You have given me something to think about, I allow Warforged in my FR campaigns cause they are cool but never given much thought to why and where they came from. That could spark good backstory material.
Found in Ancient Vault/Tomb recently opened.
Came to FR via a Portal
Could make them a Forge Cleric creation in ancient times long lost, maybe Artificer or Gnomes..
You could handwave it and come up with a story later and just say they are very rare but they have always been there, most have never seen one.
Wizard creation in labs, procedure is not well known and mostly lost in the sands of time.
Gods animated them to preform tasks for them\
A traveler of the planes brought a forge to the Forgotten Realms for good or nefarious purposes and has been amassing an "army"
Although Eberron is "isolated" from other material plane locations (per what I can remember from the lore - it's been a while) - I still like the thought of a crashed Spelljammer. How where and why would have to be worked out, but a crashed spelljammer with several warforged aboard would be an interesting way to get warforged to Toril.
One of my players plays one in our Out of the Abyss campaign. We reskinned the warforged as a Svirfneblin ancient type of self aware construct used during the war against the drow.
How about a Warforged was animated as a favor from a god, a la Pygmalion? An artificer fell in love with a golem s/he created that she appealed and made such sacrifices to a particular deity that the deity decided to grant the request for the golem to become a living being.
Or perhaps the Warforged is a curse for a mortal failing to fulfill their end of a bargain with a deity of creation and thus their eldest living child got turned into a Warforged creature?
I also like sauercarey's idea about a Spelljammer vessel crashing in Faerun.
You could also just take the current lore from Eberron and import it I to realms.
Warforged were originally created by dream spirits so that they could possess a physical body and interact with the world.
I see no reason why dream spirits in the realms wouldn't have done the same thing. Except maybe in the realms, they abandoned the Warforged in favour of Kalashtar.
A king or some such from times past could have discovered these ancient and abandoned Warforged, or the blueprints for them, and used then as soldiers. Eventually discovering a way to bind human souls to the mechanical bodies.
(d&d super soldiers?)
Make the king or whoever be from.a fallen empire of antiquity. Perhaps the process of binding the human soul to the body, made them less effective in battle, because the soul could think for itself or something, and they were again abandoned.
So there are very few Warforged in the realms, but they do exist and lore and history stays roughly the same.
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I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
My advice, don't. But if you do make them NPC only. Warforged are meant for Ebberon, where there are classes and spells and other challenges built to deal with them. Bringing them into FR is unbalancing IMO.
They could make a good monster to fight as a Wizards protector maybe an alternative to a Shield Guardian. But outside of a rare encounter as an NPC I wouldn't recommend them.
If you want to bring one in then explain where the soul forge to create the warforge came from, why the warforge isn't a slave, and how it isn't currently being hunted and destroyed for being rogue. Remember that all Constructs are to be controlled in the FR. Look at Waterdeep Dragon Heist for examples of what happens when a sentient construct is allowed freedom and how the society reacts. Warforged in Ebberon only got their freedom when they fought a war to earn their freedom, and they had numbers on their side before they could do so.
4e's Dragon #371 ("Origin Stories: Incorporating Races") discussed the idea of Warforged in Faerun, mentioning the following five possibilities:
a one off wizard experiment
a product of a (non-Thayan) Red Wizard Enclave
coming from Ebberon by way of Sigil
travelling from the Returned Abeir nation of Gontal (possibly from a primordial's ancient shattered metallic fortress) or
awakening after a century of slumber near Lantan
That last one is my favorite:
Prior to Lantan sinking during Faerûn's Spellplague, it was a technologically advanced island (much like the legendary Atlantis) that developed highly advanced clockwork mechanisms and worshipped Gond. Indeed, techsmiths of Gond could construct a mechanical Gondsman as a loyal mechanical warrior, assistant, bodyguard, and friend (confusingly, priests of Gond were sometimes called Gondsmen as well).
Also note: the new Chult map in Tomb of Annihilation shows nearby Lantan as apparently resurfaced, so it might be an excellent time for a Gondsman (or similar construct) to appear.
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I’m running a forgotten realms campaign, but want to have warforged. Any advice?
You have given me something to think about, I allow Warforged in my FR campaigns cause they are cool but never given much thought to why and where they came from. That could spark good backstory material.
Interesting topic, I though of this before and Elvinkneeknapper already mentioned some really good ones.
I'm however not a big fan of plane travelling during the lower levels in my FR campaigns. I've used the following solutions;
Hope I helped.
Although Eberron is "isolated" from other material plane locations (per what I can remember from the lore - it's been a while) - I still like the thought of a crashed Spelljammer. How where and why would have to be worked out, but a crashed spelljammer with several warforged aboard would be an interesting way to get warforged to Toril.
One of my players plays one in our Out of the Abyss campaign. We reskinned the warforged as a Svirfneblin ancient type of self aware construct used during the war against the drow.
How about a Warforged was animated as a favor from a god, a la Pygmalion? An artificer fell in love with a golem s/he created that she appealed and made such sacrifices to a particular deity that the deity decided to grant the request for the golem to become a living being.
Or perhaps the Warforged is a curse for a mortal failing to fulfill their end of a bargain with a deity of creation and thus their eldest living child got turned into a Warforged creature?
I also like sauercarey's idea about a Spelljammer vessel crashing in Faerun.
A gnome somewhere made one for a reason. You don't need to really bend over backwards for this one.
I made them the guardians and army of Halruaa.
I made one who was found in a destroyed spelljammer vessel and has amnesia from the crash
-edit- just realized someone already said that
Wild magic does strange things. Created by a wizard (probably a gnome) as an automata. Years of exposure began to suffuse it.
It began with the snippets of memories. Having done this chore before, noticing it was considering the nature of something it was doing.
Sentience.
Though, I really dig the crashed Spelljammer idea.
You could also just take the current lore from Eberron and import it I to realms.
Warforged were originally created by dream spirits so that they could possess a physical body and interact with the world.
I see no reason why dream spirits in the realms wouldn't have done the same thing. Except maybe in the realms, they abandoned the Warforged in favour of Kalashtar.
A king or some such from times past could have discovered these ancient and abandoned Warforged, or the blueprints for them, and used then as soldiers. Eventually discovering a way to bind human souls to the mechanical bodies.
(d&d super soldiers?)
Make the king or whoever be from.a fallen empire of antiquity. Perhaps the process of binding the human soul to the body, made them less effective in battle, because the soul could think for itself or something, and they were again abandoned.
So there are very few Warforged in the realms, but they do exist and lore and history stays roughly the same.
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
My advice, don't. But if you do make them NPC only. Warforged are meant for Ebberon, where there are classes and spells and other challenges built to deal with them. Bringing them into FR is unbalancing IMO.
They could make a good monster to fight as a Wizards protector maybe an alternative to a Shield Guardian. But outside of a rare encounter as an NPC I wouldn't recommend them.
If you want to bring one in then explain where the soul forge to create the warforge came from, why the warforge isn't a slave, and how it isn't currently being hunted and destroyed for being rogue. Remember that all Constructs are to be controlled in the FR. Look at Waterdeep Dragon Heist for examples of what happens when a sentient construct is allowed freedom and how the society reacts. Warforged in Ebberon only got their freedom when they fought a war to earn their freedom, and they had numbers on their side before they could do so.
4e's Dragon #371 ("Origin Stories: Incorporating Races") discussed the idea of Warforged in Faerun, mentioning the following five possibilities:
That last one is my favorite:
Prior to Lantan sinking during Faerûn's Spellplague, it was a technologically advanced island (much like the legendary Atlantis) that developed highly advanced clockwork mechanisms and worshipped Gond. Indeed, techsmiths of Gond could construct a mechanical Gondsman as a loyal mechanical warrior, assistant, bodyguard, and friend (confusingly, priests of Gond were sometimes called Gondsmen as well).
Also note: the new Chult map in Tomb of Annihilation shows nearby Lantan as apparently resurfaced, so it might be an excellent time for a Gondsman (or similar construct) to appear.