D&D General Putting the War into Warforged

[Zardnaar]

As the title says. Thinking skynet here.

If the Warforged can be mass produced enough they have a lot of advantages over humans and the other races.
Put simply they don't need to eat or breathe. This means they can settle anywhere hypothetically.

If they can control their own reproduction via resources somewhere like Siberia is great for them abundant timber and minerals few humans.

However what if they thought like Terminators eg they wanted to wipe out the biological races? Or just wanted to conquer everything on a non Eberron world?

Do creation forges magically create them or would they still need to be fed resource? Could the HQ of a Warforged empire be located in the middle of the Sahara?

Would they even want to make more or just replacements?

Just throwing around an idea for WoW, World of Warforged.

 

[Xeviat]

I think they still need resources, but with wall of iron and such spells you still might be able to magically generate those resources.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think they still need resources, but with wall of iron and such spells you still might be able to magically generate those resources.

As I said Siberia is great.

Would Warforged care about human preferences. If they were restricted to areas humans don't care about much would they be happy?

 

[Xeviat]

As I said Siberia is great.

Would Warforged care about human preferences. If they were restricted to areas humans don't care about much would they be happy?

I don't think 5E warforged get any special resistances against environmental effects. They'll still be damaged or fatigued by environmental cold and heat.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think 5E warforged get any special resistances against environmental effects. They'll still be damaged or fatigued by environmental cold and heat.

True but they don't need to eat so that gets around a big downside of those terrain types.
Also immune to disease. That opens up jungles, swamps etc.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

True but they don't need to eat so that gets around a big downside of those terrain types.
Also immune to disease. That opens up jungles, swamps etc.

Really all forms of wasteland work for them, including the not actually "land" ones like the ocean floor. Skynet's going to win.

Do creation forges magically create them or would they still need to be fed resource? Could the HQ of a Warforged empire be located in the middle of the Sahara?

I assume they need mundane raw materials for most of the body and have to be powered by magic crystals, or some comparable fantasy cliché. I think if they can just be magically created out of the aether then there is no particular reason for them to be robots. A self-aware military industrial complex gone rogue and fighting for resources to maintain and replicate itself has more interesting motivations for conflict than people who require nothing and are just born at the magic factory that requires nothing to create them.

 

[Zardnaar]

Really all forms of wasteland work for them, including the not actually "land" ones like the ocean floor. Skynet's going to win.


I assume they need mundane raw materials for most of the body and have to be powered by magic crystals, or some comparable fantasy cliché. I think if they can just be magically created out of the aether then there is no particular reason for them to be robots. A self-aware military industrial complex gone rogue and fighting for resources to maintain and replicate itself has more interesting motivations for conflict than people who require nothing and are just born at the magic factory that requires nothing to create them.

Well resources work for me.

Hmmn ocean floor kinda forgot that. Inconvenient perhaps.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Well, the exact process of creating a warforged has never been defined. Keith Baker does that intentionally to give room for the DM to fill in the gaps.

But I've always imagined that the creation of warforged requires more than materials. There is some unintended consequences in creating a warforged.

For example, it requires pulling souls from Dolurrh to create the seed of consciousness in a warforged. Or the magic that animates a warforged requires some form of magic or energy, and depleting it could weaken the prisons that contain the Overlords. Perhaps the Day of Mourning was the result of what happens when too many warforged are manufactured in one place, since Cyre is the home of House Cannith and contained the majority of their creation forges. So it may be that even with unlimited resources there could be some natural limit to warforged production.

 

[Umbran]

Anyone ever heard of the science fiction concept of the "grey goo" scenario? It is when you release self-replicating nanotechnology into the world, and it replicates, and replicates, until it overwhelms every other life form on the planet. The planet is simply covered in a blanket of nanobot grey goo.

If there are absolutely no restrictions on warforged reproduction, and they don't die of disease or old age, you eventually get a "warforged goo" - the entire planet, every square inch of surface, is covered with warforged.

There's your new novel setting idea. The ground isn't dirt - it is just a pile of warforged several tens of meters thick.

 

[Oofta]

To me the question is pretty fundamental. What do they want? I mean, the grey goo scenario is one way to go, but the assumption with the nanites is that they don't think. They're designed to replicate, nothing stops them so they just continue doing what they do.

But warforged do think and can make decisions to alter their behavior. There's no reason to assume that Skynet or any other artificial intelligence would care about world domination. I don't see a reason they would have an instinctual programmed need to replicate.

They might create more warforged to achieve a specific goal, but once they have enough members to achieve the goal why bother creating more? In addition, warforged are not assumed to be hive minds. One faction may splinter and have different goals and methods, robot wars could easily be a thing.

But I could see a solitary warfarged building a few compatriots because they're lonely and then stopping because the effort to build more doesn't justify the potential gain. We value children because of biological drive, warforged don't (necessarily) have that drive.