Yesterday in the Kender post, I wondered why no one is bitching about the warforged coming back, but taichara responded that "people who play warforged haven't been handed a mandate to drive the rest of the table into an insane asylum with their pwecious twee kleptomaniac". Well, no, they haven't. The mandate they have been handed gives them the right to sullen fighty types with few, if any, social connections. If the kender is custom made for That Guy, the warforged is custom made for The Turtle.
Also, it's made for the guy who says "I'm tired of being told my character has human limitations like a need to eat, drink and breathe, and I'm terrified that the GM will tell me I have to take my armor off to rest. So I want a race that that has no disadvantages other than 'refuses to act like a human being'."
By the way, Timrod, did you know that the kender are coming back?
Why no bitching about the Warforged? Well, around these parts, the response might be:
ReplyDeleteWhat is a Warforged? Followed by:
What is Eberrron? Followed by:
There was a Third Edition???????
;)
- Ark
I'm sure my response to the first one would invite much mockery: "I think they're like steampunk golems."
DeleteMy response to the third might result in some debate, 'cause I actually enjoyed 3E but loathed 3.5 with a violent passion. Seriously, the former's really good if you turn on some of the 2E options, ditch a bunch of crap like colossal skeletons and liberally mix with whatever old-school stuff you like so there's so semblance of balance or coherent design! And yes, contrary to what some in the OSR claim, you can house-rule 3E and use old-school materials. I did it when I was 12, so I'd think an experienced DM could as well
Except for the telling if personal anecdote that my warforged players have had no problem playing their characters with ample social connections and often a desire to explore the consequences of being a created non-biological life orignally meant for warfare. Whereas the kender players -- before I banned kender from the table -- battened onto behaviour that was the exact thing that I described.
ReplyDeleteBut then I also suspect you have a bias showing in any case, so there it is. *shrugs*
Only reason I'm not bitching is 'cause I'm done with new editions. 3.5, Pathfinder and 4E felt nothing like the fantasy I was interested in playing, but that's because they're catering to a totally different crowd. These are people interested in playing something very different from myself, so it doesn't matter what WotC is publishing, my fantasy gaming would still lie outside the norm. I'm finding plenty of great material in older editions, though, so it's not like I'm short on material
ReplyDeleteIt's true, I do loathe the kender; they were the Scrappy Doo of D&D. I don't doubt that Warforged and tieflings and whoever else are equally or perhaps even more lame as PC races, but Scrappy opened the gate for them and deserves every bit of our wrath. Plus, none of these other races had such a visible and obnoxious spokesperson as that dipshit Tasslehof.
ReplyDeleteWhile I've never seen a Kender NOT played the way you described, I've never run into a Warforged that HAS been played the way you described.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I intended to say. If anything, the Warforged stereotype is Mr. Data, fantasy edition.
DeleteBecause robots are cool. Magic is cool. Therefore magical robots are super cool.
ReplyDeleteIn my 3.5 and 4e days I never saw a Warforged played as you describe. In my experience Warforged are more of a fantasy Mr. Data-- artificial life desperately seeking a purpose in society, often through friendship, religion, or other distinctly human means.
ReplyDeleteAlso (in 3.5 at least) they didn't heal on their own and magical healing didn't work very well on them, they had to be mechanically repaired. So that's a pretty notable weakness, I'd say.
Ditto on the "Warforged are played by people who want to explore their non-humanity, not by people who want to eschew human weakness for power-gamey reasons."
ReplyDeletePlus, "fantasy robots" have old-school cred. The Oz books are in Appendix N, after all, and they feature both Tik-tok (an actual clockwork automaton) and the Tin Woodman (technically more of a cyborg in origin, though a fairy-tale type in that he had literally everything replaced over time; he's bothered by his lack of a living heart but doesn't seem to care that his whole head has been removed and replaced with a prosthetic).