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

[Remathilis]

Like I said, it's not the power level that bugs me, it's the binary, idiot-savant method of balancing it. The whole Superman complex: I am completely invincible unless I see my secret weakness. For the warforged, it's "I'm immune to a laundry list of dangers, but I can't be healed very effectively by clerics. It's a good thing I've got artificers and arcane healers, ain't it!"

It'd be like invisible halflings who were burned by sunlight: design that excludes a lot more potential adventure than it ever needed to, or really should.

I guess I'm doing something different, because one PCs immunity (even at low-levels) doesn't ruin the encounter for me. A 5th-level paladin's immunity to both fear and disease doesn't make him fear a mummy any less, since his friends AREN'T typically immune to the mummies wrath. Besides, the mummy will just pummel him to death with his fists anyway.

I had a warforged act as a "trapfinder" since he was immune to most trap-nastiness. He was nearly killed when the ceiling fell on him. Took alot of gusto out of his much hailed "immunities"

And I've never seen a game (even a low-level one) where disease is anything more than a nuisance (most my groups have SOMEONE with the heal-skill who can make those low DCs)

Going back to your "Superman" example, most of the people who challenge superman don't do it directly. Instead they do so by threatening those around him, either friends (Lois) or civilians (Metropolis). Most WF tend to fall into that mold (If we don't hurry, the plague will kill everyone in Sharn and my friends to boot!). So yeah, the WF might not personally fear it, but there is usually a way to make them care.

The only time this DOESN'T work is if you want to be heavy-handed on capture (You were drugged by the barkeep and sold into slavery...) but how common is that?

So to whit, I agree the WF immunities can be trying, but I don't think that makes them too powerful. Certainly not LA+1. Binary? Perhaps, but DMs really need to expect that before letting them in. Its just a matter on Emphasis.

KM, I know you'll come back and say we're not getting it. Its ok, lets agree to disagree on this one.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Hardly. I'm actually saying that in any campaign where the emphasis is on anything the warforged are immune to, the warforged don't work. There have been admissions of such throughout this thread ("if you're playing Midnight....", etc.). No one is saying they DO work in such environments. I'm agreeing with that point, and saying it's a darn shame, because they really COULD, if their mechanics weren't so incredibly wonky.

I think you're combining two things into one. LA is about power level, not campaign suitability. If you had a ghoul heavy campaign and everyone chose elves, should they be LA+3? Also see the notices in the water breathing races, their usefulness varies based on the campaign.

I've avoided countering examples for your Jungle Trek full of disease, poisons and micromanaging supplies, since I would hate to be in a campaign like that. Many players might enjoy the challenge of constant diseases, some of which might have Spell Resistance, but I don't know any of them. An occasional disease is not an issue, since the warforged is not alone. Poison monsters still do damage, and poison traps are easily swapped for something spewing acid.

Every campaign needs forethought by the DM, and changelings mechanical benefits are minor, while their impact on a campaign would be huge. With any campaign it comes down to whether the new race adds more than it subtracts. The Warforged are no different.

I'm feeling like I'm beating my head against a wall here, because I seem to be repeating myeslf a lot, but every time I re-iterate my point to one poster, two more pop up re-wording the questions I already addressed.

It's a revolving debate simply because we're dealing in opinion for a lot of it. You're repeating your view and wondering why others don't see that you're right, meanwhile you're passing over what the rest of us are saying by repeating the same answers that don't apply for us.

Why don't we make dwarves and gnomes immune to attacks from giants and halflings naturally invisible and give half-elves charm person instead of a diplomacy bonus, too? And even if we did that, the core races *still* wouldn't have the broad swath of annoying idiot-savant abilities that the warforged have.

Instead they get bonuses in different ways. If magic were rare in your campaign, would you say Gnomes are more powerful since they have some cantrips at will? Of the list of stuff that Warforged are immune to, only Level drain is a big thing to me. Not sleeping is also an advantage, which is offset by them having human sight and having to repair themselves. Their immunities are all thematically appropriate to the type of creature they are, IMO, and also are very situational for a campaign. I don't think Core D&D assumes that disease, poison and level drain are common things. In Eberron diseases are even less common due to the Healing House.

Like I said, it's not the power level that bugs me, it's the binary, idiot-savant method of balancing it. The whole Superman complex: I am completely invincible unless I see my secret weakness. For the warforged, it's "I'm immune to a laundry list of dangers, but I can't be healed very effectively by clerics. It's a good thing I've got artificers and arcane healers, ain't it!"

I can't see a wizard memorizing too many Repair spells, and a sorcerer has few enough spells already. Best bet is a cohort artificer, since artificers are a buff class and having one PC focus a lot of his ability on a second PC is generally tedious. THis is of course assuming you are USING the non-core Artificer as well as the non-core Warforged. Assuming he gets himself a Body feat at 1st level and a cohort at 6th, a non-fighter Warforged now as 1 feat to last him until 9th level. Woohoo...

Either way, you're not argueing that they're more powerful and deserve a higher LA, so much as saying they don't fit enough campaigns and need a redesign. In addition, you don't address whether you would even like to have an artificial race in your campaign, so whether any of that matters is unclear. The difference between "I like warforged, but they need to be tweaked" and "I wouldn't allow warforged anyway, but they're also too powerful" makes a big difference in a discussion on their merits.

 

[Seeten]

First point is that this is an unpalatable solution to the problem. A monk who gains immunity to poison must make a monk level check, meaning multiclassing has a measurable effect on their ability to resist that poison (just as it does for the clerics in the world). This has the effect of guiding characters gently toward a higher price to pay for this immunity: they must limit their options if they want to retain it at any significant level. Paladins don't keep increasing their immunity in prestige classes, monks can't take levels of fighter and still be able to resist venom at the same level.

By making the warforged able to use all of their class levels (since they have no racial HD), it gives them a distinct and telling advantage, one that makes them too powerful still for a jungle campaign: they are able to gain one of the key advantages in the setting without paying any high price, and able to do it better than anyone else.

If, instead, they just had a +4 save bonus vs. poison because of their bio-mechanics, it makes them more effective while still forcing the character to choose betwen making his character gain another level in Monk (thereby increasing his resistance to the common poisons or diseases) or gaining a level in Sorcerer (which does not do it).

Second, this doesn't address the core issue: a monk or a paladin has to pay a large price, in the form of class levels that cannot be revoked and that are one of the most limited rescources in the game to even gain this measure of protection. A warforged would get identical (if not better) protection for free, from first level, without having to pay any real price themselves. As I said in rebuttal to Hussar's point, this amounts to something like a +4 level adjustment that they'd have by virtue of this bonus alone.

Third, it doesn't come close to fixing all of the problems with warforged. Even if such a rule were to be implemented, even if I could kink out a way to make sure that warforged weren't somehow gaining a singificant benefit for free several levels before anyone else could even try to do such a thing, even if there was a good solution for making warforged succumb to poison and disease, they'd still pose issues for the jungle. No alligators attack them. No mosquitos drink their blood. No giant pythons want to eat them. Their weight, as pointed out, becomes an issue when crossing the bridges or in quicksand. The burden their half-healing places on the party, mandating that other characters spend more rescources to keep them on their feet.

And fourth, again, it emphasizes how special and unique the warforged are, that they need special consideration in this category where no other race does. Like a creature without opposable thumbs or with the inability to speak a language, special rules are needed for these beings to bring them to be roughly in-line with normal characters. The difference is that warforged are claimed to be in-line with normal characters already, when they're clearly very divergent.

I'm not really looking to "solve my problems" with the Warforged. I'm looking for warforged not to give me any problems to begin with. You know, like how humans and gnomes and dwarves and changelings don't really give people any problems to begin with. How every other PC race avoids these problems.

Making "monk checks" to get to keep my monk immunities also sounds dodgy.

I think I'd skip this "Nyambe" campaign entirely, as its based on unfun things, and full of lame house rules designed to "challenge people" by having them full up on diseases and conditions despite their immunities to said conditions.

I see why that makes Warforged not work for you, I really do, I just dont think its representative of anything, and I wouldnt have any interest in playing the game you describe whatsoever. So to each their own, I guess.

 

[Seeten]

Changelings are hugely problematic for people running intrigue based games, also, and who dont want pc's to have easy access to information they shouldnt, IE, DM's who dont want the extra work that having their carefully laid espionage plans quickly discovered/etc.

In fact, in many campaigns, and with many dm's, I'd bet Changeling PC's would be more disrupting than Warforged.

 

[Glyfair]

Changelings are hugely problematic for people running intrigue based games, also, and who dont want pc's to have easy access to information they shouldnt, IE, DM's who dont want the extra work that having their carefully laid espionage plans quickly discovered/etc.

Perhaps as written. However, if I was running that sort of game (even in Eberron) I think a few tweaks would easily allow them to fit well. Most importantly, don't make them rare in the campaign world so that the opposition expects changelings (meaning passwords, pass keys, ec. are in common use).

 

[Crothian]

Perhaps as written. However, if I was running that sort of game (even in Eberron) I think a few tweaks would easily allow them to fit well. Most importantly, don't make them rare in the campaign world so that the opposition expects changelings (meaning passwords, pass keys, ec. are in common use).

While this is true, once you start to have to tweak the game for some of these races it does ge t a bit much. People can tweak for the warforged to if they so deisre.

I'm still in the camp that none of these races are anything to worry about. We've seen zero problems with them in our games.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Perhaps as written. However, if I was running that sort of game (even in Eberron) I think a few tweaks would easily allow them to fit well. Most importantly, don't make them rare in the campaign world so that the opposition expects changelings (meaning passwords, pass keys, ec. are in common use).

In a world that features so many ways to magically disguise, true secutiry should include checks. If the world goes so far as to require too much security for convenience to be hindered, then you might as well say "no changelings" rather than nerf the PC's abilities.

But yeah, for me, Eberron accounts for Warforged very well, but Changelings seem almost forgotten for their effects on society. Races of Eberron gave a good viewpoint for changelings, but didn't really provide a good view for how the world works with such mutable folks.

(My other disappointment was that changelings didn't really get racial feats, like say the ability to grow claws, or such. Warforged and Shifters get stuff.)

I think shifters could drop right into any game though, as Eberron races go.

 

[Destil]

In a world that features so many ways to magically disguise, true secutiry should include checks. If the world goes so far as to require too much security for convenience to be hindered, then you might as well say "no changelings" rather than nerf the PC's abilities.

But yeah, for me, Eberron accounts for Warforged very well, but Changelings seem almost forgotten for their effects on society. Races of Eberron gave a good viewpoint for changelings, but didn't really provide a good view for how the world works with such mutable folks.

I like this approach, myself. Why? Because you never know who's a changling. Mabye Merrix d'Cannith is the reason Cannith south has had increased worship of the Travler in recent years: he's really a ranking changling artificator of the Cabinet of Faces who eliminated the real Merrix. Mabye the original Merrix was too... the warforged could be the 'gifts of the Travler' that you so often hear warning about.

For me changlings are like the cause of Mourning, they're a plot hook the DM is free to use as much as they want. At least that's how I look at the reletive lack of changlings in the Eberron books so far: they don't affect the world at all if you're a casual observer, because they could be anywhere.