Warforged are mountains of metal, stone, and wood constructed with sentience far surpassing a typical automaton. They tend to be bulky and muscular, often ornamented with special carvings or markings indicating some intended purpose. Those built for battle may have helmet-like heads, or those designed for spellcasting may be etched with archaic runes. A rare few may have outer platings made of polished silver or painted wood, but most tend towards worn and rusty shades of brown and grey.
Warforged are rarely less than 6 feet tall, and they usually weigh well over 300 pounds. Warforged do not seem to age, and they tend to give little regard for age as a concept. Some may prefer to go by the estimated age of their creation, while others go by their ages of reawakening. Warforged may appear or act more feminine or more masculine, but they are entirely neuter.
As far as historians can tell, the knowledge of how to create warforged was lost during the Divine War 3,000 years ago, and over the millenia, nearly all warforged have died off or gone dormant. Their memories have faltered, their secrets long buried. However, some warforged have reawakened in recent times. Whether through the repair of a master craftsman or the pre-programmed expiration of a long slumber, some of these living machines now walk the face of Zend. Some strive for a greater purpose in a world that has forgotten them, some are desperate to find the secrets of their forgotten past, and others try to act on the orders they remember from their shattered memories.
Warforged are constructs with the living construct subtype. Spells that target only humanoids, such as Enlarge Person, do not work on warforged.
As constructs, warforged are immune to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, disease, nausea, fatigue, exhaustion, effects that cause the sickened condition, and energy drain. A warforged is automatically stabilized when reduced to negative hit points and does not risk taking damage from strenuous activity at 0 hit points. Warforged do not need to eat, sleep, or breathe, but may still choose to eat to gain the effects of potions and the like.
Unlike other constructs, a warforged has a constitution score and is subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, stunning, ability damage, ability drain, mind-affecting effects, and death effects or necromancy effects. They do not gain the low-light vision or darkvision that most constructs automatically have.
Warforged may be affected both as living creatures and as constructs. For example, a warforged may be healed by both cure light wounds and repair light damage, and may be damaged by both disable construct and harm. However, spells from the healing subschool and supernatural abilities that cure hit point damage or ability score damage only have half their normal effect on a warforged.
Any spell that affects creatures wearing metal or wooden armor affect warforged as though they were wearing metal and/or wooden armor, such as heat metal and repell wood. The iron in the body of a warforged is vulnerable to the rusting grasp spell. The spell deals 2d6 points of damage to warforged, reflex half. Spells such as stone to flesh and warp wood can only target objects, and thus they do not affect warforged.
The plating used to build a warforged grants a +2 armor bonus and a 5% arcane spell failure chance. This composite plating occupies the same space on the body as a suit of armor or a robe, and thus a warforged cannot effectively wear armor or magic robes. Any class ability that allows the warforged to ignore the arcane spell failure chance of light armor allows the arcane spell failure chance from composite plating to be ignored.
The composite plating of a warforged can be enchanted just as armor can be. THe warforged must be present during the entire enchanting process.
When a critical hit or sneak attack is scored against a warforged, there is a 25% chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and damage is instead rolled normally.
Warforged have a slam attack that deals 1d4 points of damage.
Some content presented here is derived from the d20 System, a trademark of Wizards of the Coast. All d20 content is used according to the terms of the Open Game License. Zachary Kulp and merfolkstudio.com are not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast, Inc. in any way.