Why are Warforged so bad?

[BryonD]

I'm going to have to bookmark this thread, so I can point it out to people--and I've spoken to several--who feel that the warforged are too powerful.

Rule of Thumb: If a roughly equal number of people complain about X being underpowered and X being overpowered, X is probably pretty well balanced.

True statement, but I don't believe you have met the threshold yet. You just need about 25 to 50 more saying it is to weak for X to be the same on both sides of the equation.


I think a different reliable rule of thumb is at work here:
No matter how strong you design something, SOMEBODY will complain that it is to weak.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

It can, and quite easily. You have to take the Warforged into account, you can't just throw them into anything and expect them to work as well as any other race. They're a special exception to rules. They have to sit at the forefront of your mind.

Fer'instance, consider an adventure on a sailing ship that is raided by pirates, where a big fight is to take place on the rigging of the ship, with Balance checks and Trip attempts and Bull Rushes -- big, epic, ship-top battle, everyone's affraid of falling into the water below...

Well, except the Warforged. Knock him into the briney deep? "*sigh* I walk back to shore and wait for them to pick me up." Or at best "I'm making a few swim checks, but this armor check penalty and weight problem means that I can't actually make any of them, so I guess I'm sinking to the bottom of the ocean where, uhm, maybe I'll die of pressure?"

Suddenly, the entire adventure is derailed while you deal with what happens to the warforged at the bottom of the ocean.

Does this ship not have an anchor? Drop anchor, and let the warforged climb up.

 

[Storminator]

It only imposes a style of play if all players have warforged characters.

I would love to play a game with ALL warforged, precisely because you can use a completely new style of play.

You can do the underwater adventures without worrying about a Dispel Magic causing a TPK. You can have players invade the poison gas tunnels of the volcano. Maybe the WF party is specifically sent to destroy the Yuan-ti cults, only to find out what's truly behind the snakefolk...

There's a lot of game there if you ask me.

I have a WF cleric in my Eberron game, and he's a rock. Adamantine body and the Healing domain? Very dependable. Certainly not destroying everyone elses fun.

PS

 

[EricNoah]

I'm the artificer on an artificer/warforged tag team. The warforged character, a monk, has a very "pinocchio" view of the world, and it is fun to watch her react to human niceties or react literally to figures of speech. Sure, it's kind of "obvious" but so are most of the cliches of fantasy.

She started out without a name and was searching for just the right one. In the first adventure, we eventually dubbed her "Missy" because she kept using Flury of Blows and missing a lot.

It's a fun character concept and one I would love to try playing sometime.

 

[Belen]

If finding food is the challenge, it's a challenge for the whole team. Even those who do not need food directly still need to help find it, because they need the other party members to survive, and this survival requires food.

It's not a challenge for the warforged. Certain plots are useful because they are personal to everyone. Everyone else may die because of hunger, but the warforged guy will just be lonely. It's not personal or a need to the warforged player. The player may want to keep the party alive, but as long as his character is not threatened, then the urgency is not there. IME, players have the most fun when threats are personal to their character. If the game is not affecting them, then they have less stake in the outcome.

They can't? They won't feel the hormonal urge to have sex with said beautiful woman.

Exactly, they do not want to have sex. They do not want to procreate. They may even be immortal, like Data. No one yet knows if they can even die of old age. And appreciating a beautiful woman is in large part because you are hormonally attracted to them. How does a warforged even know what a beautiful woman looks like?! They don't. At most, she could be a piece of art, but nothing more. There goes another plot device. I guess I will have to start making sexy tractors with mithral gears.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

It's not a challenge for the warforged. Certain plots are useful because they are personal to everyone. Everyone else may die because of hunger, but the warforged guy will just be lonely. It's not personal or a need to the warforged player. The player may want to keep the party alive, but as long as his character is not threatened, then the urgency is not there. IME, players have the most fun when threats are personal to their character. If the game is not affecting them, then they have less stake in the outcome.

Exactly, they do not want to have sex. They do not want to procreate. They may even be immortal, like Data. No one yet knows if they can even die of old age. And appreciating a beautiful woman is in large part because you are hormonally attracted to them. How does a warforged even know what a beautiful woman looks like?! They don't. At most, she could be a piece of art, but nothing more. There goes another plot device. I guess I will have to start making sexy tractors with mithral gears.

I'm really not getting where you're coming from with this. Warforged have unique traits and predilictions, therefore they're bad? So, you want all character races to be pretty much the same then? That sounds boring...

And I fail to see how having one member of the party who isn't into girls ruins the campaign. How about if one of the characters is queer? Or a woman? Or a dwarf? I know no self-respecting dwarf is going to get all loopy-eyed over some skinny human woman. Oh noes! A plot device has been dwarfed to death! The campaign is over!

Really, a warforged provides more plot devices, rather than less. I think you're grasping at straws here, even if some of the others who don't like the race have good arguments for their side.

 

[Gez]

It's not a challenge for the warforged. Certain plots are useful because they are personal to everyone. Everyone else may die because of hunger, but the warforged guy will just be lonely. It's not personal or a need to the warforged player. The player may want to keep the party alive, but as long as his character is not threatened, then the urgency is not there. IME, players have the most fun when threats are personal to their character. If the game is not affecting them, then they have less stake in the outcome.

Yeah, of course. Just like when you crash your starship on some alien, inhospitable planet, it's not a challenge to repair it. If you can't succeed on repairing it, then he's not threatened, just marrooned there.

Exactly, they do not want to have sex. They do not want to procreate.

That they don't want to have sex doesn't mean they don't want to procreate. To the contrary. Otherwise, why

Spoiler

would the Lord of Blade operate a clandestine creation forge

?

They may even be immortal, like Data. No one yet knows if they can even die of old age.

This, in itself, is interesting. You could have an overconfident warforged thinking he's immortal, and thus a god. And you could have a hypochondriac warforged, afraid that he's going to fall apart and stop functionning any day now.

And appreciating a beautiful woman is in large part because you are hormonally attracted to them. How does a warforged even know what a beautiful woman looks like?! They don't. At most, she could be a piece of art, but nothing more.

How does a human even know what a beautiful horse looks like?! Well, they do. I wonder why. Does that mean that all humans are in a large part hormonally attracted to horses?

There goes another plot device. I guess I will have to start making sexy tractors with mithral gears.

Don't be silly.

 

[Hand of Evil]

With brings up how people play their Warforged, which I see as the following:

1...Robot: Tool with brain but no emotions
2...Data: Tool with brain but knows of emotions and trys to understand them
3...Pinocchio: Wants to be
4...Tinman: Everything in place just appearance

I am sure there are others

 

[EricNoah]

With brings up how people play their Warforged, which I see as the following:

1...Robot: Tool with brain but no emotions
2...Data: Tool with brain but knows of emotions and trys to understand them
3...Pinocchio: Wants to be
4...Tinman: Everything in place just appearance

I am sure there are others

5...Bender: essentially a rude/low-morals human but with just enough robot excuses to make him still likeable.

 

[The_Universe]

5...Bender: essentially a rude/low-morals human but with just enough robot excuses to make him still likeable.

YOINK!

Bender is totally making an appearance as Warforged NPC!