Warforged Psychology [Archive] - Wizards Community

Warforged Psychology [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
bad_phil
06-20-07, 12:18 PM We all have a need for an idendity. I think the main aspect of the warforged is his search for an idendity.There are thousands of ways to deepen a warforged by adding a different way to see things. I was wandering how you guys treat that matter. Are most of the warforged in your campains mindless soldiers or deeper philosophers. Of course there is a between.
Lord_Zzyzx
06-20-07, 02:18 PM Well ROE seems to divide them into two main catagories. Warforged either embrace their living qualities and truly view themselves as alive. Conversely, they also tend to embrace their construct aspects and gravitate towards more route actions, not considering the moral implications of their actions.

One psychology I think applies well if you want to/are able to play a neutral evil warforged I read in a Ravenloft book years ago. It said that constructs (no warforged existed in Ravenloft at the time) go through a progression of insanity like this:

They realize they are alive and look to their creators with awe, love, and respect. On the level of a god or parent.

As they become more aware they realize that others do not regard them as living sentient beings but a abominations. They begin to fear the outside world and become reclusive.

Tention and jealousy mounts and they grow to hate their creator for this miserable existence. They quickly want to destroy the creator to stop her, as the construct views it, evil ways.

Driven insane by their situation, their passions consume them, and they kill their creator. Sometimes, they grow to loath all natural living creatures due to their jealously.

In short, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to Chuck Norris.
Velcro Zipper
06-20-07, 05:23 PM The Ravenloft explanation you described seems heavily introduced by Frankenstein. That's good since that story was one inspiration for the setting. You might also look for ideas in any number of anime series where robots gain sentience. I'm currently playing a warforged and I have a plan for its psychological growth based on its experience level. At low levels, the character behaves as a loyal soldier that relies only on its training. As its power increases, so will its ability to question its training. I envision its alignment changing a few times until its comfortable with its assumed identity.
Belkar
06-20-07, 05:54 PM I love the complex phychology Keith Baker put forth from the get-go for WF. It opens up so many avenues. RoE, I think, focuses on the extremes of both sides (hey... that's what PrC's are for...;) ). I think most WF are like most folk... somewhere in between.

IMHO, however, I think the most defining psychological decision (and one made early in a PC's history) for a WF is one that will influence every other aspect of how they progress. How do they feel about being "free"?

In the real world, we have history to look on... any of a hundred enslaved or disenfranchised people who've achieved emancipation in recorded history found themselves burdened with the same things. Million suddenly found themselves legally entitled to what they deserved, and should have had all along. But the truth of history isn't as rosy as that. Historically, it's never been an easy transition. Many freed poeple found themselves with no property, possessions, or means to leave the situation they were no longer legally bound to.

Others struck out immediately, creating their own communities or striving for power and success in the communities they came from (this commonly wasn't veiwed well by the establishment). And in some places, the laws might as well not have changed - so deep was the social belief, that none could rise above it for some time.

Does any of this sound familiar? This little history lesson is echoed thoroughly by Kieth Baker's work... and I think you should consider real history to determine your WF's psychology about the change.

Where did he come from? The nation would obviously present a social structure that may influence how he regards his freedom. More importantly, though... is the second step in the process: does he cherish his freedom, or guard it?

Both are valid points of view, but when one is emphasized over the other, it creates the extremes of social change that are echoed in the two WF PrC's we know the best:

The Warforged Juggernaut; I'm free, I'm me, and don't you try to change it! You'll never take this away from me!

The Re-Forged; I'm free, and I'm me! I will spend every day savoring the freedom I was denied for so long!

When you figure out how your WF feels about his freedom... everything else falls into place. :)
ArcTan
06-22-07, 12:49 AM Well ROE seems to divide them into two main catagories. Warforged either embrace their living qualities and truly view themselves as alive. Conversely, they also tend to embrace their construct aspects and gravitate towards more route actions, not considering the moral implications of their actions.

A lot of Warforged hover in the middle, though. The majority are somewhere in the continuum between Reforged and Juggernauts.

One psychology I think applies well if you want to/are able to play a neutral evil warforged I read in a Ravenloft book years ago. It said that constructs (no warforged existed in Ravenloft at the time) go through a progression of insanity like this:

They realize they are alive and look to their creators with awe, love, and respect. On the level of a god or parent.

As they become more aware they realize that others do not regard them as living sentient beings but a abominations. They begin to fear the outside world and become reclusive.

Tention and jealousy mounts and they grow to hate their creator for this miserable existence. They quickly want to destroy the creator to stop her, as the construct views it, evil ways.

Driven insane by their situation, their passions consume them, and they kill their creator. Sometimes, they grow to loath all natural living creatures due to their jealously.

In short, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to Chuck Norris.

Keep in mind that the point of Ravenloft is that it makes the worst out of everything.

For one thing, Warforged were made by an industrial process during the War and not by a single creator who was gifted with the power to create Constructs by the Dark Powers, as a reward for an obsessive desire to make a mockery of a living loved one or ideal human being.

This is better in some ways and worse in others, but the primary thing is that Warforged by and large do *not* have a single godlike creator-figure whom they revere and obey, and on whom they project the purpose for their existence. RoE describes Warforged generally viewing their "masters" as nations, or armies, or institutions, which means they start out with a detached and depersonalized view of their "masters" and start out trained, in fact, to readily switch loyalties if sold or otherwise acquired. So the highly passionate feelings about a single human master would be rare among Warforged, although some might develop an attachment to a single trainer or maker. (Merrix d'Cannith's new Warforged, for instance, are his personal science experiments rather than industrial products, and would be a lot more likely to have this kind of "Frankenstein complex" regarding him.)
ArcTan
06-22-07, 12:56 AM The Warforged Juggernaut; I'm free, I'm me, and don't you try to change it! You'll never take this away from me!

The Re-Forged; I'm free, and I'm me! I will spend every day savoring the freedom I was denied for so long!

When you figure out how your WF feels about his freedom... everything else falls into place. :)

I don't actually have this perspective at all. "Embracing your Construct nature" can mean seizing hold of freedom or relinquishing it, depending on how you define "freedom". *Some* WF Juggernauts become Juggernauts in an effort to purge themselves of everything human because of their religious devotion to the Lord of Blades' vision. Others may just as easily purge themselves of human feeling in an effort to do the work they were created for better, and there are probably Juggernauts among the mercenary Warforged who still serve the Five Nations as selfless and unthinking warrior-slaves.

Similarly, being a Reforged certainly *does* mean, in some sense, casting off the "combat robot" mentality and role and embracing "freedom", and also cherishing freedom and trying to make freedom mean something rather than simply being technically free but still indentured and trodden upon as most Warforged are.

But it's not true that this means Reforged are pacifistic and feel no need to defend their freedom. Indeed, being a Reforged means embracing emotion, *including* emotions like hatred and rage. A Reforged, I feel, would be far, far more willing to kill a human being without direct provocation and without orders, while an ordinary Warforged would've been trained to view doing so as the gravest possible crime (even more than most humans view the crime of murder). *Especially* if that human were in some way threatening the Reforged's freedom.

The thing about Reforged is that most people don't *seek* "humanity" -- humanity is something that just happens to us and we all deal with it in our own way, and some of the ways we deal with it involve controlling or repressing it. (Holding down a job means suppressing desire and willfulness so you can take orders. Following the law means suppressing your natural reaction to adhere to a code. Etc.)

People who "seek humanity", considering that "humanity" contains all kinds of vile, nasty things that people are driven to do by instinct and desire and passion, are quite likely to be what we humans would consider sociopaths. Even if they aren't, they're likely to be, at best, very odd in our eyes.

In a sense, Reforged are "more human than human" -- their bonuses to various social skills and whatnot mean they've absorbed a lot *more* of an aggressive, almost mechanized ability to control and manipulate social situations than ordinary people. They're still machines, in a sense, but machines programmed to *act human*, and therefore are *aggressively* human in a way no natural human can be. (This may be me introducing my fanon into it, but this is how I view Reforged and what I think makes them interesting. Certainly the book does give us an example of a frightening Evil Reforged who seems to really *enjoy* killing people in a way no Warforged does and in a way people aren't supposed to.)
Edymnion
06-22-07, 04:26 PM Well ROE seems to divide them into two main catagories.Yeah, RoE likes taking extremes and trying to shove the entire race into one of said extremes.A lot of Warforged hover in the middle, though. The majority are somewhere in the continuum between Reforged and Juggernauts.Is this where I turn your stance on the three changling philosophies around on you? You know, "Well embracing your living nature or your construct nature is logical, and any character you could make would fall into one of those categories."

Hey, if you can swallow that for changelings, should be able to swallow it for warforged as well.
ArcTan
06-22-07, 05:18 PM Yeah, RoE likes taking extremes and trying to shove the entire race into one of said extremes.Is this where I turn your stance on the three changling philosophies around on you? You know, "Well embracing your living nature or your construct nature is logical, and any character you could make would fall into one of those categories."

Hey, if you can swallow that for changelings, should be able to swallow it for warforged as well.

I can certainly swallow that most Warforged can be classified as Warforged who are either "trying to be more human" or "trying to be less human". It doesn't mean that they all *are* one or the other extreme in the most extreme possible way -- but we're all defined by what poles we gravitate towards.
bad_phil
06-25-07, 05:02 PM Nice answers.

I've also considered the way other races see warforged. There's a lot of roleplay to do with this too. I mean, they are the material reminder of dark times(except for Cannith). Consider a young children who lost his parents during the last war because of warforged(they coule have killed them on a raid where they were ordered to leave none alive) and now hates warforged. The last war were most benefical to House Cannith, after all, Forge of war call the Last war as "good old days" for Cannith. People can both hate House Cannith and warforged. Furthermore, how would a warforged react at a child who throw a rock at him because he hates them. Would he most likely don't care, or realise the way some people sees them?

I mean, it's the same as today. What if machines slowly take places of humans. I hate to compare warforged with machines, I use this analogy to make you figure out how people in Eberron can see warforged. Worst, warforged are free and sentient being.

How a player or a Dm see them?
Belkar
06-28-07, 12:45 PM Nice answers.

I've also considered the way other races see warforged. There's a lot of roleplay to do with this too. I mean, they are the material reminder of dark times(except for Cannith). Consider a young children who lost his parents during the last war because of warforged(they coule have killed them on a raid where they were ordered to leave none alive) and now hates warforged.

A lot of this discussion is about polarization. Psychologically, no... most people of any social strata are in the "middle" about anything. But groups of people always tend to create the extremes and force themselves into them (which is why demonstrators can turn into a mob..., or members of a political party often go to extremes to support the entire party platform, even if they don't personally agree with the whole thing).

This is obvious group psychology. But the interesing point you mention above is how this applies to a group's relation to other people. After the Last War... many people hated the Warforged for this reason, but just as many hated the members of other nations for the same reason. A Mourner who found his way into Sharn after the Mourning and was still wearing Cyran military garb didn't exactly get a warm welcome.

Some Brelish will always hate Cyrans, because their family was killed by the Cyran army; and some Aundairians will always hate the Karnathi, because their family was killed by the Karnath Army. With Warforged, though... it goes deeper. A Warforged soldier can't renounce who and what he is, or hide it, the way a soldier can cast of his national colors and claim a new name.

Hating a group of people who look physically different, and are so fundamentaly, phsychologically different is much easier, I think. It was far too easy for the WF to be the scapegoat of hatred after the Last War.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
bad_phil 06-20-07, 12:18 PM	We all have a need for an idendity. I think the main aspect of the warforged is his search for an idendity.There are thousands of ways to deepen a warforged by adding a different way to see things. I was wandering how you guys treat that matter. Are most of the warforged in your campains mindless soldiers or deeper philosophers. Of course there is a between.
Lord_Zzyzx 06-20-07, 02:18 PM	Well ROE seems to divide them into two main catagories. Warforged either embrace their living qualities and truly view themselves as alive. Conversely, they also tend to embrace their construct aspects and gravitate towards more route actions, not considering the moral implications of their actions. One psychology I think applies well if you want to/are able to play a neutral evil warforged I read in a Ravenloft book years ago. It said that constructs (no warforged existed in Ravenloft at the time) go through a progression of insanity like this: They realize they are alive and look to their creators with awe, love, and respect. On the level of a god or parent. As they become more aware they realize that others do not regard them as living sentient beings but a abominations. They begin to fear the outside world and become reclusive. Tention and jealousy mounts and they grow to hate their creator for this miserable existence. They quickly want to destroy the creator to stop her, as the construct views it, evil ways. Driven insane by their situation, their passions consume them, and they kill their creator. Sometimes, they grow to loath all natural living creatures due to their jealously. In short, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to Chuck Norris.
Velcro Zipper 06-20-07, 05:23 PM	The Ravenloft explanation you described seems heavily introduced by Frankenstein. That's good since that story was one inspiration for the setting. You might also look for ideas in any number of anime series where robots gain sentience. I'm currently playing a warforged and I have a plan for its psychological growth based on its experience level. At low levels, the character behaves as a loyal soldier that relies only on its training. As its power increases, so will its ability to question its training. I envision its alignment changing a few times until its comfortable with its assumed identity.
Belkar 06-20-07, 05:54 PM	I love the complex phychology Keith Baker put forth from the get-go for WF. It opens up so many avenues. RoE, I think, focuses on the extremes of both sides (hey... that's what PrC's are for...;) ). I think most WF are like most folk... somewhere in between. IMHO, however, I think the most defining psychological decision (and one made early in a PC's history) for a WF is one that will influence every other aspect of how they progress. How do they feel about being "free"? In the real world, we have history to look on... any of a hundred enslaved or disenfranchised people who've achieved emancipation in recorded history found themselves burdened with the same things. Million suddenly found themselves legally entitled to what they deserved, and should have had all along. But the truth of history isn't as rosy as that. Historically, it's never been an easy transition. Many freed poeple found themselves with no property, possessions, or means to leave the situation they were no longer legally bound to. Others struck out immediately, creating their own communities or striving for power and success in the communities they came from (this commonly wasn't veiwed well by the establishment). And in some places, the laws might as well not have changed - so deep was the social belief, that none could rise above it for some time. Does any of this sound familiar? This little history lesson is echoed thoroughly by Kieth Baker's work... and I think you should consider real history to determine your WF's psychology about the change. Where did he come from? The nation would obviously present a social structure that may influence how he regards his freedom. More importantly, though... is the second step in the process: does he cherish his freedom, or guard it? Both are valid points of view, but when one is emphasized over the other, it creates the extremes of social change that are echoed in the two WF PrC's we know the best: The Warforged Juggernaut; I'm free, I'm me, and don't you try to change it! You'll never take this away from me! The Re-Forged; I'm free, and I'm me! I will spend every day savoring the freedom I was denied for so long! When you figure out how your WF feels about his freedom... everything else falls into place. :)
ArcTan 06-22-07, 12:49 AM	Well ROE seems to divide them into two main catagories. Warforged either embrace their living qualities and truly view themselves as alive. Conversely, they also tend to embrace their construct aspects and gravitate towards more route actions, not considering the moral implications of their actions. A lot of Warforged hover in the middle, though. The majority are somewhere in the continuum between Reforged and Juggernauts. One psychology I think applies well if you want to/are able to play a neutral evil warforged I read in a Ravenloft book years ago. It said that constructs (no warforged existed in Ravenloft at the time) go through a progression of insanity like this: They realize they are alive and look to their creators with awe, love, and respect. On the level of a god or parent. As they become more aware they realize that others do not regard them as living sentient beings but a abominations. They begin to fear the outside world and become reclusive. Tention and jealousy mounts and they grow to hate their creator for this miserable existence. They quickly want to destroy the creator to stop her, as the construct views it, evil ways. Driven insane by their situation, their passions consume them, and they kill their creator. Sometimes, they grow to loath all natural living creatures due to their jealously. In short, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to Chuck Norris. Keep in mind that the point of Ravenloft is that it makes the worst out of everything. For one thing, Warforged were made by an industrial process during the War and not by a single creator who was gifted with the power to create Constructs by the Dark Powers, as a reward for an obsessive desire to make a mockery of a living loved one or ideal human being. This is better in some ways and worse in others, but the primary thing is that Warforged by and large do not have a single godlike creator-figure whom they revere and obey, and on whom they project the purpose for their existence. RoE describes Warforged generally viewing their "masters" as nations, or armies, or institutions, which means they start out with a detached and depersonalized view of their "masters" and start out trained, in fact, to readily switch loyalties if sold or otherwise acquired. So the highly passionate feelings about a single human master would be rare among Warforged, although some might develop an attachment to a single trainer or maker. (Merrix d'Cannith's new Warforged, for instance, are his personal science experiments rather than industrial products, and would be a lot more likely to have this kind of "Frankenstein complex" regarding him.)
ArcTan 06-22-07, 12:56 AM	The Warforged Juggernaut; I'm free, I'm me, and don't you try to change it! You'll never take this away from me! The Re-Forged; I'm free, and I'm me! I will spend every day savoring the freedom I was denied for so long! When you figure out how your WF feels about his freedom... everything else falls into place. :) I don't actually have this perspective at all. "Embracing your Construct nature" can mean seizing hold of freedom or relinquishing it, depending on how you define "freedom". Some WF Juggernauts become Juggernauts in an effort to purge themselves of everything human because of their religious devotion to the Lord of Blades' vision. Others may just as easily purge themselves of human feeling in an effort to do the work they were created for better, and there are probably Juggernauts among the mercenary Warforged who still serve the Five Nations as selfless and unthinking warrior-slaves. Similarly, being a Reforged certainly does mean, in some sense, casting off the "combat robot" mentality and role and embracing "freedom", and also cherishing freedom and trying to make freedom mean something rather than simply being technically free but still indentured and trodden upon as most Warforged are. But it's not true that this means Reforged are pacifistic and feel no need to defend their freedom. Indeed, being a Reforged means embracing emotion, including emotions like hatred and rage. A Reforged, I feel, would be far, far more willing to kill a human being without direct provocation and without orders, while an ordinary Warforged would've been trained to view doing so as the gravest possible crime (even more than most humans view the crime of murder). Especially if that human were in some way threatening the Reforged's freedom. The thing about Reforged is that most people don't seek "humanity" -- humanity is something that just happens to us and we all deal with it in our own way, and some of the ways we deal with it involve controlling or repressing it. (Holding down a job means suppressing desire and willfulness so you can take orders. Following the law means suppressing your natural reaction to adhere to a code. Etc.) People who "seek humanity", considering that "humanity" contains all kinds of vile, nasty things that people are driven to do by instinct and desire and passion, are quite likely to be what we humans would consider sociopaths. Even if they aren't, they're likely to be, at best, very odd in our eyes. In a sense, Reforged are "more human than human" -- their bonuses to various social skills and whatnot mean they've absorbed a lot more of an aggressive, almost mechanized ability to control and manipulate social situations than ordinary people. They're still machines, in a sense, but machines programmed to act human, and therefore are aggressively human in a way no natural human can be. (This may be me introducing my fanon into it, but this is how I view Reforged and what I think makes them interesting. Certainly the book does give us an example of a frightening Evil Reforged who seems to really enjoy killing people in a way no Warforged does and in a way people aren't supposed to.)
Edymnion 06-22-07, 04:26 PM	Well ROE seems to divide them into two main catagories.Yeah, RoE likes taking extremes and trying to shove the entire race into one of said extremes.A lot of Warforged hover in the middle, though. The majority are somewhere in the continuum between Reforged and Juggernauts.Is this where I turn your stance on the three changling philosophies around on you? You know, "Well embracing your living nature or your construct nature is logical, and any character you could make would fall into one of those categories." Hey, if you can swallow that for changelings, should be able to swallow it for warforged as well.
ArcTan 06-22-07, 05:18 PM	Yeah, RoE likes taking extremes and trying to shove the entire race into one of said extremes.Is this where I turn your stance on the three changling philosophies around on you? You know, "Well embracing your living nature or your construct nature is logical, and any character you could make would fall into one of those categories." Hey, if you can swallow that for changelings, should be able to swallow it for warforged as well. I can certainly swallow that most Warforged can be classified as Warforged who are either "trying to be more human" or "trying to be less human". It doesn't mean that they all are one or the other extreme in the most extreme possible way -- but we're all defined by what poles we gravitate towards.
bad_phil 06-25-07, 05:02 PM	Nice answers. I've also considered the way other races see warforged. There's a lot of roleplay to do with this too. I mean, they are the material reminder of dark times(except for Cannith). Consider a young children who lost his parents during the last war because of warforged(they coule have killed them on a raid where they were ordered to leave none alive) and now hates warforged. The last war were most benefical to House Cannith, after all, Forge of war call the Last war as "good old days" for Cannith. People can both hate House Cannith and warforged. Furthermore, how would a warforged react at a child who throw a rock at him because he hates them. Would he most likely don't care, or realise the way some people sees them? I mean, it's the same as today. What if machines slowly take places of humans. I hate to compare warforged with machines, I use this analogy to make you figure out how people in Eberron can see warforged. Worst, warforged are free and sentient being. How a player or a Dm see them?
Belkar 06-28-07, 12:45 PM	Nice answers. I've also considered the way other races see warforged. There's a lot of roleplay to do with this too. I mean, they are the material reminder of dark times(except for Cannith). Consider a young children who lost his parents during the last war because of warforged(they coule have killed them on a raid where they were ordered to leave none alive) and now hates warforged. A lot of this discussion is about polarization. Psychologically, no... most people of any social strata are in the "middle" about anything. But groups of people always tend to create the extremes and force themselves into them (which is why demonstrators can turn into a mob..., or members of a political party often go to extremes to support the entire party platform, even if they don't personally agree with the whole thing). This is obvious group psychology. But the interesing point you mention above is how this applies to a group's relation to other people. After the Last War... many people hated the Warforged for this reason, but just as many hated the members of other nations for the same reason. A Mourner who found his way into Sharn after the Mourning and was still wearing Cyran military garb didn't exactly get a warm welcome. Some Brelish will always hate Cyrans, because their family was killed by the Cyran army; and some Aundairians will always hate the Karnathi, because their family was killed by the Karnath Army. With Warforged, though... it goes deeper. A Warforged soldier can't renounce who and what he is, or hide it, the way a soldier can cast of his national colors and claim a new name. Hating a group of people who look physically different, and are so fundamentaly, phsychologically different is much easier, I think. It was far too easy for the WF to be the scapegoat of hatred after the Last War.