Why are Warforged so bad?

[fanboy2000]

Warforged can buy better armor. The composit plating can be enchanted just like regular armor, wich is the same as buying better armor.

 

[Gez]

As Kamikaze Midget, an all undead or all poison campaign is out.

Erm...

 

[Mad Mac]

Warforged can buy better armor. The composit plating can be enchanted just like regular armor, wich is the same as buying better armor.

Uhh..they can buy better leather armor, which is utter crud for most classes. Robes are out. Wearing armor you find while adventuring is out. Unless you want to blow your 1st level feat and spend the rest of your life equipped with substandard adamantine plate armor, sucking up that +1 Dx cap, -6 armor check penalty, and reduced speed for the rest of your normal lifespan. Oh, unless you're the dexterous type, in which case you can invest one feat to get the mithral armor, and waste more feats if you want to raise the dex cap. A sweet deal it isn't.

 

[Gez]

You can even invest a feat to lose this "benefit". Yup, being free to buy and wear a normal armor like everyone else costs you one feat (and you don't keep light fortification and natural armor, of course), your first level feat.

 

[fanboy2000]

Uhh..they can buy better leather armor, which is utter crud for most classes. Robes are out. Wearing armor you find while adventuring is out. Unless you want to blow your 1st level feat and spend the rest of your life equipped with substandard adamantine plate armor, sucking up that +1 Dx cap, -6 armor check penalty, and reduced speed for the rest of your normal lifespan. Oh, unless you're the dexterous type, in which case you can invest one feat to get the mithral armor, and waste more feats if you want to raise the dex cap. A sweet deal it isn't.

Re-read the part that you quoted. The Composit Plating already on a warforged can be enchanted. You can take either Adamantine Body or Mithral Body and still have the armor thats on you enchanted. Really. I'm not making this up. You can read it for yourself on page 23 of ECS or page 191 of MMIII.

You can be a warforged and buy a better AC at higher levels.

Oh, and Gez, just for that I'm sending Drow to your home just to taunt you.

 

[ARandomGod]

Warforged can buy better armor. The composit plating can be enchanted just like regular armor, wich is the same as buying better armor.

As Mad Mac stated, it most certainly is not the same.

There's no way you can enchant your effectively leather armor to be +13 AC and DR2.

Which is +5 Adamantine Full Plate.

And, as far as I can tell, there's no way you can make your adamantine body armor into mithril armor (although I think maybe a limited wish would do it). Some people might prefer the higher dex bonus and better move (especially barbarians) that comes with Mithril full plate instead of Adamantine full plate.

 

[Gez]

Re-read the part that you quoted. The Composit Plating already on a warforged can be enchanted.

And that composite plating is, roughly the equivalent of a suit of +1 leather armor of light fortification. So it's already a +2-worth of bonus.

Oh, and Gez, just for that I'm sending Drow to your home just to taunt you.

Bring it on! I'm not afraid of these -2 Con wimps. Just arriving at my home will have them exhausted.

 

[Gez]

But seriously. People who whine they can't use undead against warforged seem to miss something. I imagine them playing a warforged character, meeting a nightwalker, and boasting pridefully: "HAH! You can't hurt me, you puny undead, I'm a warforged! I'm immune! Weeeee!"

 

[IcyCool]

Re-read the part that you quoted. The Composit Plating already on a warforged can be enchanted. You can take either Adamantine Body or Mithral Body and still have the armor thats on you enchanted. Really. I'm not making this up. You can read it for yourself on page 23 of ECS or page 191 of MMIII.

You can be a warforged and buy a better AC at higher levels.

Oh, and Gez, just for that I'm sending Drow to your home just to taunt you.

Maybe you missed it. A warforged starts out with what amounts to +0 leather armor of light fortification. Yes, this armor can be enchanted (up to a total AC enhancement bonus of +5, making the total AC benefit of this armor +7). That's it. Said warforged cannot get better armor. Now take a human fighter with leather armor. He buys +5 full plate rather than getting his leather armor enchanted to be +5 leather armor of light fortification. The human fighters total AC bonus from his armor? +13. And the human fighter can swap out his current armor for different armor. The warforged can never do this. Now, if the warforged spends his 1st level feat, he can up his armor to be a reduced power Adamantine Full Plate (gives DR 1/- rather than DR 3/-) or the equivalent of Mithral Breastplate. If he does either of these he can't change it later.

Is that more clear?

 

[ThirdWizard]

Ugh, polymorph. That's spell has several threads dedicated to it for good reason.

'Twas why I hadn't brought it up until now. I wouldn't want to base my position on a arguably unbalanced spell. Suffice to say, it is a concern, just like it is with Planetouched characters (who are LA+1).

Moving away from the immunites, we've gone as far as we can go with that, another problem is campaign design. As Kamikaze Midget, an all undead or all poison campaign is out. When you use Warforged as a playable race in Eberron, all the support material is written for you. What extra work is needed is done by campaign designers. When you take warforged out of Eberron, and put it in a campaign setting that only uses rules from the three core books, warforged don't fit so neatly. Also, if your already running a well designed and thought-out campaign, warforged might be over or under powered depending on the campaign you run.

Perhaps that's the problem. I don't run Eberron. All my knowlege of warforged is from the MMIII, so that's the context I'm taking it in. I run a Planescape game, which admittedly is far from hack and slash, since I stay true to the flavor of the setting. But, I'm still looking at the warforged from the context of adding it to a (mostly) Core game.

I did find the feats in that book, I hadn't look at them before. It lists Adamantine Body, Improved Fortification, Mithral Body, and Mithral Fluidity. I actually do think Adamantine Body is a good feat. Especially for a 1st level Fighter warforged, who could take both Adamantine Body and another feat at 1st level.

Really, Fighters get so many feats that it won't really matter to him. The pure barbarian is the one who will have to agonize over Mithral Body and Power Attack or some other feat at 1st level. Rogues, Rangers, and other lightly armored characters won't bother with either of these.

Any well designed campaign is going to have to take into account the changes the DM makes to the standered setting.

Absolutely. I could run a fine game with warforged, and I'm sure it wouldn't be derailed at all. In fact, I've decided to steal a lot of the warforged ideas and put them to use in making my own homebrewed modrons, which I think are kind of close, except part flesh part construct. I just think that they deserve a Level Adjustment because of the very wide variety of abilities they posess. It has nothing to do with me disliking the race at all. I like it!

My point is this: the argument against warforged simply isn't a straight game mechanical one, it's one based on the DMs choice of campaign. Eberron is takes warforged into account and does it well. Other campaigns don't. I find it interesting that one person who said they mined ECS for ideas and included warforged in their game, altered their flavor radically.

I wish I had access to the ECS so I could see how they interact with the world. Unfortunately, my wallet won't permit such purchases when I have no interest in the setting beyond curiosity.

Maybe you missed it. A warforged starts out with what amounts to +0 leather armor of light fortification. Yes, this armor can be enchanted (up to a total AC enhancement bonus of +5, making the total AC benefit of this armor +7). That's it. Said warforged cannot get better armor. Now take a human fighter with leather armor. He buys +5 full plate rather than getting his leather armor enchanted to be +5 leather armor of light fortification. The human fighters total AC bonus from his armor? +13. And the human fighter can swap out his current armor for different armor. The warforged can never do this. Now, if the warforged spends his 1st level feat, he can up his armor to be a reduced power Adamantine Full Plate (gives DR 1/- rather than DR 3/-) or the equivalent of Mithral Breastplate. If he does either of these he can't change it later.

Actually the feat gives +6 more armor bonus (for a total of +8) and DR 2/Adamantine, while lowering max dex bonus to +1 and giving a -5 ACP and lowering max speed to 20 feet. All at first level! For a warforged fighter this is one out of five feets he gets by fourth level!

A rogue or ranger won't even want to do this.