Warforged: How much does their adamantine/mithral sell for?

[Lasher Dragon]

And yet using the scales of a red dragon to make armour is a proud tradition. Or is this now evil as well?

Hear, hear.

 

[Lasher Dragon]

Okay on further consideration I have to admit, that the whole wacky warforged idea just doesn't work without massively tweaking reality. Even if the value of adamantine is completely from the crafting process (which really ruins the craft system for 3.X) that 1st level warforged still represent a tremendous investment of resources. Economically most warforged never have that many resources and therefore not be worth the investment. So two choices either you don't use warforged or you hand wave all those expensive details. "That isn't really adamantine at all. It is just commonly thought to be because of the extra toughness. However this extra toughness is merely a result of another layer of steel on top. 'Those mithral' ones are just the same. Less iron, higher quality steel."

Why have it be metal at all? Something akin to carbon fiber makes more sense to me. Once that fiber is set up in their armor, there is no other use for it. There is no value to it besides perhaps if it was completely intact selling it back to the makers of the warforged.

 

[Gez]

And yet using the scales of a red dragon to make armour is a proud tradition. Or is this now evil as well?

That's a blatant lack of respect for a deceased sentient creature, yes.

IMC, you're bound to have troubles with dragons if you wear a dragon armor. Even a metallic dragon doesn't like people wearing the skin of a red dragon.

As a PC IMC is going to discover somewhat soon...

 

[Staffan]

A warforged with adamantine body, or even the Improved Damage Reduction warforged feat, would by RAW (as I understand it) be able to ignore DR/adamantine if the warforged used his natural slam attack.

No, he wouldn't. "DR overcoming DR" is pretty much a thing of the past in 3.5. The only DR that makes you overcome DR yourself is DR X/magic (and, IIRC, Epic), not material DR, aligned DR (though alignment subtypes help with that one), or damage type DR.

 

[Estlor]

And yet using the scales of a red dragon to make armour is a proud tradition. Or is this now evil as well?

This is beside the point. In fact, it's kind of a straw man.

Whether you agree with it or not, D&D grants certain connotations to certain creatures. An intelligent, standard PC race is viewed in an entirely different light than a monster. The assumption in D&D is that a party will be largely good (or at least moral in nature over 50% of the time). Look at the standard races. Elves are good. Dwarves are good. Halflings are friendly folk. Gnomes are lighthearted folk. Good, good, good, good, good. The attempt made by Eberron to inject a certain amount of ambiguity in these races doesn't erase the standard, assumed perception of a base character race in D&D - they are good, friendly folk.

Monsters, on the other hand, are typically evil creatures you kill without remorse. If it's a "good" monster it quickly becomes an NPC that is only statted out as an afterthought on the rare event that it might fight alongside the PCs. Anything goes with an evil monster. Kill it. Spit on its corpse. Kick its lifeless body all you want.

So saying, "if flaying a PC race is evil, flaying a monster race must be too," requires you to ignore 30 years of implied alignment connotations throughout three editions of rules.

Or, perhaps, is the problem the players are seeing Warforged as nothing more than the next flavor of intelligent monster?

Let me put it to you another way. Which is more evil: killing a human, skinning it, and wearing your new human suit around town or killing a cow, skinning it, and wearing your new leather jacket around town? Yes, I know cows aren't ancient, intelligent monsters that breathe fire, but the analogy is the same in prototypical D&D terms nonetheless.

 

[werk]

I can't imagine coming back with warforged plating is too different to citizens of a city than adventurers regularly coming in with bloody magical/masterwork armor. Do they think the adventurers are just finding all this loot or only killing monsterous humanoids? I would imagine that they've killed far more humans than warforged. If they're really worried, they can melt the armor down into balls of metal with fireballs.

As an aside to that, I usually give bad guys that belong to an organization armor and shields, etc, that bears the mark of their organization. That way, they have to either fence them and sell at really low price, or if they sell them outright, the organization follows the money trail back to the party. My parties only really take money and magic as loot as a result. You better bet that the Zhents stamp their symbol into everything that is standard issue. ("but that's a masterwork crossbow" "yeah, but see this symbol right here on the trigger assembly? that means a death sentance if you get caught with it.")

I also use the raw vs. worked special materials approach. Once something has been made, it's pretty much done, it's not like aluminum cans that you a recycle and use again.

Both the above are housey rulish, apologies...

 

[Chimera]

It's like flaying the warforged and trying to sell its skin for profit! Within the scope of the D&D game that sound like a very evil act. Mutilating and desecrating bodies for jollies? What's next, kicking puppies?

Not owning or having played in the Eberron setting, I can't say.

But if one views a Warforged construct as something akin to an animated toaster, it's a whole different ball game.

Besides, if people were made of gold, there would be no end of people killing and reprocessing other people to get that gold. Call it evil if you will, but it would be so incredibly prevalent as to be "normal".

 

[Klaus]

Hey.
There you go. That way actually works best. They aren't adamantine at all... just in their construction they're almost as strong as adamantine, hence the DR2/Adamantine as opposed to DR3/Adamantine for the heavy armor. And they're not actually mithral, they're just built very fluidly, like mithral would be.

Still I'd say that you could sell the armor scrapings for *some* cash.

And I really like the trapped soul idea.

Edit: It also gets rid of another pesky little detail, that I've yet to meantion.

DR/Adamantine.

A warforged with adamantine body, or even the Improved Damage Reduction warforged feat, would by RAW (as I understand it) be able to ignore DR/adamantine if the warforged used his natural slam attack. But with this interpretation you *could* say that you get DR/adamantine, but it's really very very slightly weaker than real adamantine, and so you don't naturally overcome real adamantine's DR. ALthough you would still, naturally, be able to overcome other warforged's DR/adamantine.

Regular warforged, even with Adamantine Body, don't overcome DR x/adamantine. Take a look at the Warforged Charger in MMIII. It has a special quality called, IIRC, "Adamantine Fists" (it's slam attacks count as adamantine weapons for DR purposes). Regular warforged don't get that.

Keith Baker has said that the "Body" names are misnamed. The warforged aren't entirely made of adamantine. They are still made of composite materials (steel, iron, stone, wood), but with some adamantine lacing reinforcing their frames. So there is less adamantine in them than in a suit of adamantine full plate. Same goes for mithral.

And hey, it's fairly easy to overcome DR x/adamantine. Just buy a set of adamantine gauntlets.

House rule time: IMC, gauntlets aren't weapons. They don't require proficiency. All they do is turn your hand damage to lethal, and your hands count as the material the gauntlets are made of. So a monk could don adamantine gauntlets and overcome DR x/adamantine, using their regular unarmed damage. Gauntlets could look like armored fists, or they could be heavy studded leather gloves (like Gauntlets of Ogre Power). The only restrictions monk face is that they can't use their ki powers (like Stunning Fist) unless the gauntlets are enchanted with the Ki special ability.

Since I'm into house rules territory, I have one for monks and natural attcks: if a monk has a natural claw attacks, he can choose to make bludgeoning or slashing damage with each attack. If he chooses slashing, the damage cannot be nonlethal. He uses his natural or unarmed damage, as desired.

 

[ARandomGod]

Regular warforged, even with Adamantine Body, don't overcome DR x/adamantine. Take a look at the Warforged Charger in MMIII. It has a special quality called, IIRC, "Adamantine Fists" (it's slam attacks count as adamantine weapons for DR purposes). Regular warforged don't get that.

Keith Baker has said that the "Body" names are misnamed. The warforged aren't entirely made of adamantine. They are still made of composite materials (steel, iron, stone, wood), but with some adamantine lacing reinforcing their frames. So there is less adamantine in them than in a suit of adamantine full plate. Same goes for mithral.

And hey, it's fairly easy to overcome DR x/adamantine. Just buy a set of adamantine gauntlets.

House rule time: IMC, gauntlets aren't weapons. They don't require proficiency. All they do is turn your hand damage to lethal, and your hands count as the material the gauntlets are made of. So a monk could don adamantine gauntlets and overcome DR x/adamantine, using their regular unarmed damage. Gauntlets could look like armored fists, or they could be heavy studded leather gloves (like Gauntlets of Ogre Power). The only restrictions monk face is that they can't use their ki powers (like Stunning Fist) unless the gauntlets are enchanted with the Ki special ability.

Since I'm into house rules territory, I have one for monks and natural attcks: if a monk has a natural claw attacks, he can choose to make bludgeoning or slashing damage with each attack. If he chooses slashing, the damage cannot be nonlethal. He uses his natural or unarmed damage, as desired.

Actually, as house rules as people want that to be, I think that's RAW. I mean, it even states :"A strike with a gauntlet is otherwise considered an unarmed attack. " It's listed under unarmed attack... In Eberron there are gauntlets for warforged that enchant unarmed attacks, and definitely can be used for monks. There's a Rules of the Game article which talks about creating Gauntlets of Mighty Fists (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20050111a)

As for additional types of damage... the gauntlet in the Eberron book adds peircing damage just like a spiked gauntlet would...

 

[Klaus]

Yeah, but that's a Battlefist, a special warforged component that behaves as a large hand. As such, it's not a gauntlet/spiked gauntlet.

Hmmm.... (starts envisioning a warforged paladin, painted in red, and wielding a battlefist as his sole weapon, hunting fiends up and down...)