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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3231838" data-attributes="member: 2067">It's a touchy area of design. To look at it with some nuance, I'm going to say I don't like them, and I don't like them because they are unbalanced and exceptional at LA 0, I believe.I have very specific meanings for this. The lack of balance applies to the whole Immunities/Healing dichotomy, which is really just two extreme forms of power and nerf. I vastly, vastly, VASTLY prefer my PC races at EL 0 to not be so extreme. In fact, I'd say I love my D&D game to be not so rock-paper-scissors as this. Warforged on the one hand are way too powerful in a good number of situations (poison gas, the sea, rescource-depletion), and on the other are way too weak in a good number of situations (no artificer, wizard, or bard willing to play medic). This means that they require a lot of special consideration. You have to build at least two characters for every warforged (one warforged, and one warforged-healer), which puts a strain on the party as a whole (that warforged healer can no longer charm or blast with their magic). You have to keep the Warforged in mind in adventures, to avoid poisonous snakes and scorpions, to ensure that there is no tension between rescource and goal, and to avoid suffocation, strangulation, constricting, drowning, or various clouds and gasses of doom. They are the only race at LA 0 that demands this sort of special consideration.By WotC's own rules from Savage Species, they shouldn't be LA 0. Someone once gave a breakdown of what it would cost any other character to gain a warforged abilities in GP, and it came out VERY pricy. Now, being unbalanced and exceptional are not always going to be game-breakers, and there's a lot of campaigns where the lack of balance and the exceptional needs will be addressed without a second thought. I would infinately prefer warforged to gain full healing, and to have resistances instead of immunities. This would destroy the exception and make the balance less extreme, both of which I feel are admirable goals for the design of an EL 0 PC race, because an EL 0 PC race should be adaptable, general, and very similar to other, existing PC races. I would much rather have a race that allows the character to be thrown in with an existing party without having to consider their special needs. Warforged are the autistic kids of the EL 0 races. They're the idiot savants. And this makes them difficult to deal with. And thus, IMHO, they are rather poorly designed on an extreme edge rather than comfortably situated like an EL 0 PC race should be.A comparison would be allowing the (fire) subtype at EL 0. The balance is extreme because cold is twice as deadly while fire is not deadly at all. They could jump into a volcano's caldera and emerge from a lava flow a few days later without problems, but the moment they tred on a mountain peak, they'd be nearly worthless. This would, IMHO, be poor design for a creature intedned as a PC race. Though, like the (fire) subtype, I have no real issue with warforged as a CR 1 monster.I would never, ever allow a warforged character in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, and I'd seriously consider banning them from any horror game or game with a signifigant horror undertone (including a lot of what people consider "dark" fantasy). I would also remove them from classic Tolkeinish settings, or real-myth style settings. I probably wouldn't allow one in a maritime or aquatic campaign, either, including polynesian, carribean, piratical or age-of-exploration style campaigns. I probably wouldn't include them in most tropical or jungle campaigns, where disease and poisonous beasts are half the fun. I wouldn't let them tramp down into Nyambe, and I'd even worry putting them in Xen'drik.They would be the only land-walking EL 0 creature that I know of that I would consider doing all that with. The fact that they are so exceptional is not good design, IMHO. There's a significant number of campaigns where the warforged are useless.</blockquote>

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