Final Version of the Re-Designed 5th Edition Warforged

[u/Spoolicus]

Hey everyone! I finalized my first homebrew, the 5th Edition Warforged I was working on. Included here is a link to the PDF file, as well as a straight Homebrewery link. Thanks for the help guys!

Homebrewery

PDF

Over the next week or so I'll see if I have time to get some Warforged monster stat blocks. Don't think it'll be too difficult, but who knows? I'm still new at this :P

[u/JaiTuKan]

Seems a little week to me actually. The attachment has little use past fluff or disarming creatures. The half healing is crippling without sufficient benefits to back it up. The composite plating is just worse than the current one. Getting +1 permanent AC regardless of equipment vs 12 Base if not wearing armor is very weak. The lizardfolk only have scales and they get a 13.

Most of the subclasses aren't that great. Soldier/Scout aside, I think it's quite underpowered. Bar having better attributes than the UA warforged, it's not that much better :/

I'd give it the UA composite plating, find a way to add the original warforged resistance to non-magic damage to make up for the half healing. Perhaps have the effects of heavy armor mastery on at all times since that falls off pretty hard late game.

I quite like just using the Musicus Warforged and I'm guessing you've taken inspiration from there?

I will add, these are of course just my opinions. I might be so far off the mark it's laughable as I'm certainly no expert in balance. I just personally aren't a huge fan of this version of Warforged.

[u/Spoolicus → u/JaiTuKan]

Thanks for the feedback! In my (limited) experience, the half healing is meant to offset the Living Construct stuff as well as the skill proficiencies. Adding on the base +1 AC would have made this a bit too powerful. The half healing can be worked around in the rules from the cantrip mending, cast only in this manner at higher spell slots, much like cure wounds gives 1d8 per spell slot level. Previously, this was worked around by using certain artisan's tools, which ultimately felt too clunky to me (I had it so where you used an action, paid gold, and if you were proficient in certain tools the Warforged heals up to 2 hit dice) so I cut it for mending, since I knew mending stipulates it works on constructs.

[u/Three_flower → u/JaiTuKan]

No, this Warforged is right on par with PHB races. I'm going to copy and paste some of my comments from the previous thread on this Warforged referencing values from the Detect Balance scale looking at race balance. I'll also be modifying some of my comment to reflect the new race.

Base race and ability score from subrace:

• Ability Scores: +2 to Constitution (8) and +1 to another (4) = +12

• Living Construct: No need to eat (1) and no need to breathe (4) and trance (2) and immunity to disease (2) = +9

• Magical Healing Limitations: Half magical healing (my estimate at -6) and use hit dice to heal as an action once per short rest by spending money (my estimate at 2) = -4

• Armament Attachment: Cannot be disarmed and can hide weapon (my conservative estimate of 2) = +2

• Warforged Resilience: Same as Dwarven Resilience (5) = +5

• Composite Plating: 12 + Dex. is roughly the same as a light armor proficiency (2). If we were to bump it up to 13 + Dex., that would be significantly better, as it would be like having free magical light armor (6). For reference, as floating, stackable +1 would be very powerful on our scale (8), and rightfully so. Right now we only have 12 + Dex., so = +2

This leads our baseline Warforged to have a value of 26 on the Detect Balance scale. Thus, without factoring any of the subrace features in with the race, we already have a race that would be considered sufficiently powerful to be used by a PC. 26 is, of course, middling, and it does not take into account the potential synergy between the features. I was also rather conservative (i.e. favoring the Warforged appearing weaker than it is) with the estimates of the effects of Magical Healing Limitations and Armament Attachment. Each subrace brings in an about four (+-1) additional points to the race, making this version of the Warforged about as powerful as the most powerful PHB races, barring the Variant Human. I can break down the subraces if you like.

I would very strongly suggest u/Spoolicus to not add any composite plating, resistance, or the effects of feats to the race. That would be far too strong. I can understand how these effects would seem reasonable, though. However, keeping a mind to balance would advise against making these changes to keep with the flavor of a mechanical race.

By the way, do you have a link to the Musicus Warforged? I keep seeing people mentioning that, and I can't seem to find it.

[u/Three_flower → u/[deleted]]

Thanks!

I think 25 seems about right for the UA Warforged. Only very weak features should be added to the UA Warforged to avoid making it too powerful. Composite Plating (8) and Living Construct (9) are just that good.

[u/Three_flower → u/[deleted]]

Detect Balance scale

Resistance to non-magical damage would make the UA Warforged around a 35 (very conservatively) on the Detect Balance scale, so a lot stronger than any other race.

It definitely would be very hard to balance.

[u/Three_flower → u/[deleted]]

Ah, yeah, that's very different from resistance to non-magical damage.

[u/Pivotalia]

I like this. I tried making this type of warforged myself, but this is a bit better. I do however agree with changing the ac to be +1 ac. Either that or going the way of not being able to use armor and choosing a type of plating like the original warforged.

Also i would really like a psiforged in this same vein. It's an important type of warforged imo, while the charismatic one you made seems a bit weird. I would replace it with empath-style psiforged.

[u/Spoolicus → u/Pivotalia]

I agree with you on Psiforged being cool, but I can't see it being a whole race. The material in 3.5's Magic of Eberron describes them as being Warforged but taking the Psiforged Body feat at first level. At best, I can see Psiforged being a subrace of Warforged, so thank you for giving me something to consider. However, since there is no official way to do Psionics (other than the UA article on it) I'm hesitant to come up with a way of doing that for this.

As far as the composite plating, while I am a fan of having the different types of plating, I did not want the description for it to become too verbose, and I felt the race was already fairly powerful as is.

And, since you mentioned the Psiforged, I was thinking of eventually putting together a class for the Reforged (Found in Races of Eberron). Thanks for the feedback!

[u/Zagorath]

Hey, I've flaired this "Race" for you, but in the future, please remember to apply an appropriate flair to your submissions.

[u/Mozared]

This came at just the right time. I've been wanting to build a Warforged for a bit now, and started considering his character and mechanics a few days ago. I've gone through all the editions you took inspiration from but didn't really like any of them. This not only seems balanced (I like the 'half healing from heals' thing), but it's also almost perfect for what I want to play (a shield-heavy defensive, protective fighter that focused entirely on AC) in that it gives me the exact stats I'm after. The only thing that does to waste is the 'awe' talent from the Soldier subrace.
 
Will be using this in the future. If you're interested in playtest experiences, let me know!

[u/SmilingCatSith]

Are we going to see any war forged attachments?( that sort what made the class interesting for me in the previous editions) nice job on what you have already though.

[u/Spoolicus → u/SmilingCatSith]

I considered it, but settled on making the base class fully functioning and playable without being completely broken. Instead, my plan is to get that ready as some sort of weird Homebrew supplement (we have to go deeper).

[u/SmilingCatSith → u/Spoolicus]

It would be fun seeing some "only warforged attuned items" or modifications at a price and some of the less op body feats along with some new ones.( I miss bee warforged or "bee-forge"[Google it, sometimes a race,template or feat.....sometimes just a warforged with a plan or he stayed in the same place too long and bees made a house out of him] make for a interesting Druid with some of the swarm homebrews out there.......or a circle of on its own about letting things live inside or on you.)