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Eberron is a fan favourite setting inDungeons & Dragons, along with the warforged endemic to the world. Playing a character designed towards a specific task opens up powerful opportunities for storytelling once the designer’s goal has become irrelevant and the story of a warforged character begins after the climactic battle where most others would end.
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The unique circumstances of these people make writing stories around them differ greatly from more traditional fantasy characters, and it can help to go into the character creation process with some ideas of what you want them to be, even if they end up evolving beyond this intended purpose.
Best Class For Playing A Warforged
Most of the features a warforged has to offer are either situational or more oriented towards roleplaying and bookkeeping. This makes them able to work in just about any class, even if some can make more use of those features.
Constructed Resilience
Rogue
Poison resistance complementsa character working with poisons and poisonous creaturessuch as a rogue or druid. Thebest poisons are harvested from powerful monsters,and resistance will make fighting them easier.
Not needing to eat, drink or breathe is usefulat a table that keeps track of rations,but this can be a rarity. It can also allow for some creative methods of smuggling your character into stealth missions.
A strong disease can render characters powerless but is liable to appear so rarely that it’s easy to forget theimmunity to disease that warforged possess.You’ll want to remember this when someone castscontagionat you.
Integrated Protection
Armorer Artificer, War Cleric, Bladesinger
There isn’t a class in the game that wouldn’t like a free+1 to their Armour Class.Warforged can utilise this to push the boundaries ofclasses that rely on natural armour, such as barbarians and monks. The bonus can also stack on top of the heaviest armour available to afighter or paladin
Having your armour bound to you means that enemiescan’t remove it if you get captured: They’ll just put you under heavier guard.
Sentry’s Rest
Cleric, Druid, or Ranger
Sentry’s Rest makes warforged well suited tokeeping watch and evading ambushesbut doesn’t increase your perception by itself. You can make the most of this feature by playinga class that relies on Wisdom or grants the expertise feature.
As the warforged do not suffer any penalties for lack of sleep,it is possible to play the infamous “coffeelock” with one, but that build option is best kept hypothetical.
Specialized Design
Artificer
The tool proficiencies a warforged begins with will bedoubled by an artificer’s level six expertise. Combining this with a background that also provides tool proficiencies canmake a warforged into a crafting machinethat doesn’t need to interrupt their work for sleep or food.
The strongest feature in combat is the bonus AC.A sorcerer or warlock without armourwill appreciate a mote of extra defence but the most fun choice for a warforged is toplay a class that aims to maximise their defencesand use the species bonus as icing.
Bladesinger Wizards and Eldritch KnightFighters both play into this strength.
The majority of settings that contain warforgedintroduce them as a recent innovation, for which the rules are unknown. Eberron: Rising From The Last Warnotes their lifespan as a mysterysince the oldest are 30 and show no signs of aging.
Some GMs may take this in the direction of thewarforged having no natural aging process, while others might read it as not having been discovered yet.
Depending on the type of game you are playing, you may want to embrace the uncertainty around warforged lore or work with your GM to hammer out answers.
You’re unlikely to find a GM who rules that all warforged die at age 31, but if you do, it’s better to not be surprised when it happens.
How people interact with a warforgedwill also be determined by the setting. Eberron largely views them through their role in the war, but there are other questions that a setting might present about warforged which are worth considering:
Another factor that might vary with the setting is how your warforged presents itself visually. The Eberron lore gives the typical warforgedwooden construction with metal frames, but there are plenty of other ways to make them visually interesting:
Check with your GM which version of the warforged is allowed at the table.
Some groups may allowtraits from the unearthed arcana variant, such as the “integrated tool” ability: Why would a warforged carry a lockpick when they could carve one of their fingers to perform the same function?
Some homebrewed settings might alsoassign them drawbacks such as making healing magic less effectivedue to their mechanical bodies.
How To Roleplay A Warforged
More than almost any other species in Dungeons & Dragons, the warforged hold an external perspective:In most worlds they are the youngest speciesand therefore don’t have strong templates to fit into or history to learn from.
This gives exciting opportunities for roleplaying:
Best Backgrounds For A Warforged
Your background choices will matter more if playing outside the Eberron setting:If the warforged aren’t a new innovation then you’ll have more history to play with. The right background can complement the type of character you’re looking to play outside the assumptions that would otherwise be made about a warforged.
Soldier
Player’s Handbook
The most likely background for warforged but that doesn’t mean you have to play it completely straight: The soldier backgroundcovers all military roles from combatants to logistics staff: An army chef will often have a rank equal to a non-commissioned officer and provides a good explanation for why a robotic rogue is so good with knives.
Outlander
The wanderer feature isn’t quite a GPS but makes your mechanical charactergood at navigating, letting them memorise maps and landmarksto orient themselves with. Foraging food and water doesn’t matter as much to a warforged but can help the surrounding group or make an unusual hobby akin to catch-and-release fishing.
Charlatan
It’s easy to think a warforged stands out too much to make use of a disguise kit but with some inspiration from the Mechanical Turk chess machine, you canhave your warforged imitate a non-sapient construct such as a golem, store mannequin, or suit of armour.A designer body allows for creative new types of scams and sleight of handthat wouldn’t be possible for someone bound by limits such as how far the human wrist can bend or only having one elbow joint on your arm.
Celebrity Adventurer’s Scion
Acquisitions Incorporated
Put a new spin on the concept of “designer babies” byhaving your character be a physical embodiment of their parents' ego. You can use this background to justify the gaudiest creation imaginable or the most optimised killing machine depending on who it is that built your warforged.
Criminal
A criminal warforged will be highly proficient withlockpicks and other tools, gaining them from both their background and species. You only need to worry if the wizard’s tower uses an image-based lock that requires you to select pictures of bicycles.
