D&D Warforged are Bad (and how to make them better)

this is pointy hat and welcome to DND with a Twist the show where I take a deity thing could be a class could be a monster it could be a race it's that I give you a rundown on what that thing is and at the end of the video you go home with a nice little present that you can use in your very own games it's sort of Christmasy theme now that I think about it there's a gift at the end of the video it's free it's given to you by an omnipresent Eldritch magical being don't think about it too hard so when I think of War Forge I think of [Music] laughs warforge is a race for people who insist on putting sci-fi stuff in a fantasy game and real doll enjoyers warforge are Well robots but not really but kinda but no they're a fantasy Robots full disclosure here I love robots I love looking at robots I love figuring out what robots do I love stories about robots I love writing those stories and as a robot enjoyer I gotta say my opinion on workforge is they're fine disappointed I'll explain but first let me tell you a story a long long time ago magic practitioners set out to harness the power of the very building blocks of Creation with their magic they theorize that these extremely powerful sources of energy could be used in impossibly powerful spells but in the raw form they were simply too unstable and unpredictable if they could just distill the power into objects they will be able to harness the unmitigated strength of water foliage fire geodes lightning and even space but who could accomplish such a task that's when the fame dispel Alchemist and the Woodworkers of the wormboard tree joined forces to create what was later called the elemental collection dies that held the very power of the elements safely contained in Arcane dicebox and you can get them that's right the spell and wormwood are back at it again and they've sponsored me to tell you all about it they have just launched their Elementor collection kickstart powder and it runs for only 12 days December 14th to Christmas day that's the 25th and look at them look at them Jesus Outdoors pretty you can choose one of the six elements they managed to encapsulate within the elemental dice water fire foliage geodes lightning and my personal favorite space I like stars and you can choose between two sets of dice iconic dice which have beautiful drawn icons of each element in each dice or iridescent dice that give them that sick magical gleam personal favorites are the iridescent ones but to each their own and that's not all you get dice Waltz to go with them and they are also themed around elements look at these Beauties look at the space one it has stars anyway if these look pretty to you you can head down to the description below and click the link to visit their Kickstarter as I said this one is a short one running for just 12 days until the 25th so if you were looking for a Christmas treat this might be the one anyway back to the video warforts are described as tall around six feet which like whatever let us have small bullets please their skin is metallic they're basically covered head to toe in armor but it gets weird when you go past the skin you see warforge worked pretty much like normal PCS for healing because it would be insane not to be able to heal but how would that healing work exactly if the thing you're healing with magic or potions is inorganic Well turns out warforge are organic kinda this is what I meant by they are kind of robots the inside of a warforge has organic components most often wood but I found some descriptions of leather also being used in this they even have like what honestly sounds like hydraulic fluid to me like a Disney animatronic you would be a hundred percent following rules as written if you showed up with one of those Five Nights at Freddy's things that children on the internet with no adult supervision draw weird spicy pictures of you'd be wrong to do that but it would technically not be a crime I would Smite you down though you've been warned so okay humanoid robots made out of an outer layer of metal and an inner layer of organic material cool how do these guys happen let's talk about history warforge are intrinsically tied to the eberron setting eberron is like the cooler version of the Baseline DND setting the Forgotten Realms exist to establish what's normal in d d and eberron is here to show what happens when you deviate from the norm honestly everyone is getting its own entire video there's no way to talk about everything related to it here but all you need to know to understand the basics of War force is that eberron is a more modern steam slash diesel Punk setting with a higher emphasis on technology and on Magic text specifically so okay they're from eberron but how are they made well when a creation Forge and a Warhawk profiteering industrialists love each other very much the creation for churns out sentient automatons are built and trained to be weapons of war in a several year-long conflict that decimates the population and raise the world to the ground ah yes without getting too much into eberron lore warforge as the name Ever So subtly implies were made for war but this doesn't mean that that's the only thing they can do they are sentient yes I know Titan models are not sentient and those literally just follow orders I said I'm keeping this video simple with the Ebron shirt you don't need to shut this at me at the comments I get it and can therefore do whatever they want when a warforge is created they are very much like a baby they are not born with morality that's something they learn so if the person creating them decides to teach them to be a killing machine that does nothing but fight that's what the warforge will do unless something happens for them to question those orders just like a normal person this has basically led to warforge having a very hard time adapting to a society at peace them being walking reminders of an awful War still in living memory for many people also doesn't help things yes you guessed it like any setting that has robots in it we are treated to a healthy dose of like dreaded Nemesis clumsy allegory people don't like warforts because they're cheap labor people don't like warforge because they associate them with war it's your usual what if racism but robots I wonder if the hole must immediately include robot racism in any setting with robots in it thing is like a government mandate or something like our writers held at gunpoint over this playing twice if you're forced to write this because oh God have we seen it a million times and we're tired so yes warforge avoid a very common DND pit trap of having them be a caricature of a race with like two personality traits that all members of that race seem to have despite being one of the very few races where that would actually make some sort of sense seeing as they are created as constructs and not bored so they come in all styles of personality and while many do end up doing manual labor because they don't sleep or eat or breathe there are others that become spies artists bards some stay as mercenaries or even soldiers because that's what they're good at they're all very diverse but a fun quirky personality that I do love about them is that warforge are extremely task motivated they like to-do lists because how they were made they kind of need a purpose this leads to them working super well in organizations and hierarchies but if they're doing their own thing with no one giving them orders they will literally assigned themselves tasks to keep busy side note this is very similar to how dogs worked and that tickles me so much make a dog warfort you coward okay so warforge our sentient constructs with a love for a to-do list and a bit of an identity crisis in the eberron setting now that war is not a thing yet solid so let's take a look at the race in terms of abilities Warford have gone through some changes even in 5th edition but let's first look at what was actually published in the 5th edition eberron book in terms of odds that increases you got a tudikon and one wherever you want it this is honestly great literally everybody can benefit from this your size is medium and they want you to do a whole bunch of math to figure out your exact weight and size which whatever I am pretending I do not see it because Why can't your robot be small Wizards your lifespan is kind of up in the air as the oldest warforge R30 and literally have not aged a day they look great so who knows Immortal maybe most likely in terms of abilities you get your Baseline weird not living race ability with constructed resilience which makes you resistant to poison advantage against being poisoned and unable to catch any disease you also don't need to eat drink or breathe and you can basically go into idle mode and just lie in a pile for six hours while remaining completely conscious instead of a normal rest Allah elf the more robot themed abilities come later in the form of integrated protection this basically makes it so you get a plus one to your at sea at the cost of armor being particularly annoying to take off and on you also get specialized design which just gives you a skill and Tool proficiency which means I guess and Alexa language all in all honestly not amazing it's fine it's not a weak option at all it's just sort of uninspired integrated protection is a plus one to AC and almost feels like a punishment making it very hard for you to put armor on and off and change armor which also doesn't scream robot to me the whole not needing to eat or breathe or powering off to sleep is the most robot e ability but it kind of loses its charm once you see how many other races have basically the exact same ability and specialized design is fine it's just sad to look at when you know what could have been yep warforge looked very different in their Unearthed Arcana version on Earth arcano for those that do not know is sort of the playground where Wizards of the Coast designers throw new stuff for the game for the community to test and then endlessly complain about on Twitter without actually filling out the feedback survey and warforge got their own Unearthed our counter article and it was so much cooler than what we actually got it came with a bunch of sub races that detailed how the purpose of warforce had been made for changed its abilities the AC ability was much more involved giving you different options for armor and making it more about your natural armor rather than how to take off and put on normal armor you could play an Envoy warforge which were all about having a super specific design that allowed you to do specific tasks super well you could play a big boy damage Juggernaut which punch and hit real good or you could play a skirmisher that was all about being stealthy and sneaky and dexterous it was much more flavorful and felt much more in line with the spirit of the race like your character is an actual construct made for a specific purpose yes it was more complicated but I guess we're going with simple so that's what we got but what if we could change this what if we made a new alternative race to the warforge what if we delivered on that promise of a highly specialized construct as a racial option what if we gave War forged a new twist so you want to play a war Forge [Music] increase amounts of data warforge are sentient toasters that were originally designed as killing machines that are now free to pursue their liberal arts degree they always dreamed of so my problem with warforge is that they lost a lot between Unearthed Arcana and official release and I think we can do something with what was left behind I don't want to do just another robot race with different lore because let's be honest you don't need me to tell you that you can re-flavor the warforge into pretty much any construct you want do you want to play a puppet come to life play warforge do you want to play the titular character The Brave Little Toaster from the 1987 animated classic Playa warforge except apparently not because they can't be little why reflavoring is easy but what if we made something completely unique I've said I really don't like how we lost the ability to make our warforged characters the specialized constructs that were made with a specific goal in mind so what if we kept that but went on a completely different direction hear me out cyborgs [Music] yes yes I know people that get mad at anything remotely sci-fi are already busting out the pitchforks but hearing me out what about a racial option that allowed you to take into account magically enhancing your body this is a world with magic and magical items so what happens if you lose an arm a leg your side or hearing the ability to walk what if your prosthesis was magical what if your character didn't lose a limb but instead transform their body with the help of magitek to accomplish their goal that sounds pretty sweet so let's get into it those that have chosen to become augmented are anything but a monolith most augmented become so after losing a limb the capability to hear see walk or even speak phased with the challenges that naturally come from their situation they reach out to master Crafters artificers specializing in the making and installing of wondrous magical Prosthetics to a living humanoid body these artificers take incredible pride in their work and each add a unique personal touches to their craft as a result no two augmentations look or work the same they are personally made for the person augmented with them most of the time a lost arm is replaced with an artificial limb meant to work exactly like an arm would but artificers are inventive by nature and so augmented are given secondary characteristics to their augmentations allowing them not just to replace their lost limb or sense but also give them new capabilities that their original limb did not have some augmented installer augmentations with combat capabilities including finely tuned weapons into them some are given incredibly powerful legs or fast seats that allow them to move through the battlefield even faster than before and some add tools to their augmentations opening up a myriad of possibilities that go from integrated musical instruments to perfectly concealed thieves tools but there are those that decide to become augmented not after the loss of a sense or limb but because of the incredible capabilities that their augmentations would grant them there are assassin Clans that augment their members making them even deadlier at their Sinister craft there are augmented marathons where Racers have chosen to undergo augmentation to participate in the fastest ever racist involving people there are even Whispers of truly heinous Master Craftsmen artificers that force their unethical augmentations on unwilling subjects regardless of why and how someone became augmented they all share one common thing their augmentations are all as different and unique as the people attached to them imagine the augmented characters you could make how about a veteran from war that decides to take up his sword again after years of Peace for a cause he believes in and asks his artificial buddy from the war times to fit that very sword into his arm prosthetic or maybe a world famous bar that has decided to augment her voice box allowing her to not just sing but produce the notes of several musical instruments at the same time becoming a one-woman Orchestra or how about a boy raised in an Infamous deadly clan of Assassins that has been augmented from birth sent for the first time into the real world with an arsenal of weapons in his body but no true experiencing actually committing the grizzly act his family expect him to commit it's just a shame that the augmented live only in my little hat brain I'll guess you'll have to come up with them on your own you know give them a bunch of abilities to account for all the possible ways to be augmented make sure that any existing race works with them or what if I just wrote it yes that's right the augmented are written and Illustrated and ready to be played by you and they are in the description of this very video for you guessed it free just check out that thing so go out there live your fantasy cyberpunk dreams and embrace transhumanism and that's it we did it yet another DND with a Twist done I love robots I love them so much and I love cyborgs almost just as much I feel like there are so many sci-fi Concepts that fantasy can explore giving it its own twist which goes with the show magic is such a cool aesthetic and Vibe so why not take advantage of that I was also kind of disappointed with the final warforge we got especially after the unearth Arcana perfectly encapsulated what I wanted out of the race so I made it I guess you could say the augmented are more of a lineage than a race and I think that's cool I mean I made a very similar thing already with a Phantasm in the undead video and I'm generally a fan of lineages so this does make sense I hope you like them because I like them a lot if you made it this far in the video first of all thank you and second of all let me know what augmentation you would get I think you could get really creative with these alright I'm signing off it's Christmas time for me at least might not be for you that's fine I gotta go out into the City and stare at the lights for like a couple of hours with my mouth open I'll see you soon right before New Year's love ya get all the presents you need to get if you you do oh God bye [Music]

Channel: Pointy Hat

Views: 567,965

Keywords: DnD, D&D, DnD with a twist, 5e, TTRPG, How to, Illustration, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D with a twist, d&d battle music, pointy hat, animation, rant, hat, homebrew, trailer, D&D trailer, OneD&D, one d&d, onednd, one dnd, warforged, robots, eberron, eberon, last war, cyborg, augmented, war forged, synthetic, steampunk, cyberpunk, cyberpunk 77, edgerunners

Id: qSjh6-mA638

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022