Sure, except you can't do kalashtar outside of Eberron. Their Quori language doesn't exist, because quori don't exist. You'd have to alter their stat block so heavily they wouldn't really be kalashtar anymore, which would destroy the species in Eberron. You'd be better off just making a new psionically-active species than trying to cram kalashtar into a non-Eberron game.
But I suppose Duergars, who are deeply tied to Forgotten Realms history, and created by mind flayers from shield dwarves (yet another specific Forgotten Realms speciality) makes sense as system agnostic, cause even though shield dwarves are FR specific, they can be easily handwaved into any setting...
I don't see how they could do it, but I guess that there is a tiny chance that if you do buy MotM, it'll overwrite your previous statblocks etc.
Never mind could, I don't see why they would. DDB is obligated by the licence to faithfully reproduce the contents of the books on the site, and with M³ categorically not being errata the contents of Volo's and Mordenkainen's remain unchanged - hence, their DDB versions should also remain unchanged. It'll become entirely clear in May though, when people who own the two originals will buy M³ regardless (almost certainly myself for one).
I mean, the Rising of the Last War wasn't supposed to be just a bunch of errata for Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, yet the latter has been "updated" from it anyway... so what stops Wizard to come out with an errata that aligns all these changes retroactively to PHB, just as they did with the changes for the Orc and Kobold races for Volo's guide?
To put a warforged into any other setting, you'd generally have to construct a significant amount of lore
Any setting with artificers already has all the lore you should need to add warforged, really
I think what Davyd refered to was more about putting warforged as a race into another setting than about a single individual. For a single one you don't need any official lore, because one uniquely weird oddity (or up to a handful on the outside) showing up somewhere can be explained any way you want ("a wizard did it" remaining a perennial favourite). If something exists as a race however, background lore is required. Even "talented artificers commonly built them to serve as bodyguards and manservants until their creations outgrew them" or something is meaningful lore that implies a lot beyond what is said in less than twenty words there.
Sure, but that's exactly what making something "setting agnostic" is supposed to do, right? Strip out the specific lore and give a bare-bones framework you can then port into any campaign world? "Warforged is a catch-all term for any humanoid construct that has achieved sentience, whether by happenstance on an individual basis or through the efforts of a group of wizards and artificers to create an entirely new race" or something like that would seem to do the trick
Either I'm not understanding the assignment here, or leaving out warforged is, as I said, weirdly arbitrary
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
What's funny is that y'all have the stat blocks for warforged and can very easily do all the porting you're talking about. It almost more seems like folks are pissed off the Faerun lore is being confined to Faerun books, which is weird because every other setting kinda automatically assumes its lore doesn't apply outside its books. Why should Faerun be any different?
To put a warforged into any other setting, you'd generally have to construct a significant amount of lore
Any setting with artificers already has all the lore you should need to add warforged, really
I think what Davyd refered to was more about putting warforged as a race into another setting than about a single individual. For a single one you don't need any official lore, because one uniquely weird oddity (or up to a handful on the outside) showing up somewhere can be explained any way you want ("a wizard did it" remaining a perennial favourite). If something exists as a race however, background lore is required. Even "talented artificers commonly built them to serve as bodyguards and manservants until their creations outgrew them" or something is meaningful lore that implies a lot beyond what is said in less than twenty words there.
Sure, but that's exactly what making something "setting agnostic" is supposed to do, right? Strip out the specific lore and give a bare-bones framework you can then port into any campaign world? "Warforged is a catch-all term for any humanoid construct that has achieved sentience, whether by happenstance on an individual basis or through the efforts of a group of wizards and artificers to create an entirely new race" or something like that would seem to do the trick
Either I'm not understanding the assignment here, or leaving out warforged is, as I said, weirdly arbitrary
I just have to pop in to say, I remember seeing this gorgeous art someone did (or had commissioned) for their character. A "warforged" that was a glass or crystal statue given life somehow.
Really the only thing in the core class features that maybe needs some justification is the integrating armor thing, but hey, magical worlds. It can just be a magical quirk.
So yeah, count me in as Warforged should have been included, or at least some renamed version.
To put a warforged into any other setting, you'd generally have to construct a significant amount of lore
Any setting with artificers already has all the lore you should need to add warforged, really
I think what Davyd refered to was more about putting warforged as a race into another setting than about a single individual. For a single one you don't need any official lore, because one uniquely weird oddity (or up to a handful on the outside) showing up somewhere can be explained any way you want ("a wizard did it" remaining a perennial favourite). If something exists as a race however, background lore is required. Even "talented artificers commonly built them to serve as bodyguards and manservants until their creations outgrew them" or something is meaningful lore that implies a lot beyond what is said in less than twenty words there.
Sure, but that's exactly what making something "setting agnostic" is supposed to do, right? Strip out the specific lore and give a bare-bones framework you can then port into any campaign world? "Warforged is a catch-all term for any humanoid construct that has achieved sentience, whether by happenstance on an individual basis or through the efforts of a group of wizards and artificers to create an entirely new race" or something like that would seem to do the trick
Either I'm not understanding the assignment here, or leaving out warforged is, as I said, weirdly arbitrary
Isn't this some thing that is up to WotC? They write the lore for each published world right? They decided that the races in MMM were likely to be more "universal". If you don't like it you should really take it up with them and not the people here or the DnDBeyond team since no one here has any say in the matter.
Isn't this some thing that is up to WotC? They write the lore for each published world right? They decided that the races in MMM were likely to be more "universal". If you don't like it you should really take it up with them and not the people here or the DnDBeyond team since no one here has any say in the matter.
We're having a discussion about it. Davyd is, as he's indicated, not posting as a mod but just as a member of the DDB community. I'm not "taking it up" with anybody, just commenting on a strange choice by WotC
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I don't see how they could do it, but I guess that there is a tiny chance that if you do buy MotM, it'll overwrite your previous statblocks etc.
Never mind could, I don't see why they would. DDB is obligated by the licence to faithfully reproduce the contents of the books on the site, and with M³ categorically not being errata the contents of Volo's and Mordenkainen's remain unchanged - hence, their DDB versions should also remain unchanged. It'll become entirely clear in May though, when people who own the two originals will buy M³ regardless (almost certainly myself for one).
I mean, the Rising of the Last War wasn't supposed to be just a bunch of errata for Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, yet the latter has been "updated" from it anyway... so what stops Wizard to come out with an errata that aligns all these changes retroactively to PHB, just as they did with the changes for the Orc and Kobold races for Volo's guide?
I think we're talking about different things here. M³ doesn't cover PHB races, unless I'm very much mistaken, so anything affecting the PHB would be another issue entirely. And the changes to WGtE were classified as errata, that's the point. M³ is explicitly not considered errata, because if it was then every other source with the same content would have to be changed - have to be, automatically and for free - which is not something WotC wants.
Either I'm not understanding the assignment here, or leaving out warforged is, as I said, weirdly arbitrary
Regardless of anything else, the decision to put warforged in or leave them out has (as far as I can tell) nothing to do with whether they could be made setting-agnostic or not. I think it was made based on whether they were setting-agnostic in their sourcebook writeups or not. Maybe I missed something, but iirc Volo's and Mordenkainen's are setting-agnostic in their writeups. There are "and this applies to race X in setting Y" bits in Mord's, but the basic writeups at most reference gods and gods, in 5E's cosmology, can be anywhere. The Warforged writeup in E: RftLW is not setting agnostic. That's what makes it not arbitrary, as best I can tell anyway.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Regardless of anything else, the decision to put warforged in or leave them out has (as far as I can tell) nothing to do with whether they could be made setting-agnostic or not. I think it was made based on whether they were setting-agnostic in their sourcebook writeups or not. Maybe I missed something, but iirc Volo's and Mordenkainen's are setting-agnostic in their writeups. There are "and this applies to race X in setting Y" bits in Mord's, but the basic writeups at most reference gods and gods, in 5E's cosmology, can be anywhere. The Warforged writeup in E: RftLW is not setting agnostic. That's what makes it not arbitrary, as best I can tell anyway.
Hmm. I just skimmed through the Eberron book and don't really see more Eberron-specific lore in the warforged writeup than is in the shifter or changeling ones -- although the latter two have what could be called setting-agnostic intro paragraphs, while the warforged one talks about House Cannith and such
Considering all the other changes they're making though, it still seems odd to leave warforged out of this particular book, as it's a pretty basic trope for a PC. If later this year you start a campaign using only PHB and MMM options, you will not be able to make your own Fresh Cut Grass ripoff warforged PC
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I would question whether it is a basic trope, considering how viciously some people have spent the last few years defending "ONLY FAERUN FOREVER" on this board and presumably others. Sure, some folks really enjoy warforged, but a lot of others are nigh-violently opposed to mixing any degree whatsoever of sci-fi into their fantasy.
Could also simply be that they ran out of pages and had to pick what to cut. We'll never know.
That and anything that stops people from trying to play Fresher Cut Grass is a good thing. None a'ya are Sam Riegel, ya never will be, and frankly even Sam can't manage an FCG that doesn't sabotage the game's gravitas to an extent. No playing Claptrap units in D&D unless you're doing beer-and-pretzels D&D where nothing matters anyways.
I just skimmed through the Eberron book and don't really see more Eberron-specific lore in the warforged writeup than is in the shifter or changeling ones -- although the latter two have what could be called setting-agnostic intro paragraphs, while the warforged one talks about House Cannith and such
"The warforged were built to fight in the Last War. While the first warforged were mindless automatons, House Cannith devoted vast resources to improving these steel soldiers. An unexpected breakthrough produced sapient soldiers, giving rise to what some have only grudgingly accepted as a new species. Warforged are made from wood and metal, but they can feel pain and emotion. Built as weapons, they must now find a purpose beyond war. A warforged can be a steadfast ally, a cold-hearted killer, or a visionary in search of meaning."
That's a lot more specific than anything in the Changeling or Shifter entries.
Considering all the other changes they're making though, it still seems odd to leave warforged out of this particular book, as it's a pretty basic trope for a PC. If later this year you start a campaign using only PHB and MMM options, you will not be able to make your own Fresh Cut Grass ripoff warforged PC
Odd is whatever it might be. I just don't think it's arbitrary in this case. And FCG is about as close to Reborn characteristics as to Warforged, which is to say not at all. :p
As a total aside, in several groups I've been part of an FCG rip-off would have been welcomed by everyone but a character gaslighted into burning his own family to death, an amnesiac emo self-harmer, a klepto substance abuser who permaglued a golden dick onto someone's hand just because she had a stick up her ass and the daughter of the most famous escort of all the lands who's emotionally a teenager half the time and whose not-so-imaginary best friend is an imposter deity revelling in causing chaos... Eeeeh, those would have been problematic for some of the other players to deal with.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Isn't this some thing that is up to WotC? They write the lore for each published world right? They decided that the races in MMM were likely to be more "universal". If you don't like it you should really take it up with them and not the people here or the DnDBeyond team since no one here has any say in the matter.
We're having a discussion about it. Davyd is, as he's indicated, not posting as a mod but just as a member of the DDB community. I'm not "taking it up" with anybody, just commenting on a strange choice by WotC
Sorry, I may have come across too harshly. What I was trying to say is no one here can really say what the justifications are for WotC's choices. It is all just speculation. WotC wrote the lore for each individual world and only they know their reasons. I don't take issue with you or your questions, but it seems like a circular conversation since no one here can speak for WotC.
Critical Role in general tends to play pretty powerfully against type. It's probably one of the main reasons it's so fashionable around here to pile hate on CR/Exandria - the group kinda actively goes out of their way to avoid Iconic characters after C1 and Vox Machina. Ironically, most of the complaints I've seen elsewhere leveled against the Nein aren't so much "these are terrible people!" - since in large part the Nein themselves and also their players agree and did not brush off the fact that most of them were broken people looking for ways to heal - but rather "these characters aren't right!" Even when they are right - Nott started the game and played for a third of it as pretty much exactly the kind of Iconic rogue people expect, and frankly ended up as the other kind later on, and Caduceus was everything somebody expects from a basic-***** healbot cleric save for the firbolg part - quietly devout, mostly passive, and largely a nonfactor in most any scene or discussion where he's not bustijng out the sickest burn on an evil archmage.
But Yasha as an aasimar barbarian with workable Intelligence?
Fjord as a half-orc spellcaster?
Jester as a cheerful, happy, fun-loving nerdgirl instead of an emotionally stunted Hellpact warlock the way all tiffles are supposed to be?
Mollymauk existing?
Makes the Old Guard sorts tear their hair out and screech in frustration. Aasimar are clerics or paladins, period. Half-orcs are barbarians, or maybe they can be fighters with anger issues. All tiffles are always emotionally tortured deviants bound in some way to devils, and frankly there isn't anything on Mollymauk I could point to that wouldn't piss off a third of the Return To 1e crowd. He's the wrong class, the wrong species, the wrong color, the wrong gender, the wrong fashion, the wrong background, the wrong everything, and his mere existence in the overall D&D lexicon is enough reason for most of the game's grognards to decry Critical Role as a corruption of everything roleplaying forever.
Ye gods I miss that walking acid trip. Molly my friend, you're a star that never got a chance to shine.
"Warforged are called like that because on Eberron they were forged for war so you can't have the race on any other worlds..."
On Faerun, there are no high elves or wood elves or mountain dwarves or hill dwarves; they are called sun elves, moon elves, shield dwarves and gold dwarves. They just use the racial attributes and abilities for high and wood elves and mountain and hill dwarves
Dragonborn were not really a system agnostic race before dnd 4e; and on Krynn they are called draconians
Tieflings originally existed in the Planescape setting; in 3e they were added to the Faerun setting. Now they are system agnostic, even though there are other worlds where you would need to invent a lot of extra lore for them
Githyanki and Duergar are system agnostic races, even though they were created by the mind flayers - so on any setting where mind flayers are non existant, you would have to add a lot of lore...
"Volo and Mordenkainen are setting agnostic write ups"
Volo, a.k.a Volothamp Geddarm, is a very iconic Forgotten Realms hero, and the whole Volo's guide was written from his point of view
Mordenkainen was Gary Gygax's iconic Greyhawk character; most definitely not system agnostic
"M³ doesn't cover PHB races"
Directly not; what it does though is it is changing the non-PHB races retroactively, by switching the existing Ability Score Increases to this bland Tasha way, also setting every races' speed to 30 feet, including small races... how long do you think it will take to come out with an errata to adjust the existing PHB races too?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
--[ Natural 20 - that's how I roll! ]-- We've stopped this OGL madness, but stay vigilant, they tried it once, they can try it again.
I really don't understand what your objection is here, Edem? On the one hand you hate M3 and "the bland Tasha's way" of doing species, and are heavily championing replacing all the setting-agnostic descriptions and information with Faerun-specific lore on top of jettisoning non-Faerun species like tieflings and dragonborn.
And on the other hand...you're annoyed and upset that warforged weren't crammed into M3 with all the Eberron ripped out so you can back-hack them into Faerun...?
What's the logic, here? Where's the sense? What's the actual issue being poked at here?
1) "Warforged are called like that because on Eberron they were forged for war so you can't have the race on any other worlds..."
On Faerun, there are no high elves or wood elves or mountain dwarves or hill dwarves; they are called sun elves, moon elves, shield dwarves and gold dwarves. They just use the racial attributes and abilities for high and wood elves and mountain and hill dwarves
Dragonborn were not really a system agnostic race before dnd 4e; and on Krynn they are called draconians
Tieflings originally existed in the Planescape setting; in 3e they were added to the Faerun setting. Now they are system agnostic, even though there are other worlds where you would need to invent a lot of extra lore for them
Githyanki and Duergar are system agnostic races, even though they were created by the mind flayers - so on any setting where mind flayers are non existant, you would have to add a lot of lore...
2) "Volo and Mordenkainen are setting agnostic write ups"
Volo, a.k.a Volothamp Geddarm, is a very iconic Forgotten Realms hero, and the whole Volo's guide was written from his point of view
Mordenkainen was Gary Gygax's iconic Greyhawk character; most definitely not system agnostic
3) "M³ doesn't cover PHB races"
Directly not; what it does though is it is changing the non-PHB races retroactively, by switching the existing Ability Score Increases to this bland Tasha way, also setting every races' speed to 30 feet, including small races... how long do you think it will take to come out with an errata to adjust the existing PHB races too?
1) said absolutely nobody. Making up stuff to prove it wrong is... I'm going to say pointless and leave it at that.
2) their respective books are written up as setting agnostic nonetheless.
3) M³ doesn't change the PHB, not directly and also not retroactively. If WotC changes the PHB later on (which is exceedingly likely since they announced a system overhaul for 2024) then that's what happens then, but that's besides the point. The question was whether there's a chance buying M³ will result in content you own being changed on DDB, and the answer to that is no.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Kalashtar and warforged are not considered "setting agnostic" 'races'. M3 reprints character species that are expected to exist in some form in any setting. Shifters, being useful as a stand-in for White Wolf game players wanting their fur in D&D, apparently qualify. So do changelings, despite the fact that DMs detest changelings and ban them even from Eberron games. Kalashtar and warforged, however, have stories very specific to the Eberron setting and are not really translatable without ground-up do-overs that would ruin them for actual Eberron games. Thus why they do not appear in M3.
I understand why Wizards wouldn't include Kalashtar and Warforged, but first of all they made Artificers (who has as much ties to Eberron as Warforged) setting agnostic (especially since Tasha's); and Changelings and Shifters (who are also quite tied in Eberron) are also setting agnostic. That aside, the very statement that with this book you can use things from Eberron or Strixhaven, while two of the four Eberron races and the only Strixhaven race (Owlkin) are actually not in the book, is quite questionable, since nothing else from those books are present in MMM either...
Artificer has been popular as a prestige class in previous editions for a while. Actually, Warlocks, and Sorcerors got their start as prestige or sub classes once upon a time too. People like the flavor of the concepts, which while I do get, I think has over the years stripped a bit too much out of the Wizard in order to make all of these separate classes. In 3e, Wizards had item creation and metamagic associated with them as well references to the term "eldritch".
The Warforged concept is somewhat unique to Ebberon, but not the niche it occupies. We did used to have things like effigies and golems and the awaken spell etc. things before Ebberon; so I imagine we can use a Warforged statblock in other campaigns without it necessarily carrying the name or relation to the Eberron setting.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
What I find most ridiculous about the whole thing is, from the Joe Starr quote Davyd posted on the first page, " it's a book that's meant to open up D&D lore a little bit so that you can use anything that you want in your homebrew world." The stated point is to make official lore modular so anything can be pulled from one setting and plugged into another as is with no tweaking whatsoever to make it fit neatly into any other setting. Do you know what the downside of making everything canonically setting generic is? It officially and canonically waters down everything, including the original settings which are now less original. The very idea of making official lore "homebrew friendly" is a self contradicting concept. Nobody should need official lore for their homebrew because then is isn't homebrew, it's official lore. All this is really accomplishing is a reverse of the original status quo where settings and lore with any specific and unique traits are now "homebrew" retcons of the original ones that have been officially retconned into being generic and nonspecific.
Congratulations, WotC, you've applied the GURPS philosophy to D&D. Which is something anybody could have done on their own and plenty of people have been doing for decades because that's what homebrew is. Just do the same thing that's worked for as long as D&D has existed and say "your game can work however you want it to."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
But I suppose Duergars, who are deeply tied to Forgotten Realms history, and created by mind flayers from shield dwarves (yet another specific Forgotten Realms speciality) makes sense as system agnostic, cause even though shield dwarves are FR specific, they can be easily handwaved into any setting...
I mean, the Rising of the Last War wasn't supposed to be just a bunch of errata for Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, yet the latter has been "updated" from it anyway... so what stops Wizard to come out with an errata that aligns all these changes retroactively to PHB, just as they did with the changes for the Orc and Kobold races for Volo's guide?
--[ Natural 20 - that's how I roll! ]--
We've stopped this OGL madness, but stay vigilant, they tried it once, they can try it again.
Sure, but that's exactly what making something "setting agnostic" is supposed to do, right? Strip out the specific lore and give a bare-bones framework you can then port into any campaign world? "Warforged is a catch-all term for any humanoid construct that has achieved sentience, whether by happenstance on an individual basis or through the efforts of a group of wizards and artificers to create an entirely new race" or something like that would seem to do the trick
Either I'm not understanding the assignment here, or leaving out warforged is, as I said, weirdly arbitrary
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
What's funny is that y'all have the stat blocks for warforged and can very easily do all the porting you're talking about. It almost more seems like folks are pissed off the Faerun lore is being confined to Faerun books, which is weird because every other setting kinda automatically assumes its lore doesn't apply outside its books. Why should Faerun be any different?
Please do not contact or message me.
I just have to pop in to say, I remember seeing this gorgeous art someone did (or had commissioned) for their character.
A "warforged" that was a glass or crystal statue given life somehow.
Really the only thing in the core class features that maybe needs some justification is the integrating armor thing, but hey, magical worlds. It can just be a magical quirk.
So yeah, count me in as Warforged should have been included, or at least some renamed version.
Isn't this some thing that is up to WotC? They write the lore for each published world right? They decided that the races in MMM were likely to be more "universal". If you don't like it you should really take it up with them and not the people here or the DnDBeyond team since no one here has any say in the matter.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
We're having a discussion about it. Davyd is, as he's indicated, not posting as a mod but just as a member of the DDB community. I'm not "taking it up" with anybody, just commenting on a strange choice by WotC
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I think we're talking about different things here. M³ doesn't cover PHB races, unless I'm very much mistaken, so anything affecting the PHB would be another issue entirely. And the changes to WGtE were classified as errata, that's the point. M³ is explicitly not considered errata, because if it was then every other source with the same content would have to be changed - have to be, automatically and for free - which is not something WotC wants.
Regardless of anything else, the decision to put warforged in or leave them out has (as far as I can tell) nothing to do with whether they could be made setting-agnostic or not. I think it was made based on whether they were setting-agnostic in their sourcebook writeups or not. Maybe I missed something, but iirc Volo's and Mordenkainen's are setting-agnostic in their writeups. There are "and this applies to race X in setting Y" bits in Mord's, but the basic writeups at most reference gods and gods, in 5E's cosmology, can be anywhere. The Warforged writeup in E: RftLW is not setting agnostic. That's what makes it not arbitrary, as best I can tell anyway.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Hmm. I just skimmed through the Eberron book and don't really see more Eberron-specific lore in the warforged writeup than is in the shifter or changeling ones -- although the latter two have what could be called setting-agnostic intro paragraphs, while the warforged one talks about House Cannith and such
Considering all the other changes they're making though, it still seems odd to leave warforged out of this particular book, as it's a pretty basic trope for a PC. If later this year you start a campaign using only PHB and MMM options, you will not be able to make your own
Fresh Cut Grass ripoffwarforged PCActive characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I would question whether it is a basic trope, considering how viciously some people have spent the last few years defending "ONLY FAERUN FOREVER" on this board and presumably others. Sure, some folks really enjoy warforged, but a lot of others are nigh-violently opposed to mixing any degree whatsoever of sci-fi into their fantasy.
Could also simply be that they ran out of pages and had to pick what to cut. We'll never know.
That and anything that stops people from trying to play Fresher Cut Grass is a good thing. None a'ya are Sam Riegel, ya never will be, and frankly even Sam can't manage an FCG that doesn't sabotage the game's gravitas to an extent. No playing Claptrap units in D&D unless you're doing beer-and-pretzels D&D where nothing matters anyways.Please do not contact or message me.
"The warforged were built to fight in the Last War. While the first warforged were mindless automatons, House Cannith devoted vast resources to improving these steel soldiers. An unexpected breakthrough produced sapient soldiers, giving rise to what some have only grudgingly accepted as a new species. Warforged are made from wood and metal, but they can feel pain and emotion. Built as weapons, they must now find a purpose beyond war. A warforged can be a steadfast ally, a cold-hearted killer, or a visionary in search of meaning."
That's a lot more specific than anything in the Changeling or Shifter entries.
Odd is whatever it might be. I just don't think it's arbitrary in this case. And FCG is about as close to Reborn characteristics as to Warforged, which is to say not at all. :p
As a total aside, in several groups I've been part of an FCG rip-off would have been welcomed by everyone but a character gaslighted into burning his own family to death, an amnesiac emo self-harmer, a klepto substance abuser who permaglued a golden dick onto someone's hand just because she had a stick up her ass and the daughter of the most famous escort of all the lands who's emotionally a teenager half the time and whose not-so-imaginary best friend is an imposter deity revelling in causing chaos... Eeeeh, those would have been problematic for some of the other players to deal with.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Sorry, I may have come across too harshly. What I was trying to say is no one here can really say what the justifications are for WotC's choices. It is all just speculation. WotC wrote the lore for each individual world and only they know their reasons. I don't take issue with you or your questions, but it seems like a circular conversation since no one here can speak for WotC.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Critical Role in general tends to play pretty powerfully against type. It's probably one of the main reasons it's so fashionable around here to pile hate on CR/Exandria - the group kinda actively goes out of their way to avoid Iconic characters after C1 and Vox Machina. Ironically, most of the complaints I've seen elsewhere leveled against the Nein aren't so much "these are terrible people!" - since in large part the Nein themselves and also their players agree and did not brush off the fact that most of them were broken people looking for ways to heal - but rather "these characters aren't right!" Even when they are right - Nott started the game and played for a third of it as pretty much exactly the kind of Iconic rogue people expect, and frankly ended up as the other kind later on, and Caduceus was everything somebody expects from a basic-***** healbot cleric save for the firbolg part - quietly devout, mostly passive, and largely a nonfactor in most any scene or discussion where he's not bustijng out the sickest burn on an evil archmage.
But Yasha as an aasimar barbarian with workable Intelligence?
Fjord as a half-orc spellcaster?
Jester as a cheerful, happy, fun-loving nerdgirl instead of an emotionally stunted Hellpact warlock the way all tiffles are supposed to be?
Mollymauk existing?
Makes the Old Guard sorts tear their hair out and screech in frustration. Aasimar are clerics or paladins, period. Half-orcs are barbarians, or maybe they can be fighters with anger issues. All tiffles are always emotionally tortured deviants bound in some way to devils, and frankly there isn't anything on Mollymauk I could point to that wouldn't piss off a third of the Return To 1e crowd. He's the wrong class, the wrong species, the wrong color, the wrong gender, the wrong fashion, the wrong background, the wrong everything, and his mere existence in the overall D&D lexicon is enough reason for most of the game's grognards to decry Critical Role as a corruption of everything roleplaying forever.
Ye gods I miss that walking acid trip. Molly my friend, you're a star that never got a chance to shine.Please do not contact or message me.
This isn't the place to discuss Critical Role. Please start a new thread if you wish to do so
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
This isn't the place to discuss Critical Role. Please start a new thread if you wish to do so
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
"Warforged are called like that because on Eberron they were forged for war so you can't have the race on any other worlds..."
"Volo and Mordenkainen are setting agnostic write ups"
"M³ doesn't cover PHB races"
Directly not; what it does though is it is changing the non-PHB races retroactively, by switching the existing Ability Score Increases to this bland Tasha way, also setting every races' speed to 30 feet, including small races... how long do you think it will take to come out with an errata to adjust the existing PHB races too?
--[ Natural 20 - that's how I roll! ]--
We've stopped this OGL madness, but stay vigilant, they tried it once, they can try it again.
I really don't understand what your objection is here, Edem? On the one hand you hate M3 and "the bland Tasha's way" of doing species, and are heavily championing replacing all the setting-agnostic descriptions and information with Faerun-specific lore on top of jettisoning non-Faerun species like tieflings and dragonborn.
And on the other hand...you're annoyed and upset that warforged weren't crammed into M3 with all the Eberron ripped out so you can back-hack them into Faerun...?
What's the logic, here? Where's the sense? What's the actual issue being poked at here?
Please do not contact or message me.
1) said absolutely nobody. Making up stuff to prove it wrong is... I'm going to say pointless and leave it at that.
2) their respective books are written up as setting agnostic nonetheless.
3) M³ doesn't change the PHB, not directly and also not retroactively. If WotC changes the PHB later on (which is exceedingly likely since they announced a system overhaul for 2024) then that's what happens then, but that's besides the point. The question was whether there's a chance buying M³ will result in content you own being changed on DDB, and the answer to that is no.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Artificer has been popular as a prestige class in previous editions for a while. Actually, Warlocks, and Sorcerors got their start as prestige or sub classes once upon a time too. People like the flavor of the concepts, which while I do get, I think has over the years stripped a bit too much out of the Wizard in order to make all of these separate classes. In 3e, Wizards had item creation and metamagic associated with them as well references to the term "eldritch".
The Warforged concept is somewhat unique to Ebberon, but not the niche it occupies. We did used to have things like effigies and golems and the awaken spell etc. things before Ebberon; so I imagine we can use a Warforged statblock in other campaigns without it necessarily carrying the name or relation to the Eberron setting.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Let's try and keep things on topic please, or start a new thread
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
What I find most ridiculous about the whole thing is, from the Joe Starr quote Davyd posted on the first page, " it's a book that's meant to open up D&D lore a little bit so that you can use anything that you want in your homebrew world." The stated point is to make official lore modular so anything can be pulled from one setting and plugged into another as is with no tweaking whatsoever to make it fit neatly into any other setting. Do you know what the downside of making everything canonically setting generic is? It officially and canonically waters down everything, including the original settings which are now less original. The very idea of making official lore "homebrew friendly" is a self contradicting concept. Nobody should need official lore for their homebrew because then is isn't homebrew, it's official lore. All this is really accomplishing is a reverse of the original status quo where settings and lore with any specific and unique traits are now "homebrew" retcons of the original ones that have been officially retconned into being generic and nonspecific.
Congratulations, WotC, you've applied the GURPS philosophy to D&D. Which is something anybody could have done on their own and plenty of people have been doing for decades because that's what homebrew is. Just do the same thing that's worked for as long as D&D has existed and say "your game can work however you want it to."