I'm relatively new to D&D, having only started playing about 2 years ago(and still waiting to continue my current campaign), but i've seen enough to find the removal of the Warforged subraces(modules?) being retconned as kind of....unfair. I mean, there are a half-dozen elvish races - most of which are the effectively the same - a couple dragonborn varieties(not even counting the new Unearthed Arcana ones that make it like 20 different kinds), 3 kinds of halfling, 3 kinds of gnome, 3 kinds of dwarf, a dozen kinds of tiefling, and so on. So what was so 'broken'/clunky about specialized Warforged types that warranted that redaction?
At a glance, they don't look internally balanced - the juggernaut is so much worse than the other two it's deeply questionable why anyone would choose it - and if you compare them to the official race, they're all more powerful, so presumably not externally balanced. On the other hand, it doesn't seem hard to create your own homebrew version compatible with the official warforged race.
Envoy: This is the stock race, with a skill proficiency and a tool proficiency.
Skirmisher: Drop skill and tool, +5 feet walking speed and light step. (This means external balance is weird - half-elves choose between 2 skills and 5 feet, and a skill and a tool is worse than 2 skills - but 2 skills is so much better than +5 feet I think that says more about half-elves than warforged.)
Juggernaut: Drop skill and tool, get unarmed damage and powerful build.
If you want to fix that terrible juggernaut subrace, upgrade it to be as good as the mule it's already emulating with those two abilities.
Juggernaut MK2: Drop skill and tool, get unarmed damage, powerful build, and sure-footed: advantage on Strength and Dexterity saving throws made against effects that would knock it prone.
Sure-footed isn't the best - there are plenty of ways to go prone without a Str or Dex save - but that's perfect, since the juggernaut is trying to compete with other relatively minor abilities.
They changed them based on playtest feedback as far as I know. The subraces were recreated as homebrew on here.
Additionally Keith Baker released Warforged specific feats in his book Exploring Eberron that emulate these subclasses. I actually think this works much better than a subrace as it also fits the theme of the warforged being these omnifunctional tools of war (at least originally)
Weird that your warforge would suddenly become 8 ft tall and double their weight but sure feats work I guess...
Overall they could have kept them with a little work but instead they went the quick/easy route and just picked the one that people played the most during playtesting.
UA Warforged and UA Changeling I remember both being way too powerful. Thinking back on it, it kind of seems like the Eberron races were kind of built to a different "Scale" than the other player races, almost like the Eberron setting was being deliberately designed to not be fully compatible with other D&D settings. Even now the Dragon Mark subraces are still, on average, more potent than the other subraces available.
Eberron species are absolutely more powerful on average than PHB species. Frankly, I consider that a good thing. Species contributes so little to your character that it sometimes feels pointless - just pick whichever aesthetic you like best and go. Some people love that idea, but I'd prefer for species to impact gameplay more than just what skin you wear. Assigning each species unique, powerful, qualitative (i.e. not just BIGGANUMBAZ stat boosts or a mess of extra skill proficiencies) abilities accomplishes that. Frankly, even well-designed qualitative drawbacks, such as Sunlight Sensitivity on drow, duergar, and kobolds, can really help cement a species' impact on one's character.
The warforged are particularly cool and popular because their abilities can help your character feel like a deadly magitech robot man built for war. You're tougher than the squishy meatmen who think they're so much better than you because they were born from slop instead of manufactured to specification, you never sleep, and mortal frailties like disease and poison only get to you if they're super potent. Whereas the PHB Dragonborn, as the classic example of "why even bother?...yeah. No part of playing a dragonborn feels like you're an awesome dragon man, except the artwork. Playing a dragonborn usually feels more like you just had a particularly potent enchilada for lunch and have developed unusually keen belch control so you're saving the aftermath of that enchilada for the perfect moment that will never come.
It's one of the things I hope an eventual 6e does better, and one of the things I'd fix about 5e if homebrewing new PC species wasn't such a freaking unholy hassle.
While I can't speak for the subraces, I can say that the Integrated Protection feature seemed a little broken. You could argue the same about Tortles, I suppose, but they can't get an AC of 22 at level 9 without using magic. Their AC is capped at 19.
Yurei, I gotta ask, do you hate everything Tasha's did to races? Custom Lineage pretty much took everything mechanically different away from the various races. All hail our new Half-Elven overlords that look and act just like Dwarves or Gnomes. Except for the Mountain Dwarves. They look like Elves.
This is extremely off topic for this thread and feels like you're trying to turn this thread into another multi-page flame war about Tasha's race changes.
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Yurei, I gotta ask, do you hate everything Tasha's did to races? Custom Lineage pretty much took everything mechanically different away from the various races. All hail our new Half-Elven overlords that look and act just like Dwarves or Gnomes. Except for the Mountain Dwarves. They look like Elves.
"everything mechanically different" is a weird way to phrase "just the ASI's"...
Y'all have a point. I did not mention the Warforged at all. What I was talking about does apply to the Warforged, if indirectly. The Custom Lineages let you change your Speed, making the small races faster, your ASI's, give you a free Feat, and give yourself Darkvision if you didn't already have it, and your skills and languages change. That seems like enough mechanical difference, but you are correct, it's not "everything". Your Creature Type and Size do not change.
As for the Warforged, I didn't say anything because that was an asked-and-answered thing. The subraces were overpowered. Seems simple enough. Whether you like that or not doesn't seem all that on topic to me.
If you're going to kvetch at me for bringing up flamewar-ish topics, splash some at Yurei, as she mentioned the dreaded 6th Edition, and that's a pretty roasty-toasty topic right now.
Custom lineages don’t “change” anything at all. If you use the custom lineage rules, you’re not halfling or an elf or a dwarf or a whatever, and you never were. You’re your own thing.
Are you perhaps thinking of the supernatural lineages added in the new Ravenloft book?
In very brief, and spoiler'd because it is indeed both off-topic and flame bait but also possibly a legitimate ask...:
The answer is that "Custom Lineage" is not any pre-existing species. There is no such thing as "I'm playing an elf, but I'm using Custom Lineage instead of the elf stat block". The correct interpretation of Custom Lineage is that it is there for characters who are not from any recognized species or who originate from means other than being born - a cursed doll, an escapee from the Man-Mantis Invasion Force, a Saibaman who gained independence, whatever the player has decided their new thing is. Custom Lineage is not for ignoring the stat block for your own species because you want a feat at level 1, instead. A DM can decide this is permitted for their own table, but in the doing they are effectively removing species entirely from their game and I do not believe that to be a sound decision. At least, not for the kinds of games I like to play/run.
Y'all have a point. I did not mention the Warforged at all. What I was talking about does apply to the Warforged, if indirectly. The Custom Lineages let you change your Speed, making the small races faster, your ASI's, give you a free Feat, and give yourself Darkvision if you didn't already have it, and your skills and languages change. That seems like enough mechanical difference, but you are correct, it's not "everything". Your Creature Type and Size do not change.
As for the Warforged, I didn't say anything because that was an asked-and-answered thing. The subraces were overpowered. Seems simple enough. Whether you like that or not doesn't seem all that on topic to me.
If you're going to kvetch at me for bringing up flamewar-ish topics, splash some at Yurei, as she mentioned the dreaded 6th Edition, and that's a pretty roasty-toasty topic right now.
Everything about Yurei's comment was about the Warforged and Eberron and comparing them to the base PHB races, with the only tidbit about their hopes for the eventual 6e being a single sentence at the end. By contrast, your entire comment seemed centered around picking a fight with Yurei and turning the thread in the direction of discussing the (optional) custom lineage rules presented in Tasha's. What are you hoping that Yurei's opinion on Tasha's optional rules will contribute to this thread?
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Wayfinders was playtest content so it was expected to change. That was not communicated well with that book however.
Edit: also I highly recommend Exploring Eberron. It is great for more Eberron content.
There are things about both the WgtE and the published book (Rising from the Last War) that our group didn't like, so we ended up with:
Don't need to eat, sleep or drink, immune to disease, don't sleep and immune to magic sleep
6 hour inactive but conscious rather than sleeping
Choose AC formula (13+Dex or 17)
Pick one of
advantage vs poisoned and resist poison damage
1d6 unarmed strike
+5 walking speed
Pick one of
move stealthily at normal pace when traveling
powerful build
tool proficiency
Common + 1 language
Of course if you are playing Adventurer's League, only the Last War version is legal.
This would have made a LOT more sense to take this approach....actual options instead of a boilerplate approach that makes little sense given the lore of Eberron.
I think the problem was they were making the race with a more setting agnostic approach than actually embracing the world lore.
Keith Baker's approach of Warforged-specific feats is an excellent one. A warforged stat block that specifically said "select one warforged-specific feat to represent the task for which your warforged character was built" as one of its species features would've been absolutely splendid.
'Course, I think that should be a thing for every species and that species-based feats should be hugely expanded on. Any new species should come with an absolute minimum of three species-specific feats, and new books can introduce new ones tied to the species' lore in a given setting or even just throw them out there for shits. Alas, 4e put paid to actually being able to make your character your character. C'est la vie.
Keith Baker's approach of Warforged-specific feats is an excellent one. A warforged stat block that specifically said "select one warforged-specific feat to represent the task for which your warforged character was built" as one of its species features would've been absolutely splendid.
'Course, I think that should be a thing for every species and that species-based feats should be hugely expanded on. Any new species should come with an absolute minimum of three species-specific feats, and new books can introduce new ones tied to the species' lore in a given setting or even just throw them out there for shits. Alas, 4e put paid to actually being able to make your character your character. C'est la vie.
1000% agree!
I love PF2e approach to racial feats...so amazing.
PF2e's character generation embodies a concept D&D actively strayed from in the 4e to 5e transition, and as such PF2e is hands down, inarguably, uncontestably superior to 5e in its character generation.
That concept is "Systematic Freedom".
PF2e has a rigorous, step-by-step approach to character generation. Each step tells you exactly what to do, you're never lost trying to figure out what it is you're hoping to accomplish. But each step also offers you great freedom of choice within that step, and the pool of choices is easily expandable via both official content and homebrew additions. Each step is smaller and encompasses less of a character's overall potential than the D&D Three-Step System of Species, Class, then Background - all of which happen whenever the player feels like it, many of which have weirdly conflicting sub-choices. PF2e's system is both more systematic and more permissive, allowing a player to customize their character as they wish to a degree 5e cannot and will not ever match. One first-level goblin ranger in PF2e will look completely different from another first-level goblin ranger in PF2e. A first-level goblin ranger in D&D 5e is effectively identical to every other first-level goblin ranger ever created in 5e, at least before any homebrew is applied.
PF2e has its own problems. A lot of problems. It is overdesigned to hell and back, clinging to the unnecessary modifier bloat of 3.5e simply because the most common complaint about 5e is that it's too oversimplified and dumbed down. But there are good ways to be complex and bad ways to be complex, and PF2e is often a perfect example of both ways to be complex.
PF2e's character generation? Excellent.
PF2e's Three Action turn economy and returning the game to allow for different things to cost a different number of actions, i.e. 5e Legendary actions? Perfection.
PF2e's twenty-page tables of hundreds of fiddly little floating stackable modifiers that can apply to each and every roll trying to account for everything from lighting conditions to barometric pressure? Nope. Bad. Unnecessary, Paizo. That's the bad complexity people were overjoyed to get away from in 3.5e. Do better in PF3e, just like Wizards needs to do better in D&D 6e.
Weird that your warforge would suddenly become 8 ft tall and double their weight but sure feats work I guess...
Overall they could have kept them with a little work but instead they went the quick/easy route and just picked the one that people played the most during playtesting.
I think the feats are flavoured as the warforged modifying their 'chassis' with more bulk, heavier armor, etc
Yeah, it's a trope of artificial beings to discover new features about themselves, so it could even be seen as not so much modification or augmentation as unlocking dormant capacities, fuller extensions etc. I don't think the feats rework of the sub races is problematic at all.
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I'm relatively new to D&D, having only started playing about 2 years ago(and still waiting to continue my current campaign), but i've seen enough to find the removal of the Warforged subraces(modules?) being retconned as kind of....unfair. I mean, there are a half-dozen elvish races - most of which are the effectively the same - a couple dragonborn varieties(not even counting the new Unearthed Arcana ones that make it like 20 different kinds), 3 kinds of halfling, 3 kinds of gnome, 3 kinds of dwarf, a dozen kinds of tiefling, and so on. So what was so 'broken'/clunky about specialized Warforged types that warranted that redaction?
They changed them based on playtest feedback as far as I know. The subraces were recreated as homebrew on here.
At a glance, they don't look internally balanced - the juggernaut is so much worse than the other two it's deeply questionable why anyone would choose it - and if you compare them to the official race, they're all more powerful, so presumably not externally balanced. On the other hand, it doesn't seem hard to create your own homebrew version compatible with the official warforged race.
Envoy: This is the stock race, with a skill proficiency and a tool proficiency.
Skirmisher: Drop skill and tool, +5 feet walking speed and light step. (This means external balance is weird - half-elves choose between 2 skills and 5 feet, and a skill and a tool is worse than 2 skills - but 2 skills is so much better than +5 feet I think that says more about half-elves than warforged.)
Juggernaut: Drop skill and tool, get unarmed damage and powerful build.
If you want to fix that terrible juggernaut subrace, upgrade it to be as good as the mule it's already emulating with those two abilities.
Juggernaut MK2: Drop skill and tool, get unarmed damage, powerful build, and sure-footed: advantage on Strength and Dexterity saving throws made against effects that would knock it prone.
Sure-footed isn't the best - there are plenty of ways to go prone without a Str or Dex save - but that's perfect, since the juggernaut is trying to compete with other relatively minor abilities.
Additionally Keith Baker released Warforged specific feats in his book Exploring Eberron that emulate these subclasses. I actually think this works much better than a subrace as it also fits the theme of the warforged being these omnifunctional tools of war (at least originally)
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Weird that your warforge would suddenly become 8 ft tall and double their weight but sure feats work I guess...
Overall they could have kept them with a little work but instead they went the quick/easy route and just picked the one that people played the most during playtesting.
I think the feats are flavoured as the warforged modifying their 'chassis' with more bulk, heavier armor, etc
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
UA Warforged and UA Changeling I remember both being way too powerful. Thinking back on it, it kind of seems like the Eberron races were kind of built to a different "Scale" than the other player races, almost like the Eberron setting was being deliberately designed to not be fully compatible with other D&D settings. Even now the Dragon Mark subraces are still, on average, more potent than the other subraces available.
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Eberron species are absolutely more powerful on average than PHB species. Frankly, I consider that a good thing. Species contributes so little to your character that it sometimes feels pointless - just pick whichever aesthetic you like best and go. Some people love that idea, but I'd prefer for species to impact gameplay more than just what skin you wear. Assigning each species unique, powerful, qualitative (i.e. not just BIGGANUMBAZ stat boosts or a mess of extra skill proficiencies) abilities accomplishes that. Frankly, even well-designed qualitative drawbacks, such as Sunlight Sensitivity on drow, duergar, and kobolds, can really help cement a species' impact on one's character.
The warforged are particularly cool and popular because their abilities can help your character feel like a deadly magitech robot man built for war. You're tougher than the squishy meatmen who think they're so much better than you because they were born from slop instead of manufactured to specification, you never sleep, and mortal frailties like disease and poison only get to you if they're super potent. Whereas the PHB Dragonborn, as the classic example of "why even bother?...yeah. No part of playing a dragonborn feels like you're an awesome dragon man, except the artwork. Playing a dragonborn usually feels more like you just had a particularly potent enchilada for lunch and have developed unusually keen belch control so you're saving the aftermath of that enchilada for the perfect moment that will never come.
It's one of the things I hope an eventual 6e does better, and one of the things I'd fix about 5e if homebrewing new PC species wasn't such a freaking unholy hassle.
Please do not contact or message me.
While I can't speak for the subraces, I can say that the Integrated Protection feature seemed a little broken. You could argue the same about Tortles, I suppose, but they can't get an AC of 22 at level 9 without using magic. Their AC is capped at 19.
This is extremely off topic for this thread and feels like you're trying to turn this thread into another multi-page flame war about Tasha's race changes.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
"everything mechanically different" is a weird way to phrase "just the ASI's"...
Custom lineages don’t “change” anything at all. If you use the custom lineage rules, you’re not halfling or an elf or a dwarf or a whatever, and you never were. You’re your own thing.
Are you perhaps thinking of the supernatural lineages added in the new Ravenloft book?
In very brief, and spoiler'd because it is indeed both off-topic and flame bait but also possibly a legitimate ask...:
The answer is that "Custom Lineage" is not any pre-existing species. There is no such thing as "I'm playing an elf, but I'm using Custom Lineage instead of the elf stat block". The correct interpretation of Custom Lineage is that it is there for characters who are not from any recognized species or who originate from means other than being born - a cursed doll, an escapee from the Man-Mantis Invasion Force, a Saibaman who gained independence, whatever the player has decided their new thing is. Custom Lineage is not for ignoring the stat block for your own species because you want a feat at level 1, instead. A DM can decide this is permitted for their own table, but in the doing they are effectively removing species entirely from their game and I do not believe that to be a sound decision. At least, not for the kinds of games I like to play/run.
Please do not contact or message me.
Everything about Yurei's comment was about the Warforged and Eberron and comparing them to the base PHB races, with the only tidbit about their hopes for the eventual 6e being a single sentence at the end. By contrast, your entire comment seemed centered around picking a fight with Yurei and turning the thread in the direction of discussing the (optional) custom lineage rules presented in Tasha's. What are you hoping that Yurei's opinion on Tasha's optional rules will contribute to this thread?
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Wayfinders was playtest content so it was expected to change. That was not communicated well with that book however.
Edit: also I highly recommend Exploring Eberron. It is great for more Eberron content.
There are things about both the WgtE and the published book (Rising from the Last War) that our group didn't like, so we ended up with:
Of course if you are playing Adventurer's League, only the Last War version is legal.
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This would have made a LOT more sense to take this approach....actual options instead of a boilerplate approach that makes little sense given the lore of Eberron.
I think the problem was they were making the race with a more setting agnostic approach than actually embracing the world lore.
Keith Baker's approach of Warforged-specific feats is an excellent one. A warforged stat block that specifically said "select one warforged-specific feat to represent the task for which your warforged character was built" as one of its species features would've been absolutely splendid.
'Course, I think that should be a thing for every species and that species-based feats should be hugely expanded on. Any new species should come with an absolute minimum of three species-specific feats, and new books can introduce new ones tied to the species' lore in a given setting or even just throw them out there for shits. Alas, 4e put paid to actually being able to make your character your character. C'est la vie.
Please do not contact or message me.
1000% agree!
I love PF2e approach to racial feats...so amazing.
PF2e's character generation embodies a concept D&D actively strayed from in the 4e to 5e transition, and as such PF2e is hands down, inarguably, uncontestably superior to 5e in its character generation.
That concept is "Systematic Freedom".
PF2e has a rigorous, step-by-step approach to character generation. Each step tells you exactly what to do, you're never lost trying to figure out what it is you're hoping to accomplish. But each step also offers you great freedom of choice within that step, and the pool of choices is easily expandable via both official content and homebrew additions. Each step is smaller and encompasses less of a character's overall potential than the D&D Three-Step System of Species, Class, then Background - all of which happen whenever the player feels like it, many of which have weirdly conflicting sub-choices. PF2e's system is both more systematic and more permissive, allowing a player to customize their character as they wish to a degree 5e cannot and will not ever match. One first-level goblin ranger in PF2e will look completely different from another first-level goblin ranger in PF2e. A first-level goblin ranger in D&D 5e is effectively identical to every other first-level goblin ranger ever created in 5e, at least before any homebrew is applied.
PF2e has its own problems. A lot of problems. It is overdesigned to hell and back, clinging to the unnecessary modifier bloat of 3.5e simply because the most common complaint about 5e is that it's too oversimplified and dumbed down. But there are good ways to be complex and bad ways to be complex, and PF2e is often a perfect example of both ways to be complex.
PF2e's character generation? Excellent.
PF2e's Three Action turn economy and returning the game to allow for different things to cost a different number of actions, i.e. 5e Legendary actions? Perfection.
PF2e's twenty-page tables of hundreds of fiddly little floating stackable modifiers that can apply to each and every roll trying to account for everything from lighting conditions to barometric pressure? Nope. Bad. Unnecessary, Paizo. That's the bad complexity people were overjoyed to get away from in 3.5e. Do better in PF3e, just like Wizards needs to do better in D&D 6e.
Please do not contact or message me.
Yeah, it's a trope of artificial beings to discover new features about themselves, so it could even be seen as not so much modification or augmentation as unlocking dormant capacities, fuller extensions etc. I don't think the feats rework of the sub races is problematic at all.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.