Hey there adventurers! I love the recent addition of the warforged race and their additional lore provided in Eberron: Rising From The Last War, and since D&D Beyond provides me with a terrifying amount of freedom I thought the best way to show my appreciation for this carefully balanced player race is to add my own tweaks.
However, as the title of this piece suggests, you should hate all of my ideas. This is because I wrote them all under the following conditions:
- I had not slept in 9 days.
- The only food or drink I consumed in the last 9 days was cranberry-flavored Emergen-C sprinkled on leftover Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.
- I was listening to the Diablo III soundtrack backwards on a loop.
- According to my doctor I had an "amoeba whose large size is of historic scientific note" in my cranial cavity.
- The amoeba insisted on creative control of the final draft.
Therefore I am required by the content team to use the above headline, implying I am about to instill hatred in my own ideas. Whether you agree with them or an amoeba-enhanced individual is entirely up to you.
Skin Material
Previously, the armor-like warforged were made from stone, steel, and wood. This now includes deep-fried chicken. Some alchemists got sucked into that whole chicken sandwich war, and the final result was sentient chicken sandwiches.
We know what you're thinking: this isn't funny, it's just strange. And maybe you don't even like chicken that much. Well too bad, it's very lucrative in corporate America right now to even write the phrase "chicken sandwich" on your website so that it will show up in a billion Google search results. So warforged are just part chicken now, and if by sheer coincidence any megacorporations would like to use this for cross-promotional purposes please get in touch with us.
Players may choose between crispy, buffalo, herbs and spices, and original recipe warforged.
Vegan players may choose between soy, almond, oat, or cashew based armor.
Additional Quirks
We thought you could use some more 1d8 quirks to choose from at character creation, so feel free to choose from the following.
d8 | Quirk |
---|---|
1 | You think you are missing an internal gear and compulsively eat pocket watches in the hopes of it resolving your deficiency. |
2 | You think every time someone says "Damn!" they are calling for someone named Dan. |
3 | You start beatboxing uncontrollably every time you hear a sick rhyme. |
4 | You think fedoras actually look good on you. |
5 | You think goblins taste like cilantro. |
6 | You whisper "resistance is futile" while hugging people, which you do as often as possible. |
7 | You were designed to mimic humanoid facial expressions, but like real-world robots designed for it, you are utterly terrifying and people use animated images of your weird mechanical face as magical meme fodder. |
8 | You collect and keep doves in your pockets and release them after your friends speak in order to drive home their points. |
More Warforged Names
Still can't name your own warforged? Yeesh. Okay. Here you go.
More Warforged Names: Anchor, Bookend, Creep, Doorstop, Epipen, Fedora, Glow-up, Hotplate, Inkjet, Jujubee, Krusty, Luxembourg, Marzipan, Niacin, Onomatopoeia, Pzzzzzrpt, Quilt, Rectangle, Softshoe, Textile, Uvula, V-neck, Wingding, Professor Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Yoshinoya, Zankou.
You Can Replace One Of Your Hands With What Is Basically Just A Chainsaw
To be used for trees and deadites zombies.
All Warforged Can Turn Into A Vehicle At Will
Players can choose between morphing into a war machine, a covered wagon, a keelboat, or a boombox.
Transforming takes the character's action, makes an "ee-aw-oo-ee" sound, and now the creature is a vehicle that other people can ride around in with the same AC and movement of that vehicle.
If players choose keelboats, they must roll a DC 20 Wisdom saving throw once per day, timing at the discretion of the dungeon master, and on a failed save they involuntarily turn into a boat while on land. This is because it's funny to see a useless boat in the middle of an inn or a battlefield.
Also the warforged's face is still visible in a really awkward way, because let's be honest, it's too hard to hide that part and robot-y faces are cool to look at.
Additional Languages
You can now speak to inanimate objects. This should solve most puzzles, as you can now speak to their actual stone and steel parts to ask for the answers. Whew, finally, no more of those annoying puzzles!
Dan Telfer is the Dungeons Humorist aka Comedy Archmage for D&D Beyond (a fun way they are letting him say "writer"), dungeon master for the Nerd Poker podcast, a stand-up comedian, a TV writer who also helped win some Emmys over at Comedy Central, and a former editor of MAD Magazine and The Onion. He can be found riding his bike around Los Angeles from gig to gig to gaming store, though the best way to find out what he's up to is to follow him on Twitter via @dantelfer.
while some of this is pointless and funny, the quirks however are very ussful for warforged flaws.
that is deeply concerning
aggreed
Dan, I think that you should keep putting out content that is funny and satirical, however, you should keep in mind that other people want the articles on here to be applicable to their campaigns. If you make USABLE content, that might help fix the recent toxic comments.
oh thats dope
I'm fine with humor, I just don't want it overwhelming the other playstyles. One of my tables is at a game store because I'm passionate about helping people learn D&D and get into RPGs. Some people just want to try D&D as a game, and some people come to the shop wanting to explore cool stories. Trying to get my new joke heavy players to offer some room for the new players that want to explore more RP can be tricky.
On my longest running table, they have found good balance and are sometimes splitting their sides laughing and sometimes they are having deep, serious moments. The balance is nice.
Seeing DnDBeyond lean heavily into the joke angle is just frustrating for me because I've seen new players get annoyed when some players want to turn everything into a joke. I manage it fine as a DM and it's part of the package deal running tables for new players, but it would be nice if not everything has to be a joke here on DnDBeyond.
I don't think that people expressing concern about the ratio of joke to serious content counts as 'toxic'. I'm trying very hard to be polite and express my concerns clearly without attacking anyone. I don't have any issue with Dan making joke content, I'm just starting to feel like its crowding out the other content.
I am diagnosed with autism and OCD, and I conform to a lot of the stereotypes associated with these conditions. What particularly matters here is that I find it stressful when routines or expectations are broken. I prefer to read blogs with a regular posting scheme that cover the same broad topic with each post, and the only reason I read the D&D Beyond articles whatsoever is that they are generally well-written and, as mentioned, cover the same broad topic of "making D&D better"; the irregular posting scheme is a little stressful for me.
When I see a new article, and that article is written by you, it is genuinely upsetting because your articles aren't what I've come to expect from this site; they are bizarre, often very sparse and almost never something that fits into a fantasy world. Your 'Nightmare Tavern' article was the single post by you that I enjoyed. I am not saying that you're doing something wrong by making these articles, but I don't believe that this is the right place to post them; they are jarringly different from the rest of the content presented here, and the fact that they seem to be taking precedent over more generally useful content is worrying.
I apologise in advance if I come off as rude to anyone: it's sometimes difficult for me to notice when something could be taken as offensive.
On the note of the ratio of real content to joke content, I can see your point. I personally believe a 75% serious, 25% joking ratio would do well. However, I believe that DNDbeyond has stuck to that ratio quite well, with today being the exception. I've been on the site just about daily for a week or so, and I usually see 2-3 Dan Telfer posts, and everything else is from the other writers. I think that's a pretty decent ratio. Today's count of 4 Dan posts is, admittedly, a bit overboard. However, I argue that it's the exception, rather than the rule.
I click on these everytime and each time it makes me smile
How were you still alive when you wrote this? The last time you ate was nine days ago and you ate pumpkin pie!
I accept these Quirks as in-game cannon.
Has the recently suffered level drain?
Some of the quirks are funny. Most of the article is not.
I left Stone Faced.
I get the sense this one is drawn from your own experience...
...Wait, this wasn't already a rule? I've been playing wrong all this time...
Since when is a boombox a vehicle? :P
Anyone can speak to inanimate objects... The trick is getting them to respond.
Also, to those complaining about Dan's articles: Finding them unfunny would be one thing, but complaining that his articles are humorous seems... misguided. It's literally what D&D Beyond pays him to do:
If you don't want to read comedic articles by a comedian... just scroll past Dan's articles or ignore them. It's not that hard.
Okay, most of these ideas were...*shudder*...but #6 on that quirk table made me laugh. Ditto #2 (Actually had this happen to a former coworker named Dan, who was hard of hearing. Any time anyone said "DAMN," three aisles over would be "J F C WHAT??")
It made for the groundwork of a lot of pranks...
I think you are missing the point. It's pretty obvious that he gets paid to write joke articles. It's right there in his bio, as you quoted.
I am aware that I can scroll past these articles. I'm saying that DnDBeyond would be more enjoyable with a higher ratio of serious to joke content, at least for me and some other folks here in the comments. It would be nice to not have to skip over so many articles, and I would probably actually enjoy these joke articles more if they were more sparing rather than being annoyed by them because they are overwhelming the other content.
Not everything always has to be a joke.
I just counted, and out of the 9 articles displayed on D&D Beyond's front page today, 2 are related to live-streaming events or Beyond Heroes, 3 are related to actual game mechanics, and 4 of them, the VAST majority, are humor articles that most DMs would never actually use in a real campaign (except maybe the ones about warforged, nightmare taverns, and deliberately bad unearthed arcana. But those don't really count.) I do not have a problem with the articles themselves, I just have a problem with the excessive amount of them.
At one of my favorite tables to DM for, the players have found a good balance between the game and humor. We have one person playing a fighter, and his tactical and militaristic roleplaying is funny enough. I do not need to introduce this occasionally humorous but mostly boring trash to my tables, they already can laugh all they want!
Admins, IF YOU ARE READING THIS, please consider lowering the amount of humor-related articles. I, and I think most other DMs reading these comments, actually want advice on how to run a productive game that has a good story or how to write an adventure (props to Shawn Merwin for writing those articles). These humor articles are becoming way to excessive to the point where I dread what Dan Telfer is going to come up with next. Please consider limiting the amount of these articles to 1 or 2 every month.
Thank You for listening to me. (admins and otherwise)
I beg to differ. It is pretty hard to ignore a type of article when they make up half the ones on the front page of a website.
Resistance is futile.