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2019-09-11, 01:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
This is definitely a theory-crafting scenario.
Originally Posted by Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron
Another notable effect of this is that while you need the proficiency to set up the armor type, you don't need it to use it once you're in play. The question is whether there is a way to get that proficiency without investing in a class or feat. The most direct one I can think of is Tenser's Transformation. Leave your strenuous activity time for the end of a long rest, cast Tenser's Transformation, and you now have medium and heavy armor proficiency just in time to change Integrated Protection. Naturally, no sane DM would ever allow this, but it is an interesting theory.
The final one I can think of is that you can have light armor without actually being considered armored. This could let you use monk features while having low Wisdom, but that still seems bad. I like the idea of this, but I'm not sure whether it can be leveraged into something useful.
Any other impacts you all can think of? And again, I realize that several of these options would result in being thwacked but where is the fun if you can't think of the ramifications of of the game?Last edited by RickAllison; 2019-09-11 at 02:00 PM.
Originally Posted by krugaan
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2019-09-11, 02:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Various races give proficiency in armor. Githyanki and Mountain Dwarves give light and medium armor, Hobgoblins gives light.
Githzerai are interesting, they give +1 AC so long as you aren't wearing medium or heavy armor or a shield. If you grabbed heavy armor from somewhere, you coud make a pretty decent Shillelagh Druid or Cleric.
But honestly, I think the classic Champion 3/Barbarian X does really well with this.Last edited by Blood of Gaea; 2019-09-11 at 02:18 PM.
Reality is relative, and there is an exception to every rule.
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2019-09-11, 03:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Races giving armor proficiency really don't help here (since this is a racial feature as well). The druid is a good point though, Worst case, they already have medium armor proficiency already that you can now leverage into really good armor. They are normally limited to the really cheap armor with no metal which isn't much better than the light stuff, but this would let a a Druid have a medium armor option that scales perfectly fine with the best of them.
Originally Posted by krugaan
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2019-09-11, 04:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
certain polymorph options will give implied proficiency because things (ie a knight from MM347 & lots of other humanoid type baddies) simply because they are wearing various types of armor, but they don't explicitly get proficiency and more importantly you'd lose your integrated protection ability because "The creature is limited in the actions it can perform by the nature of its new form, and it can’t speak, cast spells, or take any other action that requires hands or speech. The target’s gear melds into the new form. The creature can’t activate, use, wield, or otherwise benefit from any of its equipment.". Tensers transformation is a 6th level spell that grants "You have proficiency with all armor, shields, simple weapons, and martial weapons." (among other things)... however with a mere 10 minute duration, even extended with metamagic it's not long enough to "finish a long rest"
Here's the rest of the text for integrated protection
Originally Posted by wgte69
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2019-09-11, 04:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
certain polymorph options will give implied proficiency because things (ie a knight from MM347 & lots of other humanoid type baddies) simply because they are wearing various types of armor, but they don't explicitly get proficiency and more importantly you'd lose your integrated protection ability because "The creature is limited in the actions it can perform by the nature of its new form, and it can’t speak, cast spells, or take any other action that requires hands or speech. The target’s gear melds into the new form. The creature can’t activate, use, wield, or otherwise benefit from any of its equipment.". Tensers transformation is a 6th level spell that grants "You have proficiency with all armor, shields, simple weapons, and martial weapons." (among other things)... however with a mere 10 minute duration, even extended with metamagic it's not long enough to "finish a long rest"
Here's the rest of the text for integrated protection
Originally Posted by wgte69
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2019-09-11, 04:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Reality is relative, and there is an exception to every rule.
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2019-09-12, 09:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
I don't think you'll get a DM to go along with that interpretation of how the integrated armor is supposed to work. Assuming medium armor plating is medium armor and heavy armor plating is heavy armor, here's my take on warforged for each class
Rogues - You basically start with +1 Studded Leather that gets better every 5 levels. Solid especially if you can grab shield proficiency.
Barbarians/Ranger/Clerics(Medium Armor) - You still can only wear medium armor which means you can't dump dex. You effectively get medium magic armor equivalent each tier. OK but probably not noticeable in a high magic campaign.
Fighters/Paladins/Clerics(Heavy Armor) - Free Plate at level 1. Free magic plate at higher tiers. Solid.
Monks - You could dump Wis and still have good AC. Not recommended as Stunning Fist is your bread and butter at higher levels.
Wizards/Sorcerer - Assuming you can snag light armor proficiency, it's like mage armor but improves a bit at each tier.
Druids - Nothing special here. Scaling medium armor which hopefully can work with druid metal restrictions. Potentially works in wildshape which is huge but YMMV with the DM.
Special subclasses of note:
Bladesinger could get a crazy high AC. YMMV as your DM has to give a warforged permission to take that subclass.
Bear Barbarian - Can technically gain rage damage reduction while wearing heavy armor. You still lose all your other rage features. JC has tweeted that he doesn't agree with this logic so again YMMV with your DM.
One thing you did not mention in your original post is that the heavy armor plating does NOT have a strength requirement. This can lead to some great flexible builds:
Fighter 1/Abjurer X - Solid scaling AC and Con Prof and Arcane Ward.
Tempest Cleric 2/Evoker X - Solid scaling AC and several ways to maximize damage.
Fighter 1/Battlesmith X - Very strong front liner support team with your iron guardian
Forge Cleric 1/Sentinel Rogue X - Durable front line Rogue who is dangerous to ignore. Decent Wisdom, Guidance and integrated tools makes you a very good skill monkey as well.Last edited by Wildarm; 2019-09-12 at 12:21 PM.
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2019-09-12, 03:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
It sounds a lot like you are trying to root your argument in RAW while ignoring that you need to insert "you are considered to be wearing armor" into rules that do not include those words.. {Scrubbed} Per JC in the {Scrubbed} the druid/wildshape podcast... ~1640:"we state in the wildshape rule that this transformation is magical", 20:20:"There's another bit of wildshape that generates a lot of questions, & that is.. we state, that while in wildshape you retain access to your class, your race, and any other source. and you can use them if the new form is capable of doing so. when we say any other source, this also includes stuff like feats. You have access to alk of these things as long as you are physically capable of using them. Now this is very open ended & we were very purposeful in leaving this open ended because there are so may different animals you can turn into , feats, features, racial traits. If we got too specific, we would then wind up being far more restrictive than we intended. Really the message I want to give out to our listeners is that this ruling is written in the spirit of permissiveness, we actually want you to be able to use as many of your of class features, racial traits, feats, etcetera as possible but within a sort of limit based more on narrative than game balance. think about what is your person physically capable of doing, if it's a feature that obviously requires the kind of manual dexterity that needs humanlike hands, your not going to be able to do it in your beast form. If a feature specifically refers to a kind of anatomy that you lack.. hypothetical, lets say you have a racial trait that refers to your wings say an aarakokra & you transform into something that lacks those wings... well you don't have access to that racial trait. Those aren't the combinations that people usually have questions about. They usually have questions about things like... one that comes up a lot is 'im a dragonborn, I transform into a beast, do I get to use my breath weapon?'. Well again, this rule is written in an attitude of permissiveness and also as a DM my attutude is very permissive. The dragonborn racial trait, all it says is you exhale this breath weapon. You don't talk about it tied to a particular organ in your body">"alright basically any creature that has lungs or the ability to exhale something would you say?">I would even be more permissive than that. That as long as the creature has a mouth like orifice I would be fine with the dragonborn using their reath weapon"
The warforged are not constructs. In 3.5 they were living constructs & that plating was magically part of their body.In 5e warforged are even less construct and heal/recover exactly as every other living creature does. Every beast form has a body, going by that dragonborn example from JC it continues to work after that magical transformation. Rust monster Antenna has no effect on magic armor or warforged plating in 5e. The gruamane in Kendal Santor's treatise on the Mournland has a mana drain ability that hurts warforged like rustmonsters in 3.5 did. The difference is that the 3.5 rust monster affected magical armor after a failed dex save while in 5e it just has no effect on magical armor.
back to the podcast: 26:35"another class feature that comes up a lot is people wonder does my druid benefit from this while in beast form which barbarian & monk both have[expand on those features & how various archtypes/ua/etc get similar too] people will wonder does this work while in beast form & it gets even trickier because some of the beasts you turn into have natural armor. does that count as armor?. Ok so there's several things here for me to unpack. First, those rules refer to wearing armor. You don't wear natual armor. So anything in the game that says when you're wearing armor that this thing doesn't work, that never applies to natual armor. That's your skin scales or whatever that's providing your natural armor. Your not wearing it, it's you. That restriction against wearing armor is the artificialness of being a humanoid softskin having to wear strapped on armor. exactly, a natural beast does't have any of those limitations. So right away the natural armor is not shutting off something like the UAD; however this goes back to the rule that different armor class calculations don't stack. You never use them all at the same time "
{Scrubbed}Last edited by jdizzlean; 2019-09-14 at 06:31 AM.
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2019-09-12, 03:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-09-12, 03:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-09-12, 04:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Without going too much into detail:
Redemption Paladin 4 (Though honestly the Oath doesn't really matter)
Bladesinger Wizard 8
Kensei Monk 4
Lore Bard 4
This collection of classes can give us up to 42 AC with spell shenanigans (though from official sources you'd never need more than 39). Even without, it gives us a resting ac of 25 with no resources expended. Plus you have the Bard's Jack of All Trades to help you use your higher slots for counterspelling.
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2019-09-12, 05:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Warforged's Integrated Protection, "Your body has built-in protective layers", is not that different from Lizardfolk's Natural Armor, "You have tough, scaly skin", JC has twitted:
Q: "so does the lizardfolk natural armour need the wild shape to have scales?"
A: "The lizardfolk's Natural Armor specifies anatomy: tough, scaly skin. It doesn't apply if you're wearing a beast's skin in Wild Shape" - JC
https://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/12/25...in-wild-shape/
So, RAI at least, I'd say it doesn't work.
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2019-09-12, 06:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
That's another problem. WotC has a bizarre tendency to ignore the rules when making rulings with druid wildshape. For example this one where rather than let druids finding wearable(whatever restrictions you do or don't put on armor for druid players) magic barding and have it resize to fit whatever wildshape form they take... they instead declare that barding is different from armor in that regard & inadvertently simultaneously exempt barding from "will not wear metal armor[because it goes against Mielikki's code in FR]"
"Your body", not your skin, not your scales, every wildshape form has a "body". A dwarf is still resistant to poison, a tiefling is still resistant to fire, a goliath still can use their DR thing, a halforc still gets extra damage on crits & has that drop to 1hp thing because those are all racial traits. All of those happen because "You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so." The thing that warforged need to have for those. magical protective layers to affect the wildshape form is a "body" There is also evidence of those protective layers being able to "magically adjust themselves to the wearer. " with warforged literally growing blades from it among other things.
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2019-09-12, 11:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-09-13, 12:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Reality is relative, and there is an exception to every rule.
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2019-09-14, 06:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
The Mod Life Crisis: Kindly stay on topic without attacking each other. Discussions of RAW/RAI should stay w/ just the facts or your opinion, but everyone's opinion is valid here.
Last edited by jdizzlean; 2019-09-14 at 06:43 AM.
Originally Posted by Peelee
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2019-09-14, 12:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
I always thought the whole way Warforged Integrated Protection was written was sloppy...they call it Heavy Plating, reference that it is (armor), then say you need Heavy Armor Proficiency...but somehow it isn't Heavy Armor?
Why not just leave out the (armor) qualifier in the description? Seems like that would have alleviated a lot of confusion; Ok, it is Heavy Plating, and you need Heavy Armor Proficiency to be able use it, but it is Integrated Protection, not Armor. Did they put the (armor) just to make it clear it can't work with certain "unarmored" class features? Eeesh, just write that out (i.e. "Warforged Integrated Protection levels that include Plating prohibits the use of any class features or abilities that require the creature to be "unarmored."), rather than calling it (armor) then saying "It's not armor! We mean it IS armor! But just sometimes! I'm sorry you'll just have to figure out when!"
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2019-09-14, 12:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
It's Eberron, not ebberon.
It's not high magic, it's wide magic.
And it's definitely not steampunk. The only time steam gets involved is when the fire and water elementals break loose.
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2019-09-14, 12:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Back in 3.5 it was cleaner on the armor front but there were a ton of things that came from the other racial traits that made it stand out as something very much not meat based but still not clearly just a construct. The body/bodyfeats were "cleaner" because 3.5 had a lot more tied to creature type and it still had things like Arcane spell failure chance/Armor Check Penalties. dding further evidence to the integrated protection being magical, at one point o the composite plating section it said "This plating is not natural armor and does not stack with other effects that give an armor bonus (other than natural armor)".
WotC made a decision in 5e to deemphasize creature types (that part is neither good nor bad), then on MM6 write this sentence in the top right. "The game includes the following monster types, which have no rules of their own." That choice along with system differences make it difficult to preserve that original "clearly not meat and not quite construct either" in any way other than having the integrated protection reside in the current state of not being considered wearing armor. the types of plating in 3.5 were determined by your choice to spend your level 1 feat on a body feat or not, 5e doesn't have those now though so another method needs to be used. Given 5e's mechanics, armor proficiency is about the only way that does not fling them out of that murky space of a living construct.
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2019-09-14, 04:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-09-14, 08:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Well, the fluff stuff isn't UA-level. The mechanics, though... the version number doesn't change much, as there was little change in mechanics, it was mostly editing (I actually got through the trouble of creating a changelog). And there were UAs with multiple progressive versions, Artificer had most of them. There was also older UA version of Eberron races, including warforged.
And we were promised to get final version when E:RftLW comes out.... we'll see how different that will be from the current depiction.It's Eberron, not ebberon.
It's not high magic, it's wide magic.
And it's definitely not steampunk. The only time steam gets involved is when the fire and water elementals break loose.
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2019-09-16, 12:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
I personally consider that warforgeds using composite or heavy plating are using armors.
- It is implied with the"(armor)" and "(unarmored)" in the mode column.
- It makes sense to me.
- Otherwise it would create a significant number of rules issues, like the Barbarian or Bladesinger in heavy armor or the Fighter not able of using the Defence FS and the Forge Cleric forgoing his subclass features.
The Warforged plating rules do avoid the Strength requirement though. And it doesn't look at all like a mistake.
This open a lot of possibilities. Not only it is very good for the heavy armor cleric that doesn't need 15 Str anymore but as others have pointed out, it allows a whole new set of MC combos. Notably with multiclassed arcana caster.
I believe this feature scale a bit too well anyway. At any given level, the Warforged will have 1 or 2 point of AC more than any member of another race with the same build and level-appropriate magic armor. That is significant.
That would be fine if this was the only feature of the race, but it also get Warforged Resilience and subrace feature, some of them are really good.Last edited by Petrocorus; 2019-09-16 at 12:36 PM.
Que tous les anciens dieux et les nouveaux protègent la France.
Resistance Data in MM, Volo's, MToF. -- -- Petrocorus's 3.5 Paladin Builds List. -- -- French vs. EnglishOriginally Posted by King Louis XIII in The Musketeers
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2019-09-16, 01:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
The key difference is the proficiency bonus. At max dex, the ac of any plating at 1st level is 18, 17, 18, with composite being the worst. At 20th level that is 22, 21, 22, which is comparable to a 20th level barbarian.
This is intended to have it scale with magic armor as plating by raw cant be enchanted like a plate +3, which would give 21 armor. The problem is that the warforged doesnt have to pay or find it, it grows with them.
I just started my level 5 warforged artificer, and assuming i can infuse my plating, i have 22 ac as at level 5 and 13 + 2dex + 3prof +3 from infused shield +1 from infused plating.
This increases by 5 more for free with prof and infusions as i level.
I brought this up in my own thread when i learned plating doesnt count as armor on dndbeyond. The conclusion i got was the party should decide if jit is or isnt no in between or exceptions. As warforged cant wear armor, but requires proficiency with it for plating. We determined it was. Darkwood is unarmored if you arent proficient in light.Last edited by Khrysaes; 2019-09-16 at 01:32 PM.
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2019-09-16, 01:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
They are only "rules issues" if you consider warforged as bin the same as every flesh & blood meat based race. As a living construct, they are not just like everyone else, the fact that there are things they can & can not do that weak flesh based races can is a big part of their struggle in the setting they come from.
You can consider that houserule interpretation, but the rules do not support it and more importantly it does a disservice to the lore in making the living construct warforged more like a flesh & blood humanoid rather than something that straddles the line between construct & creature. When you need to add words and say things like "it's implied" & you are arguing against the plain wording of the ability to add "you are consudered to be wearing armor" to your interpretation.. it's a rewriting or reimagining of the rules. You identified a few examples of how they straddle that line, the solution is to embrace the fact that they do so rather than force them to clearly exist on one side.
Back in 3.5 there were PrC's that would allow a warforged to embrace one side or the other (reforged for lliving, juggernaught & others for construct). Your reimagined version of the rules flatly robs reforged of much of its uniqueness by flinging base warforged clearly into the same box as flesh & blood humanoids.
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2019-09-16, 02:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Which is, in fact, irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is about mechanical balance, and not fluff. The last incarnation of warforged is already humanoid "just like everyone else" instead of being a construct for the same reason.
He's also (half)right: composite or heavy plating is considered armor for the purpose of abilities that care about that (unarmored defense, pretty much). They are not considered wearing specific class of armor, though, so Integrated Protection does not interfere with Rage, or Bladesong (not that it matters, as WF can't be Bladesinger anyway), nor does it benefit from Defense FS or Soul of the Forge.
Really, the ability is just awkwardly written. Let WF pick one of the options at character creation (just like the feats back in 3.5) and stick with that, counting it as natural armor that prevent you from wearing actual armor (like with tortles). That way, WF may have AC advantage at low levels, but won't scale later. If you're really worried about non-WF getting +X armor, create WF-only magic item that give +X to AC, at the same rarity as equivalent magic armor. It's both simpler, more balanced and closer to 3.5 rules.Last edited by JackPhoenix; 2019-09-16 at 02:04 PM.
It's Eberron, not ebberon.
It's not high magic, it's wide magic.
And it's definitely not steampunk. The only time steam gets involved is when the fire and water elementals break loose.
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2019-09-16, 02:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
I would see this as the best optiin to balance it. Give them innate 10 unarmored, 12 +dex light armored, 14+ dex max 2 medium armored, and 18 ac heavy armored but imposing disadvantage on stealth as an optin 1st level. Then give them docents that arent sentient as the armor option with same rarity. The docents could also affect materials, i.e. mithral removes disadvantage, addy makes you immune to crits, +1 gives a +1 ac, or maybe other magical effects. Proficiency effects as normal, no str requirments, feats effect as normal
There, exactly balanced with other races.
Also of note, barding. If you can make armor for a bear or egasi why not a warforged? They can even be used as mounts by small races. Judt like every other medium raceSpoiler: I am the
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2019-09-16, 04:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
If only WotC had some way to predict that warforge existed as a race somewhere between construct & flesh and blood creature where they could have given more thought to the differences between humanoids & constructs back 5+ years ago when wotc was making 5e. Since they did not, that leaves the not good for medium/heavy armor mastery forge cleric etc but good for rage & monk stuff remains the dividing line that clearly works within 5e's ruleset
With that said however, no it's not about balance at all. I've been running a game where I have players both warforge & flesh with a warforged barbarian & monk both using their integrated defense without issue since wayfinders came out. Earlier in the thread someone pointed out a build capable of breaking past 40ac using any race. In that light, what exactly is the "mechanical balance" issue that requires warforge to function like flesh based races when it comes to their magical integrated protection & armor/barding? Ne specific and spell out why it is a problemLast edited by Tetrasodium; 2019-09-16 at 05:10 PM. Reason: typo I's to It's
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2019-09-16, 04:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
Intergrated protection could have just been a flat +1 AC. Simple. Effective. The rest of the race/subrace could stay the same
what is the point of living if you can't deadlift?
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2019-09-17, 02:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
I see both humanoid with construct-like racial trait (the current version) and construct with "living construct" trait as viable options, and while the later is closer to the original WF, the first propably work better for developers, as it lessens the possible unintended interactions. GGtR already opened door for non-humanoid PC races, and also modular approach to racial traits (with Simic hybrid's mutations). We'll see how WotC reacts to feedback they've got from the UA.
That was the original version, from 2015, or whenever the first Eberron UA was released. Problem with that is that WF would have to wear normal armor like everyone else... that doesn't fit them at all... their plating is part of their body.Last edited by JackPhoenix; 2019-09-17 at 02:20 AM.
It's Eberron, not ebberon.
It's not high magic, it's wide magic.
And it's definitely not steampunk. The only time steam gets involved is when the fire and water elementals break loose.
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2019-09-17, 03:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Impacts of Warforged's Integrated Protection
I've suggested this in a previous thread, but a fine solution is just making superior warforged plating something you can purchase like other armor, with mundane and magical versions. You can factor in the superior AC and lower versatility into these plating options, giving the actual Warforged race more room for features and making them scale equivalently (though not at the same rate, what with the higher AC) with other members of the party, rather than having one scale off of purchase/looting of magic armor and the other scale off of proficiency.
The stars are calling, but let's come up with a good opening line before we answer
Spoiler: Homebrew of Mine