What is the old warforged, incarnate construct trick?

[CyberThread]

Sorry, little bit tired, but what was the point behind the warforged incarnate construct trick? Where did it lead to, besides the endless loop effort?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Basically you use Incarnate Construct to offset level adjustment from other templates, provided your DM rules that it works that way.

You apply Incarnate Construct to a regular Warforged, dropping the LA to -2, then add Feral and Half-Minotaur (or whatever), bringing you to +0 LA while being Large with natural weapons and a boatload of other good things. Other DMs will rule that Incarnate Construct being applied to Warforged gives you -2 LA with a minimum of 0, so you have a LA of zero and Feral and Half-Minotaur then give you +2 LA exactly as normal, though that isn't usually the standard.

[Karnith]

Note that an Incarnate Construct Warforged is incompatible with a lot of the best (inherited) templates, since it's an acquired template. You can't have an Incarnate Construct Feral Half-Minotaur Warforged, for example, because warforged don't qualify for either the Feral or Half-Minotaur templates, and they'd need to be applied before Incarnate Construct.

[Urpriest]

Basically you use Incarnate Construct to offset level adjustment from other templates, provided your DM rules that it works that way.

You apply Incarnate Construct to a regular Warforged, dropping the LA to -2, then add Feral and Half-Minotaur (or whatever), bringing you to +0 LA while being Large with natural weapons and a boatload of other good things. Other DMs will rule that Incarnate Construct being applied to Warforged gives you -2 LA with a minimum of 0, so you have a LA of zero and Feral and Half-Minotaur then give you +2 LA exactly as normal, though that isn't usually the standard.

To clarify Karnith's point above:

You don't apply it in this order.

Rather, you first apply +2 LA worth of templates to a Warforged. Then you apply Incarnate Construct, giving it -2 LA with a minimum of zero.

You need templates that can be applied to a Warforged to start with. Note that Warforged, as living constructs, are living creatures, so templates that specify "any living creature" can affect them.

[CyberThread]

alright thank you folks, consider the topic resolved.

[tyckspoon]

To clarify Karnith's point above:

You don't apply it in this order.

Rather, you first apply +2 LA worth of templates to a Warforged. Then you apply Incarnate Construct, giving it -2 LA with a minimum of zero.

You need templates that can be applied to a Warforged to start with. Note that Warforged, as living constructs, are living creatures, so templates that specify "any living creature" can affect them.

Also note that Incarnate Construct strips pretty much everything interesting out of the creature you apply it to - about the only things you get to keep are raw stat adjustments and a measure of Natural Armor. Something like Llolth-Touched Draconic works, but it makes for a pretty boring beatstick and it's not really all that much better than doing something like Half-Minotaur Human with LA Buyoff.

[Tar Palantir]

Also note that Incarnate Construct strips pretty much everything interesting out of the creature you apply it to - about the only things you get to keep are raw stat adjustments and a measure of Natural Armor. Something like Llolth-Touched Draconic works, but it makes for a pretty boring beatstick and it's not really all that much better than doing something like Half-Minotaur Human with LA Buyoff.

Half-Mino keeps pretty much everything that matters about it, namely stats and size. I've never seen someone take it for the +4 to Int checks against maze, that's for sure.

[tyckspoon]

Half-Mino keeps pretty much everything that matters about it, namely stats and size. I've never seen someone take it for the +4 to Int checks against maze, that's for sure.

It'd strip out the Gore attack, Darkvision, and Scent.. not that it matters, as Warforged do not qualify for Half-Minotaur in the first place. That's the main problem - every time somebody re-discovers Incarnate Construct in one of these threads you have to walk them through all the problems as well. Since your templates have to be applied *before* Incarnate and also be applicable to Warforged, you wind up with a very short list of things that work with it. That list does not include a number of the optimization standbys for good template use.

[Gemini476]

Also note that Incarnate Construct strips pretty much everything interesting out of the creature you apply it to - about the only things you get to keep are raw stat adjustments and a measure of Natural Armor. Something like Llolth-Touched Draconic works, but it makes for a pretty boring beatstick and it's not really all that much better than doing something like Half-Minotaur Human with LA Buyoff.

While it does strip most of the features from a Warforged, you could probably make it Dragonborn and take Adamantine Body at first level.
Or maybe not. Is Dragonborn applied before templates, since it's a "Race"?

On the other hand, the ability to go through the Rite of Rebirth later means that you could do something like being a level one Lolth-Touched Draconic Incarnate Warforged with Adamantine body as a first feat, and then grab Dragonborn whenever it is made available.

Unless Dragonborn conflicts with Lolth-Touched, but I haven't read up on either of them recently.

EDIT: Or you could make a Spellstitched Necropolitan Incarnate Lolth-Touched Draconic Warforged. Or any other combination of humanoid-applicable acquired templates. You just reset the type pyramid, after all.

[Sith_Happens]

You need templates that can be applied to a Warforged to start with. Note that Warforged, as living constructs, are living creatures, so templates that specify "any living creature" can affect them.

...Half-dragon.:smallconfused:

[Karnith]

...Half-dragon.:smallconfused:
Yes, that works. "A dragon's magical nature allows it to breed with virtually any creature," after all (exactly how is another question entirely). Half-celestial and half-fiend work by the same logic, too.

You wouldn't be able to apply Incarnate Construct to them, though.

[Psyren]

And lets not forget the less... biological templates, like Saint, or Phrenic.