Eberron = power creep or just pushing the envelope?

[Knight Otu]

What are they made of?

From what I've heard, and going by the pictures I've seen, I guess that a sizeable portion of the warforged interior is actually darkwood, which is pretty light as we know.

 

[DocSER]

From what I've heard, and going by the pictures I've seen, I guess that a sizeable portion of the warforged interior is actually darkwood, which is pretty light as we know.

Don't forget the snails and the hell hound tails.


Seriously though, I am concerned about the balance but want to try it out. From what I have read in the book so far ( - Thank you FLGS - I am about half-way through), I have not seen any external balancing factors (other than role-playing "out-group" status).

I sense that in cultural terms, the warforged are the new half-orcs. To a great extent, balance may depend on these cultural disadvantages - not a good sign (...visions of blade singers dancing in my head).

 

[jollyninja]

you know what? if a lizard man only gets a +1ecl, there is no way the warforged should get one. no extra skill points, no feats, no BAB, the only armor he will ever have is the natural armor, no bonus to base saves, weak natural attack form but an immunity against certian attack forms. it may be a slightly powerful race but not even close to worthy of an ecl. a lizard man ecl+1 gets 2 hd, +1 bab, +5 natural armor, a feat, +2 str and con, -2 int, these things are far more useful in any game i've run, the +5 to ac alone is huge. with say, studded leather armor at first, a rogue can be the tank of the low level party.

warforged is good but not quite good enough for an ecl. i think the mystic theurge debate was killed by unearthed arcana's gestalting rules. cast like a theurge at lev 1 with better hd, saves and bab, and not being 3 spell levels behind, kewl!

 

[Gez]

On the other hand...

Hobgoblins are LA+1.
Compare a hobgoblin's assets (+2 Dex, + Con, +4 Move Silently, Darkvision) with the Warforged's...

 

[Hamburger Mary]

The half-healing is ouchey, but not handicapping; obnoxious, yes, but no more so than a Half-Orc being stuck as the party's diplomat.

I'm not seeing the comparison. A half-orc is poorly suited by race to be a diplomat. A warforged is ideally suited by race to be a tank. But one of the primary functions of the tank is to soak up damage. If the warforged does this, it's twice as hard to heal as the dwarf. The half-orc diplomat is an intentional chjoice to go against the natural strengths of the character. The healing penalty applies TO the character's greatest strengths.

It's the difference between giving Dwarves a +2 on saves vs. poison or giving them immunity to it...in fact, comparing Warforged to Dwarves gives you a nice example of how aparently pathetic a +0 ECL Dwarf is in comparison.

Again, I disagree. The dwarf gets benefits besides a poison save; darkvision can be a handy thing. He doesn't have that Wisdom penalty. If he wants to be a wizard, he's not dealing with the permanent arcane spell failure. He gets full benefit from healing. After the first few levels, he can get armor to match the warforged -- and eventually he can get better armor. AND he's got an extra feat on top of it (which the warforged had to spend on his armor). A 1st level warforged commoner has an edge on a 1st level dwarf commoner. But do you have commoners in your party? And how long do you have 1st level characters? Once you're comparing a 5th-level fighter to a 5th-level fighter, it's a different picture.

As I said, I've been *running* a campaign with a dwarf and a warforged. Your mileage may vary, but I haven't been overwhelmed by the astonishing power of the warforged. There are a lot of things about it that are cool and interesting. But it's also got a lot of drawbacks. I suggest you give it a try -- or if you want to test it off-line, try testing midlevel PCs instead of 1st-level npcs.

 

[Hamburger Mary]

On the other hand...
Hobgoblins are LA+1.
Compare a hobgoblin's assets (+2 Dex, + Con, +4 Move Silently, Darkvision) with the Warforged's...

But is this a problem with the warforged, or the hobgoblin? As I recall, the bugbear is also LA+1, and the bonuses are significantly better than those of the hobgoblin (though I don't have the MM at hand, so I could be wrong here).

 

[Knight Otu]

Compare a hobgoblin's assets (+2 Dex, + Con, +4 Move Silently, Darkvision) with the Warforged's...

Now, compare the hobgoblins to the dwarves...

 

[Staffan]

you know what? if a lizard man only gets a +1ecl, there is no way the warforged should get one. no extra skill points, no feats, no BAB, the only armor he will ever have is the natural armor, no bonus to base saves, weak natural attack form but an immunity against certian attack forms. it may be a slightly powerful race but not even close to worthy of an ecl. a lizard man ecl+1 gets 2 hd, +1 bab, +5 natural armor, a feat, +2 str and con, -2 int, these things are far more useful in any game i've run, the +5 to ac alone is huge. with say, studded leather armor at first, a rogue can be the tank of the low level party.

Note that Level Adjustment is in addition to HD, because HD count as actual levels. So a 2nd level lizardman fighter has a total ECL of 5: 2 levels of humanoid, 2 levels of fighter and a +1 Level Adjustment.

 

[Graf]

I'm glad some discussion was generated. Some folks brought up stuff I hadn't thought about.
(and thanks to Anax for providing additional info -- I'd seen posts on wizards boards that the Warforged were "composite material" and thus "immune to all rust and metal affecting spells" glad to have that clarified.)

[tangent]
To the campaigns-exist-in-a-perfect-world-and-things-can-never-be-compared-across-campaigns folks: No. You're wrong.
ECL +0 means "roughly the same power level as being a half-elf or an orc or a human or any other ECL +0 race as presented in the PHB"

To use the example that a lot of people were, erroniously, citing: The Darksun variants of the PHB races are all ECL +1 or +2.
The 3e version of Darksun presented in Dragon/Dungeon explained that since "these races are more powerful than standard PHB" they had to have level adjustments. Darksun games start off above first level allowing people to play these classes.
[/tangent]

It's possible that
*they wanted warforged to work a certain wait for story purposes and be popular and fun for players and prioritized that above game balance
*Warforged are balanced within the setting of Eberron because the other character races get Dragonmarks and special powers not available to characters in other worlds and monsters are more powerful than their CR would indicate.
*much like 2e with Drow, the designers felt that the social constraints on Warforged served as a good "counterweight" to their improved stats

Eberron looks to have a lot of fun story elements and they're trying new stuff with mechanics. I'm looking forward to seeing more about it.

 

[Aaron L]

It has been stated by the designers on numerous occaisions that balancing mechanical benefits with roleplaying penalties is bad game design and will not happen. Has their position changed?


I will be severly dissappointed if it has.