[Eberron] Why I like Warforged

[BryonD]

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!"

Sorry but that is called disfunctional logic.
Arguments 1 and 2 are neither exclusive nor prerequistes of one another.
To claim that the two statement somehow contradict is completely vacant of logic.

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

They need a game mechanical reason to be the way they are AND need to be not tied down to a particular mandatory context.

It is possible to be both, neither, or either one but not the other.
By far the best answer is both.

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

If it is going to be what the concept truly claims to be then that would be better than asking me to ignore the obvious meta-game backbending every time I see one.

But then nobody would play one.

Eh, not so if it was a BALANCED +3LA. It isn't my fault that WotC always overrates LAs.

 

[BryonD]

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.

And my gaming philosophy is that exploring and defining a setting is part of the fun of the game.

Having someone else tell me what that should be is paying them to play the game for me.

I have not played in the Realms in many many years. But I buy the majority of the products in that line because it is so easy to adapt piece-meal concepts from it and turn them into whatever I want.

Eberron on the other hand has a hgih frequency of "the Eberron way" as presented here as a "good" thing for Warforged.

Plus I'll point out that this was the secondary point. I spent a whole sentence stating it.
The real problem with warforged is the metagame construct without being a construct thing.

 

[Hussar]

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

I'm not seeing that. Why?

They need a game mechanical reason to be the way they are AND need to be not tied down to a particular mandatory context.

Again, why?

Why does a race need to be balanced against every other setting out there in order to be considered viable? Warforged work rather well in Eberron. They make sense in that setting and, given the power available to other players in that setting, they make sense that way too.

If every race/class had to mechanically fit in every setting, it would make for very bland settings. The Oriental Adventures races/classes tend to be on the high powered side. That's not a problem since they are balanced by the elements that exist in OA. Does that mean that OA is poorly designed? Not in my opinion.

On the golem price thing, FWIW, Scarred Lands had Bone Golems, created by the necromancers of Hollowfaust as troops, that cost 1800 gp. About the same toughness as Warforged. Not a PC race, true, but, mechanically, pretty close.

 

[BryonD]

Why does a race need to be balanced against every other setting out there in order to be considered viable?

I didn't say balanced. And I don't agree that balanced is a good word for what I am saying.

I do think that balance is important. But that is a different matter that I never mentioned.

I did say that they shouldn't be tied to the context of a setting.
And the "Why?" to that is simple: many many people play in home brews or other published settings. If a concept is not tied to one certain setting, then that concept cast a wider net. A wider net is a good thing.

Warforged work rather well in Eberron. They make sense in that setting and, given the power available to other players in that setting, they make sense that way too.

I beg to differ.
If they were mechanically sound and still tied to Eberron thematically then it would not be a very big deal. I never said that being tied to the setting was the end all. I said it was a strike against it and by implication I stated that this does nothing to off-set the meta-game contortions which make the LA0.

As I have covered previously in this thread, the mechanics of the race do a very poor job of modeling the race as the flavor describes them. Instead it models them in a way that is transparantly a sacrifice of the flavor of what the race in supposed to be in order to make it fit a metagame expectation. Or, to borrow a phrase, the game is serving the rules.

If every race/class had to mechanically fit in every setting, it would make for very bland settings. The Oriental Adventures races/classes tend to be on the high powered side. That's not a problem since they are balanced by the elements that exist in OA. Does that mean that OA is poorly designed? Not in my opinion.

And if I had ever said that I sould have been wrong.
Fortunately, I did not.

Saying that spiritfolk belong in OA moreso than Greyhawk is ok.
A wider net is better. But it is fine. It has a strike against it, but it may still work out.
Now, if the spirit folk were poorly built mechanically, then that would be bad. period.
If one were to say that it is ok that they are mechanically flawed because they fit the setting it would do nothing to make them any less mechanically flawed and that would be a poor argument.

 

[Stone Dog]

the mechanics of the race do a very poor job of modeling the race as the flavor describes them. Instead it models them in a way that is transparantly a sacrifice of the flavor of what the race in supposed to be in order to make it fit a metagame expectation.

I have to wonder what you are seeing there that the rest of us are not. I've never had a problem reconciling what the backstory of the warforged says about them with the mechanics of how the race operates.

What you see as a transparant sacrifice of flavor I see as an apt description of racial abilities. If you have the book, or the Dragon article I'd love to see a breakdown of what racial abilities you feel fail to model the concept of a fully souled and living construct.

 

[Seeten]

You know what, the construct is too powerful, so they arent really a construct but they are thing bugs me also. But, I can take a couple of levels and become a full construct, so I can ignore it in game, and OOG, well, the race has enough positives to vastly outweigh the negatives.

Again, if they were ecl +3, A) No one would play them and they'd now make awful mages, and artificers, and B) If anyone DID play them, all the same complainers would say "You just want to play them for the leet powerz/buffs/powerfulness"

You cant win. LA +0 is clearly the right move for a PC race. So, make it LA +0, and then make the justifications GOOD, which they did, and I will not complain. Then, for further props, give me a way to make the half-construct a full construct in the main book, and I will give you mad props.

So, Mad Props to Hellcow for a real fine job.

 

[Hussar]

But, what is the mechanical flaw of Warforged? Are they too powerful for a LA 0 race?

There has been numerous examples given why a cheap (ish) golem race of soldiers makes perfect sense both mechanically and stylistically. Stormtrooper clones from Star Wars is probably the best example.

Clone soldiers would be vastly more expensive than regular soldiers. And the clones need to be trained as well. The advantage is, the clones are better soldiers than regular humans. Warforged fit that bill nicely.

Personally, I could use warforged in Scarred Lands in an eyeblink. A servitor race of golems created to fight the titanswar. Heck, that's the backstory for one of the races that actually exists in SL - the Hollow Knights. The Hollow Knights are created by Corean, god of paladins, to battle the titans. He powers them with the spirits of dead heroes. Vangal, angry that Corean created a better soldier, defiles the bodies of the the dead heroes so that they cannot be laid to rest after the war is done. The Hollow Knights go on to carve out a small kingdom in the middle of Ghelspad and are now left with nothing to do than to await eventual oblivion.

Now, I could use warforged for that in a heartbeat.

So the idea that warforged can't be used in other settings is perhaps less than accurate. Warforged could be ported into SL easily.

So, the race is mechanically sound, makes sense in the context of the setting (if you accept that price is a reason), and work in other settings.

What's not to like?

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Would you give a similar bonus for giving a "voiceover", in-character or otherwise, during play?

Heh...this could lead to all sorts of amusing things.

"Lately, I'd begun to suspect that Lidda is much less intelligent than I initially thought. And her attempting to pickpocket the High Priest just cemented that notion."

Brad

 

[Mad Mac]

Heh. "Lately, it's really started to bug me. I mean, yeah, everybody here chose charisma as a dump stat, except Hennet, and frankly, I'd be scared to be alone in the same room as that nutjob. But even so, Mialee...dude...like, comb your hair, or eat something, or at least find a dress that isn't designed for someone with cleavage. I know 6 year olds with better grooming habits and sense of style. Seriously. "

 

[Mad Mac]

Or even better.

"Since yesterday, I notice that Vadania has been looking at me strangely. I caught her studying my rear portion the other day, and I don't believe she was just admiring my adamantine reinforcements."