Quick Links
Eberron is a fan favourite setting in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons, along with the warforged endemic to the world. Playing a character designed towards a specific task opens up powerful opportunities for storytelling once the designer's goal has become irrelevant and the story of a warforged character begins after the climactic battle where most others would end.
The unique circumstances of these people make writing stories around them differ greatly from more traditional fantasy characters, and it can help to go into the character creation process with some ideas of what you want them to be, even if 🌄they end up evolving beyond this intended purpose.
Best Class For Playing A Warforged
Most of the feature𝓀s a warforged has ✨to offer are either situational or more oriented towards roleplaying and bookkeeping. This makes them able to work in just about any class, even if some can make more use of those features.
Trait |
Class That Benefits The Most |
Best Use Case |
Constructed Resilience |
Rogue |
Poison resistance complements a character working with poisons and poisonous creatures such as a rogue or druid. The best poisons are harvested from powerful monsters, and resistance will make fighting them easier. Not needing to eat, drink or breathe is useful at a table that keeps track of rations, but this can be a rarity. It can also allow for some creative methods of smuggꦇling your character into stealth missions. A strong disease can render characters powerless but is liable to appear so rarely that it's easy to forget the immunity to disease that warforged possess. You'll want to remember this when someone casts contagion at you. |
Integrated Protection |
Armorer Artificer, War Cleric, Bladesinger |
There isn't a class in the game that wouldn't like a free +1 to their Armour Class. Warforged can utilise this to push the boundaries of classes that rely on natural armour, such as barbarians and monks. The bonus can also stack on top of the heaviest armour available to a fighter or paladin Having your armour bound to you means that enemies can't remove it if you get captured: They'll just put you under heavier guard. |
Sentry's Rest |
Cleric, Druid, or Ranger |
Sentry's Rest makes warforged well suited to keeping watch and evading ambushes but doesn't increase your perception by itself. You can make the most of this feature by playing a class that relies on Wisdom or grants the expertise feature. As the warforged do not suffer any penalties for lack of sleep, it is possible to play the infamous "coffeelock" with one, but that build option is best kept hyp❀othetical. |
Specialized Design |
Artificer |
The tool proficiencies a warforged begins with will be doubled by an artificer's level six expertise. Combining this with a background that also provides tool proficiencies can make a warforged into a crafting machine that doesn't need to interrupt their work for sleep or food. |
The strongest feature in combat is the bonus AC. A sorcerer or warlock without armour will appreciate a mote of extra defence but the most fun choice for a warforged is to play a class that aims to maximise their defences and use the species bonus as icing.
Bladesinger Wizards and Eldritch Knight Fighters both play into this strength.
Read Up On How Warforged Work In Your Setting
The majority of settings that contain warforged introduce them as a recent innovation, for which the rules are unknown. Eberron: Rising From The Last War notes their lifespan as a mystery since the oldest are 30 a🌳nd shoꦅw no signs of aging.
Some GMs may take this in the direction of the warforged having no natural aging process, while others mig🀅ht read it as not having been discovered yet.
Depending on the🌊 type of game you are playing, you may want to embrace the uncertainty around warforged lore 🎶or work with your GM to hammer out answers.
You're unlikely to find a GM who rules that all warforged die at age 31, but if you do, it's better to not be surprised when it happens.
How people interact with a warforged will a♚lso be determined by the setting. Eberron largely views them through their role in the war, but there a🔯re other questions that a setting might present about warforged which are worth considering:
- What is the legal status of warforged? Are they treated as property or assigned personhood?
- How common are they in the setting? If you're the only person in the city with wooden joints, it becomes much harder to act covertly.
- What obligations does a warforged have? Do they have a duty to serve their creators, and how long are the potentially immortal group expected to uphold those responsibilities?
Another factor that might vary with the setting is how your warforged presents itself visually. The Eberron lore gives the typical warforged wooden construction with metal frames, but ther🅷e are plenty of other ways to make them visually int﷽eresting:
- A druidic warforged might work better if they have no metal components.
- A warforged sailor might have a thick "skin" of resin or varnish to protect themselves from water damage.
- A warforged built by Underdark denizens may skimp on the use of imported woods and replace those components with local clays and stone.
Check with your GM which version of the warforged is allowed at t🐓he table.
Some groups may allow traits from the unearthed arcana variant, such as the "integrated tool" ability: Why would a warforged carry a lockpick wh𓄧en they could carve one of their fingers to perform the🌌 same function?
Some homebrewed settings might also assign them drawbacks such as making healing magic less effective due to their mechanical bodies.
How To Roleplay A Warforged
More than almost any other species in Dungeons & Dragons, the warforged hold an external perspective: In most worlds they are the youngest species and therefore don't have strong templates to fit into or history to learn from.
This gives exciting opportunities fo🧜r roleplaying:
- You can have them be adopted into another culture, taking on traits from another group in how they interact and the values they hold. A warforged can derive their name, gender identity, and ideology from their friends instead of their upbringing. Placing a focus on a found family is also a good way of tying your character into the group and explaining their role in a party of adventurers.
- The opposite holds equal storytelling potential: Positioning them as an outsider can give new perspectives on other characters around them as cultural norms are explained to a person with no prior knowledge. A character with the noble background explaining the importance of their heritage to somebody with no concept of inheritance or parental lineage can allow both characters to introspect.
- The two don't need to exclude each other: The story of your warforged might see them experimenting with different cultures and identities to learn more about themselves and the people around them, even if they never fully arrive at a destination.
- They might also choose not to be introspective and accept life as it comes. A warforged does not need to question the reason for its existence because the answer is publicly known. On top of that, their apparent agelessness means that the quest for meaning can wait until after all the fun side quests.
Best Backgrounds For A Warforged
Your background choices will matter more if playing outside the Eberron setting: If the warforged aren't a new innovation then you'll have more history to play with. The right background can complement the type of character you're looking to play outside the assumptions that would otherwise be made about a warforged.
Background |
Source |
Roleplaying Options |
Soldier |
Player's Handbook |
The most likely background for warforged but that doesn't mean you have to play it completely straight: The soldier background covers all military roles from combatants to logistics staff: An army♋ chef will often have a rank equal to a non-coꦜmmissioned officer and provides a good explanation for why a robotic rogue is so good with knives. |
Outlander |
Player's Handbook |
The wanderer feature isn't quite a GPS but makes your mechanical character good at navigating, letting them memorise maps and landmarks to orient themselves with. Foraging food and water doesn't matter as much to a warforged but can help the surrounding group or make an unusual hobby akin to catch-and-release fishing. |
Charlatan |
Player's Handbook |
It's easy to think a warforged stands out too much to make use of a disguise kit but with some inspiration from the Mechanical Turk chess machine, you can have your warforged imitate a non-sapient construct such as a golem, store mannequin, or suit of armour. A designer body allows for creative new types of scams and sleight of hand that wouldn't be possible for someone bound by limits such as how far the human wrist can bend or only having one elbow joint on your arm. |
Celebrity Adventurer's Scion |
Acquisitions Incorporated |
Put a new spin on the concept of "designer babies" by having your character be a physical embodiment of their parents' ego. You can use this background to justify the gaudiest creation imaginable or the most optimised killing machine dependi🧔ng on who it is that built your warforged. |
Criminal |
Player's Handbook |
A criminal warforged will be highly proficient with lockpicks and other tools, gaining them from both their background and species. You only need to worry if the wizard's tower uses an image-based lock that requires you to select pictures of bicycles. |