lots of warforged=bankrupt House Cannith [Archive] - Wizards Community

lots of warforged=bankrupt House Cannith [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
DyloniusFunk
08-02-05, 01:08 AM This is something that has been bugging me about Warforged for a while. The impression i get from reading the ECS and ROE is that they were created as grunts for the Last War. This means a lot were created,. and that there were whole battellions and divisions of warforged amonst the various nations. The issue i have is this; they are still constructs, living , but still constructs still. Shouldn't they have been incredilby expensive to make. I mean if we imageing whole assembly lines of warforged creation, it's not to hard to imagine how expensive that would get. Personally i tend to imageing warforged units as small, specialized. This may also be because of racial issues. I suppose it may be similar to real life, wher ethere were minoirty squads and units in the Civil War, because the white soliders didn't want to server alongside african-americans. Ok, so maybe that's not the best exampl;e. Anyway, maybe i'm misunderstanding Mr Baker's intent with reguards to Warforged use in the war. It just seems that to have whole armies of them would get incredably expensive, and paractically bankrupt the house.
Charles Phipps
08-02-05, 01:15 AM I think that the cost of the warforged have been drastically overstated because of the fact that their cost as presented is more than any country could normally possess.

However, I think that we're thinking in terms of pure currency, which most Medieval Countries did not operate on. I'm thinking that House Cannith probably only charged for labor fees.

The countries involved in the production were no doubt required to provide for all the raw materials from Adamentine to Mirthril to normal wood and the like, which probably cuts down the cost considerably. It's also possible that they gave discounts for bulk orders.

A better idea in my mind is that the warforged are probably causing massive war debts that will probably be paid into the future for close to a century to House Cannith or at the very least leading to uneven trade benefits.
Splendide
08-02-05, 01:23 AM Its also worth looking at it in a similar capacity to real-world military development.

While the project itself might be a white elephant, the techniques devised to achieve the end result generally have a wide variety of very lucrative spinoffs. New materials that you plonked big cash out to develop, well, you can now make them at will. How about the techniques used to make silver or cold iron tracery on warforged, that doesn't deteriorate after a couple of hits?

Best part is, Cannith already has something close to a monopoly on this high-end crafting, so they can keep covering warforged losses in other fields...fields that they have a lock on because they already did the hard yards in warforged development.

If you look at the raw materials involved with warforged, how much would they really cost? Pretty much all the rest that they would charge is going straight towards the R&D required.
Edymnion
08-02-05, 01:33 AM And lets not forget that the Creation Forges themselves did most of the work.
Eldritch Machines that bend and even outright break the normal rules of the game. It could very well be that, after the raw materials are provided, the Creation Forge shapes and energizes the WF all by itself with no further imput needed. The WF could actually be dirt cheap to make, once materials are covered, which means House Cannith was actually making a killing on selling the things.

But, even if thats not true, why would it be House Cannith that went bankrupt? Its not like they weren't being paid through the NOSE for every one of those things they made. Its not like they made 50,000 WF at their own expense and just hoped they could sell them, they likely didn't make a WF until it had already been paid for.

Rather like high end automobiles. If you order a $200,000 sports car, its not like they just give you one off the lot, they custom make it for you. They most definately do not make that expensive of a car and leave it sitting in a warehouse until somebody just so happens to want a car with all of the same extras that one has. Same with the WF. Some country pays for 50 Adamantine Body warforged, Cannith makes 50 Adm Body warforged. They may have kept a ready supply of "default models" to meet rush orders (aka, the country is getting it's butt kicked and needs reinforcements NOW), but the vast majority would have been made to order.

If anybody went bankrupt over the WF, it was the nations ordering them, not House Cannith.
KP91
08-02-05, 01:56 AM Remember, they didn't give away the WF. You can sell something for twice the amount you make it for. So Cannith became rich. Nevermind that they developed other weapons as well.

There are also the artisan feats.
zambuka
08-02-05, 02:05 AM I thought low cost was part of their popularity and the eventual ban on their creation with the thronehold treaty (along with questions of life and creation in general); the forges made warforged very cheap to produce (at least in relation to other types of construct), and even more economical in mass quantities.

Remember that they had to compete with the relatively cost effective undead armies of Karrnath. After such a long war many of the nations coffers would be depressingly empty and debts would be too high to contemplate paying the kind of price needed for a typical construct. Instead they needed something cheap, adaptable and now. Cannith delivered.

I personally see the sentient living nature of the 'forged as more an accident, a result of imperfect and rushed construction and shortcuts as well as using eldritch magics not fully understood. While cannith aimed for making the 'forged as intelligent as possible they did not expect them to be "alive".
Brastan
08-02-05, 04:09 AM But not every nation or even every commander was willing to turn to undead to fill their ranks. It was not a competition at all. The cost to house Cannith was their development which in the earliest stages was actually government subsidized by Gulifar. This means that it actually cost them even less that you would think.

Have you ever read any of Isaac Asimov's short stories? I'm thinking of one were the military wanted to create the perfect robot soldier. In sort the head designer came to the conclusion that the only perfect soldier was one that could think for itself. Anything less than full sentience would cause problems. The military refused to believe this and resulted in the stories conflict. Yes, in the story they actually did make a fully aware robot. I'm sorry that I can't remember the name of that story right now. :(
Argonel
08-02-05, 02:33 PM You also have to remember that the undead armies of Karrnath were pretty much a desperation move. It paid off big, but they weren't necessarily the reason the other countires were interested in buying the warforged.
Quithion
08-03-05, 08:19 PM Also it is my understanding that Schemas such as those in the Forgotten Forge were descirbed repeatedly as something house cannith did to cut costs down.

Schemas are House Cannith's bread and butter.
aelryinth
08-03-05, 09:54 PM You have to consider the cost factor in several areas.

Let's say a level 2 Fighter Warforged is 4000 gp.

First of all, you can get him with adamantine armor. Price that out for a human.

Whats the price of equipping a level 2 fighter? Not a warrior, mind you. Full plate and masterwork blades and stuff all add up, and f/2's are 1/10 or 1/20 for every Warrior/2.

Next add in costs to feed, pay, shelter and move troops around over the long term. Subtract the fact that you can get work out of warforged 24 hours a day, not 8.

Note they heal a lot faster then humans, and don't bleed out in negatives. You actually have to reduce them to peices to kill them. They can, with just a little training, fix one another up just fine.

And for all this, for a soldier that's going to last 30 years and is definitely superior to anything you can field, you pay a piddling 4000 gp...less then an adamantine suit of medium armor. Even if you get a f/2 for 8000 gp, you could compare it to a suit of adamantine heavy armor for their DR...and it is STILL a bargain.

Mmmm.

==Aelryinth
ImmortalBlueMage
08-04-05, 05:04 AM Most of the expense was probably in the development stage.
cmanos
08-04-05, 07:45 AM somehow I don't think weapons dealers GIVE their weapons away. More likely the 5 Nations have huge wardebts from buying battalions of WF.
cmanos
08-04-05, 07:46 AM Have you ever read any of Isaac Asimov's short stories? I'm thinking of one were the military wanted to create the perfect robot soldier. In sort the head designer came to the conclusion that the only perfect soldier was one that could think for itself. Anything less than full sentience would cause problems. The military refused to believe this and resulted in the stories conflict. Yes, in the story they actually did make a fully aware robot. I'm sorry that I can't remember the name of that story right now. :(

Sounds a lot like the novel, I, Robot.
Nightshade
08-04-05, 05:45 PM This is something that has been bugging me about Warforged for a while. The impression i get from reading the ECS and ROE is that they were created as grunts for the Last War. This means a lot were created,. and that there were whole battellions and divisions of warforged amonst the various nations. The issue i have is this; they are still constructs, living , but still constructs still. Shouldn't they have been incredilby expensive to make. I mean if we imageing whole assembly lines of warforged creation, it's not to hard to imagine how expensive that would get. Personally i tend to imageing warforged units as small, specialized. This may also be because of racial issues. I suppose it may be similar to real life, wher ethere were minoirty squads and units in the Civil War, because the white soliders didn't want to server alongside african-americans. Ok, so maybe that's not the best exampl;e. Anyway, maybe i'm misunderstanding Mr Baker's intent with reguards to Warforged use in the war. It just seems that to have whole armies of them would get incredably expensive, and paractically bankrupt the house.

Yes, you're right in your belief on the extent of the use of the Warforged. It's not as much as most people seem to think. Sure the Creation Forges did most of the work and that reduced cost but the Warforged were generally elite combat unts or corps, like the Rangers in the US army. I know because I discussed this on the ask Keith Baker thread. Below is from page 6 from MarkB's summary of the Ask Keith thread:

Q Originally Posted by Nightshade Yes I think that's all basically true. I would just analogize the WF more closely to heavily armored elite shock troops.

A I would as well. Warforged soldiers were (IMO) built to serve as elite units; they were never intended to form the full mass of the army. You want a warforged that's better armored than your peasant because you have fewer warforged than peasants.

This may just be Keith's opinion but I go with that until official material says otherwise.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
DyloniusFunk 08-02-05, 01:08 AM	This is something that has been bugging me about Warforged for a while. The impression i get from reading the ECS and ROE is that they were created as grunts for the Last War. This means a lot were created,. and that there were whole battellions and divisions of warforged amonst the various nations. The issue i have is this; they are still constructs, living , but still constructs still. Shouldn't they have been incredilby expensive to make. I mean if we imageing whole assembly lines of warforged creation, it's not to hard to imagine how expensive that would get. Personally i tend to imageing warforged units as small, specialized. This may also be because of racial issues. I suppose it may be similar to real life, wher ethere were minoirty squads and units in the Civil War, because the white soliders didn't want to server alongside african-americans. Ok, so maybe that's not the best exampl;e. Anyway, maybe i'm misunderstanding Mr Baker's intent with reguards to Warforged use in the war. It just seems that to have whole armies of them would get incredably expensive, and paractically bankrupt the house.
Charles Phipps 08-02-05, 01:15 AM	I think that the cost of the warforged have been drastically overstated because of the fact that their cost as presented is more than any country could normally possess. However, I think that we're thinking in terms of pure currency, which most Medieval Countries did not operate on. I'm thinking that House Cannith probably only charged for labor fees. The countries involved in the production were no doubt required to provide for all the raw materials from Adamentine to Mirthril to normal wood and the like, which probably cuts down the cost considerably. It's also possible that they gave discounts for bulk orders. A better idea in my mind is that the warforged are probably causing massive war debts that will probably be paid into the future for close to a century to House Cannith or at the very least leading to uneven trade benefits.
Splendide 08-02-05, 01:23 AM	Its also worth looking at it in a similar capacity to real-world military development. While the project itself might be a white elephant, the techniques devised to achieve the end result generally have a wide variety of very lucrative spinoffs. New materials that you plonked big cash out to develop, well, you can now make them at will. How about the techniques used to make silver or cold iron tracery on warforged, that doesn't deteriorate after a couple of hits? Best part is, Cannith already has something close to a monopoly on this high-end crafting, so they can keep covering warforged losses in other fields...fields that they have a lock on because they already did the hard yards in warforged development. If you look at the raw materials involved with warforged, how much would they really cost? Pretty much all the rest that they would charge is going straight towards the R&D required.
Edymnion 08-02-05, 01:33 AM	And lets not forget that the Creation Forges themselves did most of the work. Eldritch Machines that bend and even outright break the normal rules of the game. It could very well be that, after the raw materials are provided, the Creation Forge shapes and energizes the WF all by itself with no further imput needed. The WF could actually be dirt cheap to make, once materials are covered, which means House Cannith was actually making a killing on selling the things. But, even if thats not true, why would it be House Cannith that went bankrupt? Its not like they weren't being paid through the NOSE for every one of those things they made. Its not like they made 50,000 WF at their own expense and just hoped they could sell them, they likely didn't make a WF until it had already been paid for. Rather like high end automobiles. If you order a $200,000 sports car, its not like they just give you one off the lot, they custom make it for you. They most definately do not make that expensive of a car and leave it sitting in a warehouse until somebody just so happens to want a car with all of the same extras that one has. Same with the WF. Some country pays for 50 Adamantine Body warforged, Cannith makes 50 Adm Body warforged. They may have kept a ready supply of "default models" to meet rush orders (aka, the country is getting it's butt kicked and needs reinforcements NOW), but the vast majority would have been made to order. If anybody went bankrupt over the WF, it was the nations ordering them, not House Cannith.
KP91 08-02-05, 01:56 AM	Remember, they didn't give away the WF. You can sell something for twice the amount you make it for. So Cannith became rich. Nevermind that they developed other weapons as well. There are also the artisan feats.
zambuka 08-02-05, 02:05 AM	I thought low cost was part of their popularity and the eventual ban on their creation with the thronehold treaty (along with questions of life and creation in general); the forges made warforged very cheap to produce (at least in relation to other types of construct), and even more economical in mass quantities. Remember that they had to compete with the relatively cost effective undead armies of Karrnath. After such a long war many of the nations coffers would be depressingly empty and debts would be too high to contemplate paying the kind of price needed for a typical construct. Instead they needed something cheap, adaptable and now. Cannith delivered. I personally see the sentient living nature of the 'forged as more an accident, a result of imperfect and rushed construction and shortcuts as well as using eldritch magics not fully understood. While cannith aimed for making the 'forged as intelligent as possible they did not expect them to be "alive".
Brastan 08-02-05, 04:09 AM	But not every nation or even every commander was willing to turn to undead to fill their ranks. It was not a competition at all. The cost to house Cannith was their development which in the earliest stages was actually government subsidized by Gulifar. This means that it actually cost them even less that you would think. Have you ever read any of Isaac Asimov's short stories? I'm thinking of one were the military wanted to create the perfect robot soldier. In sort the head designer came to the conclusion that the only perfect soldier was one that could think for itself. Anything less than full sentience would cause problems. The military refused to believe this and resulted in the stories conflict. Yes, in the story they actually did make a fully aware robot. I'm sorry that I can't remember the name of that story right now. :(
Argonel 08-02-05, 02:33 PM	You also have to remember that the undead armies of Karrnath were pretty much a desperation move. It paid off big, but they weren't necessarily the reason the other countires were interested in buying the warforged.
Quithion 08-03-05, 08:19 PM	Also it is my understanding that Schemas such as those in the Forgotten Forge were descirbed repeatedly as something house cannith did to cut costs down. Schemas are House Cannith's bread and butter.
aelryinth 08-03-05, 09:54 PM	You have to consider the cost factor in several areas. Let's say a level 2 Fighter Warforged is 4000 gp. First of all, you can get him with adamantine armor. Price that out for a human. Whats the price of equipping a level 2 fighter? Not a warrior, mind you. Full plate and masterwork blades and stuff all add up, and f/2's are 1/10 or 1/20 for every Warrior/2. Next add in costs to feed, pay, shelter and move troops around over the long term. Subtract the fact that you can get work out of warforged 24 hours a day, not 8. Note they heal a lot faster then humans, and don't bleed out in negatives. You actually have to reduce them to peices to kill them. They can, with just a little training, fix one another up just fine. And for all this, for a soldier that's going to last 30 years and is definitely superior to anything you can field, you pay a piddling 4000 gp...less then an adamantine suit of medium armor. Even if you get a f/2 for 8000 gp, you could compare it to a suit of adamantine heavy armor for their DR...and it is STILL a bargain. Mmmm. ==Aelryinth
ImmortalBlueMage 08-04-05, 05:04 AM	Most of the expense was probably in the development stage.
cmanos 08-04-05, 07:45 AM	somehow I don't think weapons dealers GIVE their weapons away. More likely the 5 Nations have huge wardebts from buying battalions of WF.
cmanos 08-04-05, 07:46 AM	Have you ever read any of Isaac Asimov's short stories? I'm thinking of one were the military wanted to create the perfect robot soldier. In sort the head designer came to the conclusion that the only perfect soldier was one that could think for itself. Anything less than full sentience would cause problems. The military refused to believe this and resulted in the stories conflict. Yes, in the story they actually did make a fully aware robot. I'm sorry that I can't remember the name of that story right now. :( Sounds a lot like the novel, I, Robot.
Nightshade 08-04-05, 05:45 PM	This is something that has been bugging me about Warforged for a while. The impression i get from reading the ECS and ROE is that they were created as grunts for the Last War. This means a lot were created,. and that there were whole battellions and divisions of warforged amonst the various nations. The issue i have is this; they are still constructs, living , but still constructs still. Shouldn't they have been incredilby expensive to make. I mean if we imageing whole assembly lines of warforged creation, it's not to hard to imagine how expensive that would get. Personally i tend to imageing warforged units as small, specialized. This may also be because of racial issues. I suppose it may be similar to real life, wher ethere were minoirty squads and units in the Civil War, because the white soliders didn't want to server alongside african-americans. Ok, so maybe that's not the best exampl;e. Anyway, maybe i'm misunderstanding Mr Baker's intent with reguards to Warforged use in the war. It just seems that to have whole armies of them would get incredably expensive, and paractically bankrupt the house. Yes, you're right in your belief on the extent of the use of the Warforged. It's not as much as most people seem to think. Sure the Creation Forges did most of the work and that reduced cost but the Warforged were generally elite combat unts or corps, like the Rangers in the US army. I know because I discussed this on the ask Keith Baker thread. Below is from page 6 from MarkB's summary of the Ask Keith thread: Q Originally Posted by Nightshade Yes I think that's all basically true. I would just analogize the WF more closely to heavily armored elite shock troops. A I would as well. Warforged soldiers were (IMO) built to serve as elite units; they were never intended to form the full mass of the army. You want a warforged that's better armored than your peasant because you have fewer warforged than peasants. This may just be Keith's opinion but I go with that until official material says otherwise.