Post/Author/DateTime	Post
TheKeyofE 06-15-07, 02:18 AM	Do warforged feel pain? I had never really thought about it until just a minute ago. I just kind of assumed they did, but then I checked the books and couldn't find anything that said definitively either way. And if they do, does it hurt to be repaired using the Craft skill (kind of like when you have a cut and get stitches)?
Altyrium 06-15-07, 02:37 AM	yes, they feel pain. they have all the senses living creatures do. as to weather or not craft hurts, thats really dms choice i think, but i mean, if your doing that then using heal on people should hurt too no?
Nived 06-15-07, 11:48 AM	Yes, remember for they most part Warforged are not metal. Most of their bodies are made from a fiberous livewood root like material. Their muscles, joints, frame, and 'bulk' are made of this organic material. While a blade dragged across their composit plating may not hurt when that blade punches through, or finds a gap and tears into that fiber... hurts. Hellcow has been known to say on many occations on the topic of Warforged (now I'm paraphrasing here) "Cannith did not have absolute control over how warforged were created, it was not an exact science, if it was why would the 'perfect soldiers' come out being able to feel pain."
Cifer 06-15-07, 11:59 AM	I'd say they feel a muted version of pain telling them which portions of their body better not be hurt any further. Spells like symbol of pain would induce the real thing, possibly accompanied by the words "That's pain. Get used to it.", although that one is usually reserved for angels/radiant idols...
Terak_the_Doom_Hammer 06-15-07, 12:17 PM	In all reality I have read many Eberron novels and in the ones that involved warforged, they most certainly felt pain.
Edymnion 06-15-07, 01:21 PM	Do warforged feel pain? I had never really thought about it until just a minute ago. I just kind of assumed they did, but then I checked the books and couldn't find anything that said definitively either way.Can you find me something that definitively says that dwarves feel pain? Warforged rule of thumb, unless specifically stated otherwise, the warforged are just like any other race. Warforged are not immune to non-lethal damage, they are not immune to Symbol of Pain, there is nothing that says they don't feel pain, so they do.
TheKeyofE 06-15-07, 03:16 PM	Like I said, I always just assumed they did. It just randomly occured to me that maybe they didn't, so I thought I'd at least ask. And Edy, everyone knows dwarves don't feel pain, gosh!
madninjapimp 06-15-07, 04:34 PM	Pain is a survival tool, and very useful at that. Why wouldn't you want a solder (particularly an expensive one) to know how damaged they are? you may want to think of pain though in different terms with warforged. Instead of thinking about the last time a bee stung you, and related that to what your warforged may feel, think of it as an "awarenes of damage to your structure". Excessive damage will cause you to cese to function, therefore you should take measures to prevent that damage. The result is the same, swat at the bee or lift your foot off of the caltrop. And both are even bordering on involuntary actions. But when you think like I suggested, it seems liek a whole different flavor of emotion than relating it to a real pain experiance.
Edymnion 06-15-07, 07:37 PM	And it can be fun to have a warforged "ignore pain". One of my WF Fighters was in a situation where the party was pinned down by archers. Adm Body Fighter with a greathammer, I decided to suck it up and save the party. Charged right into the middle of the archers, taking 2-3 turns to cross the wide open field between us. Got freaking pincushioned in the process, even with the high AC and DR. By the time I was done sundering bows and archers alike, I literally had 2 hp left. When asked if he was okay, how did my WF respond? "I am in need of repairs." Yeah, he wasn't the talkative type, but the rest of the group had one of those "Oh damn, don't mess with this guy" moments when my WF broke the line. Would have been toast if they hadn't followed suit once it was "safe", but it did give that character a reputation of being indestructible. :D
Roger Nicholls 06-16-07, 02:52 AM	And it can be fun to have a warforged "ignore pain". I agree. We had a warforged Paladin in the party who in the final clash against the ultimate "bad guys" took a huge amount of damage. He roleplayed the situation incredibly well describing the damage and looks of anguish and pain has he brought his weapon to bear for the final push.
Arcane Guyver 06-16-07, 06:13 PM	My take on this is that the DR of a warforged shows their threshold for not being hurt. If an attack punches through that...well, there comes the pain, but as Edy demonstrated earlier, they may not show their anguish the same way other living beings do.
ArcTan 06-16-07, 07:31 PM	Didn't one of the Eberron novels portray Pierce as, at least, not *thinking* of pain the way humans do? (He dispassionately realizes he is badly damaged but doesn't seem especially distressed or worked up over this fact.)
ratarang 06-16-07, 07:34 PM	The way adventurers are played you would think humans don't feel pain ;) . There's also the question of how much HP damage represents real physical injury, especially at higher levels.
Lafarallin 06-16-07, 08:07 PM	yes, they feel pain. they have all the senses living creatures do. Um...they can't smell, and not sure about taste. So not all the senses.
Altyrium 06-16-07, 08:28 PM	does it say they dont smell? that they cant taste? i've never read that. they dont have ears, but they hear. they dont have nerve endings, yet they can feel things with their fingers as people can. Eberron is fantasy. that means that its not real, it doesnt follow the rules of the world. thats how fireballs and elves can exist. why shouldnt they be able to taste? why shouldnt they be able to smell? why shouldnt they feel pain? if you wanna make your warforged nothing more then a magical robot then go right at it, but in my campaign all they are is metal people.
ArcTan 06-16-07, 08:37 PM	Races of Eberron says they don't smell or taste (and although RoE is not an Eberron line book, it is a D&D book, and so is canon for the general definition of "Warforged" just like the MM's description of Hobgoblins is accurate for Eberron except for the things that specifically aren't). Keith Baker's Dragonshard makes the amendment that they *do* have a sense of smell and taste, but it's very dull and muted compared to that of a human being. Eberron is fantasy. that means that its not real, it doesnt follow the rules of the world. thats how fireballs and elves can exist. why shouldnt they be able to taste? why shouldnt they be able to smell? why shouldnt they feel pain? if you wanna make your warforged nothing more then a magical robot then go right at it, but in my campaign all they are is metal people. Either one is, in my view, very boring. Warforged have many of the characteristics of living things, but bizarre, alien living things that are in most ways *not* like human beings. That's why they're interesting. Warforged who really are just "Your Metal Friend Who's Just Like You" are dumb and an overreaction to wanting warforged not to be "robots". (What's wrong with robots? Some of the best warforged-like characters in history have been science-fiction robots that were called robots and made entirely of robot.)
TheKeyofE 06-16-07, 09:07 PM	Robots are our friends. (http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/robots.php)
Altyrium 06-16-07, 09:18 PM	omg wtfh! hahahahaha
The Crimson Dawn 06-16-07, 11:28 PM	I figure that warforged have to be able to feel pain, though I believe they feel pain less intensely than humans. I think this because if you designed a creature that never felt pain and that creature was attacked outside its view it would not know and thus be destroyed because it did not know it was hurt. To create something like that would be foolish. Further if they can no feel pain then I would think they could not feel anything and if you have ever had your arm go numb and tried to do anything with your arm you know that it is very difficult to hold items effectively.
ArcTan 06-16-07, 11:52 PM	1) "Pain", as we define it, is more than just "sensing that you are damaged". It involves a whole bunch of things, a lot of which are directly counterproductive in war (like being paralyzed by pain and unable to take action because it hurts too much to think). Assuming you had a certain amount of control over how Warforged develop, you'd want to refine and change their pain-sense to be more controlled and specific than the blunt, messy human sense of pain. 2) There's no rule that you lose the ability to feel at all if you can't feel pain. There are separate nerves that handle separate processes. Some people are born without the ability to feel pain but otherwise feel sensation normally.
Arcane Guyver 06-17-07, 03:24 AM	Some people are born without the ability to feel pain but otherwise feel sensation normally. Yup...wasn't there a Bond villain who was like that? Think he was in Tomorrow Never Dies.
Edymnion 06-17-07, 08:18 AM	Um...they can't smell, and not sure about taste. So not all the senses.They can smell just fine. Saying they couldn't was one of the blatant mistakes in RoE, and the Dragonshard was Keith backpeddling to cover for the mistake as hard as he could, since he's specifically forbidden from ever contradicting anything that gets put into print. Some people are born without the ability to feel pain but otherwise feel sensation normally.Yes, and these people virtually never make it to adulthood without serious handicaps, if at all. Saw a thing about this on the news a while back, about a baby that had the condition. She was blind because she had literally clawed her own eyes out in her crib.
jake_lex 06-17-07, 09:47 AM	I'd think that tolerance to pain, too, depends on what the Warforged has done with his or her life. A Warforged Juggernaut is definitely going to subscribe to the "I ain't got time to bleed" credo, and ignore most of the pain he or she is feeling. A Warforged Wizard, on the other hand, who's been spending more time reading old books than combat training, probably isn't any more fond of pain than the rest of you. I don't want the "race is the single most important deciding factor in your character" mentality that's infected quite a few other settings (*cough* *cough* Dragonlance *cough* *cough* Forgotten Realms) to get that much of a toehold in Eberron.
Vharuck 06-17-07, 01:43 PM	yes, they feel pain. they have all the senses living creatures do. as to weather or not craft hurts, thats really dms choice i think, but i mean, if your doing that then using heal on people should hurt too no? You ever seen what's in a first aid kit? That hurts.
Nived 06-17-07, 03:03 PM	The 'it wouldn't make good soldiers' thing doesn't hold water, Cannith never had complete control over the creation forges. They stole the technology, they knew how to build one and activate it, but the process, what made them 'alive' they have no idea how it works, and they don't know how to tweak it to get rid of things like 'free will' and 'rebellious tendencies'. Anyway one of my current players has a Warforged named Pointe Blank. He was bought and served in Aundair. The person he had the most interaction with was a human that was in command of the Warforged unit. He died in one of the last battles of the war. Without any other role models in the time Pointe has been a free sentient he more or less adopted the persona of his old captain. Which does play off our groups (and many others) Aundair is France jokes. Pointe likes to sample wine, Because his former captain loved his wine, savored it. Pointe samples wine whenever he gets the chance, he can't consume it, he can't swallow it, but he can taste it. At least in my games. He has to spit out the wine (but many people do that anyway when sampling wine). He's also earned himself a distinguishing pallet, or at least I say he has. Like a connoisseur he can tell you where its from and likely what year. Does it make him a better soldier? Certainly not. This habit does how ever make Pointe a more interesting and rounded character.
gelalshawr 06-17-07, 05:48 PM	He's also earned himself a distinguishing pallet, or at least I say he has. Like a connoisseur he can tell you where its from and likely what year. Does it make him a better soldier? Certainly not. This habit does how ever make Pointe a more interesting and rounded character. And quite possibly make him very useful as a food taster, he's immune to poison, but that doesn't mean he won't be able to taste it. "*sniff* Iocaine... I'd bet my life on it!" -P. Humperdink
The White Sorcerer 06-17-07, 11:43 PM	he can't consume it, he can't swallow it Does this apply to other liquids as well, or just wine? How does Pointe Blanque (you should spell it like that to make it sound more French) drink potions?
Lafarallin 06-18-07, 12:33 AM	They can smell just fine. Saying they couldn't was one of the blatant mistakes in RoE, and the Dragonshard was Keith backpeddling to cover for the mistake as hard as he could, since he's specifically forbidden from ever contradicting anything that gets put into print. Oh sorry, didn't read the dragonshard. I know I read that they couldn't smell in RoE, and recall something about a magical warforged component (scent mask) that let them track and it stated, "also gave them the ability to smell as an added bonus." Something along those lines.
AntiSean 06-18-07, 10:17 AM	My warforged has no nose. How does he smell? TERRIBLE!
Nived 06-18-07, 11:27 AM	Does this apply to other liquids as well, or just wine? How does Pointe Blanque (you should spell it like that to make it sound more French) drink potions? Magic more or less. It's potions are absorbed into the magical matrix that animates the warforged. Goodberry wine I suppose would be absorbed.... maybe I should have him come across some of that. Or at least that's how I run it, based on many many many many many discussions on these boards over the years, and seeing Keith respond, and the arguements go back and forth. Also I believe that's what happened in The Gate of Night when Pierce tired eating Heroes Feast... but I loaned the book out and can't referance the passage. On the subject of smell before Races of Eberron came out Keith on the boards was apt to say things like "Cannith didn't have absolute control of the design, they didn't understand how the process worked completely. There is no reason that they should have a sense of smell but they do." Then RoE came out and said "They don't have a sense of smell". Which as its in published material is official canon while Keith's forum posts are not. So in the Dragonshard he split the difference saying they have a muted sense of smell. As to how it works? Somewhere in all that fiberous wood that they are 90% name up they have something that registers oder.
ArcTan 06-18-07, 12:10 PM	They can smell just fine. Saying they couldn't was one of the blatant mistakes in RoE, and the Dragonshard was Keith backpeddling to cover for the mistake as hard as he could, since he's specifically forbidden from ever contradicting anything that gets put into print. Again: Even if something is a "mistake" in your eyes, that doesn't affect whether or not it's actually true. It's true that an official D&D book (whether or not you want to argue about it being an "Eberron" book) says that Warforged can't smell, and that references to Warforged in other D&D books are canon unless something in Eberron specifically contradicts them (for example, the existence of Warforged Chargers and Scouts from the Monster Manual 3 is canon). In any case, Keith *has* implicitly accepted RoE's statement on this in his Warforged Dragonshard, so if you see Dragonshards as "official" then the idea that Warforged have highly blunted chemical senses is official. (Just because it didn't originally come from Keith doesn't make it non-official *especially* if Keith later references it. He could've chosen not to talk about it at all.) FWIW, the fact that Warforged can *ever* taste or smell *at all* is plenty "mysterious" and points to their "half-living" origins just fine. Yes, and these people virtually never make it to adulthood without serious handicaps, if at all. Saw a thing about this on the news a while back, about a baby that had the condition. She was blind because she had literally clawed her own eyes out in her crib. Sure, but no one said Warforged are completely unconscious of pain or of physical damage. You also don't have to "feel pain" in the human sense to be aware of damage. It's the only way we humans know of to be aware of damage, but it has a lot of disadvantages.
ArcTan 06-18-07, 12:12 PM	Oh sorry, didn't read the dragonshard. I know I read that they couldn't smell in RoE, and recall something about a magical warforged component (scent mask) that let them track and it stated, "also gave them the ability to smell as an added bonus." Something along those lines. Either way, the tracker mask would give them a far finer sense of smell than they have (a tracker mask gives you the Scent Extraordinary Ability, which means you can smell as well as a dog or cat, much better than a human can), so that line still makes perfect sense. Keith has now chosen to say that Warforged do have chemical senses in their normal form but that it's highly muted, which makes sense and is decent flavor. (A Warforged can tell that what he's put in his mouth is slightly acidic and has a moderate alcohol content, but otherwise has no idea what's so great about this "wine" stuff.)
ArcTan 06-18-07, 12:13 PM	I'd think that tolerance to pain, too, depends on what the Warforged has done with his or her life. A Warforged Juggernaut is definitely going to subscribe to the "I ain't got time to bleed" credo, and ignore most of the pain he or she is feeling. A Warforged Wizard, on the other hand, who's been spending more time reading old books than combat training, probably isn't any more fond of pain than the rest of you. I don't want the "race is the single most important deciding factor in your character" mentality that's infected quite a few other settings (*cough* *cough* Dragonlance *cough* *cough* Forgotten Realms) to get that much of a toehold in Eberron. It should be the single most important deciding factor for *Warforged*, though. I mean, c'mon, they're artificial people whom most of the world still isn't sure has souls. Downplaying that is what I see as the mistake.
Alex_ 06-18-07, 01:06 PM	Warforged are immune to fatigue and can continue fighting even when at negative hitpoints. I'm sure they can "detect damage" in much the same way as some diagnostic systems can measure the structural integrity and status (or lack of) of their systems, but a Warforged is never going to wince in pain, complain about aching limbs, or the like. I don't want the "race is the single most important deciding factor in your character" mentality that's infected quite a few other settings (*cough* *cough* Dragonlance *cough* *cough* Forgotten Realms) to get that much of a toehold in Eberron. The use of the term "race" in D&D to describe different sapient creatures is something of a misnomer. They are not all fundamentally the same thing in different bodies. They are entirely different species. A Dwarf is to an Elf as Dogs are to Cats, Horses, Seals, or Kangaroos. They differ fundamentally not only in how they generally look, but also in how they generally act. All Dwarfs, relatively speaking, are going to be short, stocky, see better in the dark than others, and live a couple of hundreds years if able. You can change it so that they wear different clothes, fashion their hair in different ways, and the like, but at they're core, they're still a Dwarf. All Dwarves are going to behave in a somewhat similar manner too, no matter what culture or society they hail from. There's still that "Dwarven nature" underneath. Of course this is really oversimplifying things, but that is the general basis behind stuff like Charisma penalties and "usual, always, any" type alignment descriptions, amongst other things.