I'm making a new character and was thinking of playing a warforged forge domain cleric and i want to know if there is anything that prevents this. So warforged integrated heavy armor is at level 16+prof (18) + clerics have prof with shields so +2AC AND because of forge domain i can bless my shield for +1AC giving me 21AC base. lastly with shield of faith spell i get +2AC more in combat giving me 23AC in total during most combat. is this allowed? i cant find any rules against it. thanks
A warforged body is not actually magical. It was neither created nor summoned by magic. They were crafted from organic and inorganic materials and then given sentience by magic.
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Does that mean that Detect Magic would always ping where a Warforged is?
I would say yes, though there are few situations I can imagine that information actually being relevant to the PCs, so I probably wouldn’t mention it when they cast it.
A warforged body is not actually magical. It was neither created nor summoned by magic. They were crafted from organic and inorganic materials and then given sentience by magic.
If a warforged’s body weren’t magical, it wouldn’t be able to heal naturally and it wouldn’t be able to change its armor type. They are inherently magical.
Having those abilities does not mean it is magical. In fact, the features you described are not magical either. Dwarves were created in the forge of Moradin. They can heal naturally and are resistant to poison. Are dwarves magical? No.
The reason why warforged can heal naturally is because they are part organic. They are also described as living creatures.
Dragons are described as magical creatures, but a dragon's breath weapon would not be stopped by an antimagic field.
Here is Jeremy Crawford's sage advice on what is magical and what is not:
Is the breath weapon of a dragon magical?
If you cast antimagic field, don armor of invulnerability, or use another feature of the game that protects against magical or nonmagical effects, you might ask yourself, “Will this protect me against a dragon’s breath?” The breath weapon of a typical dragon isn’t considered magical, so antimagic field won’t help you but armor of invulnerability will. You might be thinking, “Dragons seem pretty magical to me.” And yes, they are extraordinary! Their description even says they’re magical. But our game makes a distinction between two types of magic:
the background magic that is part of the D&D multiverse’s physics and the physiology of many D&D creatures
the concentrated magical energy that is contained in a magic item or channeled to create a spell or other focused magical effect
In D&D, the first type of magic is part of nature. It is no more dispellable than the wind. A monster like a dragon exists because of that magic-enhanced nature. The second type of magic is what the rules are concerned about. When a rule refers to something being magical, it’s referring to that second type. Determining whether a game feature is magical is straightforward. Ask yourself these questions about the feature:
Is it a magic item?
Is it a spell?
Or does it let you create the effects of a spell that’s mentioned in its description?
Is it a spell attack?
Is it fueled by the use of spell slots?
Does its description say it’s magical?
If your answer to any of those questions is yes, the feature is magical.
Let’s look at a white dragon’s Cold Breath and ask ourselves those questions. First, Cold Breath isn’t a magic item. Second, its description mentions no spell. Third, it’s not a spell attack. Fourth, the word “magical” appears nowhere in its description. Our conclusion: Cold Breath is not considered a magical game effect, even though we know that dragons are amazing, supernatural beings.
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For more context, here's Keith Baker explaining how he designed and wrote the warforged's integrated protection feature:
Is it possible to enchant a warforged’s integrated plating? Would the Integrated Protection of a warforged be considered a “nonmagical object that is a suit of armor” for Forge Clerics?
No on both counts. In 5E, the idea is that a warforged is essentially a suit of magic armor. You can’t add additional enchantments to it. Instead, the strength of its enchantments inherently increases over time—which is reflected by warforged getting to add their proficiency bonus to their AC. So a warforged Forge cleric couldn’t enchant their body, but they could still enchant a weapon.
That's fine and all, but given that the integrated protection feature does not clarify the feature as "magical" it is not a magical feature and thus becomes a "supernatural" feature as Jeremy Crawford describes. So, when a rule such as Detect Magic raises the question of whether something is magical, the integrated protection feature doesn't qualify per the inherent definition of "magic" in the D&D multiverse.
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Even Crawford's explanation leaves a lot of room for interpretation and the answer will depend on context.
I can't speak to how warforged might be placed into Forgotten Realms, for example, but in Eberron, the answer to Crawford's first question, "is it a magic item?" is already yes. They are created by magical creation forges through magical processes. The Wayfinder's Guide calls out warforged as an example of how magic is integrated into the world, which is certainly "the description says it's magical" to all but the most pedantically legalistic reading.
At any rate, I can't imagine any situation off the top of my head where the magical or not nature of warforged will have any mechanical impact. They even escape Antimagic Field unscathed by virtue of being created by artifacts, so at the end of the day, it just doesn't matter.
It sounds me to like the RP aspects and the design balancing aspects of the Warforged are in conflict with each other. The problem with Warforged being "supernatural" is that, unlike creatures who are inherently able to do magical things like fly despite weighing many tons, Warforged lore says specifically that they were Created by humanoids, similar to a homonculus. I understand why, for the purposes of game mechanics and possibly balance, the devs might not want Warforged to be designated as giving off a "magic" aura to Warlocks or monsters with an at-will Detect Magic ability, but the narrative justification for that is weak.
A Warforged is not an item at all. It is a creature.
They don't ping to Detect Magic, aren't susceptible to Dispel Magic or Anti-Magic Fields. Nothing indicates that they're 'powered my magic', even if they are created from magical machines.
Its integrated protection is its body, not an item.
The line between an item capable of taking actions (like certain magic weapons are) and a construct are arbitrary and defined by the game devs. There is no reason that an artifact (not suspectible to Anti-magic Fields) would ping as magic, but a construct animated by pure magic would not. Just b/c something is defined a certain way via the rules as Tweeted about by Crawford does not necessarily make sense from a narrative standpoint. I'm not speaking from the POV of a DM or a player here, I'm saying that from a fictional narrative world-building perspective, this makes no sense. Dragons eat and crap and reproduce. Their magic-ness is similar (though perhaps on a much greater scale) to that of the sorcerer. That is very different from a machine that does not need to consume anything whatsoever but which is capable of self-directed motion for decades if not centuries. In order to function as such, the magic which animates the construct must be a persistent active force, otherwise it should shut down after a given amount of time, similar to Tik-Tok, the metal man in the latter Oz books.
Warforged are not even constructs and therefore not powered by magic, but rather living humanoids (as the warforged section actually states). They can think for themselves, worship gods, heal naturally, die and be brought back to life, etc. I'd say that they are no more "magic" for the purposes of spells or other effects that deal with magic than dwarves (who were also forged from metal and fire) are. The humans that created warforged essentially played god for all intents and purposes.
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I'm making a new character and was thinking of playing a warforged forge domain cleric and i want to know if there is anything that prevents this. So warforged integrated heavy armor is at level 16+prof (18) + clerics have prof with shields so +2AC AND because of forge domain i can bless my shield for +1AC giving me 21AC base. lastly with shield of faith spell i get +2AC more in combat giving me 23AC in total during most combat. is this allowed? i cant find any rules against it. thanks
Unfortunately, blessing of the forge does not work on shields, so 22AC.
still a lot of AC for 1st level
Yeah. Warforged are good at AC.
Just make sure your DM allows warforged. They are still considered UA so they may not be allowed or the DM might make some changes to balance it.
What would prevent Blessing of the Forge from working on the armor itself?
The integrated protection is not an object.
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Just what I was going to say. You can't take the integrated protection off, it's your body, not external armor.
Also, a warforged’s body is already magical.
Does that mean that Detect Magic would always ping where a Warforged is?
A warforged body is not actually magical. It was neither created nor summoned by magic. They were crafted from organic and inorganic materials and then given sentience by magic.
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I would say yes, though there are few situations I can imagine that information actually being relevant to the PCs, so I probably wouldn’t mention it when they cast it.
If a warforged’s body weren’t magical, it wouldn’t be able to heal naturally and it wouldn’t be able to change its armor type. They are inherently magical.
Having those abilities does not mean it is magical. In fact, the features you described are not magical either. Dwarves were created in the forge of Moradin. They can heal naturally and are resistant to poison. Are dwarves magical? No.
The reason why warforged can heal naturally is because they are part organic. They are also described as living creatures.
Dragons are described as magical creatures, but a dragon's breath weapon would not be stopped by an antimagic field.
Here is Jeremy Crawford's sage advice on what is magical and what is not:
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For more context, here's Keith Baker explaining how he designed and wrote the warforged's integrated protection feature:
That's fine and all, but given that the integrated protection feature does not clarify the feature as "magical" it is not a magical feature and thus becomes a "supernatural" feature as Jeremy Crawford describes. So, when a rule such as Detect Magic raises the question of whether something is magical, the integrated protection feature doesn't qualify per the inherent definition of "magic" in the D&D multiverse.
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Even Crawford's explanation leaves a lot of room for interpretation and the answer will depend on context.
I can't speak to how warforged might be placed into Forgotten Realms, for example, but in Eberron, the answer to Crawford's first question, "is it a magic item?" is already yes. They are created by magical creation forges through magical processes. The Wayfinder's Guide calls out warforged as an example of how magic is integrated into the world, which is certainly "the description says it's magical" to all but the most pedantically legalistic reading.
At any rate, I can't imagine any situation off the top of my head where the magical or not nature of warforged will have any mechanical impact. They even escape Antimagic Field unscathed by virtue of being created by artifacts, so at the end of the day, it just doesn't matter.
It sounds me to like the RP aspects and the design balancing aspects of the Warforged are in conflict with each other. The problem with Warforged being "supernatural" is that, unlike creatures who are inherently able to do magical things like fly despite weighing many tons, Warforged lore says specifically that they were Created by humanoids, similar to a homonculus. I understand why, for the purposes of game mechanics and possibly balance, the devs might not want Warforged to be designated as giving off a "magic" aura to Warlocks or monsters with an at-will Detect Magic ability, but the narrative justification for that is weak.
A Warforged is not an item at all. It is a creature.
They don't ping to Detect Magic, aren't susceptible to Dispel Magic or Anti-Magic Fields. Nothing indicates that they're 'powered my magic', even if they are created from magical machines.
Its integrated protection is its body, not an item.
The line between an item capable of taking actions (like certain magic weapons are) and a construct are arbitrary and defined by the game devs. There is no reason that an artifact (not suspectible to Anti-magic Fields) would ping as magic, but a construct animated by pure magic would not. Just b/c something is defined a certain way via the rules as Tweeted about by Crawford does not necessarily make sense from a narrative standpoint. I'm not speaking from the POV of a DM or a player here, I'm saying that from a fictional narrative world-building perspective, this makes no sense. Dragons eat and crap and reproduce. Their magic-ness is similar (though perhaps on a much greater scale) to that of the sorcerer. That is very different from a machine that does not need to consume anything whatsoever but which is capable of self-directed motion for decades if not centuries. In order to function as such, the magic which animates the construct must be a persistent active force, otherwise it should shut down after a given amount of time, similar to Tik-Tok, the metal man in the latter Oz books.
Warforged are not even constructs and therefore not powered by magic, but rather living humanoids (as the warforged section actually states). They can think for themselves, worship gods, heal naturally, die and be brought back to life, etc. I'd say that they are no more "magic" for the purposes of spells or other effects that deal with magic than dwarves (who were also forged from metal and fire) are. The humans that created warforged essentially played god for all intents and purposes.
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