I don't expect to change anyone's opinion, and I'm not going to address any specific points. But just to throw a few random thoughts onto the heap...
To me, I see the warforged as less
I, Robot, and more
Blade Runner (more the movie than DADoES). I think of Roy Baty returned from the war to a world that never wanted him. You can play a warforged like Data or Pinochio, but for me it's less of the comical "I need to learn to laugh!" and more "I am a walking reminder of a war people want to forget. I was made for war, and that war is over. What use am I now? what place in the world is there for me?"
What I personally dislike about using the term robot for warforged is that for me, "robot" carries a few basic assumptions:
- Every part of the robot is manufactured with a purpose in mind. When US robotics creates a robot, they don't say "Why don't we through in a sense of pain, just for yuks." They understand what every feature of the robot is for - or if they don't, they haul in Susan Calvin, and probably trash the model. This isn't the case with a warforged. If people just wanted construct soldiers, there's no point to designing them with the ability to feel pain, to feel emotion, to have a sense of taste. And then there's the issue of souls. The people who created the warforged don't fully understand their creations... which is uncommon (though certainly not unheard of) when dealing with robots.
- Their behavior isn't programmed. Just as their physiology isn't completely the work of the creator, neither is their psychology. You can look at I, Robot, but there have never been Three Laws of Warforged imprinted on their consciousness... because Cannith can't imprint ANYTHING on their consciousness. They learn rapidly in their chrysalis stage, but they are still taught, not programmed.
Warforged are artificial beings created through the use of magic for the purpose of war and labor. If that makes them robots in your eyes, sure, they're robots... especially if golems also count as robots. If you don't feel they belong in your game, it's certainly your game. But there are those factors to consider. Their behavior isn't programmed; they possess the capacity for all of the emotions that humans have, it's simply that their emotional growth was generally discouraged by their trainers and the circumstances of their lives; their bodies are magical in natural and capable of physically evolving over time (hence the response to healing and the fact that a warforged juggernaut actually grows spikes as it advances in the PrC... not nails them on,
grows them); and not only are their bodies not completely designed my human minds, there are things about warforged that even their creators don't truly understand.
Looking at these last four points, it seems to me that at least three don't apply to Star Wars droids. Then again, some people WANT to play droids in fantasy, and good for them. I've seen people play their warforged as Terminators, and if that's what's fun for them, good - likewise, if PC sentient constructs of any sort leave a bad taste in your mouth, certainly, stay away from the warforged.
