Warforged are the first race I've ever seen without a level adjustment that GMs will flat out refuse to allow in to their games. Personally, I love the metal guys. However, with the increase in over all racial power, do they deserve a little more love? Or are they good enough as is? How do they work with the revamped classes? This is what I'm out to discuss.
With the new racial ability adjustments, I think that, despite their powers as living constructs, warforged score penalties are a little unbalanced compared to the other races. I think that removing the Wisdom penalty would fix this rather nicely. Wisdom is, arguably, a more important score than charisma, but just about every casting class uses charisma in some way now, so it's still a good hit to balance against the constitution bonus. As far as removing the wisdom penalty goes, this allows warforged clerics and druids to be, well, viable. And, for melee classes, it helps improve their will saves a bit. Since they are by nature constructs, but don't have the mind affecting immunity, it's sort more fair for them to NOT have the wisdom penalty.
Barbarian: With the changes to rage, Warforged previous Tireless Rage at level 0 is no longer anywhere near as awesome as it was before. This is actually an excellent fix on the race/ class combination that I think was somewhat inadvertant.
Bard: Nothing particularly good or bad here. If warforged keep the charisma penalty, they are less effective bards. Though, with bards being more melee capable now, this is something that could be fun to see. A character who plays his metal abs? Washboard stomache taken too far?
Cleric: Divine Conduits are always nice to have around. Especially now that the cleric isn't the walking pile of cure spells any more. Clerics have always had a lot of potential in melee, and now they have the potential to main tank for the party. Removing the wisdom penalty ensures that the warforged cleric can still cast some of those later game useful spells. Like Ressurection. Sort of handy to have, is all I'm saying.
Fighter: My question here is if Warforged should benefit from the Armor Training. I say that they should, as long as they are utilizing feated armor. Either Mithril Body, Ironwood Body, or Admantite Body. Composite Plating imposes no max dex bonus or armor check penalty. As such, it's the characters skin. You don't get better at being you. The feat armors are more armorlike (carapace, maybe?), and as such, deserve to benefit from the class ability. As it stands, Mithril Body is still technically worse from the getgo than a Mithril shirt (5 armor/ 5 max dex -2 check penalty (effectively) vs 4 armor/ 6 max dex no check penalty), and Admantite Body is strictly worse than a full plate, since it CAN'T be made if any special materials. I view it as the warforged getting increasingly used to moving about in his armored body. And, don't forget, warfored CAN'T improve their base armor outside of enancement bonuses. Also, Fighter is their favored class. Let's show some favoritism.
Monk: Warforged monks are comedy gold. Officially, in 3.5, warforged composite plating AC stacks with the monk bonuses. Never saw that as game breaking, and see it as less hugetacular now. Still good, but with some of the perks of other races, eh, not the best thing in the whole world.
Paladin: I think the Warforged Paladin Substitution Levels from Races of Eberron fixed this issue pretty good. Not enough sweeping paladin changes to make this one much of an issue with that material around.
Rangers: With the changes to the ranger that make it a class people might actually want to play, a Warforged Ranger would be a fun character. A literally tireless tracker, built to hunt down particular foes. Conceptually, it's pretty cool. He doesn't get quite as much usage out of Survial as other races (hooray for not eating!), but the race class combination is just sort of cool now.
Rogue: Charisma penalty tends to keep warforged rogues in the front lines, or in deep cover. Less diplomacy, more stabby here. At most, they'd take Mithril Body, if they really were hard up to stand next to the fighter, but the check penalty might put that off a bit. Combat race, combat class, good match.
Sorcerer: This one's a little strange. With the Cha penalty, this isn't overly appealing, but some of the bloodlines could make for a very neat character. As a GM, I'd rule carefully which ones a warforged could take. Abyssal, Arcane, Celestial, Destined, Elemental, and Infernal all make some sense. Short answer: parts used to create the warfored are from those planes, or in the case of Destined, he's just meant to be a hero. The ones that don't really fly (Abberant, Draconic, Fey, and Undead), really require a character to be descended from something. Eww. Grandpappy was a zombie. Built in spell failure still hurts. Thank goodness for Combat feats.
Wizard: Probably the better Arcane option for Warforged. Play off the thinking machine aspect for EZRP. With the improved Hit Die, the nifty class features, and the fact that ANYBODY can be a wizard, this is a nice match. The Arcane Bond over the Familiar would be a great path to follow as well. The magical pet would be less appealing for a race that is inherently somewhat of loners. I can see a warfored relating to his things more than to a magical critter.
Warforged are not OGL, so they can't do anything with them.
Nothing Paizo can do... but we can :)
If you guys want to make a conversion, you will probably want to move to the OGL D20 forum as this is the Playtest Feedback forum.
Now you can make your own semi rip off and try and get it added to one of their books.
At one point, our group half-seriously discussed an outright ban on anything with the word "war-" in front of it. Warforged, warblades, warmages, The Warduke... all out.
At one point, our group half-seriously discussed an outright ban on anything with the word "war-" in front of it. Warforged, warblades, warmages, The Warduke... all out.
Dwarven waraxe? ;-)
Let us not forget they are also Constructs as a race. It goes beyond simple listed immunities that are an amendment to the Contruct Type traits. They are also immune to things like Hold Person, Charm Person, et cetera. If you need to keep a player in check, just hit him on everything they CAN'T do well. Common is their only listed available language. Sucks to be him when the only guy around with repair damage spells only speaks Dwarven and Gnoll.
Anyways, didn't mean to start a thread that was innapropriate to the board. However, I think conversions of old material, though not able to be supported by Paizo, will be a major endeavor after PfRPG is released. I'm planning ahead now, and playtesting a couple eberron races, one slightly more maligned than the other. I've also got a couple players working with 3.0 monster manual races, such as Aasimar and Tieflings. They seem to be almost on par with the new standard races, though removing their +2 racial bonus to all saves ended up necessary. Balances well at a +1 to all saves.
What is considered to be OGL content? The three Core books? Is there a list? I'm not sure where to start looking for this, so if somebody could point me in the right direction, I'd like to playtest that stuff with the new rules the most, since that's where we'll be most concerned with the lead in to the Beta release.
Don't forget the negatives.
They will profit less from the new turning check (I think)
They are vulnerable to rust, woodrot, repel stone and metal.
And if you use "Eberron Spells" like the repair spells, you should also include the anti-construct spells.
And the typical nightwatch warforged fighter has no ranks in spot/perception and neither low-light nor darkvision. Not a very effective guardian.
What is considered to be OGL content? The three Core books? Is there a list? I'm not sure where to start looking for this, so if somebody could point me in the right direction, I'd like to playtest that stuff with the new rules the most, since that's where we'll be most concerned with the lead in to the Beta release.
Anything by WotC that's also in the SRD, is (IIRC) OGL (So dragons are, but not mindflayers). For 3rd-party works the designation of OGL is usually at the bottom of the Table of Contents (same for WotC book, but the SRD is easier to reference).
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The only OGC from WotC is (most of) the mechanics in the core books, the mechanics from the Epic Level Handbook, the mechanics of Deities and Demigods, and with a few exceptions, the entirety of Unearthed Arcana.
Everything else is closed content and as such will never show up in any Paizo stuff... unless the lawyers at WotC all have strokes, and then the people who made 4e don't care if OGL products are still being produced. In other words, just this side of NEVER.
The only OGC from WotC is (most of) the mechanics in the core books, the mechanics from the Epic Level Handbook, the mechanics of Deities and Demigods, and with a few exceptions, the entirety of Unearthed Arcana.
The Razor Boar and Scorpionfolk from Monster Manual II are also open content.
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What is considered to be OGL content?
d20SRD.org Has all the the OGL goodness so you can work from there.
As for the Warforged in PfRPG:
I was thinking of writing up my own OGL Warforged but never bothered. If I were to allow a PC to use the race it would definitely be the class as written. The wisdom penalty is a small price to pay for the racial benefits received.
Giving a WF fighter armor training if they use mithril or adamantine body is reasonable. Since there is really no permanent home for PfRPG content I don't see this as being off topic for this forum.
-- Dennis