Eberron-as corny as I think?

[Barak]

There was a slight misrepresentation above. The Creation Forges are eldritch machines that create living constructs.. not Golem's that 'accidently' gain sentience. Keith intentionally left the 'how' and 'why' out as having all the answers makes for a boring game.

My interpretation is that the Creation Forge actually re-incarnates instead of creating, bonding a living soul into an artificial body.


But you are right, if Keith didn't want a kewl new player race, he would not have bothered with Warforged, Shifters, or Khalastars... and we would have *yet another greyhawk* virtually indistinguishable from any other setting.

But.. that being said.. Okay, y'all folks are saying ya dont' like Eberron because of the Warforged.
Guess what, I don't like the Drow.. does this mean I wont play FR?

This thread is about opinions... regarding Eberron, I have mine. Formed after reading and playing in the setting.
You have your opinion, formed apparently without reading or playing the setting.

Funny the way that goes.

But, I forsee this thread will eventually dwindle farther down the path of sillyness and end up getting locked.. so I think I will go back to lurking in House Rules

Just to clarify.. I'm neutral about Eberron. To me, that means I'm just as likely to play/run it than any other setting. Since I don't have Eberoon books..

The only reason I posted in this thread to begin with was the absurd defenses to the warforged races. If any Eberron-lover had said "ok, Warforged are kinda silly, but they're there." I'd have been happy. But nooooooo. They go into weird, non-sensical rants abotu why they make sense, even though they don't.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Fair 'nuff..

Course same could be said regarding some key elements in other settings

{off to edit my bad

tag above...}

 

[Barak]

Fair 'nuff..

Course same could be said regarding some key elements in other settings

Which is why no setting ranks higher than "neutral" on my scale..

All settings have dumb stuff about them. Other thanb, of course, my awesome, too good to be published Homegrown Setting.

Darn it, even that setting has dumb stuff about it.

 

[Odhanan]

All settings have dumb stuff about them. Other thanb, of course, my awesome, too good to be published Homegrown Setting.

"Homegrown? What kind of a name is this? I prefer Dawnforge or Dragonlance! "Homegrown". That doesn't even make sense!"

 

[Barak]

"Homegrown? What kind of a name is this? I prefer Dawnforge or Dragonlance! "Homegrown". That doesn't even make sense!"

I -said- something about it was dumb.

 

[Stone Dog]

You're getting outside of the discussion. We're talking War machines. -One- Iron Golem is better than the equivalent number of warforgeds with cheap equipment, or one warforged with equipment commensurate with the cost involved in creating whatever equipment you want. So house Cannith would have been better off making Iron Golems. Wouldn't have made for good PCs, though.

It wouldn't have made for good soldiers either. Sure, everybody wants a tank now and then. The old warforged titans filled this niche pretty well. They were like iron golems, but easier to make and with a moderate degree of autonomy. The creation forges that Cannith engineers brought back from Xen'Drik could increase production of warforged types to a degree that would be impossible for golems of anykind. So they made titans to stride in battle, attack fortifications and become a battlefield presence that an iron golem could only be on a much smaller scale.

However, regardless of how devestating tanks or planes or catapults or any great machine of war is, troops are still the backbone of any army. Nobody wanted to lose the war, but they would have if they ran out of men to fight it, no matter how many iron golems were standing around waiting to be told what to do.

So Cannith made troops. They made troops that could be trained in a fraction of the time, were practically all fighters instead of mere warriors, could freely adapt to battle conditions and didn't need to sleep, eat, drink or rest. War could actually be waged with these. They could supplement regiments and companies in a way that a titan or a golem couldn't approach.

It is the creation forges that make the warforged able to take a place on the battlefield. Great eldritch machines reverse engineered from schema brought back from Xen'drik. Golems still need one 16th level caster to produce ONE in... oh hell, my DMG is in storage... however many days it takes to make a 150,000 GP item. Creation forges can make enough warforged fighters to make a fighting force in, well it hasn't been exactly established, but in a much shorter time and with much less cost.

Now somebody might turn around and say "Why don't the creation forges make golems then?" That is just it. They don't. They make warforged and the designs are ancient. It is guessed that the giants made them first, but if this is true they would have been made and abandoned before the giants created the elves in the dawn of time. Exactly what did House Cannith bring back and unleash in their pride? What secrets still lay in wait deep in the shifting jungles of the shattered land? What is the true origin of the warforged?

These are just some reasons I like the 'forged better than mere golems. The mystery behind what they actually are deep down and why they were abandoned by their creators in favor of the elves.

 

[Barak]

Again, I feel the need to reiterate that -all- other settings have contrivances built in.

That said, no matter how cool and interesting the story is.. It -is- contrived!

I can't help but -see- that the idea of a "ECL +0 Construct" came -before- the story that allows them to exist.

Then again, the only way to totally avoid that is to craft your campaign around a setting that wasn't built to be an RPG campaign, and, honestly, that comes with it's own huge set of problems.

Regardless, Warforged, while maybe cool, are contrived.

 

[Stone Dog]

I can't help but -see- that the idea of a "ECL +0 Construct" came -before- the story that allows them to exist.

Actually, on this point you are wrong. The story of the warforged, the background and impact on the world came from Keith Baker before the other developers at WotC worked with Keith to turn them into a PC race. Also the choice to make them ECL +0 came even after that when marketing research brought up that ECL +X races are irritating to alot of players.

Now you may still see them as contrived and I can't help or stop that, but it isn't because of the order of ideas.

 

[Klaus]

As the ruler of a Kingdom, I'd take a totally obedient, awesomely powerful Iron Golem over your "adaptable warriors" that my Golem could crush.

And while my Golem is busy doing that, I'd spend my time trying to buy out your sentient warforged, BTW. My Golem is uncorruptible, and non-charmable.

Except that the price of your one Iron Golem (150,000 gp), back during the war would buy 100 warforged Ftr2 with the equivalent of adamantine full plate armor that are immune to the iron golem's poisonous breath. And being mindless, the iron golem can certainly be led into a trap. And you'd still need someone to issue orders to the iron golem, unless you deploy it with a "kill everything that moves" command.

And by the time the warforged Ftr2 defeat the iron golem, they'll have enough XP to be what, Ftr4?

Oh, and btw, Eberron has the Warforged Titan, a Huge construct that is closer to what you propose without being an actual iron golem (but it is near-mindless), and the Warforged Charger, a gorilla-shaped construct with adamantine fists (handy when toppling down siege towers and castles).

 

[Ds Da Man]

It amazes me that players of a game that has dwarves, elves, and halflings fighting dragons, trolls, demons, etc. would call another game contrived or silly. What if the Eberron gods had just created them like the other sentient races? Would that have been better?