How to create a Warforge?

[Sheogoroth]

Some friends and I are in a Kingmaker campaign and we just polished off the second module.
My DM is the kind to let us do what we want and reap the realistic consequences.(A new player asked him if he could invent Fission. My DM said that he wasn't sure if his character could live long enough to pass all the checks and craft required to create everything involved, but he would theoretically allow it.

So my character is the Leader and has oodles of charisma so I took leadership and created my own cohort with a back-story who is essentially a craft master artificer specializing in constructs.

My character is the a changeling and I took the bastard trait and wrote in that he was the bastard son of the King of Brevoy who came to carve out a kingdom of his own.

Now to the meat of it, we like to make far-flung plans.
We want to eventually assassinate the royal family, ensuring that the bonds of fealty expire, then raise an army and reconquer the realm, citing royal lineage and enforcing the claim with a sizable army and key alliances.
My DM's been reading A Song of Ice and Fire and I think I can make it work, but the main problem is manpower.

I've been reading some Eberron lore, particularly regarding the Warforged race, creating in magical giant Warforges, I'm thinking if we start early, we can eventually reach the state in which are cranking out more steel soldiers than any individual fiefdom can raise through loyalty. I've been pouring over Eberron books and I can't find the answer.

So here's my question- How exactly is a Warforge is built and how are Warforged created, and what book is the methodology from?

[Flickerdart]

There is no methodology written out. IIRC the background fluff is that the warforged factories were destroyed after the war they were made for ended.

You would be far better off using something like Mineralize Warrior which makes these guys (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20031003e) out of regular joes, with the added bonus that they're forced to obey your commands for a year.

Edit: If it's a high powered game, set up an Emerald Legion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101587) assembly line.

[Gavinfoxx]

Why do you exactly need Warforged in particular?

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=177

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aG4P3dU6WP3pq8mW9l1qztFeNfqQHyI22oJe09i8KWw/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14zilT4WGOyHM0AfpG4-GmD2FkgDg1HZ9HC1cTleQHds/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9NJIs751Af3i0IEIJwCkIp9H9YFiZYZ7u-wmYVaheI/edit

What you do, see -- is just make lots of magic items, and make normal golems, but that just happen to have intelligent magic items embedded into their workings...

Also, you could use circle magic (bump your caster level up!) and the Rudimentary Intelligence feat to give any given golem intelligence, too.

[Slipperychicken]

Well, you pop all the materials into the Creation Forge, perform all the rituals or whatever to keep it running, press the big red button... and TA DAAA! Warforged!



Real answer: Magic. A Wizard Artificer did it, and he used magic.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Well, as explained in the ECS, a Creation Forge is basically a harnessed Wish spell to be used as a plot device.

So.. unless your DM is really nice to you, you're pretty much out of luck for creating Warforged.

Flickerdart's Mineral Army, however, is an excellent idea. Even better, the spell mineralize warrior states that the newly created warrior must serve the caster for a year and a day.

[Sheogoroth]

"No matter how many times you use this spell or other spells that grant you control of creatures with the earth subtype, you can control only 2 Hit Dice worth of mineral warriors per caster level."

Not very useful for raising an army.
Also a year isn't a terrible amount of time in Kingmaker.

Golems make great sentries, but are of little value on a battlefield en masse due to their lack of ability to think critically... or tactically... or at all.
They are also very expensive, time consuming, require a degree of finesse, and are difficult to mass produce.
I did find a feat that could make souled constructs in AEG-Magic, but the issue of their price is daunting when Quantity is far more useful than Quality.

[Slipperychicken]

Better than that, get Animate Dread Warrior. Same xp cost, no gold cost, no minion cap, and it serves you until your death, rather than just a year. It's an even sweeter deal if you're a necropolitan and thus can't die. Only catches are: it's dumb as **** so it freaks out with orders more than 12 words long, and as undead they're subject to Turn/Rebuke.

Spellstitched Necropolitan with Animate Dread Warrior. Cast it without xp cost, every day, on every creature you kill. If it doesn't work at first (too many HD on opponent), wait a few levels until it does. If you want books thrown at you, cast it on dead party members.

[Flickerdart]

"No matter how many times you use this spell or other spells that grant you control of creatures with the earth subtype, you can control only 2 Hit Dice worth of mineral warriors per caster level."

What kind of a chump controls everyone in their army at once? Delegate!

Besides, even if you don't control them, just, you know. Pay them wages.

[Sheogoroth]

That's very good in theory, but you are irreparably playing a dangerous game with personages with their own motivations and fears, you can't even win the obedience of your own people with an army of the undead, not to mention provoking further non-political entities to crusade against you.

I've left the brainstorming for the culling of the hearts and minds of the people to another member of the party, but zombies are impractical and the only way to make mineralizing an army practical would be a moderately smaller army of sorcerers and if you've effectively got the continents population of 12th level casters at your disposal, you can skip ahead to deep ritual magic and just summon something C'thulu-esque.

My point is that if you can mass produce cheap, expendable soldiers, you don't need conquest, you can bankrupt the realm by subtly starting a war and selling the damn things.
When things go bad for your financiers, you've still got the money AND the power- you can send "reinforcements" right into their gates, betray Brevoy and broker a peace with the enemy for half of the nation.

[Kelb_Panthera]

After reading the previous post I have only one thing to say.

If they're capable of launching a crusade, they're not a non-political group.

[Slipperychicken]

That's very good in theory, but you are irreparably playing a dangerous game with personages with their own motivations and fears, you can't even win the obedience of your own people with an army of the undead, not to mention provoking further non-political entities to crusade against you.


Undead are, for most purposes, the same as machines. Boil the meat off so they're not disgusting, call them White Golems, and market them as labor-saving technology. Your country needs labor, and it's (probably) more moral than getting slaves. Introduce them in a time of famine/crisis, so you can justify it as a measure to harvest more efficiently so you can feed everyone, or repel the invaders, or rebuild the country faster.

What the other guy said: If an entity is capable of waging war on a national scale, it's practically a sovereign (it's own country, basically), and you need to deal with it anyway. Maybe you can start a "religious-integration" program where you accept Wee-Jass into your local pantheon (as well as appeasing other Gods), and have them do a study about how totally-not-evil it is to use undead.

[Devils_Advocate]

Aren't creation forges based on Technology Recovered From An Ancient Fallen Civilization Lost To The Mists of TimeTM?

You'll probably have to go explore some ruins somewhere. (This is Dungeons & Dragons, after all. Whatever you want to do tends to involve exploring ruins somehow.)

Also I think that they may need dragonmarks or dragonshards or other dragonwhatsits to make them work, but that can probably be ignored if the DM is amenable to having warforged factories in a campaign where those things don't exist.

[Slipperychicken]

Aren't creation forges based on Technology Recovered From An Ancient Fallen Civilization Lost To The Mists of TimeTM?

In Eberron, the only reason they're (mostly) gone at all is a treaty saying "Warforged are OP. Ban Warforged". And AFAIK, they don't need dragonshards/dragonmarks to work.