Any Ideas for a Warforged Race?


Conversions


A friend of mine and I are attempting to create some new races and add in a few old favorites. The list so far includes:

- Warforged
- Eleti (undead)
- Any other suggestions!

We would enjoy any input that you may have regarding the specific racial traits of each. Keep in mind this is for the Pathfinder Role-playing game.


We would also like to add that these races should be balanced to the Standard races provided in the Pathfinder Core book, that means...no level mods or racial hit dice.

Dark Archive

A thread about Warforged (and other races) in Golarion. Mostly RP / design stuff, not mechanical crunchiness.

If you want to cut down some of the immunity craziness, or at least offset its value, having the mechanical men require some sort of sustenance or fuel, of roughly the same cost as a living creature would spend on food and drink (or greater cost), such as burnables for a 'Forgeborn' or some sort of alchemical reagents for a Starmount 'metal man,' could be a balancing factor.

Require Craft (metalworking or clockwork) might also be required instead of the Heal skill, for overnight repairs, etc. with the Mending spells being able to repair up to 1 hp / HD of the 'forged per day (since allowing even just 1 hp / casting would be overwhelming when a Wizard or Sorcerer can cast mending an unlimited amount of times per day), and the Make Whole spell being a more powerful curative option.

Many critters, such as Undead, that were immune to Sneak Attacks and Critical Hits in 3.X, aren't so immune in Pathfinder, and that's one of the biggest immunities, so that would automatically be a bonus.

For a stat adjustment, I'd be inclined to give them a +2 Strength *or* +2 Dexterity, depending upon their design (player's choice, made at 1st level, can't be re-configured afterwards), and +1 natural armor, and a -2 penalty to Charisma. The immunities they do get, combined with the +1 natural armor, would compensate for them not having a +2/+2/-2 attribute modifier, like Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings.

The metal men, being made, not born, would have the unusual choice at character creation to be either Medium sized (+2 Str) or Small sized (+2 Dex). Small ones have ground speed 20 ft. and Medium ones have ground speed 30 ft.


Ironborn of Questhaven -- It's gone though an errata tweak so take a look and drop these guys in.


I converted the Warforge to the following. Just Ignore anything specific to my homebrew Campaign World. Take it or leave it.

WARFORGED:

Built as mindless machines by master artificers, their soul purpose was to aid warring factions of the Peninsula of Apsis as mechanisms of war. However, the warforged developed sentience as a side effect of the arcane experiments that sought to make them the ultimate weapons of destruction. With their new found intelligence and free will, the warforged rebelled against their former creators abandoning them to their fate. Eventually they established a small society where their master builders construct more of their kind. With each successive generation, the warforged become more powerful and intelligent, until they evolved into a new kind of creature–living constructs. Many of their kind have traveled to the breadth of the world in search of new experiences and opportunities. Now, the warforged are known for their combat prowess, their size, and their single-minded focus, which makes them steadfast allies and fearsome enemies.

Personality: The warforged were made to fight, and they continue to fulfill their purpose with distinction. They fight fiercely and usually without remorse, displaying adaptability impossible for mindless constructs. Now that they are no longer under the control of their former masters, the warforged seek to adapt to life in this era of relative peace. Some have settled easily into new roles as artisans or laborers, while others wander as adventurers or even return to their formaer masters to fight along side them of their own free will.

Physical Description: Warforged appear as massive humanoids molded from a composite of materials–obsidian, iron, stone, darkwood, silver, and organic material–though they move with a surprising grace and flexibility. Flexible plates connected by fibrous bundles make up the body of a warforged, topped by a mostly featureless head. Warforged have no physical distinction of gender; all of them have a basically muscular, sexless body shape. In personality, some warforged seem more masculine or feminine, but different people might judge the same warforged in different ways. The warforged themselves seem unconcerned with matters of gender. They do not age naturally, though their bodies do decay slowly even as their minds improve through learning and experience. Unique among constructs, warforged have learned to modify their bodies through magic and training. Many warforged are adorned with heavier metal plates than those their creator originally endowed them with. This customized armor, built-in weaponry, and other enhancements to their physical form help to differentiate one warforged from another.

Society: Since their revolt against their former masters, the warforged have no lands to call their own. However, they have established a large community deep in the harsh lands near their former home. It is there that these master builders previously spoken of have founded the warforged as a distinct society, with artisans, warriors, spellcasters, and culture based on their former lives and dreams for the future. The Elders of the Forge, as the master builders have come to be known, serve as the society’s leaders, wisemen, and cultural depositories. Outside of this primary community, the warforged have founded but a few other small one scattered throughout the lands of both continents. However, the majority of the warforged can be found wandering the lands alone or in small groups as nomads or sellswords in an attempt to build new warforged communities free from the prejudice and mistrust of the other races.

Relations: Despite their loosely organized society, most warforged strive to find a place in the rest of the world for themselves, while simultaneously struggling to find ways to relate to the races that created them. In general, the humanoid factions who created them regard the warforged as a failure to gain victory in their brutal and ongoing war. The Lazalean Alliance of humans, elves and dwarves have openly recognized the sentience and freedom of the warforged, and labor work along side them in their struggle against their enemies. However, the Molloch Consortium, consisting primarily of orcs ogres of extraordinary intelligence, still treat the warforged as property of their military forces, forcing them to serve as slave labor, or used to repair buildings and roads damaged or destroyed in the war. Throughout the rest of the world, the warforged have their freedom but sometimes find themselves the victims of discrimination, or hard-pressed to find work or any kind of acceptance. Most warforged, not being particularly emotional creatures, accept their struggles and servitude with equanimity, but others seethe with resentment against all other races as well as those warforged whose only desire is to please their “masters.”

Alignment and Religion: Warforged are generally neutral. They were built to fight, not to wonder whether fighting is right. Though they are perfectly capable of independent thought and moral speculation, most choose not to wrestle with ethical ideals. Just as most warforged are not inclined to align themselves with any particular moral or ethical philosophy, few show much interest in religion. Some warforged have found a kind of answer to the questions of their existence by taking up the cause of one religion or another, but these remain a small (if rather vocal) minority among their kind. A larger number gravitate to the great artisan god Orin Stoneforger, or the Lord of magic and artifice Shi’ar. However, disaffected warforged have flocked to the call of Roth, with delusions of returning to their former homelands and exacting vengeance upon the “weak-fleshed” races that had brought them into existence.

Adventurers: Adventuring is one way that warforged can fit into the world–at least as well as any adventurer ever fits in. In the Great Wilderlands and the Peaks of Impasse of Apsis, the continent of their origin, few people care whether you were born or made, as long as you can help keep your companions alive. In other lands, a fairly large number of warforged choose an adventuring life to escape from the confines of societies they didn’t create and at the same time engage in some meaningful activity.

Names: Warforged do not name themselves and only recently have begun to understand the need of other races to have names for everything. Many accept whatever names others see fit to give them, and warforged traveling with humans often are referred to by nicknames. Some warforged, however, have come to see having a name as a defining moment of their new existence, and thus search long and hard for the perfect name to attach to themselves.

Warforged Racial Traits
Warforged are defined by their class levels—they do not possess racial Hit Dice. A warforged has the following racial traits.

+2 Constitution, –2 Wisdom, –2 Charisma: Warforged are resilient and powerful, but their difficulty in relating to other creatures makes them seem aloof or even hostile.

Medium: Warforged are Medium constructs, and have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.

Normal Speed: Warforged have a base speed of 30 feet (6 squares).

Composite Plating: The plating used to build a warforged provides a +2 armor bonus. This plating is not natural armor and does not stack with other effects that give an armor bonus (other than natural armor). This composite plating occupies the same space on the body as a suit of armor or a robe, and thus a warforged cannot wear armor or magic robes.

Warforged can be enchanted just as armor can be. The character must be present for the entire time it takes to enchant him. Composite plating also provides a warforged with a 5% arcane spell failure chance, similar to the penalty for wearing light armor. Any class ability that allows a warforged to ignore the arcane spell failure chance for light armor lets him ignore this penalty as well.

Light Fortification (Ex): When a critical hit or sneak attack is scored on a warforged, there is a 25% chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and damage is instead rolled normally.

Living Construct Traits: Warforged have all the traits, including the immunities and vulnerabilities, of the living construct subtype (see Chapter 12).

Slam: Warforged have a natural weapon in the form of a slam attack that deals 1d4 points of damage.

Weapon Familiarity: Warforged are proficient with longswords and battleaxes.

Languages: Warforged begin play speaking Common. They have no bonus languages to choose from.

Grand Lodge

Elghinn Lightbringer wrote:

I converted the Warforge to the following. Just Ignore anything specific to my homebrew Campaign World. Take it or leave it.

** spoiler omitted **...

I'd rather they didn't have that -2 WIS. In Eberron they mostly had it because they were slaves, and didn't fight back. With regular Pathfinder, they should at least have one of the two -2 penalties gone. I would say the -2 WIS. At the same time, the half-orc was +2 STR, -2 INT, -2 CHA, and now they're a straight up +2 to any one stat. I'd prefer that kind of an upgrade to the warforged as well, but I'm not naive to think that their abilities would therefore make them on par with a half-orc.


The half orc was a weak build.

The warforged is a very strong build in 3.5.

Sigurd

Grand Lodge

Sigurd wrote:

The half orc was a weak build.

The warforged is a very strong build in 3.5.

Sigurd

Fair enough, but for Pathfinder I still say that a single +2 to a stat is a decent update. Just get rid of the -2 WIS.


I just made the following changes to their stats. +4 Con, -2 Cha, -2 Wis.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Conversions / Any Ideas for a Warforged Race? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.