D&D General Warforged? How Long Could One Live For?

[Horwath]

 

[Oofta]

I remember reading something ages ago that, even if you are immortal, something sometime will happen that will make you wish you weren't. How many warforged have been caught in a cave in and gone mad? Something will eventually get you and being immortal will be curse rather than a blessing

It's always funny when fiction depicts someone immortal as completely unstoppable but otherwise more or less mortal. I mean if you really want to ensure the immortal person never bothers someone, just bury them. If you're buried six feet under, you're under (quick google search later) 1.3 tons of dirt. Unless you have a burrow speed or earth glide you aren't getting out on your own, even if you're the protagonist of Kill Bill.

So sure. You're immortal. Unable to move, breath or eat. Until the sun goes supernova anyway.

 

[aco175]

I was thinking about the amount of hard drive they have to store memory. The older they get, the more things become fragmented and space gets tight. They start to delete old memory to make space. I could see an adventure where you need to find an old warforged to get some information and he has forgot it.

 

[Oofta]

I was thinking about the amount of hard drive they have to store memory. The older they get, the more things become fragmented and space gets tight. They start to delete old memory to make space. I could see an adventure where you need to find an old warforged to get some information and he has forgot it.

There was a story I read a while back talking about that. The woman was effectively immortal but kept diaries throughout the years. Every once in a while she would pull out an old diary, including of when she was happily married and had a daughter. The words on the page could have been written by a stranger because she couldn't remember a single thing about her family.

Being immortal would be a kind of curse in and of itself eventually.

 

[Stormonu]

As I recall, warforged have a (dark)wood core, with the idea that the reason they can have a soul bound to them is that it is contained in this "heartwood" core.

As such, that wooden core is subject to rot, strain, hardening and whatnot over time. Personally, I'd put them at about 145 years of age for an average lifetime before parts finally give out and replacements can't be made for critical core pieces (essentially the "brain" and "heart").

It'd be interesting in later aeons to come back and discover "petrified" warforged whose heartwood had morphed to stone, leaving them frozen and unable to otherwise move - perhaps the fate of the Lord of Blades, who had to pass on their position to a successor, but is still consulted at times as a sort of "living statue"/god.

Original picture of a warforged from the Eberron campaign book:

 

[tetrasodium]

As I recall, warforged have a (dark)wood core, with the idea that the reason they can have a soul bound to them is that it is contained in this "heartwood" core.

As such, that wooden core is subject to rot, strain, hardening and whatnot over time. Personally, I'd put them at about 145 years of age for an average lifetime before parts finally give out and replacements can't be made for critical core pieces (essentially the "brain" and "heart").

It'd be interesting in later aeons to come back and discover "petrified" warforged whose heartwood had morphed to stone, leaving them frozen and unable to otherwise move - perhaps the fate of the Lord of Blades, who had to pass on their position to a successor, but is still consulted at times as a sort of "living statue"/god.

Original picture of a warforged from the Eberron campaign book:

View attachment 368968

It's been mentioned a few times by others but it feels like people are treating it as a footnote of fluff rather than the actual mechanic it was.

I'm pretty sure one of the old eberron books even described the warforge equivalent of kindergarten bootcamp involving mock battles with the losing squad being buried without repairs (stable but unconscious & helpless) only to dig them back up later to. repair them now that time has passed in the world without them as a sadistic cornerstone of childhood that teaches fear of death to someone ho might not die & never really had a chance to live.

Rising from the last war unfortunately omitted the various callouts to how incredibly damaged the child soldiers from birth/creation known as warforge were but those dashes in mechanically relevant racial details & the fact that middle age was estimated to be between dwarf/elf did a lot to really emphasize the depth of that damage extending all the way to the character sheet.

 

[Umbran]

Theoretically they're immortal. Last session the players encountered a giant pike. This turned into how old are sharks. 450 million years they're older than trees. See where I'm going with this?

You're going to the land in which they mistake how old the general family line is for how old the individuals are?

 

[GrimCo]

Age and it's effects on stats were indeed mechanic in 3.x. One that was seldom if ever used in play, mostly by power gamers as a cheese way for boosting mental stats for casters. Most people threw that out even back in the day. 5e, as far as i know, doesn't have that mechanic.

 

[Zardnaar]

You're going to the land in which they mistake how old the general family line is for how old the individuals are?

Nope it was how old the species was. Went from pike, shark, how long sharks live to long lived individuals in D&D thinking about could they last epochs.

 

[Umbran]

Nope it was how old the species was. Went from pike, shark, how long sharks live to long lived individuals in D&D thinking about could they last epochs.

Yeah, dude, that's not an obvious chain of thought.

"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so, Brain. But where are we going to get lederhosen in our size at this time of night?"