[OSSR]Races of Eberron

[tussock]

Pfft, everyone knows everything was better in the past and only gets worse over time. Just look at how Moses the Elves lived for centuries, and now their forests are fading to the onslaught of the fast-breeding gutter races.

What, it must be true, it says so in D&D. Look at the artefacts of olden times, the immensely powerful elder things, the impervious Gods risen up in ages past.

[norms29]

Still genuinely interested in an answer to this question...

We are asked to imagine a race that skips all the bottom rungs and goes straight to Self Actualization, which doesn't make any sense and might as well be Fish Malking for all the good it does in a game.

seriously? I mean I get that their physiological needs are null, but having not read the book, I'm not getting from your description what exempts them from the Safety, Belonging, and Esteem Layers.

In fact, I would think a need for Belonging and/or Esteem would have been necessary to make them act like soldiers instead of fucking off to do their own thing as soon as they were created.

[Starmaker]

picture: hierarchy of needs
We are asked to imagine a race that skips all the bottom rungs and goes straight to Self Actualization, which doesn't make any sense and might as well be Fish Malking for all the good it does in a game.

seriously? I mean I get that their physiological needs are null, but having not read the book, I'm not getting from your description what exempts them from the Safety, Belonging, and Esteem Layers.

In fact, I would think a need for Belonging and/or Esteem would have been necessary to make them act like soldiers instead of fucking off to do their own thing as soon as they were created.
...
Still genuinely interested in an answer to this question...

You'd think Belonging and Esteem would've been necessary, but this isn't actually borne out by the book. As ultimately disposable living weapons, the warforged haven't had much regard for Safety either, and the actual motivation to prioritize anything else over Safety is missing. It straight-up says "collectively, warforged don't give a fuck about anything, so go ahead and invent a purpose in life for your character". It's like your toaster suddenly gained sentience, except worse, because a toaster is a peaceful household item and we can project self-preservation on it, something the warforged-as-weapons explicitly lacked, what with marching to battle for no reason.

[fbmf]

Or did they only work with mithril, then all these young races rocked up and started experimenting with heavy metal?

I see what you did there.

Game On,
fbmf

[Ancient History]

Sort of a fridge moment on [Mindset] spells here: they added in a racial component to cast the spells, but does that mean you have to be that race to prepare them? I mean, there's only five of them and they all kinda suck, but...I may need to lay back down for the rest of my nap.

[norms29]

You'd think Belonging and Esteem would've been necessary, but this isn't actually borne out by the book. ... It straight-up says "collectively, warforged don't give a fuck about anything, so go ahead and invent a purpose in life for your character". It's like your toaster suddenly gained sentience, except worse, because a toaster is a peaceful household item and we can project self-preservation on it, something the warforged-as-weapons explicitly lacked, what with marching to battle for no reason.

oh... wow. ok. that is truly awful.

Sort of a fridge moment on [Mindset] spells here: they added in a racial component to cast the spells, but does that mean you have to be that race to prepare them?

my heart's not really in it, but I would argue that the rules always allowed you to prepare spells you don't have the material components to cast, so the same should apply to new bullshit race component

[Koumei]

I like to pretend the racial component is actually just a material component, so you have to reach out and touch a dwarf (or whatever) and let them be physically consumed by the casting of the spell.

[Username17]

Warforged need little to survive: not sleep, food, or even air to breathe. Warforged need only shelter from extremes of cold and heat, and to repair damage done to their bodies. With such minimal requirements, one might think a warforged could travel to a temperate clime and then do nothing but simply exist, standing in place like a statue. Yet warforged are thinking creatures, and as such they require activities to occupy their thoughts.

And my personal favorite:

Yet as creatures without a need for leisure, warforged often take Craft skills and create things endlessly.

It's really that bad. Warforged don't have any needs at all except to stave off boredom, and they don't even need companionship or personal belonging for that. It even explicitly tells you that few warforged pursue activities that "require another creature's participation." Not only do they not have belonging needs, they tell you that most warforged actively avoid the pursuit of social connection. There's literally nothing there to hang your hat on. You might as well be playing a hydroelectric dam.

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

My next character is going to be a hydroelectric dam bard.

[Tannhäuser]

My next character is going to be a hydroelectric dam bard.

With Vampire being a class in 4e, I entertained the idea of playing a Warforged Vampire, with a theme to get healing powers from: a dialysis machine/technician.

[Wiseman]

Warforged need little to survive: not sleep, food, or even air to breathe. Warforged need only shelter from extremes of cold and heat, and to repair damage done to their bodies. With such minimal requirements, one might think a warforged could travel to a temperate clime and then do nothing but simply exist, standing in place like a statue. Yet warforged are thinking creatures, and as such they require activities to occupy their thoughts.

And my personal favorite:

Yet as creatures without a need for leisure, warforged often take Craft skills and create things endlessly.

It's really that bad. Warforged don't have any needs at all except to stave off boredom, and they don't even need companionship or personal belonging for that. It even explicitly tells you that few warforged pursue activities that "require another creature's participation." Not only do they not have belonging needs, they tell you that most warforged actively avoid the pursuit of social connection. There's literally nothing there to hang your hat on. You might as well be playing a hydroelectric dam.

-Username17

Wow, that is genuinely stupid. I've written and played outsider races (like genies) that skip the bottom rung, but they still desire to at least form societies and be part of (or in charge of) groups, along with the other needs. From what that describes, a warforged might as well just sit around all day doing jack-all.

[Insomniac]

It sounds like Crafting is the way Warforged masturbate.

[Whipstitch]

To me the most depressing thing about all this is the fact that even shitty feats and equipment options could still be sorta fun to have around if the authors weren't crapping on things with rote, thoughtless formatting and disingenuous options offered up only in jest. As demonstrated by AH and that goony soul knife build there can be a real place in most settings for shitty shit that players aren't going to be using. You just shouldn't be dedicating 5 pages to each example or put them next to the real classes, because holy fuck.

[Ancient History]

This is the monk/soulknife gish, for anyone morbidly curious.

Flowing Blade [General]

Your mind blade is an extension of your body and soul, and you wield it with the same grace as your foot or fist.

Prerequisite: Ability to generate a mind blade, Weapon Focus (mind blade), flurry of blows class feature.

Benefit: You can treat your mind blade as a special monk weapon so that you can perform a flurry of blows with it.

Special: A kalashtar or Inspired monk can select this as a bonus feat at 2nd or 6th level, in addition to the normal options available at those levels. They must still meet all prerequisites for the feat.

[AndreiChekov]

"The elves are a lively, pointy eared race, that excel at poverty." -Sten

That was what this book made me think of.

[Ancient History]

By itself, it's a moderately interesting option because the prerequisites are simple and the effect is straightforward. It's not overpowered at low levels either, at least by itself - the damage from the soulknife and the monk's unarmed attack are about the same and the enhancements to each don't stack. But there are some things you can do to fiddle with that, like the Spiritual Force feat where kalashtar can expend their psionic focus to gain a +(CHA bonus) to mind blade damage for one round.

You can also probably sweet-talk your GM into letting your take Stunning Master, which lets you make stunning fist attacks (and various abilities based off that) through your "special monk weapon" (read: mind blade), provided you survive long enough to get a +4 BAB to qualify for it. There's a lot of Stunning Fist feats - more than you will ever be able to take even if you were a single-class monk - but the potential exists, I guess, if you want to pick one or two?

For extra fun, you could sorta-kinda do this with feats just in the books - it was just a pain in the ass. You needed a Shape Mindblade feat that changed your mindblade into said monastic weapon (optional bonus: take an additional feat to give you an exotic monastic weapon) - but only if you're a true masochist.

Wait, I forgot about this one: to swap back-and-forth evenly between classes, you need to burn yet another feat on Monastic Training, and if you're going to just through feats in the blender you might as well take Tashalatora, which will let your monk & psionic class levels stack for...monk shit you don't care a lot about.

[Shady314]

Wow, that is genuinely stupid. I've written and played outsider races (like genies) that skip the bottom rung, but they still desire to at least form societies and be part of (or in charge of) groups, along with the other needs. From what that describes, a warforged might as well just sit around all day doing jack-all.

Of course plenty of Warforged want safety, society and a sense of belonging. That's the Lord of Blades entire sales pitch. As a people Warforged are supposed to be adrift and in search of all that stuff.

It was just this stupid book was total ass. I especially hated the tracker masks one stupid fucking sentence about Warforged's poor sense of smell.They didn't have a poor sense of smell before that sentence.

It was all as lazy as it could possibly be. Warforged are anti-social robots, Kalashtar are psychic monks that dance, Changelings are obsessed with change (Im sure they thought that was super clever) and Shifters are animals/noble savages that of course love nature. Pages and pages of shit.

[Lokathor]

Warforged need little to survive: not sleep, food, or even air to breathe. Warforged need only shelter from extremes of cold and heat, and to repair damage done to their bodies. With such minimal requirements, one might think a warforged could travel to a temperate clime and then do nothing but simply exist, standing in place like a statue. Yet warforged are thinking creatures, and as such they require activities to occupy their thoughts.

And my personal favorite:

Yet as creatures without a need for leisure, warforged often take Craft skills and create things endlessly.

It's really that bad. Warforged don't have any needs at all except to stave off boredom, and they don't even need companionship or personal belonging for that. It even explicitly tells you that few warforged pursue activities that "require another creature's participation." Not only do they not have belonging needs, they tell you that most warforged actively avoid the pursuit of social connection. There's literally nothing there to hang your hat on. You might as well be playing a hydroelectric dam.

-Username17

As someone with Asperger's, the Warforged mostly sound Autistic.

EDIT: well less like actual autistic people and more a like clinical analysis of autistic people.

[norms29]

so am I justified in concluding that nobody involved in writing this book (or Eberron in general probably) even considered the question of what motivated the warforged to act like soldiers and follow orders during the war?

[Shady314]

so am I justified in concluding that nobody involved in writing this book (or Eberron in general probably) even considered the question of what motivated the warforged to act like soldiers and follow orders during the war?

Warforged Childhood

Yes Warforged were child soldiers. Or clone troopers. Depends on how dark the GM wants to make it.

[Blicero]

I nutted up and asked Keith Baker about the claims raised in this thread. He responded in the latest Eberron FAQ:
http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-3121 ... nd-thrane/

There are some fairly close thematic similarities between the kalashtar and the githzerai: both use psionics, both have extraplanar connections, both are at eternal war with a race of shared origin. Were these similarities intentional when the kalashtar were designed? If so, were they meant to be a playable version of the githzerai for your campaign (ie, lacking in level adjustment)?

Interesting theory, but no. The kalashtar have the distinction of being the one new race that was mentioned in the original ten-page overview of Eberron in the setting search (though the idea of a playable doppelganger was also there in the ten-pager). For me, the defining elements of the kalashtar are that they are mortal humanoids tied to immortal spirits and their unique connection to the world of dreams, something that’s been a long-time interest of mine. My first published piece of RPG material dealt with a conspiracy of people who shared dreams and affected the world through dream manipulation (more than a decade before Inception, mind you). So no, I’m afraid it’s just a coincidence.

Meanwhile, I’ve always used the Gith as a race whose world was destroyed by the Daelkyr before they came to Eberron. I consider the Illithids to be to the Gith as the Dolgaunts are to hobgoblins; they are creatures the Daelkyr created from Gith stock. Thus the Gith are a race who have lost their world, and they despise the Mind Flayers both as the instruments of their destruction and a mockery of their people.


Also, I have read elsewhere that warforged and shifters were elements introduced to Eberron only after WotC accepted it as their contest winner. In the pre-WotC conception of Eberron, did elements related to warforged and shifters exist?

That’s not quite true. The Warforged and Shifters weren’t present in the TEN page submission, because I made the assumption that WotC wouldn’t be interested in adding lots of new races when so many already existed. As such, the kalashtar were the only NEW race I presented. When WotC chose Eberron as a finalist, I had the opportunity to talk to the D&D R&D team and they discussed the aspects of Eberron they liked and what they wanted to see more of in the 100-page final story bible. In particular, they wanted to see more races – specifically races that addresses the magic-as-part-of-life aspect of the world. Sentient war golems and playable lycanthropes both fit that bill. So warforged, shifters and changelings were all in the 100-page story bible that was submitted in the final round of the setting search… and then after Eberron was selected, they were further defined and refined for inclusion in the 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting.

[Orion]

I though that substitution levels were actually one of the better innovations of late-cycle 3.5. Sure, it was impossible to even scratch the surface of available design space. But at least the material could be used. As you've discussed, new feats rapidly become useless because characters get so few of them. Prestige classes are also mostly "choose one," and most of them don't do anything interesting before about character level 10. Substitution levels were another channel of content that a character could access. Even better, they can be used to hotfix concepts that should have been good, but weren't. Everyone has always wanted elf wizards to be good, but in 3rd edition, they never were. They were so much worse than dwarf, halfling, and human wizards that it was frankly embarassing. Bringing out the elf substitution wizard was a great idea in that regard. Also, the substitution levels often add new class skills. It's amazingly stupid to have skills be in-class only for 1-3 random levels in your career, but that's actually enough to buy a decent investment and get a usable new function, which is nice in a game that controlled skill access way too stingily.

Now, the substitution levels in RoE are mostly stupid. The psionic ones are insultingly hamfisted cross-promotion. The Kalashtar ones are bad. Shifter Wilder is not a combo that will ever be played, but the substitution level at least has noteworthy benefits. The Changeling Egoist is the only one somone might actually play, and only 1 of the three level is worthwhile. But it's really good (I think, I haven't look at the psi book in a long time) There are some real gems, though. Shifter Druid substitution is great for the game. It lets you get rid of the animal companion and/or wild shape abilities. Both are brokenly strong abilities that are also absurdly complex mechanically, so they slow down the game and unbalance it at the same time. A strict power gamer won't touch Shifter Druid, but you can use it to pare down a druid to something a newbie player can actually handle, or use it as an experienced player to sandbag your power level. Warforged Paladin cures MAD, Changeling Wizard is just cool, and Changeling rogue trades terrible abilities you don't care about for terrible abilities you might care about. It's all in good fun.

[Username17]

So Keith Baker confirms that Shifters, Warforged, and Changelings started life as playable Lycanthropes, Golems, and Doppelgangers (getting converted to "it breeds true" races during discussions with WotC about how much ECL rules could be dicked with), but insists that the Kalashtar look exactly like Githzerai with the serial numbers rubbed off because they are a completely original creation that simply happens to be structurally, narratively, culturally, and mechanically indistinguishable from Githzerai save that they are less interesting. That's entirely possible. People reinvent the wheel all the time.

Although to be honest, I'm now even less interested in the Kalashtar than I was before. If they were literally Githzerai with the ECL lowered and serial numbers rubbed off, that would be a reason for them to exist. The fact that someone thought the world genuinely needed to retell the Githzerai story because they had an extra plane full of psychic aliens for a group of humans to be associated with and transformed into psychic warrior monks divided against an equivalent group of humans transformed into similarly psychic warrior mages is just kind of sad.

I can see why someone would think that because their setting had a world of dreams in addition to an astral plane that they would need to make a whole new race of basically just humans with the bad touch from it. And I can see why having committed yourself to making a badtouch race for the world of dreams that would end up making pretty much all the design choices that Stross made with the Gith back in his pimply faced youth. Basically humans with mind powers, so you make them essentially Jedi and so on and so on. But this is not in fact a thing you need to do, and indeed it's the very worst part of D&D. It's why we have Mechanatrices and Flynds. And it's bad.

I though that substitution levels were actually one of the better innovations of late-cycle 3.5. Sure, it was impossible to even scratch the surface of available design space. But at least the material could be used. As you've discussed, new feats rapidly become useless because characters get so few of them. Prestige classes are also mostly "choose one," and most of them don't do anything interesting before about character level 10. Substitution levels were another channel of content that a character could access.

Based on the design space they had painted themselves into, substitution levels weren't the end of the world. Although the fact that people seemed to think you had to give up something from Fighter Levels to access additional content was deeply insulting.

The issue I have is with the racial substitution level. It's one thing to pull an Unearthed Arcana and let Bards trade in their Inspire Courage for an animal companion or let Barbarians trade their Uncanny Dodge for Pounce - but it's quite another to have these options be restricted to specific race/class combinations. Even iconic combinations like Dwarf Cleric, Gnome Wizard, and Orc Barbarian don't appear in every game. You've seen a lot of Halfling Rogues, hell you've probably played a Halfling Rogue. But do you have a Halfling Rogue in even half of the games you're in?

-Username17

[Orion]

There were 7 "Complete X" class books and 4 "Races of" books before you add any of the monster themed books, alternate magic system books, or setting specific books. Nothing you could possible add at that points would be relevant to half of all games. Now, some of the substitutions really should have been general-purpose. For instance, the Halfling Monk that got Skirmish instead of sneak attack. That was clearly written because they hired a freelancer smart enough to understand that special full attack options are exactly what you shouldn't give to a class whose selling points are supposed to be tumble and fast movement. The skirmish option needed to be available to all monks (and also to give you damage numbers that weren't terrible). On the other hand, Elven wizard was written specifically because elven wizards were bad. A bunch of half-orc and half-elf levels should have been written because those races are bad at everything. Unfortunately, the ones that were written for those races were terrible. Races of Incarnum even realized that you could use racial substitution to throw a bone to level-adjusted races, though what they gave out was pretty minimal. They could have pushed that a lot harder -- imagine an Aasimar Cleric substitution that straight-up gave you +1 level of spellcasting progression.

[tussock]

You're supposed to buy-off LA with the UA rule (or a better version of that, always HD 3, 9, and 18). Having a lot of options for making LA less bad ends up making LA awesome and a must-have for every character, which is not good.

It's like how the various fixes for core metamagic being a bit stink ended up giving full casters a bunch of free metamagic in exchange for stuff they didn't use anyway, which is a terrible thing for the game.

But nightsticks, divine metamagic, and metamagic rods where totally relevant to every single game that didn't ban them. Those things are in the complete X books. If they'd added something which also massively powered up Fighters or Rangers or Paladins or Monks or Bards those things would also see a lot of use (and they did, for various bits of cheese). 99% garbage is not 100% garbage, people find things.

And core 3e PHB Elves in general are bad. The real Elf is the Grey, hidden in the Monster Manual. They make fine Wizards, which is what everyone did.