There has been a thought festering in my mind for a few days now after finally picking up the E RftLW book.
Warforged are created, so the are/were designed with certain physical attributes: Height, weight etc being fixed in place. Essentially I was reminded of Data in Star Trek explaining to the young kid in ST:Insurrection that his legs were a certain length when he came online and they won't change.
To that end, has anyone ever toyed with the idea of a Warforged PC's physical ability scores (Str, Dex, Con) being fixed - afterall, it's not like they can work out and gain muscle mass, or lose weight to become more flexible and nimble.
Our next campaign will be my 1st as DM in many, many years and I know one player would really like to play a Warforged and I'm looking to lock the Str, Dex and Con scores at character creation but how best to balance that out as the character levels up.
First thought would be granting bonuses to those ability scores from the outset, but that could bring imbalance in esrly combat encounters.
It could also mess with some Feats that also grant a small ASI.
I would say a) that's a pretty major gameplay nerf to Warforged that is going to feel unfairly punishing to most players and potentially make them dislike their character choice, and b) it doesn't really even make all that much sense - there's no reason a robot can't be modified to make it stronger, more nimble, able to take more punishment, etc. I wouldn't recommend it, but kind of depends what your player thinks too
I'm aware that you could re-built a robot to make it stronger etc, but with the creation of Warforged being somewhat outlawed in Eberron it may be difficult to find somewhere willing to do it and it wouldn't be for free either and would be time-consuming. It's never sat particularly well with me (even as a player) that suddenly one day any given PC can wake up and they are suddenly stronger, or smarter or my personal favourite, the Elf Wizard who yesterday would stand at he back of the party for fear of getting hurt and casting Magic Missile wakes and all of sudden remembers all those years of swordplay training and now gets stuck into the fight as a Bladesinger.
When I mentioned giving bonus to the physical stats, I wasn't meaning +1 or anything. I'm suggesting a serious bonus, to the point that looking to improve upon them later in the PC's career could almost been seen as a waste of an ASI. When you look at objectively, there isn't a massive difference in a Str of 18 vs a Str of 20
When you look at objectively, there isn't a massive difference in a Str of 18 vs a Str of 20
Hard disagree. "Massive" is subjective, but I would say that +1 on every attack roll and damage roll you will ever do in the lifetime of your character qualifies as a massive difference
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
There has been a thought festering in my mind for a few days now after finally picking up the E RftLW book.
Warforged are created, so the are/were designed with certain physical attributes: Height, weight etc being fixed in place. Essentially I was reminded of Data in Star Trek explaining to the young kid in ST:Insurrection that his legs were a certain length when he came online and they won't change.
To that end, has anyone ever toyed with the idea of a Warforged PC's physical ability scores (Str, Dex, Con) being fixed - afterall, it's not like they can work out and gain muscle mass, or lose weight to become more flexible and nimble.
Our next campaign will be my 1st as DM in many, many years and I know one player would really like to play a Warforged and I'm looking to lock the Str, Dex and Con scores at character creation but how best to balance that out as the character levels up.
First thought would be granting bonuses to those ability scores from the outset, but that could bring imbalance in esrly combat encounters.
It could also mess with some Feats that also grant a small ASI.
Any ideas?
I would say a) that's a pretty major gameplay nerf to Warforged that is going to feel unfairly punishing to most players and potentially make them dislike their character choice, and b) it doesn't really even make all that much sense - there's no reason a robot can't be modified to make it stronger, more nimble, able to take more punishment, etc. I wouldn't recommend it, but kind of depends what your player thinks too
Thanks for the reply. Appreciate the feedback.
I'm aware that you could re-built a robot to make it stronger etc, but with the creation of Warforged being somewhat outlawed in Eberron it may be difficult to find somewhere willing to do it and it wouldn't be for free either and would be time-consuming. It's never sat particularly well with me (even as a player) that suddenly one day any given PC can wake up and they are suddenly stronger, or smarter or my personal favourite, the Elf Wizard who yesterday would stand at he back of the party for fear of getting hurt and casting Magic Missile wakes and all of sudden remembers all those years of swordplay training and now gets stuck into the fight as a Bladesinger.
When I mentioned giving bonus to the physical stats, I wasn't meaning +1 or anything. I'm suggesting a serious bonus, to the point that looking to improve upon them later in the PC's career could almost been seen as a waste of an ASI. When you look at objectively, there isn't a massive difference in a Str of 18 vs a Str of 20
Hard disagree. "Massive" is subjective, but I would say that +1 on every attack roll and damage roll you will ever do in the lifetime of your character qualifies as a massive difference