Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Laerrigan 12-03-07, 12:02 AM	I'm trying to figure out whether living constructs would feel pain. One would think that a creature that can be repaired without anesthesia--or even have a limb removed and replaced with a different one--wouldn't. Or maybe there's a difference between "modifications" that cause damage and ones that heal it? And is there any central location for thought/awareness on such a construct (most likely the head), despite the fact that removing a nonliving construct's head doesn't destroy it (as far as I'm aware, anyway)? Can the head of a living construct continue living if removed from the body with a minimum of hp damage? This probably sounds morbid, but doggonnit, I'm curious :P :) I'd be greatly interested in anyone else's thoughts (especially if the cow from hell happens to wander through ;) ).
ArcTan 12-03-07, 12:26 AM	Um, Warforged can't easily have limbs removed and replaced by different ones. Their "arm components" are things that *attach* to their limbs, but don't replace them. In any case, WF are not immune to things like symbol of pain or other pain-based magic effects (and the "stunned" condition is implied to be related to pain, as is nonlethal damage, and WF are susceptible to both). As a flavor issue, the novels talk about how WF feel pain, but are socialized to respond to it very different from how Humans do -- WF imagine pain as a simple indicator that their body has been damaged and are trained not to freak out or take pain personally and emotionally the way Humans often do. As far as where the seat of consciousness is on a WF, the books don't say for sure, but the concept of the circlet of preservation, which a WF wears on its head in order to transfer its consciousness into the circlet, implies that WF's minds do, in fact, live in their heads like ours do. The general rule of thumb is to treat WF mechanically just like Humans unless something in their racial entry *specifically* says otherwise, so yes, the safest ruling is that WF die from decapitation (and are therefore vulnerable to vorpal weapons).
Laerrigan 12-03-07, 12:29 AM	Very helpful! Thanks a lot :) To your knowledge, has anything been stated or implied on this subject with regard to half-golems (categorized as constructs, sentient but not living)? I find the template intriguing, and one Eberron adventure involves a stone half-golem wolf so I know they exist in that setting.....
Edymnion 12-03-07, 10:49 PM	Very helpful! Thanks a lot :) To your knowledge, has anything been stated or implied on this subject with regard to half-golems (categorized as constructs, sentient but not living)? I find the template intriguing, and one Eberron adventure involves a stone half-golem wolf so I know they exist in that setting.....Half-golems still start out as a living base with golem parts bolted onto them. They can make saves to keep from losing their minds, meaning that they do still use their biological minds, its just when they fully give in to their "upgrades" they lose their humanity and become mindless. I'd say they still require their heads to function though.
Laerrigan 12-03-07, 11:10 PM	Actually, half-golems don't lose their minds when they fail a Will save, they lose their alignments (becoming NE). They still have an Int score (just at a -6 penalty), and are not mindless; they even retain memories from their previous life, and they're entirely self-willed as far as I can tell from the descriptive text of the template (as opposed to the nimblewright which is sentient but NOT self-willed). I was just wondering what different people might think about whether or not a half-golem would feel pain from taking damage or from being manually repaired. A half-golem's entire body takes on full construct traits when it fails a Will save, and its entire body (not just the prosthesis) has the natural armor and DR of whatever golem it's meshed with. So would damage to a portion of its body that's NOT prosthesis cause any kind of pain? I'm thinking it wouldn't (as the whole body of a failed-Will-save half-golem is technically nonliving), but I'm interested to see other people's ideas.
Kreistor2 12-04-07, 01:02 AM	Pain serves a purpose. It tells us that something is hurt. It is genreally in proportion to the amount of hurt done, so that we are less able to use something that is already damaged so that we do not damage it further by accident. We can fight through the pain (especially with experience), and thereby overcome it in order to achieve what we want despite the pain, but, in the end, the pain tells us that we shouldn't be doing what we are doing. It's generally a bad idea to change that concept. If you allow for something like "they know they are damaged, but don't feel anything more if they use the damaged part", then the creation becomes suicidal, and for an investment, especially a military one, that's a bad thing. A soldier that doesn't feel pain is one that won't be able to accurately judge the cost of choosing to fight. Being able to overcome and fight through pain in times of desperation is good. Being able to ignore pain anytime one likes is very bad.
Laerrigan 12-04-07, 01:40 AM	Pain serves a purpose.....A soldier that doesn't feel pain is one that won't be able to accurately judge the cost of choosing to fight....... Good point. A construct that recognizes something at least akin to pain (as in, a very disagreeable sensation) is certainly more likely to realize the extent of damage taken and consider retreating to be repaired before continuing the fight, thus saving an investor the expense of replacement. Of course, as ArcTan pointed out, how said construct views and responds to pain can be entirely different from the standard human response, making pain really not much more than a clinical awareness that repair is needed and perhaps a limb shouldn't be used until then. I don't imagine pain could be used as any sort of threat or deterrent to such a creature. :::wry laugh at self::: I sound like a freaking death-camp doctor :yuck:
ArcTan 12-04-07, 01:41 AM	It's generally a bad idea to change that concept. If you allow for something like "they know they are damaged, but don't feel anything more if they use the damaged part", then the creation becomes suicidal, and for an investment, especially a military one, that's a bad thing. A soldier that doesn't feel pain is one that won't be able to accurately judge the cost of choosing to fight. Being able to overcome and fight through pain in times of desperation is good. Being able to ignore pain anytime one likes is very bad. I never said WF can ignore pain anytime they like. Indeed, it's demonstrable that they can't -- dealing greater than their current HP total in nonlethal damage reduces them to unconsciousness (a noticeably counterproductive thing to have happen, but one that they're vulnerable to anyway). The way I picture it is that WF come out of training automatically inured to pain in the way that only the best human soldiers are (they are, after all, almost all 2nd-level Fighters at the beginning of their careers, while most soldiers are level 1 Warriors). The *flavor* is that they seem more "mechanical" in the way they approach pain than humans -- if nothing else, they don't have the *vocabulary* to describe pain as anything other than "battle damage" -- but pain still debilitates and distracts them. BTW, the jury is still out on how adaptive the human pain response is. The human brain is, to be honest, a kind of shoddy, slapped-together product full of redundancies -- most complex systems created by biological evolution are -- and it really doesn't seem to make sense that in order to treat pain seriously, we must degrade in our ability to function the more pain we feel. A well-organized mind ought to be able to understand how serious and bad pain is and as a result become *more* focused, *more* alert and *more* rational and logical-minded when enduring extreme pain. That is, indeed, what soldiers and fighters work very, very hard to train themselves to be able to do. The normal human reaction of feeling extreme pain -- i.e. being badly physically damaged and in great physical danger -- and, as a result, losing the ability to think completely, screaming wildly and attracting everyone's attention, and keeling over and waiting to die is probably not a good reaction. At the very least, it's something that may have worked as a response in primitive society but, like many of the responses programmed into us when we were wild animals, is now hugely counterproductive for the variety of situations we can end up in in modern life.
Kreistor2 12-04-07, 02:03 AM	Not everything is about you, ArcTan. If I were responding to you directly, I would have quoted you or used your name. My post was intended as a stand-alone.
Laerrigan 12-04-07, 02:17 AM	At the very least, it's something that may have worked as a response in primitive society but, like many of the responses programmed into us when we were wild animals, is now hugely counterproductive for the variety of situations we can end up in in modern life. LOL, the reverse would be true in an evolutionary scenario, with the more wild, primitive state being THE most dangerous environment for flipping out over pain/damage. When the sabertooth's claws slash across your monkey-haired back from ambush, you'd be much better off thinking clearly and reacting in a focused manner than screaming and flailing about (predators expect hysteria from their prey and account for it, witness a snake's immobilizing of a struggling mouse or a pride of lionesses' use of a spooker to drive prey into the ambush). Most of our modern life (outside the battlefield or horrible accident scenes) is considerably cushier, giving us much more leeway in how we can afford to react to sudden pain. If anything, evolution should have wiped out proto-humans who reacted the way we do ;) This thread is netting some rather interesting information and viewpoints. Keep them coming! :D
JulesCARV 12-04-07, 04:11 AM	The physical pain warforged feel in response to environmental stimuli is nothing compared to the pain in their souls, reaching through their minds like black tendrils of despair, leaving them aware of nothing but the miasma of torment through which they can only dimly see the hope of oblivion's sweet release. Or possibly not.
TheKeyofE 12-04-07, 07:37 AM	The physical pain warforged feel in response to environmental stimuli is nothing compared to the pain in their souls, reaching through their minds like black tendrils of despair, leaving them aware of nothing but the miasma of torment through which they can only dimly see the hope of oblivion's sweet release. Or possibly not. Emo robots? (http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u158/MUmU_peachieZ/EmoRobot.jpg) Seriously, though...I watched Transformers again today, and I thought it was a good example of constructs and pain. When Bumblebee gets his legs blown off, he's very obviously in pain, but pushes through like the tough soldier he is. When Ratchet chops off Devastator's arm while Ironhide and Jazz shoot him, he's obviously distressed by this but keeps fighting anyway. Scorponok exhibits similar behaviour when he gets chewed up by the gunships.
JulesCARV 12-04-07, 03:34 PM	In short, warforged are like people with comparable hit points, fortitude saves, and, where applicable, autohypnosis and concentration checks. A typical warforged is a fighter 2 with 15 str, 13 dex, 16 con, 12 int, 8 wis, and 6 cha, with a fortitude save of +6 and 17 hit points. A typical human soldier is a warrior 1 with 13 str, 11 dex, 12 con, 10 int, 9 wis, 8 cha, with a fortitude save of +3 and 5 hit points. A typical elf civilian is a commoner 1 with an unpredictable ability score distribution, but, on average, pre-racial modifier scores of around 10.5, with constitution thus being around 8.5, with a fortitude save of -1 and 1 lonely hit point. A really tough human (like, you guessed it, King Boranel, with his 6 + con fortitude save and 2d8 + 8d10 + 10con hit points) is probably better able to withstand pain than a typical warforged. Most people aren't King Boranel, though. Or even Vin Diesel, for that matter. So usually warforged seem to be exceptionally good at withstanding pain.
ArcTan 12-06-07, 01:40 AM	LOL, the reverse would be true in an evolutionary scenario, with the more wild, primitive state being THE most dangerous environment for flipping out over pain/damage. When the sabertooth's claws slash across your monkey-haired back from ambush, you'd be much better off thinking clearly and reacting in a focused manner than screaming and flailing about (predators expect hysteria from their prey and account for it, witness a snake's immobilizing of a struggling mouse or a pride of lionesses' use of a spooker to drive prey into the ambush). Most of our modern life (outside the battlefield or horrible accident scenes) is considerably cushier, giving us much more leeway in how we can afford to react to sudden pain. If anything, evolution should have wiped out proto-humans who reacted the way we do ;) This thread is netting some rather interesting information and viewpoints. Keep them coming! :D Well, primitive humans weren't actually the constant victims of predator attacks that movies paint them as. You have a much higher chance of being killed in any modern war than any randomly selected primitive hunter-gatherer human would've -- predators aren't that common (given the way the food chain works), and there are plenty of animals more plentiful and easier to hunt than we are. In the wild, where humans would've generally moved and hunted in groups (like other primates), there wouldn't be very many threats an individual human would face that the rest of the group couldn't deal with. When you're dealing with a predator whose strategy is probably to try to pick you off without the others noticing -- because the others, as a group, can probably beat the predator off -- falling down and shrieking at the top of your lungs *is* a good survival strategy. It becomes a much less useful survival strategy when you're dealing with something that can kill as quickly as, say, another human with a gun, or if you're in a situation where you *can't* rely on the fact that a cry for help will reach friendly voices, or whatever. And, again, evolution is dumb. It's unintelligent design (as opposed to intelligent design). For our pain response to work it only has to be something that was useful in the rough majority of cases over millions of years. There are still tons of individual situations where our pain response is an awful, awful bug in the system, and in all likelihood (given the law of averages) the more our world changes from the one we evolved in the more such situations are likely to increase. If it were possible to have a little readout display in the corner of your eye that told you precisely how damaged you were right now and how much more damage you would take by performing X, Y, or Z actions, that would be much, much better than our current pain response. Our current pain response exists because evolution is too stupid to create such a thing on its own.
ArcTan 12-06-07, 01:43 AM	The physical pain warforged feel in response to environmental stimuli is nothing compared to the pain in their souls, reaching through their minds like black tendrils of despair, leaving them aware of nothing but the miasma of torment through which they can only dimly see the hope of oblivion's sweet release. Or possibly not. Stop broadcasting LoBster propaganda all up in here. I have twenty warforged workers and they're all perfectly happy and satisfied with the warehouse I keep them in and the 1 silver piece I pay them a week. Collectively.
Laerrigan 12-06-07, 05:05 PM	Stop broadcasting LoBster propaganda all up in here. I have twenty warforged workers and they're all perfectly happy and satisfied with the warehouse I keep them in and the 1 silver piece I pay them a week. Collectively. LMAO!!!! I still say that the reason our pain response is so totally stupid is that we weren't made for pain/death in the first place and have never come to grips with it (simplest solution, anyone?), but that's just me =) I enjoy seeing the intelligent arguments on both sides, even if I'm not always that terribly great at organizing and presenting them, myself. I'm a Discovery Channel nerd, when I bother with the stupid hypnogourd at all :D
TiwazTyrsfist 12-06-07, 06:28 PM	Q> Do Warforged feel pain? A> I certainly hope so, otherwise I spent 8000gp creating a magic power-drill for nothing!
Laerrigan 12-06-07, 06:44 PM	Q> Do Warforged feel pain? A> I certainly hope so, otherwise I spent 8000gp creating a magic power-drill for nothing! :::snickering::: I'm right with you there ;-) My question was birthed by my writing, in which a half-golem is doing things that might yet put him in the hands of a Silver Flame inquisitor. That led me to the larger question about warforged and other kinds of (living or non-) constructs. Wondering how in the world to treat in-story a creature that has a body of inert material but also has a relatively humanoid psyche, when that one is undergoing forceful questioning. After the excellent points raised by most people here, I'm thinking he'd definitely feel it, but how he'd react psychologically is another matter entirely.
Kreistor2 12-06-07, 07:35 PM	:::snickering::: I'm right with you there ;-) My question was birthed by my writing, in which a half-golem is doing things that might yet put him in the hands of a Silver Flame inquisitor. That led me to the larger question about warforged and other kinds of (living or non-) constructs. Wondering how in the world to treat in-story a creature that has a body of inert material but also has a relatively humanoid psyche, when that one is undergoing forceful questioning. After the excellent points raised by most people here, I'm thinking he'd definitely feel it, but how he'd react psychologically is another matter entirely. You are welcome to do whatever you want, but I don't allow such forceful questioning in my game beyond simply making an Intimidation roll. There is no need to describe what you're doing to get the information, just stating you're trying to force the information out of him. Anything messy does not get any benefit in my game. Some people have RL issues concerning pain and torture, and so it is best not to let this sort of thing get described. just "I'm trying to use Intimidation to get information out of him" is enough, and no one's sensitivities get hurt.
ArcTan 12-06-07, 08:01 PM	*shrug* Different strokes for different folks. The concept of torturing Warforged and making them switch sides as a result was a big part of a recent Eberron campaign of mine, and I really liked how the theme played out, especially with the creepy hyper-clinical way the "reclamation" teams for enemy Warforged carried out their "reconditioning". (There's a lot of things people want to do but can't as long as they think their enemy is a person. Once that barrier goes away...)
Kreistor2 12-07-07, 12:53 AM	*shrug* Different strokes for different folks. The concept of torturing Warforged and making them switch sides as a result was a big part of a recent Eberron campaign of mine, and I really liked how the theme played out, especially with the creepy hyper-clinical way the "reclamation" teams for enemy Warforged carried out their "reconditioning". (There's a lot of things people want to do but can't as long as they think their enemy is a person. Once that barrier goes away...) That's not what I'm talking about. NPC enemies, those that are clearly evil, can get that sort of treatment: that's inherent in the beast. (I had my guys find a BoV research facility. Yes, lots of torture stuff there.) But I don't describe the actual torture. The players see the results (Ie. injured subjects, but in this case they had a necromantic parasitic infection from Libris Mortis), but they don't see the devices in operation. I place the devices in the room and leave them there, leaving the rest to the imaginations of the players. They don't need to imagine what happened if they don't want to. It is the players I don't want describing nasty things they do to people to try to force information out of them. Most don't realize that people will say anything to get away from pain, so their responses are unreliable. Unless they're trained, in which case they know how to not say anything, in which case short term torture (players rarely get more than minutes or hours) simply gets them nothing. The Intimidation rules are far more reliable than real torture ever is. It is the description of the method of torture that I avoid, not the existence of torture altogether.
Artector 12-07-07, 05:47 PM	I'd imagine that many warforged are conditioned to withstand pain quite well, represented in fighter and high hit dice classes, also the racial constitution bonus could be interperted as that. As they are hurt they still feel it, but it is less deabilitating to them and they can keep going. The vague nature of HP is actually the answer.
Laerrigan 12-07-07, 09:35 PM	You are welcome to do whatever you want, but I don't allow such forceful questioning in my game beyond simply making an Intimidation roll. There is no need to describe what you're doing to get the information, just stating you're trying to force the information out of him. Anything messy does not get any benefit in my game. Some people have RL issues concerning pain and torture, and so it is best not to let this sort of thing get described. just "I'm trying to use Intimidation to get information out of him" is enough, and no one's sensitivities get hurt. Oh, I didn't mean in a campaign. In my story-writing. The half-golem is a rather powerful sociopathic villain. And I have no intention of giving gruesome details--I've just been wondering whether a half-golem would have any unexpected resistance to such measures (his captors wouldn't know much about his kind as different from warforged [unless they dragged in some Cannith specialist on little-known experiments in Whitehearth], and he'd definitely capitalize on that to trick them). I feel much the same as you about detailed torture, whether in game or in story. I'm all in favor of "shadows on the wall," so to speak, as in old horror movies. Used artistically, that can have the desired effect on the player/reader without disgusting anyone. Other approaches can be used to various effects, of course (so long as the players are in accord), but that's my preference.
ArcTan 12-07-07, 11:07 PM	A Half-Golem who has retained their humanity nonetheless gets a boost to their Con score, and a bigger one than a Warforged does (+4 while a WF gets +2), and increased Con basically means higher pain tolerance. A Half-Golem who loses their humanity becomes a true Construct with Con (-). What this says for pain is up in the air, but since Constructs are immune to stunning and nonlethal damage and most Fort save effects, they're probably immune to any mechanical representation of "pain" in D&D. If I were to mechanically represent torture in D&D, it'd be a skill check of some kind that set a DC that was resisted with a Fort save. A Half-Golem who'd become a true Construct would therefore be immune to physical torture. You can try to intimidate them by damaging them, but they'll feel no pain from being damaged nor have their mental processes affected by it.
Laerrigan 12-07-07, 11:23 PM	No Con score or Fort save or nonlethal damage is definitely a good point in favor of no real pain; I was starting to think that maybe ordinary constructs feel pain but don't react to it because they're mindless.......I sometimes trip when criscrossing back and forth between hard mechanics and what they translate into in lifelike terms. Which is why I post threads like this, to pick other people's brains. Great feedback/discussion so far...
ArcTan 12-07-07, 11:29 PM	Con (-) basically means not alive, only with the semblance of life. What this means for *pain* is up to you (after all, in real life there is no solid definition of "pain" other than as a subjective experience) but part of the attraction of building a machine that's simpler and dumber than you for the sake of doing jobs you'd rather not do is making the machine completely unaware and uncaring of damage done to itself in the course of fulfilling your orders.
TiwazTyrsfist 12-11-07, 01:13 PM	No Con score or Fort save or nonlethal damage is definitely a good point in favor of no real pain; I was starting to think that maybe ordinary constructs feel pain but don't react to it because they're mindless.......I sometimes trip when criscrossing back and forth between hard mechanics and what they translate into in lifelike terms. Which is why I post threads like this, to pick other people's brains. Great feedback/discussion so far... Actually, I think you hit on an excellent decider there. Are they Immune to Nonlethal Damage? If yes, then they don't feel pain. If no, then they do feel pain.
Elderich 12-11-07, 01:27 PM	Actually, I think you hit on an excellent decider there. Are they Immune to Nonlethal Damage? If yes, then they don't feel pain. If no, then they do feel pain.Perhaps as a suggestion, but one can be immune, and still feel the effect.
skrap-san 12-11-07, 01:32 PM	The warforged are not immune to non lethal damage, it was actually a survival tactic they had, go into battle with a few nonlethal damage points, get to effective zero, wait for nonlethal damage to wear of, go back to camp get repairs, repeat procedure.
Elderich 12-11-07, 01:55 PM	The warforged are not immune to non lethal damage, it was actually a survival tactic they had, go into battle with a few nonlethal damage points, get to effective zero, wait for nonlethal damage to wear of, go back to camp get repairs, repeat procedure.Do you have a source on this. brilliant!
skrap-san 12-11-07, 04:51 PM	Do you have a source on this. brilliant! I do, and this source actually have a few words about fear and pain to. ...it's a common misconception that warforged are fearless. In truth, the average warforged fears destruction as much as or more than any other race fear death, but warforged do not feel or fear pain in the same way that most creatures do. Pain is not a fear-laden indicator of impending death, but raher a gauge of overall operational status-informative if somewhat unplesant, but rarely frightening or debilitating... as an example, some warforged now go into batle with self-inflicted nonlethal damage, a tactic outlawed by their masters during the war. All taken from page 15 of the Races of Eberron. Now I know not all in here take what stands in it as good fish (translated Norwegian saying). But it offers some good points to the debate I think. Yes the warforged feel pain, but not the same way we do. So I would like to ask the following question, do they feel lasting pain, or only short bursts?
ArcTan 12-11-07, 08:11 PM	Obviously if they're aware of nonlethal damage, which lasts a long time, then they "feel" lasting pain. But what it means to "feel pain" is subjective -- it's a mental thing, not a physical thing -- and Warforged probably have the same abilities as people who've trained themselves in pain management techniques -- a sudden rush of pain that they can then mentally "push away" so that they're aware of it but it doesn't interrupt their thoughts. The "sudden rush of pain", if prolonged, would translate to the D&D Stunned condition (which WF are vulnerable to, but less so than Humans because of their +2 Con) and "lasting pain" is nonlethal damage (same as above).