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In my homebrew campaign setting, the large, technologically advanced city-state is going to war and decides to create an army of living constructs instead of sending its own citizens to fight. Eventually, I would like this race to become a player race, so I thought I'd go ahead and make it a player race now. I naturally decided to use warforged as a basis, but instead of converting it myself, I searched these forums.
Fellow Paizo message board user Anburaid posted his/her conversion of warforged a year and a half ago. (The post can be found here.) Since it was the last post before the thread died, I wasn't able to see what any one else thought of it. I liked it, and what you'll find below are a blend of my own ideas and a few of his/hers. I'm looking for critiques on balance. What are your opinions?
A living construct is a construct with the soul of a living creature. This soul can either be created specifically for a living construct or it can be taken from a different creature and placed in the living construct. They have the following features:
- Hit Dice, base attack bonus, saving throws, and skill points based on character class.
Traits: A living construct possesses the following traits:
- Immunity to bleed and sleep effects.
- Can be affected by spells that target living creatures as well as by those that target constructs. Damage dealt to a living construct can be healed by a cure light wounds spell or a repair light damage spell, for example, and a living construct is vulnerable to disable construct and harm. However, spells from the healing subschool and supernatural abilities that cure hit point damage or ability damage provide only half their normal effect to a living construct.
- Cannot heal damage on its own, but can be repaired through the use of the Craft Construct feat or through various Craft skills.
- Not subject to exhaustion or nonlethal damage.
- Can be raised or resurrected.
- +2 Strength, -2 Charisma: Warforged are physically imposing, through their alien appearance and origin make social situations difficult.
- Medium: Warforged are Medium creatures and have no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
- Humanoid (living construct).
- [b]Tireless:
Warforged gain the Endurance feat. They do not need to sleep, warforged spellcasters still need 8 hours of rest in order to regain any spells.
- Auto-Stabilizers: Warforged who are reduced to -1 hit point or lower automatically stabilitze on their turn.
- Unusual Anatomy: Due to their unusual anatomy, warforged gain a +4 bonus to saving throws against poisons and disease and against effects that confer the sickened or nauseated conditions.
- Unusual Composition: Since they are made of wood and metal, warforged are vulnerable to certain spells and effects that don't affect living creatures. A warforged takes damage from heat metal and chill metal as if he were wearing metal armor. Likewise, a warforged is affected by repel metal or stone as if he were wearing metal armor. A warforged is repelled by repel wood. The iron in the body of a warforged makes him vulnerable to rusting grasp. The creature takes 2d6 points of damage from the spell (Reflex half; save DC 14 + caster's ability modifier). A warforged takes the same damage from a rust monster's touch (Reflex DC 17 half). Spells such as stone to flesh, stone shape, warp wood, and wood shape affect objects only, and thus cannot be used on the stone and wood parts of a warforged.
- Armor Plating: Warforged possess a built-in armor plating that provides a +2 armor bonus. The plating makes wearing normal armor impossible. It 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. The armor plating may be removed (such as to replace it with better plating), but the warforged takes 2d6 damage. The warforged may not drop below 1 hit point because of plating removal. Once removed, old plating can be reinstalled with a DC 15 Craft (armor) check and new plating can be installed with a DC 20 Craft (armor) check. If the installer has the Craft Construct feat, the DCs are reduced to 5 and 10, respectively. The DC for crafting armor for a warforged is increased by 5. If the crafter has the Craft Construct feat, the DC is unaltered.
- Languages: Warforged begin play speaking common. Warforged with high intelligence scores can choose any languages they want (except secret languages, such as Druidic).
What would be the point value of this using the Advanced Race Guide system? Just curious.
I haven't gone in-depth with the Advanced Race Guide's creation system. I remember Construct by itself costing more than a regular PC race, but I don't know what kind of negatives I could give it to balance it out. I'll have to look into it a little more next time I can get my hands on the book. I'll let you know what I find.
The point value would be higher, don't you think? You're not calculating Unusual Anatomy and Unusual Composition.
I have a Battleforged... I know they are on my Gothic Races thread but can't find it right now...
Dot. Always interested in new takes on this subject. I ran a 3.0 OZ for friends' kids a few years back and didn't have Eberon yet.
Hmm. That's a nice work-up, TGMaxMaxer. Thanks! I looked over the Advanced Race Guide's creation system (thanks to Paizo's PRD), and it was tough finding which attributes would work with my race. I tried assigning my own point value to the abilities, but that proved difficult. Yours does a pretty good job! I'll play around with it a bit more next time I have free time.
Battleforged Grunt. Playtested... Well into the ground.
Battleforged Grunt. Playtested... Well into the ground.
Like it, but you might want to look at the 'Natural Armor' entry again...
It is correct... Natural Armour and 1 Improved Natural Armour costs 3RP & gives +2 Natural Armour.
Umm, I was referring to the 'Dragonkin part...
I have no clue what you are talking about...