[Eberron] Why I like Warforged

[Staffan]

Some of the 2e balancing methods sucked, actually. I hated the inability to use Strength to modify the natural attacks.

That one was added in TKOA, not the base Dark Sun setting (together with nerfing their AC from the excellent 5 that was a big part of their mechanical appeal, to the ridiculously bad 8 - though I can see why they did that, since it made a "base" thri-kreen have AC 5 with its Dex bonus). As an aside, the AC nerf was definitely not taken into account when they wrote the revised DS setting, since the native land of most kreen was covered in razor-sharp grass that kept doing damage to you if you had a worse AC than 7...

Me personally, I thought it was stupid that they wouldn't get Strength bonus on their claws, but accepted it with their bite.

 

[JohnSnow]

Firstly, a request: can we move the Thri-Kreen discussion to a different thread?

Second, I have to address the following with some comments about Eberron.

And that is why I dislike warforged. I see no reason for their existance. Why go to all the bother of creating a race that is the same LA as a human? I find Warforge(d) [sic] to be gimped.

There's something you have to realize about Eberron to get this. Most characters are not PC classes. I'll repeat that. Most of the NPCs in Eberron do not have a PC class. Warforged do. From what Keith says, almost all of them. So, I can:

a) Train a commoner from when he's 10-18 and hope he has the chops to take a PC class.
b) Spend 1600 gp on a guaranteed combatant that I can have next week.

After decades of war, the Five Nations were doing all they could as far as A went, and still found themselves short of troops. And along comes House Cannith with their marketing material: "Soldiers for sale. Well-trained." They're like the Clone troops from Star Wars - they come out fully trained in a LOT less than 20 years.

That alone explains it.

So, they're sort of magical clones. As far as the argument that "there's no reason for them to be LA +0" other than playability. Gee, you're right. But IMO, the things they've done to justify the 0 LA make the Warforged MORE interesting as a race, not less.

As always, YMMV.

 

[Stone Dog]

Well, two months not a week. They still need to go through basic training. Nitpicking aside, you can bolster your numbers in two months or wait for 15 or so years for new humans to be bred. Hmmmm....

 

[I'm A Banana]

There's something you have to realize about Eberron to get this. Most characters are not PC classes. I'll repeat that. Most of the NPCs in Eberron do not have a PC class. Warforged do. From what Keith says, almost all of them. So, I can:

a) Train a commoner from when he's 10-18 and hope he has the chops to take a PC class.
b) Spend 1600 gp on a guaranteed combatant that I can have next week.

Makes sense to me. The idea of PC classes being special go a long way toward this, as do the fact that human troops can tire out, starve, and require daily provisioning and training. You can march a warforged from the day he crawls out of the creation forge until the planet dies and not have to do anything other than give him orders.

Think about the effects in a rather industrial setting like Eberron. Warforged are effectively infinite energy machines. They can propel themselves withuot ever resting. Stick one in a turbine and he can spin the blades *eternally*. Warforged can cart around the commanders for free, and can fight and die more effectively and cheaply than any human.

It makes a lot of sense to have warforged as troops IMHO.

As well, think about elves. How many people do you know who play elves as immortal or extremely long-lived, the way they are shown in fiction? How often does the "immortalness" actually make a difference in what a character chooses to do?

Never. Which is why, IMC, they're usually not. Unless elven superiority needs to factor into it, because longevity is a good motivator for feeling better than all these whippersnappers who haven't been on the planet for a tenth of the time you have.

 

[Klaus]

Note that while warforged are not immune to nonlethal damage (but they can be with just a single feat). So your warforged army might not move 24/7, but your elite warforged troops (say, 3rd level) can run from the Lhazzaar Principalities to the Eldeen Reaches without breaking stride.

 

[shilsen]

Note that while warforged are not immune to nonlethal damage (but they can be with just a single feat). So your warforged army might not move 24/7, but your elite warforged troops (say, 3rd level) can run from the Lhazzaar Principalities to the Eldeen Reaches without breaking stride.

So, if a warforged army leaves Fairhaven heading east at 4 miles/hr and a zombie army leaves Korth heading west at 4 miles/hr...

 

[BryonD]

Second, I have to address the following with some comments about Eberron.

Being forced to retreat to the fluff of a specific setting to justify the mechanics of a race is a strike against it. IMO.

 

[el-remmen]

Being forced to retreat to the fluff of a specific setting to justify the mechanics of a race is a strike against it. IMO.

This is the opposite of my gaming philosophy.

For me the rules exist to justify the setting. You can call it 'fluff', but a setting has its own set of "rules" that are just not necessarily mechanical that should be adhere to as well - and to me the usually the setting rules trump the mechanical ones.

 

[JohnSnow]

Being forced to retreat to the fluff of a specific setting to justify the mechanics of a race is a strike against it. IMO.

This is called "wanting it both ways" or "arguing out of both sides of your mouth."

Argument 1: "Warforged have no reason to exist other than providing a playable construct race. They're soooo lame!"

Argument 2: "Warforged only make sense in the context of the Eberron setting. They're soooo lame!"



So...umm...which is it? Do they need believable context? Or a game-mechanical reason to be the way they are?

Unless you're all claiming they should just have introduced a +3 ECL Construct race...which might have been the purist solution...

But then nobody would play one.

 

[Seeten]

Someone would play one, actually and the people complaining right now that they are
La +0 and its so wrong would be complaining then also, except a new complaint. Now its that your a powergamer, who wants to play a weird ecl +3 race that doesnt fit their setting, and everyone else is level 1, so why cant you just make YET ANOTHER HUMAN!?