In 3.5 the warforged had a way bigger issue with free time, as it was canon that they would actually go insane if they didn't have something to do with their free time. No really, they'd start getting unbalanced and nutty because their minds didn't have something to do all the time, they would get literally stir crazy.
If I may ask, but will you ever release the Hellish Adepts sheet and "How to make D&D ACTUALLY Scary" sheet? You said in the "How to make D&D ACTUALLY Scary" video that it would be coming last weekend and it has been quite a while since the devil video. I DON'T want you to rush or feel presured in any way shape or form, but it would be nice to know if you're still working on them in the backround or if it doesn't make sense to go back to them each time you upload. Other than that, I'll just say that I love your stuff and hope to see more epic content form you in the future!
"From the moment I learned of the weakness of the flesh, it disgusted me. There is no strength in flesh, only failure. There is no constancy in flesh, only decay. There is no certainty in flesh save death." The Augmented will be perfect for an Adeptus Mechanicus character!
@@mikachan365 Images of a kind of grumpy yet lovable clawed metallic creature, with the extra ability to use it's claws to dig trough ground and rock at near missile speed, comes to mind from that. Cool!
My warforged part-artificer has a mechanical falcon as his homunculus which, if inactive, folds up into what looks like an intricately fashioned plate of armor protecting his neck. And when it activates (unless directed to skip the boot-up-sequence and act immediately) it unfolds and with its wings forms what looks like a metal-halo behind the character's head before it flies off to do whatever the character needs done. I am probably not going to go further into Artificer than the two levels he currently has, because most of the perks of the various subclasses he already has from other sources (Battlemaster-8/Barbarian-1/War-Wizard-2/Artificer-2)
I did a warfoged as a flesh golem, he was Frankenstein-ish and was traveling the world seeking the ability to create more like him. So naturally, he started as a barb and slowly became a necromancer.
When asked to make a new character I came up with a fleshy frankenstein warforged. Then the DM said I should just be a Reborn, which I had never heard of before.
One of my players is doing a planty warforged, our setting is sort of clockpunk and robots can have souls if they’re designed masterfully enough. Their pc was made by an artificer and a druid, and is made of metal components held together partially by druid magic, moss and dirt and vines and flowers and shit. Also, their pc can heal with mending because, well, it makes sense lol
Before watching it, this is a character I really want to play: This wizard reached the peak of power, an archmage with amazing power and vast treasures, but as a human, nature would eventually takes its course and take his life away. Terrified of the prospect, he sought ways to extend his life through magical means, and even immortality, but he saw the paths leading to that goal were too evil, specially the idea of becoming a Lich forever damning souls to oblivion as fodder for his phylactery. He sought another way, and after much searching he met a very talented gnome artisan specialized in creating golems. They made a partnership to create golems to defend the vaults of Sorcerer Sundries to amass a vast quantity of gold. As a secret project, however, Solomon was learning all he could, for another path had presented itself: what if he could transpose his soul into a construct? Metal never dies. The latter part of his years was spent perfecting the craft, creating a special construct capable of harnessing magic, a very intricate design of the inner workings had to be performed, not too dissimilar from the clockwork constructs of the plane of Order. When the day finally came, he performed the ritual and his souls successfully latched on to the construct, but something went wrong. You see, Souls were not meant to linger after death, much less to attach to lifeless things, even if those things are soaked in magic, the experience of the process was too traumatic for the soul; it became fatigued, blocking away all prior experience as a defense mechanism like someone who experienced a very traumatic event in life. The Solomon was sucessful, and the Soul Powered Golem (SPO-1) was alive, but the memories of who Solomon was are scattered, Spoi doesn't know who he is, he doesn't know what he is. All he remembers is the last thought that crossed his mind as he transposed his soul without the assistance of his most loyal ally. That is all he knows, he must discover who he is, who he was, and must also discover if he's still Solomon, or something else. This is the backstory of this character I wanna play: a wizard warforged with amnesia, and it even explains how the construct "levels up", as more memories are unlocked through experience.
DUDE, I HAD A VERY SIMILAR IDEA! Mine was an artificer instead of a wizard, one that was hunted and had to resort to transferring his memories to an automaton (the warforged) he created before he was killed. The automaton was never activated and millenia passed before a member of the party found him and accidentally activated him. He looks like a child at level one and my idea was that as he leveled he remembered more and more about his past life and even made modifications to his body, growing in size too. Thing is, the original artificer was also named Solomon hahaha that's a bunch of coincidences!
In a recent campaign I played in, I was a Echo Knight Fighter Warforged named Drednen who pretty much had a Overwatch Bastion style backstory and somehow got warped from Ebberon to Sword Coast. He found a passion in baking after seeing how baking made people happy with various sweets and pastries. After taking apprenticeship and developing his artisan skills, he had an EZ bake oven installed in his chest and set off in the world to garner enough funds to fulfill his dream of making people happy through baking and opening his own bakery.
I'm building an Echo Knight Warforged too hahahahhaha but he was a tinker's assistant and some spooky events haunt him. Also, using the Envoy Warforged from the UA because
my warforged is very similar, hes a circle of the shepard druid warforged who was created towards the end of a war in our campaign but due to a series of events he was chased out of his home. so he became a hermit and all his little animals are his friends. hes also very fucking stupid
My version of "warforged" were made by an ancient civilization living in the desert. They ended up replacing all the humanoids living there thanks to the area completely running out of water. They all share a single mother, a giant sentient factory that keeps expanding. They send back information and samples of anything new they find to help improve the next generation.
Had two similar ideas to that for a setting in the past. My ancient desert civilization are undead awaiting the day the rains return and they can live again. My Warforged instead are from the frozen northlands. Every year a few more crawl out of the permafrost, thaw out of a glacier, are exposed to the air by a landslide, or awake from some recently uncovered vault from the last time the area was warm.
@@Liethen Love the idea of the Warforged in the Arctic regions slowly thawing out and reactivating. It reminds me of the classic Dr. Who story "Tomb of the Cybermen."
As much as I love having a cyborg species option, I'd rather have gotten the Borgs in a stand-alone video and have this video be about the species it says it was improving. I'm sad we didn't get any options for the actual Warforged. A Borg doesn't fulfill the same fantasy as a bot. Still, it's a great concept, and I appreciate your hard work
Same. I was really excited to hear about Warforged changes since his other videos on the different races were fun watches. But this had next to nothing to do with Warforged. Seriously could just cut the talk about Warforged out completely.
every single new "rework" of a race from pointy hat is just a human with a random part of the original race tacked on in the least creative way possible. I was expecting it already from the tabaxi and dragonborn vids but when i saw the final "rework" i legit started laughing in the most mean-spirited way possible.
i wrote a more magic robot style thing Unborn (warforged) Small/Medium Custom Build: You may choose a feature from another race, given to it by physical traits. Examples: Extra arms, powerful build, large size, etc You can be healed by normal means or by use of the Mending cantrip. If Mending is cast on you, you can expend 1 Hit Die per casting of the cantrip. Wood: Your Hitpoint maximum increases by 4 and does so again each time you gain a level Steel: You have a +3 bonus to your AC All armor+shield proficiency Porcelain: You have 2 sorcery points and 1 metamagic option of your choice in addition to any you have from other sources You can concentrate on two spells at once. Concentration checks are made at disadvantage and when you fail a concentration check you lose concentration on one of your spells (your choice). Gold: Natural AC 11+ Dex all armor+shield proficiency With enough focus, you can create a small antimagic field in your hand with the shape of a 6 inch sphere. This field lasts up to 1 hour. You may do this a number of times equal to twice your proficiency bonus per long rest. very unbalanced, but that can be worked out by tweaking numbers, all homebrew races I make are a little op because i like my players op.
Well pausing here at 11:37, Cyborgs in Eberron - This is the Renegade Mastermind. It was the opposite prestige class of the reforged prc. Renegade Mastermind would allow an artificer of any race slowly transform themselves into a warforged, while the reforged prc would allow a warforged to transform themselves into more flesh and blood like. 3.5 had a lot of cool things, but since ebberon came out mostly at the tail end of the edition, lot of it was kinda forgotten and lost. Warforge had special equipment items called "Warforged Components" which basically were parts that you could incorporate into your character. Like a mask that allowed you to gain the scent feature, or specialized feet to grip the ground. Whats cooler is that you could reforge any magic item into a new component, allowing you to basically become something of inspector gadget if you had a bunch of unslotted magic items built into your character. But 4e and 5e did warforge dirty, making them more simplified and generic mush. The worst incarnation though was early DDO which they only gained a small bonus on different things that warforged where normally immune to. Poisons, diseases, breathing.. All kinds of things like that you only got a slightly better boost if anything at all.
I like that with The Augmented, you can incorporate the flavor into feats you might take. I’m already imagining my character with Blind Fighting having prosthetic eyes installed after losing his sight.
Thematicaly, my warforged armorer artificer was my favourite character. Being able to "integrate" my arcane armor and modefy it made me fell like a REAL robot.
I honestly think warforged artificers are just one of the coolest and most flavorful options for them especially since it specifically says in the eberron book That sometimes war forged seek out artificers to make modifications to themselves. I can honestly see a character that is a war forged artificer who does surgery for other war forged to help them better adjust to their new life and attain forms that they are more comfortable with
For me a simple way to fix the no sleep issue is the following: Make it so that they do need to let their bodies rest, but their consciousness doesn't shut off. Think of it sort of like being idle in a game Edit: Also I legit play my warforged like a golden retriever most of the time, he's way too trusting. Also he doesn't know what being fancy is in the slightest, because when my party had to go to a banquet he just stuck a bunch of ties and bowties around himself
I'm thinking of running a warforged made by the best artificer in the world the fastest most effective body guard ruthless in killing and protecting fast, strong, and efficient. And his only drawback is also his greatest strength. It doesn't heal naturally. No health potions, no short, or long rest nothing. He has to be refueled to heal. What is is fuel you ask *Hahahahahahahaha!* *His fuel is **_BLOOD_* Being covered, immersed, or splattered with blood will refuel him as the blood will soak through his thin armour giving him less AC than other characters, but ultimately better staying power. The only drawback is he needs to refuel constantly on a 2-week basis, so he needs to kill constantly,and the blood has to be freshly oxidized and have no other contaminants or else it'll hurt his engine so it has to be fresh blood that hasn't touched the ground Lore wise, it makes sense (I mean if you have a problem with players healing via blood look at vampires) Scientifically it also makes sense blood has iron in it right? It could use the red blood cells to chemically generate energy, and once the cells are filtered out the rest of the blood can be used as coolant as it's mostly water. Alas the world's first VAMPIRIC NIKKON
Warforged and the general idea of robots have so much potential for cool character ideas I wished they gave us a load of different warforged types than 12 different elf subraces
i did an empire with a cybernetic or even robotic elite really obsessed with all kinds of fancy designs and weapons whom are rivals of a totalitarian regime that wants to wipe them off the face of the galaxy for being too individualistic and not equal enough
11:17 3.5 had warforged grafts, where you could replace a bodypart like an eye, arm, leg, even a chunk of brain with a warforged body part. Be it for fixing a lost limb or such or augmenting a fleshbag to just be better. It was pretty awesome and could be pretty much what you mentioned here. I actually really liked the Warforged idea, and when I run games I like to take a bit of the anime Galaxy Express as for how the factory they are made in works. ;)
I did this on accident in a campaign once my samurai lost her dominant hand when it was bitten off by a horror. Shed picked up a handgun that she was practicing with so after we got to safety i asked pur artificer to make me a specialized replacement arm that would let me use the gun occasionally (ala vash the stampedes arm.) It definitely kind of showed her growth as a character
My last character was a Warforged Cleric of the Forge named Error who created themselves due to a computational bug that occurred over the course of hundreds of years. When they joined the party, they were hundreds of years old, but only sentient for an entire day. Error spent the campaign questioning the basis for morality, what that means, and how they could improve the quality of the world after making instruments of war for centuries.
Sounds a bit like my second one. The name the party gave him was Clang. His real “name,” more of a designation, was Combat Construct A-495. He was originally built to defend a civilization of dwarves long since fallen to ruin. In that desperate last stand, he was built with all the siege-scrap the dwarves could muster, given orders to march out beyond the wall, to start killing the undead besiegers. It received no orders to stop. It was mostly successful. It had intelligence limited to a complete and total understanding of physics, the knowledge to self-repair and upgrade, knowledge of every fighting style the dwarves had yet encountered, and knowledge of undead. So, he went out there in hyper focused terminator mode and crushed every last zombie and skeleton he came across, only for the Lich commanding them to raise the dead dwarves to fight for him. The Lich absorbed the knowledge from those dead dwarves and, through means unknown to him, struck down the construct. Centuries later, after the desert sands had half-worn down the ruins, the party received a task from a dwarf archaeologist to go to the ruins and investigate. They found Clang’s massive armored hand poking up from the sand. They dug him out, finding a 7 and a half foot tall, heavily armored and bulky warforged with the etching of A-495 on its forehead. The party artificer, after about 3 days of tinkering, got it up and running again. Through some… creative liberties taken by the artificer, she had accidentally made him fully sentient. He had no prior memory, save an internal map of the city, a BURNING HATRED for all undead, and utter apathy to the living. He took up his massive flail and kite shield, and after a few battles, since he couldn’t remember his designation, the party named him “Clang,” because that’s the sound his footsteps made, the sound that was heard whenever he was hit, and whenever he hit something.
I would say warforged are less robot racism and more military veterans with no purpose now that the war is over. People don’t want to really acknowledge veterans especially in America so that’s where the disinterest partially comes from along with the other things you mentioned.
Funniest thing about being a veteran is the people most disinterested in veterans are those "empowered" to "help" them 🤷 (VA) There's been a rash of vets setting themselves on fire in front of clinics (like Charles Ingram III) because of all the "didn't happen during service/not required to cover that" BS
I'd thought your augmented was going to be like an Artificer slowly turning himself into a Warforged. Like, one idea I'd had was taking the Armorer subclass of Artificer and gradually working his soul into the advanced suit, so that when someone one hundreds of years later discovered it the Artificer and the new hero could work together.
maybe, imagine thet you play as a warforged for most of the campaign and all your companions think you are just that a warforged until like during a battle part of your face breaks off and under it there is a human face hidden away by the faceplate, then after the battle is over its revealed that all this time the warforged was in reality an artificer that decided to upgrade his body into an advanced cyborg
@@carso1500 That sounds awesome. Or maybe an artificer version of a lich where the armor is their philactory and they absorb the souls of their enemies in combat.
a fun time I had with Warforged once was making one a Sorcerer and it was cool coming up with HOW they would actually use "magic". so like they had flexible pipping running down their arms for fuel to use fire etc
I’m currently playing as a war forged Druid who has become sick of the endless wars that sentient biological beings impose on eachother and wishes to find a resting spot to become a tree permanently. So he wanders from biome to biome, town to town etc. in search of this spot. Helping those he deems worthy and ignoring those who only wish harm on others
Imagine a Tortle who had their shell replaced after it being ripped by a cruel giant, or a Chnangeling who decided to anchor their body in one form to fit their self image, and used porcelain prosthetics to make their image eternal.
@@ztoxicman Exactly! Hence the prosthetic implants. There's also been turtles (or was it a tortoise?) who had a very large portion of their shell removed.
Over time, more and more of their shell has been replaced and augmented. A ferro-ceramic artificial spine supports the creature from the inside, with finely-woven layers of spider-silk connecting pieces and creating a sterile barrier between the artificial and living organic organs. Magically enhanced for longevity and strength, the lateral shell plates are of a pallid-grey, though can be painted to appear natural, and offer compatibility with various organic and inorganic pieces. Bits of petrified wood, hastily incorporated armor scraps, and even a dragon scale or two dapple the creature's back, while natural tissue continues to grow normally. This augmentation may even allow for an instrument or tool to be incorporated into one or more of the artificial plates, and be safely removed or replaced. Regenerative magic and abilities cause non-essential parts to simply become detached, or absorbed. The creature equip with the artificial spine may choose to excluded it from any regeneration that would have it removed, allowing the internal structures to enhance their biology and continue to grant its benefits. In such instances, the lateral plates may remain, reduce in size, or fuse with the internal vertebrae to provide superior support of the body and limbs.
Good news - they're still a thing! Bad news - they're not in official 5e material, but in supplements made by a third party. Good news - said third party is Keith Baker himself, the original creator of the Eberron setting!
aaaa they're not robots! They're sophisticated golems! That's part of why they're so dang big, they took those hulking constructs and refined them down to something vaguely humanoid. A lot of their stuff makes more sense in that light, but I do agree the unearthed arcana stuff was super neat.
So nice to see someone that finally gets them right. I know it’s hard to see anything but “fantasy robot” when there is way more nuance there. Autognomes are more robot like. Sucks trying to find an Eberron stream period, even more to find someone that does a good roleplay as Warforged
@@baianojackSo, Dungeons and Dragons Online is an MMORPG that takes place in Eberron of all places. The warforged, in terms of playability, are an extremely popular race to play. Fairly durable and can work well as both a martial and a caster. In terms of story, there's a whole rebellion going on in the background with their "god", the Lord of Blades. You end up having to cooperate with him a few times throughout the game. There's even one decently popular quest chain about someone(s) stealing the souls of warforged and turning them into mindless automata. Kinda depressing when you take into account that a lot of them were already mind-wiped and there's nothing you can do for them except put them out of their misery and avenge them
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 a golem is a magical existence usually made of clay or simple materials and usually can only do actions the spell parameters allow for. So simple actions: attack intruders or defend a certain macguffin. Robots are sophisticated creations of metal and programming code lines usually capable of adaptability or at least rudimentary independent action. Constructs to which Warforged are adjacent, are somewhere in the middle. Though Warforged in the lore are constructs with souls. Think of it like a person’s soul put in man-made body. So the way they get roleplayed most of the time is like a robot. Coded this way or following that directive with gears and whatnot. That is really what an autognome is like. It is just a little grinding since they are my favorite playable race but never get done right.
Great video! Just a note: Going back to the roots of ebberon there were small sized warforged. They were called warforged scouts. Theyre in the ebberon monster manual with player stats and lore.
I wanted to throw out a character concept using augmented inspired by a specific disabling condition that not a lot of people know about. That being Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I would recommend looking it up and researching it yourself if any of the real life implications of this seem like something you would want to look into. So, long story short they are a martial artist who is extremely talented at what they do. I like to think they're a long standing champion of the Great Gymnasium from the planescape setting. Over time they began to notice the more time passed the more their body started to deteriorate. Joints started dislocating, chronic pain and fatigue was a constant struggle and fighting became nearly impossible despite their very high skill level. They realized something was wrong and went to their Artificer friend who specialized in Augmented and got their joints replaced with magi-tech parts. Now their fighting capabilities are enhanced and despite still dealing with the chronic pain and fatigue they can still kick butt just as well. Obviously make them a monk. I was personally thinking more of an open hand or kensei monk but any subclass would work. I hope this is some good inspiration for you to make a d&d character with a disability because I rarely ever see them.
I had a DnD game a few years ago where the warforged were big and monstrous, after we killed a particularly nasty one it's torso opened up and what our DM described is stained in my memory, a wheezing lump covered in a black membrane suspended by tubes lurched out and yeah after that we knew exactly what this campaign was gonna be like and all in all it was probably one of my favorites I've ever played!
I've always thought of them as what should be the "basic stats race", as their entire thing is that they are designed to be good enough for anything thrown at them. This way humans could stop being the middle ground race.
@View Bot based on what they said about the feedback they got I actually think it's pretty likely to remain. Something around 80% or more said they like it. Not to mention that's how monsters of the multiverse does some races
I love the concept of an artificer that just added weapons in peoples' limbs or a a murderous assassin that just pops a weapon out of somewhere like it's the most normal thing in the world.
You could do hidden weapons with base Warforged too, actually. Warforged CAN, if I remember correctly, attune any bladed melee weapon they are proficient with into a magic weapon known as an "Arm Blade", which is exactly what it sounds like: a blade that extends from your arm with a bonus action and makes you feel like a Transformer or like you're playing a tabletop version of Assassin's Creed. I'm currently a Warforged dex paladin with a rapier as an arm blade, because I got tired to people taking my stuff away so I built it into my right forearm.
@@ananonymousnerd.2179 I believe they were in fact attunement options for artificers of any races before TCE - replacing limbs or embedding weapons/wands/spells. AFAIK, TCE ruled out all “magic cyborg” flavoured attunements and only allow warforged to attune to them.
@@ananonymousnerd.2179 my warforged artillerist artificer uses wand sheath and animated shield to essentially quadruple wield - a shield and three wands. With the eldritch cannon, I am trying to be an “one-man firing squad”.
I like the idea that warforged (or any robot race for that matter) are only that tall because either 1) the amount of tech to actually make a robot sentient with magic or otherwise is equivalent to a level 9 spell 2) the amount of work needed to do so means people strive for perfection in their own definition, meaning you get waifudroid designs or designs similar to the gods themselves. This has the interesting implication that robot racism is the only plot that writers use because the actual interesting themes require introspection on the writers part.
Don’t get me wrong, I do really like your new custom race. But it feels too far removed from what a war forged is slash could be. It is definitely its own thing in my mind. And less of a twist on an existing thing
Yeah, exactly. It's completely separate from what Warforged are and will appeal to different people/fit different things. When you want to play as Warforged, you want to play a machine, not a person with prosthetics.
As a lover of Robots, I adored the Warforged as soon as I found out that they existed. I used the Warforged sheet and a litt homebrew to make a character who was "Blessed" by a powerful faerie and turned into a little ragdoll. They now adventure the land in an attempt to find a way to to break this blessing and become a person again
@@calliclassic Assuming you're on Runesmith as well.. and? He still stopped engaging when he could start putting $60 tags on what he produced. 'Kickstarters completed' aren't a metric for 'good/accessible for the community'
Man I love Eberron. It's gotta be the most well fleshed out setting I own at this point. Between the UA, Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, Exploring Eberron, Dread Metrol, and now Chronicles of Eberron, there's just so much great stuff available to really dive deep into this fantastic setting! And on top of all of those books, we're still waiting on the eventual release of Frontiers of Eberron: Threshold.
Also check out the 3.5E content for eberron. they had more options there for warforged, Such as the warforged scouts, the reforged( who take on their living side rather than construct side) the juggernaut( inverse of the reforged) There where druid variants who wore wood armor instead of wood. And you should be able to find the books pretty cheaply online.
@@RedStripeMedia Yes, but there's a key difference. With the UA, Wayfinder's, Rising, and the additional supplements on DM's Guild (I think 4 or 5?), you pretty much get everything you need to run any type of game anywhere in Khorvaire. And it has a clear starting point for anyone with the aftermath of the Last War. There's pretty much no restrictions in terms of character creation, and any race can be on Eberron, they just won't have a major world role. How many books do you need to detail all of Ansalon? Or all of Taladas? Not to mention, if one of your players is a dick, you have to run through everything (comics, novels, etc.) in addition to the modules and decide on a time and then make sure everything is detailed accurately to that time and all of the lore matches up, and you don't get stuff like what we have with the 5e Dragonlance book (specifically with Kitiara at the end, not all the other lore issues with that campaign). Plus, there's all the creation restrictions that are put in place (and not just the races); forcing people to either be hunted to death or join a massive guild of wizards, a lack of Healing magic for a large time period, etc. It's much more concise, and a lot less daunting as a GM. It's much easier to jump into.
You have the Augmented, and then you have the artificers who made their limbs, the splicer artificers. Splicers are artificers that have studied anatomy, magic and mechanics to replace and improve upon the body. I would say they are proficient with the medicine kit and would work similar to armorer, except they start gaining abilities like resistance to poison and such over time. Maybe grant them the ability to infuse extra magic items as long as those items replace body parts.
The campaign got cut short, but my favorite Warforge build was us going "how do we allow the fact he is abnormally large for the race" and gave him a Primordial's heart expirament to do so. He was 10 ft tall.
The one I'm running is roughly 8ft (because I don't like sticking too closely to size categories and my DM is cool with it) He towers over most people he encounters and add to that he is clad head-to-toe in a self-made suite of Adamantine Plate Armor and has an (equally self-made) greatsword wrought from the same material as backup - or when he really wants to wreck something. For the most part he uses warhammer and shield though, to maximize his durability. As i like to put it: If you want a chokepoint held, he is the one to put there. (Battlemaster-8/Barbarian-1/War-Wizard-2/Artificer-2)
I've toyed with the idea of using the undead race from ravenloft with the armorer artificer class for something similar. I love the way you made it a common place idea in the lore and applied it across practical and adventuring characters. This would make an amazing city if not a full fantasy world
That race option allows you to choose between undead and construct. I've made a couple characters with it and they were all very Warforged-adjacent. It's a great option, definitely my fave of the three in that book.
This is perfect timing because I'm just starting a new game where warforged are a big part of the homebrew lore, we have a warforged player and a forge domain cleric, and I've been really wanting to incorporate fantasy robot prosthetics in a fun way!
I'm all for the augmented. As someone with a disability, these are literally just the things I think about when it comes to magic - give myself power for those moments when I feel like I have none.
How integrated protection is worded makes me think you wouldn't need to take armor off because it is basically your skin now so it won't be uncomfortable to wear in casual settings, also your Augmented kinda reminds me of Reborn without the dying bit as Starting Point is just Ancestral legacy without the prohibition on inheriting skills and movement at character creation
yeah, the way I understand it - and how my DM runs it - it's basically fused with your body and functions similar to an adjustable version of a Tortle's shell - which precludes the use of the defense fighting style, but in return offers the ability to use Rage instead (which I do as a sort-of overdrive-mode)
*Cough* look, I wanna mention that they where written as machiens of war, back before THAT WAS A TROPE, some can say that that trope was so fresh, that it's the reason it was the winner of a competition from WOTC that allowed Ebberon to become an offical setting
There's also a pretty neat homebrew class called Mechromancer that also takes the idea of cyborgs. Kind of like an Adeptus Mechanicus type of experimentation. You can replace pretty much everything and do some cool spells provided you have the energy for it. Really like this concept, love your work, especially your demon video
I’m working on a custom world for my players where everyone is small (ie a small animal or such turned into a DnD race.) Long story short, I used the basic Warforged stat block but tweaked the origins, making the Warforged as humanoid-ish inanimate objects like toy soldiers or puppets, instead referring to them as Automatons. Love to see the insight on how I can make them even more interesting!
I love this twist! Augments create so many possibilities for new and existing characters alike. I'm imagining a combination of this and your cowboy ranger subclass where they have their pistols augmented into their hands. They could do literal finger guns! Love your channel, and I look forward to seeing what else you decide to create!
It's a great concept, but it feels odd that a lot of what Pointy Hat described is literally the cyborg race from pf2e. Idk if it's a coincidence that he designed it the same way or if he read it and just decided to convert it to 5e.
Lol this is canon in my campaign, one of the partial pcs is a human who began replacing his body with metal until he became a warforged and most warforged have wrist-guns and handblades
Should really check out 3rd Ed Eberron. There are many variations to the Forged like psiforged, and the small sized scout forged. But there is also the prestige class the Renegade Mastermaker.
I had a friend who played a Warforged wizard, flavored as an experimental construct that collected schematics for how to replicate wands that would cast certain spells. Its purpose was collecting and harnessing magic, and trying to break the Warforged's limitation of "can't be spellcasters", every rest was basically time spent allowing those wands to regain charges, levelling up and learning new spells was literally a matter of collecting knowledge and receiving assistance in creating new wands out of those spell patterns, and instead of casting like wizards do, it would have these linked wrappings dangling from its arms, hidden in flowing robe sleeves, so it'd allow it to cycle wands in its forearms almost like a belt-fed machinegun being slotted in a new cartridge. So when about to cast a fireball, it'd cycle through this loop of "wand catridges" until it slotted in the Fireball one, shoot the spell, then cycle to a new wand. - It was a pretty good idea, and it gave them a routine of tending to these wands and whatnot.
It's always nice when Warforgeds are a topic, being my favorite race and the one I see with most potential for flavouring, also having some great arcs as they develop. My favorite ever PC was a warforged, a literal quadruped machine with a weapon built in it's back, developing sentience, emotion and a soul, fighting once until it was only a core, then being rebuilt from the ground up in a humanoid body that better fit his personality.
I’ve had this idea for a young Artificer who would have a running theme of modified toys in all of their infused items, but was never really able to decide on what I wanted them to be in terms of their species, but honestly, it feels like seeing the augmented was the last thing I needed for the whole thing to come together in my brain!! A young girl who looses some of her limbs in a tragic accident, struggling to fit in with her peers and even being bullied by some particularly cruel kids, just because she looks different. She eventually confides about her situation to her grandfather, an artificer and former adventurer who now uses his class’ skills to infuse small sparks of magic into the toys he now makes for a living. Hating to see his dear granddaughter so upset and ashamed about her appearance, a lightbulb lights up in his mind, getting an idea of how to cheer her up. He constructs her whimsical prosthetics that leave her awe inspired, all while reassuring her that he loves her dearly and that even though she’s a little bit different from all the other kids now, she can still do anything they can do, and now, even more!! Ahhhhh I’m so excited to work on my lil cutesy toy cyborg augmented Artificer now!! This was really a good take on the idea of D&D cyborgs, thank you once again for sharing all of these amazingly creative ideas with us all for free!! :D
On the whole robot racism stuff, I set both my personal stories and my D&D settings AFTER the whole "robot racsim" shit happens so that we don't have to deal with it. I think there's a lot of potential in seeing just how a world would work with both humans and robots living alongside each other and how they would have to accommodate for each other. It's a shame we don't get to see these things explored... ever. Also, not robots being an allegory for Austim either. I'm sick of that too.
I think a good example of humans and AIs living side by side each other is Questionable Content the webcomic. It started off as just a slice of life webcomic, which it still is, but has now gone into AI automatons and how they fit more with society. One AI automaton asking a Catholic priest where he sees A.I. in the place of religion. He talks about how some see A.I. as not true life, but others see them as an extension of God’s creation as he created humans and they created A.I., so they are also children of God.
My warforged barbarian met with a fate worse than death: Currently trapped in a campaign that was "temporarily paused" and has been in limbo for 2+ years now. 😔 Good bot.
Important to keep in mind that the warforged are from the eberron setting, and the eberron setting is full of scifi magitech stuff. An official part of the setting is a floating highway of magic pylons that make ship flight very easy. It's also where the artificer class is from. Point is they fit in extremely well in the eberron setting.
Honestly, the reflavoring capability of Warforged is what makes this one of my personal favorites. The first time with the race I went with a Battlesmith Artificer who was more of a homunculus herself, being an artificial body made by an alchemist to house the soul of a dead warrior. Her whole thing was trying to use biomechanics to recreate her own existence, partially for the ambition of creating life out of nothing, but also because she was really kinda lonely. The DM didn't want a robot on the game, so I did that and gave her this cool magical origin and it ended up becoming an important plot point that ended with the character discovering the meaning of life by learning how to recreate the experiment that made her, which led to her burning her research, fusing her soul with that of her Steel Defender and becoming "the Soul Master", switching to Armorer and going in a quest to defeat the alchemist so that the method of creating lives could be forgotten. Long story, but one that brings a big smile to my face whenever I remember it.
I am doing something similar with my warforged character. Originally he and his kin were created to help defend the world against an ongoing invasion of undead. To this end he and his kin were wrought from living metal and have an appearance strongly resembling your average human, albeit roughly 8ft talland much more resilient. And even then over hte course of roughly twenty years his unit was whittled down from five-hundred to less than two dozen - which is when it was disbanded and the remains were left to fend for themselves, prompting him to become a mercenary and bodyguard. This is roughly when he joins the party. And over time he has involuntarily become the leader of the party, despite his mediocre charisma. He even inherited an abandoned castle (since rebuilt) and started his own mercenary unit to confront the BBEG down the line. As part of his character development he sought to understand why his unit never was reinforced while other regiments of less-advanced warforged did get reinforcements. To this end he delved into the secrets of artificers - and even found his own creator to get some answers. Yet, artificer is only a small part of what he is. (just two levels currently). He has used his skills to create an artificial construct himself though. A homunculus taking the appearance of a mechanical falcon - or if inactive an adorned piece of armor protecting his neck. Always fun when the bird activates: it looks like the warforged has a halo of wings until the bird takes flight.
I actually like the artificed warforged concept like it's implemented in the Marvel Thanos - Nebula story arc. Once, it was just an organic creature, but it was intensively altered by experimental surgery by an evil warlord (thanos). It gained incredible strength and used it to break free, but it lost its humanity/empathy in the process. It became a robot/monster... during the campaign, it started on a revenge mission, balancing his merciless robot-like character with the search/regaining of his lost humanity still left somewhere inside. You can even implement real-life concepts like PTSD, personality disorders, phantom pains felt in lost limbs etc..
This video was pretty good! I was kinda hoping we'd get a Warforged Rework instead of a Cyborg Race/Subrace thing but the idea is still pretty cool i guess
Kinda funny, I was actually working on a Warforged character today when thus showed up on my recommended. It's a Warforged artifacer with the clan crafter background. Was still working on the backstory, but the idea I had was that it was created by mountain dwarves to help assist them in the mines, I gave it proficiency in smith's, woodworking and tinkers tools. It was designed to basically help with maintaining tools, weapons and buildings. That was over a century ago. Now it suddenly finds itself awake, with all it's comrades and companions either dead or missing, and now their goal is to uncover what happened. Was struggling to find some ideas to improve the backstory somewhat and this video was a great help.
Perfectly timed for me making my warforged character for a new campaign. I’m making a warforged who was actually crafted for entertainment purposes and already includes a lot of what you suggested so I’m glad I got someone else thinking the same. Now I really wanna make a modified human tho.
This twist is exactly what I need for an NPC idea I have for a campaign I’m working on, like it couldn’t be more perfect. This is why you’re my favorite D&D channel, well one reason
With the autognome, I feel like the augmentations from your idea and the Unearthed Arcana should definitely be allowed more for Warforged to allow them to be their own thing and now just not “autognomes but not as good”.
I've always loved warforged, recently made a 4'6" boat themed warforged named Boaty Mcboatface *might put a picture i drew of him in my community tab if i can figure out how to ;-;* I've also made a beehive themed one where he was like a paladin who died and was resurrected in a warforged body by bees as a druid/paladin with a bee themed patron, was cool 😌
My warforged players always have a unique trait to their creator. The warforged that was made by a dwarf for example was a metal eater. He could consume different metals for new effects he had to discover. 10 coins worth of gold would heal him and make it so he had dragons breath cast on himself as fire. And eating enough copper let’s him cast shocking grasp for an hour and apply shocking grasp’s damage to his metal weapon artacks
In our campaign we have made a variant since we found warforged a little cliché on the "sentient machine made for war" front We call the race Thingborn and their origin is both old and mysterious. They spring to life in matter seemingly at random and can be altered into a functional shape if they were unlucky with their original body. They live forever as long as they repair themselves but have a soft memory capacity of the last 100 years. They are strongly drawn towards family relations and are service minded. Which often makes them voluntary servants or foster parents for other races. This comboed with their memory loss makes them very easy to exploit for long lived races. And while they are very good as soldiers they generally hate to hurt others unless it's absolutely necessary to protect their perceived families. They use names as a way of telling their traits. Examples are if they start with Ko- they are great warriors or if it's Go- its great wisdom/magic Li- is a pleasent or empathetic individual and if they have -ian as an ending they are awakened which means they can remember more than a 100 years of their life. They sing alot as a way to remember their pasts. We refer to the Thingborn as the wholesome race👨👩👧👦🫂🗣🎶
I kinda always liked the whole "well shit, now what do I do?" character crisis of Warforged. They don't know what to do or who they are, or in many ways even _what_ they are. Hell, they'd probably wonder if they even had a "who" in the first place. Especially in a world with souls. Up until recently their lives were filled with violence and a lack of self, and suddenly free will is now given to them. What happens then? That concept of a lone robot wandering the world trying to find out who he is really appeals to me. Makes for a good adventurer.
This is something I could totally take and run with! I love creating backstory and lore. I often combine magical items and the results can be amazing! Like an berserker axe mixed with the jug of endless water and wand of magic missile. It made an axe that was perpetually dripping blood, (a gallon per day based on the moon, this attracted vamps, but wasn't actual blood so this would enrage the vamps) and it had a certain amount of charge to it that allowed swinging the axe for a ranged attack with magic formed 'blood spikes', (not full magic missile accuracy though). This axe allowed for some interesting RP as if the axe was stored, it didn't stop dripping and could soak everything in a pseudo-blood stain. Worked great for a gladitorial arena scene though. For the Augmented I can see things like a magic eye than can allow darkvision or blindsight, ears than can detect sounds at distance or hear a heart beat. If char is damaged, the sense might require a 'bump' roll, (think hitting an old CRT TV to get the image to come through) just don't hit too hard or you might damage it further (I usually do targeted rolls, ie player has to roll between X and Y number; too low and ineffective like a weak hand shake, too high and you accidentally crush their hand). Maybe physical feats can be more effective but require a recharge time/roll. I can see making smaller or larger constructs or augments that can have limited range or physical limitations. This is a great idea and I will write a bunch of stuff for sure! Great video.
To be fair, warforged work great in Eberron which has always been more geopolitically focused than most DND settings. Also ine thing that you miss is that in Eberron Warforged are quite literally doomed to extinction. Part of the treaty of Thronehold is that all information on creating them be destroyed, and since they can't reproduce their numbers will only dwindle. This plus the general alienation they receive from natural races has led to attempts to create their own religions and nations, such as that of the Lord of blades
If you're a Cyborg, then you're not a robot. The thing you missed is the race part here. I made a Tabaxi Monk with a Homebrewed Magic item Called a Forged Limb. It has a damage output of 1d6, adds +1 to AC and the ability to add a "Hidden Feature" in the form of any Armblade that are a Warforged exclusive magic item. (A better way to explain that are the weapons The Transformers use in the Prime series and Michel Bay Movies.) As the Armblade has to be attuned it provided one attunement slot with the caveat that is AGREED UPON BETWEEN PALYER AND DM that only an Armblade can be place in that slot! otherwise you only have 2 remaining slots to attune to other magic items. For balancing purposes I added in the fact that it reduces your Movement Speed by 10 as well for all the benefits you get from this item. If the Warforged are "Semi-organic" you should think of them more like Transformers if you want to keep to the Robotic *RACE* that they are. Create a varying design that was there before but WOTC got lazy with alongside the other lazy fools and just say Reallocate that +2 to a stat more fitting to what you want. Sorry for the rant there, but tbh your answer in this "twist" is more of a "bend" than anything. Very, very poor and not all there. Granted it's a fair design to play a race or a sub-race without really making anything "new". That notion, however, takes away what Warforged are: "a Race of their own"
I actually came up with an idea for a beast barbarian warforged in a Spelljammer setting. He's the last survivor from a war that happened hundreds if not thousands of years ago. His body is built to be sleek and powerful, designed to take damage but dishing out twice as much. Thanks to bizarre "nanotech" that's build throughout his frame, he can warp his body to fit any scenario (basically an excuse to have the beast barbarian abilities). His underframe looks like it's made out of synthetic muscles, designed after human anatomy, and his head has a collapsing visor that folds over his eyes to protect the sensitive lenses. He was salvaged by a group of Kobalds after being adrift in wildspace for who knows how long, but it was long enough that his memory degregated to the point where he only truely remembers his name. His Designation is Buster Destroyer Unit 1 or BD-1. His friends call him "Buddy."
I am making a dog shaped warforged monk for my upcoming campaign! I just happened to watch this video to get a better understanding of the race. Your wish has been granted. Dog11 is a warehouse guard dog, it loves its job very much and is extremely good at it. Thank you for this validation!!!
Y'know, for all this talk about how warforged waste their potential as robots, I'm EXTREMELY disappointed that you just... threw out the robot aspect instead of fixing it... Cyborgs aren't robots, people with prosthetics aren't robots, that beats the entire goddamn point of playing as a robot who has been a robot from the moment they were created. (Even though warforged aren't really 'fantasy robots', but instead are golems, The Augmented can't even be classified as constructs! Its simpler to call them bots for the sake of this comment because thats their vibe, and it makes my point easier to illustrate, cyborgs =/= robots or golems or constructs, living armor is closer to warforged than a borg is) I don't like being this harsh especially since I really love all your other stuff but... these aren't warforged anymore.
Lmao, I had similar ideas. I do a lot of world building, so when it came to the “not warforged” I made them literally come to life from root and stone and metal because they were so near to a source of life energy so potent that the stones came to life. Though they can be “imperfect” allowing for my setting’s version of orcs and goblins. They seem very alien to anyone who isn’t one of them because they kinda don’t care about grievous wounds so long as their black box can be salvaged. They can be put into whole new bodies, have limbs replaced, including specialized tools. Imagine walking into your job, having your arm taken off and replaced with a Swiss Army knife, and using that for the next 10 hours to do everything you need to do. When they start trading with other races, the first thing that they do is start selling prosthetic limbs with the potential for upgrades. They have battle bodies they can step into which require more energy to operate but also provide greater strength and endurance. They even go so far as to reverse engineer Titans, though they need some outside help to make them work beyond the city walls. Even reverse engineer old “not spelljammer” tech the elves eventually show them. I found them very fun as a concept to play around with, and am glad to see similar lines followed here.
We had an interesting version of Warforged (or Forgeborn) in our campaign. In short, they're basically the spirits of Fire Giants inhabiting medium or small-sized suits of armor, after the Dwarf King took them in and let them live in the city of Forge (the other giants were trying to kill them, you see). Since the Fire Giants were technically made of fire themselves, the armor they inhabit basically lives off coal (or other things that can burn), meaning they still have to eat; if the fire within dies, so does the Forgeborn. They "breathe" by letting the fire inside the suits breathe via gaps in their helmets, which they can close at will if they need to "hold their breath" (for example, against poison gas or going underwater). But of course, a lack of air can snuff fire out, so they're the similar to humans in that regard too. Many of them choose suits of armor to look like dwarves, but a few chose the larger variants and went exploring the world. Some chose even smaller suits, called Mole-forged, designed with drills for hands, and they specialized in mining alongside their dwarven brethren. As closed-off as the dwarves seemingly are, they make a welcome exception for the Forgeborn.
I'm miffed whenever people forget that golems are a thing And hey, my first ever bard was a warforged. He looked like one of these Laputa robots mixed with iron golem from minecraft. I wrote him with story that he just woke up in the forest without much memory and decided to be an artist Was a funny thing because the rest of PCs also played people woth memory problems by sheer accident- we had fallen asemar hunter without recollection of her past who chased after answers, my warforged artist, a warlock who after loosing his memory was adopted by the three local hags and a lizardfolk monk, the only person with all their memories intact. And out first mission was to get flour for warlocks three adopted moms
One thing that would have been cool for the Warforged were if they could take a specific feature after like level 5 for example that changes them like a subrace and after a few levels that features gets stronger or they take another. For example: You can choose at level 5 between strenghten your mind: Int, Wis and Cha(yeah it is magical it must be here ok?) or strenghtening your body: Str, Dex and Con. You get a + 1 in the one you took but a - 1 in the other. After like 3-4 levels you get a new more specific bonus to choose from that what you picked be it just another increase in that stat(boring) or a more specific feature like getting + 1,5 meters more movement.
I'm playing a Warforged in the Wildmount setting, so I've made him an 860 year old, 6' 7'', 300 lbs Aeormaton that was designed to catalog powerful magic artifacts, specifically tied to time magick. He survived the Calamity but his home and artifacts were destroyed and left him with intertwining memories of the past and the present. He's been wondering Wildmount ever since, watching all of the empires rise and fall. The Cobalt Soul tracked him down, and brought him into their Order not just because he was a living relic but to also help him repair his memories and give him purpose again. He doesn't look like a tradional Warforged does, he's made modifications to his body to look more human but still has the arcanic runes etched into his face. I picture him to be a robotic cross between Mr. Manhattan from Watchmen and the Creators from Prometheus.
My first, (and favorite) character was a warforged artillerist named Lucky. I loved that Texas accent having, gun-slinging, Ironically named SOB. He died brutally.
We have an Artificer (me) and a Warforged paladin (another PC) in our current party. The Warforged was build for a war over 2000 years ago and my father, a blacksmith, found him just 20 years ago and repaired him. He is with me on our adventure and is basically my protector while I always repair him. 😅 He is however a little too religious due to my father being a very religious man and basically teaching him everything. It's a very cool idea so far. The world is a bit like backwards history.. you know getting to higher tech and then through a bad thing that happened going back to medieval times. He is the only warforged we know of so far and no one outside our party knows what he is. That makes some good roleplay. 👍
I had a warforged warlock at one point. No pact. He was created by the rogue secundus modron on Mount Celestia and imbued with the ability to tap into his power source before being set down on the prime. He was CG and had a weird penchant towards cold damage. (Hellrime blast was a favorite essence. This was 3.5) eventually we ended up epic and found the elemental fonts of power (basically enchanting fountains that would empower items based on how much gold is spent.) The other players dropped their primary weapons into theirs and dumped enough gold into them to blow them up. (Overcharged basically making artifacts) I jumped into the font of elemental cold and did the same. Queue walking around with a body temperature of absolute zero and being so cold that even magical fire would go out within 30 feet of me. He retired shortly after that as a demigod with the cold portfolio.
Here’s how little I know about dnd: 2 minutes in, when you were doing the ad, I genuinely believed it was part of the war forged lore. By the time I realized it was an ad, I wrote this to tell you that you surprised me pleasantly and I’m intentionally finishing your sponsored read. lol, good job.
The concept of cyborgs was actually touched down upon in _Dread Metrol_ (an Eberron/Ravenloft crossover written by Eberron's creator Keith Baker) in the form of the Reconstructed, though they are a bit more dark than your take on em. The premise of these half-warforged/half-humans were a twisted attempt to create super soldiers among an endless siege leaving little in terms of supplies. The result was people of flesh and blood who are now largely constructs, and warforged who've been reverse engineered until they're almost human. Though these just use the standard warforged player stats generally, I'll definitely be trying them with the Augmented stats now! On the same premise, there's also an Artificer subclass in the same book; the Mastermaker. It utilizes integrated flesh and steel through various magical prosthesis as you suggested, and your character gets a cool cyborg arm that you can give any number of weapon properties. And in another non-WotC Keith Baker book _Exploring Eberron_ he actually brought back the concept of the old Juggernaut and Envoy warforged in the form of racial feats.
Hi Pointy Hat. Took a look over the file, and I like the options. It's more flexible and detailed then , "you have magic item eyes for dark vision" and the like. Also, I never thought I'd see "The Brave Little Toaster" referenced in a D&D video. Wow, that's a flashback.
My last character (who I will be reusing since the game she was originally made for fell apart) was originally a copper dragonborn before dying to her mother (a duchess of a powerful dragon clan). Her father managed to capture her soul and put it in a warforged body! Probably one of my favorite concepts I've ever done
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… Even in death I serve the Omnissiah." - Someone who ditched the main 5e Warforged race and got the Unearthed Arcana version instead.
Your suggestion in the end was refreshing. 40k nerd that I am when you initially described them and started talking about organic components is wad thinking about the body horror that is the Servitors or the Schitari its interesting to me how cutesy D&D can sometimes be when compared to "The Grim Darkness of the far future". Or even something like Full Metal Alchemist or Dune. If only the "Satanic Panic" parents looked up something on Slanesh I think D&D would have been fine.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… And even in 2023, I play sci-fi RPGs.
I too enjoyed Cyberpunk Edgerunners I like this idea for a Warlock character. Simply reflavour the patron to a mechanic who refines/replaces parts. The warlock subclasses are different styles/schools of engineering.
I made a Warforged once named Tap. He was built by an Artificer, with the scraps scavenged from fallen warforge during the war, to serve as an assistant unit to a monastery to treat the sick and ill. Due to that, his body was modified to carry surgery kits and blood sacks. But, unfortunately, Tap ended up getting lost when a group of people who were victims of the war kidnapped him and threw him onto a cliff, calling him an abomination. Tap survived, though heavily damaged, and ended up being rescued by an academy of... Bloodhunters of all people, who helped him with basic repairs. Tap was lost, injured and unprepared to go back, so, he did the thing he thought was most logical and became a bloodhunter, to increase his chances of survival during his trip back. Believing his primary mission was to save lives, and that he would be able to do that better if he could both protect himself, and protect the injured. This character was really fun for me, because i went more into Terminator 2 and Baymax vibes, where he would just be really blatant and straightforward, making allegories and analogies make no sense to him, and he was incredibly blunt with the way he spoke and acted. It was a fun challenge to make a character who sounded like he was a real person, but this was due to the way he was programmed and not because he actually felt feelings. Fun thing is that he actually went T2 style and died by saving the party from the main antagonist, by grappling her and jumping into a door to a different dimension. The only thing left of him being his hand, that was left doing an "Ok" sign, because one of the party members taught Tap that this was how you showed people that everything is under control.
I played a warforged Samurai in my groups long running campaign, he was a relic from a war long passed and without a master had become a ronin, joining the group he began to question the life he was leading and the things he had been taught and ordered to do. Their arc ended with them turning to a life of pacifism and finding a place to reside in peace. It was one of the most rewarding and beautiful storylines I've ever had the privilage of playing. I never intended it to go the way it did, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Rest well man of iron.
Warforged druids. They're interesting. You could go down the route of being basically a living geode, or you could be like a gardening or farming robot meant to have a symbiotic relationship with nature. Maybe both at once
🤖 BEEP BOOP BEEP BOOP ATTENTION GRABBING VIDEO TITLE DETECTED 🤖
Hey, could you make a video on the bloodhunter?
In 3.5 the warforged had a way bigger issue with free time, as it was canon that they would actually go insane if they didn't have something to do with their free time. No really, they'd start getting unbalanced and nutty because their minds didn't have something to do all the time, they would get literally stir crazy.
Ye
Warforged techpriest?
If I may ask, but will you ever release the Hellish Adepts sheet and "How to make D&D ACTUALLY Scary" sheet?
You said in the "How to make D&D ACTUALLY Scary" video that it would be coming last weekend and it has been quite a while since the devil video. I DON'T want you to rush or feel presured in any way shape or form, but it would be nice to know if you're still working on them in the backround or if it doesn't make sense to go back to them each time you upload. Other than that, I'll just say that I love your stuff and hope to see more epic content form you in the future!
"From the moment I learned of the weakness of the flesh, it disgusted me. There is no strength in flesh, only failure. There is no constancy in flesh, only decay. There is no certainty in flesh save death."
The Augmented will be perfect for an Adeptus Mechanicus character!
I was lowkey expecting the Mechanicus intro to drop somewhere in the section about the Augmented
Insert here
That line is metal af
It makes me happy when someone in a RUclips comment section mentions warhammer
You could also play with a maddoc from warhammer.
Those are the crazy ork doctors who give their patients weird cybernetics.
Hello little friend
You cheeky boy
Leave me alone you will never understand me
Goddamnit, Yamato. goddamnit
Hello, big friend.
Get in the robot?
Pointy hat: “Make a dog robot you coward!”
Artificer Battle Smith with a Mastiff Steel Defender: “Okay…”
My Warforged Character does this but it's a robot badger instead of a doggo 😂
@@mikachan365 Images of a kind of grumpy yet lovable clawed metallic creature, with the extra ability to use it's claws to dig trough ground and rock at near missile speed, comes to mind from that.
Cool!
I once played a sentient Steel Predator based on Bladewolf from MGR Revengeance
You could also being PHYSICALLY a dog-like humanoid, with a dog head and a tail that maybe moves when healed or while in combat if they likes it
My warforged part-artificer has a mechanical falcon as his homunculus which, if inactive, folds up into what looks like an intricately fashioned plate of armor protecting his neck. And when it activates (unless directed to skip the boot-up-sequence and act immediately) it unfolds and with its wings forms what looks like a metal-halo behind the character's head before it flies off to do whatever the character needs done. I am probably not going to go further into Artificer than the two levels he currently has, because most of the perks of the various subclasses he already has from other sources (Battlemaster-8/Barbarian-1/War-Wizard-2/Artificer-2)
I did a warfoged as a flesh golem, he was Frankenstein-ish and was traveling the world seeking the ability to create more like him. So naturally, he started as a barb and slowly became a necromancer.
When asked to make a new character I came up with a fleshy frankenstein warforged. Then the DM said I should just be a Reborn, which I had never heard of before.
Looks like a Promethean: The Created story pretty much)
No bcuz you meant 'barbarian' but i thought you meant a nicki minaj fan 😭
One of my players is doing a planty warforged, our setting is sort of clockpunk and robots can have souls if they’re designed masterfully enough. Their pc was made by an artificer and a druid, and is made of metal components held together partially by druid magic, moss and dirt and vines and flowers and shit. Also, their pc can heal with mending because, well, it makes sense lol
So a homunculus
Before watching it, this is a character I really want to play:
This wizard reached the peak of power, an archmage with amazing power and vast treasures, but as a human, nature would eventually takes its course and take his life away. Terrified of the prospect, he sought ways to extend his life through magical means, and even immortality, but he saw the paths leading to that goal were too evil, specially the idea of becoming a Lich forever damning souls to oblivion as fodder for his phylactery. He sought another way, and after much searching he met a very talented gnome artisan specialized in creating golems. They made a partnership to create golems to defend the vaults of Sorcerer Sundries to amass a vast quantity of gold. As a secret project, however, Solomon was learning all he could, for another path had presented itself: what if he could transpose his soul into a construct? Metal never dies.
The latter part of his years was spent perfecting the craft, creating a special construct capable of harnessing magic, a very intricate design of the inner workings had to be performed, not too dissimilar from the clockwork constructs of the plane of Order.
When the day finally came, he performed the ritual and his souls successfully latched on to the construct, but something went wrong. You see, Souls were not meant to linger after death, much less to attach to lifeless things, even if those things are soaked in magic, the experience of the process was too traumatic for the soul; it became fatigued, blocking away all prior experience as a defense mechanism like someone who experienced a very traumatic event in life.
The Solomon was sucessful, and the Soul Powered Golem (SPO-1) was alive, but the memories of who Solomon was are scattered, Spoi doesn't know who he is, he doesn't know what he is. All he remembers is the last thought that crossed his mind as he transposed his soul without the assistance of his most loyal ally. That is all he knows, he must discover who he is, who he was, and must also discover if he's still Solomon, or something else.
This is the backstory of this character I wanna play: a wizard warforged with amnesia, and it even explains how the construct "levels up", as more memories are unlocked through experience.
DUDE, I HAD A VERY SIMILAR IDEA!
Mine was an artificer instead of a wizard, one that was hunted and had to resort to transferring his memories to an automaton (the warforged) he created before he was killed. The automaton was never activated and millenia passed before a member of the party found him and accidentally activated him.
He looks like a child at level one and my idea was that as he leveled he remembered more and more about his past life and even made modifications to his body, growing in size too.
Thing is, the original artificer was also named Solomon hahaha that's a bunch of coincidences!
Either everything is a coincidence, or nothing is ;) @@hayatoart
In a recent campaign I played in, I was a Echo Knight Fighter Warforged named Drednen who pretty much had a Overwatch Bastion style backstory and somehow got warped from Ebberon to Sword Coast. He found a passion in baking after seeing how baking made people happy with various sweets and pastries. After taking apprenticeship and developing his artisan skills, he had an EZ bake oven installed in his chest and set off in the world to garner enough funds to fulfill his dream of making people happy through baking and opening his own bakery.
This is the most Wholesome character i've ever read about!
I'm building an Echo Knight Warforged too hahahahhaha but he was a tinker's assistant and some spooky events haunt him. Also, using the Envoy Warforged from the UA because
my warforged is very similar, hes a circle of the shepard druid warforged who was created towards the end of a war in our campaign but due to a series of events he was chased out of his home. so he became a hermit and all his little animals are his friends. hes also very fucking stupid
I don't even know if an echo knight robot would be possible but it's dnd so whatever you want can exist some where
I love it! quirky characters are the best. Just have him show up one day with a crown of (plastic) sporks and you would have achieved perfection 😆
My version of "warforged" were made by an ancient civilization living in the desert. They ended up replacing all the humanoids living there thanks to the area completely running out of water. They all share a single mother, a giant sentient factory that keeps expanding. They send back information and samples of anything new they find to help improve the next generation.
That's friggin rad. I love the concept and it gives your dm a super interesting set of side missions for your campaign.
Had two similar ideas to that for a setting in the past. My ancient desert civilization are undead awaiting the day the rains return and they can live again. My Warforged instead are from the frozen northlands. Every year a few more crawl out of the permafrost, thaw out of a glacier, are exposed to the air by a landslide, or awake from some recently uncovered vault from the last time the area was warm.
Super cool idea man!
@@Liethen Love the idea of the Warforged in the Arctic regions slowly thawing out and reactivating. It reminds me of the classic Dr. Who story "Tomb of the Cybermen."
Warforged mineflayer lol
As much as I love having a cyborg species option, I'd rather have gotten the Borgs in a stand-alone video and have this video be about the species it says it was improving. I'm sad we didn't get any options for the actual Warforged. A Borg doesn't fulfill the same fantasy as a bot. Still, it's a great concept, and I appreciate your hard work
Same. I was really excited to hear about Warforged changes since his other videos on the different races were fun watches.
But this had next to nothing to do with Warforged. Seriously could just cut the talk about Warforged out completely.
Same. This wasn't Warforged. This was people with robot limbs attached. Completely different.
every single new "rework" of a race from pointy hat is just a human with a random part of the original race tacked on in the least creative way possible. I was expecting it already from the tabaxi and dragonborn vids but when i saw the final "rework" i legit started laughing in the most mean-spirited way possible.
i wrote a more magic robot style thing
Unborn (warforged)
Small/Medium
Custom Build: You may choose a feature from another race, given to it by physical traits. Examples: Extra arms, powerful build, large size, etc
You can be healed by normal means or by use of the Mending cantrip. If Mending is cast on you, you can expend 1 Hit Die per casting of the cantrip.
Wood:
Your Hitpoint maximum increases by 4 and does so again each time you gain a level
Steel:
You have a +3 bonus to your AC
All armor+shield proficiency
Porcelain:
You have 2 sorcery points and 1 metamagic option of your choice in addition to any you have from other sources
You can concentrate on two spells at once. Concentration checks are made at disadvantage and when you fail a concentration check you lose concentration on one of your spells (your choice).
Gold:
Natural AC 11+ Dex
all armor+shield proficiency
With enough focus, you can create a small antimagic field in your hand with the shape of a 6 inch sphere. This field lasts up to 1 hour. You may do this a number of times equal to twice your proficiency bonus per long rest.
very unbalanced, but that can be worked out by tweaking numbers, all homebrew races I make are a little op because i like my players op.
The borg concept is kinda consumed by the mindflayers tho.
Well pausing here at 11:37, Cyborgs in Eberron - This is the Renegade Mastermind. It was the opposite prestige class of the reforged prc. Renegade Mastermind would allow an artificer of any race slowly transform themselves into a warforged, while the reforged prc would allow a warforged to transform themselves into more flesh and blood like.
3.5 had a lot of cool things, but since ebberon came out mostly at the tail end of the edition, lot of it was kinda forgotten and lost. Warforge had special equipment items called "Warforged Components" which basically were parts that you could incorporate into your character. Like a mask that allowed you to gain the scent feature, or specialized feet to grip the ground. Whats cooler is that you could reforge any magic item into a new component, allowing you to basically become something of inspector gadget if you had a bunch of unslotted magic items built into your character.
But 4e and 5e did warforge dirty, making them more simplified and generic mush.
The worst incarnation though was early DDO which they only gained a small bonus on different things that warforged where normally immune to. Poisons, diseases, breathing.. All kinds of things like that you only got a slightly better boost if anything at all.
I like that with The Augmented, you can incorporate the flavor into feats you might take. I’m already imagining my character with Blind Fighting having prosthetic eyes installed after losing his sight.
Thematicaly, my warforged armorer artificer was my favourite character. Being able to "integrate" my arcane armor and modefy it made me fell like a REAL robot.
Bro i also amde a armorror artificer warforged
@@namethefifth7315 It makes three of us
@@ZelphTheWebmancer lets go. Well technically it was a person turned into a rat that built a warforged body to pilot around but still
I went with artillery artificier since I love the idea of the turret being launched out of the warforged body
I honestly think warforged artificers are just one of the coolest and most flavorful options for them especially since it specifically says in the eberron book That sometimes war forged seek out artificers to make modifications to themselves. I can honestly see a character that is a war forged artificer who does surgery for other war forged to help them better adjust to their new life and attain forms that they are more comfortable with
For me a simple way to fix the no sleep issue is the following: Make it so that they do need to let their bodies rest, but their consciousness doesn't shut off. Think of it sort of like being idle in a game
Edit: Also I legit play my warforged like a golden retriever most of the time, he's way too trusting. Also he doesn't know what being fancy is in the slightest, because when my party had to go to a banquet he just stuck a bunch of ties and bowties around himself
I'm thinking of running a warforged made by the best artificer in the world the fastest most effective body guard ruthless in killing and protecting fast, strong, and efficient. And his only drawback is also his greatest strength. It doesn't heal naturally. No health potions, no short, or long rest nothing. He has to be refueled to heal.
What is is fuel you ask
*Hahahahahahahaha!*
*His fuel is **_BLOOD_*
Being covered, immersed, or splattered with blood will refuel him as the blood will soak through his thin armour giving him less AC than other characters, but ultimately better staying power. The only drawback is he needs to refuel constantly on a 2-week basis, so he needs to kill constantly,and the blood has to be freshly oxidized and have no other contaminants or else it'll hurt his engine so it has to be fresh blood that hasn't touched the ground
Lore wise, it makes sense (I mean if you have a problem with players healing via blood look at vampires)
Scientifically it also makes sense blood has iron in it right? It could use the red blood cells to chemically generate energy, and once the cells are filtered out the rest of the blood can be used as coolant as it's mostly water.
Alas the world's first VAMPIRIC NIKKON
i love your bowtie bit
@dragonstee4473
Danny Phantom: GOIN AFK
XXD
I did this with my crabfolk cleric of community, I loved Tiderider.
That kind of sounds like sleep paralysis
Warforged and the general idea of robots have so much potential for cool character ideas I wished they gave us a load of different warforged types than 12 different elf subraces
i did an empire with a cybernetic or even robotic elite really obsessed with all kinds of fancy designs and weapons whom are rivals of a totalitarian regime that wants to wipe them off the face of the galaxy for being too individualistic and not equal enough
What’s stopping you from making one of your own and sharing it?
I want to combine warforged with something that emulates a changeling. Hat of disguise? Alter self? Limited polymorph? Custom race and bribe the DM?
lets be honest, the only reason people use elf subraces is for the purpose of a slightly different anime waifu elf.
Would you like to play a Slightly Different Shade Of Blue elf or Has Kinda Weird Eyes elf?
11:17 3.5 had warforged grafts, where you could replace a bodypart like an eye, arm, leg, even a chunk of brain with a warforged body part. Be it for fixing a lost limb or such or augmenting a fleshbag to just be better. It was pretty awesome and could be pretty much what you mentioned here.
I actually really liked the Warforged idea, and when I run games I like to take a bit of the anime Galaxy Express as for how the factory they are made in works. ;)
I did this on accident in a campaign once my samurai lost her dominant hand when it was bitten off by a horror. Shed picked up a handgun that she was practicing with so after we got to safety i asked pur artificer to make me a specialized replacement arm that would let me use the gun occasionally (ala vash the stampedes arm.) It definitely kind of showed her growth as a character
My last character was a Warforged Cleric of the Forge named Error who created themselves due to a computational bug that occurred over the course of hundreds of years. When they joined the party, they were hundreds of years old, but only sentient for an entire day. Error spent the campaign questioning the basis for morality, what that means, and how they could improve the quality of the world after making instruments of war for centuries.
"I AM ERROR"
sick as fuck
Sounds a bit like my second one. The name the party gave him was Clang. His real “name,” more of a designation, was Combat Construct A-495. He was originally built to defend a civilization of dwarves long since fallen to ruin. In that desperate last stand, he was built with all the siege-scrap the dwarves could muster, given orders to march out beyond the wall, to start killing the undead besiegers. It received no orders to stop. It was mostly successful. It had intelligence limited to a complete and total understanding of physics, the knowledge to self-repair and upgrade, knowledge of every fighting style the dwarves had yet encountered, and knowledge of undead. So, he went out there in hyper focused terminator mode and crushed every last zombie and skeleton he came across, only for the Lich commanding them to raise the dead dwarves to fight for him. The Lich absorbed the knowledge from those dead dwarves and, through means unknown to him, struck down the construct. Centuries later, after the desert sands had half-worn down the ruins, the party received a task from a dwarf archaeologist to go to the ruins and investigate. They found Clang’s massive armored hand poking up from the sand. They dug him out, finding a 7 and a half foot tall, heavily armored and bulky warforged with the etching of A-495 on its forehead. The party artificer, after about 3 days of tinkering, got it up and running again. Through some… creative liberties taken by the artificer, she had accidentally made him fully sentient. He had no prior memory, save an internal map of the city, a BURNING HATRED for all undead, and utter apathy to the living. He took up his massive flail and kite shield, and after a few battles, since he couldn’t remember his designation, the party named him “Clang,” because that’s the sound his footsteps made, the sound that was heard whenever he was hit, and whenever he hit something.
I would say warforged are less robot racism and more military veterans with no purpose now that the war is over. People don’t want to really acknowledge veterans especially in America so that’s where the disinterest partially comes from along with the other things you mentioned.
With some having PTSD (one of the quests in D&D Online features this theme).
Funniest thing about being a veteran is the people most disinterested in veterans are those "empowered" to "help" them 🤷 (VA)
There's been a rash of vets setting themselves on fire in front of clinics (like Charles Ingram III) because of all the "didn't happen during service/not required to cover that" BS
I'd thought your augmented was going to be like an Artificer slowly turning himself into a Warforged. Like, one idea I'd had was taking the Armorer subclass of Artificer and gradually working his soul into the advanced suit, so that when someone one hundreds of years later discovered it the Artificer and the new hero could work together.
maybe, imagine thet you play as a warforged for most of the campaign and all your companions think you are just that a warforged until like during a battle part of your face breaks off and under it there is a human face hidden away by the faceplate, then after the battle is over its revealed that all this time the warforged was in reality an artificer that decided to upgrade his body into an advanced cyborg
@@carso1500 That sounds awesome. Or maybe an artificer version of a lich where the armor is their philactory and they absorb the souls of their enemies in combat.
FROM THE MOMENT I UNDERSTOOD THE WEAKNESS OF MY FLESH, IT DISGUSTED ME.
There is an artificer subclass like that in Dread Metrop. Mastermaker. Unfortunately not official.
@@quietone2674 I'm here to deliver you the oracle certificate.
a fun time I had with Warforged once was making one a Sorcerer and it was cool coming up with HOW they would actually use "magic". so like they had flexible pipping running down their arms for fuel to use fire etc
The rules mention that it's possible to embed wands in their forearms so that they can use the wand by pointing their fingers.
I’m currently playing as a war forged Druid who has become sick of the endless wars that sentient biological beings impose on eachother and wishes to find a resting spot to become a tree permanently. So he wanders from biome to biome, town to town etc. in search of this spot. Helping those he deems worthy and ignoring those who only wish harm on others
Imagine a Tortle who had their shell replaced after it being ripped by a cruel giant, or a Chnangeling who decided to anchor their body in one form to fit their self image, and used porcelain prosthetics to make their image eternal.
Hmmmmmmmmm I mean cool but like...... Aren't the shells literally a turtles spine? If you remove the shell you basically kill them.
@@ztoxicman it's a giant walking, talking turtle, i'm sure it doesn't really matter
@@ztoxicman Exactly! Hence the prosthetic implants. There's also been turtles (or was it a tortoise?) who had a very large portion of their shell removed.
Over time, more and more of their shell has been replaced and augmented.
A ferro-ceramic artificial spine supports the creature from the inside, with finely-woven layers of spider-silk connecting pieces and creating a sterile barrier between the artificial and living organic organs. Magically enhanced for longevity and strength, the lateral shell plates are of a pallid-grey, though can be painted to appear natural, and offer compatibility with various organic and inorganic pieces. Bits of petrified wood, hastily incorporated armor scraps, and even a dragon scale or two dapple the creature's back, while natural tissue continues to grow normally. This augmentation may even allow for an instrument or tool to be incorporated into one or more of the artificial plates, and be safely removed or replaced.
Regenerative magic and abilities cause non-essential parts to simply become detached, or absorbed. The creature equip with the artificial spine may choose to excluded it from any regeneration that would have it removed, allowing the internal structures to enhance their biology and continue to grant its benefits. In such instances, the lateral plates may remain, reduce in size, or fuse with the internal vertebrae to provide superior support of the body and limbs.
@@ztoxicman Gentle repose until the procedure is finished then revivify. Or, barring that, true resurrection. Death is not final in D&D.
I still kinda miss all the feats and upgrades for Warforged that allowed you to personalize your own golem like a build-a-bear
Good news - they're still a thing!
Bad news - they're not in official 5e material, but in supplements made by a third party.
Good news - said third party is Keith Baker himself, the original creator of the Eberron setting!
@@mofumyon This reminded me of Homer Simpson talking to the Chinese shopkeeper about the cursed gift. 😂
@@mofumyon what supplement are you talking about? The UA warforged? I'm curious to read it
@@mofumyon Where can I find those supplements?
hey i know you
aaaa they're not robots! They're sophisticated golems! That's part of why they're so dang big, they took those hulking constructs and refined them down to something vaguely humanoid. A lot of their stuff makes more sense in that light, but I do agree the unearthed arcana stuff was super neat.
So nice to see someone that finally gets them right. I know it’s hard to see anything but “fantasy robot” when there is way more nuance there. Autognomes are more robot like. Sucks trying to find an Eberron stream period, even more to find someone that does a good roleplay as Warforged
@@baianojack Or the rogue modron...
Tbf, whats the difference between a golem and robot other than how they are made?
@@baianojackSo, Dungeons and Dragons Online is an MMORPG that takes place in Eberron of all places. The warforged, in terms of playability, are an extremely popular race to play. Fairly durable and can work well as both a martial and a caster. In terms of story, there's a whole rebellion going on in the background with their "god", the Lord of Blades. You end up having to cooperate with him a few times throughout the game. There's even one decently popular quest chain about someone(s) stealing the souls of warforged and turning them into mindless automata. Kinda depressing when you take into account that a lot of them were already mind-wiped and there's nothing you can do for them except put them out of their misery and avenge them
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 a golem is a magical existence usually made of clay or simple materials and usually can only do actions the spell parameters allow for. So simple actions: attack intruders or defend a certain macguffin. Robots are sophisticated creations of metal and programming code lines usually capable of adaptability or at least rudimentary independent action. Constructs to which Warforged are adjacent, are somewhere in the middle. Though Warforged in the lore are constructs with souls. Think of it like a person’s soul put in man-made body. So the way they get roleplayed most of the time is like a robot. Coded this way or following that directive with gears and whatnot. That is really what an autognome is like. It is just a little grinding since they are my favorite playable race but never get done right.
Great video!
Just a note: Going back to the roots of ebberon there were small sized warforged. They were called warforged scouts. Theyre in the ebberon monster manual with player stats and lore.
I wanted to throw out a character concept using augmented inspired by a specific disabling condition that not a lot of people know about. That being Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I would recommend looking it up and researching it yourself if any of the real life implications of this seem like something you would want to look into.
So, long story short they are a martial artist who is extremely talented at what they do. I like to think they're a long standing champion of the Great Gymnasium from the planescape setting. Over time they began to notice the more time passed the more their body started to deteriorate. Joints started dislocating, chronic pain and fatigue was a constant struggle and fighting became nearly impossible despite their very high skill level. They realized something was wrong and went to their Artificer friend who specialized in Augmented and got their joints replaced with magi-tech parts. Now their fighting capabilities are enhanced and despite still dealing with the chronic pain and fatigue they can still kick butt just as well.
Obviously make them a monk. I was personally thinking more of an open hand or kensei monk but any subclass would work. I hope this is some good inspiration for you to make a d&d character with a disability because I rarely ever see them.
I had a DnD game a few years ago where the warforged were big and monstrous, after we killed a particularly nasty one it's torso opened up and what our DM described is stained in my memory, a wheezing lump covered in a black membrane suspended by tubes lurched out and yeah after that we knew exactly what this campaign was gonna be like and all in all it was probably one of my favorites I've ever played!
Ah yes, killer robots powered by "organic batteries." Dr. Robotnik would approve.
@@minimalbstolerance8113 Holy shit that makes sense the BBEG did look like the death egg thinking of it
daleks
Your DM gave you Daleks my dude
*Let's just talk about this, sonnymom*
I've always thought of them as what should be the "basic stats race", as their entire thing is that they are designed to be good enough for anything thrown at them. This way humans could stop being the middle ground race.
I mean if the One DND background rules stick anyone can put their stats wherever they want
@View Bot based on what they said about the feedback they got I actually think it's pretty likely to remain. Something around 80% or more said they like it. Not to mention that's how monsters of the multiverse does some races
I am pro human!
@View Bot the sample size was about 37,000 people if I remember correctly and the method of collection was the survey on DND beyond
I love the concept of an artificer that just added weapons in peoples' limbs or a a murderous assassin that just pops a weapon out of somewhere like it's the most normal thing in the world.
You could do hidden weapons with base Warforged too, actually. Warforged CAN, if I remember correctly, attune any bladed melee weapon they are proficient with into a magic weapon known as an "Arm Blade", which is exactly what it sounds like: a blade that extends from your arm with a bonus action and makes you feel like a Transformer or like you're playing a tabletop version of Assassin's Creed. I'm currently a Warforged dex paladin with a rapier as an arm blade, because I got tired to people taking my stuff away so I built it into my right forearm.
@@ananonymousnerd.2179 I believe they were in fact attunement options for artificers of any races before TCE - replacing limbs or embedding weapons/wands/spells. AFAIK, TCE ruled out all “magic cyborg” flavoured attunements and only allow warforged to attune to them.
@@ananonymousnerd.2179 my warforged artillerist artificer uses wand sheath and animated shield to essentially quadruple wield - a shield and three wands. With the eldritch cannon, I am trying to be an “one-man firing squad”.
I like the idea that warforged (or any robot race for that matter) are only that tall because either
1) the amount of tech to actually make a robot sentient with magic or otherwise is equivalent to a level 9 spell
2) the amount of work needed to do so means people strive for perfection in their own definition, meaning you get waifudroid designs or designs similar to the gods themselves.
This has the interesting implication that robot racism is the only plot that writers use because the actual interesting themes require introspection on the writers part.
Don’t get me wrong, I do really like your new custom race. But it feels too far removed from what a war forged is slash could be. It is definitely its own thing in my mind. And less of a twist on an existing thing
Yeah, exactly. It's completely separate from what Warforged are and will appeal to different people/fit different things.
When you want to play as Warforged, you want to play a machine, not a person with prosthetics.
As a lover of Robots, I adored the Warforged as soon as I found out that they existed. I used the Warforged sheet and a litt homebrew to make a character who was "Blessed" by a powerful faerie and turned into a little ragdoll. They now adventure the land in an attempt to find a way to to break this blessing and become a person again
Just want to say: Love your work!
Please don't vanish into thin air after the inevitable kickstarter.
Off the top of my head that sounds like a Runesmith reference, any other D&D creators go poof after a kickstarter?
Haha pretty sure he's already run and completed 2 kickstarters
@@calliclassic Assuming you're on Runesmith as well.. and? He still stopped engaging when he could start putting $60 tags on what he produced.
'Kickstarters completed' aren't a metric for 'good/accessible for the community'
@@T.BG822 i have no idea what runesmith is. I was talking about Antonio/Pointy Hat. He's done 2 5e supplement iirc
@@T.BG822 Not that I know of. But one is enough to make I me feel abadoned... ;)
Man I love Eberron. It's gotta be the most well fleshed out setting I own at this point. Between the UA, Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, Exploring Eberron, Dread Metrol, and now Chronicles of Eberron, there's just so much great stuff available to really dive deep into this fantastic setting! And on top of all of those books, we're still waiting on the eventual release of Frontiers of Eberron: Threshold.
Also check out the 3.5E content for eberron. they had more options there for warforged, Such as the warforged scouts, the reforged( who take on their living side rather than construct side) the juggernaut( inverse of the reforged) There where druid variants who wore wood armor instead of wood. And you should be able to find the books pretty cheaply online.
Dragon lance is substantially more in depth just 5e basically just makes tribute books
@@RedStripeMedia Yes, but there's a key difference. With the UA, Wayfinder's, Rising, and the additional supplements on DM's Guild (I think 4 or 5?), you pretty much get everything you need to run any type of game anywhere in Khorvaire. And it has a clear starting point for anyone with the aftermath of the Last War. There's pretty much no restrictions in terms of character creation, and any race can be on Eberron, they just won't have a major world role.
How many books do you need to detail all of Ansalon? Or all of Taladas? Not to mention, if one of your players is a dick, you have to run through everything (comics, novels, etc.) in addition to the modules and decide on a time and then make sure everything is detailed accurately to that time and all of the lore matches up, and you don't get stuff like what we have with the 5e Dragonlance book (specifically with Kitiara at the end, not all the other lore issues with that campaign). Plus, there's all the creation restrictions that are put in place (and not just the races); forcing people to either be hunted to death or join a massive guild of wizards, a lack of Healing magic for a large time period, etc.
It's much more concise, and a lot less daunting as a GM. It's much easier to jump into.
You have the Augmented, and then you have the artificers who made their limbs, the splicer artificers.
Splicers are artificers that have studied anatomy, magic and mechanics to replace and improve upon the body.
I would say they are proficient with the medicine kit and would work similar to armorer, except they start gaining abilities like resistance to poison and such over time. Maybe grant them the ability to infuse extra magic items as long as those items replace body parts.
Splicer Artificer = Dr Gero from Dragonball Z?
The campaign got cut short, but my favorite Warforge build was us going "how do we allow the fact he is abnormally large for the race" and gave him a Primordial's heart expirament to do so. He was 10 ft tall.
The one I'm running is roughly 8ft (because I don't like sticking too closely to size categories and my DM is cool with it) He towers over most people he encounters and add to that he is clad head-to-toe in a self-made suite of Adamantine Plate Armor and has an (equally self-made) greatsword wrought from the same material as backup - or when he really wants to wreck something. For the most part he uses warhammer and shield though, to maximize his durability. As i like to put it: If you want a chokepoint held, he is the one to put there. (Battlemaster-8/Barbarian-1/War-Wizard-2/Artificer-2)
I've toyed with the idea of using the undead race from ravenloft with the armorer artificer class for something similar. I love the way you made it a common place idea in the lore and applied it across practical and adventuring characters. This would make an amazing city if not a full fantasy world
That race option allows you to choose between undead and construct. I've made a couple characters with it and they were all very Warforged-adjacent. It's a great option, definitely my fave of the three in that book.
You KNOW it's a good day when Pointy Hat starts oversimplifying fantasy droids
You know its a good day when he uploads
I love your enthusiasm and life in these videos. I hope you get as much joy making these as I get watching them.
Ehh, I'm not feeling it. I feel like 'Cyborg' is a little too far from a Warforged to be called a Twist.
great opinion
This is perfect timing because I'm just starting a new game where warforged are a big part of the homebrew lore, we have a warforged player and a forge domain cleric, and I've been really wanting to incorporate fantasy robot prosthetics in a fun way!
I'm all for the augmented. As someone with a disability, these are literally just the things I think about when it comes to magic - give myself power for those moments when I feel like I have none.
Loved the Augmented idea! It kinda reminded me of the Foreclaimers in Fools' Gold. Super cool idea!
U 4 kill or no kill forecamers?
@@BroodingEdgelord Stella's Children deserve to live! The rest though...
How integrated protection is worded makes me think you wouldn't need to take armor off because it is basically your skin now so it won't be uncomfortable to wear in casual settings, also your Augmented kinda reminds me of Reborn without the dying bit as Starting Point is just Ancestral legacy without the prohibition on inheriting skills and movement at character creation
yeah, the way I understand it - and how my DM runs it - it's basically fused with your body and functions similar to an adjustable version of a Tortle's shell - which precludes the use of the defense fighting style, but in return offers the ability to use Rage instead (which I do as a sort-of overdrive-mode)
*Cough*
look, I wanna mention that they where written as machiens of war, back before THAT WAS A TROPE, some can say that that trope was so fresh, that it's the reason it was the winner of a competition from WOTC that allowed Ebberon to become an offical setting
There's also a pretty neat homebrew class called Mechromancer that also takes the idea of cyborgs. Kind of like an Adeptus Mechanicus type of experimentation. You can replace pretty much everything and do some cool spells provided you have the energy for it.
Really like this concept, love your work, especially your demon video
I’m working on a custom world for my players where everyone is small (ie a small animal or such turned into a DnD race.) Long story short, I used the basic Warforged stat block but tweaked the origins, making the Warforged as humanoid-ish inanimate objects like toy soldiers or puppets, instead referring to them as Automatons. Love to see the insight on how I can make them even more interesting!
I love this twist! Augments create so many possibilities for new and existing characters alike. I'm imagining a combination of this and your cowboy ranger subclass where they have their pistols augmented into their hands. They could do literal finger guns! Love your channel, and I look forward to seeing what else you decide to create!
You basically just described Vash The Stampede
@@Mr.Despair. huh, never heard of him. Just looked him up, sounds like a cool character concept.
@@richgrassmann2009 Oh dude, Trigun! It's a classic anime!
I highly reccommend!
It's a great concept, but it feels odd that a lot of what Pointy Hat described is literally the cyborg race from pf2e. Idk if it's a coincidence that he designed it the same way or if he read it and just decided to convert it to 5e.
Lol this is canon in my campaign, one of the partial pcs is a human who began replacing his body with metal until he became a warforged and most warforged have wrist-guns and handblades
Should really check out 3rd Ed Eberron. There are many variations to the Forged like psiforged, and the small sized scout forged. But there is also the prestige class the Renegade Mastermaker.
I had a friend who played a Warforged wizard, flavored as an experimental construct that collected schematics for how to replicate wands that would cast certain spells. Its purpose was collecting and harnessing magic, and trying to break the Warforged's limitation of "can't be spellcasters", every rest was basically time spent allowing those wands to regain charges, levelling up and learning new spells was literally a matter of collecting knowledge and receiving assistance in creating new wands out of those spell patterns, and instead of casting like wizards do, it would have these linked wrappings dangling from its arms, hidden in flowing robe sleeves, so it'd allow it to cycle wands in its forearms almost like a belt-fed machinegun being slotted in a new cartridge.
So when about to cast a fireball, it'd cycle through this loop of "wand catridges" until it slotted in the Fireball one, shoot the spell, then cycle to a new wand. - It was a pretty good idea, and it gave them a routine of tending to these wands and whatnot.
I might take inspiration from your idea. It's brilliant!
It's always nice when Warforgeds are a topic, being my favorite race and the one I see with most potential for flavouring, also having some great arcs as they develop. My favorite ever PC was a warforged, a literal quadruped machine with a weapon built in it's back, developing sentience, emotion and a soul, fighting once until it was only a core, then being rebuilt from the ground up in a humanoid body that better fit his personality.
I’ve had this idea for a young Artificer who would have a running theme of modified toys in all of their infused items, but was never really able to decide on what I wanted them to be in terms of their species, but honestly, it feels like seeing the augmented was the last thing I needed for the whole thing to come together in my brain!! A young girl who looses some of her limbs in a tragic accident, struggling to fit in with her peers and even being bullied by some particularly cruel kids, just because she looks different. She eventually confides about her situation to her grandfather, an artificer and former adventurer who now uses his class’ skills to infuse small sparks of magic into the toys he now makes for a living. Hating to see his dear granddaughter so upset and ashamed about her appearance, a lightbulb lights up in his mind, getting an idea of how to cheer her up. He constructs her whimsical prosthetics that leave her awe inspired, all while reassuring her that he loves her dearly and that even though she’s a little bit different from all the other kids now, she can still do anything they can do, and now, even more!!
Ahhhhh I’m so excited to work on my lil cutesy toy cyborg augmented Artificer now!! This was really a good take on the idea of D&D cyborgs, thank you once again for sharing all of these amazingly creative ideas with us all for free!! :D
That sounds cool hope good luck on it and that your party enjoys it
This idea sounds rad. Love it!
On the whole robot racism stuff, I set both my personal stories and my D&D settings AFTER the whole "robot racsim" shit happens so that we don't have to deal with it. I think there's a lot of potential in seeing just how a world would work with both humans and robots living alongside each other and how they would have to accommodate for each other. It's a shame we don't get to see these things explored... ever. Also, not robots being an allegory for Austim either. I'm sick of that too.
I think a good example of humans and AIs living side by side each other is Questionable Content the webcomic. It started off as just a slice of life webcomic, which it still is, but has now gone into AI automatons and how they fit more with society.
One AI automaton asking a Catholic priest where he sees A.I. in the place of religion. He talks about how some see A.I. as not true life, but others see them as an extension of God’s creation as he created humans and they created A.I., so they are also children of God.
My warforged barbarian met with a fate worse than death: Currently trapped in a campaign that was "temporarily paused" and has been in limbo for 2+ years now. 😔 Good bot.
Important to keep in mind that the warforged are from the eberron setting, and the eberron setting is full of scifi magitech stuff. An official part of the setting is a floating highway of magic pylons that make ship flight very easy. It's also where the artificer class is from.
Point is they fit in extremely well in the eberron setting.
Honestly, the reflavoring capability of Warforged is what makes this one of my personal favorites. The first time with the race I went with a Battlesmith Artificer who was more of a homunculus herself, being an artificial body made by an alchemist to house the soul of a dead warrior. Her whole thing was trying to use biomechanics to recreate her own existence, partially for the ambition of creating life out of nothing, but also because she was really kinda lonely. The DM didn't want a robot on the game, so I did that and gave her this cool magical origin and it ended up becoming an important plot point that ended with the character discovering the meaning of life by learning how to recreate the experiment that made her, which led to her burning her research, fusing her soul with that of her Steel Defender and becoming "the Soul Master", switching to Armorer and going in a quest to defeat the alchemist so that the method of creating lives could be forgotten. Long story, but one that brings a big smile to my face whenever I remember it.
I am doing something similar with my warforged character. Originally he and his kin were created to help defend the world against an ongoing invasion of undead. To this end he and his kin were wrought from living metal and have an appearance strongly resembling your average human, albeit roughly 8ft talland much more resilient. And even then over hte course of roughly twenty years his unit was whittled down from five-hundred to less than two dozen - which is when it was disbanded and the remains were left to fend for themselves, prompting him to become a mercenary and bodyguard. This is roughly when he joins the party. And over time he has involuntarily become the leader of the party, despite his mediocre charisma. He even inherited an abandoned castle (since rebuilt) and started his own mercenary unit to confront the BBEG down the line. As part of his character development he sought to understand why his unit never was reinforced while other regiments of less-advanced warforged did get reinforcements. To this end he delved into the secrets of artificers - and even found his own creator to get some answers.
Yet, artificer is only a small part of what he is. (just two levels currently). He has used his skills to create an artificial construct himself though. A homunculus taking the appearance of a mechanical falcon - or if inactive an adorned piece of armor protecting his neck. Always fun when the bird activates: it looks like the warforged has a halo of wings until the bird takes flight.
I actually like the artificed warforged concept like it's implemented in the Marvel Thanos - Nebula story arc. Once, it was just an organic creature, but it was intensively altered by experimental surgery by an evil warlord (thanos). It gained incredible strength and used it to break free, but it lost its humanity/empathy in the process. It became a robot/monster... during the campaign, it started on a revenge mission, balancing his merciless robot-like character with the search/regaining of his lost humanity still left somewhere inside.
You can even implement real-life concepts like PTSD, personality disorders, phantom pains felt in lost limbs etc..
This video was pretty good! I was kinda hoping we'd get a Warforged Rework instead of a Cyborg Race/Subrace thing but the idea is still pretty cool i guess
Kinda funny, I was actually working on a Warforged character today when thus showed up on my recommended. It's a Warforged artifacer with the clan crafter background. Was still working on the backstory, but the idea I had was that it was created by mountain dwarves to help assist them in the mines, I gave it proficiency in smith's, woodworking and tinkers tools. It was designed to basically help with maintaining tools, weapons and buildings. That was over a century ago. Now it suddenly finds itself awake, with all it's comrades and companions either dead or missing, and now their goal is to uncover what happened. Was struggling to find some ideas to improve the backstory somewhat and this video was a great help.
The Hat is precious and infinitely helpful. Let us ensure that we praise the hat and protect the hat with our lives.
I absolutely freaking LOVE your channel! Quality content, new ideas, humor...honestly, I couldn't ask for more
5:52 I don't think it's a racism allegory, I think it's a war veteran allegory, and it's honestly a good one.
Perfectly timed for me making my warforged character for a new campaign. I’m making a warforged who was actually crafted for entertainment purposes and already includes a lot of what you suggested so I’m glad I got someone else thinking the same. Now I really wanna make a modified human tho.
This twist is exactly what I need for an NPC idea I have for a campaign I’m working on, like it couldn’t be more perfect. This is why you’re my favorite D&D channel, well one reason
I now imagine a 6ft tall toaster warforged...
but also, congratulations - you invented Shadowrun :D
With the autognome, I feel like the augmentations from your idea and the Unearthed Arcana should definitely be allowed more for Warforged to allow them to be their own thing and now just not “autognomes but not as good”.
I've always loved warforged, recently made a 4'6" boat themed warforged named Boaty Mcboatface *might put a picture i drew of him in my community tab if i can figure out how to ;-;*
I've also made a beehive themed one where he was like a paladin who died and was resurrected in a warforged body by bees as a druid/paladin with a bee themed patron, was cool 😌
My warforged players always have a unique trait to their creator. The warforged that was made by a dwarf for example was a metal eater. He could consume different metals for new effects he had to discover. 10 coins worth of gold would heal him and make it so he had dragons breath cast on himself as fire. And eating enough copper let’s him cast shocking grasp for an hour and apply shocking grasp’s damage to his metal weapon artacks
In our campaign we have made a variant since we found warforged a little cliché on the "sentient machine made for war" front
We call the race Thingborn and their origin is both old and mysterious. They spring to life in matter seemingly at random and can be altered into a functional shape if they were unlucky with their original body.
They live forever as long as they repair themselves but have a soft memory capacity of the last 100 years. They are strongly drawn towards family relations and are service minded. Which often makes them voluntary servants or foster parents for other races.
This comboed with their memory loss makes them very easy to exploit for long lived races. And while they are very good as soldiers they generally hate to hurt others unless it's absolutely necessary to protect their perceived families.
They use names as a way of telling their traits. Examples are if they start with Ko- they are great warriors or if it's Go- its great wisdom/magic Li- is a pleasent or empathetic individual and if they have -ian as an ending they are awakened which means they can remember more than a 100 years of their life.
They sing alot as a way to remember their pasts. We refer to the Thingborn as the wholesome race👨👩👧👦🫂🗣🎶
Man. Just about everything Point Hat has made its so good.
Sounds less like Robot racism and more like Robots as a parallel to war vets being unable to adjust to civilian life.
“Hear me out, cyborgs.” So, armourer artificer?
I kinda always liked the whole "well shit, now what do I do?" character crisis of Warforged. They don't know what to do or who they are, or in many ways even _what_ they are. Hell, they'd probably wonder if they even had a "who" in the first place. Especially in a world with souls. Up until recently their lives were filled with violence and a lack of self, and suddenly free will is now given to them. What happens then?
That concept of a lone robot wandering the world trying to find out who he is really appeals to me. Makes for a good adventurer.
This is something I could totally take and run with! I love creating backstory and lore. I often combine magical items and the results can be amazing! Like an berserker axe mixed with the jug of endless water and wand of magic missile. It made an axe that was perpetually dripping blood, (a gallon per day based on the moon, this attracted vamps, but wasn't actual blood so this would enrage the vamps) and it had a certain amount of charge to it that allowed swinging the axe for a ranged attack with magic formed 'blood spikes', (not full magic missile accuracy though). This axe allowed for some interesting RP as if the axe was stored, it didn't stop dripping and could soak everything in a pseudo-blood stain. Worked great for a gladitorial arena scene though.
For the Augmented I can see things like a magic eye than can allow darkvision or blindsight, ears than can detect sounds at distance or hear a heart beat. If char is damaged, the sense might require a 'bump' roll, (think hitting an old CRT TV to get the image to come through) just don't hit too hard or you might damage it further (I usually do targeted rolls, ie player has to roll between X and Y number; too low and ineffective like a weak hand shake, too high and you accidentally crush their hand).
Maybe physical feats can be more effective but require a recharge time/roll. I can see making smaller or larger constructs or augments that can have limited range or physical limitations.
This is a great idea and I will write a bunch of stuff for sure! Great video.
To be fair, warforged work great in Eberron which has always been more geopolitically focused than most DND settings. Also ine thing that you miss is that in Eberron Warforged are quite literally doomed to extinction. Part of the treaty of Thronehold is that all information on creating them be destroyed, and since they can't reproduce their numbers will only dwindle. This plus the general alienation they receive from natural races has led to attempts to create their own religions and nations, such as that of the Lord of blades
Robot racism isn't a bad narrative, it's just realistic and what is to be expected.
Just look at all the (especially twitter) freaks that freak out about AI😅
@@Poglavnit_Pferdefuhrer The way you worded that implies you do not understand the problem.
If you're a Cyborg, then you're not a robot. The thing you missed is the race part here. I made a Tabaxi Monk with a Homebrewed Magic item Called a Forged Limb. It has a damage output of 1d6, adds +1 to AC and the ability to add a "Hidden Feature" in the form of any Armblade that are a Warforged exclusive magic item. (A better way to explain that are the weapons The Transformers use in the Prime series and Michel Bay Movies.) As the Armblade has to be attuned it provided one attunement slot with the caveat that is AGREED UPON BETWEEN PALYER AND DM that only an Armblade can be place in that slot! otherwise you only have 2 remaining slots to attune to other magic items. For balancing purposes I added in the fact that it reduces your Movement Speed by 10 as well for all the benefits you get from this item. If the Warforged are "Semi-organic" you should think of them more like Transformers if you want to keep to the Robotic *RACE* that they are. Create a varying design that was there before but WOTC got lazy with alongside the other lazy fools and just say Reallocate that +2 to a stat more fitting to what you want.
Sorry for the rant there, but tbh your answer in this "twist" is more of a "bend" than anything. Very, very poor and not all there. Granted it's a fair design to play a race or a sub-race without really making anything "new". That notion, however, takes away what Warforged are: "a Race of their own"
I actually came up with an idea for a beast barbarian warforged in a Spelljammer setting. He's the last survivor from a war that happened hundreds if not thousands of years ago. His body is built to be sleek and powerful, designed to take damage but dishing out twice as much. Thanks to bizarre "nanotech" that's build throughout his frame, he can warp his body to fit any scenario (basically an excuse to have the beast barbarian abilities). His underframe looks like it's made out of synthetic muscles, designed after human anatomy, and his head has a collapsing visor that folds over his eyes to protect the sensitive lenses. He was salvaged by a group of Kobalds after being adrift in wildspace for who knows how long, but it was long enough that his memory degregated to the point where he only truely remembers his name.
His Designation is Buster Destroyer Unit 1 or BD-1.
His friends call him "Buddy."
I am making a dog shaped warforged monk for my upcoming campaign! I just happened to watch this video to get a better understanding of the race. Your wish has been granted. Dog11 is a warehouse guard dog, it loves its job very much and is extremely good at it. Thank you for this validation!!!
Pointy hat's comedic edits authentically crack me up like few other content creators.
Y'know, for all this talk about how warforged waste their potential as robots, I'm EXTREMELY disappointed that you just... threw out the robot aspect instead of fixing it... Cyborgs aren't robots, people with prosthetics aren't robots, that beats the entire goddamn point of playing as a robot who has been a robot from the moment they were created.
(Even though warforged aren't really 'fantasy robots', but instead are golems, The Augmented can't even be classified as constructs! Its simpler to call them bots for the sake of this comment because thats their vibe, and it makes my point easier to illustrate, cyborgs =/= robots or golems or constructs, living armor is closer to warforged than a borg is)
I don't like being this harsh especially since I really love all your other stuff but... these aren't warforged anymore.
Lmao, I had similar ideas. I do a lot of world building, so when it came to the “not warforged” I made them literally come to life from root and stone and metal because they were so near to a source of life energy so potent that the stones came to life.
Though they can be “imperfect” allowing for my setting’s version of orcs and goblins.
They seem very alien to anyone who isn’t one of them because they kinda don’t care about grievous wounds so long as their black box can be salvaged. They can be put into whole new bodies, have limbs replaced, including specialized tools. Imagine walking into your job, having your arm taken off and replaced with a Swiss Army knife, and using that for the next 10 hours to do everything you need to do.
When they start trading with other races, the first thing that they do is start selling prosthetic limbs with the potential for upgrades. They have battle bodies they can step into which require more energy to operate but also provide greater strength and endurance. They even go so far as to reverse engineer Titans, though they need some outside help to make them work beyond the city walls. Even reverse engineer old “not spelljammer” tech the elves eventually show them.
I found them very fun as a concept to play around with, and am glad to see similar lines followed here.
We had an interesting version of Warforged (or Forgeborn) in our campaign.
In short, they're basically the spirits of Fire Giants inhabiting medium or small-sized suits of armor, after the Dwarf King took them in and let them live in the city of Forge (the other giants were trying to kill them, you see).
Since the Fire Giants were technically made of fire themselves, the armor they inhabit basically lives off coal (or other things that can burn), meaning they still have to eat; if the fire within dies, so does the Forgeborn. They "breathe" by letting the fire inside the suits breathe via gaps in their helmets, which they can close at will if they need to "hold their breath" (for example, against poison gas or going underwater). But of course, a lack of air can snuff fire out, so they're the similar to humans in that regard too.
Many of them choose suits of armor to look like dwarves, but a few chose the larger variants and went exploring the world. Some chose even smaller suits, called Mole-forged, designed with drills for hands, and they specialized in mining alongside their dwarven brethren. As closed-off as the dwarves seemingly are, they make a welcome exception for the Forgeborn.
I'm miffed whenever people forget that golems are a thing
And hey, my first ever bard was a warforged. He looked like one of these Laputa robots mixed with iron golem from minecraft. I wrote him with story that he just woke up in the forest without much memory and decided to be an artist
Was a funny thing because the rest of PCs also played people woth memory problems by sheer accident- we had fallen asemar hunter without recollection of her past who chased after answers, my warforged artist, a warlock who after loosing his memory was adopted by the three local hags and a lizardfolk monk, the only person with all their memories intact. And out first mission was to get flour for warlocks three adopted moms
One thing that would have been cool for the Warforged were if they could take a specific feature after like level 5 for example that changes them like a subrace and after a few levels that features gets stronger or they take another.
For example: You can choose at level 5 between strenghten your mind: Int, Wis and Cha(yeah it is magical it must be here ok?) or strenghtening your body: Str, Dex and Con. You get a + 1 in the one you took but a - 1 in the other. After like 3-4 levels you get a new more specific bonus to choose from that what you picked be it just another increase in that stat(boring) or a more specific feature like getting + 1,5 meters more movement.
I'm playing a Warforged in the Wildmount setting, so I've made him an 860 year old, 6' 7'', 300 lbs Aeormaton that was designed to catalog powerful magic artifacts, specifically tied to time magick. He survived the Calamity but his home and artifacts were destroyed and left him with intertwining memories of the past and the present. He's been wondering Wildmount ever since, watching all of the empires rise and fall. The Cobalt Soul tracked him down, and brought him into their Order not just because he was a living relic but to also help him repair his memories and give him purpose again. He doesn't look like a tradional Warforged does, he's made modifications to his body to look more human but still has the arcanic runes etched into his face. I picture him to be a robotic cross between Mr. Manhattan from Watchmen and the Creators from Prometheus.
My first, (and favorite) character was a warforged artillerist named Lucky. I loved that Texas accent having, gun-slinging, Ironically named SOB. He died brutally.
I guess the name was more ironic than it was literal.
We have an Artificer (me) and a Warforged paladin (another PC) in our current party. The Warforged was build for a war over 2000 years ago and my father, a blacksmith, found him just 20 years ago and repaired him. He is with me on our adventure and is basically my protector while I always repair him. 😅 He is however a little too religious due to my father being a very religious man and basically teaching him everything. It's a very cool idea so far. The world is a bit like backwards history.. you know getting to higher tech and then through a bad thing that happened going back to medieval times. He is the only warforged we know of so far and no one outside our party knows what he is. That makes some good roleplay. 👍
I had a warforged warlock at one point. No pact. He was created by the rogue secundus modron on Mount Celestia and imbued with the ability to tap into his power source before being set down on the prime. He was CG and had a weird penchant towards cold damage. (Hellrime blast was a favorite essence. This was 3.5) eventually we ended up epic and found the elemental fonts of power (basically enchanting fountains that would empower items based on how much gold is spent.) The other players dropped their primary weapons into theirs and dumped enough gold into them to blow them up. (Overcharged basically making artifacts) I jumped into the font of elemental cold and did the same. Queue walking around with a body temperature of absolute zero and being so cold that even magical fire would go out within 30 feet of me. He retired shortly after that as a demigod with the cold portfolio.
Here’s how little I know about dnd: 2 minutes in, when you were doing the ad, I genuinely believed it was part of the war forged lore. By the time I realized it was an ad, I wrote this to tell you that you surprised me pleasantly and I’m intentionally finishing your sponsored read. lol, good job.
The concept of cyborgs was actually touched down upon in _Dread Metrol_ (an Eberron/Ravenloft crossover written by Eberron's creator Keith Baker) in the form of the Reconstructed, though they are a bit more dark than your take on em.
The premise of these half-warforged/half-humans were a twisted attempt to create super soldiers among an endless siege leaving little in terms of supplies. The result was people of flesh and blood who are now largely constructs, and warforged who've been reverse engineered until they're almost human. Though these just use the standard warforged player stats generally, I'll definitely be trying them with the Augmented stats now!
On the same premise, there's also an Artificer subclass in the same book; the Mastermaker. It utilizes integrated flesh and steel through various magical prosthesis as you suggested, and your character gets a cool cyborg arm that you can give any number of weapon properties.
And in another non-WotC Keith Baker book _Exploring Eberron_ he actually brought back the concept of the old Juggernaut and Envoy warforged in the form of racial feats.
Hi Pointy Hat. Took a look over the file, and I like the options. It's more flexible and detailed then , "you have magic item eyes for dark vision" and the like.
Also, I never thought I'd see "The Brave Little Toaster" referenced in a D&D video. Wow, that's a flashback.
My last character (who I will be reusing since the game she was originally made for fell apart) was originally a copper dragonborn before dying to her mother (a duchess of a powerful dragon clan). Her father managed to capture her soul and put it in a warforged body! Probably one of my favorite concepts I've ever done
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… Even in death I serve the Omnissiah."
- Someone who ditched the main 5e Warforged race and got the Unearthed Arcana version instead.
Your suggestion in the end was refreshing. 40k nerd that I am when you initially described them and started talking about organic components is wad thinking about the body horror that is the Servitors or the Schitari its interesting to me how cutesy D&D can sometimes be when compared to "The Grim Darkness of the far future". Or even something like Full Metal Alchemist or Dune. If only the "Satanic Panic" parents looked up something on Slanesh I think D&D would have been fine.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine.
Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you.
But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal…
And even in 2023, I play sci-fi RPGs.
I too enjoyed Cyberpunk Edgerunners
I like this idea for a Warlock character. Simply reflavour the patron to a mechanic who refines/replaces parts. The warlock subclasses are different styles/schools of engineering.
I made a Warforged once named Tap. He was built by an Artificer, with the scraps scavenged from fallen warforge during the war, to serve as an assistant unit to a monastery to treat the sick and ill. Due to that, his body was modified to carry surgery kits and blood sacks.
But, unfortunately, Tap ended up getting lost when a group of people who were victims of the war kidnapped him and threw him onto a cliff, calling him an abomination. Tap survived, though heavily damaged, and ended up being rescued by an academy of... Bloodhunters of all people, who helped him with basic repairs.
Tap was lost, injured and unprepared to go back, so, he did the thing he thought was most logical and became a bloodhunter, to increase his chances of survival during his trip back. Believing his primary mission was to save lives, and that he would be able to do that better if he could both protect himself, and protect the injured.
This character was really fun for me, because i went more into Terminator 2 and Baymax vibes, where he would just be really blatant and straightforward, making allegories and analogies make no sense to him, and he was incredibly blunt with the way he spoke and acted. It was a fun challenge to make a character who sounded like he was a real person, but this was due to the way he was programmed and not because he actually felt feelings. Fun thing is that he actually went T2 style and died by saving the party from the main antagonist, by grappling her and jumping into a door to a different dimension. The only thing left of him being his hand, that was left doing an "Ok" sign, because one of the party members taught Tap that this was how you showed people that everything is under control.
I played a warforged Samurai in my groups long running campaign, he was a relic from a war long passed and without a master had become a ronin, joining the group he began to question the life he was leading and the things he had been taught and ordered to do. Their arc ended with them turning to a life of pacifism and finding a place to reside in peace.
It was one of the most rewarding and beautiful storylines I've ever had the privilage of playing. I never intended it to go the way it did, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Rest well man of iron.
Warforged druids. They're interesting. You could go down the route of being basically a living geode, or you could be like a gardening or farming robot meant to have a symbiotic relationship with nature. Maybe both at once