Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Rechan 08-26-07, 03:56 PM	Someone on these boards said that when a Warforged has a piece torn off of it, the piece crumbles into unusable dust. Like an arm hacked off a warforged dissolves or desicates. This was done, supposedly, to prevent people "from melting down warforged to make swords". Is there anything in any book to back up this claim?
Artector 08-26-07, 05:43 PM	I don't think there is (maybe races of Eberron), but pretty much it so that the Warforged Fighter with Adamantine Body and the sorc/wiz with repair x damage can't sell off adamantine by ripping off chunks of the warforged then healing the damage. The flavor reason is that warforged are inherently magical and the magic in them sustains the armor which isn't truly adamantine. Once removed the chunks are no longer connected to the magic and decay rapidly. Or at least that's the reasoning that I know.
Edymnion 08-26-07, 06:05 PM	Someone on these boards said that when a Warforged has a piece torn off of it, the piece crumbles into unusable dust. Like an arm hacked off a warforged dissolves or desicates. This was done, supposedly, to prevent people "from melting down warforged to make swords". Is there anything in any book to back up this claim?Not that I know of. And yes, it was directly a result of all the evil vultures that just look at the price of mithril and adamantine, and start looking at a fellow party member as a walking treasure chest. Of course, instead of being practical about it, and actually using the original intent of the feats (that the WF was still mostly steel, with just some lacing and alloying of the precious metals), and saying "Sure, you could do that. You get 500 gp worth of adamantine out of the body. However, it cost you 1,000 gp of smelting goods and time to actually extract that metal.", they just went totally out in right field and said WF bodies rot, metal and all.
Hellcow 08-26-07, 06:08 PM	It's from the Warforged Dragonshard: (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050627a) An important side effect of this is that if material is removed from the body of a warforged, it quickly degrades. As a result, stripping a warforged and selling its metal is impossible; a warforged may have adamantine components, but these will rust and pit when they are pulled from the warforged. Warforged are created through a process similar to the creation spell (hence, creation forge). An adamantine warforged has the qualities of adamantine, but a Cannith artificer didn't actually hammer adamantine plates to its body. Beyond this, warforged are truly alive; even their inorganic components aren't set in stone. The warforged juggernaut actually grows spikes from its body. The reforged completely shifts its composition. A healing spell, while it has limited effect, can still heal a warforged. They aren't simply robots covered in metal plates; they are living beings, and their lifeforce is integral to maintaining the cohesion of their bodies. When that lifeforce is truly destroyed - or when a piece of the body is severed from the warforged - it starts to degrade. However, this isn't supposed to mean "instantly turns to dust." It means that it starts to corrode, that it becomes brittle, and that like organic corpses, it will eventually disintegrate. This effect is sufficient to make the mithral and adamantine elements of the body unusable for any other purpose. But to the naked eye, you won't see any obvious effect within, say, ten minutes. Within an hour, you may notice that the leathery cords seem to be withering. Within a day, there will be serious pitting on the armor. But it's not like they crumble to dust the instant they hit HP -11.
Rechan 08-26-07, 06:12 PM	Thanks Edy, Hellcow. :)
Hellcow 08-26-07, 06:13 PM	Saying "Sure, you could do that. You get 500 gp worth of adamantine out of the body. However, it cost you 1,000 gp of smelting goods and time to actually extract that metal." Oh, if you check the threads, you'll find out that I said that too. People look at the price of a suit of adamantine plate and assume that's the value of the raw materials, whereas if you look at the value of the amount of steel that goes into a suit of full plate vs the price, you can see that craftsmanship is key. But the creation origin is the point behind degrading metal. Again, warforged aren't robots. They are magical beings whose bodies can evolve over time. Juggernaut spikes, reforged transformation, Mithral Fluidity, Improved Damage Reduction, healing spells, etc, etc - just as the warforged's body can evolve while it's alive, it can degrade after it's dead.
Edymnion 08-26-07, 07:07 PM	But the creation origin is the point behind degrading metal. Again, warforged aren't robots. They are magical beings whose bodies can evolve over time. Juggernaut spikes, reforged transformation, Mithral Fluidity, Improved Damage Reduction, healing spells, etc, etc - just as the warforged's body can evolve while it's alive, it can degrade after it's dead.But honestly, I chalk that up to magic. In a game where you can have a dagger that turns into a greatsword and nobody really looks twice at it, there's no discrepency in a WF growing a few spikes here and there. I just don't like the idea of putting in what feels to me as a last minute gap filler to an unexpected problem, that makes no logical sense, and say that the stone and steel and everything else in a WF rots. No other construct "rots" when you kill it. And given your own stance that WF bodies are not literally covered in plates of mithril and adamantine, but that they're alloyed and/or use small bits of precious metal in key points, I don't see the need to say it magically decays. Just say its possible, and then make the process so cumbersome and/or expensive that it ends up costing the person trying to do it far more than they can get out of it. After all, the problem is a metagaming player trying to cheat the system. Once they realize that their cheat doesn't work, they'll move on to something else. There's no point in adding the whole rotting metal thing when it isn't actually needed, IMO.
The Dreaming Duck 08-26-07, 07:31 PM	No other construct "rots" when you kill it. But no other construct can be repaired with healing spells, IIRC. And given the explanation that "No one cares if a dagger turns into a greatsword because it's magic", I don't see why it's any stranger to say "They've made adamantine out of raw dragonshards, and it fades away when the spirit is killed." It's magic - both things are equally implausible. If you accept the first, what's so strange about the second? Personally, I think it's a trivial detail, and I don't care much one way or the other. But I'm just as glad to have a conclusive answer to give to anyone who wants to strip adamantine from a warforged. I agree with you, Edy, that the amount of adamantine SHOULD be trivial, that the work should be more than it's worth, etc, etc. But as we have seen on these very boards, there are people who will say "It says Adamantine Body!!! I should be able to get 10,000 gp for that!" If you try to give them a scientific answer, they demand more details - "How trivial can it be! It's DR 2! Surely I can get something from it. Can I at least make a dagger? What about arrowheads?" and get into questions of the price of raw adamantine, the question of whether it can be reforged, and on and on and on. Simply saying "It's magic. You can't reuse it," ends the issue with no room for argument, and given that I don't want to deal with the argument, it's good enough for me. Just say its possible, and then make the process so cumbersome and/or expensive that it ends up costing the person trying to do it far more than they can get out of it. This is great for a strong DM. But once you've said it's possible, a weak DM with overbearing players may have a hard time if they come up with some crazy adamantine stripping scheme. Me? I'm all for saying it's impossible and just letting it go. If WotC never intended it to be done, then it shouldn't be done, and I'd rather have a simple and final statement than one that leaves room for annoying debate. If the book said something like "adamantine and mithral can't be reforged" that would be fine with me too, but especially in the case of mithral I don't think it's true; so I'll take whatever absolute answer I can get.
Hellcow 08-26-07, 08:00 PM	But honestly, I chalk that up to magic. In a game where you can have a dagger that turns into a greatsword and nobody really looks twice at it, there's no discrepency in a WF growing a few spikes here and there. But that's exactly the point, Edymnion. The juggernaut growing spikes is just like the sword that becomes a dagger; it's magic. And as TDD says, the warforged aren't like other constructs. Actually, the Dragonshard bit wasn't originally intended as a patch for people stripping warforged; it was intended to address a different question, namely "Where the #$%@ is Cannith getting all that adamantine?" With tens of thousands of adamantine warforged in service, it seemed valid to question whether adamantine weapons and armor were more common in the world, how much Cannith spent on its ores, and who was supplying this material. The assertion that these facsimile substances are actually created using the Mark of Making and creation forges is an answer I like; it's like the creation spells, except that the duration of the spell is then linked to the lifespan of the warforged. So essentially, it began as an answer to the question "Where's all the adamantine come from", and happened to include an easy answer to "and can it be stripped after death?" I certainly understand your complaint, but to me, it is logical. The materials are created by magic. They are capable of responding in a magical manner - shifting shape, evolving (Mithral Fluidity), responding to spells that normally heal flesh. A warforged can be damaged by a spell that causes rust (or a rust monster), and then repaired, without actually applying new chunks of metal. And warforged metal doesn't "rot"; it rusts. It becomes brittle. Warforged bodies degrade in a manner that is appropriate for the substance in question, just accelerated in time. In the case of adamantine, it responds in a manner you'd expect from a lesser metal - but still something where you look at a metal plating and say "It's rusting", not "It's transformed into pudding." But I have to agree that it's a trivial detail. The important facts are that you can't strip materials from a warforged and that there's no adamantine shortage. If you want to use another answer with your players, it's hardly like saying "warforged need to eat" or even "warforged have no capacity for emotion."
DarkPawn 08-27-07, 09:26 AM	How I've dealt with this issue in my campaign is when most unique metals are processed and cooled they are unable to be melted down again. Basically when adamantine or mithril cools it is forever set in whatever form it is set in. You can not reforge adamantine or mithril at this point. The only exception to this is through magical means. Someone with access to a fabricate spell could do so, but this is a fairly high level spell not available to most. Also, one warforged with adamantine body is not enough to make even a breast plate. You could accumulate enough of them to fabricate a full suit but it would take a lot of time and more importantly, a lot of adamantine body warforged to do it. So you could strip out trace amounts of adamantine or mithril from a warforged, but it is practically useless for most without magical means. It could probably be patched together to form a very crude piece mail armor, but would offer very little protection and wouldn't be worth it.
KnightArcanus 08-27-07, 02:03 PM	And here I was home brewing a feat that allowed you to replace a lost limb with a WF replacement. Hellcow, since its based of off life force, ya think that might work? Somewhat like a Renegade Master without the Bwaa Ha Ha! evil scientist vibe. More of a prosthetic.
Hellcow 08-27-07, 02:07 PM	Hellcow, since its based of off life force, ya think that might work? Sure. Basically, construct grafts from Faiths of Eberron.
DragoonDarkfire 08-27-07, 09:35 PM	This talk about Warforged being able to alter their bodies and all reminds me of Gurren Lagann for some reason...
JulesCARV 08-27-07, 10:38 PM	And here I was home brewing a feat that allowed you to replace a lost limb with a WF replacement. Hellcow, since its based of off life force, ya think that might work? Somewhat like a Renegade Master without the Bwaa Ha Ha! evil scientist vibe. More of a prosthetic. I think it could work, but there are two questions I have: how does the immune system react to the transplant, and where does the warforged limb come from? For the first question, it depends on how integrated the warforged limb is with the body -- for instance, does the graftee's blood flow through it? Overall, immune rejection for a warforged-to-humanoid transplant probably isn't as big a concern as it is with the human-to-human transplants we're familiar with in 21st century reality. I'm not sure though. As for where the limb comes from, I see three routes: one is that you could get it by killing a warforged and dismembering its corpse to take its limbs to transplant it. It's a touch macabre, but if the warforged happened to be attacking you unprovoked first (say, a warforged bandit), and you had to kill him anyway, I'm not sure it's wrong. Of course, if it is wrong, that doesn't mean you can't do it anyway. If you found a dead warforged that you didn't kill, but it was still fresh enough, and hadn't decayed, that could be the same. The other route is that the warforged voluntarily donates the limb. This is a pretty big deal. Losing a limb is a lot bigger deal, I'd say, than losing one of your kidneys, but even donating a single kidney is a pretty big deal in real life. The warforged would have to be very devoted to the recipient, or to be rather psychologically abnormal in some other way (such as a warforged who isn't particularly loyal to the recipient, but rather has an obsession with martyring himself and making sacrifices). The last route is making a warforged limb that doesn't come from a whole warforged, but is rather made just as a replacement for a humanoid limb. This resolves all issues with the donor, but if you want an actual warforged limb, as opposed to, say, a homunculus limb or a iron golem limb, that raises the question of how to get it. A cleric with craft construct can't make a warforged the way she might be able to make a clay golem. They only come from Cannith Creation Forges, the Canniths don't really know how they work, and I know of no instances of the creation forges simply making warforged "spare parts" -- it seems like they make whole warforged. I'm not sure who would actually be able to craft a warforged limb.
Alex_ 08-27-07, 11:03 PM	I think it could work, but there are two questions I have: how does the immune system react to the transplant, and where does the warforged limb come from? For the first question, it depends on how integrated the warforged limb is with the body -- for instance, does the graftee's blood flow through it? Overall, immune rejection for a warforged-to-humanoid transplant probably isn't as big a concern as it is with the human-to-human transplants we're familiar with in 21st century reality. I'm not sure though. As for where the limb comes from, I see three routes: one is that you could get it by killing a warforged and dismembering its corpse to take its limbs to transplant it. It's a touch macabre, but if the warforged happened to be attacking you unprovoked first (say, a warforged bandit), and you had to kill him anyway, I'm not sure it's wrong. Of course, if it is wrong, that doesn't mean you can't do it anyway. If you found a dead warforged that you didn't kill, but it was still fresh enough, and hadn't decayed, that could be the same. The other route is that the warforged voluntarily donates the limb. This is a pretty big deal. Losing a limb is a lot bigger deal, I'd say, than losing one of your kidneys, but even donating a single kidney is a pretty big deal in real life. The warforged would have to be very devoted to the recipient, or to be rather psychologically abnormal in some other way (such as a warforged who isn't particularly loyal to the recipient, but rather has an obsession with martyring himself and making sacrifices). The last route is making a warforged limb that doesn't come from a whole warforged, but is rather made just as a replacement for a humanoid limb. This resolves all issues with the donor, but if you want an actual warforged limb, as opposed to, say, a homunculus limb or a iron golem limb, that raises the question of how to get it. A cleric with craft construct can't make a warforged the way she might be able to make a clay golem. They only come from Cannith Creation Forges, the Canniths don't really know how they work, and I know of no instances of the creation forges simply making warforged "spare parts" -- it seems like they make whole warforged. I'm not sure who would actually be able to craft a warforged limb. You can. As Hellcow already mentioned, you can find Warforged "replacement" or prosthetic limbs in the form of grafts on page 158 of the Faiths of Eberron book. The source if is either a limb merely built by anyone capable, or from a Warforged (however you'd get it). There's legs too. Blood circulation, neural systems, and other biological concerns would be solved with magic. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/foe_gallery/99919.jpg
JulesCARV 08-29-07, 04:11 AM	You can. As Hellcow already mentioned, you can find Warforged "replacement" or prosthetic limbs in the form of grafts on page 158 of the Faiths of Eberron book. The source if is either a limb merely built by anyone capable, or from a Warforged (however you'd get it). There's legs too. Blood circulation, neural systems, and other biological concerns would be solved with magic. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/foe_gallery/99919.jpg I don't have Faiths of Eberron. Who can build Warforged grafts from scratch? Does it require craft construct or a Cannith creation forge or what?
Alex_ 08-29-07, 10:39 AM	I don't have Faiths of Eberron. Who can build Warforged grafts from scratch? Does it require craft construct or a Cannith creation forge or what? You don't build a whole Warforged from scratch. It's possible to approximate the design enough to make arms and legs that look and function similarly for the purposes of a graft, but not a fully functional Warforged (torso, head, actual life, etc).
ArcTan 08-30-07, 05:24 PM	Are people really saying that it doesn't make sense for adamantine and mithral to corrode (*not* "rot", corrode) after a WF dies? You do realize a WF is filled with alchemical materials that provide the semblance of life (hence the term "living construct") and therefore allow the WF to heal with healing magic, to grow spikes, and do other things, right? It actually makes *more* sense than not that, the WF's life processes being disrupted, these alchemical components would begin to chemically interact with the WF's metal and stone parts and start to corrode and destroy them.
Alex_ 08-30-07, 06:26 PM	Are people really saying that it doesn't make sense for adamantine and mithral to corrode (*not* "rot", corrode) after a WF dies? You do realize a WF is filled with alchemical materials that provide the semblance of life (hence the term "living construct") and therefore allow the WF to heal with healing magic, to grow spikes, and do other things, right? It actually makes *more* sense than not that, the WF's life processes being disrupted, these alchemical components would begin to chemically interact with the WF's metal and stone parts and start to corrode and destroy them. Many people expect a Warforge to be able to lose a limb, and it stays all in one piece, just like if you pulled the arm off a Golem or a robot. They would expect the limb to deteriorate as wood/stone/metal normally does- over a very long period of time (especially if properly treated), but manageable enough to be fashioned into a weapon or tool. They would not expect a breakdown comparable to if you cut off a Human or Dwarf's arm. The "living" part of living construct is often overlooked when people think about Warforged. They see them more like stone/steel Golems, Shield Guardians, and Automatons that have free will than they do as a construct magically imbued with traits of living things. Many see the livewood and sapience as the only "living" parts, and consider the stone, metal, etc as the part that qualifies it as a "construct".
Closet_Nerd 08-31-07, 10:17 AM	This can be explored in a wholly roleplaying aspect: Even if your long-time friend (a year or two?) the wizard came up to you and said "Give me your shoulderblade, it will only hurt until I cast repair X." would you do it? Heck no! How many people are actually looking for a black market surgeon to turn their kidneys in to $40,000? Not many.
Edymnion 09-02-07, 06:35 PM	This can be explored in a wholly roleplaying aspect: Even if your long-time friend (a year or two?) the wizard came up to you and said "Give me your shoulderblade, it will only hurt until I cast repair X." would you do it? Heck no! How many people are actually looking for a black market surgeon to turn their kidneys in to $40,000? Not many.Generally, people wanting to pull this don't ask nicely. They just kill the WF and start trying to rip it apart.
Closet_Nerd 09-07-07, 02:22 PM	Generally, people wanting to pull this don't ask nicely. They just kill the WF and start trying to rip it apart. Right, but it will stop the pcs. The DM being in charge of the world is in control of dispatching brigands to dismantle the WF pc.
Kreistor2 09-08-07, 12:40 PM	Actually, none of that is really necessary. The value of even an Adamantine Bodied Warforged (if it were made of Adamantine) is chicken feed. Take a look at the value of a pound of iron in the PHB. 1sp. And the value of 8lb's of Greatsword? 50GP. The iron content is only worth 8sp. The maximum value of a 300 lb normal warforged is 30GP in raw material. Whooptyding. You can follow that same economic model for all of the rare metals. The raw material is just not worth filling your bag with. A DM is welcome to make rare metals so rare they can't be bought, but if that's the case, who on Eberron woould blow Adamantine on a Warforged in the first place, when a sword is so mch more valuable.
Edymnion 09-08-07, 11:31 PM	Right, but it will stop the pcs. The DM being in charge of the world is in control of dispatching brigands to dismantle the WF pc.You're assuming the DM *NEVER* uses a single warforged with a body feat as an enemy. If the PCs want to pull this, the only way to stop them would be to essentially remove WF from the setting entirely. If there is a WF PC, then all they have to do is wait for them to get killed in combat to cash in on his "life insurance". So no, it won't stop the PCs. It has nothing to do with asking and taking pieces and casting Repair. It has to do with the fact that any time a WF with anything but base composite plating dies, greedy PCs will try to salvage the corpse itself.
Kreistor2 09-09-07, 11:44 AM	And yet, the urban legends of people cutting out kidneys to sell on the black market are false: it has never happened. In the end, criminals won't do something like steal a kidney because they realize that they are just as vulnerable to having their kidneys cut out, so it is not a good idea to create that market in the first place. If your PC's decide to cut up a part of a warforged for sale, then have one of them learn that something has happened to his/her mother or friend. When they visit, they discover the person has had a kidney removed. Eberron is a place of magic. As the DM, for plot purposes, you can give you NPC's whatever they need in order to figure out who did nasty things to their friends. So, somehow, they found out who desecrated the warforged, and decided to take revenge by harming some loved one of the person who did it. Evil deeds have consequences, whether done by PC or NPC. In the end, anything a PC can do, an NPC can do, or undo. Evil begets evil, if you want it to. And, you're assuming that there is no possiblity of learning the origins of the materials. Let's say your PC's decide to turn an Adamantine Warforged killed in Xen'drik into weapons. As they come into the city of Sharn, they pass through customs. They check for illegal possessions in Sharn, so they will note the brand spanking new Adamantine weapons. That leads to a couple questions: where did they get the raw materials for adamantine weaponry? Adamantine shouldn't be easily obtainable in Stormreach. Did they find some Giant artefact and break it down into raw materials, to hide the find? So, confiscate the weapons while the authorities investigate their origins. The PC's are to produce documentation proving where they bought the raw materials, or pay for a Legend Lore to prove the source of the weaponry. Of course, they can do neither. They don't have documentation, and if they pay for Legend Lore, the quthorities will know the materials came from a warforged. Having refused either situation, you can now charge them, but that should only result in confiscation of the goods. There are other things you can use. For instance, Wills. That warforged you just killed... he has a will. He has declared that his body is to be disposed of in a particular way. Even if commiting a crime, that will determines what happens to his body and goods. Taking them off him, even after he attempted to steal from you, is stealing. You, the DM, can use the law itself to prevent the kinds of abuses described above. And not only that, you've got access to the Houses, many of which can be called on to provide magical services to uncover or hunt criminals. Some of you view the Houses as Uberpowerful... and yet you won't use that power in defense of the society they rely on to maintain that power base? Magic, in Eberron, is common and cheap. Simple magics can undo many of the protests against warforged bodies as raw materials.
Alex_ 09-09-07, 04:14 PM	The reason that Warforged corpses rot is not to prevent the looting of dead Warforged bodies, but the exploitation of living ones. Killing a Warforged to strip their body of composite is like killing as Fighter to take his sword, shield and plate, or killing a Wizard and taking their spellbook, Killing a Dragon to take their hide and bone, or killing the Goblin and taking their weapon. It's part of the spoils of murder/war/adventuring, and is common in many D&D campaigns. So getting into a fight with a bunch of Warforged, defeaing them, and taking their weapons, magic items, and the material they were armored with is not much of a problem in and of itself. The problem comes when the Warforged is still alive. It's assumed by many players that since Warforged are constructs, with parts made of traditionally non-living materials that can be sold, but can be healed, that you now have a renewable source of that non-living material. Just like living creatures may sell regenerating body parts like hair, blood, plasma, etc, so is it feared that a Warforged or their allies might discover that via regular "donations", they have a virtually endless supply of Mithril. A couple of pounds of Mithril tends to have more value to adventurers than a couple of pounds of hair or blood. And, you're assuming that there is no possiblity of learning the origins of the materials. Let's say your PC's decide to turn an Adamantine Warforged killed in Xen'drik into weapons. As they come into the city of Sharn, they pass through customs. They check for illegal possessions in Sharn, so they will note the brand spanking new Adamantine weapons. That leads to a couple questions: where did they get the raw materials for adamantine weaponry? Adamantine shouldn't be easily obtainable in Stormreach. Did they find some Giant artefact and break it down into raw materials, to hide the find? It's suggested in the ECS that most treasure hunters in Xen'drik have papers entitling them to all that they find. I would also think it's well understood by those in Stormreach that anyone exploring the ruins of Xen'drik are going to come across valuable items, and possibly face dangerous creatures and individuals that they may very well have to kill, and to the winner goes the spoils. Actually, this tends to be generally accepted in many D&D campaigns. Never in any game I've played, has my party of adventurers been stopped in a town and asked where they got their +2 weapons, masterwork armor, and a Bag of Holding full of gold, platinum, and jewels (unless someone was looking for a specific item).
Closet_Nerd 09-09-07, 08:10 PM	I think cannibalizing a warforged for it's mithril or adamantium is more like lopping off the fighters arm to make a flesh golem. On that note I think that some necromantic magic would be required to maintain the integrity of the removed metal. I don't see any moral delinqency in taking a vanquished foes weapon, but ripping their body to bits for their organs is not something a good party would do. Dragons (of all types and alignments) don't like to see adventuring humanoids wearing their felows as armor. Adding a necromantic taint to plundered metal would also assist in disuading this practice.
Kreistor2 09-10-07, 01:41 PM	The reason that Warforged corpses rot is not to prevent the looting of dead Warforged bodies, but the exploitation of living ones. Yes, and we cause human corpses to rot to prevent necromancers ffrom exploiting them. Awhoops, no, we don't. Skeletons abound. The Karrnathi even use them as military units for the state. Warforged have been recognized as a sentient race, and can gain citizenship in the four remaining Nations of Galifar. As a sentient, their bodies are protected by the same laws that protect any human's body from casual abuse by the necromantic arts. The disposal of their body is up to the individual, unless they have not indicated their will on this matter, in which case it falls to the state to dispose of the body. If someone tries to murder you, and you kill them instead, do you get to decide if the body is cremated or buried? Can the government give you permission to make that decision? No and no. Just because you kill a person in Xen'drik, that does not give you the moral or ethical authority to turn the body into swords or undead. Both concepts are reprehensible. The implication in all of this is that the human body is a useless thing once dead. If you care to crack open your ancient history texts, you'll find the pre-history peoples used every single bit of an animal's corpse for something: bones for needles, ligaments for glue, tendons for thread, muscle for food, and so on. A human corpse is as much a source of natural resources as an animals. It is only that the warforged's raw materials are useful in more modern eras that makes the difference between warforged and human.
Gurv 09-10-07, 04:56 PM	Oh, if you check the threads, you'll find out that I said that too. People look at the price of a suit of adamantine plate and assume that's the value of the raw materials, whereas if you look at the value of the amount of steel that goes into a suit of full plate vs the price, you can see that craftsmanship is key. I think the best example of this (and it may have been Hellcow's example now that I think about it) is to compare the price of a dagger (2 gp), a masterwork dagger (302 gp), and an adamantine dagger (3,002 gp). Thus, you could argue that adamantine has a value of 3,000 gp per pound. But: do the same with a suit of full plate (1,500 gp) and a suit of adamantine full plate (16,500). In this case, you would conclude that adamantine has a value of only 300 gp per pound. I would argue that although adamantine is rare, it isn't rare enough to justify the cost of adamantine items. What drives up the price of adamantine is how difficult it is to work with. It must require intense heat to work, and quite likely alchemy and/or magic. All of which indicates the need for an above average smith, which are rare and expensively in demand.
Alex_ 09-10-07, 07:10 PM	Yes, and we cause human corpses to rot to prevent necromancers ffrom exploiting them. Awhoops, no, we don't. Skeletons abound. The Karrnathi even use them as military units for the state. I'm not understanding. I said that the reason Warforged corpses and lopped off parts deterotiate is not because people would abuse dead Warforged. Warforged have been recognized as a sentient race, and can gain citizenship in the four remaining Nations of Galifar. As a sentient, their bodies are protected by the same laws that protect any human's body from casual abuse by the necromantic arts. The disposal of their body is up to the individual, unless they have not indicated their will on this matter, in which case it falls to the state to dispose of the body. The main thing keeping most adventurers from stripping the flesh, bones, and teeth from their slain enemies is the fact that it's really of no value to them (uness they're a Necromancers). However, weapons, armor, wealth, and other goods are commonly looted from the bodies of those killed in an adventure. The reason people would ever be interested in removing the composite pating of a Warforged, is because they know that the particular materials (steels, adamantine, mithril, etc) have some actual value and can be fashioned into useful things like effective weapons and gear (more than skin, bones, and flesh). In this instance, it would be viewed as taking the armor off the guy you just killed- a very common practice amongst adventurers. If someone tries to murder you, and you kill them instead, do you get to decide if the body is cremated or buried? Can the government give you permission to make that decision? No and no. Just because you kill a person in Xen'drik, that does not give you the moral or ethical authority to turn the body into swords or undead. Both concepts are reprehensible. Whether it's legal, whether it's ethical, whether you have the "right" is moot. People (and most adventuring parties) do it. Both in central Khorvaire, in Xen'drik, and in other lands. Pretty much the first thing a party of adventurers do when they defeat an enemy is investigate the corpse and take anything they considered valuable/useful that they can get away with. The implication in all of this is that the human body is a useless thing once dead. If you care to crack open your ancient history texts, you'll find the pre-history peoples used every single bit of an animal's corpse for something: bones for needles, ligaments for glue, tendons for thread, muscle for food, and so on. A human corpse is as much a source of natural resources as an animals. It is only that the warforged's raw materials are useful in more modern eras that makes the difference between warforged and human. Regardless of what they do in real world history, they don't do that in D&D. In D&D, adventurers would rather hump around bags full of Mithril and Adamantine than bags full of skin, bones, and meat. There's more money to be had in ccarrying around valuable metals as opposed to organic parts. All of which is certainly disturbing, but not game-breaking. What's gamebreaking is when you have a Warforged, still alive, willingly removing the metal parts of itself and selling it, but growing the stuff right back. It's like someone making money selling their hair or blood, but their hair and blood is worth a couple of GP per pound, never decomposes, and could be used to make superior weapons and armor. So Warforged parts deteriorate over time like the parts of other organic beings. Adamantine and Mithril that rots away like flesh is worthless and useless to most adventurers. They will, however, still take the Warforged's weapons, wealth, and possibly remove their docents and components.
Kreistor2 09-11-07, 01:02 AM	I'm not understanding. I said that the reason Warforged corpses and lopped off parts deterotiate is not because people would abuse dead Warforged. Whoops, you did and I apologize. But that is the general consensus. I do not believe there is an official statement anywhere that demands this is what happens to dead warforged, but if someone has a reference location for me, that'd be great. The main thing keeping most adventurers from stripping the flesh, bones, and teeth from their slain enemies is the fact that it's really of no value to them (uness they're a Necromancers). However, weapons, armor, wealth, and other goods are commonly looted from the bodies of those killed in an adventure. But it is a common overreaction to a potential abuse. There was a guy around here that had created a Hulking Hurler Sun Giant that dealt 17000D6 of damage, with only a 5% chance of missing the target. The immediate reaction from most was to ban the Hulking Hurler as abusable. Well, maybe the Sun Giant HH was abuse, but what about the Ogre Hulking Hurler that dealt 8D6? That's not abuse, is it? Baby tossed with the bathwater. It's not reasonable to rot human corpses because a necromancer might use it for fodder, but it is reasonable to rot warforged corpses because someone might try to use the body for swords. It is, in the end, a hypocritical argument. Regardless of what they do in real world history, they don't do that in D&D But I have had a necromancer PC in my campaign that wanted to create an undead army. (The other PC's had issues with that, but they might not have.) I haven't had anyone want to loot the bodies of the one or two warforged they've stumbled onto.
Closet_Nerd 09-11-07, 10:58 AM	So Warforged parts deteriorate over time like the parts of other organic beings. Adamantine and Mithril that rots away like flesh is worthless and useless to most adventurers. They will, however, still take the Warforged's weapons, wealth, and possibly remove their docents and components. While I'm not sure i agree with how you got there- i do agree with your final assessment. But it is a common overreaction to a potential abuse. There was a guy around here that had created a Hulking Hurler Sun Giant that dealt 17000D6 of damage, with only a 5% chance of missing the target. The immediate reaction from most was to ban the Hulking Hurler as abusable. We had a guy that thought that he could fire nearly infinite numbers of bolts from a repeating xbow that nearly instantaneously slew dragons. His math didn't add up. Well, maybe the Sun Giant HH was abuse, but what about the Ogre Hulking Hurler that dealt 8D6? That's not abuse, is it? Not really, hulking hurler is a prestige class. Ogres aren't exactly weak. I think that an ogre with a prestige class that's dealing 8D6 is pretty reasonable. That's the equivalent of 8 fighters with short swords (STR10). It amounts to a walking siege weapon. -Which it pretty much would be. A gather information check of 10 would discover that it was within 100miles of you (unless you were in Xen'drik). That kind of thing is notable... It's not reasonable to rot human corpses because a necromancer might use it for fodder, but it is reasonable to rot warforged corpses because someone might try to use the body for swords. It is, in the end, a hypocritical argument. I don't think it's reasonable to rot human corpses because they might be used as fodder for undead armies. I think it's reasonable because it's the spark of life that keeps our tissues alive. If a necromancer wants to raise an undead army (outside Karnath) they will have to deal with the consequences and repercussions. But I have had a necromancer PC in my campaign that wanted to create an undead army. (The other PC's had issues with that, but they might not have.) I haven't had anyone want to loot the bodies of the one or two warforged they've stumbled onto. Then you don't need to disuade it.
Alex_ 09-11-07, 11:03 AM	But it is a common overreaction to a potential abuse. There was a guy around here that had created a Hulking Hurler Sun Giant that dealt 17000D6 of damage, with only a 5% chance of missing the target. The immediate reaction from most was to ban the Hulking Hurler as abusable. Fortunately, nothing so drastic is being done here. Nothing is being banned. All that's being done is the introduction of a piece of fluff that makes sense for a new and odd concept like a "Living Construct" and simultaneously prevents abuses. There may be overreaction in other instances, but not this particular one. Well, maybe the Sun Giant HH was abuse, but what about the Ogre Hulking Hurler that dealt 8D6? That's not abuse, is it? Baby tossed with the bathwater. It's not reasonable to rot human corpses because a necromancer might use it for fodder, but it is reasonable to rot warforged corpses because someone might try to use the body for swords. It is, in the end, a hypocritical argument. But I have had a necromancer PC in my campaign that wanted to create an undead army. (The other PC's had issues with that, but they might not have.) I haven't had anyone want to loot the bodies of the one or two warforged they've stumbled onto. One Dead body = one Undead. One Living Warforged = endless swords (amongst other things). There's a big difference. An endless supply of Adamatine and Mithril swords (as well as other weapons, armor, and just play raw metal) is a lot more unbalancing to a game, and more readily available to the average adventurer than a single Undead. Furthermore, the number of HD of Undead you can control is ultimately capped, since you are not usually automatically in control of Undead you create using the Create Undead spell. There's no limit on how much Adamatine or Mithril you can store up from a Warforged "donor" every day, or every couple of hours though. It's not the same. Warforged body parts decompose when the Warforged dies or when removed from a Warforged to keep people from getting an nigh endless supply of the rarest and most expensive metal in the world. Not all players are going to figure that out as quickly as others.
Kreistor2 09-11-07, 05:38 PM	One Living Warforged = endless swords (amongst other things). What makes you think cutting off parts of bodies regenerates them? Warforged suffer all the same rules as humans, unless otherwise specified. Cut off an arm and it is gone, until a Regenerate spell is obtained. Shaving off a Warforged is no different than shaving off a human. DnD rules are silent on issues such as these, so you are welcome to rule however you want. The rules are not intended to cover heinous acts by PC's: it is assumed they are going to be the heroes of the game. So, apply your knowledge of what shaving off a human would do to a warforged, namely, aberrant scarring, which can be reflected in warforged as unusable alloys of adamantine with alchemical substances. There is no rule covering the scars a human receives from wounding in combat, is there? Does that mean scars are non-existent in fantasy worlds? No, it only means that there's no mechanical effect from being scarred for most heroes. That there is no rule for a warforged being wounded in the same manner is not an indicator that the warforged is pristine after repairing it. Treating the rules as a model of every single possible effect in a uiverse is foolish -- the rules for our own world fill libraries -- we can't boil it down to a 300 page book, so why should the all the rules for a fantasy world boil down to this much information. You're just being selective in which effects a warforged ignores. Blind obedience to the rules, and the lack of them, is not reasonable, whne the players themselves step beyond the rules.
Alex_ 09-13-07, 01:38 PM	What makes you think cutting off parts of bodies regenerates them? Warforged suffer all the same rules as humans, unless otherwise specified. Cut off an arm and it is gone, until a Regenerate spell is obtained. Shaving off a Warforged is no different than shaving off a human. Don't cut off an arm. Just remove some of the metal parts. Many players would assume this happens anyway during the course of a battle DnD rules are silent on issues such as these, so you are welcome to rule however you want. Nobody has have to house rule in this case, as the rules are not silent. Parts of warforged that come off ofthem degrade over a period of time comparable to biological parts, rather than metal/stone/what-have you. It's fine if you do houserule, but it's not because there's no ruling for it. The rules are not intended to cover heinous acts by PC's: it is assumed they are going to be the heroes of the game. Not a heinous act, at least not as I've described. A willingly Warforged knowing that it "grows" substances that are valuable to others (and itself) harvesting those substances from its own body, with no considerable risk of death, severe injury, or illness. Just like people clip their toenails, cut their hair, draw blood, or pick at their skin. Certainly less so than plundering ancient ruins and killing the inhabitants when they attack you for invading their home/territory (or because they're hungry). So, apply your knowledge of what shaving off a human would do to a warforged, namely, aberrant scarring, which can be reflected in warforged as unusable alloys of adamantine with alchemical substances. There is no rule covering the scars a human receives from wounding in combat, is there? Does that mean scars are non-existent in fantasy worlds? No, it only means that there's no mechanical effect from being scarred for most heroes. That there is no rule for a warforged being wounded in the same manner is not an indicator that the warforged is pristine after repairing it. Treating the rules as a model of every single possible effect in a uiverse is foolish -- the rules for our own world fill libraries -- we can't boil it down to a 300 page book, so why should the all the rules for a fantasy world boil down to this much information. Sure you could do this. I just don't find such houserules necessary for addressing such a concern when there are already published rules that do it. Okay, so it causes scarring. That's not really going to keep money grubbing PCs from doing it. You're just being selective in which effects a warforged ignores. Blind obedience to the rules, and the lack of them, is not reasonable, whne the players themselves step beyond the rules. Metal and stone Warforged parts deteriorating at a rate comparable to if they were made of flesh isn't a rule or idea I came up with. I'm not being selective, the rules are, but they aren't being inconsistent. Warforged already poses an illogical/improbable combination of traits of both living and contruct creatures. They don't have to follow logic or probability. They're magical, and being magical creatures, have all sorts of weird and seemingly impossible attributes, many of them totally unexpected or even counter-intuitive. The rules are simple and make sense in the context of the world. Personally, I also think it's an interesting quirk of Warforged physiology.
Kreistor2 09-13-07, 05:51 PM	Nobody has have to house rule in this case, as the rules are not silent. Parts of warforged that come off ofthem degrade over a period of time comparable to biological parts, rather than metal/stone/what-have you. It's fine if you do houserule, but it's not because there's no ruling for it. Are you referring to a specific rule? Besides the general "warforged are the same unless otherwise written", which is more or less what you're saying, I am unaware of a specific rule stating these effects. Care to give me the reference you're discussing? You refer to a rule, but you're not giving me a page number and book to read what you're talkking about. Sorry, my library is pretty darned large, and I can't remember the location of every sentence. I don't have an eiditic memory. I don't disagree with anything you say in general (except that cutting off little bits would cause no damage... it would to me, so it should to a warforged). I will point out that human flesh can be used before it rots. If used for something else, the decay process stops. So, cutting off a piece of a warforged and making a horseshoe out of it will leave a horseshoe that won't rot just like any other, just as a tiger that ate human's flesh would not rot.
Alex_ 09-14-07, 03:11 PM	Are you referring to a specific rule? Besides the general "warforged are the same unless otherwise written", which is more or less what you're saying, I am unaware of a specific rule stating these effects. Care to give me the reference you're discussing? You refer to a rule, but you're not giving me a page number and book to read what you're talkking about. Sorry, my library is pretty darned large, and I can't remember the location of every sentence. I don't have an eiditic memory. From the Dragonshard Article on Warforged (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050627a). I will point out that human flesh can be used before it rots. If used for something else, the decay process stops... just as a tiger that ate human's flesh would not rot. Flesh inside a Tiger's (or any animal's stomach) [i]does[i] continue to rot and decay. However, the process of digrestion is much faster, and the flesh has already been broken down and turned into substances with different properties, so there's really no flesh left to rot. If the digestion process somehow ended, like if the tiger died, or threw the meat back up, then it would keep on decomposing. So, cutting off a piece of a warforged and making a horseshoe out of it will leave a horseshoe that won't rot just like any other, just as a tiger that ate human's flesh would not rot. The process would not be the same, as the digestion of flesh doesn't just change its shape or form, it changes it from one substance to another, with toally different associated properties. Unless making Warforged adamantine/mithril/iron into a horseshowe somehow involves changing it into a totally different material, it would continue to degrade. What you're saying is more like saying taking some meat and putting it into the form of a horseshoe would stave off decomposition.
Kreistor2 09-14-07, 06:19 PM	Well, you can follow a Dragonshard on this, if you wish. Dragonshards are optional, not rules. But, riddle me this: if adamantium can decompose into component elements, then can't it also be made from those same elements. (Technically, Fabricate might be able to do it.) I don't like the implications of this rule: it stomps all over common sense knowledge of metals. Nothing elemental "degrades" to the point it can never be recovered. It might be hard or expensive, but the elements are there. Also, it raises the question: if the metal decays quickly when cut off, then why are there no rules about warforged not being restorable via Raise Dead? Dead or cut off, it's the same state. If the cut off bit decays that fast, and all alchemical processes are ceased due to death, then it's the same for both cases: the body should be quickly immune to Raise Dead. The rule is just a handwave overreaction to a problem that can be more easily solved by a DM that actually includes repercussions for the reprehensible acts being commited.
Alex_ 09-14-07, 07:33 PM	Well, you can follow a Dragonshard on this, if you wish. Dragonshards are optional, not rules. Optional rules are described as such. Dragonshards aren't any more or less optional than the material written in any other book. You can choose to follow them or ignore them, but it's no different than following or ignoring something written any Eberron book. But, riddle me this: if adamantium can decompose into component elements, then can't it also be made from those same elements. (Technically, Fabricate might be able to do it.) I don't like the implications of this rule: it stomps all over common sense knowledge of metals. Nothing elemental "degrades" to the point it can never be recovered. It might be hard or expensive, but the elements are there. Magic does what it wants, with no real rhyme, reason, logic, or foundation in common sense. It's even at times anti-intuitive, capable of producing effects the opposite of which you believe should be possible. The process of Warforged materials degrading is magical, and as such, defies logic. As pointed out earlier in the thread, this is perfectly in keeping with Warforged themes as they can also magically grow spikes, blades, and other parts. Furthermore in the real world, elements can "degrade" by losing sub-atomic particles until they're turned into other elements or combine into new substances naturally through atomic/chemical processes. Such processes get even worse when you're dealing with alloys like steel, and unless there are additions to the periodic table of elements in D&D, Mithril and Adamantine. Alloys are not made of only one element, but a combination of them, which generally facilitates chemicals reactions and leads to more corrosion and reactions at a faster pace. Sure with enough time, resources, and money you could get back all the elemental atoms, or break down the new material and try to rebuild it at an atomic level, but it's generally not worth it. You always want to prevent or delay corrosion or decomposition since reversing the process isn't worth it. Also, it raises the question: if the metal decays quickly when cut off, then why are there no rules about warforged not being restorable via Raise Dead? Dead or cut off, it's the same state. If the cut off bit decays that fast, and all alchemical processes are ceased due to death, then it's the same for both cases: the body should be quickly immune to Raise Dead. It doesn't decay that fast. As Hellcow mentioned earlier in the thread, it doesn't crumble to dust shortly after being removed, but the process is such that trying to make it into a sword, armor, etc is virtually worthless compared to making it out of material taken from other sources. Warforged bodies (and the bodies of all dead creatures and their limbs) do become immune to the Raise Dead over time. That's why they have the spell Gentle Repose, which decreases the rate of decomposition of corpses and body parts, or spells like True Resurrection, which don't require any body parts. Essentially, when a Warforged dies or has a body part cut off, just treat it like the limb of any other living thing. It's that simple. The rule is just a handwave overreaction to a problem that can be more easily solved by a DM that actually includes repercussions for the reprehensible acts being commited. It's not an overreaction, and it actually is rather simple. Treat a dead Warforged or severed body parts like you would any other PHB race. Also, the scenario I represented was not reprehensible. Not that it matters, since even if you do make the process "reprehensible", which may result in a moral debate with your players, it ultimately won't stop all PCs from getting away it.
Kreistor2 09-15-07, 10:03 AM	Magic does what it wants, with no real rhyme, reason, logic, or foundation in common sense. It's even at times anti-intuitive, capable of producing effects the opposite of which you believe should be possible. Right. Handwaving. Got it. Furthermore in the real world, elements can "degrade" by losing sub-atomic particles until they're turned into other elements or combine into new substances naturally through atomic/chemical processes. Releasing alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, and in quantity, the energies released can cause explosive effects, but at the least cause great heat. Oddly, in the case of the degrading warforged pieces, these effects are hand-waved away so no one gets hurt. There's that word again. Hey, if you want to include these secondary effects, that's great, really. It's consistent with the idea of powerful magic gone wrong. It solves the problem, has a negative reinforcement reason to back up the "don't do that" thing, and has some common sense behind it. It doesn't decay that fast. As Hellcow mentioned earlier in the thread, it doesn't crumble to dust shortly after being removed, but the process is such that trying to make it into a sword, armor, etc is virtually worthless compared to making it out of material taken from other sources. So here we're hand-waving away any potential alchemcial process that could remove the adamantium from the alchemicals that are causing the rot. Essentially, when a Warforged dies or has a body part cut off, just treat it like the limb of any other living thing. It's that simple. That is not "quick". That is "normal". A human's body can be used for its component raw materials inside that time, so it's not too fast to recover the warforged's component raw materials. Treat a dead Warforged or severed body parts like you would any other PHB race. Then it is usable. We consider it reprehensible to use a human body in this way, but an animal's body decays at the same rate as ours. Ancient peoples made bone tools (needles), thread (sinew), leather (skin)... need I go on? That the body decays is not a preventative measure against the body parts being used.
ArcTan 09-16-07, 03:02 AM	Well, you can follow a Dragonshard on this, if you wish. Dragonshards are optional, not rules. But, riddle me this: if adamantium can decompose into component elements, then can't it also be made from those same elements. (Technically, Fabricate might be able to do it.) Well... yes. And if a human can decompose into component elements (and compounds), a human can theoretically be made from those same elemenst (and compounds). So? That doesn't actually mean you can do it. Certainly not with fabricate, which requires that you start with raw materials that you *physically* rearrange into a new material, not *chemically* transform into a new material. (Fabricate can't, for instance, make wood from ashes.) I mean, if you want a spell that *can* reassemble the decayed alchemical remnants of a Warforged into their former adamantine glory, there is one. It's called raise dead. Works on humans, too, turning all that CO2 and water vapor and nitrate sludge back into pristine proteins. Great stuff. I don't like the implications of this rule: it stomps all over common sense knowledge of metals. Nothing elemental "degrades" to the point it can never be recovered. It might be hard or expensive, but the elements are there. Who the hell says adamantine is an element, in the chemical sense? It sounds much more like some kind of alloy or composite to me, probably one made through a highly expensive alchemical process. And, remember, this is D&D, which is based on medieval alchemy, not real chemistry. Metals aren't elemental. Metals are a mixture of fire and earth. Any metal can "degrade" into any other metal -- such is the nature of alchemy. The hard part is always trying to get the "noble" or useful metals out of the "base". Also, it raises the question: if the metal decays quickly when cut off, then why are there no rules about warforged not being restorable via Raise Dead? Uh, there are. A dead Warforged's corpse becomes totally unusable for raise dead after 1 day/caster level. This does not mean this is some magical point at which the Warforged corpse *starts* decaying or now counts as "decayed". A human corpse, after all, that's just been sitting around for nine days is unlikely to bear much more than a cursory resemblance to the living person -- indeed, it's likely to have already decreased in mass dramatically through decay and dessication. Dead or cut off, it's the same state. If the cut off bit decays that fast, and all alchemical processes are ceased due to death, then it's the same for both cases: the body should be quickly immune to Raise Dead. How about all the valuable bits of adamantine decaying *first* (and we know these are "extraneous" bits of a Warforged -- a Reforged can have them all removed and still survive) and the rest of the Warforged taking longer to decay afterwards? Does that also not make sense? The rule is just a handwave overreaction to a problem that can be more easily solved by a DM that actually includes repercussions for the reprehensible acts being commited. Not really. Warforged were slaves with no legal rights all through the War, remember? Looting Warforged corpses would've been big business. Besides, the problem isn't looting, it's creation in the first place. Keith made this up so that you could explain the metals in a Warforged body as something that "grew" there through alchemy, rather than saying Cannith magically had the capital to put thousands of GP worth of adamantine into their little experiments, over and over again. After all, Warforged "growing" metal out of nothing is already a big part of who they are -- growing spikes, being able to repair major damage with cure spells or regenerate spells, that sort of thing -- and if something can grow like a living thing, it can decay like a living thing.
ArcTan 09-16-07, 03:03 AM	What makes you think cutting off parts of bodies regenerates them? Warforged suffer all the same rules as humans, unless otherwise specified. Cut off an arm and it is gone, until a Regenerate spell is obtained. Shaving off a Warforged is no different than shaving off a human. ...And *after* PCs get access to regenerate?
ArcTan 09-16-07, 03:05 AM	So here we're hand-waving away any potential alchemcial process that could remove the adamantium from the alchemicals that are causing the rot. ...Or the metal was "alchemical metal" that *required* an ongoing living process to sustain it in the first place, just as your skin needs a constant living process to sustain it so it doesn't shrivel up and rot. It's not real adamantine, remember. It's some kind of alchemical process that *makes* adamantine, or at least something that looks kind of like adamantine, but only keeps going while the WF is alive. I mean, we're "handwaving away" the idea of miraculously coming up with an alchemical way to reverse the process, sure. Just like we're "handwaving away" the idea of using alchemy to turn lead into adamantine *without* a Creation Forge and becoming a millionaire. We're just saying it's not possible, or if it is possible it's really hard. Why *should* it be possible? Isn't part of the whole fantasy flavor of alchemy that it's *hard*?
Alex_ 09-16-07, 01:13 PM	Right. Handwaving. Got it... Oddly, in the case of the degrading warforged pieces, these effects are hand-waved away so no one gets hurt. There's that word again. It is handwaving. D&D is a game based on a fictional fantasy world. It constantly glosses over details and handwaves others away. To do not do so would result in a totally unplayable and ultimately un-enjoyable game, as you would have so many rules, so many details, and so many mechanics that nobody would bother with it. Physics in D&D would make a real world Physicist weep. The economy in D&D would make a real world Economist go insane. The Biology in D&D would confound a real world biologist and destroy their perceptions of many well understood and reliable models. A real world jewelcrafter, animal trainer, or even a practitioner of magic or psychic phenomenon can find countless holes and inaccuracies in D&D rules related to such tasks. Yeah you can provide enough information that people with a casual interest or understanding (or none at all) of the subject in question will go, "okay, that's good enough", but you will never be able to accurately reflect the entire complexity and detail of reality through a game. Handwaving of a certain level is required, and present in every aspect of D&D (and every other form of media). Releasing alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, and in quantity, the energies released can cause explosive effects, but at the least cause great heat.... Hey, if you want to include these secondary effects, that's great, really. It's consistent with the idea of powerful magic gone wrong. It solves the problem, has a negative reinforcement reason to back up the "don't do that" thing, and has some common sense behind it. So here we're hand-waving away any potential alchemcial process that could remove the adamantium from the alchemicals that are causing the rot. You say your explanation is based on common sense, but it requires your PCs to actually have an understanding of chemistry and the nature of decay to get it. The fact that you think that the process of losing protons/neutrons/electrons is always so dangerous as to require handwaving to make it less dangerous also seems to suggest you yourself have a more casual interest and understanding. You shouldn't have to have any understanding of modern genetics to understand that Human+Elf=Half Elf, or an understanding of economics to know that the merchant's shortsword will cost you 20 gold pieces, while nobody else in the town has more than a copper piece to their name. You don't have to have a degree in psychology or anthropology to understand the social behavior of Kobolds. You don't need to know anything about physics or kinematics to justify movement rates ot the jumping, climbing, and tumble skills. You shouldn't have to delve into chemistry and go on about atomic decay when all you have to say is, "A Warforged's body decays when it dies, so you can't use it to make swords and stuff." Someone who has greater interest and knowledge of these subjects will see that it's inaccurate, and that details and other things are being ignored. However, part of the idea of fantasy is that many of the things in it are fantasy. They aren't real. So why go this far? Why can't we just accept that Warforged body magically begins to degrade when removed from the Warforged that, in a game mechanics sense, makes it unsuitable for other uses? That's something a person with no knowledge of chemistry or a researcher with a Doctorate in Biology and Chemistry can reasonably understand and accept. If you make rules trying to stick to real world things, and try to use those as pillars that can resist any criticism, someone who knows more about it or is more familiar with it than you are will always come along and tear it down. However, if you use things like themes, genre ideals, and intended feel/tone, and end mechanical results as the basis of your rulings, then you'll be virtually immune to such criticisms. That is not "quick". That is "normal". A human's body can be used for its component raw materials inside that time, so it's not too fast to recover the warforged's component raw materials. It's not impossible to recover the raw materials (as in the Adamantine/steel/etc). It's that those materials, when part of a Warforged structure and taken from it, begin to corrode and break down faster than usual- to the point where it's pointless to try and use them for weapons. The process could take 3 hours of 3 months. Either way, who would want a sword made of metal that only lasts 3 months compared to one that lasts (in D&D mechanics) virtually forever? Then it is usable. We consider it reprehensible to use a human body in this way, but an animal's body decays at the same rate as ours. Ancient peoples made bone tools (needles), thread (sinew), leather (skin)... need I go on? That the body decays is not a preventative measure against the body parts being used. It's reprehensible because it disgraces the dead, since bone, sinew, and usable amounts of skin can not really be safely harvested without maiming the person. People generally don't have much problem with parts that can be safely removed from still living people (hair, blood, etc). I'd imagine people would be even less uncomfortable if those same or similar materials could be found naturally in the ground (like a Warforged's body parts) and people were made from assemblies of those parts. Furthermore, turning bone, ligaments, and skin into materials like thread or leather involves treatments that change the properties of those materials (mostly chemical changes related to loss of water and the atoms that make it up). The skin you pull off a person or animal is not the same as leather it becomes. The tendons you pull out are not the same as the sinew. For Warforged to follow a similar model, you would be pulling steel, adamantine, and mithral off of Warforgeed and treating it to make it into something else. something that isn't suggested to be possible. Which again, is all beside the point. D&D only follows real world when it wants to, and that's only when it doesn't want to bother coming up with rules. When it has rules for something, that's when D&D is telling you that they're straying from reality. It's all ultimately arbitrary. It's fantasy. It's a game. It's a fantasy game.
Hellcow 09-16-07, 03:09 PM	Uh, there are. A dead Warforged's corpse becomes totally unusable for raise dead after 1 day/caster level. Good point. The fundamental rule is "Unless something's called out, a warforged is like a human character." So you CAN keep a warforged at -9 HP indefinetely. It doesn't need to eat, it doesn't heal naturally, it automatically stabilizes. However, there's nothing stating in the rules that warforged bodies DON'T degrade - that they benefit from a persistent gentle repose. If there are any rules that relate to the degrading condition of corpses, they apply to warforged as well as humans. Likewise, when it comes to rules, the adamantine issue is actually very cut and dried. There are no rules for stripping valuable substances from the body of a human. Unless stated otherwise, warforged behave as humans (hence the sense of taste). Therefore, in lieu of there being any rules saying that you CAN strip materials from warforged, the answer is that you can't. You can justify this any way that you choose: the metal in a warforged was never true metal to begin with (the Dragonshard approach); these materials can't be reforged and are thus useless; they degrade in some other way; or what have you. But from a pure RAW standpoint, there's no need to create rules saying that you can't, because there's no rules saying that you CAN - and that's the trump. Everything else is just fluff to explain the lack of said rules. As a side note, it was never MY intention to say that "warforged crumble to dust within seconds of death." Among other things, THAT would be a change of rules, affecting the ability to use things like raise dead. My intention was that they decay faster than you'd expect given the materials they appear to be composed of. In terms of the adamantine, my point in the dragonshard is that it's not actually adamantine; it is a material created not through fabricate as much as from creation (they are "creation" forges, after all) and sustained by the life-force of the warforged. It has the qualities of adamantine, mithral, whatever, but it's NOT adamantine... and when the lifeforce is removed, a critical component is lost. It doesn't crumble to dust. It just warps, pits, rusts, or otherwise shows signs of that loss... and loses its exceptional quality. You could build a wall out of dead warforged, just as you could out of dead people - it just wouldn't be as tough as you'd expect. After all, Warforged "growing" metal out of nothing is already a big part of who they are -- growing spikes, being able to repair major damage with cure spells or regenerate spells, that sort of thing -- and if something can grow like a living thing, it can decay like a living thing. That's the key point to me. They aren't just metal shells. The lifeforce of the warforged is integrally tied to its physical being. And when the lifeforce is taken away, the body suffers. At the end of the day, though, the lack of existence of rules for stripping warforged is due to the designer's intent that it can't be done. The fluff that justifies this is really in your hands.
androkguz 09-16-07, 10:41 PM	It is handwaving. D&D is a game based on a fictional fantasy world. It constantly glosses over details and handwaves others away. To do not do so would result in a totally unplayable and ultimately un-enjoyable game, as you would have so many rules, so many details, and so many mechanics that nobody would bother with it. Physics in D&D would make a real world Physicist weep. The economy in D&D would make a real world Economist go insane. The Biology in D&D would confound a real world biologist and destroy their perceptions of many well understood and reliable models. A real world jewelcrafter, animal trainer, or even a practitioner of magic or psychic phenomenon can find countless holes and inaccuracies in D&D rules related to such tasks. Yeah you can provide enough information that people with a casual interest or understanding (or none at all) of the subject in question will go, "okay, that's good enough", but you will never be able to accurately reflect the entire complexity and detail of reality through a game. Handwaving of a certain level is required, and present in every aspect of D&D (and every other form of media). However, I do think that it's good to have many explanations for as many things in the D&D world as posible. Yeah, you eventually have to handwave things but a world full of logical and/or consistent causes and consecuences is a world in which the PC can dive as more than just actors: they can become guionist. So yeah, I could choose to just have a the NPC that's the superior of my PC come out with a plan to desestabilize the Karrnath's economics or I could give them enought knowledge of the world so that using some of that and gathering the rest, they could come out with the idea. And that without it being something like "hey DM, I have an idea for an adventure, you just have to make a town that's critical for Karrnath to commerce and you also have to give us some contacts in the Brelish army in the next adventure. Oh! and you have to give Breland a reason to sabotage their economics and a way to do it." Instead it could be "hey, guy! I have an idea! we can damage the Aurum by damaging their trade in west karrnath. Do you remember we where told that [Town] was a critical spot for trading in the region? So well, here is the plan: we use this and that that we know is true here and do that and that but we gotta find someone who knows that..." or something like that. I would even be better if things like that were posible for planning a ritual. But that can only happen if magic's rules (in-game rules) are partially written.
Alex_ 09-17-07, 01:33 PM	However, I do think that it's good to have many explanations for as many things in the D&D world as posible. Yeah, you eventually have to handwave things but a world full of logical and/or consistent causes and consecuences is a world in which the PC can dive as more than just actors: they can become guionist. Sure things can work like the real world in D&D. However. When they don't, though, it shouldn't be a surprise to players (maybe their characters, but not the players), especially when it's obviously magical in nature. So yeah, I could choose to just have a the NPC that's the superior of my PC come out with a plan to desestabilize the Karrnath's economics or I could give them enought knowledge of the world so that using some of that and gathering the rest, they could come out with the idea. And that without it being something like "hey DM, I have an idea for an adventure, you just have to make a town that's critical for Karrnath to commerce and you also have to give us some contacts in the Brelish army in the next adventure. Oh! and you have to give Breland a reason to sabotage their economics and a way to do it." Instead it could be "hey, guy! I have an idea! we can damage the Aurum by damaging their trade in west karrnath. Do you remember we where told that [Town] was a critical spot for trading in the region? So well, here is the plan: we use this and that that we know is true here and do that and that but we gotta find someone who knows that..." or something like that. I would even be better if things like that were posible for planning a ritual. But that can only happen if magic's rules (in-game rules) are partially written. I'm not saying abandon all logic and reason. I'm saying that's it's largely impossible to present a 100% true to life representation of real world phenomena in D&D or most any game. There's a point where you just have to gloss things over. That suspension of disbelief has to apply to the whole game, not just the overtly fantastic. Not everything can or should be taken to its greatest logical conclusion. You don't have to have an above average interest in or knowledge of economics to come up with the above scenario. You didn't base it on real world economic models down to the tiniest details. If something happens that can really derail the story, even if it's not something you planned for, you know that you can handle it on the fly. Simply put, you're not sticking 100% to reality. If one of your players has a degree in economic theory and tries to use that out of game knowledge to allow their character to become the richest person on Khorvaire with no downside, and uses technical terms and economic theories and ideas you've never heard of to try and justify it, you're not actually going to let them get away with it. Then there's stuff like how the economy impacts other aspects of the world that players might know more than you about. You want the general themes of economic warfare, sabotage, and intrigue. You're not looking to play D&D Wall Street simulation (I'd assume) with rules covering everything the players want to do or could possibly think up. You cut corners here, sweep details under the rug over there, and actually do end up doing some handwaving, and might have to outright say, "That won't work" without having to go into excruciating details. Most people don't even stick that closely to simple the published rules. Why stick that closely to more complicated real ones we don't even know?
ArcTan 09-18-07, 01:25 AM	Good point. The fundamental rule is "Unless something's called out, a warforged is like a human character." So you CAN keep a warforged at -9 HP indefinetely. It doesn't need to eat, it doesn't heal naturally, it automatically stabilizes. Well, yeah, but a disabled Warforged is still alive, as much as a Warforged can ever be said to be "alive". A Human at -9 is still alive, after all. The fact that a Warforged's internal life processes can keep its motionless body alive for millennia without degradation is remarkable, sure, but not any more remarkable than the fact that said processes can keep it alive in a moving, living, talking, fighting state for that same length of time (no max age). Also, as you point out, has no bearing on what happens to the Warforged when it's truly *dead*. Oddly I see Eberron-bashers talking about Warforged being "overpowered" because they themselves don't understand this distinction, and assume that the idea of a Warforged is that they can be repaired back up to full health from -224 HP or something.
ArcTan 09-18-07, 01:28 AM	Sure things can work like the real world in D&D. However. When they don't, though, it shouldn't be a surprise to players (maybe their characters, but not the players), especially when it's obviously magical in nature. More to the point, Kreistor2's arguments aren't really "real-world" arguments -- they just assume certain things that, even in the real world, I wouldn't assume if Warforged magically became real. (For instance, that adamantine cannot decay or be corroded because adamantine is a chemical element, an assertion we have exactly no proof for. Also, that the way alchemy works is that anything that alchemy does can be undone just as easily, which is *certainly* not true of authentic medieval alchemy and is *absolutely* not true of real-world modern chemistry. You try un-frying an egg.)
androkguz 09-18-07, 12:29 PM	Sure things can work like the real world in D&D. However. When they don't, though, it shouldn't be a surprise to players (maybe their characters, but not the players), especially when it's obviously magical in nature. I'm not saying abandon all logic and reason. I'm saying that's it's largely impossible to present a 100% true to life representation of real world phenomena in D&D or most any game. There's a point where you just have to gloss things over. That suspension of disbelief has to apply to the whole game, not just the overtly fantastic. Not everything can or should be taken to its greatest logical conclusion. You don't have to have an above average interest in or knowledge of economics to come up with the above scenario. You didn't base it on real world economic models down to the tiniest details. If something happens that can really derail the story, even if it's not something you planned for, you know that you can handle it on the fly. Simply put, you're not sticking 100% to reality. If one of your players has a degree in economic theory and tries to use that out of game knowledge to allow their character to become the richest person on Khorvaire with no downside, and uses technical terms and economic theories and ideas you've never heard of to try and justify it, you're not actually going to let them get away with it. Then there's stuff like how the economy impacts other aspects of the world that players might know more than you about. You want the general themes of economic warfare, sabotage, and intrigue. You're not looking to play D&D Wall Street simulation (I'd assume) with rules covering everything the players want to do or could possibly think up. You cut corners here, sweep details under the rug over there, and actually do end up doing some handwaving, and might have to outright say, "That won't work" without having to go into excruciating details. Most people don't even stick that closely to simple the published rules. Why stick that closely to more complicated real ones we don't even know? Sure, I agree with you, specially in the part of not letting an economist become rich. But my point is that all the stuff we discuss in this boards about the nature of magic, the secrets of Vol, the nature of warforged, the posible interests of the Aurum and a lot of other things that we usually use for an excuse to an adventure should also be usable by the PC themselves to affect the world.
Hellcow 09-18-07, 04:37 PM	Well, yeah, but a disabled Warforged is still alive, as much as a Warforged can ever be said to be "alive". A Human at -9 is still alive, after all. Absolutely. I didn't make my point clear. What I was trying to say is just that: there are rules stating that a warforged can remain alive indefinately provided it still alive - at least one sparkof life. But there are no special rules that say that once they go past -10 hit points, warforged corpses should be treated any differently from those of any other creature. There ARE rules pertaining to corpses: raise dead, gentle repose. If it was intended for warforged to have amazing non-degrading corpses, that's something that should be called out, and it's not. In the Dragonshard, I provide one explanation for why warforged corpses are treated in the same way as other corpses. If that's not satisfactory, the DM can come up with one he likes. But the point is that stripping warforged - or otherwise treating warforged corpses in a manner different from the corpses of other player characters - requires the addition of house rules; by the RAW it can't be done, and the ECS simply doesn't provided any sort of fluff explanation for it.
Kreistor2 09-20-07, 12:57 AM	And $300 later, my computer is back up and running. Dead motherboards definitely do not rock. New HD, just in case. And, back to our porgram. Well... yes. And if a human can decompose into component elements (and compounds), a human can theoretically be made from those same elemenst (and compounds). Eye-to-eye there. So? That doesn't actually mean you can do it. Certainly not with fabricate, which requires that you start with raw materials that you *physically* rearrange into a new material, not *chemically* transform into a new material. (Fabricate can't, for instance, make wood from ashes.) Check the last sentence of the first paragraph of Fabricate. The one starting with "If you work with a mineral...". This implies that Fabricate will extract iron from the rock, add carbon from the coal to make steel and then out pops your sword. There is no actual limit on Fabricate not creating leather goods from animal hide and the various chemicals involved in that industry (mercury, IIRC). I mean, if you want a spell that *can* reassemble the decayed alchemical remnants of a Warforged into their former adamantine glory, there is one. It's called raise dead. Works on humans, too, turning all that CO2 and water vapor and nitrate sludge back into pristine proteins. Great stuff. Well, technically, the body needs to be reasonably intact before casting, so Raise doesn't really do that. Who the hell says adamantine is an element, in the chemical sense? It sounds much more like some kind of alloy or composite to me, probably one made through a highly expensive alchemical process. I don't pull the periodic table into DnD. I do pull some of our concepts of matter in. I'm not going to say that there are atoms in DnD, but I do say that the substances we view as being elements are also elemental in DnD, in that they cannot be further reduced. But that is my choice: there are no rules for any substance. You can say that iron is not elemental in your campaign, while I can say it is in mine, and we're both right! Where the rules are silent, the Dm makes the choice. And, remember, this is D&D, which is based on medieval alchemy It uses the word Alchemy, but no one ever pulled anything fo real alchemy into DnD. Alchemists, to protect themselves from being called heretics, firmly entrenched alchemy in religious dogma, and often took high positions as laymen in the church. None of that is in DnD... Uh, there are. A dead Warforged's corpse becomes totally unusable for raise dead after 1 day/caster level. You'll note that this is caster dependent, not corpse dependent. It rots in 11 days for one Cleric, but if a different Cleric arrives, it has rot less and had 9 more days to go? That is one way of imagining why the day/level limit is present, but not the only one. rather than saying Cannith magically had the capital to put thousands of GP worth of adamantine into their little experiments, over and over again. Well, my Cannith does. But then, I've advanced the economy to 1800's standards. After all, Warforged "growing" metal out of nothing is already a big part of who they are -- growing spikes, being able to repair major damage with cure spells or regenerate spells, that sort of thing -- and if something can grow like a living thing, it can decay like a living thing. Well, more on this later. Hellcow said something later that a lot of people seemed to have forgotten. He had another explanation for the "adamantium" in adamantine bodied warforged. Folks had forgotten. I'm glad he popped it on here again. Oh, heh, your next... ...Or the metal was "alchemical metal" that *required* an ongoing living process to sustain it in the first place, just as your skin needs a constant living process to sustain it so it doesn't shrivel up and rot. was it. This is a far more reasonable solution, to me. The metal isn't metal, just an alchemical substance with metallic properties. That's fine, but it's also not what that Dragonshard says -- just to be entirely rhetorical. I'm dropping a number of the thoughts you brought up, ArcTan, simply to keep this message shorter than insanely long. Re-raise them if you feel you really want them addressed. It is handwaving. D&D is a game based on a fictional fantasy world. It constantly glosses over details and handwaves others away. To do not do so would result in a totally unplayable and ultimately un-enjoyable game, as you would have so many rules, so many details, and so many mechanics that nobody would bother with it. The problem is one of consistency in application. How many rules are there now in 3.5? Thousands of pages. No man can be expected to remember them all, wihtout an eiditic memory, which I for one am not blessed with. For a DM to make a quick judgement, rulings need to be consistent. More consistency means less rules review and faster game progress. (But fewer rules means fewer books and that makes marketing unhappy.) What we have here (with the Warforged metal shavings rotting) is an exception. Metal is now treated inconsistently, and unexpectedly. Yes, a lot of DnD is handwaving, but so long as the hands wave in the same direction, then the rules are consistent. "Excepts" are bad things, and this is a big except. You say your explanation is based on common sense, but it requires your PCs to actually have an understanding of chemistry and the nature of decay to get it. I didn't start that train of thought. Someone else did. You're quoting from my response to someone else's suggestion, not mine. He brought up nuclear decay to suggest the breakdown of Adamantium. Yes, i have more than a passing knowledge of the subject, BTW. No, my players don't need that. I provide experts whenever they need that level of knowledge. (Ie. They wanted to run a true expedition to Xen'drik, so they hired a business manager to CEO the company, sell shares, market, etc. None of them understood how businesses are started and run, but I do having spent some time in high tech start-ups. The NPC did it all for them.) You shouldn't have to have any understanding of modern genetics to understand that Human+Elf=Half Elf, or an understanding of economics to know that the merchant's shortsword will cost you 20 gold pieces, while nobody else in the town has more than a copper piece to their name. You don't have to have a degree in psychology or anthropology to understand the social behavior of Kobolds. You don't need to know anything about physics or kinematics to justify movement rates ot the jumping, climbing, and tumble skills. No, but if you are a DM runnning a world, the more you understand about how a real world works (and so far, ours is the only one), the more accurate and consistent that world will feel to players. The more you can afford to study, the better. You'll never do it well enough for a true expert in the field, but then all you need to do is talk to them and get their input. Which again, is all beside the point. D&D only follows real world when it wants to, and that's only when it doesn't want to bother coming up with rules. When it has rules for something, that's when D&D is telling you that they're straying from reality. It's all ultimately arbitrary. It's fantasy. It's a game. It's a fantasy game. When the rules are silent, what is one to use as the basis for a ruling, if not the real world? Magic is not so unpredictable and unknowable: the rules we have are end results, not magical processes. We don't have rules on how magic works: we have rules for what magic causes. So, we can't take teh rules of magic and come up with a consistent ruling on how an alchemical process interacts with the world. How alchemy works is just as unknowable. So, in the end, we are either arbitrary, or we try to find some sort of consistency. However, there's nothing stating in the rules that warforged bodies DON'T degrade - that they benefit from a persistent gentle repose. If there are any rules that relate to the degrading condition of corpses, they apply to warforged as well as humans. I would argue here that when someone dies, they become an object of whatever material they are made of, and unless a magical effect is present (ie. one that can be seen with Detect Magic), then the substances decay at the same rate they would in our real world. A human body is called a corpse, but it decays at the same rate as any other dead fleshy substance. If we were made of wood, we would decay at the same rate as trees, not mammals. A wood golem is destroyed, it falls into a pile of wood, and it then decays just like wood, not a man. Since the Warforged is constructed of obsidian, stone, iron, etc. (See ECS pg 20), then it should decay as though made of those materials as if they were here on earth. The organic part would decay at human rates, one would presume, but iron would rust as if normal iron, not at human decay rates. In terms of the adamantine, my point in the dragonshard is that it's not actually adamantine; it is a material created not through fabricate as much as from creation (they are "creation" forges, after all) and sustained by the life-force of the warforged. I was really surprised that no one brought this one up before ArcTan. That was the explanation that worked best with everyone on the forums in the past. It's an acceptable solution that doesn't stomp all over everything. and if something can grow like a living thing, it can decay like a living thing. That's the key point to me. They aren't just metal shells. The lifeforce of the warforged is integrally tied to its physical being. And when the lifeforce is taken away, the body suffers. Right, but there are no rules in the game for decaying corpses. We must turn to our own knowledge of the real world to determine how long it takes for a body to decompose. But there are parts of the Warforged that are made of wood and stone. Either they are wood and stone, as per the ECS, or they just look like them, and the ECS describes them incorrectly. IF they are those substances, then they would decay at the rate those substances normally decay at, not human rates, unless otherwise specified. Here we have a description that does give us cause to decay components of a warforged at different rates from a human, because the ECS has specfied that they are not entirely biological (or entirely alchemical). the lack of existence of rules for stripping warforged is due to the designer's intent that it can't be done. That doesn't quite read right. The designer didn't intend the warforged to be strippable so he didn't write a rule to say it couldn't be stripped? For instance, that adamantine cannot decay or be corroded because adamantine is a chemical element, an assertion we have exactly no proof for. Not a chemcial element: elemental, in that it, like iron, is a pure substance. Also, that the way alchemy works is that anything that alchemy does can be undone just as easily, which is *certainly* not true of authentic medieval alchemy and is *absolutely* not true of real-world modern chemistry. You try un-frying an egg. That is not quite what I said. I never said "undone". An egg can be made. The process for creating an egg involves a chicken. Put the right raw materials in front of a chicken and out pops an egg. We can now make diamonds. We make them in a completely different way from the way we destroy them, but we can make them (albeit low quality as yet). This is not "undoing" the destruction process: it is creation of its own type. In the same way, if adamantium is composed of other materials, it too can theoretically be made. You can arbitrarily declare that process undiscovered, but something created it wherever it was mined from in the first place, and that can be reproduced once enough has been learned about it. All you've done, at this point, is prevent one form of creating adamantium (by making adamantine bodied warforged slices crumble) and introduced another. But the point is that stripping warforged - or otherwise treating warforged corpses in a manner different from the corpses of other player characters - requires the addition of house rules; by the RAW it can't be done, and the ECS simply doesn't provided any sort of fluff explanation for it. Hellcow, a human corpse can be stripped -- the act is just reprehensible so it wasn't normally done. There are no rules in Core or anywhere else I know of that says a human body cannot be used in the same way as an animal's. Let's not go into all the ways a human body could be used... suffice it to say that any student of tribal culture can tell you that every single bit of animal corpses were used for something. The RAW is silent on this issue, which does not mean it can't be done: it only means that such things are left to the DM.
ArcTan 09-20-07, 01:43 AM	Check the last sentence of the first paragraph of Fabricate. The one starting with "If you work with a mineral...". This implies that Fabricate will extract iron from the rock, add carbon from the coal to make steel and then out pops your sword. Er, no. Why the hell does it imply that? It's merely drawing a distinction between "vegetable matter" and "mineral matter", like any number of other spells (most notably major creation and minor creation). Steel is a mineral. "Mineral" doesn't mean "raw stuff you find in the ground". There is no actual limit on Fabricate not creating leather goods from animal hide and the various chemicals involved in that industry (mercury, IIRC). It says you have to make something out of the "same material". This would allow you to forge swords out of bars of steel, yes, but not get a steel sword out of iron ore and coal. I mean, fabricate is already often considered an overpowered spell. Saying that the "same material" doesn't respect the boundaries between different substances like iron ore and steel or cowhide and leather makes the spell ridiculous. Technically, I could then take some hay and water and make leather, too (because in the long run, that's how leather comes into being, when a cow takes in its food and converts it to skin cells). Or make diamonds out of coal. Or, hell, make *any* gemstone out of small amounts of dirt. Of course, fabricate cannot do this. Fabricate cannot even replicate the process of turning impure, poor-quality steel into pure, high-quality steel, much less smelting the iron from ore and alloying it into steel in the first place. (Remember that the quality of the item is commensurate with the quality of the material? If fabricate can make iron from ore, then it absolutely can extract high-quality iron from low-quality iron. But it can't.) Well, technically, the body needs to be reasonably intact before casting, so Raise doesn't really do that. It reverses a hell of a lot of chemical processes, though. Like I said, a body after 9 days of decay has gone through a huge number of physical and chemical changes. I don't pull the periodic table into DnD. I do pull some of our concepts of matter in. I'm not going to say that there are atoms in DnD, but I do say that the substances we view as being elements are also elemental in DnD, in that they cannot be further reduced. But that is my choice: there are no rules for any substance. You can say that iron is not elemental in your campaign, while I can say it is in mine, and we're both right! Where the rules are silent, the Dm makes the choice. Sure, but if an argument depends on iron being an element, it's not a very good one. Because if iron is an element then all of D&D's stuff about the "four elements" now makes no sense. It uses the word Alchemy, but no one ever pulled anything fo real alchemy into DnD. Alchemists, to protect themselves from being called heretics, firmly entrenched alchemy in religious dogma, and often took high positions as laymen in the church. None of that is in DnD... Which doesn't matter. D&D is absolutely based on certain concepts from real alchemy, like the classical four elements of matter (fire, earth, air and water) being truly "elemental". Let's not forget that the Philosopher's Stone is a real thing in D&D. Transmutation of metals, in D&D, is totally possible. A lot of D&D magic works by alchemy's idea that there's a general concept of "corruption" that can automatically be reversed into "ennobling" or "purifying" something, rather than the value-neutral eye real chemistry uses to look at substances or living things. (Make whole, for instance. Most healing magic, especially things like remove disease or restoration.) You'll note that this is caster dependent, not corpse dependent. It rots in 11 days for one Cleric, but if a different Cleric arrives, it has rot less and had 9 more days to go? That is one way of imagining why the day/level limit is present, but not the only one. No... the more powerful the Cleric, the more powerful the spell, and the more decay the spell is capable of reversing. A 10-day-old corpse is too decayed for one weaker version of raise dead but not for a stronger version. There's no inconsistency there at all. The problem is one of consistency in application. How many rules are there now in 3.5? Thousands of pages. No man can be expected to remember them all, wihtout an eiditic memory, which I for one am not blessed with. For a DM to make a quick judgement, rulings need to be consistent. More consistency means less rules review and faster game progress. (But fewer rules means fewer books and that makes marketing unhappy.) What we have here (with the Warforged metal shavings rotting) is an exception. Metal is now treated inconsistently, and unexpectedly. Yes, a lot of DnD is handwaving, but so long as the hands wave in the same direction, then the rules are consistent. "Excepts" are bad things, and this is a big except. Not really. Warforged corpses are corpses. That overrides the thing about them being made of "metal", which is only flavor in any case. You never paid for the metal that was put into the Warforged -- you don't track it as equipment -- so why worry about it? This is *exactly* about keeping rules simple. The rules players actually deal with, not the imaginary rules that run the world. From a game perspective, if WF decay exactly the way Human corpses do, and if WF corpses *cannot* be used for any purpose that Human corpses can't, then the rules are simple. If we changed this, and *on the basis of flavor* said that WF could have Adamantine harvested from them, we'd have to make up rules for that. *That* would be complicated and confusing. From a rules perspective, if Warforged "rot" just like Humans rot, that's actually the simplest way to do it (if slightly unsatisfying flavorwise, and requiring a flavor explanation). When the rules are silent, what is one to use as the basis for a ruling, if not the real world? Magic is not so unpredictable and unknowable: the rules we have are end results, not magical processes. We don't have rules on how magic works: we have rules for what magic causes. So, we can't take teh rules of magic and come up with a consistent ruling on how an alchemical process interacts with the world. How alchemy works is just as unknowable. So, in the end, we are either arbitrary, or we try to find some sort of consistency. Warforged bodies come from a process that's a lot less expensive than the things that the Warforged are apparently made of. Therefore, when the die, the stuff they're made of goes away, rather than Warforged being a way to get expensive stuff for free. To me, that makes perfect sense. Another way to put it is that although Warforged don't *look* alive, they're a way to give nonliving substances -- metal, wood, stone -- the semblance of life. Once they have artificial life, they also become subject to artificial death and artificial decay. Also makes sense. You're not going to get anything that "makes sense" on a deeper level than that, because Warforged already fundamentally do not make sense. The fact that Warforged can "grow" metal spikes already means their metal isn't like real metal, it's like "living" metal, and real-metal rules don't apply. I would argue here that when someone dies, they become an object of whatever material they are made of, and unless a magical effect is present (ie. one that can be seen with Detect Magic), then the substances decay at the same rate they would in our real world. A human body is called a corpse, but it decays at the same rate as any other dead fleshy substance. If we were made of wood, we would decay at the same rate as trees, not mammals. A wood golem is destroyed, it falls into a pile of wood, and it then decays just like wood, not a man. Adamantine isn't a real substance, first of all, and actually seems to be very expensive to process and make into a weapon -- being chemically unstable could certainly be part of that. Or we could point out that Warforged aren't really made of dead matter but dead matter that's been made living, and so now it acts just like living matter, even if this seems bizarre and perverse. (It's already bizarre that Warforged can "heal" under the influence of healing magic and "grow back" lost metal. Or can "grow" *new* metal over time. Why is it bizarre that it decay? Again, it's not "real" metal -- or, rather, it's *alchemically-treated* metal.) Since the Warforged is constructed of obsidian, stone, iron, etc. (See ECS pg 20), then it should decay as though made of those materials as if they were here on earth. The organic part would decay at human rates, one would presume, but iron would rust as if normal iron, not at human decay rates. Adamantine's not real, and we know nothing about how it acts. I was really surprised that no one brought this one up before ArcTan. That was the explanation that worked best with everyone on the forums in the past. It's an acceptable solution that doesn't stomp all over everything. It's irrelevant. "Not really adamantine" isn't that different from "adamantine that's been alchemically treated". Adamantine isn't steel. In real life you can't make steel that "grows" and then "decays". You also can't make an "alchemical substance that's just like steel except it grows and decays". Either one is equally impossible. It's not necessary to this point to call it "not real adamantine". "Not real adamantine" and "adamantine that's been bizarrely altered by alchemy" are really the same thing. I actually find the latter easier to believe, at least in the sense that I think they must use up some *real* adamantine to make a Warforged, and the Warforged's living-metal body is certainly *made of* adamantine even if it's not adamantine now. Right, but there are no rules in the game for decaying corpses. We must turn to our own knowledge of the real world to determine how long it takes for a body to decompose. The raise dead rule is usually treated as decay. For one thing, that explains why gentle repose lets you get around it. But there are parts of the Warforged that are made of wood and stone. Either they are wood and stone, as per the ECS, or they just look like them, and the ECS describes them incorrectly. IF they are those substances, then they would decay at the rate those substances normally decay at, not human rates, unless otherwise specified. Here we have a description that does give us cause to decay components of a warforged at different rates from a human, because the ECS has specfied that they are not entirely biological (or entirely alchemical). No, because the wood and stone have undergone some kind of *process* to make them into a Warforged. Things of wood and stone cannot normally sit up and talk and think. Once the Warforged is capable of doing this, we *know for a fact* that its component materials are no longer normal and don't follow normal rules. There is no reason to have to specify this any more clearly than it's already specified. Not a chemcial element: elemental, in that it, like iron, is a pure substance. Well, don't say "elemental", then, because that's not what it means, and it'll confuse everyone who knows what it does mean. And we don't even know that. Like I said, adamantine could well be an alloy of more than one metal, that can only be made under very extreme conditions. (That actually makes a lot more sense than adamantine being either a chemical element or a chemical compound.) And "pure substances" are not immune to corrosion or decay -- not if they're chemically (or, I suppose, alchemically) active. You leave a lump of pure, shiny metallic sodium (a pure substance *and* an element!) on the ground and come back in a few days and see if it's still there, or if, instead, almost all of it that's exposed to the air has oxidized. Better hope you make it before the first time it rains (or if it gets humid or damp) or you won't see anything at all, except maybe some scorch marks. There is no rule in chemistry at all that "pure" substances don't corrode or decay. They absolutely do. And plenty of impure substances corrode a lot more slowly than pure substances. Stainless steel is iron alloyed with chromium in an attempt to keep iron from rusting quite so fast. (Iron that has not been treated to resist rust *at all* can sometimes rust at rates you might find shocking.) That is not quite what I said. I never said "undone". An egg can be made. The process for creating an egg involves a chicken. Put the right raw materials in front of a chicken and out pops an egg. And adamantine can be made. It just can't be easily made from what's left over when adamantine corrodes. Any more than it's an easy process to take powered rust and get iron out of it. Anything *can* be undone, but not everything can be undone as easily as it was done. The "useless" metal left over from a Warforged corpse probably still contains the chemicals of useful adamantine, sure. You just can't get them back easily, any more than it's easy to make wood out of ashes. We can now make diamonds. We make them in a completely different way from the way we destroy them, but we can make them (albeit low quality as yet). This is not "undoing" the destruction process: it is creation of its own type. Okay. And people in D&D can make Adamantine. We already know this. This is where we buy Adamantine swords and armor from in the first place. They just can't make it from *formerly Adamantine objects that have been rusted to uselessness*. This isn't relevant just for Warforged -- it explains why you can't just get back the Adamantine sword that just got rusted by a Rust Monster. In the same way, if adamantium is composed of other materials, it too can theoretically be made. You can arbitrarily declare that process undiscovered, but something created it wherever it was mined from in the first place, and that can be reproduced once enough has been learned about it. Who said "No one in the world of D&D makes Adamantine"? I never did. The fact that there is a process for making Adamantine in the first place does not mean that it is easy or even possible to undo or arrest the process that destroys the Adamantine in a dead Warforged. We know, broadly speaking, how to make new eggs. We have no way of indefinitely keeping eggs from rotting (we can slow down the process, sure, just like you can cast gentle repose on a Warforged corpse) and we sure as hell have no direct means of turning rotten eggs back into un-rotten eggs. Similarly, when the metal in a Warforged rots, it's just rotten. There isn't an alchemical way to arrest the process, or at least no known one. Maybe someday someone will invent one and become a millionaire. Maybe someday someone will invent nuclear power in Eberron, or invent spaceships, or publicly-traded corporations. But none of those things exist in Eberron *now*. All you've done, at this point, is prevent one form of creating adamantium (by making adamantine bodied warforged slices crumble) and introduced another. Er, no. The fact that former Adamantine is made of the same stuff regular Adamantine was made of doesn't mean that it's *at all* practical to make it back into regular Adamantine. It's probably several times less practical than making Adamantine whatever way D&D blacksmiths already make it. Presumably, Adamantine was made of the same basic elements as the rest of the universe in the first place -- earth, air, water and fire. And in real life I'm made of the same elements as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, or an orchid, or crude petroleum. That doesn't mean I am a "possible source" for any of those things. The fact that in real life all the dead T-Rexes eventually decayed into the same molecules of CO2 and water vapor that we breathe in and out today doesn't mean that now we have a "source" for making T-Rexes. You put *way* more emphasis on the fact that one thing comes from another than any self-respecting chemist or alchemist would do. Surely you're not so blindly stubborn as to claim that because ash and smoke contains all the elements of wood, that setting all the wood on fire doesn't actually decrease the wood supply?
Hellcow 09-20-07, 02:13 AM	That doesn't quite read right. The designer didn't intend the warforged to be strippable so he didn't write a rule to say it couldn't be stripped? Yup. As one of the designers involved, I feel that I can confidently state this as fact. The designers of the warforged never intended warforged corpses to have any more inherent value than human corpses. You are correct, there's no rules saying that a human body can't be stripped of its organs. However, there's certainly no rules stating the monetary value of such organs or the precise skills involved in harvesting them (in core rules, at least); a DM could decide that there's some sort of market for such things, but you don't find "human corpses" having a value listed in any of the core books. We chose not to assign value to warforged corpses because, in all honesty, it never occured to us that people would try to sell them. They weren't supposed to be inherently valuable. This does come back to the issue I raised the very first time this came up - that the term "adamantine body" is deceptive. But all of these arguments still circle around the main point. Whether you use the Dragonshard explanation or any other, no value is assigned to warforged corpses nor process given for breaking them down because the designers of the ECS did not intend for warforged corpses to be more valuable than other corpses, and as such, there to be any point to such rules. You can decide that this is illogical and change it in your campaign - but the intent was and still is that they aren't especially valuable, whether you base it on artificial adamantine, unreforgable metals, minimal value vs effort, or something else entirely.
Hellcow 09-20-07, 02:46 AM	Just as a random factoid, I'll point out that I HAVE included rules for harvesting and using body parts for things I've created, in Creatures of Freeport. So if it's something I feel should be significant within a game, I will call it out. In the case of Eberron, none of the PC races are supposed to have valuable corpses. You could come up with crazy theories for any of them. Perhaps changeling skin is used in shiftweave and, disturbingly, cloaks of elvenkind (there's changeling farms on Aerenal) while their blood is used in potions of disguise self. Longstride shifters have an organ that can be used to create boots of striding and springing or potions of longstrider. Kalashtar actually get crystaline growths in their brains that can be used for a variety of psionic items. Obviously none of these are as logical or obvious as the idea of taking adamantine from an "adamantine body" warforged - which is why this problem began with the name of the feat. But the point is that none of these things were intended to be the case... or they would have been mentioned, if not in the ECS, certainly in Races of Eberron. The issue of harvesting corpses isn't discussed because the corpses simply aren't supposed to be valuable. If they were, it would be addressed. They aren't, so it's not - except of course in the Dragonshard. Other explanations for the lack of value can certainly be developed, but it's intentional that no monetary value was assigned to warforged corpses.
Kreistor2 09-20-07, 11:02 AM	a DM could decide that there's some sort of market for such things, Well, someone designed the Drow as a savage, morally deficient, tribal race. What better an example of savagery than using human bodies as raw materials for tools? We chose not to assign value to warforged corpses because, in all honesty, it never occured to us that people would try to sell them. Okay, I have to question this. DnD players, especially old school ones, are known for trying to eke every last copper out of a dragon or magical beast corpse. That they might do the same for a warforged is obvious. but the intent was and still is that they aren't especially valuable, whether you base it on artificial adamantine, unreforgable metals, minimal value vs effort, or something else entirely. We can't determine intent just by reading text. Just read through this thread as an example -- do you know what anyone here actually intends based on what they say? ArcTan, for instance, thinks I use atomic elements in my campaign because I called Adamantine an element. That's nothing like my intention, but I was limited in what words I could use, so he made that mistake. It's my fault that he misinterpreted my words. The warforged is described as being made of materials that are useful to players. There is no way we can interpret that the corpse is worthless when compared to that written fact. Steel is a mineral. "Mineral" doesn't mean "raw stuff you find in the ground". Heh, actually it does. Wikipedia on Mineral says, "A mineral is a naturally occurring substance formed through geological processes that has a characteristic chemical composition, a highly ordered atomic structure and specific physical properties." Iron isn't naturally occuring, except in minerals (usually found as iron oxide), and steel is fabricated through an artificial process that injects carbon into iron. Of course, fabricate cannot do this. Fabricate cannot even replicate the process of turning impure, poor-quality steel into pure, high-quality steel, much less smelting the iron from ore and alloying it into steel in the first place. You seem to like interpretational magic. Is it not reasonable to take the "If you work wiht a mineral" sentence that reduces the quantity to explain that you can only extract 1/10th of the original mineral mass as iron? That's a fair explanation for that 1/10th mass thing. Sure, but if an argument depends on iron being an element, it's not a very good one. Because if iron is an element then all of D&D's stuff about the "four elements" now makes no sense. Iron is elemental, not an "element". This is just a semantics argument. Use the term "indivisible" instead of "an element" if you have a problem understanding what I mean. Which doesn't matter. D&D is absolutely based on certain concepts from real alchemy, like the classical four elements of matter (fire, earth, air and water) being truly "elemental". Followed by a whole lot of handwaving that doesn't atually describe anything about magic. DnD includes the concepts of elementalism, but it does not explain how those processes apply to the world, and that was what alchemy was about. All of that pseudo-science is handwaved. I, as a DM, can't appply that elemental concept to describe what elements make up iron or the wind. No... the more powerful the Cleric, the more powerful the spell, and the more decay the spell is capable of reversing. A 10-day-old corpse is too decayed for one weaker version of raise dead but not for a stronger version. As I said, you are welcome to interpret such things however you want, but don't imagine that you're interpretation is the only interpretation. For instance, the time does not change relative to location. A corpse in a frozen landscape lasts many times longer than one left in a jungle, but the time limit on Raise Dead does not change. That suggests to me that it has less to do with the rate of rotting than with convincing the soul it wants to come back. Anyway, I'm just pointing out that basing rulings on interpretational explanations is a losing game. There is no satisfactory explanation justifying the limits on any spell. This is *exactly* about keeping rules simple. The rules players actually deal with, not the imaginary rules that run the world. From a game perspective, if WF decay exactly the way Human corpses do, and if WF corpses *cannot* be used for any purpose that Human corpses can't, then the rules are simple. Simple or simplistic? My players can understand the concept of metal and flesh rotting at different rates. They expect the metal in a warforged not to rot, since that is based on common sense knowledge of iron. They expect it to rust at normal rates. Warforged bodies come from a process that's a lot less expensive than the things that the Warforged are apparently made of. Therefore, when the die, the stuff they're made of goes away, rather than Warforged being a way to get expensive stuff for free. Did Forge of War publish costs for Warforged? It's the only book I'm missing, and I'm pretty certain a warforged has never been priced out before. The fact that Warforged can "grow" metal spikes already means their metal isn't like real metal, it's like "living" metal, and real-metal rules don't apply. While on the body, sure. But a corpse is an object. It follows object rules, not living rules, since the alchemical processes that repaired it are now shut down. How such a thing decays can depend on the materials it is described as being made of: that's at least (or more in my opinion) as reasonable as saying it decays at human corpse rates. Adamantine's not real, and we know nothing about how it acts. So I can rule it however I want. I'm not wrong, and you're not wrong. I don't see a problem. Adamantine isn't steel. In real life you can't make steel that "grows" and then "decays". You also can't make an "alchemical substance that's just like steel except it grows and decays". Either one is equally impossible. This was never about what was real: this was about design decisions having consequences beyond solving the immediate problem. A problem was foreseen (ie. infinite adamantium) and a process enacted to overcome it that is inconsistent with the current rules, and that had suggestive elements that could become game breaking. We're playing in a magical world, so anything is allowed if you want, but for players to play in that world, as much common sense should be applied as possible. Players that cannot predict a ruling lose connection to the fantasy world and feel less a part of it. Things of wood and stone cannot normally sit up and talk and think. Once the Warforged is capable of doing this, we *know for a fact* that its component materials are no longer normal and don't follow normal rules. There is no reason to have to specify this any more clearly than it's already specified. No, we don't know anything "for a fact". The description is stone and wood, not "sort of like stone and wood". And "pure substances" are not immune to corrosion or decay -- not if they're chemically (or, I suppose, alchemically) active. However, for a pure substance to not be usable, it has to decay faster than it can be used. Iron can be smelted and the impurities removed in minutes. If the iron rusts at human rates, you have days to smelt it down to pure iron. The rate of rotting preventing use in a manufacturing process is not consistent with normal rusting rates. And adamantine can be made. It just can't be easily made from what's left over when adamantine corrodes. Any more than it's an easy process to take powered rust and get iron out of it. If you wish, it can be made. Many DM's like it to be mined, or found in meteorites, to prevent players from getting their hands on it early in campaigns. Where it comes from is normally up to the DM. Part of my point is that by declaring it decays at this rate, the DM now is forced to accept that it can be made, and that limits what he can do to control the substance. Okay. And people in D&D can make Adamantine. We already know this. This is where we buy Adamantine swords and armor from in the first place. No, that's not inherently true. A DM is not required to have aadamantine weapons available anywhere, anytime. Your campaign can include that, but I'm not required to, if I want it to be rare. Er, no. The fact that former Adamantine is made of the same stuff regular Adamantine was made of doesn't mean that it's *at all* practical to make it back into regular Adamantine. It's probably several times less practical than making Adamantine whatever way D&D blacksmiths already make it. Like I said, in your campaign you are allowed to make adamantine however you want. You can explain anything however you like: the only people that it matters to are your players. If they are satisfied with the explanation, then you're done. But your explanation is not mine. My complaint is the knee-jerk reaction to a perceived potential problem that interferes with a DM's choice on such matters. This kind of thing is hardly restricted to game rules: you see it all the time in things like security issues. Someone realizes something bad could be caused someplace, slams a rule in place to prevent it, but doesn't take the time to find a less intrusive solution, because they were paranoid and wearing blinders. Solutions to problems can often cause as much damage as the problem would have caused in the first place.
Hellcow 09-20-07, 12:40 PM	Okay, I have to question this. DnD players, especially old school ones, are known for trying to eke every last copper out of a dragon or magical beast corpse. That they might do the same for a warforged is obvious. You miss my point. I'm not questioning whether a player may try to do it; I'm saying that especially in the case of a player character race, something found in every city, in lieu of a statement that their corpses possess significant value it should be assumed that they don't. Again, what has been said is that unless specifically stated otherwise, warforged should be treated as humans. This includes both the fact that they have a sense of taste, and that there isn't a significant market for their corpses. Dragons, on the other hand? No one's EVER said "unless said otherwise, treat dragons like humans" that I know of. Furthermore, while I don't have time to look up the reference, stripping magical beasts IS covered in the core books, as a potential source of power components. So this isn't an unknown concept - and yet it's not advised for warforged. The point of power components is that the creatures you get them from are rare and dangerous, and that they are a secondary form of treasure... not part of a common race found on the streets of every major nation. The warforged is described as being made of materials that are useful to players. There is no way we can interpret that the corpse is worthless when compared to that written fact. You may certainly consider it a mistake on the part of the designers for not spelling it out. Personally, I stand by the facts as I've said them. The core books provide no base value for PC-race corpses of any sort. Unless otherwise mentioned, warforged are supposed to be mechanically identical to humans... and I consider corpse value a mechanical issue. Beyond this, if warforged corpses had an intrinsic significant value (and even a value in the hundreds is quite significant - remember that a mercenary earns less than 1 gp/day), I'd expect them to be torn apart by mobs and sold; even if it was something a commoner would be too scared to attempt, you'd certainly have bands of ex-soldiers hunting down warforged, killing them whenever they could be caught alone. It might be illegal, but that again, does the watch really care what happens to warforged? They're hardly loved. Beyond this, as I said, it's one thing for it not to be mentioned in the ECS; it's another entirely for it not to be mentioned in Races of Eberron, in a chapter entirely dedicated to warforged. Having a corpse with a significant intrinsic value is a serious thing that, as noted above, should have a important impact on the race. Perhaps it could slip by the ECS without being known. But not RoE as well. At the end of the day, it comes down to this. The reason this thread exists - and that any thread on this subject exists - is because we didn't tell you the value of warforged corpses. That's because, in our opinion, warforged corpses had no intrinsic value. Is it reasonable for a player or DM to challenge this idea, to feel that they should have value? Sure. And whatever they decide is a house rule, and thus perfectly appropriate in your campaign - just as you could decide that the drow pay platinum for human corpses. The dragonshard (which, while you may not consider it official, was reviewed and approved by WotC design) was written to justify the original assertion of the ECS: that warforged corpses have no intrinsic value. You can ignore it, you can keep the principle but justify it however you like. But the fact of the matter is that warforged corpses having a common market value would be something that makes them significantly different from humans, and if we'd meant that to be the case, we would have called it out. In the case of warforged, it HAS been stated that in lieu of clear rules, assume that they are mechanically identical to humans; and if we'd intended it, we could have easily slipped a "body value" table into Races of Eberron. Don't like it? Think it's illogical? That's what house rules are for. But that is what this is about: an argument over house rules. The original intent is no significant value. And the dragonshard - approved by WotC - backs up that original intent.
Alex_ 09-20-07, 12:48 PM	The problem is one of consistency in application. How many rules are there now in 3.5? Thousands of pages. No man can be expected to remember them all, wihtout an eiditic memory, which I for one am not blessed with. For a DM to make a quick judgement, rulings need to be consistent. More consistency means less rules review and faster game progress. (But fewer rules means fewer books and that makes marketing unhappy.) However, if you try using real world rules and facts, you're stuck trying to memorize even more pieces of information. There are lots of rules in D&D, but all of them are simpler than the rules and references in chemistry. If you want to make rules for something in D&D, and you can't remember the official ruling, that doesn't mean you have to consult the laws of physics or other real world models to justify something. What we have here (with the Warforged metal shavings rotting) is an exception. Metal is now treated inconsistently, and unexpectedly. Yes, a lot of DnD is handwaving, but so long as the hands wave in the same direction, then the rules are consistent. "Excepts" are bad things, and this is a big except. It's inconsistent with the real world, but it's very simple to understand and remember in general. Your alternatives with nuclear decay, political, and ethical justifications are actually more complicated, and unless you apply such logic equally to all situations, or encounter someone who tests them, will also be inconsistent. You say your explanation is based on common sense, but it requires your PCs to actually have an understanding of chemistry and the nature of decay to get it. I didn't start that train of thought. Someone else did. You're quoting from my response to someone else's suggestion, not mine. He brought up nuclear decay to suggest the breakdown of Adamantium. No, you were the first to bring the idea of elements not degrading, and mention of radiation and atomic decay into the discussion. Yes, i have more than a passing knowledge of the subject, BTW. No, my players don't need that. I provide experts whenever they need that level of knowledge. (Ie. They wanted to run a true expedition to Xen'drik, so they hired a business manager to CEO the company, sell shares, market, etc. None of them understood how businesses are started and run, but I do having spent some time in high tech start-ups. The NPC did it all for them.) But what happens when you have a player that also has some knowledge of the subject? Perhaps more? They can point out that inconsistencies in your rulings- like the suggestion that elements don't corrode, break down, or decompose? You shouldn't have to have any understanding of modern genetics to understand that Human+Elf=Half Elf, or an understanding of economics to know that the merchant's shortsword will cost you 20 gold pieces, while nobody else in the town has more than a copper piece to their name. You don't have to have a degree in psychology or anthropology to understand the social behavior of Kobolds. You don't need to know anything about physics or kinematics to justify movement rates ot the jumping, climbing, and tumble skills. No, but if you are a DM runnning a world, the more you understand about how a real world works (and so far, ours is the only one), the more accurate and consistent that world will feel to players. The more you can afford to study, the better. You'll never do it well enough for a true expert in the field, but then all you need to do is talk to them and get their input. This isn't really any more consistent though, as perception and understanding of the real world varies moreso than rules in books. There are so many phenomena and factors at work in the real world that go on unnoticed by some people, but are the great interest of others. Everyone can look in the PHB and agree that a Medium Sized Longsword does 1d8 damage in D&D. However, those same people could argue for hours over the damage a real world longsword would do, if they can even agree on what counts as a longsword. Rulings based on reality will continue to be inaccurate or less likely to reach consensus, and as a result, be applied inconsistently. When the rules are silent, what is one to use as the basis for a ruling, if not the real world? Magic is not so unpredictable and unknowable: the rules we have are end results, not magical processes. We don't have rules on how magic works: we have rules for what magic causes. So, we can't take teh rules of magic and come up with a consistent ruling on how an alchemical process interacts with the world. How alchemy works is just as unknowable. So, in the end, we are either arbitrary, or we try to find some sort of consistency. Magic isn't the only difference between the world of D&D and our own. D&D is also fiction, and being fiction, also has themes and moods, genre conventions, and good old artistc license/movie magic (amongst other thigs). The rules in D&D don't just adress magic, thy adress the general vibe, feeling, and themese of the fictional world. Things like attack bonuses are not based on the calculations of how well a person should be able to hit with a weapon. Skills don't go into exact details in regards to the demands of a task. HP is not based on real world anatomy and how it responds to certain kinds of blows. It's all fantasy. Not just the Wizard, but the Fighter. Not just the magic wand, but the dagger. Not just the flying carpet, but the old wagon. When you come to a situation where the rules are silent, rather than thinking, "what would happen in the real world", thinking, "what makes for a better game/story/adventure/theme" provides simpler and surprisingly more consistent (if unrealistic or unexpected) results. Magic gives you even more flashy and fantastical effects, but it's not what defines fantasy or fiction.
Hellcow 09-20-07, 12:50 PM	My complaint is the knee-jerk reaction to a perceived potential problem that interferes with a DM's choice on such matters. Fair enough. Hence my point on house rules. In my opinion, that's what this argument about, and therefore the answer is in your hands. The DM should do whatever he wants. However, the default position - the intention of the original designers - was that warforged corpses have no intrinsic value, just as the default in Khorvaire is that human corpses have no intrinsic value. A DM can do anything he wants; that's his right as a DM. You can decide that changeling skin is used in cloaks of elvenkind; it's never been said that it's not, and after all, it changes appearance. The Dragonshard is a WotC-approved clarification of the lack of value of warforged corpses, but you don't use it. Which is essentially the point. NOTHING should ever interefere with a DM's choice, whether it's official, the extremely unofficial opinion of someone on the boards, knee-jerk, logical, or otherwise. The rules provide a baseline to work with. The boards provide alternatives. Any DM has the right to use the rules he wants, and to listen to the posters he wants. In the case of warforged, the default rule is that unless specifically called out, treat them as humans; unless you can shave flesh from a human and sell it, you can't do the same with a warforged. If you hold to the "Mechanically the same unless mentioned otherwise", the answer is there. If you don't like it, you CAN come up with a different answer; that's what it means to be a DM. And while I haven't looked over this thread in great detail, I trust you are aware that it's never been said that warforged metal "rots". This is your word and has never, in my knowledge, ever been used in an official capacity. To quote the Dragonshard: The materials of the warforged are not truly natural; this is reflected by the ability of a warforged juggernaut to change its shape over time (growing spikes), or the fact that an armorer can repair a mithral warforged even when he doesn't have any mithral on hand. An important side effect of this is that if material is removed from the body of a warforged, it quickly degrades. As a result, stripping a warforged and selling its metal is impossible; a warforged may have adamantine components, but these will rust and pit when they are pulled from the warforged. Rust. Pit. Degrade. They suffer degradation that would normally only occur to lesser metals, and it occurs far more rapidly than you'd expect. But "rotting" - behaving as if they are literally flesh - never enters into it. If you simply mean it as an alternative for "degrades after death", that's fine - but if you're using it in the sense of "behaves like just like flesh", that's not something that's ever been stated in an official source, including the Dragonshard.
Kreistor2 09-20-07, 05:03 PM	Fair enough. Hence my point on house rules. In my opinion, that's what this argument about, and therefore the answer is in your hands. The DM should do whatever he wants. I agree 100%. However, the default position - the intention of the original designers - was that warforged corpses have no intrinsic value, just as the default in Khorvaire is that human corpses have no intrinsic value. Default? How do we know what default is, if the rules are silent? Default is no different from "intent": we can't puzzle out what isn't stated in the rules, except from a position of arrogance. Reason and common sense are determined from our background and history, and so are not the same for everyone. I've seen people state that the "default" for Eberron is "no sub-races", and yet, the rules do not say what is default: that position is interpretational. That this postion has become majority opinion on this forum makes it no more default than the converse. (And perhaps it's a majority here only because those that disagree just get sick of the argument and leave, allowing the con side to win by... heh... default.) Unless the rules state the default position clearly, by saying that it is the default, there is no default, just as intent is just as unknowable. If you hold to the "Mechanically the same unless mentioned otherwise", the answer is there. [Note: All Q's in the following paragraphs are rhetorical. I am not looking for answers. I am merely pointing out game questions for which there has never been an official answer, but are very hard to select defaults for.] Okay, here we have a difference in perspective. A corpse is not defined under DnD rules, and so there are no mechanics to fall back on. Nothing says, "A human decays in 20 days, on average." This has been a problem before. I see the corpse as a pile of raw materials, regardless of whether it was a human wizard, an elemental, or a construct. What happens next depends on what happens to objects of that resource type. A human normally decomposes at animal rates. A water elemental just dissipates into a pool of water that acts like a pool of water should. An iron golem is iron, and so it rusts at iron rates for the environment it stopped functioning in. So for me, a warforged becomes an object made of wood, stone, and metal. I then apply the same rule I apply to humans: I examine the substances tehy are made of and determine how long they take to decay from my own limited metallurgical knowledge (or look it up on the web if I don't know). So, yes, I am applying the same mechanical rule to a warforged as I apply to human, construct, and elemental. You and I are both applying rules to the warforged equally, it's just that I don't apply the same rule to corpses in general in the first place. Another perspective might be the following: The default on warforged is that they can do anything any human can do, unless otherwise specified, not necessarily that their bodies are human in every way unless otherwise stated. A Warforged is a living construct, and so decay can also come from the "construct" portion of its type. It does not inherently come from the "living" portion of its type. A warforged's metal can decay at the same rate as an iron golem's and still be using a default position -- it's just the default for the construct portion of its type. But figuring out what is default and what isn't can be very difficult. For instance, is a dead Warforged Juggernaut immune to Raise Dead, by default? My answer to that is "No, a corpse is an object, and by definition, an object cannot have class levels. Since the corpse has no features derived from class levels, and the immunity to Conj(heal) comes from class levels, then that immunity is lost in the same way BAB is lost. The Warforged Juggernaut can, therefore, be Raised." But that is not going to be the majority opinion: few think that deeply about a corpse. So which is default? Should I abandon my position because it is not of the majority opinion? There are many cases of majority opinion being tragically wrong, so I'm not about to abandon anything because many other people disagree with me. This has also come up before in a discussion about Spell Resistance. Does a Drow corpse retain Spell Resistance? An outsider? What about a monk with Diamond Soul? DnD is silent on what a corpse retains from life, and so no default can be assumed. What's the default in these cases? Both possible defaults to both of these subjects have repercussions. (I believe you involved yourself in that thread, Keith. You probably don't remember.) And while I haven't looked over this thread in great detail, I trust you are aware that it's never been said that warforged metal "rots". This is your word and has never, in my knowledge, ever been used in an official capacity. To quote the Dragonshard: Rust. Pit. Degrade. They suffer degradation that would normally only occur to lesser metals, and it occurs far more rapidly than you'd expect. The rate of decay of an animal corpse is dependent upon the environment the body is left in. Similarly, the same for metals. A pipe wrench used at the Mary Celeste (but left on the ocean bottom) was a mass of nearly unrecognizable rust after 20 years, but they dragged perfect iron cannons out of the same area that hadn't rusted after centuries because they'd been buried in the silt, protected from the salt water. We have bodies of wooly mammoths tens of thousands of years old preserved by the cold, and dying in a desert can mummify you to last millenia, but a dead body in a jungle is going to be a skeleton in days, or maybe hours. What I'd expect is probably not so uninformed as you may think.
The Dreaming Duck 09-20-07, 07:38 PM	Default? How do we know what default is, if the rules are silent? The designers aren't silent. Unless a warforged is clearly called out as being mechanically different from a human, it behaves as a human, so it is for example subject to "blood drain" effects unless the effect is blocked by its warforged racial immunities. It's up to the DM to explain that with fluff. After all, it seems logical to assume that a warforged doesn't have blood. What's being drained? Alchemical fluids? I'll have to decide. But the ruling is clear. If the warforged racial description is silent on immunity, the creature is not immune. By the same token, you can't strip precious metals from the corpse of a human, so you can't do it from a warforged. By fluff you might say "Why not?", but in the lack of rules allowing you TO strip metals from the body, you can't strip metals from the body... without changing the rules, which is your right as DM. The ECS includes lots of rules about warforged. For example, the fact that they suffer damage from rusting grasp... and the fact that this damage can be repaired using cure light wounds, something that doesn't work on your suit of armor. Proof positive that there is something fundamentally unnatural about warforged metal. The ECS also provides specific rules for using the Craft skill to REPAIR warforged, and includes tools for doing it. If the designers had intended it to be possible to strip warforged, they could have done the exact same thing: describe the skill used, describe the results of using the skill, provide tools. They did none of this. You are interpreting this as "They didn't say you CAN'T do it." But the position that's been given is "If the rules are silent, they behave like humans" - and you can't strip metal from a human corpse. The problem is one of consistency in application. How many rules are there now in 3.5? ...Metal is now treated inconsistently. Not at all. The problem is that you're insisting on treating the warforged as if they are made with natural metal. They aren't. The substance that makes up the WARFORGED behaves in a certain way. It rusts when exposed to rusting grasp (a spell that normally only effects iron, but affects "mithral" and "adamantine" warforged) and yet can be repaired with cure light wounds. Right there you have the material of a warforged behaving in a manner that's inconsistent with mundane metal. If you're going to go there, can warforged "adamantine" still be affected by rusting grasp after being removed from the warforged? Can it still be restored with cure light wounds? If not, than something has changed in the transition from living to dead. If you don't try to treat warforged metal as mundane metal but rather accept it as a magical substance with some of the qualities of metal but other unique qualities of its own, the issue goes away. The Dragonshard ISN'T establishing a new rule to add to those thousands of rules; it's a fluff explanation of the default position that you can't strip valuable materials from a warforged. Allowing someone to do so is what requires the addition of rules: what skill is used, how much can you get based on the feats involves and the skill roll, what are the consequences of failure? Can warforged survive scraping? Does it cause damage? What does it generate? These add to that unwieldy pile of rules. By simply saying that the warforged have the qualities of metal but that these substances become useless when the lifeforce of the warforged is extinguished, these rules become unnecessary, the game is simpler, and you don't have to either explain why I can't use cure light wounds on the armor I've made from warforged bits or why there aren't mercenary chop squads hunting down any warforged who strays out alone. Hand-waving? You bet. Because this is, in fact, a world in which you can create metal by waving your hand. Major creation can create adamantine from thin air. And when the spell expires, it's gone. What Hellcow has said in the Dragonshard and in the past is that the creation forges are based on creation as much as fabricate, and that it is the lifeforce of the warforged that sustains the components beyond the usual spell duration. This works for me, and seems like a clear enough explanation of how the warforged metal can evolve and be repaired in ways that are already inconsistent with mundane metal... and how it can degrade in an unusual manner once its gone. You can add rules for stripping or the like, but that's not the simplest and most consistent answer, because it's inconsistent with the way warforged behave while they are alive. The simplest answer is to accept that warforged aren't made of natural materials, and that the death of a warforged is like the end of the duration of creation - the unnatural materials are removed from the economy and pose no further social or economic issues.
Kreistor2 09-20-07, 09:47 PM	Wow, I've got everyone coming out to play. The designers aren't silent. And thank goodness for that. I very much appreciate that Hellcow comes by and chats. I've gotten a couple insights into things I wouldn't otherwise have a source on without him. And I'm being vague on purpose. Unless a warforged is clearly called out as being mechanically different from a human, [snip] Yep, yep. Not a newbie. Been said in this thread already. By the same token, you can't strip precious metals from the corpse of a human, so you can't do it from a warforged. However, you can drain blood repeatedly. Some people on earth consider that stuff more precious than gold. The human body is not made of precious metals, so it makes no sense that you could remove precious metals from it. You can, however, drain biological substances (what it is made of) from it. The warforged is described as being constructed of iron. It is common sense that if something is made of iron, you can get the iron from its dead form. As I have said before, tribal societies learned to use every part of an animal's corpse for something, and a human is essentially an animal. It is not science that prevents humans from being treated as raw materials, it is morality. I am merely applying the same process that protects a human corpse from violation to a warforged corpse. Proof positive that there is something fundamentally unnatural about warforged metal. I never denied this. they could have done the exact same thing: describe the skill used, describe the results of using the skill, provide tools. They did none of this. I don't see the rules for turning hides into leather, either. And yet leather armour comes from somewhere. Common sense tells us that despite the lack of rules pertaining to animal hides, animals are skinned, tanned, and leather produced. The lack of rules means only that you are to use real life sources to provide the rules for such things. Not at all. The problem is that you're insisting on treating the warforged as if they are made with natural metal. They aren't. The substance that makes up the WARFORGED behaves in a certain way. But what about when it dies. We don't have rules about what properties are retained by a normal human, Drow, or elemental corpse when it dies. Spell resistance? Fire sub-type? Class properties? All of this is left to us. What is a corpse, anyway? I view it as an object. Others treat it as a special substance called "corpse of X". With no rules, no one is wrong in their choice of how to define it. If you don't try to treat warforged metal as mundane metal but rather accept it as a magical substance with some of the qualities of metal but other unique qualities of its own, the issue goes away. I don't have an issue. I solved the problem through moral solutions. It's reprehensible to desecrate a corpse or enslave a warforged to mine it for metal, so don't do it if you want to retain a non-evil alignment. Problem solved, and I don't need to remember any fancy alchemical handwaving. The Dragonshard ISN'T establishing a new rule to add to those thousands of rules; it's a fluff explanation of the default position that you can't strip valuable materials from a warforged. A fluff description that I personally find unsatisfying. Use it if you want to. I don't, because I only use what is consistent with my Eberron. Allowing someone to do so is what requires the addition of rules: Only if it comes up. Until it does, I can ignore it. I do not foresee any need to invent this, since I have no plans for my PC's to come across a group that are doing this in my current storyline. Since my PC's are all good, or at least the good side of neutral, I am reasonably assured that I don't need to do this work, ever. Hand-waving? You bet. Because this is, in fact, a world in which you can create metal by waving your hand. There is a difference between a spell description (in which you only see the end result, in order to not have to explain the basic precepts and laws of magic), and hand-waving a design problem out of existence. What Hellcow has said in the Dragonshard and in the past is that the creation forges are based on creation as much as fabricate, and that it is the lifeforce of the warforged that sustains the components beyond the usual spell duration. Haven't seen that one, myself. I don't read every thread anymore. But I will say this: this forum is not an official source of rules. Hellcow himself is adamant that all DM's take Eberron and make it their own, and to not take his word as law. I am, ultimately, doing exactly what Hellcow wanted us to do: making my Eberron my own, regardless of the majority opinion, or even his own words. That is, in the end, the spirit of Eberron. The freedom to create our own solutions and our own ideas, without fear of interference from the creators of the campaign setting sets Eberron apart. You can add rules for stripping or the like, but that's not the simplest and most consistent answer, You have that same mindset that created this issue in the first place. My solution prevented the creation of any rules whatsoever, because it was a solution designed for my players, and I would hope, 95% or more of all Eberron players (I hope most DM's run heroes in Eberron). All you see is the potential abuse of allowing the event to occur, and so you overreact to that and implement an excessive solution that relies on handwaved alchemy and processes that lack a basis in common sense. The simpler solution relies on trust in the players, which tells me that you don't trust yours. The simplest answer is to accept that warforged aren't made of natural materials, Pg 20 ECS. They are, according to the RAW. Now who is creating his own rules?
The Dreaming Duck 09-20-07, 10:04 PM	Metal is now treated inconsistently. I wanted to explore this point further. My central thesis is that you shouldn't treat the material that composes a warforged like mundane material, whether it's wood or metal. There's lots of ways in which it differs from mundane matter... which in my mind makes it foolish to try to apply mundane rules to it in isolated situations. So, just skimming over things: The process of warforged creation is said to use principles similar to the spell creation, which does produce matter from nothing. That matter is destroyed when the spell duration fades. In the case of warforged, the stated explanation is that the lifeforce of the warforged sustains the matter, and that once this is removed the substance becomes worthless. Most of the materials associated with the warforged will eventually decay over time, especially under adverse conditions. Per the age table on page 27 of the ECS, warforged are potentially immortal. They have no maximum age, and "suffer no further aging effects" after becoming adults. This supports the theory that the lifeforce of the warforged sustains its components. It doesn't matter if a warforged appears to have leather strips in its body: those strips will still be in perfect condition 800 years from now. Likewise, warforged do not appear to suffer adverse effects from conditions that would normally be detrimental to their component parts; there's no specific issues given about humidity or even submersion causing trouble, or warforged ever needing to worry about rust for any reason aside from magic. Warforged bodies respond to magic in ways that are inconsistent with natural materials. Whenever a warforged is damaged, it is possible to completely heal the construct using cure spells - it's less effective than repair, but nonetheless, there is no amount of damage that cannot be affected through the use of healing spells. Meanwhile, healing spells have absolutely no effect on mundane metal. Warforged with the Overload Metabolism feat can heal themselves by temporarily suffering ability damage - diverting their life force from other functions. This supports the "the materials of a warforged are physically sustained by its life force" assumption. Just as they can be healed with magic, warforged can suffer from magic. Rusting grasp normally affects iron objects, but can be used to kill a warforged, regardless of it's "body type". And yet, all damage caused by rusting grasp can be restored with... cure light wounds. The damage is apparently being done to the metal of the warforged - but that damage can be restored with magic that normally only heals flesh. Of course, an "adamantine" warforged can also be rusted all the way to -9 HP... suffering damage from nothing BUT rusting grasp, presumably indicating some fairly serious rust damage... and still be completel restored using Craft skill, even if the craftsman has no access to adamantine or the tools that would presumably be required to work it. Warforged bodies can evolve. Mithral Fluidity, Improved Damage Reduction, Improved Resilency, and Improved Fortification all reflect change over time. None of these require the warforged to spend gold or to seek the assistance of a craftsman in order to take the feat. The Reforged PrC takes this to an extreme, and the PrC says "their bodies change" - there is no implication that any outside force is involved. Likewise, there's no "When you go through the final reforging, you gain 300 gp of adamantine if you had the Adamantine Body feat, 200 gp of mithral..." The plates don't fall off so you can sell them; your body changes, and you don't have an Adamantine Body any more. The feats mentioned above could be seen as an internal shift; other changes cause the warforge to literally change shape. Spiked Body and Jaws of Death cause the warforged to produce natural weaponry, as does the warforged juggernaut PrC. Again, this requires no assistance from a craftsman; the warforged could take one of these feats while sitting in a desert, and suddenly have spikes pop out. The juggernaut PrC specifically says that the juggernaut "grows" his spikes. Warforged can spontaneously manifest new materials... including precious metals. Cold Iron and Silver Tracery are feats that can be acquired in the wild, and which don't require any sort of expenditure of gold or resources. They aren't grafts; the character simply manifests alchemical silver where previously, there was none. A DM could make a house rule stating that these require the help of an outsider or a gp cost, but that's a house rule. But the rules as they stand, a warforged could take one of these feats anywhere and any time he has the opportunity to add a feat... causing precious metal to appear on his skin. The wooden components of a warforged aren't, AFAIK, affected by spells that set flameable objects on fire. They're also immune to things like warp wood or wood shape, apparently because these spells can't touch an integrated piece of a warforged. There's probably more that I haven't thought of, but it's a start. If the metal in a warforged is normal metal, why can't the cleric heal my suit of armor after the bad man uses rusting grasp on it? And if you accept that it's not normal metal, why start treating it like normal metal once the warforged is dead? The Dragonshard/creation approach deals with all of the issues above. Warforged matter can be healed because it's sustained by positive energy, like a living thing; it's immune to the ravages of time because it is sustained as long as lifeforce remains; Silver Tracery and juggernaut spikes can appear (or disappear, for the reforged) through a process similar to the creation that made the warforged to begin with. The life force is removed, the power sustaining the creation effect ends, and while the material doesn't just vanish, it ceases to maintain any remarkable qualities. And in the bargain, you take away the question of whether you can make a living shaving bits off warforged, whether there are warforged chop shops, and the need for additional rules governing the process of stripping warforged. If the DM wants warforged chop shops, go him. But warforged bodies don't behave in a "realistic" manner in life, and I don't see why it's logical for them to start at death.
The Dreaming Duck 09-20-07, 10:52 PM	It is not science that prevents humans from being treated as raw materials, it is morality. I am merely applying the same process that protects a human corpse from violation to a warforged corpse. And my point - and I truly mean no offense by this, because whatever works in your campaign works in your campaign - is that I find that FAR more "hand-wavy" than the Dragonshard approach. "We agree it's a bad thing, so no one does it." Even if you do set the price of warforged adamantine at a trivial amount based on the "the value of armor is on the labor" formula, you'll still end up with an adamantine warforged having a value in the hundreds. And compared to the daily wages of a typical 2nd-level warrior, that's a HUGE amount. If I went with that in my campaign - especially given the "shades of gray" nature of the Eberron - I simply could not justify a lack of bands of former soldiers hunting down any warforged foolish enough to travel alone. People don't like the warforged as it is, and that's without their bodies being made of gold. Sure, those people will become evil. But they'll be there in considerable numbers. Look at how many creatures we've driven to extinction because of the value of their body parts. If a warforged body is worth 300 gold - 1,200 day's labor for a 2nd-level Deneith mercenary (and he doesn't presumably see all that pay himself) - they'd be hunted down. You consider the use of magic to be hand-waving. I consider the suggestion that morality alone would deal with this problem to be naive. Yes, people don't tend to murder humans for their blood, because at the end of the day it's not so valuable. But check with the rhinos with their horns and see how well that's worked out for them. And I don't accept "A person who would kill a rhino because it's an animal wouldn't kill a warforged", because it's a warforged. It's a thing. Four years ago, it was property. The treaty of Thronehold may give them rights, but I don't see the poacher giving a damn about the question of the warforged soul. Even if you drop the value of warforged adamantine to a hundred gold it's still over a year's wages for a skilled soldier... and in the wake of the Last War we've got a LOT of out-of-work soldiers and a lot of unwanted warforged. The average person would surely find it reprehensible, but it's not average people that have hunted animals with valuable horns and tusks to near-extinction. And given that the warforged cannot reproduce, I would expect this to have a huge impact on their numbers and their psychology. Essentially, you're saying that it works because it keeps your players from killing warforged. You further state that if I'm worried about it, it must be because I can't control my players. That's not it at all - the problem is your hobgoblin, realism. It's not players I'm worried about - it's the hundreds of brutal NPCs who would be hunting warforged. This would likely result in warforged traveling in bands, being armed and paranoid, etc - a social side effect that would have a major impact on my world. But what about when it dies. Your common sense tells you that what was magical becomes mundane. My common sense tells me that it was never mundane to begin with, and there's no reason it should start now. Which is perfectly fair - different strokes and all. Haven't seen that one, myself. It's actually taken directly from the Dragonshard you dislike: Warforged are formed in the creation forges, which channel the powers of Cannith heirs to produce effects similar to major creation and fabricate. However... That is, in the end, the spirit of Eberron. The freedom to create our own solutions and our own ideas, without fear of interference from the creators of the campaign setting sets Eberron apart. Sure, well said. I'll stop arguing the point. However... My solution prevented the creation of any rules whatsoever, because it was a solution designed for my players, and I would hope, 95% or more of all Eberron players (I hope most DM's run heroes in Eberron). I will let this drop. However, I disagree with this assessment. I don't feel that the Dragonshard approach - which you yourself describe as a "fluff" description - is an extra rule; all it does is clarify the fact that there are no rules for stripping warforged because you're not supposed to strip warforged. It doesn't stop the DM who wants them from adding them - but it's an easy fallback for the DM who doesn't want to deal with it. Meanwhile, the moral solution does little for the DM whose players DO want to do it, and who also want to know what skills they should use, how much they can get, etc (while the DS version allows the DM to say "Simple. None."). Beyond that, whether or not it stops players, I'd expect it to have enormous social ramifications across the world. If you're running a world where warforged are so universally loved and the forces of the law so efficient that people wouldn't murder for a payoff of a few hundred gold, we're playing in very different worlds. So I DON'T have a problem with your solution. You shouldn't have to follow the DS method; even Hellcow, who wrote it, has said that. My problem is with your assertion that your way is the only "realistic" way, while the other version is "handwaving" - while I see yours as being more unrealistic given my vision of the moral landscape of Eberron. But after all that, again, well said. The spirit of Eberron is that we can all do what we want, so I'll agree to disagree. At least until the topic starts up again in a few months...
Kreistor2 09-20-07, 11:06 PM	I don't disagree with any of that, Duck. I never did. There are many rules that apply to a Living Construct that make it different. But all of them apply to a living Warforged. Just as with a Drow, the rules are silent on what happens to a Warforged's body when it is dead. That is left to the DM, currently. When a Warforged dies, his alchemical processes cease, just like a human's biological processes cease with death. All of those exceptions become irrelevant, because they rely on the Living Construct type or the Warforged in particular. Upon death, the body becomes an object, and objects have rules of their own, or the specifics are undescribed (meaning we use our common sense). You are welcome to interpret the various effects of a living warforged as you see fit, and apply whichever ones you wish to a dead one, but as an interpretational solution, it is dependent on opinion, just like my own solution is dependent on opinion. It is my opinion that a corpse is an object: there's nowhere in DnD rules that says that it definitely is an object. It is my interpretation that when biological (or alchemical) processes end in a living being, the corpse is an object and obeys object rules. I think it is a common sense solution, but hey, your common sense is different from mine, and you may feel differently, perhaps creating a third state of being for matter, or viewing it as still partially active. Whatever your choice, it's based on opinion just like mine. That is our discretion, as DM's. Our own perception of our world determines how we will run a fantasy world, and we all have different backgrounds and world views that affect our perception..
The Dreaming Duck 09-20-07, 11:22 PM	I think it is a common sense solution, but hey, your common sense is different from mine, and you may feel differently, perhaps creating a third state of being for matter, or viewing it as still partially active. Whatever your choice, it's based on opinion just like mine. That is our discretion, as DM's. Our own perception of our world determines how we will run a fantasy world, and we all have different backgrounds and world views that affect our perception.. Fair enough, and well said. I accept that, and apologize if I was unnecessarily snarky.
Kreistor2 09-21-07, 12:22 AM	And my point - and I truly mean no offense by this, because whatever works in your campaign works in your campaign - is that I find that FAR more "hand-wavy" than the Dragonshard approach. Hand-wavy? Morality and ethics are not hand-waving in the slightest. If I went with that in my campaign - especially given the "shades of gray" nature of the Eberron - I simply could not justify a lack of bands of former soldiers hunting down any warforged foolish enough to travel alone. Sounds like an adventure opportunity to me. It has a great tie in with the LoB, greying his normally "evil" nature. That is what Noir is about... greying the line of morality. Here you're discarding a pefect opportunity to include a core Eberron concept -- Pulp Noir -- in your campaign! Sure, those people will become evil. But they'll be there in considerable numbers. Cars. In our society, you can make a ton of money from stripping down a car. It happens. But do we have huge gangs of thieves doing it? No, it is fairly rare. What stops it? Basic morality or a fear of consequence, take your pick. This is, again, an overreaction on your part. A Warforged is a walking, talking car. If it's not so easy to steal a car for most people in our world, it would be even harder in a world where the car can talk and demonstrate sentience. You consider the use of magic to be hand-waving. I consider the details of the process by which magic occurs to be hand-waving, but an unavoidable hand-wave so acceptable. I consider the suggestion that morality alone would deal with this problem to be naive. Yes, people don't tend to murder humans for their blood, because at the end of the day it's not so valuable. But killing people for their valuables, since they do carry gold and cash, is not so common. People are carrying more goods on average than ever before in history, but crime is not affecting a higher proportion of society than ever. But check with the rhinos with their horns and see how well that's worked out for them. Animals aren't people. Warforged can walk, talk, and plead for mercy in a language you can understand. If your attacker has come to view warforged as non-sentient, that's your choice. You're creating a serial killer, after all, so you can add whatever insanities you like. The treaty of Thronehold may give them rights, but I don't see the poacher giving a damn about the question of the warforged soul. Going after an animal is not the same as going after a trained soldier from a tight-knit community that can more than protect itself. The poacher becomes the poached, and the gang of toughs looking for easy cash finds a warforged is no easy prey. Part of the warforged mistique is in their name. They are called warforged for a reaon, and anyone that treats them casually is committing suicide. Heh, just an anecdote. I played an adamantine bodied Warforged Fighter-wizard in one campaign. I was travelling on the lightning rail with some of the party, when teh Dm had an one-armed NPC veteran say something like, "You damned warforged. One of you took my arm!" I calmly replied, "Do you want to keep the other one?" Would you have had me gang-rushed by the train-load of civillians? Even if you drop the value of warforged adamantine to a hundred gold it's still over a year's wages for a skilled soldier... I've never had to worry about how much adamantine is actually in a warforged. There's no indication if it's as much as a longsword, a tiny fraction of that, or even more. If it ever comes up for the PC's, then I'll decide. Essentially, you're saying that it works because it keeps your players from killing warforged. Killing? They would kill warforged, given moral justification. What they do with the corpse and the goods on that corpse depends on the laws of the land where they are. In Sharn? Looting a body, even of a criminal that attacked you, is considered theft. (If you're attacked by a mugger, I'd suggest not taking his wallet and thinking you're going to keep his money.) In Xen'drik? they're limited only by their morality. You further state that if I'm worried about it, it must be because I can't control my players. Not control -- trust. No one controls their players. It is up to us to decide what the repercussions of their actions are. My players seem to enjoy the more 1800's style my campaign has taken on, and with that comes a more advanced sense of morality that disallows things allowed by a 1600's morality. That's not it at all - the problem is your hobgoblin, realism. We all insert our own sense of reality into our campaign. That reality changes based on genre and player capacity to accept that reality. What aspects of reality are included in a fantasy campaign is not a simple subject. I do inject aspects of our world into Eberron (such as businesses having shareholders and boards of directors, for instance) that other DM's wouldn't. That makes my campaign different from yours. Not better, just different. It's not players I'm worried about - it's the hundreds of brutal NPCs who would be hunting warforged. So your world lacks an inherently moral culture? You seem to think that morality is less powerful than greed in a larger percentage of the population than I do. That's your opinion, and that's your problem. I have a morality taught by the Sovereign Host that keeps most people away from such moral landmines. This would likely result in warforged traveling in bands, being armed and paranoid, etc Forcing the government to step in, patrol the streets to protect the Warforged and do their jobs properly. Of course, this potential reaction requires Clan Boramar to get these gangs of poachers suppressed, since they can't afford the Watch establishing a presence in the Cogs, and violence of any sort is bad for nefarious businesses since it attracts attention in the wrong areas. This can all have happened and be done before 998 and already be a part of history, if you really think it should happen given these conditions. The poachers have had their noses bloodied, the warforged have proven their point that they aren't easy meat as a group, and Clan Boramar has made it clear that no one strips Warforged in their territory. I don't feel that the Dragonshard approach - which you yourself describe as a "fluff" description - is an extra rule; Not quite. The fluff does not adequately explain the rule about warforged bodies degrading at human rates. Meanwhile, the moral solution does little for the DM whose players DO want to do it, and who also want to know what skills they should use, how much they can get, etc (while the DS version allows the DM to say "Simple. None."). [quote] Consequences. I've listed some earlier in this thread. Oe example is of a someone coming back from Xen'drik with a shiny new adamantine longsword. Customs asks, "Where's the receipt for the weapon? You made it? Okay, from what artifact did you get the metal, and do you have a letter of marque for it, and a notary signed to prove you brought the item in? Oh, you bought the raw metal? Where's the bill of sale? No bill? Okay, thanks, we'll be hanging onto that sword until you can provide the proper records." [quote]Beyond that, whether or not it stops players, I'd expect it to have enormous social ramifications across the world. If you're running a world where warforged are so universally loved and the forces of the law so efficient that people wouldn't murder for a payoff of a few hundred gold, we're playing in very different worlds. Well, that's obvious. Your society is far more morally banqrupt than mine. Yeah, the players see only the nasty parts of mine, so from their perspective they probably see about the same thing anyway (they go where the action is).
Kreistor2 09-21-07, 12:24 AM	Fair enough, and well said. I accept that, and apologize if I was unnecessarily snarky. Bah, I know my tone is confrontational, and that inspires debate. I'm guilty of anything you might be guilty of, so no harm no foul: nothing to apologize for.
The Dreaming Duck 09-21-07, 02:13 AM	Warforged can walk, talk, and plead for mercy in a language you can understand... Your society is far more morally banqrupt than mine. Yup, seems to be the case. Which, of course, is fine. In my campaign, the world as a whole isn't morally bankrupt. Most people would be horrified by the idea of killing a sentient being and taking his stuff, let alone selling his body parts. Just as most people in our world wouldn't kill an endangered rhino just to saw off his horn. However... The war has left many people at a moral low point. Many people have lost relatives or property in the war. The Cyrans have lost their entire nation, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees with literally nothing left. Hostility and prejudice between nations remains extremely high. There's still a tremendous amount of tension between Thranes and Brelish, Thranes and Aundairians, etc. ESPECIALLY between soldiers and enemy combatants. The way I run it, warforged are generally marked with unit insignia... which means foreign warforged stand out as former enemy combatants. Many people (again, in my campaign) dislike or distrust the warforged. Some simply feel that they are disturbingly alien: don't eat, don't sleep, made of metal and stone. Others are afraid of them: they were made to fight, how do we know they won't turn on us? And still others are angry that the warforged are being treated as people; they were created to fight, and don't deserve to have rights. They're property. People have done horrible things to slaves throughout history, in spite of those slaves having the ability to walk, talk, and plead for mercy in a language you can understand - and slaves in our world are flesh and blood. Warforged are wood and metal. Is it COMMON that people hate them? No. But there certainly are those who do. The Mourning has caused a tremendous amount of fear and a certain loss of inhibitions. I'm put in mind of The Dying Earth. A second Mourning may destroy the world tomorrow, so why should I care about the consequences of my actions? All this combines to create a world where there are a lot of dangerous people desperate for opportunities. In my campaign, if warforged had a significant intrinsic value, I'd certainly expect there to be squads of Cyran soldiers hunting and killing them - some for personal profit, others to support the Cyran refugee community. They'd target enemy warforged, justify it both as killing "inhuman things" and "former enemies", but they'd certainly do it. You could call them serial killers, but they aren't killing members of their own species, and there's certainly lots of examples of soldiers pursuing former enemies in our world. If they could make 300 gold selling the blood of Brelish soldiers, I'd expect them to do that too; the difference is that there's a lot more Brelish soldiers than Brelish warforged, and that humans can reproduce. Yes, this murder for gold is immoral and horrifying. But one of the things I've always liked about Eberron is that it's a place where war has pushed people to the edge and where once decent people can be driven to do horrible things... just as can happen in our world. Four Cyran soldiers believe that if they can work together and kill four warforged (and they killed more than that during the war) they can secure the futures of their families. They KNOW it's wrong, but they're going to do it anyway - and do their best to justify it to themselves. So, yes, it sounds like my society is far more morally bankrupt than yours. It's how I see Khorvaire in the wake of the Last War, with the moral values of Galifar tattered and tarnished. But there's nothing wrong with it... and certainly no rules saying it's supposed to be one way or the other. ;)
ArcTan 09-21-07, 02:21 AM	Okay, I have to question this. DnD players, especially old school ones, are known for trying to eke every last copper out of a dragon or magical beast corpse. That they might do the same for a warforged is obvious. Right. So if you don't have rules that say you can, you can't. Because people know D&D players and know that they care about every last place you can get GP. The warforged is described as being made of materials that are useful to players. There is no way we can interpret that the corpse is worthless when compared to that written fact. Sure there is. There are no rules for getting adamantine out of the Warforged. Therefore, you can't. Just like you can't shave adamantine from his body while he's alive, or any of the other things you might be able to do. This is no different from the hundreds of other times someone says "Can a Warforged do X?" and someone else says "Warforged are just like every other race unless it says otherwise!" If you don't like that the *rules* imply this, there is also *flavor* that says so, and makes sense. The flavor implies a weird exception to the "laws of physics" of the game world, but the game world's laws of physics and the actual rules of the game are two completely different things. From the game world's laws of physics' perspective, WF bodies decaying is a weird, hard-to-explain phenomenon. From the game rules' perspective, it's just saying that dead WF behave exactly the same as the corpses of every other living creature. Heh, actually it does. Wikipedia on Mineral says, "A mineral is a naturally occurring substance formed through geological processes that has a characteristic chemical composition, a highly ordered atomic structure and specific physical properties." Iron isn't naturally occuring, except in minerals (usually found as iron oxide), and steel is fabricated through an artificial process that injects carbon into iron. Words have more than one definition. "Mineral" as in "animal/vegetable/mineral" doesn't mean that (or else "animal/vegetable/mineral" wouldn't be sufficient to cover all possible objects), and that's the definition D&D uses. Look at polymorph any object. You seem to like interpretational magic. Is it not reasonable to take the "If you work wiht a mineral" sentence that reduces the quantity to explain that you can only extract 1/10th of the original mineral mass as iron? That's a fair explanation for that 1/10th mass thing. No. It's not reasonable, because that's exactly what "mineral" *doesn't* mean in the context of major creation, which is the most analogous spell here. Also, it then makes *no sense* that you can't improve the quality of low-quality steel to end up making a high-quality sword. The quality of the iron you get from ore largely depends on the quality of the smelting process. Followed by a whole lot of handwaving that doesn't atually describe anything about magic. DnD includes the concepts of elementalism, but it does not explain how those processes apply to the world, and that was what alchemy was about. All of that pseudo-science is handwaved. I, as a DM, can't appply that elemental concept to describe what elements make up iron or the wind. Does it really matter? For instance, the time does not change relative to location. A corpse in a frozen landscape lasts many times longer than one left in a jungle, but the time limit on Raise Dead does not change. That suggests to me that it has less to do with the rate of rotting than with convincing the soul it wants to come back. It's an abstraction to make the rules easier to adjudicate. How does applying unguent of timelessness to the corpse do anything to convince the soul to stick around longer? Anyway, I'm just pointing out that basing rulings on interpretational explanations is a losing game. There is no satisfactory explanation justifying the limits on any spell. Right, so we accept that it's just a cute exercise to validate the *rules*, which give simple answers. Like that WF corpses rot like everything else. Simple or simplistic? My players can understand the concept of metal and flesh rotting at different rates. They expect the metal in a warforged not to rot, since that is based on common sense knowledge of iron. They expect it to rust at normal rates. Right, but that's *flavor*, not rules. The fact that a WF is made of iron is merely *flavor*. According to the *rules*, the WF still rots like every other living creature. You can interpret that however you want. Alchemical fluids dissolving the metal, the metal being "fake metal" or, hell, an illusion, anything you want. Did Forge of War publish costs for Warforged? It's the only book I'm missing, and I'm pretty certain a warforged has never been priced out before. Yeah, it did. I don't remember the price, but it was pretty cheap. While on the body, sure. But a corpse is an object. It follows object rules, not living rules, since the alchemical processes that repaired it are now shut down. When a human being dies, the biological processes in the human do not just "shut down". Much of human decay comes about because of ongoing processes in the body that cause various tissues to disintegrate (such as in the digestive system, the lymphatic system and your kidneys, which require constant maintenance to survive) and microorganisms in the body begin to start eating it. This is, in D&D terms, *flavor* for why human corpses go bad and you can't harvest anything from them. All you need is a similar flavor -- whatever it is, doesn't matter -- to explain the simple rule that WF are exactly the same way. So I can rule it however I want. I'm not wrong, and you're not wrong. I don't see a problem. Sure, but criticizing WF decay because it "doesn't make sense" is annoying. This is the same reason I keep ending up in arguments with people who want to get rid of Skeletons being Evil because it "doesn't make sense". This was never about what was real: this was about design decisions having consequences beyond solving the immediate problem. A problem was foreseen (ie. infinite adamantium) and a process enacted to overcome it that is inconsistent with the current rules, and that had suggestive elements that could become game breaking. We're playing in a magical world, so anything is allowed if you want, but for players to play in that world, as much common sense should be applied as possible. Players that cannot predict a ruling lose connection to the fantasy world and feel less a part of it. But this ruling is *easy* to predict, if you treat the rules as a game and not as laws of physics. It just means every time you try to do something to a WF that depends on it being different from a human, it will not work unless there's a rule that says it does. No, we don't know anything "for a fact". The description is stone and wood, not "sort of like stone and wood". Warforged are *made of* stone and wood. That doesn't mean the stone and wood survives, unmodified, when it turns into a Warforged. However, for a pure substance to not be usable, it has to decay faster than it can be used. Iron can be smelted and the impurities removed in minutes. If the iron rusts at human rates, you have days to smelt it down to pure iron. The rate of rotting preventing use in a manufacturing process is not consistent with normal rusting rates. That's iron, which has particular properties that make it amenable to smelting. Aluminum, for instance, is much much more difficult to extract from compounds that contain it. Basically impossible before the discovery of electrolysis. If you wish, it can be made. Many DM's like it to be mined, or found in meteorites, to prevent players from getting their hands on it early in campaigns. Where it comes from is normally up to the DM. Part of my point is that by declaring it decays at this rate, the DM now is forced to accept that it can be made, and that limits what he can do to control the substance. No, I don't get it. Why does it imply that? There were only so many T-Rexes in the world. When a T-Rex dies, it decays into simpler substances. Now no T-Rexes can ever be made again, except in science fiction. The simpler substances can't be made back into a T-Rex. That's true of anything. Sheesh, you really think the only way to make Adamantine limited is to say that Adamantine is some kind of super-special substance that's not made of simpler elements at all? That not only contradicts flavor (Adamantine, like everything else, is made of earth, air, water and fire) but is totally unnecessary.
ArcTan 09-21-07, 02:25 AM	Another perspective might be the following: The default on warforged is that they can do anything any human can do, unless otherwise specified, not necessarily that their bodies are human in every way unless otherwise stated. No, that is the default. It's just as true for doing things to the Warforged as the Warforged trying to do things. A Warforged is a living construct, and so decay can also come from the "construct" portion of its type. It does not inherently come from the "living" portion of its type. A warforged's metal can decay at the same rate as an iron golem's and still be using a default position -- it's just the default for the construct portion of its type. Except it *isn't*, because the default is that we treat the Warforged like a Human and *not* like an Iron Golem. This has been stated very explicitly. It's precisely to prevent the problems that treating a WF like an Iron Golem would cause -- the idea is that for WF to be balanced we have to treat them like a standard PHB race by default unless otherwise stated, or else their advantages could multiply without limit.
ArcTan 09-21-07, 02:29 AM	Cars. In our society, you can make a ton of money from stripping down a car. It happens. But do we have huge gangs of thieves doing it? No, it is fairly rare. Define "huge". There are enough people who can make a living working at chop shops that you can't dismiss it as impossible. It's, in fact, precisely the kind of thing that the master criminals represented by a Chaotic Evil party of PCs would do. Animals aren't people. Warforged can walk, talk, and plead for mercy in a language you can understand. If your attacker has come to view warforged as non-sentient, that's your choice. You're creating a serial killer, after all, so you can add whatever insanities you like. Treating WF as non-persons isn't a "serial killer" position in Eberron. These things are culturally determined, after all, tragic as that might be -- people in the American South who treated black slaves as subhuman were way more common then than "serial killers" in the sense you mean ever have been. There's a substantial political movement, in the most liberal city in the world, Sharn, to re-enslave the Warforged. Military officers, many of whom are still alive, heartlessly sacrificed them as living weapons for decades. The major churches of the continent still haven't granted them official status as ensouled beings. So yes, a WF "serial killer" is not only plausible, but likely. That one NPC in Sharn seems to be likely to be a sponsor of such. Not quite. The fluff does not adequately explain the rule about warforged bodies degrading at human rates. It doesn't explain how a *living* Warforged can heal and regenerate tissue the way a human does, either. It's part and parcel of the same thing.
ArcTan 09-21-07, 02:33 AM	When a Warforged dies, his alchemical processes cease, just like a human's biological processes cease with death. All of those exceptions become irrelevant, because they rely on the Living Construct type or the Warforged in particular. Upon death, the body becomes an object, and objects have rules of their own, or the specifics are undescribed (meaning we use our common sense). You can make metal and stone with major creation (the spell on which Creation Forges are based). When the spell ends (the equivalent of a WF dying), the result is not the metal becoming ordinary, non-magical metal. The result is the metal vanishing into thin air. You don't find this analogous? Also, again, the primary reason decay of a human body starts so fast is because the enzymes in the human's body keep on lysing the human's own cells and breaking down the human's own proteins after death, without corresponding processes of regeneration to cancel them out. Shutting down all these processes is extremely difficult, and if you succeed, the body decays a lot more slowly. (This is effectively what a large part of embalming is -- it's why embalmers have to drain all the blood out of the corpse, for instance.)
Kreistor2 09-21-07, 11:21 AM	Yup, seems to be the case. Which, of course, is fine. Yeah, I posted that one before your apology. I thought about going back and changing the terminology to lighten it a bit, but couldn't think of any better phrasing that late at night. Anyway, it's just a question of scale. Some of my world is morally banqrupt too, it's just not as large of a percenteage as yours. My world is already up to 1001, so the Last War is even further a memory. I also progress the socio-economic state of Eberron to 1800's levels. Breland is politically and socially more in the range of 1850, economically ahead to 1890, etc. I admit it's a lot more steampunk in terms of magic-tech and the effects on society. Newspapers have influence with the people, most can read and enjoy good pulp paperbacks about expeditions to Sharn, etc. It is Victorian England that really began the push for morality at all levels of society, and that's where my Sharn is at. There's still that undercurrent of criminality, but the police are becoming effective. But all of this is moot. My group has reached L12, and so can't effectively adventure on the surface of Khorvaire anymore. The details of Sharn are simply no longer that important, since it's just a place they live between adventures now.
Kreistor2 09-21-07, 11:42 AM	Right. So if you don't have rules that say you can, you can't. Because people know D&D players and know that they care about every last place you can get GP. There are no rules for skinning animals; therefore, leather comes from trees. No, there's no rules for scraping leather off trees either, so... Sorry, your statement is absurd. The lack of rules is not an indication that something cannot be done. Where the rules are silent, the DM rules. It has always been this way. Words have more than one definition. "Mineral" as in "animal/vegetable/mineral" doesn't mean that I believe that the dictionary definition, not the definition used in a game of questions, is the one intended here. No. It's not reasonable, because that's exactly what "mineral" *doesn't* mean in the context of major creation, which is the most analogous spell here. Major creation uses the term "mineral nature" not "mineral" on its own. It's an abstraction to make the rules easier to adjudicate. Of course it is. And it pokes holes in your theory about what causes that time limit. Right, but that's *flavor*, not rules. The fact that a WF is made of iron is merely *flavor*. According to the *rules*, the WF still rots like every other living creature. Well, let's go with Hellcow and use degrade, not rot. The substance stops being flavour when it influences the mechanics. See Duck's list of mechanics influenced by the substances that make up a warforged above. When a human being dies, the biological processes in the human do not just "shut down". Much of human decay comes about because of ongoing processes in the body that cause various tissues to disintegrate (such as in the digestive system, the lymphatic system and your kidneys, which require constant maintenance to survive) and microorganisms in the body begin to start eating it. You're welcome to extend that to warforged, but the important part is that if you get to the meat in time, it's useful. The decay process is slow enough that the human body can be used as raw material. This is, in D&D terms, *flavor* for why human corpses go bad and you can't harvest anything from them. And you'd be dead wrong. Show me the rule that says human corpses can't be used as raw materials. If an animal's corpse can, then a human corpse can. We don't, because it is morally and ethically wrong to do so. That doesn't make it impossible. Sure, but criticizing WF decay because it "doesn't make sense" is annoying. I'm glad you took this so personally. That was, of course, my intent. Wait. No, it wasn't. You were welcome to ignore my opinions. The anoyance would stop if you dind't open the thread. Don't blame me for that. This is the same reason I keep ending up in arguments with people who want to get rid of Skeletons being Evil because it "doesn't make sense". Uhm... yeah, that was too much information. But this ruling is *easy* to predict, if you treat the rules as a game and not as laws of physics. When the rules are silent, I can introduce whatever rules I wish, from whatever source I wish. My right as DM. Aluminum, for instance, is much much more difficult to extract from compounds that contain it. Basically impossible before the discovery of electrolysis. But once extracted is easy to reform. Where it comes from is normally up to the DM. Part of my point is that by declaring it decays at this rate, the DM now is forced to accept that it can be made, and that limits what he can do to control the substance. No, I don't get it. Why does it imply that? I stated that earlier in the thread. That the material degrades implies that it is made of component substances. Anything that can be broken down like this, can, in some way, be made artificially. That adamantium can break down says that adamantium can be made, and now you've just created the same problem you were trying to prevent in the first place -- too much adamantium in the world.
Kreistor2 09-21-07, 04:05 PM	You don't find this analogous? If it works for you, then cool for you. You seem to expect that it must work for me, if it works for you. Sorry, as I said to the Duck, we are allowed to have different opinions on what is reasonable based on our own backgrounds and environment. There is no one lock on what is the correct solution to a problem. Also, again, the primary reason decay of a human body starts so fast is because the enzymes in the human's body keep on lysing the human's own cells and breaking down the human's own proteins after death, without corresponding processes of regeneration to cancel them out. Wikipedia, Decomposition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decomposition) I don't want to copy a lot of that disgusting stuff. If you read through it, you'll find bacteria is a larger factor in decomp than autolysis, and insects are even more important. In an environment unfrendly to bacteria (lacking oxygen, moisture, low or high temp), bodies mummify. Shutting down all these processes is extremely difficult, and if you succeed, the body decays a lot more slowly. (This is effectively what a large part of embalming is -- it's why embalmers have to drain all the blood out of the corpse, for instance.) And from the same page... "The chemicals used in embalming repel most insects, and slow down bacterial putrefaction by "fixing" cellular proteins, which means that they cannot act as a nutrient for bacteria, and killing the bacteria themselves." Embalming has no effect on autolysis. Define "huge". There are enough people who can make a living working at chop shops that you can't dismiss it as impossible. It's, in fact, precisely the kind of thing that the master criminals represented by a Chaotic Evil party of PCs would do. I never said it was impossible. I merely said that the frequency in Duck's campaign is much higher than it would be in mine, because I feel a smaller percentage of the population is immoral to the point of being able to commit such acts. I did demonstrate this, but the browser crashed on me losing my links. The 2004 US criminal statistics lised ~421 auto thefts/100000 people in the states, and 16.4% were juvenile, so joy rides. Worst case, all 460 or so remaining thefts were done by career criminals for chop shops. At 10/year (a very low number), 46 career auto thieves exist in a rnadom US population of 100000. That's much less than 100's, which Duck suggests should exist in the city of Sharn with its population of 100000. You can fudge around with those numbers if you want, but when working wiht a number as small as 421/100000, you're going to find it hard to create gangs of hundreds hunting cars in US cities. Treating WF as non-persons isn't a "serial killer" position in Eberron. It is according to the gov't, and it's the gov't who are responsible for hunting the criminals down.
The Dreaming Duck 09-21-07, 05:20 PM	I did demonstrate this, but the browser crashed on me losing my links. The 2004 US criminal statistics lised... But honestly, Kreistor, what do the 2004 US criminal statistics have to do with Eberron? It's one thing when you're talking about physical laws, which presumably are the same in Eberron as they are here. But CULTURE? Why pick 2004? Why the United States? Why not pick a time after the US Civil War and look at lynching statistics - crimes perpetrated against people of flesh and blood, people who could and presumably did beg for mercy? All the issues I raised before come into play here: the fact that we're dealing with hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers (people trained to kill, who have spent years standing ready to kill or actually killing, now having to readjust to civilian life) and homeless refugees (psychologically devastated by the loss of everything they have known, humiliated by their current circumstances, and quite possibly the subject of hate crimes themselves) mixed in with the population and a high degree of international tension. All of this is going to contribute to a higher crime rate - both hate crimes, crimes committed by those struggling to survive, and people dealing with PTSD and Last War Syndrome. And on the other side of the coin, by default the law doesn't have DNA tests, computer networks... even circles of sound (which could be used as short-range walkie talkies) cost thousands of gp, too much to be in the hands of the average city watchman. Look at the US after the Civil War and consider crimes against the African-American population and I think you'll be a step closer to a realistic assessment of the status of warforged... and even then you aren't dealing with hundreds of thousands of homeless Cyrans, the concept that the corpses are worth significant amounts of cash (so murder has a point besides satisfying hate), or the fact that warforged can't reproduce - so every loss is significant. which Duck suggests should exist in the city of Sharn with its population of 100000. Actually, Sharn has a population of 211,850. Among other things, this puts the number closer to a hundred even using your stats. Beyond this, however, setting aside my issue of veterans who might turn to crime if it was insanely profitable to do so, we KNOW about criminal groups in Sharn. One in particular is Daask, a group which includes approximately 260 active members and specializes in violent crime. A commoner might be afraid to go after a big scary warforged. But a troll? Minotaur? Ogre? Daask has all of them. And most of the warforged of the city live in the Cogs... and according to page 131 of S:CoT, "The Watch avoids Lower Dura and the Cogs." Given that most members of Daask aren't even protected under the Code of Galifar themselves, I don't see fear of the law holding them in check, and I don't see a troll criminal holding back out of empathy for a warforged. Sure, in Eberron not all trolls are violent criminals - but the trolls of DAASK are, and there's a bunch of them in Sharn. Add to this the fact that there's only around 10,000 warforged in the world, and they can't reproduce. Suddenly the loss of a single warforged becomes more significant than the loss of a car - because in a city of 100,000, odds are you have at least 50,000 cars. My vision of Eberron is certainly more on the dark, noir side of things than yours, and that's fine. But I don't see what quoting modern US statistics has to do with Eberron, because Eberron isn't the modern US. I doubt you'll find a statistic about the number of violent, criminal ogres in a modern US city of 200,000. ;)
The Dreaming Duck 09-21-07, 05:28 PM	It is Victorian England that really began the push for morality at all levels of society, and that's where my Sharn is at. With my Eberron, I see Galifar as being closer to Victorian England, and the modern day being closer to post WWI (with the Mourning obviously being closer to WWII). Galifar was a time of morality, equality, and peace. After a century of war - a war no one has yet won - that has fallen apart, replaced by fear, prejudice, failing confidence in monarchies, and the fact that for many - former soldiers and especially the Cyrans - modern life is horrific. The police do their best to contain violence, but as per Sharn, they don't even go to Lower Dura, let alone into High Walls; if someone kills a Cyran, that's not their concern. If Sharn doesn't have enough room for all the Cyran scum out there, Dolurrh does. So I see where you're coming from, but I'm still closer to the war and in my campaign the fact that the war isn't really over and that the Mourning is still seen as a serious threat is a huge part of the tone... all of which makes a comparison to the 2004 US pretty pointless.
Alex_ 09-21-07, 05:33 PM	But honestly, Kreistor, what do the 2004 US criminal statistics have to do with Eberron? It's one thing when you're talking about physical laws, which presumably are the same in Eberron as they are here. But CULTURE? Why pick 2004? Why the United States? Why not pick a time after the US Civil War and look at lynching statistics - crimes perpetrated against people of flesh and blood, people who could and presumably did beg for mercy? All the issues I raised before come into play here: the fact that we're dealing with hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers (people trained to kill, who have spent years standing ready to kill or actually killing, now having to readjust to civilian life) and homeless refugees (psychologically devastated by the loss of everything they have known, humiliated by their current circumstances, and quite possibly the subject of hate crimes themselves) mixed in with the population and a high degree of international tension. All of this is going to contribute to a higher crime rate - both hate crimes, crimes committed by those struggling to survive, and people dealing with PTSD and Last War Syndrome. And on the other side of the coin, by default the law doesn't have DNA tests, computer networks... even circles of sound (which could be used as short-range walkie talkies) cost thousands of gp, too much to be in the hands of the average city watchman. Look at the US after the Civil War and consider crimes against the African-American population and I think you'll be a step closer to a realistic assessment of the status of warforged... and even then you aren't dealing with hundreds of thousands of homeless Cyrans, the concept that the corpses are worth significant amounts of cash (so murder has a point besides satisfying hate), or the fact that warforged can't reproduce - so every loss is significant. Also, Khorvaire has Darguun and Droamm, and the Lhazzar Principalities, which are relatively lawless. The Shadow Marches, Eldeen Reaches, Talenta Plains, Valenar, Qbarra, and colonies on Xen'drik don't seem to be well known for their civil rights laws and effective law enforcement either. Most of Khorvaire isn't as tolerant or metropolitan as Sharn.
ArcTan 09-21-07, 06:13 PM	I believe that the dictionary definition, not the definition used in a game of questions, is the one intended here. Why the hell would you believe that, considering that every other spell from polymorph any object to major creation uses that definition? In any case, if I took that literally, it still wouldn't "imply" you could smelt iron from ore. It would, in fact, imply that that clause only applied to things like stonework or digging earthen trenches. Again, if the spell can smelt iron from ore -- can, in fact, take me all the way from iron ore to a new sword! -- then the spell shouldn't care about "low-quality iron". Processing low-quality iron into high-quality iron is an expensive process that will leave you with less iron, but it can be done, and it's not effectively different from the process of smelting iron in the first place. And you'd be dead wrong. Show me the rule that says human corpses can't be used as raw materials. If an animal's corpse can, then a human corpse can. We don't, because it is morally and ethically wrong to do so. That doesn't make it impossible. Again, the rule of thumb is that if the rules don't say you can do it, you can't. This is important in campaigns where players hoard every GP. Of course the DM *can* always rule that something is possible because it "seems realistic", but he is advised to keep game balance in mind first when doing so and "realism" as a secondary consideration. I stated that earlier in the thread. That the material degrades implies that it is made of component substances. *sigh* No, it doesn't. Sodium is as "elemental" as you can get. Sodium degrades very quickly if you leave it just sitting around. It's the *opposite* of what you're claiming -- sodium is an element that it takes a lot of work to isolate in its pure form, and is very eager to recombine with other substances in the world around it if you don't take steps to protect it. Anything that can be broken down like this, can, in some way, be made artificially. That adamantium can break down says that adamantium can be made, and now you've just created the same problem you were trying to prevent in the first place -- too much adamantium in the world. Er, no. The fact that adamantine (not "adamantium", okay?) can, theoretically, be made, proves nothing. Everything can theoretically be made. It's D&D. There's alchemy. Everything's made out of the same four elements. You never needed to say that adamantine was made of some super-special magic thing that wasn't made of the same four classical elements to say it was rare and impossible for *people* to make. Again, T-Rexes were made of the exact same chemical elements as every other living thing. Doesn't mean you can make a T-Rex.
ArcTan 09-21-07, 06:20 PM	And from the same page... "The chemicals used in embalming repel most insects, and slow down bacterial putrefaction by "fixing" cellular proteins, which means that they cannot act as a nutrient for bacteria, and killing the bacteria themselves." Embalming has no effect on autolysis. Actually, "fixing" proteins has as much to do with making them immune to the body's own destructive enzymes as the destructive enzymes of bacteria that might eat them (which are, in many cases, the same enzymes). I never said it was impossible. I merely said that the frequency in Duck's campaign is much higher than it would be in mine, because I feel a smaller percentage of the population is immoral to the point of being able to commit such acts. Well, what does it matter what the NPCs do? A 7th-level party with a Chaotic Evil Rogue and a Neutral Evil Artificer and so forth is *exactly* the kind of party that goes around doing the kinds of things ordinary people are too moral (and too weak) to do, often for profit. "It's Evil and it's hard to do!" is not a foolproof way to stop PCs from doing things. PCs are by definition exceptional, and are *not* by definition Good.
ArcTan 09-21-07, 06:25 PM	Also, Khorvaire has Darguun and Droamm, and the Lhazzar Principalities, which are relatively lawless. The Shadow Marches, Eldeen Reaches, Talenta Plains, Valenar, Qbarra, and colonies on Xen'drik don't seem to be well known for their civil rights laws and effective law enforcement either. Most of Khorvaire isn't as tolerant or metropolitan as Sharn. Right. The thing is that Sharn is the most pro-Warforged-rights place on the continent, aside from the Lord of Blades' city of Construct. And Sharn has a small but influential political faction that's all about putting the Warforged back in chains and/or simply destroying them all. This would be like if the KKK were a significant force in the politics of New York City, and the local Grand Wizard of the KKK were an influential contact of one of New York's most influential councilmen. If the country were like that right now, in New York, what do you think things would be like for black folk in the Deep South (Karrnath) or in Utah (Thrane)? Keep in mind that whatever kind of world this is, if it's at all clinging to the basic framework of Eberron's core setting, it is the kind of world where a violent psychopath who calls for armed revolution and genocide is convincing enough to get a large percentage of the Warforged race on his side, or at least sympathetic to him. A world as hunky-dory for the WF as all that would be a much harder world for the Lord of Blades to go recruiting in -- and, in fact, it would be hard to understand exactly how he justifies his existence. BTW, if Sharn is Victorian London, that doesn't actually make it a nice place. Victorian morality was known for its hypocrisy, *especially* among upper-class Victorians. This is the time period Charles Dickens wrote about, remember? The adjective "Dickensian" in our slang doesn't tend to mean "egalitarian, altruistic, and everyone cares and tries to help you if you get murdered in the street by thugs".
Kreistor2 09-21-07, 07:06 PM	But honestly, Kreistor, what do the 2004 US criminal statistics have to do with Eberron? Arctan asked me to define "Huge" in relation to criminal activity. I was jsut comparing crime in our world to the crime you were proposing, and finding your numbers much larger than crime in the US right now. Why pick 2004? Because I found 2004 first. Why the United States? Because the US makes these public, and Canadian numbers would be lower. Why not pick a time after the US Civil War and look at lynching statistics - crimes perpetrated against people of flesh and blood, people who could and presumably did beg for mercy? I didn't find those. Doubt I could. Use them if you like. Maybe returning British soldiers from 1812? Ah, but those were mostly criminals when they were "recruited" (you could dodge a hanging sentence by entering the army), so that's not really a fair comparison. Actually, Sharn has a population of 211,850. Among other things, this puts the number closer to a hundred even using your stats. A lot of things culd. Claiming that 10/year was too many woould do it too. My vision of Eberron is certainly more on the dark, noir side of things than yours, Noir has nothing to do with crime rates. Noir is a style based on Film Noir movies of the 50's. Those movies did not assume high crime rates: they merely had the protagonist descending into a dark underworld. Size of that underworld is irrelevant: it's what the protagonist went through, blurring the lines of morality, that made it Film Noir. By your definition, Bad Boys is a Noir movie. Why the hell would you believe that, considering that every other spell from polymorph any object to major creation uses that definition? Clearly, you need to cool off. Again, the rule of thumb is that if the rules don't say you can do it, you can't. This is important in campaigns where players hoard every GP. No, you are wrong. Period. Quote me chapter and verse to prove your case: I will never otherwise accept your above statement. "Rule of thumb" is meaningless unless it is stated in the text. No RPG can include all rules required to adequately define the entire universe. In all RPG's it is up to the game master to determine how those undefined things operate. *sigh* No, it doesn't. Sodium is as "elemental" as you can get. Sodium degrades very quickly if you leave it just sitting around. It's the *opposite* of what you're claiming -- sodium is an element that it takes a lot of work to isolate in its pure form, and is very eager to recombine with other substances in the world around it if you don't take steps to protect it. So, if one leaves an adamantine sword lying around exposed, it reacts and dissolves? Nope: it has no decay rate normally, since as you said, if there are no rules it doesn't exist. *chuckle* BTW, i use adamatium because I hate the adjective form "ine" being used with a noun. Adamantium is the substance adamantine was modelled after, so I call a spade a spade. I call a sword made of adamatium an adamantine sword, because the "ine" adjective suffix works in that case. I'm not going to change. And now you know. Well, what does it matter what the NPCs do? A 7th-level party with a Chaotic Evil Rogue and a Neutral Evil Artificer and so forth is *exactly* the kind of party that goes around doing the kinds of things ordinary people are too moral (and too weak) to do, often for profit. I had a new player try CE once. The CG and NG characters in the party offed him when he stomped all over their morals. If it hadn't been them, the Sharn authorities would have dealt with him. Oh, do you think a 7th level party has a hope against a nation's resources? Again, T-Rexes were made of the exact same chemical elements as every other living thing. Doesn't mean you can make a T-Rex. An egg was the previous example. To make an egg, I buy a chicken and feed it the correct raw materials. One egg. T-rex the same way. Dominate monster and a few months, poof, one T-rex. My point on adamantium is that many DM's have severely limited adamantium in their campaigns. By making it "manufacturable", no matter how difficult, you're removing that mistique. You're welcome to rule it however you want, but you're not allowed to tell those DM's how adamantium appears in their campaigns. ArcTan, your arguments have become distractions to your point. Do you have one? You really need to consolidate to some kind of position: all you're doing is trying to tear at perceived weaknesses in mine. Nobody cares about these minutiae discussions, so even if you win one, it doesn't defeat any of my arguments. My only argument is that moral solutions can work in many situations, since players are typically inherently moral. Do any of your nit-picky debates actually defeat that point? Nope, not a one. Maybe you perceive them as undercutting something, but the argument does not stand on decisions made about metallurgical substances. You are perfectly welcome to use a different solution, if you like, but what is right for you is not necessarily right for me. Neither of us are wrong, since Eberron is at its core our own: if you want a realm that is dominated by a set of immutable rules, then you want Forgotten Realms. Your arguments are doing more to damage Eberron than I think you realize. The worst possible result of this debate is you somehow convincing me that my position is wrong, because when you've done that, Eberron becomes yours, and then it becomes Forgotten Realms, as you slave yourself to the words of Keith Baker. He doesn't want that, and I will never let you have that.
ArcTan 09-21-07, 11:47 PM	So, if one leaves an adamantine sword lying around exposed, it reacts and dissolves? Nope: it has no decay rate normally, since as you said, if there are no rules it doesn't exist. *chuckle* However, a Warforged isn't an adamantine sword. A Warforged is a living creature with a corpse that decays like every other living creature's corpse (which, yes, for the sake of the rules, decays at the same rate -- always the same level of unusability after X days, unless you use unguent of timelessness). BTW, i use adamatium because I hate the adjective form "ine" being used with a noun. Adamantium is the substance adamantine was modelled after, so I call a spade a spade. I call a sword made of adamatium an adamantine sword, because the "ine" adjective suffix works in that case. I'm not going to change. And now you know. There are plenty of other words that are both nouns and adjectives, especially when describing minerals. But the noun form of "adamantine" isn't "adamantium", it's "adamant". "Adamant" and "adamantine" are real words used in folklore and mythology for some kind of indestructible substance (and the source of the word "diamond"). "Adamantium", with the modern "-ium" ending (which should properly only be used for chemical elements) is something made up and named by Marvel Comics (in fact, *mis*named by Marvel Comics, since the adamantium in Marvel is clearly stated to be an alloy or composite or something like that, not an element). Most of the older fantasy before Marvel says "adamantine" or "adamant". "Adamantine" is, in fact, a real word for a real mineral, named after the fact that it's similar to diamond in appearance. So even if you don't like it, "adamantine" is in every way more correct a term than "adamantium". And now you know. I had a new player try CE once. The CG and NG characters in the party offed him when he stomped all over their morals. If it hadn't been them, the Sharn authorities would have dealt with him. Oh, do you think a 7th level party has a hope against a nation's resources? Er, not if the whole nation fights against them, but whole nations tend not to do that. Crime is rampant in Sharn, etc. An egg was the previous example. To make an egg, I buy a chicken and feed it the correct raw materials. One egg. T-rex the same way. Dominate monster and a few months, poof, one T-rex. *sigh* You're not getting it. A T-Rex dies. The T-Rex's body decomposes. Assuming that that T-Rex was the last T-Rex in the world, I have *no way of making a new T-Rex*. My point on adamantium is that many DM's have severely limited adamantium in their campaigns. By making it "manufacturable", no matter how difficult, you're removing that mistique. You're welcome to rule it however you want, but you're not allowed to tell those DM's how adamantium appears in their campaigns. But adamantine decomposing doesn't prove that! At best it makes adamantine a real metal rather than some magic thing that's not made of the four elements. But that doesn't make it "manufacturable". Again, if I only want there to be one T-Rex in the world -- say he came off an alien spaceship -- and he gets killed, I don't have to invent a Law of Conservation of T-Rexes and say that the T-Rex never decays. The T-Rex dies. His body decays into water and CO2. Does that mean it will *ever* be possible for human beings on Earth to make another T-Rex? NO. ArcTan, your arguments have become distractions to your point. Do you have one? You really need to consolidate to some kind of position: all you're doing is trying to tear at perceived weaknesses in mine. Nobody cares about these minutiae discussions, so even if you win one, it doesn't defeat any of my arguments. I dunno, you're just saying a lot of annoying things that have no reason to be true as though they were obviously true, and that annoys me. Like saying "If it decomposes, that means it can be manufactured!" (If a T-Rex appeared today, and then died and decomposed, that would not make it even one tiny bit easier to manufacture a T-Rex. If a gram of antimatter appeared today, and then annihilated in a great big explosion, that would not make it even one tiny bit easier to manufacture antimatter.) Like saying "Harvesting corpses is an essential part of the rules being consistent!" Like saying "Saying something is morally wrong is sufficient to make it no longer an economic possibility!" That kind of thing. Yeah, I'm overreacting, but still. I get prickly when people tell me something that makes sense doesn't make sense. My only argument is that moral solutions can work in many situations, since players are typically inherently moral. Do any of your nit-picky debates actually defeat that point? Nope, not a one. Maybe you perceive them as undercutting something, but the argument does not stand on decisions made about metallurgical substances. You are perfectly welcome to use a different solution, if you like, but what is right for you is not necessarily right for me. Neither of us are wrong, since Eberron is at its core our own: if you want a realm that is dominated by a set of immutable rules, then you want Forgotten Realms. Your arguments are doing more to damage Eberron than I think you realize. The worst possible result of this debate is you somehow convincing me that my position is wrong, because when you've done that, Eberron becomes yours, and then it becomes Forgotten Realms, as you slave yourself to the words of Keith Baker. He doesn't want that, and I will never let you have that. What is all that about? Eberron has a set of core assumptions as much as FR does. Eberron has as many people who undercut those core assumptions in their campaigns as FR does. When did this become some holy identity issue for Eberron, that people can houserule things in it?
The Dreaming Duck 09-22-07, 12:31 AM	A lot of things culd. Claiming that 10/year was too many woould do it too. I can't help but notice that you dodged the subject of Daask. While one can always ignore it, S:CoT tells us about a large and violent criminal organization operating in the same region that most of the warforged live, a region that the Watch generally avoids. Now, you certainly don't have to hold to any of this - it may be that it your campaign the Watch has pulled together and cleaned out the Cogs. But if you do hold to it, it sounds like a recipe for disaster if warforged are innately valuable. I don't see Daask having moral qualms about violent crime, they aren't worrying about the legal ramifications of their actions, and things go from there. The warforged of the Cogs are generally foundry workers with little money, so as it stands, there's not a lot of reason for Daask to pick on what are inherently risky targets. But if the warforged itself is valuable, everything changes. Again, different strokes and all. I'm just saying that in my campaign, if morality was the only factor, I'd have trouble justifying why Daask wouldn't prey on the warforged. Which would either mean that the warforged couldn't live in the Cogs or that they'd have a hunted mentality, always traveling in large enough groups to repel attack... and generally creating a social and psychological situation I don't want to deal with. It's not about what my PLAYERS are going to do; it's what seems realistic within the world, at least as I have interpreted it. The idea that the metal created by magic dissolves when the magic/life goes away allows me to leave warforged society as it stands, making the warforged actually unappealing targets to Daask because of their military experience. And for ME, that's certainly worth the oddity of warforged metal not being exactly what it appears. Noir has nothing to do with crime rates. Did I ever say that it did? I said "My vision of Eberron is certainly more on the dark, noir side of things than yours, and that's fine." I didn't say "My vision of crime rates in Khorvaire is more on the noir side..." Since we're linking to things, let's take the short version and look at a dictionary definition (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/film%20noir) of "film noir": A motion picture with an often grim urban setting, photographed in somber tones and permeated by a feeling of disillusionment, pessimism, and despair. This is EXACTLY what I meant. Allow me to rephrase. "My vision of Eberron is appears to be grimmer than yours, and permeated by a feeling of disillusionment, pessimism, and despair." The fact that this results in a world where you're more likely to find people killing warforged for their adamantine is a side effect of the noir flavor, not the justification for claiming that it has noir flavor. Likewise, it's far from my intent to say that you couldn't have an adventure WITH noir flavor within your campaign - as you said, the size of the underworld or the source of despair doesn't matter, as long as the protagonist can find it. However, my vision of Eberron overall seem to lean more towards the tone of a film noir movie. While it sounds like your Victorian world with its efficient police is GENERALLY a more pleasant place - not one permeated by disillusionment, pessimism, and despair. I'm not trying to criticize your campaign. You may run the best noir-y adventures that have ever been created, and they may fit seamlessly into the world; nothing that you've said gives me reason to doubt that. And there's certainly no rules as to what the tone of a campaign should be like - that's why DMs exist. But it doesn't sound like your vision of Khorvaire itself leans in that direction, while mine does.
yrogerg 09-22-07, 01:12 AM	My point on adamantium is that many DM's have severely limited adamantium in their campaigns. By making it "manufacturable", no matter how difficult, you're removing that mistique. You're welcome to rule it however you want, but you're not allowed to tell those DM's how adamantium appears in their campaigns. If it so rare, how did it make its way into all of those Warforged? Fact is, the Creation effect handles this problem pretty nicely. If you read Keith's commentary on this issue, that was *why* this ruling came to exist. It was a consequence making the Body feats a result of the Creation effects from the Creation Forges. The bit about Warforged decaying before people could harvest them for metals was simply a convenient consequence of the explanation. It was never the main point.
Kreistor2 09-22-07, 01:17 AM	I can't help but notice that you dodged the subject of Daask. While one can always ignore it, S:CoT tells us about a large and violent criminal organization operating in the same region that most of the warforged live, a region that the Watch generally avoids. Now, you certainly don't have to hold to any of this - it may be that it your campaign the Watch has pulled together and cleaned out the Cogs. But if you do hold to it, it sounds like a recipe for disaster if warforged are innately valuable. I don't see Daask having moral qualms about violent crime, they aren't worrying about the legal ramifications of their actions, and things go from there. The warforged of the Cogs are generally foundry workers with little money, so as it stands, there's not a lot of reason for Daask to pick on what are inherently risky targets. But if the warforged itself is valuable, everything changes. Actually, I take a page out of Steven Brust's stories about Vlad Taltos. Violence is bad for business. It's nto the watch that cuts down on this kind of crime, but Organized Crime. Disorganized crime attracts attention from the Law and Order types. Remember that protection rackets have to do one thing: protect their patrons, and not just from themselves. If someone pays you protection and you let them come to harm, then they'll find someone else to pay protection to that will stop that harm. So, to keep the Watch out, Boramar, Daask, or whoever runs the protection scam in that community has to ensure that these roving bands of marauders stop. Serial deaths cause the liberal types, those in charge of the papers, to call out for social equality, and that means the Watch coming down on the Cogs. It is far more profitable to suppress these activities before the liberal types get their knickers all knotted up. Now, if you think the Organized Crime Business might see making money off a warforged corpse as profitable, it is in the end a one-time profit. That dead warforged was a source of long term revenue, or even a potential head-thumper. That warforged might have been a gambler, or like watching the ladies. It gets worse if the dead Warforged was a head-thumper in your employ. Now the marauders are taking down people you owe loyalty to. "My vision of Eberron is appears to be grimmer than yours, and permeated by a feeling of disillusionment, pessimism, and despair." Again, I think you miss the point of Noir. If my players go through grim setting after grim setting, just like yours, even though there is more unused grim territory in your setting than mine, our campaigns are equally Noir. Noir is what the players go through, not the grimness of the world. What matters for Noir is what the protagonist goes through, not the percentage of the world that suffers from a bleakness of morality. Likewise, it's far from my intent to say that you couldn't have an adventure WITH noir flavor within your campaign That's the source of your misunderstanding. You don't think I can have any Noir. That's just not true. I put as much Noir into the storyline as I can possibly imagine, which means pretty much every story arc has Noir elements. I quite specifically stated that my world was more moral, not that it was completely moral. Heck, my players have had to work with an element of the Blood of Vol (a Karrnathi Vampire to boot): I find it unlikely most have gone that far. But it doesn't sound like your vision of Khorvaire itself leans in that direction, while mine does. Really? Do you think you'd have a hard time with your storylines if there were 50% fewer members of Daask, House Phiarlen, or spies from Karrnath? I doubt it. The numbers are large enough that a significant reduction still leaves more than enough for the players to stumble across. Ultimately, the percentage of the state that is involved is not important at all: the players will encounter those that do exist, regardless of demographics, because that is where the story is.
Kreistor2 09-22-07, 02:12 AM	However, a Warforged isn't an adamantine sword. A Warforged is a living creature with a corpse that decays like every other living creature's corpse (which, yes, for the sake of the rules, decays at the same rate -- always the same level of unusability after X days, unless you use unguent of timelessness).[quote] Ah, but living in what sense? Living on our world requires a biological make-up. Warforged specfically do not have a biological make-up: theirs is alchemical. There are strict defintiions of what Living Construct means, mechanically, but anything beyond that is interpretational and subject to opinion. My own position, and like any other it is based on opinion, is that the Living component refers to the mind, not the body. What makes a Living Construct different from Constructs is the presence of a sentient mind, instead of a programmed response. You will not agree, I know that, but your opinion matters not in the least to me. That's how I understand these creatures. [quote]"Adamant" and "adamantine" are real words used in folklore and mythology for some kind of indestructible substance (and the source of the word "diamond"). Yay for you. You know more about the root word than i do. I'm still going to use adamantium. If only to annoy you. Nah, because I like the sound. It sounds cooler, to me. Er, not if the whole nation fights against them, but whole nations tend not to do that. Crime is rampant in Sharn, etc. Actually, I'm thinking of Letters of Marque. If an artifact is brought to Sharn by an expedition and the bearer lacks a Letter of Marque, then it gets seized by the government. So, what happens to it then? It gets sold? There's been a war going on. You don't sell things that are useful for war. So the government has them. Don't you think the government would wind up using them against a group of criminals that resist arrest? Never, ever, underestimate the resources of an entire nation. 100000GP is a lot to a PC, but it's nary a dent in the annual income of Breland. A T-Rex dies. The T-Rex's body decomposes. Assuming that that T-Rex was the last T-Rex in the world, I have *no way of making a new T-Rex*. Because you're placing an artificial restriction on the creation of the T-rex, for argumentative reasons only. Specifically, you want me to create it alchemically or magically, only. Sorry, that is not a realistic limitation on creation. If I need a T-rex, I don't care how it is created. that's pretty much how it goes in any world: if someone wants something, they won't care much how it was gotten. But adamantine decomposing doesn't prove that! It implies it. I never said proves it. At best it makes adamantine a real metal rather than some magic thing that's not made of the four elements. But that doesn't make it "manufacturable". If yu're thinking on that level, you've gone far beyond DnD rules. They're silent on what elements make up metals. Oh, right, that means they don't make up metals. Where the rules are silent, you can't do it, according to you. You're bringing your own alchemical knowledge into DnD, not referring to a DnD rule. Or, you can find whatever it is you're referring to and quote me to prove me wrong. Again, if I only want there to be one T-Rex in the world -- say he came off an alien spaceship -- and he gets killed, I don't have to invent a Law of Conservation of T-Rexes and say that the T-Rex never decays. What rule says it decomposes? It doesn't decompose if there isn't a rulesaying it does. Does that mean it will *ever* be possible for human beings on Earth to make another T-Rex? NO. Eldritch machine to create a time portal and collect a pice to clone it. Done. We are in Eberron after all, and Eldritch machines can literally do anything a DM needs. I dunno, you're just saying a lot of annoying things that have no reason to be true as though they were obviously true, and that annoys me. You can end the annoyance by not reading this thread. Don't blame me for your own problems. Yeah, I'm overreacting, but still. I get prickly when people tell me something that makes sense doesn't make sense. Then you're in for a world of disappointment. Every single human being has to live with an inadequate world view and make decisions on insufficient and incorrect information. What you have studied is not what I have studied, and it is very self-centered of you to expect anyone else to study what you have. There jsut isn't enough time for any of us to study everythign in the world, and so we all muddle through it with whatever information we do have. You getting angry because I know less about one thing than you do is not my fault. It is your world view that is faulty, despite your superior knowledge, because your world view demands that everyone know exactly what you do, and agree with you on all of it. That will simly never happen, and I am not going to accept any responsibility for annoying you. I cannot predict what will annoy somoene on the other side of my keyboard. It is inevitable that I will annoy someone, but taking that as a fault on my part demands only one cure: never post. I must, therefore, accept that someone is going to be annoyed with me, just like every other poster must. Those that post must learn to accept that the annoyance they feel is a part of this process, and the acceptance of the decision of posting is the cause of that annoyance. What is all that about? Eberron has a set of core assumptions as much as FR does. Eberron has as many people who undercut those core assumptions in their campaigns as FR does. When did this become some holy identity issue for Eberron, that people can houserule things in it? I'll let Hellcow answer that for me. He has a better way with words than I do. Fair enough. Hence my point on house rules. In my opinion, that's what this argument about, and therefore the answer is in your hands. The DM should do whatever he wants. He and I already identified the core debate in this thread as being one of house rulings. I guess you missed that. This debate was always about house rules: you just never noticed.
Kreistor2 09-22-07, 02:16 AM	If it so rare, how did it make its way into all of those Warforged? It's not rare in my campaign. I am speaking for those DM's that do make it rare. It is up to them to decide how large a percentage of Adamatine bodied warforged are of teh overall population, and how much of their body is adamantine. (Or as KB suggested earlier, if any of it is at all.) Fact is, the Creation effect handles this problem pretty nicely. Then use that. I disagree, so I don't use it. I actually like the idea of someone trying to rip parts off a warforged: I can create a story arc around that where the players have to stop it.
The Dreaming Duck 09-22-07, 03:31 AM	Actually, I take a page out of Steven Brust's stories about Vlad Taltos. Violence is bad for business. It's nto the watch that cuts down on this kind of crime, but Organized Crime. Disorganized crime attracts attention from the Law and Order types. Right. But you're ignoring the fact that the situation isn't analagous to the Jhereg from Brust, who have to deal with the Phoenix Guards, and who are very organized in their dealings. Sharn has that; it's the Boromar Clan. They operate in territories that overlap with those governed by the Watch, and they do in fact specialize in things like gambling and protection... just like the Jhereg. Classic organized crime. That's not what Daask is. Daask operates in regions of the city where the Watch is afraid to go. Therefore, they don't have to worry about the law. Their stock in trade is violence, not protection. Furthermore, if the body of a dead warforged is worth the same amount as that warforged will make in four years of labor, which is going to interest the troll? The BOROMAR crime lord may look at a long-term investment; his family has been in Sharn for centuries and expects to be in Sharn for centuries. They see the warforged as a potentially immortal revenue stream. But Daask exists as a counterpoint to Boromar. In fact, that's essentially what's going on - the law isn't stopping Daask, so Boromar is being forced to do it - because Boromar has promised "protection" and Daask is putting the violence to it. Not unlike the situations in Dragaera where two Jhereg DO have a war - the problem is that there's no Jhereg council to step in to tell them to knock it off, and the Watch doesn't care what happens in the Cogs (just as, by and large, the Phoenix Guards don't much care what happens to Easterners). So I'm not talking about organized crime in general. I've read the Taltos books too. I'm talking about Daask: a violent group of powerful creatures that are described as employing smash-and-grab techniques in a lawless part of the city - also the part of the city inhabited by most warforged. Again, if those warforged are schmucks like everyone else, Daask has no reason to kill them; mug them, maybe, taking the silver piece they earned today, but there you have it. It's exactly as you say: kill them today and you can't mug them or fleece them tomorrow. But if that warforged's body is worth a THOUSAND silver pieces? Lower Dura and the Cogs are the bad part of town, inhabited by the poor and ignored by the watch. It's going to be a rough life if your body is worth more than you could make in years of labor - because the thumpers may be willing to take the quick fix over the multiyear investment. Daask doesn't run brothels or gambling dens; they work strongarm. They're the Orca toughs, not the Jhereg crimelords. That IS bad for longterm business - which is exactly why there's war between Daask and Boromar. Serial deaths cause the liberal types, those in charge of the papers, to call out for social equality, and that means the Watch coming down on the Cogs. OK, I will acknowledge that this may be true in the Sharn in your Victorianish campaign, and that if it is true, everything else you've said falls into place. But this is just another example of the different ways we see the world... and that difference explains the entire argument. I don't see the people of Skyway giving a copper crown for the fate of anyone in the Cogs. And I see the statement that the Watch does not go to the Cogs as meaning just that. If one of the altruists (because I certainly believe they are out there) tells a Watch captain "Aren't you going to do something about the warforged murders in the Cogs," he'll laugh and say "You do it, if you care so much"; he's not going to put his mens' lives in danger venturing into that literal hellhole to seek revenge for a bunch of dead clankers. If there's going to be any justice in the Cogs, it's going to come from the players, not from the Sharn Watch. But again, that's just how I like to run my game, not something that's right or wrong. I LIKE the idea of a Sharn where there are places the guards are afraid to go; it adds drama to my game. People KNOW they are taking their lives into their hands when they go below. And the people below know that the law won't do a damn thing for them - which means that they need to form alliances with groups LIKE Daask, like the Cannith foundry, because it's those allies that will save their lives. The idea that the law has everything perfectly in hand - even in the worst, most miserable parts of one of the most dangerous cities in the land - frankly bores me. Again, I think you miss the point of Noir. Again, I think you miss the point of what I think the point of noir is. You are saying "Noir is an experience." You're saying that that experience can be found in any world, bright or dark. I get it. All that I am saying is that in my vision of Eberron, this experience is commonplace. The war has left people pessimistic and cynical. Galifar was an ideal, and that ideal has failed. Many people believe that the world is close to its end. It's an environment in which the noir story becomes more the norm than the exception. Yes, a player could FIND a noir story in a cheerful circus, if he interacts with the right people and is drawn to the right space in his life. I'm saying that he's more likely to be drawn to those sorts of people and times in my vision of Eberron, where the law isn't reliable, where morals aren't strong, and most important of all, where people don't have the hope it sounds like they have in your world. Essentially, it sounds to me like your world is generally more optimistic. Morals tend to accompany hope and altruism. Given that I see the world as a place colored by cynicism, loss of opportunity, uncertainty, too many trained soldiers and not enough fighting... it's easy for people to lose their grip on morality when they feel that the world has betrayed them. I'm not saying that I see Eberron as being populated by murderers and criminals; I still believe that more people want to do the right thing than otherwise. But I see it being a place where people are far more likely to turn to crime than they were a hundred years ago - whether that crime is motivated by greed, passion, desperation, hatred, or despair. That's the source of your misunderstanding. You don't think I can have any Noir. That's just not true. Pardon me, but what are you talking about? Are you just trying to annoy me? Look at what I wrote! Likewise, it's far from my intent to say that you couldn't have an adventure WITH noir flavor within your campaign - as you said, the size of the underworld or the source of despair doesn't matter, as long as the protagonist can find it. You may run the best noir-y adventures that have ever been created, and they may fit seamlessly into the world; nothing that you've said gives me reason to doubt that. I NEVER said that I thought "you can't have any noir". I understand EXACTLY what you're saying about noir, and how it fits into your game IN SPITE of the fact that your world overall has a lighter tone. YOU are the one who is continually failing to understand MY point. I'm not trying to do some little "My world is more noiry than yours" superior dance. Unlike you, I'm not claiming that YOU don't understand noir. I'm saying that you are choosing to confine the tone to specific adventures, while for me it is more part of the world at large. I'm not saying, nor have I EVER said, that what I'm doing is somehow a superior way to handle things. On the contrary, I said that tone is something that's entirely up to the DM and NOT defined by the rules. Heck, my players have had to work with an element of the Blood of Vol (a Karrnathi Vampire to boot): I find it unlikely most have gone that far. Honestly, this seems like a sort of standard Eberron plot to me, which is why I LIKE Eberron - because it forces people to question the traditional elements of good or evil. Have to work with the BoV. Running into the Dhakaani in the dungeon and realizing that they have a better claim to the artifact than you do - do you fight them anyway? If, in fact, most haven't gone that far, I feel they're missing out on a lot of the promise of the setting. Really? Do you think you'd have a hard time with your storylines if there were 50% fewer members of Daask, House Phiarlen, or spies from Karrnath? No. DID I EVER SAY THAT I DID? You seem to have this idea that I've said "My world's got more noir than yours, people are worse, and I can run stories you couldn't ever do! Nyaah nyaah nyaah!" whereas in fact I've said quite the opposite. NOT ONLY have I acknowledged that I see no reason you should have trouble running noir stories in your campaign, what I've actually said is that I would be unable to run stories you CAN do in your world in mine. I've said that I COULDN'T have warforged running around with 200-gp bodies because they would be killed; you, on the other hand can run with that, because your vision of the world supports it. I'm not saying that my vision of the world is in any way superior to yours. I NEVER said that you were incapable of running a noir campaign in your world. I said, quite specifically, that my vision of Khorvaire itself - as continent and culture - was more colored by noir. In other words, it's harder for me NOT to have a noir story, because the characters and situations are everywhere. YOU can have it wherever you want to create the situation. For me, it's more the norm. I understand you have a confrontational tone. I'm being rude myself. But frankly, I'm sick of being told that I don't understand a concept when your answer completely ignores what I actually said.
Kreistor2 09-22-07, 09:09 AM	Daask operates in regions of the city where the Watch is afraid to go. So? Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Until DAask came along, Clan Boramar ran these areas, too. The residents are going to expect that level of protection of DAask. I'm talking about Daask: a violent group of powerful creatures that are described as employing smash-and-grab techniques in a lawless part of the city - also the part of the city inhabited by most warforged.[/quote] You're welcome to run them the way you want to. If I perceive an inconsistency, I correct it my way. DAask can't get away with that kind of operational standard for long, because it attracts enemies. Remember all of those soldiers you were referring to? Those are the trained men that DAask is preying on. **** 'em off, and you've got your hordes of underemployed men crashing DAask, instead of the warforged you want them to go after. Replacing DAask is a profitable future. Lower Dura and the Cogs are the bad part of town, inhabited by the poor and ignored by the watch. It's going to be a rough life if your body is worth more than you could make in years of labor Of course, with an opportunity like this, the Warforged could also choose to unite and replace DAask, taking their position. That would be interesting, too. OK, I will acknowledge that this may be true in the Sharn in your Victorianish campaign, and that if it is true, everything else you've said falls into place. But this is just another example of the different ways we see the world... and that difference explains the entire argument. I don't see the people of Skyway giving a copper crown for the fate of anyone in the Cogs. I'm only modelling it on what I know of the events surrounding Jack the Ripper. Newspapers were all over the police's inability to catch the killer of a bunch of hookers. The liberal media has been watching out for the little guy fr a lot longer than we might think. And before the media, it was others. See, nobility fears the people. Riots caused major damage to London in the 1600's, and that hurt their income, and ppointed out that a horde of enraged people could kill anyone. They had to do something to calm the people when bad things were happening to them. They didn't protect the people out of a liberal sense of social responsibility: they did it to protect themselves. A noble's power does not come from birth: it comes from money and the belief of the people that they deserve power. Their soldiers are, in the end, just armed people. If the nobles don't do what needs to be done to protect the families of the men that serve them, their evidence of power evaporates away to protect their own. The nobility always knew this. Leaving the people to protect themselves from monsters only serves to cause those people to tear the nobility down. It is, for the nobility, self protection to protect the people. So, yes, in my world there is great concern for any area like you describe. Such a place could tear society apart and establish a new rule without the nobility. The war has left people pessimistic and cynical. Galifar was an ideal, and that ideal has failed. Well, it's been three or four generations since Galifar. Most inhabitants of the Five nations have grown up with war, and don't remember Galifar itself. That will be a great relief to almost everyone: cynicism isn't that appropriate when you also get to survive to see old age out of the deal. Pardon me, but what are you talking about? Are you just trying to annoy me? Look at what I wrote! Hmmm... okay, apologies. I misread something, clearly.
The Dreaming Duck 09-22-07, 02:39 PM	So? Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Until DAask came along, Clan Boramar ran these areas, too. The residents are going to expect that level of protection of DAask. Perhaps. But protection in these areas has NEVER been great, if one goes by S:CoT (and I understand you may intentionally be diverging from it). The character of Lower Dura is "Miserable and dangerous, this ward is a hotbed of crime and violence". It continues to say that "street violence occurs on a regular basis, amateur and professional cutpurses abound, and the Sharn Watch won't do much to help" - observing that most of the regulars do survive because of ties to gangs, one of the major criminal organizations, "or the simple fact of having nothing to steal". The Boromar Clan won't give you protection if you can't pay them for it. And even in Dragaera you've got the Orca toughs beating the crap out of Easterners (who do look like them and can beg for mercy). Personally, I view it as being much like Escape from New York. The Watch has written off this area as being too dangerous, which leaves it in the hands of the gangs. They will keep the violence from straying OUT of Lower Dura. If a prince of Breland is lost there, they might mass the Redcloaks to try to find him... or they might turn to an adventurer, like Snake ir'Plisskan. But as long as the events in LD aren't threatening life OUTSIDE of LD, they ignore it. Assuming someone hears about a murder in Fallen, in my campaign they're more likely to say "Why's that surprising? I hear they EAT each other down there." than "That's outrageous! I DEMAND that the Watch put a stop to it." With that said: I am mistaken. Daask does indeed do protection. And protection means having an interest in the long term. HOWEVER... I've already said that I agree with you that long term, it's a better investment for a criminal organization to milk its "clients" than to kill them. But you're the one who brought up Brust, so let's look at that. Vlad runs brothels and gambling establishments. But what is he? An assassin. What's that? Someone who kills for money. And there's quite a few of them among the Jhereg. But why would they do that? If they kill people, they lose any future income they could gain from those people. They do it because the pay-off for the assassination is far more significant than the amount they'd make from the "client" otherwise. Which is precisely my point about Daask and the warforged. One of the things that keeps people safe in Lower Dura is the simple fact of having nothing to steal. If the body of the warforged possesses significant value in and of itself - if killing the warforged gives you a thousand times what you could expect to make if you mugged that warforged every day and left him with nothing - then you've got the motive for killing him. It's the same motivation that drives the assassin: being willing to kill someone for a big payoff. The ex-soldier can't get ahold of a hundred gold pieces even if he had to; if he could, he sure as #@$% wouldn't be living in Lower Dura. It's better to run the protection racket on him, or keep him as a customer for the brothel. But the warforged? He's not coming to your brothel. You can't sell him dreamlily. And if his body is worth that much more dead than alive, there you go. DAask can't get away with that kind of operational standard for long, because it attracts enemies. Remember all of those soldiers you were referring to? Those are the trained men that DAask is preying on. **** 'em off, and you've got your hordes of underemployed men crashing DAask, instead of the warforged you want them to go after. Replacing DAask is a profitable future. It's also insanely dangerous. The soldiers I was talking about were second-level warriors. In having them go after warforged, even there I was considering that a dangerous, risky task - assuming that they would gang up and ambush lone warforged, relying on numbers and circumstance to bring down the foe. They also don't need to pick their targets; any warforged will do (whereas if you're trying to hit Daask, you need to know if that particular ogre is a member). But if a possibly second-level warforged is a threat, what do you make of Daask, with its trolls, medusas, harpies and minotaurs - creatures running all the way up to CR 7 assuming they have no class levels, and a number DO have class levels; per page 153 of S:CoT they may even have CR 11 troll hunters down there. Their ranks include rangers and creatures with scent (giving them the opportunity to track you if you go after them) and their leader is an CR 11 ogre mage who can turn invisible at will or change her shape. Add to this the fact that most people aren't going to have the Knowledge skills to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of these monsters. Among other things, that ex-soldier has FOUGHT warforged in the war. A soldier who is willing to kill a warforged for the adamantine in its skill is probably a soldier who has actually killed warforged before. It's experience he's had. But fighting a CR 11 troll or a creature who can turn you to stone just by LOOKING at you? That's a different experience altogether. It's the sort of thing that cries out for PCs. Beyond this, I wouldn't necessarily call soldiers Daask's primary prey (though I'll also point out that Vlad certainly takes advantage of Dragons and Dzur in his line of work). I'd say that their PRIMARY prey would be refugees and the commoners who do manage to eke out a living in Lower Dura - the Teckla in the Taltos analogy. I'd think that those "trained men" would either find honest work (in which case, yes, they would become prey), become legbreakers for the Boromars, or become the lesser gangs described as operating in LD, offering their smaller-scale protection. In this case, they very easily could clash with Daask - but lacking the numbers or the power of Daask, I'd expect them to avoid such clashes when possible. NOW, with that said, I was misreading Daask. While they do have muggers and such, it also sounds like by default (again, you can do whatever you want or ignore them completely) they do engage in more organized crime as well. That doesn't change the fact that if warforged have significant value, they'll be worth more dead than alive... making it equivalently the same as if someone was willing to pay an assassin to kill any warforged. Of course, with an opportunity like this, the Warforged could also choose to unite and replace DAask, taking their position. That would be interesting, too. Certainly, though that raises the question of whether the average warforged wants to be part of an organized crime group or whether he just wants to be left alone to do what he finds satisfying work (no right answer here - it all depends on how you personally view warforged). You still have the issue of that CR 11 troll hunter being able to take on a LOT of warforged. Looking back over it, Daask is a pretty significant force. Now, if warforged WERE valuable, the point is that I'd expect them TO band together for safety, and frankly to get out of Sharn before that CR 11 troll comes looking for them. Could they form a warforged army to defend themselves from predators? Certainly. It just creates a very different life and outlook for them. Among other things, I'd see it as being an environment in which the beliefs of the Lord of Blades would thrive; if warforged face significant danger in the cities of men, they're more likely to listen to the warforged leader calling on them to stand together. I'm only modelling it on what I know of the events surrounding Jack the Ripper. Newspapers were all over the police's inability to catch the killer of a bunch of hookers. Now that's an argument I find more compelling than 2004 US car theft statistics. However, from the description, it sounds to me like Lower Dura is far less pleasant than even Whitechapel. The Metropolitan Police DID patrol Whitechapel... and Whitechapel wasn't home to talking wolves and trolls (though it was home to some 1,200 lower-class prostitutes...). And in spite of the newspapers jumping on the case, the police never caught Jack, did they? Well, it's been three or four generations since Galifar. Most inhabitants of the Five nations have grown up with war, and don't remember Galifar itself. That will be a great relief to almost everyone: cynicism isn't that appropriate when you also get to survive to see old age out of the deal. I'll come back to this in a second post, but the more important issue is that it sounds to me like in your campaign people consider the Last War to be over. If you've already moved on another three years, perhaps it is. In my campaign, it's definitely not and everyone knows it. Galifar is the reason people were fighting: to return the broken world to the proper state of Galifar under their king. That hasn't happened. The only reason people have stopped fighting is because they're terrified of the Mourning. They don't know why it happened and they're too scared to continue to fight until they know if it's going to happen again. The dominant mood isn't "Phew! Now I'll live to see old age!", it's "Will any of us live to see old age, or will the world end tomorrow?" As long as the Mourning remains a mystery, people live in fear of it - and they know that should that mystery ever BE solved, it will bring the return of war as the rulers seek to finish what came before. As I've said, this isn't "right", and there's nothing wrong with a Khorvaire that has a sunnier outlook on things. But this is what makes sense to ME. The Mourning is an inexplicable horror that has destroyed an entire nation and left hundreds of thousands of refugees (People we were fighting only a few years ago). We don't have any idea of why it happened or if it's going to happen again. To me, it's more of a post WWII situation... which brings us back to film noir. Looking to the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir#Worldview.2C_morality.2C_and_t one) on the subject, one author is quoted as saying "it is as if the war, and the social eruptions in its aftermath, unleashed demons that had been bottled up in the national psyche." In my opinion the Mourning makes this all the worse. WW II was a war with a clear conclusion, which TLW lacked. And the looming threat of the atomic bomb was nonetheless something we understood and had created; with the Mourning it's as if the universe itself may be out to get us. Hence, the last thing I see in the world is great relief; I see pessimism and the fear that this may be the last generation, the belief that the golden times the nonhumans still speak of will never come again. But that's fine. I like my world dark. I like Lower Dura to be the place where the only hope comes either from allying yourself with criminals or from adventurers. And in that world, I can't justify warforged surviving as they are described if their corpses are valuable, so I'll go with the creation explanation. You feel that a more optimistic, moral world makes sense. You've got the law as a more efficient force that people can trust and rely on in this world. And you believe that these factors would protect the warforged even if their corpses had value, so you choose your path. Both perfectly valid stories - we're just doing what makes sense to each of us.
Alex_ 09-22-07, 03:08 PM	What's with all this talk of having to kill Warforged to take pieces of their armor? What if my Warforged spell caster or Warforged with high ranks in repair or a spellcasting decides that everyday, they're going to remove a piece of adamantine, take 1dX damage, and heal/repair it back so they're perfectly fine? Then they use the metal for whatever it is they want? Sell it to someone. Use it to make weapons and gear which would sell for even more, and I'd be reaping greater profits since much of the material is coming from a free and renewable (regrowing in seconds/hours) resource. I can do this every night while the party sleeps and during other moments of downtime. No death. No moral/ethical/alignment concerns (donor is willing). No legal concerns, and even if it were illegal, do they have to know where the material is actually coming from. I could be a miner or a trader. Or I could be like any other adventurer who got into a fight with bandits/goblins/BBEG, killed them, and took their stuff. Even if I were Evil or a criminal, killing Warforged would be foolish as well. Put them down below 0 HP so they go inert. Put them in a cellar or something and just keep removing the material, healing or repairing them as needed.
The Dreaming Duck 09-22-07, 03:20 PM	Well, it's been three or four generations since Galifar. Most inhabitants of the Five nations have grown up with war, and don't remember Galifar itself. This just got me thinking. In D&D, every PHB race except humans and half-orcs can live to be over a hundred. Technically, elves born on the day the Last War began aren't even "adults" yet; and any "middle-aged" dwarf, elf or gnome was alive when the Last War began. Kalashtar are the only ECS race with inhuman lifespans (aside from warforged, but they didn't exist); a kalashtar has an average maximum lifespan of 190 years, and any old or venerable kalashtar was alive when the war began. What makes this interesting to me is to consider the impact this will have by nation. Thrane has the highest human population, meaning the fewest who remember the good ol' days. So I've broken this down into racial breakdown of the remaining Four Nations. These numbers are "Percentage of national population that was alive before the war if they are this age or higher" - so it's not that 11% of the Aundairian population WAS alive, it's that 11% is comprised of a race whose members were alive if they are adults or older. If they were alive as adults, they'll also be alive if they are middle-aged, hence the cumulative numbers in parentheses. "Impossible" refers to races with shorter lifespans or warforged; I've ignored "other" percentages. Aundair: Adult - 11%; Middle-Aged and Old 11% (22%); Venerable 21% (43%); Impossible - 54% Breland: Adult - 8%; Middle-Aged and Old - 21% (29%); Venerable 14% (44%); Impossible - 55% Karrnath: Adult - 8%; Middle-Aged and Old - 18% (26%); Venerable 18% (44%); Impossible - 52% Thrane: Adult - 4%; Middle-Aged and Old - 9% (13%); Venerable 14% (27%); Impossible - 70% What surprises me is how close the numbers run for Aundair, Breland, and Karrnath. I'm not going to hazard a guess as to whether the racial breakdown of the nation is universal across age groups (IE If elves make up 8% of the Brelish population, is that 8% of all age groups, or weighted in one direction or another; given how long they can live, I'd be more inclined to think they'd be less than 8% of the adult population and more than 8% of the venerable population). But if it is, almost half of the venerable people in those nations were alive before the war; and in Breland and Karrnath, over a quarter of the middle-aged population was. These numbers are skewed slightly. I've included halflings in "Venerable", a category they hit at 100, with an average maximum life of 150 years and a maximum of 200. Technically, they need to be 104 to have been born before the war, and that one-year-old halfling won't remember much about Galifar. On the other hand, I left half-elves to venerable, when it's possible for an old half-elf to have been alive; in fact, any venerable half-elf was an adult by the time the war began. An adult dwarf who fought in the first days of the war when he just raised his axe (average adult age of 57 for a 1st-level fighter) would be 161 in 998 YK - in the middle of middle-aged. This doesn't actually mean anything, I just think that it's interesting. In many of the nations, there ARE people who remember Galifar. And of course, the next question is the impact of living memory or lack thereof on the people fighting. Personally, what makes sense to me is that the people with no living memory of Galifar would actually paint a rosier picture of it than ever truly existed. This is why they are fighting, after all - to restored this fabled kingdom under their leader. So again, for me I have the disappointment. We believed that we were fighting to bring about something better than we've ever known - a world WITHOUT war, a world with justice, a world under our king. Instead, after all those decades of sacrifice and pain, we just... stopped. We don't have a better world. Our king isn't ruling. We just aren't fighting any more. And on top of that, we have the Mourning - an unexplained disaster that could kill us all tomorrow. The Thranes butchered my family at Vathirond. I don't just want peace. I want REVENGE. I want to know that their loss meant something. This time out won't be a cause of celebration for me. But that's just my doom-and-gloom spin on things. ;)
Kreistor2 09-23-07, 03:16 AM	It continues to say that "street violence occurs on a regular basis, amateur and professional cutpurses abound, and the Sharn Watch won't do much to help" Okay, what happens to an area like that over the long term? How long can a region defined like this continue to survive in the same form, in our reality? I explain that the Watch doesn't help because the organized crime element in the region buys them off, personally. My Watch are notoriously underpaid, which means they have family in places like this, and they have a vested interest in seeing these areas protected. The Watch aren't nobles (like the Pheonix Guard in Dragaera, for instance): who do they want to protect in the long run -- family or employers? For the Watch to not care, they have to trust that their own interests are protected. And even in Dragaera you've got the Orca toughs beating the crap out of Easterners (who do look like them and can beg for mercy). Dragaera is a society segmented into strict classes. Some of that is breaking down, but Easterners are still viewed as less than human. There is a physical difference, after all, especially in size and strength, and especially in magical prowess, so the Easterners have no advantages to level the playing field. Warforged are advantaged in the physical and training areas over humans. Inherent AC, fortification, Con bonus, natural attack, and at least 1 BAB for any veterans... Warforged are inherently better combatants than humans. The analogy of Easterners to Warforged doesn't fly very well. Personally, I view it as being much like Escape from New York. Such areas shouldn't last in that form long. Unending crime has consequences. Thieves turn on their own, and in the real world, there are no hit points -- a knife in the back is death, and the greater your reuptation for being worth something, the more frequently you'll be attacked. No one survives at the top for long, meaning a place like that kills off its best faster than the weak. In DnD, that higher level character can survive the worst attack of a low level attacker (if he has more HP than the maximum damage of the attacker, he can't die), no matter how lucky the guy is, but in reality, anyone can hit your heart and then it's over. With that said: I am mistaken. Daask does indeed do protection. And protection means having an interest in the long term. HOWEVER... I've already said that I agree with you that long term, it's a better investment for a criminal organization to milk its "clients" than to kill them. Cool. I was fairly certain they did, but I had a game to prep for Sat, and couldn't afford the time to look it up. Vlad runs brothels and gambling establishments. But what is he? An assassin. What's that? Someone who kills for money. And there's quite a few of them among the Jhereg. But why would they do that? If they kill people, they lose any future income they could gain from those people. The most common reason is that they violated the Jhereg law: typically, stealing from the Jhereg, betraying a Jhereg to law enforcement, or the like. They make examples of such people, since if people think they can get away with it, then the Jhereg will bleed money, since none of them have any actual loyalty to the Jhereg. There are other lesser reasons, like a war between rival gangs (Vlad did most of his 'work' to this end, IIRC, killing Jhereg of rival organizations), but let's not forget that Vlad's first job for the Jhereg was to bust some kneecaps, not kill. A dead man can't pay back the loan. They do it because the pay-off for the assassination is far more significant than the amount they'd make from the "client" otherwise. I don't remember Vlad killing any clients that hadn't committed some sort of betrayal of the Jhereg. They killed to make examples, and it doesn't take a death to scare people into paying their bills. If the body of the warforged possesses significant value in and of itself - if killing the warforged gives you a thousand times what you could expect to make if you mugged that warforged every day and left him with nothing - then you've got the motive for killing him. Yes, there is a break point, and it would be less than a thousand times, in my opinion. That's why I make it a moral issue. Murder is just not that easy. It's one thing to be a soldier: it's another to kill in order to tear up a body for spare parts. Even if you get those spare parts, you have to find someone willing to melt them down. Now you're talking about organization, not marauding, and that's pitting you right up against DAask. So now DAask has to be involved, and your profit just nose-dived, since they get the greater cut. It's the same motivation that drives the assassin: being willing to kill someone for a big payoff. Well, Vlad killed Dragaerans because he hated them, and the money was a nice bonus, but I agree that there are people in that world that do kill solely for the payoff. (Not Mario, though. He is an... artist would likely describe it best.) The ex-soldier can't get ahold of a hundred gold pieces even if he had to; if he could, he sure as #@$% wouldn't be living in Lower Dura. Is he going to get 100GP for it? He can't smelt it, so he's got to have a blacksmith buy it. The blacksmith has to cut in the local mob, so that is another cut. And you don't get full value in the first place. If the metal is worth 100GP, the murderer will be lucky to get 10GP. Not a lot of people will risk death attacking a veteran soldier for 10GP. But the warforged? He's not coming to your brothel. So, what do your warforged do with their money. They have no need to eat, drink, sleep, and some feel they can't even get drunk. What in the world does the next thing to an automaton enjoy? Do your warforged only work 24 hours a day? They've been given a life, so what do they do with it, especially if they can't actually get a job which puts them in the Cogs? It's also insanely dangerous. The soldiers I was talking about were second-level warriors. In having them go after warforged, even there I was considering that a dangerous, risky task - assuming that they would gang up and ambush lone warforged, relying on numbers and circumstance to bring down the foe. At that point, how much is each attacker going to get for the risk? 1GP? For that little return, why on earth are they risking so much? any warforged will do To be worth 100GP, a warforged has to be adamantine. 100 lbs of iron is worth 10GP if bought as raw from a vendor. He buys for 5GP from DAask (100% markup is standard). The cutters get 10c on the dollar, so 5SP per iron bodied warforged. Split 5 ways, that's 1SP each. So, not any Warforged will do: you need the ones worth a darn, so only Adamantine will do. But if a possibly second-level warforged is a threat, what do you make of Daask, with its trolls, (snip) I'm not sure what the point of that paragraph was. It demonstrates that anyone operating a sriminal venture in DAask territory better be paying off the right people, or pay dear. It might also be something about DAask doing it themselves, instead of the soldiers concept. I'm not going to comment on it until I understand the relevance of the information. It just didn't seem on point. Beyond this, I wouldn't necessarily call soldiers Daask's primary prey That depends on what they are in Sharn to do, and that depends on the goals of your sisters. They are not given motiviation, so ultimately, DAask is a tool of the plot, not the rules. DAask's primary prey is whatever the DM wants it to be for whatever their sisters want. I'd say that their PRIMARY prey would be refugees and the commoners who do manage to eke out a living in Lower Dura - the Teckla in the Taltos analogy. For Clan Boramar, I agree. DAask may not be limited to the goal of only making money. I'd think that those "trained men" would either find honest work (in which case, yes, they would become prey), become legbreakers for the Boromars, or become the lesser gangs described as operating in LD, offering their smaller-scale protection. In this case, they very easily could clash with Daask - but lacking the numbers or the power of Daask, I'd expect them to avoid such clashes when possible. I'll drop another name. Glen Cook and his Garrett series (Sweet Silver Blues, et al.). This is exactly what many of the strongest veterans did upon return from the Cantard. I was misreading Daask. While they do have muggers and such, it also sounds like by default (again, you can do whatever you want or ignore them completely) they do engage in more organized crime as well. That doesn't change the fact that if warforged have significant value, they'll be worth more dead than alive... making it equivalently the same as if someone was willing to pay an assassin to kill any warforged. But are they worth enough to perhaps cause the Warforged to unite in self-defense? It doesn't take a lot of warforged to take down a minotaur, if they can catch him alone. And how long will it be before some of that warforged scrap metal winds up in the hands of a warforged smith, and the word gets out? Or a warforged escapes the ambush, or someone sees an ambush happen, or some dumb criminal gets drunk and mouthy? Something like this cannot be kept secret long, and though there may not be a lot of Warforged, there are even fewer monstrous members of DAask, and they are just as visible as a warforged is. Certainly, though that raises the question of whether the average warforged wants to be part of an organized crime group or whether he just wants to be left alone to do what he finds satisfying work (no right answer here - it all depends on how you personally view warforged). If he's in the Cogs, he doesn't have much work. Now I don't let Warforged work any longer than a human -- he may be immune to fatigue, but he's not immune to the non-lethal damage that causes the fatigue state. Others, though, allow Warforged to work straight through, making their income 3x that of a human. No dependents. No daily expenses for food, or water. No need for clothes. A warforged with work can rise out of the Cogs very quickly, if he has a job, so most can't have one in order to maintain their population in that sector of the city. You still have the issue of that CR 11 troll hunter being able to take on a LOT of warforged. Looking back over it, Daask is a pretty significant force. Well, yes and no. They have powerful individual members, but any that aren't gnolls shouldn't be good team players. Tough individuals, but not a cohesive force. Warforged, though, can be justified as true soldiers, trained to work as units and used to taking orders. They should fight better than average soldiers, IMO, and so all the tricks should come out... full defense, aid, disarm, sunder, trip, etc. Could they form a warforged army to defend themselves from predators? Certainly. It just creates a very different life and outlook for them. Among other things, I'd see it as being an environment in which the beliefs of the Lord of Blades would thrive; if warforged face significant danger in the cities of men, they're more likely to listen to the warforged leader calling on them to stand together. Yep. I wish I could expand on the LoBster in my cmapaign, but I just don't have the space in the storyline. My loss. Anyway, I think it would be an interesting plot to have the Warforged unite to face DAask. They'd get support from Boramar. You might wind up with a Warforged Mob replacing the Monstrous Mob. Definittely a change in political dynamics, and it has great potential for a Noir campaign. You've definitely got the common tin-man being forced to descend and become that which he hates. Now that's an argument I find more compelling than 2004 US car theft statistics. However, from the description, it sounds to me like Lower Dura is far less pleasant than even Whitechapel. The Metropolitan Police DID patrol Whitechapel... and Whitechapel wasn't home to talking wolves and trolls (though it was home to some 1,200 lower-class prostitutes...). And in spite of the newspapers jumping on the case, the police never caught Jack, did they? Well, there are a lot of different claims about why they failed, but I think that they at least made a show of trying to catch him is important. DAask needs to avoid the scrutiny that comes with an investigation, for the same reason the Jhereg need to avoid riots in their territory bringing in the Pheonix Guard -- the Watch would need to have public demonstrations of their effectiveness, and what better than to shut down some bookkeeping joints and drug houses along the way? I'll come back to this in a second post, but the more important issue is that it sounds to me like in your campaign people consider the Last War to be over. More over than most. It's gone into a Cold War stage. Lots of espionage and intrigue. My Last War was far nastier than most. Armies in mine number hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands. I have Elemental Cannon and weapons of major destruction, so area effect slaughter is common place. Death rates on the order of US Civil War, though, not WWI. Very nasty, but not yet nasty enough that people are abjectly afraid of war. If you've already moved on another three years, perhaps it is. In my campaign, it's definitely not and everyone knows it. The risk of the Next War in my campaign, however, just increased. The Dragons and Aerenal are at it again, meaning the Valenar are heading off to a real war. (If they really are all about the challenge, then what are they doing staying on Khorvaire attacking pissy little Q'barran outposts and Karrnathi forts that could never challenge them by definition? Unless they are just addicted to killing people and victory, and it all has nothing to do with a challenging fight. The real challenge in my campaign is back in Aerenal, so if they really are what Keith defined them as, Valenar is emptying as Elves seek glory against dragons.) Karrnath and Breland just found a solution to the Cyran refugee problem, and it's called Valenar: it was Cyran territory before the War, after all. hat better than to resettle the refugees on their native soil? With the Valenar diminished in numbers, even Kaius can't help but take the opportunity to end the incessant raiding from these sociopathic elves that seem to think killing is fun. Yes, it risks all out war, but if it stops Karrnath bleeding border guards to sate elven bloodlust, it's got to be worth the risk. That risks the Next War breaking out. I'm not going to do have it happen, at least not yet, but I am going to send the Valenar packing. Galifar is the reason people were fighting: to return the broken world to the proper state of Galifar under their king. That's what started the war, but that's not why everyone fought. Five nations broke into 14 distinct regions (Q'Barra didn't form out of fighting), but of those, only 5 retain Galifaran names. The goblinoids fought for money, then for a homeland. The Valenar fought for fun. The Eldeen fought only to defend itself. Mror the same. Lhazhaar stole from whoever they could, but didn't really fight for anything but booty. The only reason people have stopped fighting is because they're terrified of the Mourning. That's only part of it. The fighting was dying down long before that, according to the Forge of War (which I now own and haven't had time to fully read). They also stopped fighting because everyone was bankrupt and couldn't afford to attack anyone else. They don't know why it happened and they're too scared to continue to fight until they know if it's going to happen again. It's a convenience for the gov'ts that want peace, and for the movements that support pacificist views. They use it to create paranoia, sure. But such things fade with time. When someone wants war, they publish a fake reason for the Mourning, tell the people thre's nothing to fear, and wham, it's right back at it. WW2 did happen, even after the devastating losses of WW1, and Germany proved that people will believe what they want to hear, and Khorvaire has the media to inspire the populace. Mass death is not enough to hold back the tides of war long. The Mourning is an inexplicable horror that has destroyed an entire nation and left hundreds of thousands of refugees (People we were fighting only a few years ago). We don't have any idea of why it happened or if it's going to happen again. But that it's the result of wartime activites is a fair leap to a conclusion. To me, as an engineer, it seems more like a horrible experiement ran out of control, and experiments on such things have not stopped as a result of the Mourning. It may have been an experiment for a weapon for war, but technology for war has other uses, so that same technology may have been studied for some other purpose, and wound up with the same result. But experiementation has not been halted, unlike the war, so for those that worry it was a result of House Cannith research, the Second Mourning can happen tomorrow despite the war ending. "it is as if the war, and the social eruptions in its aftermath, unleashed demons that had been bottled up in the national psyche." In my opinion the Mourning makes this all the worse. Now wait a sec. He's talking about the phenomenon of Film Noir, not the real society. He's talking about the people that enjoyed watching the movies: he's not saying that the War caused people to create a society in which Noir situations really happened. The War lead directly to the Fifties, and that was viewed as many as a golden age, not a drab, soulless world. Hence, the last thing I see in the world is great relief; I see pessimism and the fear that this may be the last generation, the belief that the golden times the nonhumans still speak of will never come again. Fear, sure. But the fear of the 60's did not lead to dark days. The 70's included a recession caused by war, but the fear of the bomb did not turn that recession into depression, and the loss of that war didn't lead to that end in the US either. Fear does not always inspire decadence and decay. The Blitz of London inflamed the British to greater efforts against the Germans. Fear can have the opposite effect to paranoia and pessimism: it can inspire loyalty and noble self-sacrifice. And in that world, I can't justify warforged surviving as they are described if their corpses are valuable, so I'll go with the creation explanation. You feel that a more optimistic, moral world makes sense. You've got the law as a more efficient force that people can trust and rely on in this world. And you believe that these factors would protect the warforged even if their corpses had value, so you choose your path. It protects against large scale annihilation of the Warforged: it doesn't protect all individuals all the time. Sociopathic or desperate individuals get it in their head to go after a Warforged body once in a while, disovering that once they have the material, there's not much they can do with it without giving their crime away, and even if they do find someone willing to buy it, the "hotness" of the material means they get pathetic return on the dollar. Heck, you can get more iron ripping the iron railings off a house, and that won't put you in a noose. Criminals, for the most part, are morons. They don't think things through, and so wind up caught by their own stupidity. Soldiers capable of organization and smart tactics are smart enough to realize that they aren't going to get away with mass slaughter, and small sale slaughter is risking hanging for insufficient remuneration. If you're going to risk a hanging, you go big or you go home, and the body of a warforged just isn't that big.
The Dreaming Duck 09-23-07, 03:46 PM	Okay, what happens to an area like that over the long term? How long can a region defined like this continue to survive in the same form, in our reality? And that is another key in this discussion - reality vs. fantasy. I don't care if LD as a lawless area wouldn't work in our reality, because it makes a great story as it is. Looking back to Dragaera, you have the Teckla revolt essentially drawing on exactly the sort of social principles you mentioned earlier, and Verra actually saying "Those idiots! They don't understand that our world doesn't work that way!" So I recognize your concern. But my point is that I think Fallen is a great place to have in Sharn and it lets me tell an unusual type of story for a city. In real life, would it have been reclaimed after twenty years? Probably. But I don't WANT it to be reclaimed. I don't WANT Sharn to be purely realistic. You can call that handwaving (and I imagine that you will), but it's like Verra says. Eberron ISN'T our world. It doesn't have to do what makes sense for us. I explain that the Watch doesn't help because the organized crime element in the region buys them off, personally. I don't argue that at all. I'll also point out that the City Councilor of Lower Dura is Ilyra Boromar, who doesn't want the Watch causing trouble. I think it even calls out which Watch captains are in the pocket of the Clan. But when it gets to the areas where Daask has its strongholds - Khyber's Gate and Malleon's Gate, along with areas like Fallen - I say that they leave them alone because it's just too dangerous and they don't care what goes on there. They don't care what happens to the goblins, and anyone who goes into Malleon's Gate deserves what comes to them. You say "For the Watch to not care, they have to trust that their own interests are protected" - my point is "their own interests are protected" includes "staying out of areas where Watch mortality is extremely high." They are looking out for their families by not venturing into places where they would likely die unless they absolutely have to (like a prince of Breland getting lost there) and even then, they might hire adventurers to do the job, because now we have a story. Having places where the watch is afraid to go may NOT be realistic - but in this case, I prefer my fantasy to your reality. Now looking to the warforged, I'll reiterate what's been said before - the city councilor in charge of the Cogs hates warforged. "If Nolan had his way, all warforged would be melted down..." This is not a man who's going to demand that the Watch investigate warforged murders. If anything, he's going to help cover them up or demand that the Watch stay out of it. As a side note, I certainly have SECURITY in the Cogs in my campaign, but it's private security - either House Deneith for the important areas, or hiring veterans who couldn't make the Deneith cut for others. There's businesses down in the Cogs, and they need to protect their interests, though they essentially run their businessses as fortresses and keep their nose out of anything else. The point is that they can also pursue their interests without worrying about the law. Blackwater (or Blackwheel) is in charge, not the police. Some of that is breaking down, but Easterners are still viewed as less than human. Glad we agree on that. There is a physical difference, after all... The analogy of Easterners to Warforged doesn't fly very well. OK, you've totally lost me. There's a physical difference between humans and warforged, too. So far, we're on the same page. But as I read your argument, you're saying "Easterners are weaker than Dragaerans, so they are despised; warforged are stronger than humans, so they won't be despised, they'll be treated OK." Given that you place such great weight on things being realistic, I'm amazed at the idea that you would consider strength to somehow eliminate bigotry or racism. Just looking to the facts, as you say, warforged are essentially superior to humans in many ways. Most have military training. On top of that, they have a deadly natural weapon. Warforged are dangerous. This won't make the typical commoner like them or trust them; it will make them afraid, and that doesn't usually bring out the best in people. Warforged are about as alien as you can get while still being humanoid. You've talked about "They can beg for mercy in a langauge you can understand" - but as multiple people have said, that hasn't done a damn thing for slaves throughout history. And those were creatures of flesh and blood. The warforged has a metal face. He may beg in a LANGUAGE I can understand, but his face isn't the face of a human. His voice isn't the voice of a human. He himself is a thing made for war. Again, I am puzzled by your general statements about how our reality wouldn't support various things and then this refusal to look at the cruelty and bigotry that does exist in our world. Look at the violence and oppression done to African-Americans in the US for more than a century following the Emancipation Proclaimation. As of 998 YK, the warforged have only been "free" for two years. They're dangerous, which will frighten people. They're inhuman in appearance. They are symbols of war, which if people believe the war is over they want to forget. Warforged aren't easterners, but I see no reason they'd be treated better than easterners. If anything, people will fear them - which will result in them being treated even worse. Yes, there is a break point, and it would be less than a thousand times, in my opinion. That's why I make it a moral issue. Murder is just not that easy. It's one thing to be a soldier: it's another to kill in order to tear up a body for spare parts. Even if you get those spare parts, you have to find someone willing to melt them down. Now you're talking about organization, not marauding, and that's pitting you right up against DAask. So now DAask has to be involved, and your profit just nose-dived, since they get the greater cut. First off: I agree with those first few sentences. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that murder is a trivial thing for anyone. I'm not saying that this is something just anyone would do. But I'm saying that there ARE those who would do it. They may be horrified by it but feel that they have no choice; they may be people who hate the warforged specifically because of something in their own history; or they may be people who have been truly desensitized to violence by years of war. I personally believe that people would find it easier to kill a warforged than a human; whether or not it begs, it doesn't bleed. It's not what you are. You can more easily tell yourself it's just a thing. Now, tearing it apart? I don't think the typical guy-on-the-street would do this. I expect it would take skill and tools. But we're in the Cogs, so there's hardly a shortage of smiths - and if the warforged body has value, I'd certainly expect there to be chop shops set up, likely operated BY Daask or the Boromar Clan. Yes, that takes a cut out of my pay. But if I get 50 gp instead of 100 gp, that's still as much as I'd make in a year in an honest job with a Dragonmarked house... a job I may not be able to get. As for competing with Daask, that's something else entirely, but if that's true, that implies that Daask has an interest in the field. Personally, I'd think Daask would BE the field; I'd suggested soldiers being the problem before considering Daask. If Daask is interested, it's much easier for them. That troll hunter can kill CR 2 warforged all day long - and if he's a troll hunter he even has stealth to help. If there's a market for Daask, it will be an ugly thing, and the councilor of the Cogs will be happy to let them do it. Is he going to get 100GP for it? He can't smelt it, so he's got to have a blacksmith buy it. That's raising an entirely different question: the value of the warforged. If you say that the metal in an adamantine warforged is only worth 10 gp to the killer, then your issue isn't even morality, it's that they just aren't worth that much. At that point, you'd get more from mugging a guy wearing a breastplate and selling his breastplate. I've heard all sorts of numbers thrown around, and some make more sense to me than others. If he's only going to get 10 gp - which he'd have to divide up among his buddies - no, I don't think it's worth it, with the exception of those who hate warforged to begin with; remember, we've had lynchings with no value from the body at all. If the body's worth 50 gp to the killer, we're starting to get somewhere. If it's worth 100 gp to the killer, then we're talking years of work for that one death; that's where I can see the Cyran refugees doing it. Remember, the Cyran refugees have nothing and may also have trouble finding honest work because no one wants them around; if one dead warforged could secure the future of your family for a year - and if you can pick an enemy warforged, one who probably killed your own people during the war - which comes first, your family or this thing? Money is the issue. If you say that even that professional warforged stripper won't give you a better price than 10 gp, then you've solved your problem right there; as I said, morality barely needs to play into it, it's simple risk versus reward. If the payoff rises to 100 gp, that's where I see a different story. So, what do your warforged do with their money. They have no need to eat, drink, sleep, and some feel they can't even get drunk. I certainly don't think they can get drunk on alcohol; among other things, they are immune to poison. If you create a form of warforged alcohol, then great, I'd expect that to be a big deal - and if Daask has the market on that, the warforged become valuable, sure. Gambling is another possibility. However... especially if they can't actually get a job which puts them in the Cogs? If he's in the Cogs, he doesn't have much work. Since when did being in the Cogs mean "Not having a job"? The Cogs are an industrial district. Most of the warforged are in the Cogs BECAUSE they have have jobs: basic jobs paying 1 sp/day. So the question is "How many gp do I need before I can afford to live in a better district" combined with "As a warforged, do I want to live in a better district?" What I've always seen with the warforged is that they want a purpose. Having a job gives them purpose. Those that work in the Cogs are content to work hard at their foundry roles because it gives them a sense of meaning. Nonetheless, they aren't in the Cogs because they have no job, they're in there because that's where their job is... and yes, because at 1 sp a day, even if they don't spend it on warforged booze, it'll be a while before they can afford to move to the nice part of town. I like the warforged in the Cogs because it's where their work is, and because they DON'T care about living in an environment which is unappealing to humans... which is, in turn, why I don't want to deal with something that I feel would drive them out of it or turn the Cogs into a war zone. I'm not sure what the point of that paragraph was. You said that "replacing Daask is a profitable venture" for a handful of ex-soldiers. I was calling out the fact that it's FAR more dangerous than picking off warforged stragglers. Many of the members of Daask are more dangerous than a 2nd-level warforged, and with creatures like worgs on their side, being tracked down is a serious risk. As a side effect, it also addresses the fact that Daask has creatures powerful enough to fight warforged themselves if there was profit in it. DAask's primary prey is whatever the DM wants it to be for whatever their sisters want. Sure. You're the one who originally said that their primary prey were ex-soldiers; I was simply pointing out that it doesn't have to be. I'll drop another name. Glen Cook and his Garrett series (Sweet Silver Blues, et al.). This is exactly what many of the strongest veterans did upon return from the Cantard. Again, sure. Everything I said seems like logical work for soldiers, especially the most skilled among them. It doesn't take a lot of warforged to take down a minotaur, if they can catch him alone. But that brings us back to the earlier point. How do the warforged know that minotaur had anything to do with it? They aren't inquisitives. Great, a warforged was killed. Scrap turns up. What says "minotaur?" It could be soldiers of another nation taking vengeance. It could be the city councilor indulging HIS desire for vengeance. The world isn't a friendly place for warforged. Even if they hear that *A* minotaur had something to do with it, how do they find the right one? The killer seeking an adamantine warforged has a wide field to choose from. While there are ogres in the Cogs who have nothing to do with Daask; are you just going to go on an ogre killing spree? And assuming you do find a minotaur alone, it's NOT actually that easy; if he is armed (+9 BAB, greataxe 3d6+6, plus the potential of gore) he's got a better chance of hitting an adamantine warforged than a warforged with +2 BAB does of hitting him, and he hits hard. And if he's not armed, he's probably not the minotaur you're looking for. Beyond this, Daask is noted as being more subtle than people would expect; the human scrapper may spill his guts, but I think Daask will be a little sharper. If Daask goes into the business, I'd expect them to use their troll hunter, who's going to be using stealth for the approach, killing the warforged extremely quickly and having no problem hauling away the body, and not being the type to hang around the bars drinking and spilling his guts to random warforged. But all this is irrelevant, because I addressed it at the very begining. I'm not saying that the warforged couldn't defend themselves. I'm saying that they'd HAVE to defend themselves. And that I don't feel like making that part of the psychology and sociology of warforged in my campaign. The creation method eliminates the problem in a manner that I find more satisfying and realistic. A warforged with work can rise out of the Cogs very quickly, if he has a job, so most can't have one in order to maintain their population in that sector of the city. [quote] Again, we appear to have very different views of the economy of Sharn. I don't see 1 sp/day as quickly getting you out of the Cogs. If it does, I don't see how any common laborer jobs remain filled. [QUOTE=Kreistor2;13877008]They have powerful individual members, but any that aren't gnolls shouldn't be good team players. Tough individuals, but not a cohesive force. [quote] Umm... why not? As you said, Daask isn't just a criminal gang - it's a hand-picked force sent to pursue the interests of the Daughters. Their military commanders have PC classes, including fighter and ranger. Cavallah is described as being a careful commander who has successfully concealed the true power of her organization to date - implying that her followers are capable of carrying out this subtle agenda. And Droaam fought in the Last War as well, both in the service of House Deneith and on the Brelish border. Overall, the Gnoll Brotherhood is the most unified and disciplined force in Droaam, but Droaam has veterans of all species, and with Daask as a handpicked force with a subtle mission I would assume that their members have been chosen because they ARE team players. That's one of the other great things about Eberron - you CAN'T assume that just because the ogre is an ogre that he's not actually a military veteran capable of working on a team (even if his limited intelligence doesn't make him officer material). [QUOTE=Kreistor2;13877008]Anyway, I think it would be an interesting plot to have the Warforged unite to face DAask. Sure. Sounds good. You do it. I don't feel like it, which is why I'm taking a different approach with warforged body value. Honestly, I don't even know at this point if we're arguing, debating, or just talking about what we'd do. The Daask-Warforged war sounds like a fine plot, just not one I feel like using. Though it does sound like we have differing opinions as to the efficiency of Daask. That's what started the war, but that's not why everyone fought. Five nations broke into 14 distinct regions (Q'Barra didn't form out of fighting), but of those, only 5 retain Galifaran names. Sure, and those are the only ones I've been considering. Yes, I think the Valenar and the Darguuls are quite happy with the outcome of the war. I assume they haven't adopted your Victorian morality, though? But that it's the result of wartime activites is a fair leap to a conclusion. Well, first off, I'm not trying to argue any of this, and I'm not going to draw out the conversation (it's certainly off-topic). I was explaining what I am doing in my campaign, and I don't particularly feel a need to justify it; it's not going to change as a result of this conversation, any more than I'd expect you to suddenly say "Wait! This Victorian direction is all wrong!" However, on this point, I'd say "EXACTLY!" People don't know what caused the Mourning. War is one possibility, and so fighting has stopped. But the fact that it is only one possibility is EXACTLY why people are still afraid. Because they don't know what caused it and have no reason to believe that it won't happen again tomorrow. If they KNEW it was the war, then they'd at least know they were safe. But they don't. Perhaps it was the Lord of Blades. A demon lord, like the one that rose in Thrane. Or the begining of the end of the world, as the Children of Winter claim. You've brought up Cook and Brust; I'm again looking to Vance, with The Dying Earth. If we think the world could end tomorrow, that is going to have an impact on our outlook and morality. Consequences aren't as important, because the world itself may be doomed. Again, not trying to argue this point: just the way I run it. It protects against large scale annihilation of the Warforged... It does for you, and that's great. Again, for me, if the body had value, there would be chop shops. I appreciate the discussion, and I understand where you're coming from and why you do things the way you do them. But to me, if the body has significant value - and I've already described this above - it's not going to just be the sociopaths. Beyond this, we also have very different views on the degree of empathy people feel for the warforged and the degree to which you get hate crimes in the world. All fine - just different outlooks on the campaign. I consider the creation-metal approach to be a simple solution that fits the logic of the gameworld as I see it; but even there, I still expect there to be violence against warforged, just as there's violence against Cyran refugees in Sharn. We just run different campaigns.
Kreistor2 09-23-07, 04:42 PM	Wow, that's a lot of text. I hope you understand that I have to trim this back and drop some points unanswered. And that is another key in this discussion - reality vs. fantasy. [snip] You can call that handwaving (and I imagine that you will), but it's like Verra says. Eberron ISN'T our world. It doesn't have to do what makes sense for us. I don't call it handwaving if you can create justification for it. Perhaps a Rakshasa is keeping that way. Story opportunity! I say that they leave them alone because it's just too dangerous and they don't care what goes on there. They don't care what happens to the goblins, and anyone who goes into Malleon's Gate deserves what comes to them. Well, I'd say that's true, until it starts cutting into profit, at which point it becomes more profitable to spend money to eliminate the cash bleed. Now looking to the warforged, I'll reiterate what's been said before - the city councilor in charge of the Cogs hates warforged. "If Nolan had his way, all warforged would be melted down..." This is not a man who's going to demand that the Watch investigate warforged murders. If anything, he's going to help cover them up or demand that the Watch stay out of it. But when the Inquisitive starts printing about a series of Warforged murders and strippings, he starts looking very bad in the press, and his position becomes tenuous. His own prejudices either cause his downfall, and relacement by someone more sympathetic, or he sucks it up and does what he is paid to do. The latter has more story potential, to me. As a side note, I certainly have SECURITY in the Cogs in my campaign, For me it's whichever mob is in control. My Deneith is too expensive to keep muggers in line. It controls it in two ways: control the fences, and suppression of competition. OK, you've totally lost me. There's a physical difference between humans and warforged, too. Easterners are bullied because they are weaker than Dragaerans (even Teckla). Warforged should not be bullied in general, because they are tougher than humans. Warforged physically equate more to Dragaerans than Easterners. I personally believe that people would find it easier to kill a warforged than a human If they are capable of murder, I agree. As for competing with Daask, that's something else entirely, but if that's true, that implies that Daask has an interest in the field. Personally, I'd think Daask would BE the field; I'd suggested soldiers being the problem before considering Daask. Which establishes that roaving bands of marauders won't be doing this in the first place. It would be DAask itself. Fine, I agree. But then when the news hits the papers, DAask has to shut down shop to keep the watch out, and the issue is resolved, or at least the quantity is brought way, way down. That's raising an entirely different question: the value of the warforged. And that value has a set max for any normal composite plated warforged. Even it it were 300lbs of solid iron, it's still max 30GP to the end buyer. It cannot be worth more, unless the DM allows the alchemicals to be collected and worth some monetary value. Wood, stone, and obsidian are wort less per pound than iron. So the target has to be well chosen. Adamantine or Mithril bodies aer the only ones worth stripping. And in my world, those are worth a lot more, and are worth training in advanced skills. That CR11 Troll isn't facing a CR2 Warrior, he's facing a 6th level Mithril bodied Scout with Spring Attack and Hide skills, who may well have a Flaming weapon. Non-trivial and dangerous. Not beyond a good group of PC's, but not worth the trouble for NPC's. If you say that the metal in an adamantine warforged is only worth 10 gp to the killer Let's not get too mixed up here. Wit PC's, I rely mostly on morality. The Wizard is a blacksmith and can turn that stripped iron into weapons without DAask ever finding out. For marauders, I don't rely on any one thing. Normal warforged are protected by the inherent worthlessness of iron in the PHB. The others, well, as above, that Adamantine bodied Warforged is a battlescarred veteran. Anyone that thinks he's an easy mark is easy meat for him. That only leaves the smart killers, and that keeps the numbers down on its own. I certainly don't think they can get drunk on alcohol; among other things, they are immune to poison. If you create a form of warforged alcohol, then great, I'd expect that to be a big deal - and if Daask has the market on that, the warforged become valuable, sure. Gambling is another possibility. However... I don't worry too much about the details. There's something they can enjoy. You said that "replacing Daask is a profitable venture" for a handful of ex-soldiers. I was calling out the fact that it's FAR more dangerous than picking off warforged stragglers. If your people are getting slaughtered by the score, then yes, it's profitable to replace those doing the slaughtering with yourselves. You're going to die anyway, so why not do what has to be done to stop it, and then discover you're in position to make excellent mney if you succeed? How do the warforged know that minotaur had anything to do with it? They aren't inquisitives. It all predicates on the media getting ahold of the story and going public. This can attract the PC's into the tale, and they may be inquisitives. At the least, it may attract Merrix's attention and he can afford to hir inquisitives. He has a vested interest in seeing this stopped. Out of time. Losing electricity in a cuple mins. I'll continue later.
The Dreaming Duck 09-23-07, 06:11 PM	But when the Inquisitive starts printing about a series of Warforged murders and strippings, he starts looking very bad in the press... *Shrug* again, we have deeply different opinions about public sympathy for the warforged... and for that matter the accuracy of stories in tthe Inquisitive. If there's city councilors and crime lords who have a vested interest in the business of warforged murder, I think it's likely that it's either going to be covered up or that the papers will place the blame on, for example, a psychotic warforged (adding fuel to the "warforged are dangerous" fire). If, as in my world, many common people are actually AFRAID of the warforged, many of them will actually be glad that they're turning on each other. Even prostitutes are flesh and blood, and furthermore provide a service to some of your fine upstanding citizens. If these crimes are confined to the Cogs, where your fine citizens don't go, and confined to warforged, which we'd be just as happy to live in a world without, there's no concern for the average citizen. The people of your world may have more sympathy for the warforged and more concern for what goes on in even the worst parts of the city - but it doesn't bother me. His own prejudices either cause his downfall, and relacement by someone more sympathetic, or he sucks it up and does what he is paid to do. The latter has more story potential, to me. While for me, it has far more story potential if he embodies the worst in humanity. If he embodies the spirit we see in the KKK, or for that matter Hitler, whose hate politics hardly led to his political defeat. I feel that it's more interesting if he WON'T do anything, because it means that if the players care about the warforged, it's up to them to bring justice to the region, to expose the murders, etc. To me, the STORY is the players doing this, not the Inquisitive and the masses doing it for them. Easterners are bullied because they are weaker than Dragaerans (even Teckla). That may be why they are bullied. That alone is not why they are despised. Are you suggesting that prejudice against former slaves in our world is solely the result of the slaves being physically weaker than their former masters? In my opinion those who do despise the warforged will do so because the warforged are dangerous. Because they are symbols of the war for those who lost something during the war. And most of all - the key reason we get prejudice in our world - because they are different. They aren't going to be casually bullied; they are too powerful and dangerous for that. Which is exactly why the people who would LIKE to bully them will hate them. Which in turn is what leads to things like lynchings. Again, I think you'll see SOME warforged murders just as simple hate crime, regardless of the value of the body. Just not enough to change everything about their society. And that value has a set max for any normal composite plated warforged. I'm aware of that. You may be reacting to my earlier statement that they could "take any warforged". It was my assumption that we were only discussing adamantine, which are supposedly the most common warforged. My point is that it's not like hunting a murderer or hunting a member of a criminal organization. You don't need to know anything about the warforged except the metal of his skin. You can seize any opportunity that you find. I don't think any composite warforged would be worth commiting murder. I haven't looked into mithral. Adamantine seems to be the risky substance, but it's also the most common body type. And in my world, those are worth a lot more, and are worth training in advanced skills. That CR11 Troll isn't facing a CR2 Warrior, he's facing a 6th level Mithril bodied Scout with Spring Attack and Hide skills, who may well have a Flaming weapon. HOLY %*#%$!!! OK, there is really no point in comparing our campaigns any more, because they have absolutely nothing in common. In my campaign that warforged is worth training in advanced skills, which means he's going to be a 2nd-level fighter. There's NO WAY a 6th level PC-class character is going to end up in the Cogs, because that guy ought to be working for some mercenary company, noble house, or something, not hanging around the $#@^ing Cogs for 1 sp/day. Essentially, I don't see there being many composite warforged, because they are WARFORGED, built for war, and therefore MOST are constructed of adamantine or mithral; composite plated are rare. But yeah, we can really let this drop here, because we are on such distant ends of the spectrum that there's not going to be much middle ground here. If your people are getting slaughtered by the score, then yes, it's profitable to replace those doing the slaughtering with yourselves. You're going to die anyway, so why not do what has to be done to stop it, and then discover you're in position to make excellent mney if you succeed? But your people aren't getting slaughtered by the score. This is a separate issue: Daask versus random soldiers. First you said that the soldiers were the primary prey of Daask - something I've never said. Than you brought up the fact that random slaughter is bad business for organized crime, and I agree - unless that slaughter brings in so much gold to outweigh the other loss. Slaughtering ex-soldiers won't do it. So again, where are you getting the situation that gets these soldiers to try to replace Daask or the Boromars? Also, if you're talking about 6th-level fighters with flaming weapons, we're back to there being no point to the debate; I'm talking about 1st and 2nd level warriors, to whom that CR 11 troll is going to be a horrorshow. The way I look at it, the whole point of that troll is that he's something the Watch and the locals are simply unprepared to deal with - that this REQUIRES PC intervention. If you're saying that the Cogs are chock full of 4th-6th level veterans, Daask becomes a far less significant force. It all predicates on the media getting ahold of the story and going public. This can attract the PC's into the tale, and they may be inquisitives. You just said the magic words. THAT'S where I see the story. Not in the Inquisitive stirring up massive public outrage and a liberal populace demanding that the Watch perform a large-scale cleansing of the Cogs. For me, the story is the story largely getting killed in the media, but being brought to the attnetion of the PCs, whether by the reporter who can't tell the tale, a warforged who asks the warforged in the party for help, or Merrix d'Cannth. What makes the story interesting to me is that there's no justice for the warforged. They aren't to blame. They didn't asked to be made. They served loyally during the war. Now they're just trying to earn an honest living in the Cogs. Yet there are people who hate them simply because of the nation they served in the war (not even their choice - the nation they were sold to), because they're made of metal instead of flesh, because they're dangerous - something they can't even help. There are people in the government who would like to see them melted down or returned to bondage. If they are going to have justice, it's going to be in the hands of the PCs or the warforged themselves - but I'd rather have it be a PC who inspires them to unite than to just have it happen at random. For me, the interesting story isn't the public demanding that the Watch act. It's the fact that the public doesn't care and the Watch won't act, and the players have to find those few people who DO care. The players have to be the ones to make a difference in the world, because the best outcome won't happen if it's left alone.
Kreistor2 09-23-07, 09:47 PM	But all this is irrelevant, because I addressed it at the very begining. I'm not saying that the warforged couldn't defend themselves. I'm saying that they'd HAVE to defend themselves. And that I don't feel like making that part of the psychology and sociology of warforged in my campaign. The creation method eliminates the problem in a manner that I find more satisfying and realistic. And all of the potential stories that go with it. Baby and bathwater. Again, we appear to have very different views of the economy of Sharn. I don't see 1 sp/day as quickly getting you out of the Cogs. If it does, I don't see how any common laborer jobs remain filled. The difference between 1sp/day for a warforged and a human is that the warforged has nothing he must spend it on. Where the human will wind up spending 9cp on daily needs, the warforged doesn't, so it is close to pure profit. And if you let warforged ignore fatigue entirely, like some do, then where a human makes 1sp/day, a warforged makes 3sp/day. If anyone can get out of the Cogs quickly, it's an industrious warforged, at least according to the math. Umm... why not? As you said, Daask isn't just a criminal gang - it's a hand-picked force sent to pursue the interests of the Daughters. Droaam society isn't lawful. It reads as very chaotic. Might makes right, with the Daughters at the top liking it that way. You're welcome to have a lawful style DAask, but I prefer them to be chaotic, which differentiates them from Boramar. Their military commanders have PC classes, including fighter and ranger. Cavallah is described as being a careful commander who has successfully concealed the true power of her organization to date - implying that her followers are capable of carrying out this subtle agenda. Chaos is capable of subtlety, too. Honestly, I don't even know at this point if we're arguing, debating, or just talking about what we'd do. I like the third. Less stress. And maybe we'll inspire someone else's campaign in the process. Yes, I think the Valenar and the Darguuls are quite happy with the outcome of the war. I assume they haven't adopted your Victorian morality, though? No, definitely not. The Valenar are too strictly defined to take there. When I talk about morality and warforged, I talk about the Four Nations only. For the other two, I notice that Valenar doesn't really care about anyone except those they can fight against, so a Warforged will likely find itself being tested to death, regardless of how many Valenar it winds up killing. Darguun has a very low percentage population of humans remaining, so it looks to me like a pogrom designed to evict everyone, with a touch of slavery. That means what few Warforged might be found there woould just be booted from the nation. I don't particularly feel a need to justify it; it's not going to change as a result of this conversation, any more than I'd expect you to suddenly say "Wait! This Victorian direction is all wrong!" Well, let me say that talking to you has coalesced some of my own chaotic thoughts on this. I am increasingly likely to introduce the DAask-Warforged war in the Cogs. My Warforged Wizard PC needs some warforged stuff, and this might be right up his alley. I'm again looking to Vance, with The Dying Earth. If we think the world could end tomorrow, that is going to have an impact on our outlook and morality. (Haven't read Vance.) Okay, I don't know how old you are. I graduated high school in '87. There was still a USSR. Estimates on nukes in the two major arsenals were enough to destroy the world 5 times over. Teh clock to destruction was at 11:59:59. We did expect the world to end tomorrow. It could have been caused by the attack on Libya. Or Grenada. Or Russia in Afganistan. Or America feeding Stingers to the mujahadeen. Or a simulation of a Russian attack left running on a computer in a mountain making the US think the birds were flying (thank goodness they called the Brits who told them there wasn't a single radar blip in the sky, and the generals sweated out as the simulation destroyed the US in their face). And yet, we didn't devolve into cavemen morally. The threat of destruction at a moment's whim has a second possible outcome. I like to use Feudal Japan as the most extreme example. Politeness became the most absolutely needed quality in any person. A lack of politeness brought down someone's sword on your neck, so you can view it as Social Darwinism. And now from your next response... *Shrug* again, we have deeply different opinions about public sympathy for the warforged If it was that low, how did they get citizen rights in the Treaty of Galifar? Forge of War describes the soldiers the Warforged fought beside being the first to bring up the subject of Warforged sentience. (Still haven't read it all, so forgive me if I'm off.) This has you in a dichotomous position. Soldiers are behind their rise in social status and soldiers are responsible for the mass prejudice against them. Someone has to be behind that rise in status. Who was it in your campaign, and why are they now ignoring the population they so strongly backed a few years before? and for that matter the accuracy of stories in tthe Inquisitive. Well, the first printed media propoganda was in support of the Protestant movement, back when the printing press was first invented. Manipulation of the reader comes with the invention. I think you'll see SOME warforged murders just as simple hate crime, regardless of the value of the body. Complete agreement. It does happen. (My warforged wizard PC hides in a tower and never sees it, much to my disappointment. he doesn't involve his PC in the world at all.) OK, there is really no point in comparing our campaigns any more, because they have absolutely nothing in common. In my campaign that warforged is worth training in advanced skills, which means he's going to be a 2nd-level fighter. There's NO WAY a 6th level PC-class character is going to end up in the Cogs, because that guy ought to be working for some mercenary company, noble house, or something, not hanging around the $#@^ing Cogs for 1 sp/day. The problem with that is there should be a surplus of people looking for those jobs. With so many out-of-work soldiers, wages for those jobs should be through the floor. That's more or less what happened after the British returned from winning the War of 1812 (the pseudo-end before Waterloo). So what is that Warforged doing in the Cogs? Visiting old war buddies. Tracking a criminal. Protecting someone important. But i really don't limit the hunting to the Cogs. If the hunters are organized, they'll be taken anywhere in the city. Essentially, I don't see there being many composite warforged, because they are WARFORGED, built for war, and therefore MOST are constructed of adamantine or mithral; composite plated are rare. My demographic for that is the opposite. 90% composite, 7% Adamantine, and about 3% Mithril. But that is because I require the real metals to be used in their creation. Mithril is cheaper, but those types are more condicive to Scouting roles, which are not really what they were thought to be useful for until late in the war. For me, produciton of mithril bodies was last, and it was ramping up when the war stopped the forges. First you said that the soldiers were the primary prey of Daask - something I've never said. Okay, you've said this twice, and I ignored it the first time. I don't know what you're referring to. DAask is an organized criminal venture, which preys on anyone they can figure out how to prey on. They have the added complication of being an arm of the Daughters, which means they may have a plot driven secondary directive. I don't know where you think I think they prey on ex-soldiers by preference. the whole point of that troll is that he's something the Watch and the locals are simply unprepared to deal with - that this REQUIRES PC intervention. I can't go that direction. My campaign is already L12 and may cap out in the early Epics. Yes, the PC's are the strongest characters in Sharn, but I can never let them be stronger than the gov't. If they think their power can let them get away with anything, then I might have to show them what a Nation can do. I don't want to have to do that. So, yes, the gov't can deal with that L11 Troll. But that was planned from the start. There are still things the gov't needs the PC's for, but they're the weird and strange things, not the, well, I'd call a Troll mundane by comparison. I look for the players to feel special, not the PC's. They solve puzzles, which makes the players the source of the solution, not the stats on a page. It's not that I can't run a campaign where that Troll is the biggest problem in Sharn. Not in the Inquisitive stirring up massive public outrage and a liberal populace demanding that the Watch perform a large-scale cleansing of the Cogs. For me, the story is the story largely getting killed in the media, but being brought to the attnetion of the PCs, Well, that's great, except that means nothing happens in your world except what the PC's get involved with? This kind of thing can make for a great story-inside-a-story. Things like that make a world seem more alive. If the only big things that happen involve the PC's, then the rest of the world is static. Yes, it would make a great story, but the PC's have already levelled past that, and I have more than a year's worth of material in the current stories. But, I can describe events in the Sharn Inquisitive. The players might find it interesting to follow what happens in that story, and of course if they choose to side adventure into it, they can. But I won't force them to, if the world ending problems they are facing are considered more important.
The Dreaming Duck 09-24-07, 02:44 AM	And all of the potential stories that go with it. Baby and bathwater. Certainly. I have many stories I want to tell, and the stories associated with valuable warforged bodies aren't on the list. They aren't bad stories - but I don't have an interest in them. Where the human will wind up spending 9cp on daily needs, the warforged doesn't, so it is close to pure profit. If anyone can get out of the Cogs quickly, it's an industrious warforged... I'll argue the "warforged have no expenses". Does the warforged have living quarters anywhere? He doesn't need to sleep, so technically he doesn't NEED them... but does he carry all his possessions with him wherever he goes? If he's got weapons, I'd imagine the foreman doesn't want him showing up armed to the teeth for his foundry job. And if he's developed any interests beyond working (Reading books? Producing art of some sort? Acquiring new weapons? Possibly wearing clothing or jewelry, since some warforged do?) this is both a place to spend income and more possessions to store. Perhaps he'll just get a footlocker in a flophouse, but he still needs somewhere to store his stuff. And frankly, if there is warforged booze, if I'm a bartender, I'd charge a high price for it, because I know warforged can afford to pay. However, I agree that if anyone can do it, the warforged can. The question is, where does he go? A year's work with no expenses whatsoever gets him 33 gp. What's he do with that? You're welcome to have a lawful style DAask, but I prefer them to be chaotic, which differentiates them from Boramar. I respect that. However, what I see with Daask is a group that plays on humanity's tendancy to underestimate the monstrous races, using their appearance to lead people to BELIEVE that they are chaotic thugs while carrying out a more subtle agenda. None of the officers are chaotic in alignment; Cavallah is concerned with order and discipline; and she is acting carefully to conceal the true power of her organization. Droaam is chaotic, but it's far LESS chaotic now that it was ten years ago; the Daughters have turned complete anarchy into a working feudal system. Daask serves Sora Katra's ends. So you're certainly welcome to have them be chaotic - but I see the chaos as being a cover for their true goals. I like the third. Less stress. And maybe we'll inspire someone else's campaign in the process. Works for me. I'll try not to take anything personally, then. ;) I am increasingly likely to introduce the DAask-Warforged war in the Cogs. My Warforged Wizard PC needs some warforged stuff, and this might be right up his alley. Cool. (Haven't read Vance.) Okay, I don't know how old you are. I graduated high school in '87... We did expect the world to end tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I graduated high school in '87. My point is that the difference between the threat of the Cold War and that of the Mourning is that the Cold War has a face. Reading the news, we could find out what the current status was with the superpowers. We might have worried about fallout shelters or the like, we might have made The Day After, but I don't think I remember a night that I went to bed thinking "This could be it." I admit, there were a few scary times - Grenada and all - but I still don't remember ever being that afraid. Perhaps it's because I didn't grow up in a primary target. The Mourning? It's a complete mystery. No explanation at all. There's no red alert. There's no SALT treaties. No Star Wars defense plans. We understand atomic bombs; we can try to come up with defenses, we can anticipate blast radiuses, etc. The Mourning? We have no idea what caused it, or what could cause it to happen again... terrorists? One of the enemy nations? Or is it simply inevitable? It's not even like a huge natural disaster, because we understand natural disasters; we may blame ourselves for letting the levies go, but at least we can build stronger levies. With the Mourning we don't know a damn thing. We can't predict it. We can't understand it. We have no reason NOT to think that it won't happen again tomorrow except for the fact that it didn't happen today. And that makes it, in my mind, a VERY different thing from our Red Scare. (If it was that low, how did they get citizen rights in the Treaty of Galifar? It's all about the sources you choose to follow. Let's just take page 21 of the ECS, under "Relations": In general, the humanoid races of Khorvaire regard the warforged as an unpleasant reminder of the brutality of the Last War and avoid dealing with them whenever possible. In Thrane and Karrnath, the warforged are still seen as property of the military forces that paid to have them built, and most warforged in those nations still serve as slave labor... Throughout the rest of Khorvaire they have freedom but sometimes find themselves the victims of discrimination, hard-pressed to find work or any kind of acceptance. Races of Eberron echoes this, though it describes the warforged of Thrane and Karrnath as indentured servants instead of true slaves. And this makes sense to me. As I said before, the warforged are dangerous, a symbol of the war, and very alien. As for why give them citizen rights, assuming that it was up to all of the participating nations, Boranel probably thought it was the right thing to do, Thrane and Karrnath resisted, and for all of the lesser nations it was an obvious way to weaken the big four. For Darguun or the Eldeen Reaches, what's not to like about Aundair or Breland suddenly losing its construct army? And for everyone, it was a way of weakening House Cannith. I'm fine with FoW saying that there were soldiers who supported it, but the ECS didn't say "Warforged are beloved of soldiers everywhere!" and I'm still holding that above the rest. Though as you've noted, what's said in print is less important that what makes sense to the DM - and for the reasons I've given above, I don't see warforged being beloved. Again, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't solve all of the problems of African-Americans. Soldiers are responsible for the mass prejudice against them. Oh, I don't feel this. I think a soldier who served with a warforged is more likely to be comfortable around warforged, both because of his personal experience with warforged and because if he's a trained soldier, he's going to be more confident in his ability to defend himself - and the lethal nature of the warforged (armored skin, lethal natural weapon) is something I expect to frighten a commoner. However, I also expect soldiers to have experience FIGHTING warforged, which means that they will respond in a hostile manner to warforged with who served on the other side; and in my campaign, it's harder for a warforged to change his markings than for a human to take off his uniform. And if it comes to hostility, the soldier who's fought warforged before will be more comfortable fighting them again. But I think most prejudice would come from the civilians who are afraid of them, who didn't serve alongside them, and who haven't had the chance to work past the creepy constructness. Leading to the ECS's statement that the average person "avoids dealing with them whenever possible". Someone has to be behind that rise in status. Who was it in your campaign, and why are they now ignoring the population they so strongly backed a few years before? I mentioned the who earlier. The lack of backing? Because the action served its purpose. It was a political maneuver, and I'm sure you could find many similar actions in our world... a superpower doing something supposedly for the good of a particular group and having it actually work out poorly for the group they "helped." And if you look at nations like the Eldeen Reaches, Darguun, or Valenar, as I said, certainly in their interests to back warforged freedom, but they don't care about the fate of the warforged any more than they care about the fate of Cyran refugees. Races of Eberron (while I'm not crazy about the warforged chapter) echoes the fact that warforged were given freedom and then essentially abandoned, with many waiting around for someone to tell them what they were supposed to do with it. My demographic for that is the opposite. 90% composite, 7% Adamantine, and about 3% Mithril. Oh, fair enough, then. Again, this leaves us so far apart on the warforged spectrum that we aren't likely to have overlap in our games; again, I'm saying that the precious metals wouldn't work in my world BECAUSE there's too many vulnerable warforged... but in my world I probably see it more as 65% Adamantine, 20% Mithral, 15% Composite. I am curious about the 90% composite warforged. Are you positing that they were extremely cheap? That they were produced in huge numbers? Or was there another benefit to using them? Given that a warforged can't actually wear armor, the composite warforged is worse off than a human wearing studded leather (such as a typical member of the Sharn Watch), let alone a royal guard soldier in scale mail. If your thought is that most troops in the war didn't even have the equivalent of leather armor, or that the warforged innately possess superior skills that make them valuable despite the lack of defense, fair enough. But when you compare them to the Karrnathi Undead, even the adamantine warforged have a tough time matching up (the undead have darkvision, better AC than even an adamantine warforged, considerably better DR if the opponent doesn't have the right weapon, and the advantage of being "born" with 3 HD right off the bat). I just don't see the composite warforged as being great soldiers... unless they're cheap enough to offset that low AC. Okay, you've said this twice, and I ignored it the first time... I don't know where you think I think they prey on ex-soldiers by preference. Your first message at the top of this page. I don't think YOu think it, but you claimed that I did... Remember all of those soldiers you were referring to? Those are the trained men that DAask is preying on. So, yes, the gov't can deal with that L11 Troll. But that was planned from the start. Fair enough. I like Daask and Droaam, so I might be more inclined to make Daask even MORE powerful - again, since they've been hiding their strength, who knows how much worse it could get? Nonetheless, the government of Sharn being corrupt and weak serves my stories more than it being strong and reliable. There are still things the gov't needs the PC's for, but they're the weird and strange things, not the, well, I'd call a Troll mundane by comparison. I look for the players to feel special, not the PC's. They solve puzzles, which makes the players the source of the solution, not the stats on a page. It's not that I can't run a campaign where that Troll is the biggest problem in Sharn. Oh, I never said that troll was the biggest problem in Sharn. Among other things, the troll shouldn't even be making too much of itself for all the reasons you mentioned before. The story I was describing earlier wasn't "PCs! Help! There's a troll killing warforged!" It was "PCs! Help! Something is killing warforged in the Cogs. We don't know what, but someone powerful is killing the story. I think someone in the government is involved!" Over the course of the story, the PCs then have to discover who's killing the warforged, see if they can find a way to stop it (because killing one troll isn't the answer; Daask can easily replace it) - try to destroy Daask completely? Negotiate with Cavallah? Beyond this, they need to discover what's going on with the city council. And both Daask and the councilor may have independent plans only partially related to this. For the councilor, this is just the first step towards wider action against the warforged - as I said, he won't just cover it up, he'll spread the story that there's psychotic warforged down below, and blame THEM for damage Daask is doing. Meanwhile, Daask is working for the Daughters, and this may be part of some far greater and deadlier scheme. Then we have Daask's connections to the cult of the Shadow, which may be, for example, draining the souls of the murdered warforged for a dark purpose. So by the end of this, I want the players doing their best to expose and dethrone a corrupt councilman who wants to destroy the warforged of Sharn - no small thing, since he has allies among the rest of the Council. I want them to become deeply involved with Daask and the Daughters (and likely ending up allied with either the Boromars or coming to an understanding with Daask). I want them to be responsible for a shift among the warforged, with a warforged PC inspiring the warforged to defend themselves. They'll make a strong ally in that reporter who couldn't tell the story. And the Shadow cult will be a starting point for more trouble in the future. So yes, I think I can make my players feel special. There's more to it than "Ooh! We killed a troll!" None of that, however, changes the fact that the typical member of the WATCH is scared of that troll. Well, that's great, except that means nothing happens in your world except what the PC's get involved with? Not at all. The world needs to grow and evolve. The difference I'm seeing is that it sounds like your Khorvaire is generally moving in a positive direction. Mine's moving in a darker one. Many of the things that happen if the PCs aren't involved are more likely to be bad than good - setting up situations for the PCs to right. For example, Daask murdering warforged and the councilor covering it up is an action that takes place without the PCs being involved. And now, when they arrive in Sharn, there's an injustice to deal with. Not everything is doom and gloom in my Eberron; endless despair certainly loses any impact or meaning. But I'd be more likely to have relations between the Cold Sun tribes and Newthrone break down and fall into war, or Holy Uldra lead a crusade against the humans in the Talenta Plains, than I would be to have Newthrone come to a wonderful new level of understanding with the lizardfolk or for Uldra to abandon her message and embrace Halpum. Likewise, I'd prefer to have the good things that happen occur as a result OF player action. So, offscreen, warforged are murdered, councilor covers it up. PCs arrive, work through the whole thing, organize the warforged defense, do manage to get councilor replaced. NOW I have no problem with the PCs returning to Sharn to discover that the warforged are prospering and the new councilor is the best one in Sharn. Because they can feel responsible for those positive developments. They occured off-camera, but they occured BECAUSE of the players. Yes, it would make a great story, but the PC's have already levelled past that, and I have more than a year's worth of material in the current stories. But, I can describe events in the Sharn Inquisitive. The players might find it interesting to follow what happens in that story, and of course if they choose to side adventure into it, they can. Sure, that makes perfect sense - again, we're running different campaigns. And having a story unfold in the Inquisitive is a great thing to do. But essentially, it's the same issue as your observation that I'm throwing the baby out with the bathwater by going the creation route. I can see your point on stories that can be tied to it - I've just got enough stories without it.
ArcTan 09-24-07, 02:47 AM	Ah, but living in what sense? Living on our world requires a biological make-up. Warforged specfically do not have a biological make-up: theirs is alchemical. There are strict defintiions of what Living Construct means, mechanically, but anything beyond that is interpretational and subject to opinion. My own position, and like any other it is based on opinion, is that the Living component refers to the mind, not the body. What makes a Living Construct different from Constructs is the presence of a sentient mind, instead of a programmed response. You will not agree, I know that, but your opinion matters not in the least to me. That's how I understand these creatures. Well, I just have to point out that Inevitables and Nimblewrights and Homunculi and the awaken construct spell all kind of wreck this interpretation of "Living Construct". There are tons of sentient, intelligent Constructs in D&D. The vast majority of them -- all of the ones that aren't Warforged -- are not Living Constructs, at least by RAW. Because you're placing an artificial restriction on the creation of the T-rex, for argumentative reasons only. Specifically, you want me to create it alchemically or magically, only. Sorry, that is not a realistic limitation on creation. If I need a T-rex, I don't care how it is created. that's pretty much how it goes in any world: if someone wants something, they won't care much how it was gotten. It's not "unrealistic" to say that it is a fact that T-Rexes are extinct. Did you miss that this was why I said T-Rexes and not chickens or cows? It is simply a *fact* that you cannot get a T-Rex the old-fashioned way in real life. If you had one (just one) T-Rex, and that T-Rex died, it would be *absolutely impossible* to get a T-Rex, no matter what method you used. The means to make a new one does not exist anymore. Eldritch machine to create a time portal and collect a pice to clone it. Done. We are in Eberron after all, and Eldritch machines can literally do anything a DM needs. Yes, and now you see the point. The players could only make a new T-Rex if the DM handwaved a way for them to do so. In a world where there's no way to smelt adamantine, adamantine can still work the exact same way. All I'm saying is there's absolutely no way you can say that the fact that adamantine breaks down into component compounds (or, conversely, reacts with other compounds to make junk unusable compounds) means "you can make adamantine".
Kreistor2 09-24-07, 10:39 AM	Certainly. I have many stories I want to tell, and the stories associated with valuable warforged bodies aren't on the list. They aren't bad stories - but I don't have an interest in them. And if I am? I deserve to be argued down because I want to tell stories that someone else doesn't? That someone else is scared to? That's not directed at you, Duck. Does the warforged have living quarters anywhere? I've had a couple player argue they don't. I say, yes, but even at worst, they only need a closet with a chair. It's no life, but it's what a greedy player has anted in the past. And with no food or water requiements, you've got a higher percentage of your income going to housing, and that means a rise out of Lower Dura. A year's work with no expenses whatsoever gets him 33 gp. What's he do with that? Save it in the bank. In time, you can buy a place outside of Lower Dura, and you're out. Maybe it takes years, but Warforged right now don't know if they have a limited lifetime. I respect that. However, what I see with Daask is a group that plays on humanity's tendancy to underestimate the monstrous races Underestimate? Err... they're big scary monsters out of legend and myth, usually. Most DnD players I know treat them as tougher than they know they are. there were a few scary times - Grenada and all - but I still don't remember ever being that afraid. Because a constant state of fear is simply not possible. It's all over our history. Despite the fear, men went over the top in WW1. Despite the fear, the British in London went to work every morning. Despite the fear, the Germans did the same, even when firestorms that killed as many as nukes would tore their cities apart. When it is impossible to fight the enemy inspiring fear, things aren't the same. (The Vikings and Tartars got paid to not attack the French and Russians respectively, for instance.) But we were in a state where if we were attacked, the enemy would be annihilting themselves. However tenuous that was, it was hope, and hope is enough. Perhaps it's because I didn't grow up in a primary target. I grew up in a sleepy little town about an hour NE of Detroit. I felt pretty safe, until a former officer in the Canadian military told me that he had been involved in a project once, judging what the top 10 targets in Canada were. Included in that was the city of 100000 just 20mins NW of that little town. Sarnia refined all of the oil coming out of Alberta, and hitting that would stop a lot of the plastic production in both Canada and the US. I wasn't going up in a fireball, but I was too close to avoid dying from the cancer an attack there would induce. The Mourning? It's a complete mystery. Which really makes it more like an envoironmental effect than a weapon. It might not happen, and that allows for hope. Races of Eberron echoes this, though it describes the warforged of Thrane and Karrnath as indentured servants instead of true slaves. Which makes them valuable to their owners, so there they are inherently protected from roving gangs of chop shoppers.. Oh, I don't feel this. I think a soldier who served with a warforged is more likely to be comfortable around warforged, That's another vector for the info to get out, without involving the Inquisitive. It leaks out from a soldier that knows a soldier that knows a soldier that's involved. they will respond in a hostile manner to warforged with who served on the other side; Well, the Last War was a Civil War. Was this how the Blue and Grey treated each other? I've seena couple things that suggest there was great respect between the soldiers that fought each other. But I think most prejudice would come from the civilians who are afraid of them, who didn't serve alongside them, and who haven't had the chance to work past the creepy constructness. Yes, I agree with that. My problem is that you;ve got the soldiers hunting them down. I am curious about the 90% composite warforged. Are you positing that they were extremely cheap? No, just much cheaper than Adamantine or Mithril. They aren't particularly common, in my world. I think FoW says they ran 1000GP, suggesting that made them more affordable than a human soldier, but I don't think that math works out, personally. I'd probably put Mithril at 3-5K and Adamantine at 10K. The special types are worth building, but only for very specialized missions. Your first message at the top of this page. I don't think YOu think it, but you claimed that I did... Hrmmm... what was I thinking there. Somehow I lost the context saying it that way. I think by "soldiers" there, I meant "Warforged soldiers". As in "Remember all of those Warforged soldiers you were referring to? Those are the trained men that DAask is preying on." The knowledge of Merrix's little production is not out yet, so every warforged is assumed to have been a soldier. Fair enough. I like Daask and Droaam, so I might be more inclined to make Daask even MORE powerful - again, since they've been hiding their strength, who knows how much worse it could get? Nonetheless, the government of Sharn being corrupt and weak serves my stories more than it being strong and reliable. Politically weak, yeah. Social welfare incapable. Decadent and uncaring? in time. Doomed to suffer a rebellion and system change? Definitely. But they've got that rack of artifacts they've collected over the years... Newthrone come to a wonderful new level of understanding with the lizardfolk Hahahah! The PC's already caused something like that. They tracked a macguffin to Q'barra, and followed it through Adderport. There they stopped a Lizardman siege on the fort-town (which had been caused by changlings), and discovered there was something going on in Hakathorvak. There they stopped a Rakshasa (who had the macguffin) from freeing the Rajahs trapped by Rhashaak. Okay, it only temporarily stopped the fighting, but it did inspire one new thing: the lizardmen and humans actually talked to a conclusion of the attack on the city. And it did happen as a result of player action. Without the PC's, the lizardmen would have just left due to supply issues, but no channel of communications would have opened.
Kreistor2 09-24-07, 11:02 AM	Well, I just have to point out that Inevitables and Nimblewrights and Homunculi and the awaken construct spell all kind of wreck this interpretation of "Living Construct". There are tons of sentient, intelligent Constructs in D&D. The vast majority of them -- all of the ones that aren't Warforged -- are not Living Constructs, at least by RAW.[quote] And they are immune to Mind Affecting. They are programmed, not self-aware. Inevitables are extraplanar, which is an entirely different matter. [quote]It's not "unrealistic" to say that it is a fact that T-Rexes are extinct. Did you miss that this was why I said T-Rexes and not chickens or cows? And do you think it is impossible for us to eventually clone a Dinosaur? There are many in the world hunting for that strand of DNA that will make it possible. Or, if birds are their ancestors, we might be able to de-evolve them someday. Yes, and now you see the point. The players could only make a new T-Rex if the DM handwaved a way for them to do so. Any "scientific" style discovery has to be inherently handwaved in any game. You're not making a new point: I accept that. You proved nothing I am not aware of. The point is that DM's have made decisions about things already. By redefining the contents of the core rulebooks, which the decay of metal implies is happening, you're stepping on decisions DM's have already made. It forces them into world redesign. Your solution, however acceptable to you, may be completely unacceptable in campaigns already underway. Argue until your face turns blue if you like: anything that encroaches on decisions left to the DM previously is a bad thing.
Alex_ 09-24-07, 02:25 PM	[QUOTE=ArcTan;13886969]Well, I just have to point out that Inevitables and Nimblewrights and Homunculi and the awaken construct spell all kind of wreck this interpretation of "Living Construct". There are tons of sentient, intelligent Constructs in D&D. The vast majority of them -- all of the ones that aren't Warforged -- are not Living Constructs, at least by RAW. And they are immune to Mind Affecting. They are programmed, not self-aware. Vampires, Liches, and Treants, are all immune to mind-affecting abilities, but Manta Rays, Toads, and Lizards aren't. Being immune to Mind Affecting abilities is not an indication of how "self-aware" something is, which isn't even a distinction suggested in the game. Even normal constructs are generally self-aware. Hommoculi have alignment and personalities, as do Nimblewrights, which are actually Water elemental spirits trapped in a construct, not too much like elementally bound items. They're merely forced to obey orders from their masters. Inevitables are extraplanar, which is an entirely different matter. It's not an entirely different matter. Being extraplanar is never mentioned as differentiating Inevitables non-extraplanar constructs. They still have all the same traits and follow the same rules regarding constructs unless otherwise stated, and there's nothing stating otherwise. And do you think it is impossible for us to eventually clone a Dinosaur? I would say it's impossible. This is entirely based on current trends and my experience with paleontology and biology. Nobody here has access to a time machine or information from the future. It might happen, and it might not. There are many in the world hunting for that strand of DNA that will make it possible. Foolish people perhaps. There have been parts of extinct animal DNA found, but nobody sane goes out expecting to find enough intact with which to clone an actual animal that's been gone for over 60-odd million years. Or, if birds are their ancestors, we might be able to de-evolve them someday. Now that's impossible. Evolution simply doesn't work that way. Any "scientific" style discovery has to be inherently handwaved in any game. You're not making a new point: I accept that. You proved nothing I am not aware of. The point is that DM's have made decisions about things already. By redefining the contents of the core rulebooks, which the decay of metal implies is happening, you're stepping on decisions DM's have already made. It forces them into world redesign. Then defend it on those grounds: "I use these rules because they work fine for me, and I don't want to change the feel they've created for my world." You don't have to criticize the old rules for being handwaving, unrealistic, or unscientific, and then suggest your rules aren't. All game rules are unrealistic, unscientific, and require handwaving: both RAW and DM houserulings. You don't have to attack houserules to go by RAW and you don't have to attack RAW to go with houserules.
The Dreaming Duck 09-24-07, 03:50 PM	Put it in the bank. In time, you can buy a place outside of Lower Dura, and you're out. Maybe it takes years, but Warforged right now don't know if they have a limited lifetime. Per Sharn, a "poor residence" is 100 - 400 gp. I'd assume that if you want OUT of the worst neighborhood, you'll be at least in the middle of that range. At 33 gp/year assuming no expenses whatsoever, we're still talking three years to get any place, and closer to six if you're leaving Lower Dura. Sure, a warforged could do it in six years where it might take a human thirty or forty... but it's still not a swift option. And it does assume no warforged booze, no gambling, no side interests that cost gold, etc. Underestimate? Err... they're big scary monsters out of legend and myth, usually. Most DnD players I know treat them as tougher than they know they are. You misunderstand. I'm not talking about underestimating their POWER; on the contrary, I'm the one saying the Watch is afraid to tangle with them. I'm talking about underestimating their sophistication - the fact that they CAN act as an organized military unit, acting with discipline and purpose. Again, in my campaign, Daask is the hand-picked force of Sora Teraza. Many of the warriors of Droaam ARE undisciplined, but there are those who have spent the last decade serving with House Tharashk or fighting in the hag's own elite forces. So I view Daask as an elite military unit posing as a savage gang. It's on BEHAVIOR where I expect them to be underestimated - taken to be brutes incapable of subtle plans. Because a constant state of fear is simply not possible. When it is impossible to fight the enemy inspiring fear, things aren't the same. I respect your opinion, and I certainly agree with the second sentence. The main thing is that I feel that we have never dealt with anything like the Mourning. The closest that has come would be for the Japanese living near Hiroshima or Nagasaki in the time before they learned it was a bomb. They're dealing with a force that is FAR more destructive than ANYTHING seen in human history (that is, human history in Eberron). It's something that appears to be deeply unnatural, not simply because of its effects, but because it targeted a specific country and cleaved so close to its borders. Beyond that, it's not easily forgotten and set aside, because we see its effects every day. There are Cyran refugees spread across the Four Nations, and their fate is a reminder of what has happened and could happen again. And then we have the Mournland - the heart of the old kingdom we were fighting over, transformed into a wasteland full of monsters. Not only do we have the mists and the monsters, but we have the fact that the lightning rail through there is lost and that even air travel over it is unsafe. It's a scar on the land. And it's not the only scar of the war; if I live in Breland, I've got the Darguuls next door. A nation of goblins who seized what used to be human territory and who are now sitting right to our east. And then we've got Droaam to our west. The Mourning is inexplicable horror, but we've got monsters on either side as well. This hasn't produced a paralyzing fear. People in Sharn still go to work every day. The Tains hold their galas every month. But in my opinion, it's had a deep effect on many people. It's resulted in a massive growth in religious fervor, as people either seek a path to salvation or take the view that the Cyrans were punished by divine forces and that faith is the only shield. That's one section of the population. Another section suffers from cynicisim and pessimism... and it's this group that leans towards the "We may all die tomorrow, so I don't give a damn about the moral consequences of my actions." As I said way back at the start, these people are a minority of the population - yet it still produces more people willing to do terrible things that you'd find in 990 YK. And then there are those who either aren't concerned or are actively trying to find an explanation/defense. Again, I'm not saying "Everyone in my Eberron is petrified with fear"; I'm saying that the Mourning is an unprecedented event in human history that has resulted in a fundamental shift in cultural psychology. That still results in a spectrum of behavior - it's just that what were previously extremes on that spectrum are now more common. Beyond that, there's still the issue of those Cyran refugees. In my campaign, they do play a major role. Most are living desperate and miserable lives, and they are dealing with both the shock of what they've been through and the loss of almost everything they've known. Here again you are more likely to get extreme behavior on either end of the spectrum - from people trying to prove to the world that the Cyrans are noble people who deserve better to those who have literally been driven to psychotic madness, with the entire range of greed, despair, desperation, and hope through the middle. Which really makes it more like an envoironmental effect than a weapon. Again, you can see it that way if you want. I just don't feel that if some comepletely unknown effect - something with no resemblance to any known natural disaster - surgically destroyed the heartland of the US that people would shrug it off and say "Well, it probably won't happen again." Which makes them valuable to their owners, so there they are inherently protected from roving gangs of chop shoppers... No argument there. I'm only concerned about free warforged. Well, the Last War was a Civil War. Was this how the Blue and Grey treated each other? I've seena couple things that suggest there was great respect between the soldiers that fought each other. Hmm. Aren't people calling the current strife in Iraq a civil war? I don't really see the opposite sides in that treating each other with great respect. Beyond that, in the US Civil War you literally had brother against brother. As you've pointed out, this was a multigenerational war; by the end, the humans had no memory of Karrnath ever have been allied with Thrane. You can certainly run it that the Thranes and Karrns felt that their opponents were right decent folks despite being on opposite sides. That's not what I see as the typical attitude, and not something I find especially interesting from a story perspective. Besides that, there were some African-American soldiers in the Civil War... but again, neither that nor the EP erased prejudice from the world. Yes, I agree with that. My problem is that you;ve got the soldiers hunting them down. Actually, after discussing it, I'd now expect it to be groups like Daask or the Boromars that would do it. They've got the power to pull it off, and they'd be the ones that would be running the chop shops to begin with. However, I could certainly see ruthless ex-soldiers working for the Boromars. I suggested soldiers earlier on before Daask came up. However, I'd still expect to see hate crimes and I'd still expect to see ex-soldiers who turn to banditry, preying on anyone. A tiny minority of them, certainly, but it's hardly unprecedented in our history. I'd probably put Mithril at 3-5K and Adamantine at 10K. The special types are worth building, but only for very specialized missions. Yes... I think our situations are just so different here that it's hard to compare them. I have about 8.5 times as many adamantine warforged in the world as you do, and they're not as tough. If the average adamantine warforged is a 2nd-level character, than the group of 2nd-level warriors can feel that they have a chance to jump him, especially if they catch him unarmed. If the average adamantine warforged is a 6th-level warrior, it's a death sentence for at least a few of those warriors; even immoral people aren't going to risk it for the 100 gp. I have more warforged with "valuable" bodies and lower skill levels. As you said at the start of your post, there's nothing wrong with you running the story the way you want. But it doesn't fit MY campaign. Honestly, my hostile reaction at the very begining was purely triggered by the use of the term "hand-waving". You don't deserve to be told that you're wrong - but likewise, I don't care to be told that my approach is essentially lazy and stupid. You may not like the creation approach, but in a world where the creation spells exist, I consider it to be a logical thing - an aspect of the fact that Eberron is a setting in which magic is incorporated into society. It's NOT realistic in our world, because we don't have magic that can create metal from thin air, only to have it disappear again. But it's like Verra saying that what's realistic for our world won't work for Dragaera. We're running different campaigns. Both approaches are valid. And hopefully someone might get something out of the conversation in the future. But I'm willing to let the issue rest. Of course, that still leaves the off-topic issues... ;) Politically weak, yeah. Social welfare incapable. Decadent and uncaring? in time. Doomed to suffer a rebellion and system change? Definitely. And THAT'S the "underestimating the monsters" bit I was talking about. Again, no right or wrong here. But I have the opposite view. I see the Daughters as a force who've taken a territory that had no structure whatsoever - complete lawless "might makes right" - and created a basic feudal structure in the space of ten years. I see Sora Katra as being more intelligent and charismatic than any human leader in the Five Nations at the moment, and as having the oracular power of Sora Teraza behind her. It may take Katra more time to consolidate her power than it takes a warforged to buy his way out of Lower Dura, but I see Darguun as being more likely to collapse than Droaam. Both are held together by the power of influential leaders - but Haruuc is going to go soon to old age, which isn't a threat to the hags. I like having the hags as true legends, the stuff of faerie tales, and Droaam as the nation that IS growing stronger, a shadow in the west. But that's just what I like about them. Not trying to argue you down from running your "Collapse of Droaam" campaign (if you haven't already). ;)
Kreistor2 09-24-07, 04:51 PM	At 33 gp/year assuming no expenses whatsoever Okay, now let's review something else... ever sat down and figured out the profit from Crafting? Let's use Armorcrafting, since it's got the easiest DC's. Okay pick a bonus for the character's skill... let's say total ranks and stat adds +3. You can pick studded leather at a DC of 13. Now, I know you can't take 10 on a Craft check since there's a cost for failure, but I'm going to treat it that way for the moment. So, taking 10 gives you 13x13=169sp of product produced per week. This costs you <59sp. So, it takes two weeks and costs you <9GP to make a 25GP suit. Even if you can only sell it at 1/2 price to someone, that's 3.5GP/2 weeks, and that's with only rank+stat=3! It's an exponential system: it starts low, but it ramps up very quickly. Now, with failures back in, you do lose 4.5GP 25% of the time (10 succeeds, so only 1-5 costs you extra raw materials), so it's not always profitable at low skill levels. The solution to that is to make things with lower DC's so that you rarely, if ever fail (1 is not automatic failure). My warforged tend to have Craft(bsmith, armor, or gemcraft) in order to heal themselves, so they do have skills. Yours migh tnot, and that's okay: I can understand why people might do that. Even wiht no Int stat, a 2nd level warrior would have +5 in crafting, allowing him to make DC12 Leather in 1 week 70% of the time (roll 7+ = 12x12), and extra raw materials costs only 5% of the time, giving him an average income of >1GP per week, if he doesn't also sell his own wares. If he does sell his own wares (which I would allow for NPC's, but adventuring PC's can't keep the shop open all the time), he sells for the full 10GP, for 6.6GP/week. So, work for 1SP/day for 1 year, that gives you the 33GP, turn that into raw materials. Create your wares out of that investment, and now you're making money much faster. (I simplify this whole dirty mess by allowing Take 10 on Craft. It's an annoying skill to adjudicate.) You misunderstand. I'm not talking about underestimating their POWER; on the contrary, I'm the one saying the Watch is afraid to tangle with them. I'm talking about underestimating their sophistication - the fact that they CAN act as an organized military unit, acting with discipline and purpose. I don't actually allow that. My Watch is a police force, not militia. House Tharashk or fighting in the hag's own elite forces. That's why I excluded gnolls. They're mentioned directly as organized mercs working for anyone that'll pay cash. One of my PC's favorite NPC's is a gnoll Barbarian they picked up in Droaam. (He was without an employer after the PC's offed her, so the PC's took up his contract.) So I view Daask as an elite military unit posing as a savage gang. Mine are more subtle, less forceful. There is that brutal element that acts as thugs, but they aren't the ones with the agenda. They are exactly what they appear to be. It's the ones that you don't see that execute the Daughter's agendas: I like my spies hidden. My PC's having a hanging plot htread involving an ex-PC (player had to stop). They don't know if she's alive or dead... Beyond that, there's still the issue of those Cyran refugees. In my campaign, they do play a major role. Most are living desperate and miserable lives, and they are dealing with both the shock of what they've been through and the loss of almost everything they've known. Unfortunately, they've got that French-style denial to their position. They seem to stil think there is a Cyre, and that doesn't let me take them seriously. I've never involved them in anything. Hmm. Aren't people calling the current strife in Iraq a civil war? I don't really see the opposite sides in that treating each other with great respect. They don't. It's genocide. It's flat murder for murder, eye for an eye. Some colour it as a civil war, but the targets are soft, not military. Beyond that, in the US Civil War you literally had brother against brother. All civil wars are like that. The US plays that side up of their civil war, but really, it is inherent in revolutions. Even the US Revolution was brother against brother. 33% of US citizens supported the British. The Loyalists all wound up moving to Canada. I've definitely got Loyalist blood. Besides that, there were some African-American soldiers in the Civil War... but again, neither that nor the EP erased prejudice from the world. What was it... 33% or more of the North's army was black by the end of the war? And then 0% by WW2. Tragedy. I'd now expect it to be groups like Daask or the Boromars that would do it. Well, it could start as a private industry, but any profitable criminal activity attracts the vultures. Organized crime owns crime in their region, or kneecaps get busted. However, I'd still expect to see hate crimes and I'd still expect to see ex-soldiers who turn to banditry, preying on anyone. I never disagreed with this. I just limit it, because it's loud, messy, and ultimately attracts attention because criminals of this sort are stupid. I have about 8.5 times as many adamantine warforged in the world as you do, and they're not as tough. If the average adamantine warforged is a 2nd-level character, than the group of 2nd-level warriors can feel that they have a chance to jump him, especially if they catch him unarmed. If the average adamantine warforged is a 6th-level warrior, it's a death sentence for at least a few of those warriors; even immoral people aren't going to risk it for the 100 gp. I have more warforged with "valuable" bodies and lower skill levels. As you said at the start of your post, there's nothing wrong with you running the story the way you want. But it doesn't fit MY campaign. And those kind of assumptions are where these kind of arguments come from. Until we talk, we don't know what details each of us have implemented differently. So we argue at each other, then realize that there was no point in it, because we're all reaonable people. Honestly, my hostile reaction at the very begining was purely triggered by the use of the term "hand-waving". Hey, I used that negative connotation term, so I bear some of the fault. It could be stated that I was being unnecessarily provocative. Or it was late and my brain was on idle. And THAT'S the "underestimating the monsters" bit I was talking about. Again, no right or wrong here. But I have the opposite view. I see the Daughters as a force who've taken a territory that had no structure whatsoever - complete lawless "might makes right" - and created a basic feudal structure in the space of ten years. Now, I don't see it that way. Such creatures naturally tend towards that system, so they merely implemented what the region was already prone to. If the locals were more lawful, it would have been more structured. as having the oracular power of Sora Teraza behind her. Teraza's visions are not good to rely on. If she sees the real future, rather than the potential future, then it's not that much of an advantage, since you can't influence what will happen. "Collapses of Droaam"? Droaam isn't about to fall in my campaign: Valenar is (because teh stupid elves keep making enemies by having fun challenges). Maybe you mean DAask? yeah, they might find themselves diminished. My PC's are terrified of the Daughters, since they already met Sora Maenya. They blew that bit, and lost a PC to her (the afforementioned ex-PC one).
The Dreaming Duck 09-24-07, 05:37 PM	Okay, now let's review something else... ever sat down and figured out the profit from Crafting? Nope. And I actually do think it's logical to have many warforged have crafting skills. However, I think the typical warforged soldier is unlikely to match a dedicated human commoner, who, as he's not devoted anything to being a soldier, can have a 12 Int (even using the crappy array) and put one of his two feats into Skill Focus. Then we have the fact that the warforged is going to need to acquire space and facilities to perform his crafting. As you said before, following the war, there's going to be more people and not enough jobs. Assuming that warforged primarily have Armorcrafting and Weaponsmithing, well, the world was turning just fine without them in the service economy, and the market for armorers and weaponsmiths has, if anything, just dropped. Beyond that, there's a difference between using the skills of the smith on the battlefield to save your friends and understanding the concept of running a business and dealing with customers. Sure, you can hire people to handle that, but that's one more layer of complexity for the would-be warforged smith to deal with. Then, if you go by the ECS (which I do, in this case) you have the fact that a lot of people don't want to deal with warforged - that they are "hard-pressed to find work or any kind of acceptance." So there's the question of the potential value of the skills of a warforged... and the ability for him to actually make the money he deserves to make. Warforged are little better off than slaves in Thrane or Karrnath; in my Breland, they still often don't get the opportunities they deserve or are taken advantage of in other ways. Again, I'm not denying the opportunity or ability of a warforged to do right for himself, in your campaign or mine; they have talent, and it's only logical to assume that some get what they deserve. But in my campaign, most are denied opportunity. I don't actually allow that. My Watch is a police force, not militia. Well, to quote a wise man, by not allowing it you may be throwing out "all of the potential stories that go with it. Baby and bathwater." That's the whole point. We're taking different paths and they're both filled with good stories - just different ones. You've thrown out some of the stories I want to run; I've thrown out some of the ones you want to run. Unfortunately, they've got that French-style denial to their position. They seem to stil think there is a Cyre, and that doesn't let me take them seriously. I've never involved them in anything. This is another thing that is just going to set our campaigns far apart in tone. I don't do much to the "New Cyrans". I consider that to be a small movement. Sure, Prince Oargev can say "there's still a Cyre." But Oandre, whose wife died in the Mourning, whose daughter was taken by Darguul slavers, and who's now trying to support his infant son? He's just trying to survive. When one is dealing with 400,000 refugees in a place where most of the major nations have their populations in the 1-3 million range, you're dealing with a huge influx of poverty-striken individuals, with the added complications that they used to be your enemies in war and that many of them may be deeply unsettled by what they've been through. Again, this is part of WHY my world has a little more gloom than optimism; it's bad enough that we're dealing with our OWN war refugees without having the refuse of Cyre scattered across the Four Nations. They don't (call the struggle in Iraq a civil war). Type 'Iraq "civil war"' into Google. It's a point that's being argued, but there's lots of pundits, politicians, and historians who are using just that term. I'm not saying it's justified and I'm certainly not saying it's unanimous - there's an equal number who will deny the validity of the label. But it's certainly not as simple as "they don't"; some do, some don't. I see your point on soft targets, although I'd argue that police stations and military convoys have been attacked... while during the Last War, there were certainly incidents where civilian populations were slaughtered. But turning back to Eberron, the American Civil War lasted four years. Most of the officers went to the same military academy - of course they'll respect each other. They KNOW each other. Many were friends BEFORE the war. But the Last War lasted a century. As you yourself said, by the final decades you're dealing with a significant portion of the population that has no living memory of the warring nations being anything but the enemy... at which point it hardly seems reasonable to even call it a civil war. If Thrane attacked Karrnath today, would you call it a civil war because they were ONCE part of the same country? Or would it just be a war? And whether fought a decade ago or tomorrow, I don't see the Thrane Knight of the Flame having a great deal of respect for the Karrnathi Bone Knight. Mutual respect is certainly possible, especially among allied forces (or long-lived races, like the Brelish dwarf who trained at Rekkenmark) but I wouldn't expect it to be the norm among enemies after such a long war. "Collapses of Droaam"? Droaam isn't about to fall in my campaign... I was reacting to your phrase "Doomed to suffer a rebellion and system change? Definitely." But my point wasn't that you WERE going to make them collapse - it was simply that hey, if that's what you wanted to do, no harm done to me.
Kreistor2 09-24-07, 07:40 PM	as he's not devoted anything to being a soldier, can have a 12 Int (even using the crappy array) and put one of his two feats into Skill Focus. IMO, only 1 in 3 should have Int 12 or 13. Most humans in the Cogs are performing back breaking labour, not crafting. Warforged, on the other hand, have a solid reason to know how to repair themselves. So where most Warforged would have a crafting skill (which if you have a lot of warforged in your world creates a glut and drives down prices due to higher supply until people get out of the industry), most humans work off Profession rules, or basic wages for labour intensive occupations. Since Warforged need less money to live, in a supply heavy economy, they can afford to reduce prices, abd that's what drives humans into unemployment and increases jealousy, which leads to prejudice against the warforged. Some are not prejudiced because they fear the misshapen warforged, they hate warforged because they blame them for their own poor situation. This reduction in prices also serves to keep the warforged in the Cogs longer, because they aren't making that high crafting income. Then we have the fact that the warforged is going to need to acquire space and facilities to perform his crafting. Yep, subtract rental of facilities or payments for buying into a forge. Given the industrial nature of the place, I see the Cogs as fundamentally different from normal smithing in other settings. It's a place of factory-style manufacturing. So though I posted the interesting nature of Crafting above, that's not how I run the Cogs. (It's how the PC's make their money between adventures if they Craft. We have long downtimes, which is why my story has progressed to 1001.) In the Cogs, it's "work for the factory alongside a hundred others". So, yes, the Warforged are making 1sp/day, or rather 8cp/day and stealing a human's job. As you said before, following the war, there's going to be more people and not enough jobs. It is in ths case, and it was after 1812, but after WW1 and 2 it was good times in the post-war. It's not inherent in the beast, but it's not uncommon. Assuming that warforged primarily have Armorcrafting and Weaponsmithing Weaponsmithing can't be used to repair Warforged, so that's not one I'd normally see a warforged select. there's a difference between using the skills of the smith on the battlefield to save your friends and understanding the concept of running a business and dealing with customers. But that's somethign every young crafter goes through, so there's not exception there. they are "hard-pressed to find work or any kind of acceptance." Then what do they do all day? If not work, and they have no vices, needs, or desires, then there's a lot of warforged wandering in parks not hurting anyone. It's hard to justify hate when they're just keeping to themselves and looking different. I just don't see what to do with warforged that have no accepted place in society, except to turn them to crime, and they just arent' described as headed in that direction. They are industrious and don't fatigue... they can work until they collapse from nonlethal pre-fatigue damage. That is an attractive asset to any would be employer, so I really have a hard time justifying that position. If, on the other hand, the employers are snapping them up and using their lower wage requirements to put humans out of work, you have a solid misplaced hatred that drives the prejudice and feeds the abuse of the species. When one is dealing with 400,000 refugees in a place where most of the major nations have their populations in the 1-3 million range, Like many, I have multiplied the population densities by 10, since KHorvaire would be virtually empty with it as defined. But I don't do that for the CYran refugees. I don't think there should be 4 million survivors. 400000 sounds much more reasonable, and the New Cyre becomes that much more absurd. Still, 400000 new hungry mouths is too much for any economy already stretched to the limit by war, so they are definitely a problem. 400000 for 1 million to feed? Yeah, there's gonna be starvation in the refugees on a massive scale. Type 'Iraq "civil war"' into Google. It's a point that's being argued, but there's lots of pundits, politicians, and historians who are using just that term. They can not say genocide without causing certain things from happening in the UN. The UN was started to prevent genocide, so at its core is a "stop genocide" mandate. The moment someone calls a situation genocide on the floor of the UN, the world has to react. The "civil war" spin is absolutely necessary to prevent a massive response. I was reacting to your phrase "Doomed to suffer a rebellion and system change? Definitely." But my point wasn't that you WERE going to make them collapse - it was simply that hey, if that's what you wanted to do, no harm done to me. Oh, no, I was talking about Breland, not Doraam! Breland is doomed to suffer rebellion and system change. It has the strongest chance of preventing that situation, since S:CoT seeems to indicate rising democratic initiatives. Remember, mine is 1800's? The people are rising in their sense of power over nobility. If the noble system attempts to prevent itself from being displaced, it will be rebellion, but that's a long, long way down the road. It won't take place in my campaign. I could see another DM revolving a campaign around the idea, though.
The Dreaming Duck 09-24-07, 11:43 PM	IMO, only 1 in 3 should have Int 12 or 13. Most humans in the Cogs are performing back breaking labour, not crafting. Sure. But there's far more than three humans for every warforged out there. There's lots and lots of humans doing back-breaking labor. But those who end up rising is skilled trades will be the ones suited to it. Humans are physically inferior to warforged, but they have their own advantages: they are mentally adaptable. They don't get armored skin: they get bonus feats and skills. Beyond this, Khorvaire is a world where magic is a part of life, especially in a city like Sharn. So let's look at an example of a human smith in Sharn – 1st level, NPC class. Cannith Smith: Human Magewright 1; CR 0; AL N; Str 11, Dex 9, Con 12 , Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 8; Skills: Appraise +3, Craft (armorer) +10, Craft (blacksmith) +7, Knowledge (local) +5; Feats: Least Dragonmark (Making – make whole), Skill Focus (Craft - Armorer); Spells – magecraft 2/day When you add in magecraft, he's got a +15 modifier to his primary craft check, +12 to his secondary. The cross-class ranks in Appraise could be replaced with another Craft or Profession; however, it's enough for the general DC 12 "appraise common items" check. Likewise, Knowledge (local) is optional, but useful in terms of understanding local politics, navigating the guild structure, finding suppliers, knowing who the criminelords are. In this fellow's case, being Cannith will give him useful family ties even without Favored in House… and it lets him use make whole once per day, a useful gift for any smith. If you want an out-of-houser, replace the dragonmark with Open-Minded to give him 5 more skill points. This can be used on another Craft skill – so he'd be at a total modifier of +13 for his primary and +11 in two secondaries – with a point left over for Knowledge or Spellcraft. All of this, of course, not accounting for tools which could push it farther (and which a warforged could also acquire). So in a world where a 1st-level smith is going to be sporting a +15 modifier, the +5 modifier of a typical warforged soldier (I'm assuming 5 skill ranks for second level, no Int modifier) won't account for much. Now a warforged ARTIFICER, specifically designed with crafting in mind, would be another story - but I'm looking at the general-purpose soldier. More important than sheer skill is cultural background. The reason the magewright has the skill set he does is because he's not a soldier. He's spent his life being a professional armorer. He's been through trade school, he knows how to appraise as well as make, he understands the systems of guilds and licensed businesses associated with the dragonmarked houses. He has an idea of what to charge for his goods. He knows where to acquire tools and raw materials. He has a relationship with suppliers and with customers. When the warforged shows up fresh from the war, he has none of that. He has no funds; in all likelihood, he's never even used money before, since warforged weren't paid for their service, and those in the army had no need of it. He knows nothing about starting a business. He doesn't know who to talk to in order to get supplies. He doesn't know about guild politics. He doesn't know what prices are fair, let alone how much he can afford to undercut other merchants. He's a soldier who knows how to smith; that magewright is a smith first and foremost. Now SOME warforged may have the drive to push past all of this, but they have a lot of lessons to learn – and they'll need instructors. First, this requires people willing to teach them who don't see them as threats. It also requires people willing to treat them fairly, and to put their skills before prejudices – people who won't simply say "You want to be a smith? That's great. But you're a big guy and I understand you don't get tired. Why don't you go break rocks. I'll think about giving you a chance at the forge in a few months." Essentially, I see the lots of warforged becoming underpaid apprentices. It's indentured servitude all over. It doesn't matter that they have the skills; their lack of understanding of how the civilian world works will hurt them, especially if the commoners feel threatened by them. The human smith says "OK, Tongs, I'll let you work here at my smithy. You can even keep your things in that box over there. I'll pay you a decent wage, but I am going to have to deduct forge fees for use of the anvil, and of course mentoring fees because I'm helping you get established. But some day, this could all be yours." So setting aside the fact that I'd expect a lot of warforged to be underpaid simply because they have no experience with being paid at all and have little need for the money, you also have the fact that if a first-level smith can hit a +15, the warforged at +5 may be better suited to BE an apprentice. But that's somethign every young crafter goes through, so there's not exception there. Of course there is. The crafter I posted above never spent a day on the battlefield. He's spent his life as a dedicated smith. Yes, once upon a time he was inexperienced… and he went to a Cannith trade school, aligned himself with a guild, and so on. He spent years as an apprentice and eventually his house/guild connections helped him get a licensed business of his own. Furthermore, the human crafter has a good chance of being the son of a crafter, and learning the basics of the trade – economics as well as the physical art – watching his family. The warforged coming off of the battlefield has no experience with economy, and knows nothing of guilds. Sure, he can go through the same process as the human crafter – but the question as I saw it was whether he could just walk off the battlefield and start up his own place, and I don't see that happening for lots of reasons. By 1001? That's far more likely. That's more time for him to earn money, learn how the business works, earn the respect of at least a few of the people he works with. But in 998 YK, I'd see warforged-owned businesses as being rare – though of course "rare" is far from "impossible". There are undoubtedly exceptional warforged, and there are undoubtedly sympathetic businessfolk willing to help them. It's just a matter of the two coming together. Then what do they do all day? If not work, and they have no vices, needs, or desires, then there's a lot of warforged wandering in parks not hurting anyone. Who said that they have no desires? What's been said in the past is that their primary desire is to have a purpose – to DO something. That's why the Thranes and Karrns can get away with indentured servitude/slavery – because the warforged are just happy to have a purpose. Thus the warforged in the Cogs of Sharn, who for the most are happy with their lot and aren't TRYING to earn their way out of the Cogs – because they have a job. They have a purpose. And everyone else is happy, because they're out of sight and out of mind. Now SOME of those warforged will say "But I'm not fulfilling my potential. I have skills I'm not using. I want more from life." But others have literally never known anything beyond being part of a troop and following orders – and working manual labor under direction of a foreman isn't so different. Looking to the question of "If they aren’t hurting anyone, how could such prejudice remain" I look to the Civil War – it's not like there was full social justice within five years, and even TODAY you still have racial profiling and bigotry. And warforged are far more alien – and potentially more dangerous – than African-Americans. You seem to believe the best of people, and I admire that. But for me, the idea that the common people would discriminate against the warforged is what rings true. People fear that which is different, and if we have trouble dealing with someone with different color skin, how much worse will it be when he doesn't even have skin? They are industrious and don't fatigue... they can work until they collapse from nonlethal pre-fatigue damage. That is an attractive asset to any would be employer, so I really have a hard time justifying that position. If, on the other hand, the employers are snapping them up and using their lower wage requirements to put humans out of work, you have a solid misplaced hatred that drives the prejudice and feeds the abuse of the species. Oh, sure. As I said at the start of this message, what I see is a lot of warforged apprentices who are underpaid for their position and passed over when it comes to raises and promotions. And in the Cogs, I think they're massively displacing those humans who used to do back-breaking labor because they're just happy to have a job. And I agree that this would be a source of resentment. Oh, no, I was talking about Breland, not Doraam! Oh, never mind then. You're right there. ;)
Kreistor2 09-25-07, 10:55 AM	Cannith Smith: Human Magewright 1 Having lots of Magewrights doesn't seem consistent with your world. That takes training, which costs money; unless you've introduced public education. Tehre should be some of these guys, sure, but I wouldn't expect them in the Cogs, but rather in places like Holdfast. There are trades scattered all over Sharn, not just in the Cogs. The Cogs is where I put mass production of basic items. Someone with a +10 is skilled labour and can make a whole lot more: they should never be stuck in the Cogs. tThey aren't under threat from the Warforged, yet, it's the Commoners that make up the bulk of the untrained masses that feel threatened in my campaign. With a +15 modifier to Craft, you not punished for a failure when aiming for DC 19, so you can take 10 on DC19. The magewright above will produce 25x19=47.5GP worth in 1 week. You spend 1/3rd (15.9GP) and sell at 1/2 (23.7GP), making 7.8GP per week. Someone like that isn't going to be living or working in the Cogs in my world. Essentially, I see the lots of warforged becoming underpaid apprentices. That's very reasonable, but the war has been over for two years and diarmament had begun before then. If I'm five years from the war, in 1001, I can't justify most being apprentices anymore, can I? I'm fairly certain apprenticeships didn't laast much longer than that. The warforged coming off of the battlefield has no experience with economy, and knows nothing of guilds. It's two years later, even for a new campaign. How long do you make that ignorance last? Who said that they have no desires? What's been said in the past is that their primary desire is to have a purpose – to DO something. Desires beyond work, then. Some people play them that way. (Unfortunately, my Warforged Wizard player does, and he wonders why I tell him his character has no friends or hang outs. He does whatever he can to work 24/7.) That's not my own attitude: I like my warforged PC's to have a simulation of a life. They can't actually have a real life, since a real life kinda has to include needs, but they do their best to come as close as they can. But when it comes to NPC's, I have to go with the broader opinion than what I would personally play, and include character types I am never going to play.
The Dreaming Duck 09-25-07, 12:58 PM	Having lots of Magewrights doesn't seem consistent with your world. That takes training, which costs money; unless you've introduced public education. Well, technically public education is part of Eberron by default, according to page 132 of the ECS. However, if you mean formal TRADE education, certainly magewrights don't replace commoners. However, I draw from Dragonmarked. Skilled trades are dominated by the dragonmarked houses, both through the houses themselves, the guilds they maintain, and the system of licensing independents. Per Dragonmarked, the houses run the trade schools, teaching skills in exchange for bonds to the house guilds. So it's essentially a franchise system. Having ties to the Fabricator's Guild is what gets you the training you need to succeed, and also the contacts with the suppliers. Again, the warforged coming off the field knows nothing about navigating these systems. With my world, I take the power of the houses very seriously, considering them a force whose influence now rivals that of the kings. Some within Cannith may be sympathetic to the warforged (Merrix), but others... well, until two years ago they were the ones SELLING the warforged. I don't see the slavemakers suddenly turning around and being the best friends of the slaves they were selling. But I consider the role of magic in the world to be a critical part of Khorvaire, so I think magewrights are very important. With that said, no, I WOULDN'T see the Craft +15 guy down in the Cogs. Because I see the Cog workers as primarily factory laborers, not independent businesses at all. They're either doing backbreaking labor or mass production. So my point is that if you want to rise OUT of the Cogs, you're going to compete with Mr. +15; down in the Cogs, you don't have much chance to shine. You you're absolutely right, it's the commoner who's threatened, not the magewright; my point was simply that the magewrights are out there, and AREN'T as threatened. But yes, the common laborer is screwed on many levels, which should lead to its own prejudice. If I'm five years from the war, in 1001, I can't justify most being apprentices anymore, can I? I'm fairly certain apprenticeships didn't laast much longer than that. Well, first, I'm not saying what's reasonable for YOUR campaign. ;) However, I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. My point is the the warforged "apprentice" isn't treated fairly. A human apprenticeship might only last 2 years. But the warforged has an adamantine ceiling, if you will. Some will be sharp enough and driven enough to recognize that they aren't being treated fairly and try to act on their own, certainly. But most won't because again, in their former lives the typical warforged soldier wasn't SUPPOSED to take initiative. Warforged served in the war for thirty years - did you give them the same opportunity for promotion in the army as other races? If not, than that's the threatment they are used to. The warforged was supposed to follow orders. He's got a job. He's getting paid for it. His commanding officer treats him well, but doesn't promote him - same as his last commanding officer. My point is that even more than slaves in our world, many warforged don't understand the concept of freedom: they want purpose. So they are willing to BE treated poorly. There are exceptions - like the Lord of Blades on the dramatic end, but certainly many who simply do see the potential of their kind, do understand freedom, do want to see their race truly rise - but as I run it, the majority are simply glad to be working, to have a purpose they understand. It's two years later, even for a new campaign. How long do you make that ignorance last? Looking to our world and the Civil War? Seems like it could go for a century, easily. Like I said, you're more optimistic about human nature, and I admire that. When I look at history I see a lot of ignorance, bigotry, selfish opportunism, and hatred, and I see the warforged as being far more alien than any of the groups that have suffered from prejudice or oppression on Earth. Desires beyond work, then. Certainly. Some do, some don't. As I said, there's always exceptions. In my earlier note about expenses, I discussed the idea of a warforged who buys books to read about history. The warforged who becomes an artist. I think there's lots of examples of this. But I feel that the greater number are driven by work, because that's what their lives have been: goals clearly defined for them, operating on someone else's orders. Some will want more; others I feel will be happy just to be given that again, making them the ideal sweatshoppers. As I said, the reason I feel Thrane/Karrnath can get away with mass indentured servitude is because most the warforged don't really recognize that they are being oppressed. Meanwhile, this makes the warforged who AREN'T like this - like hopefully, PCs - stand out, and gives them the opportunity to become a transformative forces within their local communities.
Kreistor2 09-26-07, 01:54 AM	Looking to our world and the Civil War? Seems like it could go for a century, easily. Like I said, you're more optimistic about human nature, and I admire that. When I look at history I see a lot of ignorance, bigotry, selfish opportunism, and hatred, and I see the warforged as being far more alien than any of the groups that have suffered from prejudice or oppression on Earth. No, I wasn't talking about the Civil War. How long does a Warforged ignorance about basic economic factors last? The game starts in 998, two years after the treaty of thronehold, and the beginning of Warforged independence. Some of them have been dealing with civilian society for two or more years. How long does ignorance about the way money, supply, demand, and business last? I really don't see that sort of thing running longer than 2 months: you need to learn those fundamentals for basic existence (just seeing a single barter session would cause a Warforged to suddenly have a lot of questions, and one thing about poor societies, there's a lot of bargaining). Warforged have adult level learning capacity: they aren't children.
DragoonDarkfire 09-26-07, 12:27 PM	People you're getting off topic. This isn't about how Warforged are treated or their status in life this is about warforged crumbling to dust when components are removed and I think that's already been stated that it's a good rule to put in.
Cifer 09-26-07, 01:30 PM	Warforged have adult level learning capacity: they aren't children. And precisely that's their problem: their childhood lasted about half a year and they spent it in Cannith training facilities. After that, their only regular interaction with humanoids was marching through their cities, receiving orders from them and killing them. They aren't stupid, they just don't have our upbringing. If you at the age of 18 had never heard of bartering and the concept of value, you might learn it within two or three months - but that's because you have 18 years of otherwise normal human education behind you.
The Dreaming Duck 09-26-07, 01:31 PM	How long does ignorance about the way money, supply, demand, and business last? I really don't see that sort of thing running longer than 2 months: you need to learn those fundamentals for basic existence... But you've already pointed out that warforged don't have many needs for basic existence. I'm a warforged. I wander in from the war having no idea what to do with life, being used to having a commander tell me what to do. A Tain or Cannith recruiter grabs me and says "Good to see you, soldier. We've got a place for you in our foundry. It's hard work, but you'll be quartered, repaired when you need it, AND we'll even give you 3 silver pieces a week for your work, which you can spend at the company commissary." Not only does he have everything he actually NEEDS - a place to store his belongings, something to occupy his mind and hands - he IS getting paid for it, something that's never happened before. Perhaps they don't even pay; they just give credit at the company store. Still more than he's used to getting, and provides him with everything he needs. If they serve warforged booze at the company store, all the better. The point to me is that this is the sort of treatment they are used to. When they were in the army, they had a task and they did it. The army provided shelter, made sure they were repaired, and told them what to do. That's what the Tain foundry manager is doing. SOME are going to be curious about the world beyond, but I see many of them being happy to continue their lives as they were before. And as for supply and demand, I really don't see things coming that quickly. I've lived in a money-driven world all my life. But I'm a TERRIBLE haggler, because I feel that people should simply offer me something for what it's worth, and that it's rude of me to question the price - and that's something I'd see as endemic with warforged due to their military background. The warforged weren't encouraged to question officers or other soldiers; as such, I think the concepts of deception and economic opportunism will be quite alien to them. Likewise the fact that I'm going to undercut merchant X because he needs to feed his family and so can't afford to offer prices as low as I can - I see that as being a strange lesson for warforged on multiple levels. Beyond that, my point was that much of the reins of industry are in the hands of guilds. I'm not used to having to acquire supplies. I might be a smith, but in the army, the supplies were given to me. At the ir'Tain foundry, the supplies are given to me. The idea of starting my own smithy and suddenly the supplies AREN'T given to me is challenge one. The second is finding out where those supplies are coming from. Who am I going to ask? If I talk to my foreman, he'll say "Get back to work, 26, that's not your concern." If I talk to a human smith, what's his motivation for helping me? He can recognize that I'm likely to be competition if I get things going. And even if I do figure it out, the supplier may have an exclusive contract with the local guilds, or choose to charge me more because I simply don't have alternatives; I can hardly go mine the ore myself. The issue with the Civil War still stands, because the point is that the slaves might have been freed at the end of the war, but they were hardly lifted to full equality, nor were they given all of the opportunities that their former masters possessed. The warforged may have equal or even superior capabilities to the human, but if he's not given the opportunity to use them, he's screwed - and I see ignorance and prejudice preventing many people from giving them those opportunities even when it's logically completely ridiculous. I just don't see human behavior as being logical when it comes to dealing with alien beings... and when one combines the fact that the warforged used to be property, that they're made for war, and that they are far more inhuman than any slaves in human history, it's logical to me that they would be treated worse than slaves in human history. And because they have never known anything besides military service and following the chain of command, I see many of them accepting mistreatment without question. They didn't ASK to be freed; thus I hold with RoE's assertion than many of them don't truly understand what freedom means. As I've said, to me, sense of purpose is paramount for the warforged. After all, they can't raise families. They can't starve, and many human luxuries are meaningless to them. Many of the things that give purpose to humanity are alien concepts to the warforged. But working with a group on a clearly defined task, having a commander to tell them what to do - that's what they are used to. I consider pride in workmanship to be somehting else they take seriously - doing the best possible job on an assigned task - but for many, it's enough to do the best job on the ASSIGNED task, not to question the commander as to whether their skills would be better suited to another task. Obviously this is a broad view. Among other things, there WERE a few warforged officers, and any warforged who served as an officer should show more initiative. Warforged built after the war (by a certain someone in Sharn) won't be locked into this military mindset. But essentially, what comes to me is the question of whether most warforged are trying grasp their full potential and the complexities of the world - and if those who are trying are given the opportunity to do so.
The Dreaming Duck 09-26-07, 01:34 PM	People you're getting off topic... True, but it's hardly the first thread to do so... and as you noted, the original topic seems to be as settled as it's going to be. If people were still actively debating it, I'd feel bad about derailing the thread, but it seems to be done.
Kreistor2 09-26-07, 02:36 PM	But you've already pointed out that warforged don't have many needs for basic existence. I'm a warforged. [snip] That's a lot of text. But you never actually answered the question. :) My answer is simpler: they already know it when they are freed from service. The worst possible thing the government could do is release untrained warforged into a population. They risk Frankenstein's monster on a vast scale. Unable to understand the society they are now free to roam in, they become a criminal danger, simply because they cannot know the law. They are immediate physical threats to the populace. So in my campaign, they are taught. We already established that public education exists. Some of that is shifted to teach Warforged basic societal information. The warforged, then, is released with an inherent understanding of money and the principles of law.
The Dreaming Duck 09-26-07, 03:00 PM	So in my campaign, they are taught. We already established that public education exists. Some of that is shifted to teach Warforged basic societal information. And as I said before, your campaign has a much sunnier view of human nature than mine does. In mine, the idea of setting up schools for warforged is completely at odds with the people of Thrane or Karrnath wanting to keep them as property, or the people of Breland being happy to take advantage of them. Warforged will already understand most of the basic principles of law from their time in war: don't steal, don't kill the people on your team (which is now everyone), follow the orders of your commander. And in terms of teaching them economic theory, why do that? Right now they are great, cheap labor. As you've noted, fully educated they stand an excellent chance of THREATENING the economic status quo. Why is this in the best interests of anyone but warforged? Certainly, understanding the basic principle of "This is a silver piece. You trade it for services." is something I expect them to pick up within a day. But supply and demand? Bartering? Establishing small businesses? No way they're learning that in my campaign. In your campaign you seem to have a stronger drive towards altruism and the freedom of the warforged being something done by people who truly want the best for them. In my campaign, it was driven by pure politics, and most people prefer either to take advantage of them, or to avoid them. Looking to human history, this is what seems more realistic to me, especially given the alien nature of the warforged. I certainly believe that warforged can overcome these limitations... but in my campaign, they're the exceptions, not the rule. And I'm a minimum of decades away from a National Association for the Advancement of Construct People, not years.
Kreistor2 09-26-07, 07:51 PM	Warforged will already understand most of the basic principles of law from their time in war: don't steal, don't kill the people on your team (which is now everyone), follow the orders of your commander. Uh... here we diverge again. Until Wellington, the looting of a besieged city was considered by the soldiers as a right. They paid in blood for the city, so they got the contents. Also, the killing of dislike sergeants, officers, or rivals was also commonplace. Int he heat of the battlefield, who can say which sword killed which man? And orders have nothing to do with freedom. Once free, you have no one to tell you what to do, and this can lead to the worst trouble. So, no, I don't agree that they'd even have the basic understanding of law without instruction. And in terms of teaching them economic theory, why do that? Right now they are great, cheap labor. Idealism. The people that started this were concerned with slavery. If they were concerned with making money off of them, then they would have looked to prevent their freedom and sought to hire them as cheap labor. it's cheaper to pay the gov't a little per warforged than to pay a wage. I've always viewewd idealists as short-sighted. They worry about the immediate problem and don't see the damage their idealism will eventually do. They freed the warforged. The military, then, foresaw a problem. Their trained killers were being unleashed on an unaware society. They didn't want the political heat that would come from their previous training. They trained the warforged, and if the warforged wind up harming society from their ignorance, the military will be the ones that pay for the damages with their careers. (I model this on a series by Timothy Zahn in which men trained to kill alien invaders are returned to society, but their hardwired cybernetic nervous systems couldn't be removed. They reacted to danger the way their cybernteic implants were trained to, accidentally killing some civilians. The military wound up taking the blame. They foresaw the problem, but couldn't really do anything about it because the politicals had made the project secret, and were telling them to release the soldiers. The project wasn't secret anymore after that.) Which creates your cheap labour. Business benefits from the freedom most. They had no say in the freedom, so they don't bemoan the loss of indentured servitude. They benefit financially from hiring them, so most of my warforged actually do work, and hard. Which creates resentment from the unemploed human labour. Warforged can reduce their wages to ensure they have a job, because their upkeep is much less than a human, especially a human with a family to feed. This is where the grassroots prejudice comes from. This is the largest demographic and most powerful demographic, and they are the ones that abuse the warforged at every opportunity. In your campaign you seem to have a stronger drive towards altruism and the freedom of the warforged being something done by people who truly want the best for them. No, it's idealism, diguised as altruism. These idealists see onyl slavery and want freedom for the warforged. Most have nevef really met a warforged: they just see a plight and serve to eliminate it. It was the military, trying to save their own careers, that pointed out the dangers of freeing these walking killing machines onto an unsuspecting public. It doesn't take much spin like that to get funding for integration. In my campaign, it was driven by pure politics, Mine too, but in mine, a different sector won. Business had limited foreknowledge of the abilities of the warforged until after they were freed, so they didn't concern themselves with the issue. How would business know that most warforged are driven to work? Maybe a few knew (like House Cannith), but if you knew, would you tell any of your competitors? No, you'd keep any knowledge secret, and try to snap up as many as labour before your fellow businessmen caught on. So when you see a proposal to instruct warforged on the ways of society, are you going to alert people to your knowledge by opposing it, or just ignore it and stay the course to hire as many as possible? They're going to be cheaper than humans no matter what happens, so you're still riding the gravy train if they cost a couple copper more per day, but if people become suspicious, yoou wind up not being able to hire very many, so the net effect on your income is much smaller.
The Dreaming Duck 09-27-07, 02:17 AM	Uh... here we diverge again. Until Wellington, the looting of a besieged city was considered by the soldiers as a right. They paid in blood for the city, so they got the contents. Also, the killing of dislike sergeants, officers, or rivals was also commonplace. So, no, I don't agree that they'd even have the basic understanding of law without instruction. Of course they wouldn't have this knowledge without instruction. You're saying that if they aren't rushed into school after the war, they might turn into Frankenstein's monsters. I'm saying that they should have had THAT part of their training before they ever hit the field, to make sure they DIDN'T turn on their officers. Humans may turn on their officers, because we can't control peoples' upbringing, approach to authority, and so on. But the warforged were indoctrinated from "birth" by Cannith specialists to BE ideal soldiers. That's one reason to buy them - because they should be more reliable than the peasants you press. I think we have different ideas about warforged psychology. You seem to see them as fundamentally more human than I do. I see the basic psychology of the two races as being completely different. We have a lot of primal instincts based around our struggle to reproduce. Competition is part of our nature. But warforged were created to be part of a team. From the moment they were born, they were trained to function as members of a unit. Hence, my assertion that they are more interested in purpose than profit. I see most humans as always wanting more - more power, more gold, more respect, whatever. I see most warforged as wanting to contribute to their team: to protect and serve, to be part of the greater whole. Furthermore, while they aren't children, their life experience has been channeled down an extremely narrow and carefully focused path. Different warforged will be different people, because they will learn from human comrades as well as from Cannith trainers; the lone warforged assigned to work with Breland's 100th Lootin' and Rapin' Sarge-Killers is going to end up with a different outlook on life than the one who serves with the Thranish Knights of Saintly Purity. But I do feel that the Cannith indoctrination guides their basic outlook - and that it's part of what you pay for when you buy a 'forged. Idealism. Fair enough, and interesting. Just not the way I run it. Business had limited foreknowledge of the abilities of the warforged until after they were freed, so they didn't concern themselves with the issue. How would business know that most warforged are driven to work? I think the real issue here is the power of the DM houses in your campaign. As I said before, in mine House Cannith is a powerful force. House Cannith created and trained the warforged. Therefore, Cannith knows almost everything there is to know about warforged psychology. And in my campaign, the Cannith guilds DO run most large industry - so most of the Cogs are either directly run by Cannith, or under the auspices of the Cannith guilds. Beyond this, Cannith has alliances with other houses. The purpose of the Twelve is (IMO) to facilitate cooperation between the houses. The creation of the airship was a joint venture between Cannith and Lyrandar. Warforged weren't just sold to the Five Nations; some were used by the houses as well, meaning there are some who would have experience with warforged laborers; they were around for thirty years before the war ended. In my campaign, Cannith (Merrix and Aaren aside) are extremely bitter about the creation forges being shut down. Again, they are the ones who were selling the warforged as slaves - and making a healthy profit off the trade - just two years ago. With that said, I agree: in a world in which there was going to be a warforged education program, there's no point in their opposing it; if they had the influence to do anything about it, they would have had the influence to keep the forges going to begin with. So within the context of your campaign, I understand the reasoning. In mine, they have the basic "don't kill or steal" from their boot camp, so it's not as vital to have the post-war training. But I can see where you're coming from. I think I'm going to let the subject go at this point. I understand your approach and it is interesting, for all that it's very different from mine. There's certainly some ideas that I will bear in mind for the future, so thanks for sharing.
Kreistor2 09-27-07, 09:58 AM	I think I'm going to let the subject go at this point. I understand your approach and it is interesting, for all that it's very different from mine. There's certainly some ideas that I will bear in mind for the future, so thanks for sharing. Heh, I had come to the same conclusion. Catch you next time.