If you were to rename the Warforged for a neutral setting, what would you name them? (thread 1/3)

[jasper]

Bob the Wonder Bolt

 

[Gradine]

This a friendly reminder, BTW, that Warforged are not robots or androids or anything in the like but rather living golems, and are in fact constructed as much (of not more) out of wood than metal.

Edit: Though to be fair the metal stands out quite a bit more (since it's mostly on the outside).

 

[steeldragons]

Golems
Growbots
Growboids
Mandroids
Artiforms
Artifitians
Metalmen
Bronzonians
Ironoids
Mechamen
Mechanids

Gimme a minute...I bet there's more...

 

[Satyrn]

Alternate Reply

Tinmen.

I've already used that name for a Great Old One, a massive creature wandering the void of space looking for a new pilot.

 

[MarkB]

Dolls.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've used Golemborn before.

 

[Yaarel]

Seriously, I would refer to the Warforged as:

• Wood Golem
• Armor Golem

It depends on the concept. The armor golem would be an archetypal empty suit of armor.

 

[Oofta]

Bob. Or maybe Robert if you're being formal. Unless of course their name is really Margaret and for some reason people call them Peggy, which is something I've never understood. I mean, seriously? It's like calling Richard "Dick". The only commonality is a random vowel.

Anyway, I digress. Warforged works because it's simple and evocative, unique without being totally made up. They were forged for war, it's right there in the name. So maybe you need to start with their origin story. If they were not created to be warriors, why or how were they created? Are they still being built, and if so why?

Barring some bolt from the blue, you could just use a standard term like androids, automatons, mech or from sci-fi synthetic humans aka synths. Robot for example comes from Slavic robota for "forced labor".

So in my world I might use google to look up "slave labor" in latin to give me "servi laborant" which could become Serborants or Serlab? I don't know, neither really rolls off the tongue but you get the idea. An option is to just make up a new word that you think sounds cool, it doesn't need to mean anything. Maybe they're just named after their inventor? Kind of like how we call Frankenstein's monster Frankenstein?

Other options would be more how they were made. Soulforged, Constructed, Metal Men, or just Forged Ones.

But seriously? Jack for John? Really?

 

[cbwjm]

I'd probably stick with warforged or perhaps just forged depending on the background of the setting. If they weren't made for war then it makes sense to remove war from the name.

I'd also consider automaton but that evokes an image of a clockwork robot in my mind so that doesn't really fit. I guess I could give them all the ability to wildshape into an animal 1/short rest and then call them cybertronian.

 

[Gradine]

I'd probably stick with warforged or perhaps just forged depending on the background of the setting. If they weren't made for war then it makes sense to remove war from the name.

This is a good point. Warforged were ultimately sentience for a reason; in Eberron this was (theoretically, in any case) to make them more effective warriors. The reason why for they are built, and then ultimately given sentience, will probably go a long way towards figuring out what people in any given world would call them.

So perhaps that answer to the OP's question is that there isn't a good name for them in a neutral-setting that would be superior to a setting-specific name.