Spatula said:
Note that the design concern had nothing to do with balance. They made the change so warforged PCs could wear found armor.
And thus be
exactly balanced with the other PC's, who can also wear found armor. You don't have to have a bunch of feats that give them armor plus some special bonus because they were required to use a feat to get armor and start riding the balance train. (Alternately, you could give all PC's armor feats).
Actually I was going for "silly."
"Silly" isn't a logical argument. The idea that you don't owe me $5 is "silly". Have I convinced you? When do I get my $5? Saying something you don't like is "silly" or something you do is "common sense" are both obfuscated ways of saying "you're stupid if you don't agree with me". Just because it's obfuscated doesn't mean you aren't still insulting me for disagreeing with you.
Warforged are walking, talking, thinking, feeling, pieces of metal, stone, fibrous material, tubing, fluids, and heart (Capitan Planet!). None of that is any more or less "silly" than the magics that converted said mass of stuff into a sentient being also softening said stuffs so the sentient being can be as mobile as any other sentient humanoid. Just because a certain fluff explanation doesn't immediately gel with you doesn't mean it's "silly".
<snip snippy armor questions>
The AC progression for characters is no secret. It's been mentioned numerous times over the past year, mainly by the #1 4e rules guy Mike Mearls, that you can do away with magic entirely, or even armor, and the game still works great as long as you translate what are currently equipment-related bonuses into innate bonuses. The applications of that concept to a naturally armored race are fairly obvious, I think.
So yes, the warforged's armor would get better as its level increases, just like any character's innate abilities improve. It's a testament to the quality of the game structure that such a thing is even contemplatible.
The question is not "Will the warforged have a level appropriate AC". As you have said (and we agree on this completely) 4E has made the AC math nice and explicit so this is assured.
The question is "How will you balance requiring a feat to have armor with just being able to put on the latest found magical armor and go?" and the answer is "Not as easily or as seamlessly as just leaving everyone equal on this matter and changing the fluff explanation so I'm more comfortable with it." I don't care about your fluff explanation for why warforged are the way they are (there is a ritual that all warforged know for free that costs nothing to cast that will equip/dequip any armor onto them. If they go down to "cloth" armor they're mostly fibrous material and tubing instead of stone and metal tah dah! Don't like that one, if pressed I can come up with a dozen more), but by default you're messing up balance by changing things from "you're treated equally". For something as fundamental as "AC" or "Attacks" I think it's important to keep things as equal as possible. You can play around more with "Well he gets to breath fire, but you get to plug stuff into your body and control it with your mind."
If you and your twin brother are given $5 is that equal? Inarguably.
If your twin brother is given $5 and you are given $4 and a $1.10 ice cream cone, is that equal? We can argue about this for a decade.
I suppose I'm looking for something that is fundamentally different.
4E is specifically avoiding making mechanics "fundamentally different" for no reason other than it "feels" right. This is
enormously upsetting to some people. I understand this. Change can be bad, change can also be good. System mastery can be fun, system mastery can also be alienating. All of this is true. The Thri-Kreen won't be the same 3E "Level Adjustments have kind of screwed me, but if I take exactly the right build I will be the ultimate TWF master and shred things to pieces" race, but it will have some kind of interesting ability that represents "hey I've got a bug face and four arms". Heck, warforged plugging stuff into themselves all the time strikes me as "fundamentally different" from other races in an "OMG Shadowrun" way.