Eberron = power creep or just pushing the envelope?

[MDSnowman]

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet (but I could have missed it) is the fact that cure spells only heal half of what they normally would when applied to a Warforged.

Please tell me you're being sarcastic....

 

[Hamburger Mary]

Note that our friend the warforged has another vunerability: a metal chasis. This makes him vunerable to Heat Metal, Chill Metal, Rusting Grasp, Rust Monsters (ewww), Maginetism, and other metalitc traps a DM can thow at them...

Good point -- though I think this was added in after the Dragon article, right? In any case, it does mean that the warforged is immune to many things that fleshy folks can ignore, but has vulnerabilities they do not.

A few observations from running a campaign with a warforged character in it:

* No natural healing? No big deal. 50% benefit from cure spells? BIG deal. Until we added an artificer to the group, the warforged was a serious cure-vacuum, even with his adamantine plating.

* You're making a permanent sacrifice for something that provides you with a temporary edge. You *must* decide at first level whether you're taking that adamantine body or not. You sacrifice a feat forever to do it. Yes, for a few levels you are the bad ass. But eventually, the dwarf fighter gets his own suit of adamantine full plate -- now you're even on the AC front, and he's got one more feat than you do. Then, you discover the supercool major artifact plate mail -- and guess who's going to be wearing it? Hint: not you.

With that said, warforged can *be* enchanted. So you can get slick or silent moves. But you have to convince your artificer pal to help you out with it, and you'll never be able to just find a super-cool suit of armor in the dungeon.

* No sleep = designated watchdog. This says nothing good or bad about the race, just an observation -- now they have a warforged in the group, everyone else gets 8 hours of sleep each night.

* Social stigma. This is purely up to use as a DM, but I certainly play up the element that many do not consider the warforged to be the equals of humans, that many do not trust them or expect them to be intelligent. In this sense, warforged are the half-orcs of Eberron (given that half-orcs don't have as much of a stigma).

So far, I haven't found the warforged to be overpowered compared to the other characters in the party... Just my 2 coppers.

 

[Veneficus the Great]

First Eberron adventure

I began to write my first Eberron adventure last week, but I have not the Campaign Setting book yet, so I got a little shock when I read this thread..

..are the Warforged really immune to diseases? My first adventure in Eberron are destroyed. A city infected by blinding sickness, blindheims (from Tome of Horror) and grimlocs. Who does not want to be a warforged then?

---
Veneficus the Wise

 

[Anax]

I think the 1/2 healing is a big issue, as well. Another fun thing is that if you take the Improved Fortification warforged feat (grants immunity to sneak attacks and extra damage from critical hits), you can no longer be healed by Healing spells any more.

And let's look at some others... Hmm. Adamantine Body. Cool, adamantine full plate. Only... you're considered to be wearing heavy armor now. Max land speed 20 feet... 3x run speed limit... And you can't take it off when you need a bit more maneuverability.

Anyway, I think that at the lowest levels it might be a little powerful. But once you hit level 8-10, an ECL of +1 would get you started thinking "Why in god's name did I spend a +1 ECL on this character? All I get is a handful of immunities and a built in suit of armor."

So while it might be more powerful than some other races, it's clearly not worth a +1 ECL.

 

[Anax]

Oh, and Veneficus: Note that warforged and that numerous. While a group of PCs composed entirely of warforged might be a *great* team for someone to hire to look into this nasty disease, chances are very slight that the disease is going to be no big deal because everybody living in the area is warforged.

Just make sure that disease is not the *only* threat.

 

[tarchon]

Note, I'm also going by Dragon #318. If someone with the ECS can weigh with info whether some things have changed, that would be good.

With 5% arcane spell failure. Not much, but it is there. Also, constructs would normally be immune to critical hits. And since it is wearing that armor, it cannot wear other armor or magical robes.

Light armor? Sounds like warforged bards are the only way to go.
Does sound a little excessive, but I guess it depends on how hard those repair spells are to come by and what Mending and Make Whole do for them. I wonder if Craft Construct can be used to repair them as with normal constructs?

 

[Knight Otu]

Light armor? Sounds like warforged bards are the only way to go.

Yep, light armor. The Mithral Body feat would also be light armor.

Does sound a little excessive, but I guess it depends on how hard those repair spells are to come by and what Mending and Make Whole do for them. I wonder if Craft Construct can be used to repair them as with normal constructs?

The Repair Damage line of spells (Tome and Blood) also exists in Eberron. That is the mentioned arcana healing.

 

[JoeBlank]

Warforged Bard = C-3PO

Had to comment, since I was thinking of bard while reading the whole thread, only to see it brought up in the last 2 posts.

 

[tarchon]

Warforged Bard = C-3PO

Had to comment, since I was thinking of bard while reading the whole thread, only to see it brought up in the last 2 posts.

I was thinking of Disney animatronics

 

[~Johnny~]

Over the past few months, I've seen a lot of debate on the relative merits and drawbacks of the warforged. I don't think the fact that they can spend a feat to gain a suit of armor is game-breaking. In most campaigns I've played in, feats are more precious than armor. Dont get me wrong, warforged have a lot of advantages. But in anything but barbarian or fighter, they're not going to be min-max choices. Even if you're trying to game the rules, the warforged most significant benefits are most visible at low levels.

From what I've seen, Eberron isn't an overpowered setting. Some of its mechanics will be attractive to min-maxers, but that's true of just about any book that comes out from WotC these days. It's been playtested more heavily than some of WotC's recent releases. I'm sure they don't want to take all the energy/money they've put into creating a cool world and ruin it with shoddy mechanics.

Does the Dragon article go into how easy it would be to remove the precious adamantine coating from the critter? Because a low level party could easily get a decent "inheritance" if their buddy... died... due to... uneforeseen circumstances.

One thing worth mentioning is that the feat was originally called "Adamantine Laced Body," so the actual adamantine content might not be that huge. There's sure to be some value in the body of a dead warforged, but removing it would be an arduous process, and comparable to cutting apart your enemies' bodies for spell components.

Eberron designer Keith Baker actually responded to this question once before:

"Adamantine body" is something of a misnomer -- it used to have a longer, clunkier name... A warforged with this feat is not supposed to be solid adamantine, like a suit of adamantine armor; if so they would be virtually indestructible, after all. Instead, it is a matter of adamantine being alloyed with the base metal to strengthen it. Ditto for mithral. With that said, you might still be able to get something for a dead warforged; on the other hand, it depends how unscrupulous your buyer is. It's sort of like showing up with a dead human and saying "Wanna buy his skin?"

I laughed when I saw this:

Warforged Bard = C-3PO

Uh-oh! They're on to me!