Undead warforged

[AuraSeer]

Warforged are living creatures, but they're not made of ordinary flesh. I'm wondering whether that prevents them from being turned into undead creatures.

Can a dead warforged be animated as a zombie?
Can a warforged wizard become a lich?
How about wraiths, wights, vampires, vampire spawn, and other kinds of undead?

 

[DanMcS]

Warforged are living creatures, but they're not made of ordinary flesh. I'm wondering whether that prevents them from being turned into undead creatures.

Can a dead warforged be animated as a zombie?
Can a warforged wizard become a lich?
How about wraiths, wights, vampires, vampire spawn, and other kinds of undead?

They're living constructs, and immune to energy drain, but not ability drain.

Constructs can't become undead, because they were never alive. Most of the undead templates say something like "Vampire" is an acquired template that can be added to any humanoid or monstrous humanoid creature'; warforged are neither, they're living constructs, which is a subtype of construct. So technically, probably not.

I'd go with the rule of cool: if it would be cool and useful for your campaign to have a vampire warforged, go for it.

 

[Liquidsabre]

A dead warforged, a living construct, whose body is given animation after it's soul has passed would be a normal construct, lifeless and souless.

 

[Knight Otu]

A warforged could become undead, if there were an undead creature that could spawn from them. There are none of them in the SRD. Most only spawn from humanoid creatures (type restriction), or pass on a disease (which living constructs are immune against). Warforged have no skeletal system, and thus cannot be animated as skeletons or zombies. An undead template that can be applied to living creatures could be used, if the warforged could be killed by the attack that does the spawning.

 

[Herobizkit]

"Rule of Cool" should apply to an undead Warforged. Undead and Constructs share similar immunities, so it's just a matter of stats (ie loss of Con).

 

[Vegepygmy]

Warforged are living creatures, but they're not made of ordinary flesh. I'm wondering whether that prevents them from being turned into undead creatures.

From Races of Eberron, page 16:

"The Treaty of Thronehold gave warforged their freedom, but only after great debate. House Cannith and Thrane argued ardently that warforged were not living creatures because they do not possess souls. Their evidence for this was that warforged cannot become undead by any known method, not even ghosts or shadows."​

 

[Herobizkit]

But what about unknown methods?

 

[Jack Simth]

Well... technically, there is a method by which you can turn a Warforged into a Wight.

Step 1: Get a 1st level LG Warforged.
Step 2: Get an Unholy Chaotic Weapon
Step 3: Convince the Warforged to wield the weapon

Effect: The Warforged gains a negative level or two - as it has more negative levels than hit dice, it dies. As it was killed by negative levels, it rises the next day as a Wight.

 

[FoxWander]

Warforged are living creatures, but they're not made of ordinary flesh. I'm wondering whether that prevents them from being turned into undead creatures.

Can a dead warforged be animated as a zombie?
Can a warforged wizard become a lich?
How about wraiths, wights, vampires, vampire spawn, and other kinds of undead?

Well, they don't have blanket immunity to necromancy effects, so theoretically they can become undead. However, because of the type restrictions, it's difficult to find an undead template that can be applied to them. It has to be a template which can be applied to "any corporeal creature" without any other qualifiers. Zombie and skeleton are out because they require a corporeal creature WITH a skeletal system- which warforged don't have. The same goes for the other undead types you list.

The only undead "template" that kinda works on a warforged is "Spawn of Kyuss" from MM2- and even that one depends on ruling that warforged have a brain for the spawn worm to burrow into. If the worm can cause enough intelligence damage to kill a warforged, then it will become a spawn.

You can also create warforged wights- but it requires some extra work. Normally they would be immune to "wightdom" because of their immunity to energy drain, but under the spell Greater Humanoid Essence (Races of Eberron, Cleric 7, Artificer 6) a warforged loses the living construct subtype, their main type changes to humanoid and they lose ALL their other immunities. They are now eligible to be energy drained to death (Yay! What a fun prize!) and can become wights. When the spell wears off they'll be UNliving constructs! In fact, that spell could be used to create several types of undead warforged that require the "humanoid" type.

 

[Umbran]

Well, they don't have blanket immunity to necromancy effects, so theoretically they can become undead.

I'm working from the d20 srd, which doesn't cover warforged specifically. However:

Constructs are immune to necromantic effects.

And the level loss from an unholy or chaotic weapon isn't necromantic - the weapons are made with evocation magic. And the weapon power description notes that it cannot result in actual permanent level loss. So, I'm thinking it cannot kill you and have you come back as a wight.