Warforged ECL 0???? Yeah right!!!!

[Knight Otu]

Do the proponents of the "warforged are broken" side of the argument have anything to say about this? Seems to me this little post was kinda glossed over...

Depends on what Sidgel thinks he is missing. Warforged are immune to poison, sleep, paralysis, disease, nausea, fatigue, being sickened, and energy drain. They are affected by crits, nonlethal damage, stunning, ability damage and drain, and death effects and necromantic effects.
Assuming it was in reference to the energy drain immunity thing, they are. Ability drain is different. But it seems to be more of a general remark saying that they are still affected by a lot of stuff that affect other normal creatures.

 

[NilesB]

B) Have we forgotten what you get for being a dwarf?
EWP: Dwarf Waraxe
+2 to all saves vs magic
+2 to saves vs poison
Not slowed by heavy armor

That last is more of a mitigator on the Dwarf's movement penalty than a bonus. which is not to say that Warforged are not a signifigantly less powerfull race than Dwarves, or Half Orcs for that matter.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't see how you can say warforged don't fit into a jungle/undead/ocean game. Is the sole focus of the game that one thing the warforged are immune to? Maybe it's just me but I wouldn't want to play in any game, jungle or otherwise where the biggest worry is "am I going to die from malaria because the misquito bit me?" Or where I have to fear being killed by every bee sting. That just doesn't sound like a fun time. Heroic/gritty or whatever, being killed because a scorpion crawled into your bedroll is just anti-climatic.

On the undead, is level drain your sole threat to the PCs? "Wait, bob is imune to level drain. Send him in. <round or two later> uh-oh. They just ripped bob apart. Guess we'll have to join in."

Water: In shallow water, it's an advantage. PC falls into a lake, they may drown. Warforged PC falls in, the take a day or so walking back to shore. But in an ocean once that warfarged fails his swim check and sinks, just like any other character he's dead. He'd be crushed by the pressure. Sure they don't have to worry about drowning the in the bathtub, but if any of my characters went out that way I'd be looking for a new game.

Basing an entire campaign around one specific threat is bad GM'ng IMO. A game or two, ok. But you just have to adapt. Bob may not have to worry about every little but they come across, but those big bugs, pigmys, pit traps, monsters, cultists... are still a threat. The warforged my not die from mummy rot, but when he's all alone in the abandoned crypt, he's going to be pretty scared.

Warforged have feelings, have a soul and feel fear as much as anyone else. They just don't have to fear some of the little things. And yes, those can be hyped up, but if your playing with warforged, you'll just have to hyp up some other little detail to bring out the fear in addition.

I think it is also noteworthy that this is not really an issue with the ECL of the race. By this reasoning, such a campaign could not contain a Warforged at any ECL, since one of the major focuses of the campaign is negated by it.
(The question remains if this should actually be such a great solitary focus in any campaign...)

 

[Someone]

IMO, any race that gives you the opportunity to say "kiss my shiny adamantine ass" is worth at least a +1 ECL

 

[wildstarsreach]

This is something I agree with.

For Remove Disease, you'll probably be sick a whole day until the cleric preps the spell. Diseases are usually weak, however.



Those penalties last a long time. I've seen PCs cower in fear because they got hit by an energy draining sword (a vampire was wielding it, which was nasty because the sword normally inflicts negative levels on the wielder)* whose effects lasted for hours. Running around with penalties to saves and lost spells for most of an adventuring day is simply vicious. Enervation is also nasty - I don't recall how long it lasts, but you're basically screwed for that encounter (penalties to saves and many die rolls) and it doesn't allow a save. I've never actually seen someone killed by energy draining; but then again I've never seen someone killed by Hold Monster either, yet that has resulted in the deaths of a fair number of PCs.

* It occurs to me, too late, that my warforged could have used that weapon. *Sigh*



I disagree, especially if the warforged is themself an artificer. (Warforged non-spellcasters who take Adamantine Armor are kind of overpowered too, unless they were rogues.) Warforged psions (not core/Eberron, admittedly) are cheesy when they take that feat. (The feat is quite balanced with fighters in mind, though.)

I play a Psiforged in our Savage Tide campaign. We had in our Age of wyrm campaign who was a paladin/cleric/Fighter/Exorcist of the Silver Flame Warforged. From playing and watching one I think that they are definitely a Strong LA +0. If they gave the option of either -2 to Cha or Wis instead of both, then they would definitely an LA +1 race. Having these two stat minuses severely limit the classes they can become. The Body feats are significant and keep warforged generally at the top end of competetiveness.

When asking for opinions on body feats, everyone was saying not to take the psiforged body feat that I ended up taking for flavor. They were suggestingto take mitril or adamantine body. This would have been more effective but I was playing for flavor.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't see how you can say warforged don't fit into a jungle/undead/ocean game. Is the sole focus of the game that one thing the warforged are immune to? Maybe it's just me but I wouldn't want to play in any game, jungle or otherwise where the biggest worry is "am I going to die from malaria because the misquito bit me?" Or where I have to fear being killed by every bee sting. That just doesn't sound like a fun time. Heroic/gritty or whatever, being killed because a scorpion crawled into your bedroll is just anti-climatic.

Your reduction doesn't hold. I can have a breadth of challenges face the characters, and if that breadth just happens to include a plurality of a certain kind of encounter (e.g.: has a theme), the warforged will seem too powerful, and the player won't experience the same adventure as the rest of the people at the table.

Fer'instance, one of my first 3e campaigns was going for a Columbian-age-Americas feel, with the PC's being emissaries of a vast imperial monarchy, searching for the city of gold, etc., etc. Thematically, warforged would work okay -- they're pretty much a walking, talking industrial complex, and this makes the whole "civilization vs. savegry" motif really evident.

Researching the era and the mythos, you come accross countless talks of the "green hell" of the mesoamerican (and south american) jungles. Disease is big (I adopted the Nyambe rules which give diseases an SR to make them bigger). Poisonous vermin are big (giant spiders and scorpions fit well, and checking your boots for the smaller cousins is like checking for traps in a dungeon). Poisons in general are pretty big (stereotypical angry natives with venomous blowguns). Psychotropic drugs are big (drink some tobacco, wig out, reach transcendance). Water is omnipresent (rivers, estuaries, swamps, and constant, constant rain), making aquatic challenges (like monstrous crocs or sea hags) a constant part of the environment. Undead don't have much of a hold, but mummies (with mummy rot) and lycanthropes (with...uhm...lycanthropy) are very popular. Sewage systems exist, and are ripe for the lairing of monstrosities. Bugs are big -- mosuitos and spiders especially.

All in all, it's a great typical jungle campaign. Something you might even find somewhere on Xen'drik!

For any of the races from the Core and the ECS, except the warforged, this is an ideal environment for adventure. Face challenges, overcome them, and win great treasure and fame. The warforged, however, are outright immune to most of what makes this campaign different and special -- the rampant disease, the infestation of creepy crawlies that can kill you if you're not observant, the experience of drugs (drugs being a kind of poison), the threat of floods or the risk of falling into the water and being eaten all up, disappearing into the muck ('cuz no giant alligator eats up a construct, it's got no food on it!), catching a disease from an errant mosuito and having to seek out native remedies in a hostile environment...they waltz through the campaign with none of this, and that's kind of a shame. After all, jungle adventures are *fun*! It's sad that the warforged character's "jungle experience" doesn't really differ from any other experience except that his friends and companions are getting sick.

It's not that they'll be totally immune to every challenge, it's that they'll have a significant advantage that will remove some of the core threats from the campaign. I don't need EVERY challenge to be a poisonous spider to have the warforged be fairly unwelcome. Just as part of the fun of dungeon delving is the possibility of traps, part of the fun of jungle-delving is the possibility of a hungry croc in the water or a scorpion hiding in your shoe. It's part of the theme, part of the motif...and this makes warforged miss out on some of the *point* of having the adventure in the jungle, rather than in Merry Olde Greyhawk City again.

Basing an entire campaign around one specific threat is bad GM'ng IMO. A game or two, ok. But you just have to adapt. Bob may not have to worry about every little but they come across, but those big bugs, pigmys, pit traps, monsters, cultists... are still a threat. The warforged my not die from mummy rot, but when he's all alone in the abandoned crypt, he's going to be pretty scared.

First off, don't assume that people are bad GM's just because they think the warforged are problematic. That way lies petty bickering and further madness. You can have a diversity of threats and still have the warforged be very problematic.

The big bugs can't poison him, the pigmys can't hunt him (especially not with their poisoned darts), the monsters don't want to eat him, and the cultists can't invade his dreams and give him nightmares or spread a cursed plague upon him. If he can't die from mummy rot, how's the encounter with the mummy any different from the encounter with the guy dressed up in a halloween costume who just happens to get to his friends first?

He's constantly a special case, and his weirdness, according to WotC's own rules, would seem to warrant a +1 ECL, just like any creature without opposable thumbs or who cannot speak or heal (note that's not what I actually advise doing, that's just pointing out yet another situation where they're a special case).

Am I missing something here? Right now I am looking at the WF racial traits and, in my Eberron book, it says Unlike other constructs, war forged are subject to... abilty damahe, ability drain, and death effects or necromancy effects. Now if I am not mistaken that takes a lot of steam from the WF lv adj +1 crowd. And in fact makes WF... crappy.

There's a few issues with this argument, from what I can see. #1 is the suggestion that a warforged without full construct abilities at ECL +0 makes them "crappy." I'd just have to respond with "no, it doesn't." Obviously full construct immunities are way too powerful for ECL +0, so they have to take a hit. That's like saying that dwarves are crappy because they get a +4 bonus to AC vs. giants rather than a +8. It's still a big bonus. Heh, come to think of it, do you think it would be unbalanced to make dwarves immune to attacks from giants?

#2 is related: you can't judge the warforged based on what they DO NOT have that other constructs DO. That's only gonna reveal how balanced they are in comparison to other constructs, things which aren't PC races. To judge the warforged as a PC race, you have to compare it with other PC races. The only one that gets immunity at all is the elf, and it gets immunity to sleep. A single first-level spell effect that appears in...how many enemy stat blocks? Compared to poison? Level drain? Clearly, the WF has more powerful immunities than the elf.

I think it is also noteworthy that this is not really an issue with the ECL of the race. By this reasoning, such a campaign could not contain a Warforged at any ECL, since one of the major focuses of the campaign is negated by it.
(The question remains if this should actually be such a great solitary focus in any campaign...)

I agree, it's not really an ECL issue (laying aside WotC's own rules on the thing). It's an issue of the specific binary nature of the warforged -- namely, the immunities. It would be similar if we said, that, for instance, dwarves were immune to spells (rather than gaining a +2 bonus), or attacks from giants (rather than gaining +4 AC), or that halflings were invisible (rather than giving them massive stacking Hide bonuses). In all cases, there are still challenges they can contribute to -- dwarves can still be wacked with a stick (even a magically treated stick!), or can still be attacked by anything OTHER than giants. Halflings can still be heard, smelled, and felt (and there's low-level magic and mundane techniques a plenty that disrupt invisibility).

It doesn't need to be "such a great solitary focus" for it to be a problem. If halflings were invisible, it would be a constant problem, and while it would be great for some campaigns (such as a spy-oriented thriller-style campaign!) it would outright suck for other campaigns (such as...well...most others. ). If dwarves were immune to giants attacking, it would be a nice little bone to throw them in some campaigns (where giants are not a regular threat), but it would be way, way too powerful in others (where the ancient giant kingdom is acquiring dominance over the little folk!).

There's plenty of threats a jungle can hurl at an adventuring party, but a warforged is immune to a lot of the threats that make the jungle itself a special challenge. They don't have to be immune to ALL of them to make them ill-suited.

Again, to re-phrase it, I'm not saying it's impossible (or even particularly difficult) to challenge a warforged in the jungle. I'm saying that their immunities mean that they make poor PC's in jungle-focused campaigns. This is because their immunities make them immune to many of the challenges of the jungle itself, meaning the player misses out on the fun of overcoming them (which ends up making threats look the same after a while), and because in being immune, the character may overshadow those who must constantly struggle against these forces.

Could you have Warforged and have fun in a jungle exploration campaign? Sure, probably. Just like you can play Farty McCrablegs in a grim n' gritty survival game and have fun. But I'd say in both cases, the characters are very poor PC's because of the obvious conflict of intentions.

 

[Storm Raven]

There's plenty of threats a jungle can hurl at an adventuring party, but a warforged is immune to a lot of the threats that make the jungle itself a special challenge. They don't have to be immune to ALL of them to make them ill-suited.

Again, to re-phrase it, I'm not saying it's impossible (or even particularly difficult) to challenge a warforged in the jungle. I'm saying that their immunities mean that they make poor PC's in jungle-focused campaigns. This is because their immunities make them immune to many of the challenges of the jungle itself, meaning the player misses out on the fun of overcoming them (which ends up making threats look the same after a while), and because in being immune, the character may overshadow those who must constantly struggle against these forces.

I would look at this as an opportunity as a DM though. Even though the warforged is immune to a lot of the challeneges that "fleshy" characters might face in the jungle, he is more susceptible to other jungle specific threats that his companions are able to much more easily overcome. The constant humidity is likley to play havoc on his metal body. His inability to swim is magnified in an environment with swampy rivers and quicksand. His increased weight makes relying on rickety bridges and hanging vines for support in difficult terrain a hazardous affair. Consequently, though the warforged may be able to come to the rescue of his human companions for several jungle hazards, they will have to come to his aid for others, meaning that the party needs to work together to get through the jungle successfully.

 

[Stone Dog]

As a point of interest, a warforged is just as vulnerable to mummy rot as most characters. Oddly enough, a warforged is also vulnerable to a vampire's blood drain. I guess that whatever arcane fluids that are in a warforged's body are close enough to blood to count. It maybe an aquired taste though and a vampire fond of warforged fluids might be derided as being "vegetarian" by its fellows.

 

[Stone Dog]

I would look at this as an opportunity as a DM though. Even though the warforged is immune to a lot of the challeneges that "fleshy" characters might face in the jungle, he is more susceptible to other jungle specific threats that his companions are able to much more easily overcome. The constant humidity is likley to play havoc on his metal body. His inability to swim is magnified in an environment with swampy rivers and quicksand. His increased weight makes relying on rickety bridges and hanging vines for support in difficult terrain a hazardous affair. Consequently, though the warforged may be able to come to the rescue of his human companions for several jungle hazards, they will have to come to his aid for others, meaning that the party needs to work together to get through the jungle successfully.

As much as I think that warforged characters are just fine as is, a couple flaws are in your reasoning here. Warforged have no problem swimming. Not a bit. It would say so in the rules if they did and aside from the armor check penalty of adamantine body and such feats they don't even suffer on the roll. Warforged also only rust from supernatural causes such as Spells and rust monsters. Natural oxidation just isn't a problem.

Now, warforged DO have a metabolism which means that there must be things that can mess with it and I DO think that a jungle is a hostile environment for them. Craft checks on a regular basis would be in order to keep a warforged's organic bits from being overridden by molds and vermin. It wouldn't be disease or poison exactly, but it would be damn inconvinient anyway. A warforged with ghastly stench would be an unfortunate ally.

One more thing to consider. Warforged MUST spend skill points on extra languages. they get nothing for having INT bonuses. This has the potential to be very... very troublesome for a PC on his own. Okay, it isn't much... but it can be very exploitable in the right setting. Just like an immunity to poison can be exploitable in a different setting.

 

[Hussar]

But, again, KM, those threats you talk about in the jungle campaign - disease, poison namely - only really bother a low level party anyway. After 5th level, all of those issues vanish. Delay poison, create food and water, Lesser Restoration, Cure Disease, poof all jungle problems gone.

I know that in my World's Largest Dungeon game, issues of disease, food, etc, all vanished at the same time. In the first four levels, the party was constantly diseased, ability damaged, etc. After 5th, between either a cleric or a paladin, all those issues vanish. You're not exactly losing a lot anyway.

Besides, it's never, or at least rarely, an issue for the entire party when poison or disease rears its head. It's an issue because 1 or 2 PC's are diseased and/or poisoned. That it's never the warforged is no different really than it's never the paladin. Somehow I don't think you'd make the arguement that a paladin would not fit into the Americas campaign. Pretty much a perfect fit if you ask me. Yet, a paladin of 3rd level ignores all diseases. Poison? With a good fort save and divine grace? Not likely.

I'm really of the opinion here that you are making a mountain of a molehill. Most of the things a WF is immune to - poison and disease especially - are minor inconveniences anyway. The fact that he lacks healing is a far bigger penalty than what he gains.

Let me put it this way. Is a PC more likely to be damaged than poisoned or diseased? How much more? Is healing more important, more often, than Delay Poison and a Heal check?