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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pweent" data-source="post: 3244992" data-attributes="member: 15256">I'm finally getting a chance to run Eberron for the first time, GMing the Age of Worms. And while I've always been a warforged advocate, I'm rather suprised to find that after our first two sessions, I'm finding our two warforged, one fighter and one cleric, are somewhat rendering our other two players irrelevant. More specifically, their broad set of immunities makes it difficult to do anything much more interesting to them than straight damage. Certainly part of this is due to the specific set of encounters that make up the first part of The Whispering Cairn. A breakdown of encounters so far follows in the spoiler tags:[sblock]<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Three wolves. No particular WF advantage or disadvantage here.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fire trap: No special imunities.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Poison gas trap: WF immune to poison.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lurking Strangler: Best chance against the warforged, as Adamantine Body doesn't help against touch attacks. The strangler had two ranged touch attacks available, a sleep ray (WF immune) and a fear ray. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mad slasher. Again, no particular WF advantage beyond the DR + high AC granted them by the Adamantine Body feat.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Acid Beetle Swarm. The swarm does high damage against a first level character (d6 + d4 acid) in the unlikely event that they hit. Their most solid tactic is that characters occupying the same space as the swarm must make a Fort save or be nauseated: Warforged immunity.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Giant Bombardier Beetle: No special defenses; just AC + DR.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Water Elemental: This encounter and the next are when matters veered towards the ridiculous, as the WF fighter and the WF cleric, under the effect of a light spell, decended on their own into a flooded chamber (no need to breathe), and took on the small water elemental there alone. They retreated, but the fighter took one last swing at the elemental as they reached the stairs to the air again, and took the elemetal out. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ghoul: Another underwater fight, again with just the two warforged. Immunity to paralysis and disease meant the two players laughed out loud when they came up against the ghoul. </li> </ul>[/sblock]That's a pretty significant number of encounters in which the warforged immunities turn what should have been interesting tactical situations into simple matters of who can slug out the most damage the fastest. I don't object to immunities as a rule, but the sheer number the WF have mean they are likely to come into play with WF more than for pretty much any other race/class combo. The tradeoff, in theory, is more difficult healing. In practice, our cleric has access to Repair spells by way of the Warforged domain, and the fighter has the Craft skill for repairs, so thus far they're not feeling much hurt.I saw the possibility arising and considered tweaking the encounters a bit to challenge the 'forged more. I decided after the firs tsession to let them revel in their strengths for now. After they flesh-races sat out the last two encounters, however, I'm concerned that everyone else may start feeling extraneous. We'll see what I can do to make the next session more challenging. I don't want to turn up the difficulty to the point I start accidentally kiling all my players, though.I say again - I love the idea of warforged, and am really taken aback at how they're affecting the game in practice. And at the risk of getting into nerf-bat territory, I don't really get the immunity to energy drain - they're living beings now, yes? That's what makes them more than just constructs? That energy drain immunity worries me, especially for an undead-heavy campaign, but I don't want to house-rule it out now - I don't want the players to feel they got a bait-and-switch, and I don't want to go forming house rules after only a couple of play sessions. We'll talk about it next week and see if the other players do in fact feel the party is as lopsided as I do.</blockquote>

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