If a character's type change, does that affect its subtype?

[Wednesday Boy]

If a character's type change, does that affect its subtype or will it stay the game? So if a warforged, (Living Construct subtype) had its type changed by a PrC (say, the Elemental Savant), would it then be an Elemental (Living Construct) or would it lose its subtype as well? Thanks!

 

[MarkB]

It depends upon the template, and upon the base creature, and most templates will tell you if they alter the base creature's subtype.

In the warforged's case, the (Living) subtype is purely a means of differentiating it from the general rules that apply to the Construct type - so if it loses the Construct type, it should generally lose the (Living) subtype as well.

 

[Herzog]

Mmmm. Hadn't seen it in that direction before.

I looked into the same regarding the Renegade Mastermaker PrC, which states it changes your type to Living Construct.

Now, since Warforged are Constructs with the Living Construct subtype, that statement can't be correct.

Types and creature types are discussed in :
the Rules of the Game: Types and Templates

In short, my human with 10 levels in the Renegade Mastermaker PrC would become a Construct with the augmented humanoid, human and Living Construct subtypes.

Your Warforged would probably become and Element with the Augmented construct and living construct subtypes.

Herzog

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Your Warforged would probably become and Element with the Augmented construct and living construct subtypes.

That makes sense. Thanks for the link, that was quite helpful. So in the case of the warforged Elemental Savant, after transformation I would ignore the features of a living construct and just consider the features of an Elemental type. Right?

 

[Herzog]

ehm. not exactly.

from part two of that series:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20060718a

...a creature with the augmented subtype retains the features from its original type, but it often has the traits from its assumed type (see page 306 in the Monster Manual). This tends to make changing a creature's type easier to handle because features from a type affect many of a creature's basic game statistics. See the descriptions for creature types in the Monster Manual glossary for the list of traits and features that go with each type.

in short, most of the time you retain the features of your original type, but gain the traits from your new type (in this case, elemental).

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Ok, I see what you mean. Thanks H!