Why are Warforged so bad?

[Flyspeck23]

Well, you just hit upon my main dislike of warforged. I don't object to a player wanting to try his hand at playing a construct. After all, I've allowed a trumpet archon, a rakshasa, an ogre mage, and some other weirdos into the party. What I dislike is the idea of them as being so common that they're just another race. A town guard doesn't see a warforged and think "good lord, what's that thing walking towards me?", instead they just shout mean names at it and tell it not to use the front entrance 'cause that's for decent flesh and blood folks.

So you don't like elves either, because the town guard wouldn't think "Whoa, an elf! I've never ever seen an elf before. Marvellous!", or no peasant would say: "I want to see elves, Frodo."

Looks to me like you're pretty good at splitting hairs yourself

In Eberron, warforged are common - but not as common as the core player races, mind you. So there might well be folks who've never seen a warforged before (although they'll have heard of them, sure).
If you're including warforged in your homebrew, nothing would stop you to make them as uncommon as you like - heck, you could even declare the single warforged PC to be unique.

Psst: The stats are balanced (take a look at creating races chapter in the DMG)

Isn't that what Glyfair said?

 

[Staffan]

Psst: The stats are balanced (take a look at creating races chapter in the DMG)

No, they're not. A bonus to Con is balanced by a penalty to any stat other than Strength. In exchange for their Con bonus, warforged have penalties to *two* stats.

 

[Marshall]

Nothing in the game says the cleric has to heal. The arcane caster wants to blast instead of heal? Fine, he can go do that somewhere else with the clerics who want to be party tanks. Really, if they split up the healing duties, then they should both be fairly happy.

Eh, No. Clerics are designed with healing in mind. Hence, the extra spells/day and, biggie here, spontaneous Cures. Unless the WIZ has some way to spontaneously switch to Repair spells the role of "Warforged Healer" is a much, much, MUCH larger drain on his resources than the role of "Rest of Party" healer is on a CLR.

Basically, anytime the Warforged gets damaged its going to cost the party at least a day of downtime for the WF to make his craft check(would a sane DM actually let you do this overnight? While on watch? With the rest of the party trying to sleep?), the WIZ to prepare and cast a slate of "Repairs" and then rest to refresh his adventure list, and/or the CLR having to get back the extra spells he cast to heal the 'forged.
That a huge inconvenience to the party, the DM and the story.

I do think it does work. Because most people won't utilize warforged to their best ability. They'll play a barbarian warforged or a fighter warforged in a party where the arcane caster refuses to be healer and everyone accepts that as fine.

And in a party where the Arcanes are acting as healers they ARE NOT going to be competent Arcane Casters.

 

[Felon]

So you don't like elves either, because the town guard wouldn't think "Whoa, an elf! I've never ever seen an elf before. Marvellous!", or no peasant would say: "I want to see elves, Frodo."

Yeah, those pointed ears pretty much makes elves as every bit as inhuman as a warforged, right?

Looks to me like you're pretty good at splitting hairs yourself

Sure, short guy with weird ears, big menacing metal thing--pretty much the same thing. Now I see the light.

/sarcasm

Well if you're sufficiently obtuse, you can stand by this ill-considered attempt at an analogy between a race that largely resembles humans and one that very much does not, assert that a town guardsman would find them equally monstrous, and call the difference hair-splitting, but I'd say you very nicely serve to underscore just how a race magical robots are grossly out-of-place amongst the standard +0LA races.

 

[Felon]

Basically, anytime the Warforged gets damaged its going to cost the party at least a day of downtime for the WF to make his craft check(would a sane DM actually let you do this overnight? While on watch? With the rest of the party trying to sleep?), the WIZ to prepare and cast a slate of "Repairs" and then rest to refresh his adventure list, and/or the CLR having to get back the extra spells he cast to heal the 'forged.
That a huge inconvenience to the party, the DM and the story.

Well, the easiest way for a warforged to handle out-of-combat healing is to do it the same way that everyone does: with a 1st-level wand of for 750 gp. That's 50 castings of repair lights, which should tide the robot over.

It's in-combat healing that I suspect makes things rough for a warforged.

 

[Glyfair]

Psst: The stats are balanced (take a look at creating races chapter in the DMG)

Depends on what definition of "balanced" you use (and the DMG version for balanced stats is certainly controversial, at least). I was referring to the original version having as many penalties as bonuses. IIRC, they had a strength bonus (it's been a while since I heard this and I could be wrong).

My point being, it seems a lot of people complaining about the LA issue seem to believe the designers designed the race, had an LA +1 (or more) race, had to have an LA +0 race, so pronounced it an LA +0 race. Instead, the designers took what they had and reduced some abilities and maybe added some drawbacks to come up with an LA +0 race.

 

[I'm A Banana]

THE STATS AREN'T BALANCED! THE STATS AREN'T BALANCED!

ALL RIGHT ALREADY! I'll cede this point.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

I think warforged look pretty with pink ribbons on thier heads. And nobody with pink ribbons could possibly be LA +1.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

ALL RIGHT ALREADY! I'll cede this point.

Ha ha, you loooose!!

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think warforged look pretty with pink ribbons on thier heads. And nobody with pink ribbons could possibly be LA +1.

My purdy ol' Tiefling says otherwise.