Warforged in Varisia


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


A player of mine is thinking of playing a warforged character. And I was wondering if they could have similar ties to their Ebberon background of being created in ancient times.

I was wondering if it would fit that they are left over from the age of the Rune Lords. Limiting them to very few in the general populous. And them not knowing anything about the Runelords either.

Possibly being created/constructed near the time of the fall of the empire but not awakened until just recently. Possibly a curious Pathfinder or other organization discovering them?

Not sure how all this would fit and if it would mess with anything in the later Pathfinder Volumes.


I ran into this with D0: Hollow's Last Hope. A player of mine wanted to play a warforged, but alas, this isn't Eberron. Not one to turn an enthusiastic player down, however, I suggested that he was an experimental construct created from a local wizard, in a secluded home on the outskirts of Falcon's Hollow.

But in the grand scheme of Varisia, I agree that warforged would function perfectly as construct agents/soldiers crafted by the Runelords. Certainly any Runelord of Sloth would have his lackeys craft automatons capable of cognitive thought, so as to better serve his needs.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

There were certainly constructs and "automatic men" of a sort in Thassilon. One of them, at least, shows up in Pathfinder #4. So it's not completely outlandish to think of warforged as being a Thassilonian throwback... but since that's a span of 10,000 years, you'll need to come up with some tricksy backstory for them...


If I skimmed the article on Thassilon correctly, nobody's exactly sure what caused everything to come crashing down. You could possibly tie it in to a disaster of some sort, with it wiping out the warforged's memory. Or, possibly link them to the runewells. Those could be one of the instruments used to make them, similar to the creation forges in Eberron.

Spoiler:
An interesting point could be that the warforged were made prior to the runelords' rise to power, by Xin. Or, maybe even the runelords made them, before they were corrupted. The key would be to tie them to the Celestial Age, before Xin's demise. Then, after ideals of the runelords changed from 'good' to evil, their connection was severed, and they shut down. Or, perhaps they were loyal only to Xin, and refused to serve the runelords, causing the runelords to shut down/destroy many of them. Either way, they have a solid creation tale, and a plausible reason for having no memory. Even if they did, most of them would be of a world long ago perished, and no complications regarding immediate knowledge.

Liberty's Edge

Spoiler:
Maybe they lay dormant in ancient Thassilonian(sp?) ruins since the fall of the empire and were awakened, oh say, about five years ago when the runewells were awakened. The years have eaten away at their memories and they now have to discover who they are and what thier purpose is.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Not to be a wet blanket, but if I had a vote, I'd vote for Warforged to not really have a niche in Golarion. If people want to force them into their own games there's nothing stopping them, but one of the reasons that I embrace Golarion so readily is that it is so different from Eberron. The way I interpret the setting, Warforged would seem somewhat incongruous.

There's already an official setting and probably many homebrews where Warforged fit right in. For me, and I suspect for many others, Warforged in Golarion would ruin things. In all sincerity, though, no offense to those who really love Eberron. I know there are a lot of people who like it. I just personally don't like it, and I think Paizo is doing something fairly different with Golarion and so far I like the direction it is headed.


Kelvar Silvermace wrote:

<snip> The way I interpret the setting, Warforged would seem somewhat incongruous.

There's already an official setting and probably many homebrews where Warforged fit right in. For me, and I suspect for many others, Warforged in Golarion would ruin things. <snip>

I wouldn't necessarily incorporate warforged, at least not under that name. I like Eberron, but I'm not buying Pathfinder to be Eberron II. If anything, I'm picking it up as an old-school Greyhawk II ;-)

But we do already have the "golemworks" in Magnimar, and the ancient magics of the Runelords. So I can see a place for intelligent golems in the setting as James mentioned above, even if not as an ECL 0 player race. We'll see when more information comes out in future issues of Pathfinder, but it might not be that much of a stretch.


Kelvar Silvermace wrote:

Not to be a wet blanket, but if I had a vote, I'd vote for Warforged to not really have a niche in Golarion. If people want to force them into their own games there's nothing stopping them, but one of the reasons that I embrace Golarion so readily is that it is so different from Eberron. The way I interpret the setting, Warforged would seem somewhat incongruous.

There's already an official setting and probably many homebrews where Warforged fit right in. For me, and I suspect for many others, Warforged in Golarion would ruin things. In all sincerity, though, no offense to those who really love Eberron. I know there are a lot of people who like it. I just personally don't like it, and I think Paizo is doing something fairly different with Golarion and so far I like the direction it is headed.

I wouldn't worry about warforged becoming any official part of Golarion. If they did, Paizo would have to worry not only about unhappy customers but also Hasbro/WotC's lawyers getting really angry. Warforged are not in the SRD and are not open gaming content. So Paizo cannot legally use warforged, and even going with a "RUNEforged that look and act like warforged but definitely aren't warforged, Mr. Lawyer, sir" still wouldn't go over well.

In many discussions the Paizo gang has made it clear that they don't want to make Golarion into Eberron - after all, there already is an Eberron as you said, and that's also not a lot of people's cup of tea. So, I think it's pretty safe to assume the discussion here is just for those who personally want warforged in their own campaigns.


Yeah I wouldn't want them to be an integral part of the Pathfinder series. But my player wants to play one and I don't want to say no to something that can be easily fixed with a couple paragraphs of background.

I just don't want to muck up anything is all. Thanks for the input though guys. :)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

One thing that I should say, of course, is that while individual GMs can certainly do what they wish when it comes to using warforged and other elements from Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dark Sun, etc. in their own games... we can't. Those elements belong to WotC, and we can't officially use them in Golarion.

In the case of warforged, in fact, we wouldn't anyway. Personally, I really don't like the way warforged are built in the rules and don't like their flavor. They're too sci-fi for me, and their presence in Varisia would, I think, cause ENORMOUS changes to the flavor I'm aiming for in the setting, which is a much more traditional setting. So while it's cool if individual GMs out there want to add in elements like this (which would be an AWFUL lot of work)... and while you can expect at least one ancient Thassilonian construct to appear during the course of the campaign... that construct is basically a monster in a room. There won't be robots on the streets of Sandpoint. I certainly won't be going out of my way to make the adventure path as written easy for warforged or other crazy fringe elements (like incarnum or mechs or spaceships or machine guns) that aren't part of traditional D&D-type worlds to be introduced. If you want them in your game, great! It'll be tough to fit them into the adventure path seamlessly, though.

Of course, messageboard posts on HOW individual GMs fit them in are awesome, and althoguh I don't like warforged myself, I'm eager and curious to see how you fit them in to Rise of the Runelords. :)


Ken Marable wrote:
and even going with a "RUNEforged that look and act like warforged but definitely aren't warforged, Mr. Lawyer, sir" still wouldn't go over well.

I just got done saying in another thread that I don't care much for anachronisms, but the name 'runeforged' is actually very evocative. Like James, I'm also not that thrilled with warforged as written, but that name alone is enought to make me reconsider their inclusion.

Perhaps the best bet is to have your 'forged character be made in the modern day (maybe very recently) based on information gleened from the golemworks, old Thasilonian arcana, and half-understood runes uncovered from ancient texts. If nothing else, I suspect the moment of discovery when he realizes the rune on his forehead is the same rune as that used by the wicked Runelord might be a great roleplaying scene for all the players involved.


Fletch wrote:
Ken Marable wrote:
and even going with a "RUNEforged that look and act like warforged but definitely aren't warforged, Mr. Lawyer, sir" still wouldn't go over well.

I just got done saying in another thread that I don't care much for anachronisms, but the name 'runeforged' is actually very evocative. Like James, I'm also not that thrilled with warforged as written, but that name alone is enought to make me reconsider their inclusion.

Perhaps the best bet is to have your 'forged character be made in the modern day (maybe very recently) based on information gleened from the golemworks, old Thasilonian arcana, and half-understood runes uncovered from ancient texts. If nothing else, I suspect the moment of discovery when he realizes the rune on his forehead is the same rune as that used by the wicked Runelord might be a great roleplaying scene for all the players involved.

I really like the idea of the rune matching the sin for which they were created. Awesome idea (both for background and that role-playing moment)!

Also, if "robots" in Sandpoint makes people uncomfortable, I could easily see the runeforged being more like Terminators and being constructs that appear exactly like humans - the better to corrupt the masses.

Whatever their appearance, you could come up with feats that give them special abilities matching the sin for which they were forged. Use the dragonmark feats as a template and give each sin a least, lesser, and greater feat that a runeforged could take. Could even be a series of feats for the positive runes/virtues of rulership as well.


Some thoughts.

Living Constructs when damaged between below 0 but more than -10 become inert. How long they can stay in that state I don't think is made clear, so perhaps eons might not be all that unreasonable especially if they were protected from the elements.

My suggestion is to go mystery over detail. A warforge was found in the wreckage of some ancient building (perhaps by a Pathfinder member). Despite obviously being damage it was still intact and so the person thought it might be valuable. There may be other ones found as well if the particular warforge is not meant to be unique (Data? :) ).

Some silly gnome decided to try to do some repair work somewhere along the line (repair light damage) and the warforge awakens. At the time of the collapse it had just come online moments before, so it actually has no memories of the previous civilization.

Alternatively, you could take a more sci-fantasy approach and make it something like a cyborg (robocop?). But the transition is so dramatic that the entire memories of the previous individual are destroyed (or perhaps merely surpressed).

I don't think you have to play in Eborron to use warforges (or shifters or whatever). They are included in the MMIII, players and DMs should feel free to use them if they have access to that text. The flavor around their creation may be have to be adjusted a bit (see above for examples), but the actual design can be introduced without problem.


James Jacobs wrote:
In the case of warforged, in fact, we wouldn't anyway. Personally, I really don't like the way warforged are built in the rules and don't like their flavor. They're too sci-fi for me, and their presence in Varisia would, I think, cause ENORMOUS changes to the flavor I'm aiming for in the setting, which is a much more traditional setting. So while it's cool if individual GMs out there want to add in elements like this (which would be an AWFUL lot of work)... and while you can expect at least one ancient Thassilonian construct to appear during the course of the campaign... that construct is basically a monster in a room. There won't be robots on the streets of Sandpoint.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I feel the same way about warforged and their presence in Varisia would chill my enthusiam for the setting. I'm all for a small number of intelligent constructs, but not as a PC race and not as a common sight.


pres man wrote:

Some thoughts.

Living Constructs when damaged between below 0 but more than -10 become inert. How long they can stay in that state I don't think is made clear, so perhaps eons might not be all that unreasonable especially if they were protected from the elements.

My suggestion is to go mystery over detail. A warforge was found in the wreckage of some ancient building (perhaps by a Pathfinder member). Despite obviously being damage it was still intact and so the person thought it might be valuable. There may be other ones found as well if the particular warforge is not meant to be unique (Data? :) ).

Some silly gnome decided to try to do some repair work somewhere along the line (repair light damage) and the warforge awakens. At the time of the collapse it had just come online moments before, so it actually has no memories of the previous civilization.

This is exactly what I would do if a player of mine wanted to play a warforged. This means you don't have to worry about there being stacks of them around, and you can really play up the surprise (and fear?) of townspeople when they meet your warforged.

Even have him on the run from the Pathfinders if you want. Say he "awoke" when he was repaired, and escaped and now is on the run to remain free. Sounds like great roleplaying opportunities.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

If the GM want them in the campaign, then add them. But please Paizo, don't enclude them in the written material. Besides, I doubt they are part of the OGL so I don't think you could.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Well, It's a good thing James already reiterated that Warforged are NOT OGL material then eh? :)

Depending on how much science I want in my Science-Fantasy, I may use one as a plot device, we shall see.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16

LOL... I can just see a lone warforged being called the "Monument Man" by the people of Magnimar for being found inside one of the ancient Monuments.

I wouldn't have a Repair light damage spell handy though... too easy to include that in a setting where it doesn't belong. No the Monument Man has to find a Wizard or Cleric with the requisite craft skills and Craft Construct feat to be repaired fully. Cure Light Wounds spells only working half as well is the price a player pays for being "special."

-- the Vrock-work Soldier

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

I believe Ironborn are OGL. If the name isn't voila, you get your runeforged. ;-)

Seriously, I think autonomus constructs would have to follow one of two routes.

1) abberations. Free willed constructs weren't part of plan x where they were created. This doesn't tie them to the setting in any one place. Instead it makes them an 'insert where you want'

2) Left over from the old empire. either they're 'off line' and recently were repaired or maybe an automated process when the wells were reactivated. Either way, I'd make them speak whatever language was default in their area, and have to spend skill points to speak common.

The Exchange

A large mechanical change... but what if warforged were powered by light (natural or magical), and when the miller was building a second mill, he stumbled across a tomb. Inside he found some rotten food in jars and various gems, but he also found himself face-to-face with a metallic man who was buried with his master, or some such jazz.

The mechanical change is just if the warforged isn't exposed to sunlight or something that reproduces the effects for a few days, he goes inert and doesn't awake until next he is exposed. This would have the bonus of potentially creating some Extremely nyctophobic warforged. In my mind, it's a scaredy cat warforged walking about with a bandolier filled with sunrods. ;)

I may have taken this idea too far.


James Jacobs wrote:
In the case of warforged, in fact, we wouldn't anyway.

While we are at it, can we do away with Gnomes and Halflings too? Hairless Ewoks just ruin the feel for me.

Spoiler:
Flame on!


CourtFool wrote:
While we are at it, can we do away with Gnomes and Halflings too? Hairless Ewoks just ruin the feel for me.

Hairless ewoks! I'll have to remember that one. But you can keep the halflings . . . only gnomes are pointless.

get it? get it? Cause ussually gnomes run around with those stupid pointy hats . . ah, I kill me.


CourtFool wrote:
While we are at it, can we do away with Gnomes and Halflings too? Hairless Ewoks just ruin the feel for me.

Well gnomes are only mostly hairless (the whole beard thing). I do find it funny that someone else thought of them as ewoks. I suggest to some friends that I might include some "ewokish gnomes" and someone said, "You should use halflings." To which I responded that, no a gnome would be the one to try to build a glider or other silly thing "Ok, I'll sit on this catapult and you fire it and I begin flying!"


James Jacobs wrote:

One thing that I should say, of course, is that while individual GMs can certainly do what they wish when it comes to using warforged and other elements from Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dark Sun, etc. in their own games... we can't. Those elements belong to WotC, and we can't officially use them in Golarion.

In the case of warforged, in fact, we wouldn't anyway. Personally, I really don't like the way warforged are built in the rules and don't like their flavor. They're too sci-fi for me, and their presence in Varisia would, I think, cause ENORMOUS changes to the flavor I'm aiming for in the setting, which is a much more traditional setting. So while it's cool if individual GMs out there want to add in elements like this (which would be an AWFUL lot of work)... and while you can expect at least one ancient Thassilonian construct to appear during the course of the campaign... that construct is basically a monster in a room. There won't be robots on the streets of Sandpoint. I certainly won't be going out of my way to make the adventure path as written easy for warforged or other crazy fringe elements (like incarnum or mechs or spaceships or machine guns) that aren't part of traditional D&D-type worlds to be introduced. If you want them in your game, great! It'll be tough to fit them into the adventure path seamlessly, though.

Of course, messageboard posts on HOW individual GMs fit them in are awesome, and althoguh I don't like warforged myself, I'm eager and curious to see how you fit them in to Rise of the Runelords. :)

Thank you Mr. Jacobs. I hope all will follow your example and leave the moronic piles of scrap-iron in the Non-mentionable campaign setting where they belong.


Playing with the runeforged concept, I started coming up with some ideas for dragonmark analogs. I started with the two most relevant to the current arc - wrath and greed. These are just like dragonmark feats with a +2 to a skill and a spell-like ability usable 1/day unless otherwise noted.

GREED
(Mostly stuck with transmutation spells based around objects, but divination also seemed appropriate for greed.)
Skill: Craft
Least: Detect Secret Doors (2/day) or Magic Weapon
Lesser: Fabricate
Greater: Animate Objects or Greater Scrying

WRATH
(For reasons apparent in the Sandpoint article, and it is fitting anyway, I went with a fire theme. Therefore, definitely very damage focused. But it is evocation after all.)
Skill: Intimidate
Least: Burning Hands
Lesser: Fire Shield or Searing Light
Greater: Flame Strike

Thoughts? I'll work on the other 5 sins and possibly the 7 positive runes as well.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8

I thought a bit on adding warforged to Varisia as creations of a Runelord of Greed. So I would change them so that they were made of precious materials like copper, silver, or gold instead of steel and wood. The runelord would have kept them as his treasure. Both for the materials they were made of and the knowledge they contained. This would seem too be, in my opinion, a greedy way to store treasure because even if someone got into your vault they would have to destroy the warforged and the much of the treasure it is made of. Even if you survive and win you will only get a portion of the treasure that was in there.

Instead of being natural soldiers they would be information gatherers for they ancient runelord. Their combat abilities were just their primary tool for gathering and guarding information. The name warforged only came after the fall of the runelord’s empire after people forgot their original purpose.

There would be three types of warforged: copper, silver, and gold. Copper would be the most numerous with a total of several hundred and silver would number only a hundred. Then the gold would be incredibly small with only seven in existence.

When created the warforged were lawful evil, but over time many have become less viscous so that over all they tend toward lawful neutral. The gold however still have their creator’s evil within them and their actions and alignment reflect this. The copper and silver are most often found traveling with groups of Varisians. They have good relations with the wanderers who see them as loyal allies. The Shoanti on the other had are at best distrustful of the warforged because of the legends they tell of their brutality. The Cheliax more often than not see the warforged as tools or weapons and not as equals. Currently significant numbers of warforged are attempting to join the Pathfinder organization in order to satisfy their desire to gather information.

I would limit how far back its memory goes so that the warforged only know as much about the history of the land as everyone else. The most common Warforged would be the copper and its memory would only be able to recall events from at most two centuries ago, but their memories start to fade after one century. Then silver warforged would be able to remember most facts from the last two centuries and some facts from as far back as five centuries ago. Unlike the others the golden warforged would have no limits to their memories, but since there would be only a handful of them it shouldn’t be a problem.


Awh man, I wrote up a story on how to explain the 1 Warforged I was going to allow in my game. But it seems to have disappeared when I hit the submit button :(

It was good too! :(


Basically it went like this:

Underwater Ruins off the coast of Magnimar, that have been nicknamed "The Stone Cradle" Small Island of Golem Fanatics and Researchers and salvagers that plunder what they can of the sunken ruins. Mostly broken constructs, unreadable tablets, or other archeological treasures.

Golemworker named Dastah and his crew finds a chest titled "De La Metalica" with 4 tablets that describe ancient methods to making Golems. Dastah tries to copy the method but none of the golems activate. He tries for years but keeps failing. He goes back to the ruins to try to find if he missed anything, finds nothing. Finally tries mixing golem methods to make the golems work but they still do nothing. Working day and night he finally falls ill, he tries to tell his co-workers and friends of his researchers but they think he's just lost it because he's reached a deadend. He dies, and one of the Automatons comes to life. The runes he copied on the metalica frame melt and sink into the skin.

Golem starts walking around town. Researchers think its Dastah at first but realize its not his soul in the construct its something else as it behaves differently and can't communicate clearly. They try to study it, but it doesn't want to comply. It eventually leaves the island and the researchers raid Dastahs workshop to try to figure out how he did it. None of them realizing that for the construct to awaken it needs a life. The runes are necromantic, requiring a life to give life to the construct.

Add a ton of flavoring that I'm just to mad to retype :(

Construct disappears possibly becomes PC.

Scarab Sages

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber

I was thinking about this recently...Could Warforged exist in Golarion?

Would they be from Numeria or maybe could have been constructed in Garund at some point in the Geb/Nex war?


Mactaka wrote:

I was thinking about this recently...Could Warforged exist in Golarion?

Would they be from Numeria or maybe could have been constructed in Garund at some point in the Geb/Nex war?

I would make them unique, limited, and certainly not a "race" as it were. A random occurence in the golem works of Magnimar. A specialized troop of warriors. Something like that.

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