Construct Vs Living Construct

[Dire Reverend]

Search is failing on me, so forgive me if this has been answered.

Are there benefits of being a Living Construct over a regular Construct? The only thing I can think of is that Living Constructs with a high con score will have superior hp to a regular construct.

Also, an unrelated question: can Living Constructs become undead?

[TroubleBrewing]

Constructs are unsuitable as player characters. Most of them are purpose-built to follow the commands of their creator, which makes them poor players.

I know of no way for a living construct to become undead.

[The_Snark]

As far as I know there is no general rule stating that living constructs cannot become undead, but you'd be hard pressed to find a specific template that allows it. Most undead templates list the creature types they're allowed to apply to (and somehow, construct is never on the list).

If you found an undead template that could be applied to any living creature you could make the argument that a living construct qualifies, but I don't know of any. Closest I can find are the zombie and skeleton templates, which apply to any living corporeal creature with a skeletal system.

As for advantages... well, living constructs can benefit from healing spells and spells that allow Fortitude saves (which are occasionally beneficial). From a metagame perspective, being a full construct tends to come with level adjustment, which is generally bad and gets worse when combined with their lack of a Constitution score.

[Dire Reverend]

I think all living constructs are intelligent. Not all constructs are mindless. There's a spell called Awaken Construct which "awakens a humanoid-shaped construct to human-like sentience".

[Zaq]

Basically, the benefit to living constructs is that there are playable LA 0 living constructs, while I know of no such thing for just straight up constructs.

"You can be one" is a pretty significant advantage.

[Flickerdart]

I think all living constructs are intelligent. Not all constructs are mindless. There's a spell called Awaken Construct which "awakens a humanoid-shaped construct to human-like sentience".
Awaken Construct plops the Incarnate Construct template on, I believe - which essentially removes all Construct benefits.

[deuxhero]

I know of no way for a living construct to become undead.

Hasn't WoTC said Animate Dead works on them?

[BlackestOfMages]

living contruct benefits:
can be healed by cure spells (big advantage) as well as repair contruct spells
have all those nice construct immunitites
have a con score, which can be usefull at times

so, now you're planning to upgrade from superpowered salient vampire human to superpowered salient vampire warforged? :smalltongue:

[Dire Reverend]

Awaken Construct plops the Incarnate Construct template on, I believe - which essentially removes all Construct benefits.

You are thinking of a separate spell, called "Incarnate Construct". Awaken Construct just gives a construct an intelligence.


living contruct benefits:
can be healed by cure spells (big advantage) as well as repair contruct spells
have all those nice construct immunitites
have a con score, which can be usefull at times

so, now you're planning to upgrade from superpowered salient vampire human to superpowered salient vampire warforged? :smalltongue:

Not for the bleach game, silly.

[Flickerdart]

You are thinking of a separate spell, called "Incarnate Construct". Awaken Construct just gives a construct an intelligence.


Well derp.

Alternatively, the creations of a caster with the Rudimentary Intelligence feat from Dragon 327 gets an Intelligence score of half its creator's CL, meaning that you could make true to life robot Orcs long before you could cast Awaken Construct.