D&D 3.5 Edition ruleset and how it applies to DDO

I have sat here on my overburgeoned bookcases over fifty D&D 3.5 Edition rule books. A lot of players, both in and out of guild know about this and I get numerous tells throughout the day asking questions not only about build but about stats of monsters found in game, weaknesses, as well as a lot of other bizzare questions.

What I thought I'd do is start a thread here so if anyone has a specific question, they can put it to me as I check these forums very regulary now.

I'm often amazed when I ask people where they are going with their builds and they reply that they have no idea and they're just making it up as they go along. This of course is a perfectly valid way to play but I really enjoy planning out char paths. (I have all my chars planned out up to lvl 30 so far as word is we're getting Epic levels post lvl 20) and if I can help tweak anyones char to get a bit more out of them, so much the better

Hope I'm not treading on anyones toes here as there are a few threads about asking questions but those tend to be about game specific things (Where can all 6 Dragon gems be located etc etc). This is meant to be a bit different from those.

Just to try to clarify exactly what it is that I'm trying to do here, I thought I'd give you an example.

We've all ran the quests in the desert and taken on Queen Lailat and her Demonic minions.

We've all taken our skills, powers and abilities to the Vale of Twilight to prevent Ebberon becoming overrun by the Devilish hordes of a certain big red chicken.

So... Demons are chaotic and vulnerable to cold iron while Devils are lawful and vulnerable to silver.

End of story right?

Well... To many and most, yeah sure, and if thats all you want to know just to play the game then thats fine of course. I myself get a lot of pleasure from knowing a bit more about the various beasties we encounter on our travels and so offer this now as a bit of a history lesson about the difference between Demons & Devils in D&D



So there you have it. This is the sort of thing I'd like to be able to offer to the guild. I may be the only person insane enough to have an active interest in fictional creatures but if there are any more out there that want to know just what exactly a Beholder eats, What a typical Mind Flayer is likely to be thinking when it encounters your group or just how large a gelatenous cube can grow to..

This is the place.

DW
Your resident UA Loremaster

Just like to say a couple of things

i thought i had a lot of 3.5 AD&D books (25) but you take the crown lol
you have made me think about character generation, so some of mine may be about to be rebuilt like Dr Who

Thanks Dark nice read
Ive a little question if I dare, Warforged ?????? whats that all about dont remember them. Its like D&D meets star wars?.
short and simple answer is best or i just get dizzy
Tyvm

Lol Nev, you should know that I never do anything by halves :-)

Rol, good question and one that leads into lots of other ones as many people are familiar with Krynn or Faerun (from the respective Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms settings) and those are to fairly typical fantasy worlds.

The creators of Eberron tried to do something a little different though and mixed in an almost Sci Fi feel to the fantasy mixture. The short simple answer as to what exactly a Warforged is is pretty much whats given in the character creation screens...

This is a little bit more in depth though and will hopefully give anyone who's interested a further glimpse into Eberron and Stormreach...

A Day in the Life

Watcher detects a light blue tint in the windows across the road and knows that only a few more hours remain before dawn. He has learned from a thousand similar nights that the blue tone will gradually brighten, first to gray and then to a pale yellow. The sky over the building behind his back won’t grow bright enough to offer a true reflection in the paned glass until just after dawn, when his human employer will awaken and begin to stir. Watcher ponders this as he stands motionless in the doorway on the dark street, eyes and ears ever alert for threats to his employer’s warehouse. Despite the darkness and the danger of his nightly vigils, Watcher looks to the coming day with resignation rather than anticipation. Daylight brings the hustle and bustle of city life, and it will no doubt bring the hollered commands of his employer and her sons. Although the night can bring confrontations with thieves, daytime life is more complicated, more troublesome. At night, this part of the warehouse district can be so still and quiet that for hours at a time Watcher feels as though he’s the only living thing in the city. On such nights, Watcher thinks about the Last War and of his former comrades in arms who now work in other parts of the city. All of them were adrift after the Treaty of Thronehold declared them free. When their unit was told of the treaty’s meaning, they simply stood waiting in the rain for three days until their human commander returned and ordered them to disperse. For months they wandered the roads and travelled through the wilderness aimlessly. Eventually
Watcher suggested that they try doing what humans do in peacetime. All of them have jobs now, and Watcher rarely sees them. A few work in the mines outside town, some are part of the city watch, and several work as salvagers when ships run aground on the reefs in the bay.

As Watcher contemplates these things, his hands work with a knife and a piece of wood. With swift and deft cuts, he whittles almost unconsciously, carving a small block of wood into the shape of a lizardlike creature he once saw flying over the battlefield, its rider casting lightning down with a forked wand. When finished, he places the wooden monster against the side of the building and picks up another block of wood, never taking his eyes off the shadowy street.

Inevitably, the sun rises. Watcher gazes impassively as the first morning travelers go about their business.
Most passersby deliberately ignore him, which is a vast improvement over when he first started work at the warehouse. Some people spit on him as they passed, calling him a job stealer. Watcher could do the jobs of two or three humans, so the hostility made sense, but he had to work somewhere to pay off his debt for the repairs done on him when he arrived in the city. A dwarf dockworker Watcher had spoken to once gives the warforged a habitual nod as he passes and Watcher nods in return, pleased by even this small affirmation of his presence. As usual, the neighbourhood children come squealing up to the building to gather up his night’s carvings. One of them surprises Watcher by having the courage to thank him instead of simply grabbing a toy and running away. In an hour, the coach of his employer arrives, and she and her sons step down to enter the building. Watcher follows them in, and when there is a break in their morning chatter, he gives his report of the night. Afterward, Watcher steps back outside to await other commands, hopeful that they’ll require his services elsewhere in the city. Instead, one of the sons comes to tell him to stand ready in the warehouse to unload wagons. Watcher thinks the man’s name is Barro, but his employer has six sons, and they all look too similar for him to tell them apart.

Watcher unloads wagons for a time. It’s simple work, and Watcher’s mind is free to wander. After a while, the sons and other workers sit down to eat, signalling to Watcher that it is sometime after noon. They return to work shortly, and everyone works hard and fast. As the light outside the warehouse doors dims, Watcher notes that the activity in the warehouse does not diminish. The other workers are sweating and doing the curious things typical of humans becoming tired.

They yawn more frequently and become clumsier as the evening wears on, and eventually Watcher’s employer orders them to go home. “Watcher can finish the rest,” she says with some satisfaction—and Watcher does. It takes him several more hours to stack the unloaded barrels and crates, but he does so without comment or complaint. Standing in place or lugging heavy cargo—it makes little difference to Watcher, as long as he has something to do. Watcher checks one last time to make certain he has done all that his employer asked him to, and then he steps out of the warehouse into the cool predawn air.
After locking the door behind him, Watcher turns his back to the door and steps into the doorway, assuming his customary post as guardian. Watcher notes the yellow tone in the windows of the building across the road. In an hour or two, the dwarf will walk by again and another day’s labor will begin. Watcher spends the time before his employer returns wondering what it might be like to be a dockworker or to join his old comrades in salvaging cargo from the sea. Perhaps next year, he thinks, or maybe tomorrow.


Born from the strife of the Last War, warforged remain as constant reminders of that terrible time. To look upon one is to see an instrument of destruction, a heartless killing machine, a siege engine in the shape of a man. Despite the purposes for which House Cannith built them, however, warforged can choose to be peaceful. When given thinking minds, warforged were granted the ability to surpass the limited uses for which their creators had designed them. When peace finally came, the nations of Khorvaire agreed to free the warforged, granting them their first opportunity to make their own choices. Although tireless creations, the warforged had long ago become tired of war and chose to live among the other races. Unlike other veterans of the Last War, however, the warforged have never known peace and have no homes to which to return. The warforged thus live uneasily among the other races of the world, seeking to create a place for themselves in unwelcoming lands.

Warforged Psychology

The technology used to create warforged began with the methods used to create mindless constructs. Although true sentience was a goal, there was little thought given to what the effects of sentience would be or how to best prepare those minds for their new existence. At the moment of a warforged’s first awakening to the living world, it can understand the language of its creator and instinctively knows how to move its body, but in all other respects the newly created warforged is a blank slate. At this early stage, any creature has great power to mold the future psychology of a warforged. It has no knowledge of the world, no understanding of falsehood, and no feelings about good or evil. Lies told to it then might be considered truth forever, or at least until disproved. Most warforged were created in the forges of House Cannith. During the Last War, House Cannith had heavily regulated regimens of instruction for warforged.
At their core was the understanding that a warforged was not entitled to choose for itself. It was created for one purpose: to be obedient to and fight for whomever bought it. This simple concept required months of instruction. Although fighting came naturally enough, warforged had to be taught the use of weapons and tactics. They were instructed in how to recognize enemies, know allies, and improvise when left without commands. Most of this training took the form of elaborate war games in which warforged fought one another with real weapons while artificers and magewrights stood on hand to heal them. The victors received praise and saw the exultation on the faces of their human commanders, while the losers were berated. At this point most warforged felt their first emotions. For most it was a single feeling: pride or shame, joy or jealousy. From then on, the warforged fought to preserve or quell that feeling through combat. It was better to feel nothing than to be jealous of others or shameful, and to maintain joy or pride, a warforged had to succeed constantly in battle. This simple view of the world served the warforged’s creators and buyers well.

Next came fear. Although sometimes it is magically induced, most warforged first experience fear not in the face of overwhelming odds or terrible carnage, but when they realize that death means an end to experience. For a warforged, this is a traumatic revelation. Warforged were designed not to require sleep; they don’t have any reckoning of a time when they aren’t able to experience what happens around them. When a warforged was awakened from incapacity, it saw for the first time that the world moved without its input, things changed over which it had no control, and time passed without its knowledge. At this point, House Cannith trainers explained death to the warforged as equivalent to oblivion. Once that information had been implanted, fear could then be used as a motivator to get warforged to do their creators’ bidding.
Warforged learned about other emotions on the battlefield. Most gained a sense of camaraderie from sharing battlefield successes and failures, but few know what real friendship is, and fewer still understand an emotion as complicated as love. Hate comes somewhat more easily to warforged. Warforged who know jealousy can most easily understand hate, but any warforged who cares for his comrades and fears for his life can come to hate an enemy that threatens both.

When the Last War ended and the Treaty of Thronehold declared warforged to be free beings, warforged lost the structure of their existence. Suddenly thousands of warforged were left bereft of leadership or purpose. This bewildering freedom led to a profusion of lifestyle choices. In Thrane and Karrnath, most warforged became indentured servants, tireless workers who could rebuild the lands ruined by war. In other lands, many warforged stood on the mustering fields for days or weeks, waiting for orders that would never come. Some warforged then banded together to decide what to do, while others looked to one of their own for a leader. Still others immediately set out in search of a life free of war. In those chaotic days that followed their freedom, warforged made their choices based on their feelings about the four facets of their free lives discussed below. The ideas they formed then about these core facets of their lives ruled their psychology and influenced the choices they made.

Continued...

Needs
Warforged need little to survive: not sleep, food, or even air to breathe. Warforged need only shelter from extremes of cold and heat, and to repair damage done to their bodies. With such minimal requirements, one might think a warforged could travel to a temperate clime and then do nothing but simply exist, standing in place like a statue. Yet warforged are thinking creatures, and as such they require activities to occupy their thoughts. When House Cannith first created thinking warforged, it experimented with sensory deprivation (often by simply burying warforged alive). Such experiments showed that, although warforged could maintain their sanity far longer than humans could, warforged left with nothing to do eventually became insane.

Warforged always seek something to do or to pursue some purpose. They look for a place in the world or to make their mark on it. Some warforged are content to have a meager existence, working only for materials to repair themselves and taking shelter only in the worst weather, but the vast majority pursue some profession or activity to give purpose to their constantly working minds.

Roleplaying Application: Your warforged character should have some goal. You don’t need much, so you should decide what your character wants and why. If your goal is something specific that your character can feasibly accomplish, think about what she will want when she’s finished.

Battle
Born into a warring world, warforged were divorced from everything they understood when the Last War ended. Some warforged were relieved by the end of the conflict, some were angry, and others were frightened. All warforged have opinions about war, and their feelings about it help dictate their current actions. War and violence are closely linked in the warforged mind—you can’t have one without the other. A warforged witnessing a tavern brawl or a scuffle in the street inevitably sees it as part of a larger conflict. He might attempt to discover which side he should fight for or what tactical advantage he might gain by allowing what could be enemies to wear one another down. The inability to think of violence on a small scale or as an isolated incident often causes problems for warforged in the settlements of their creators and former masters. For this reason, many warforged either seek peaceful lands or take up lives in which the purpose of violence is clearly defined.

Roleplaying Application: Your character should have an outlook about war, but he might have mixed feelings about it all. Look for larger conflicts in the acts of violence your character witnesses and try to define these in terms of a war. Your character might make strange associations between people or leaps of logic about alliances and chains of command that others think are ridiculous, but don’t be afraid: War is naturally on your character’s mind, and your strategic thinking might cut to the core of a conflict others are too emotional about to see clearly.

FreedomFreedom is wonderful, but it can also be terrifying. Warforged were created to fight and trained to follow orders; lacking a war to win or a leader to follow, many warforged are intimidated by the possibilities of freedom and seek comfort in roles where expectations are clear. Although some of the indentured warforged of Thrane and Karrnath bristle under the yoke of servitude, many are pleased by the safety and simplicity of their roles as builders and workers.

A warforged may revel in freedom and despise authority, look for someone to serve, or test the waters of freedom by creeping slowly across self-imposed boundaries. Feelings about freedom can impose themselves on even the smallest decisions. A warforged offered the choice of several colors of cloaks to wear might take them all, choose a color he has seen others choose, or beg off choosing entirely.

Roleplaying Application: Some warforged embrace their construct nature and their warrior purpose.
Others reject all ties to the past and seek experiences that they were not built to know. Most are lost somewhere between these extremes, trying to find a place in a world that wanted them only to fight and die, and now has no need of them. When you roleplay a warforged, remember that the world has changed. Your character was created for war and spent every moment of life in preparation for or in the act of fighting. Her new life is strange and filled with unexpected pitfalls and hidden rules. At the same time, your character has a tremendous amount of freedom to determine her fate, and the world is filled with experiences, sights, and sounds she never before thought possible. Have your character take pleasure in small things. Consider the depth and breadth of her experiences; when you confront something new, take note and decide how your character would react.

Soldier Mindset
Warforged were sold to each of the Five Nations, and each individual owed allegiance to one of those states. Even so, a warforged was beholden not to all the people of that nation but to its army leaders. Freed warforged do not consider other creatures their masters but instead tend to view them through the filter of their old lives, placing them in one or more of five categories: commander, comrade, ally, civilian, and foe. Warforged consider an individual to be their commander if they take orders from that person. Taught to recognize the marks of authority on the battlefield, warforged also categorize others’ commanders and look for their place in the chain of command. Comrades are those who work or fight alongside the warforged on a consistent basis. The term “comrade” is a label that a warforged uses to indicate that experience. Warforged feel camaraderie for a group or individual after going through trying times, but it is only now, among the humanoids in peaceful times, that warforged are beginning to understand the concept of true friendship. Allies are creatures with the same goals as the warforged. Warforged always view allies with some suspicion. During the Last War, alliances were frequently broken, and warforged learned not to trust allies to remain true. A warforged considers anyone with whom it does not have a quarrel or common goal a civilian. Civilians and noncombatants were to be ignored unless a warforged was ordered to do otherwise. Thus, warforged have difficulty relating to others now that they have no masters to tell them how to do so, and many people see warforged as disrespectful, rude, and cold. A warforged chooses its foes based on its goals. A foe need not be attacked, but a foe is someone to be defeated. When labeling someone a foe, a warforged also looks to see who that person’s allies are and what position the individual occupies in a chain of command. Of course, foes often became allies during the Last War, and warforged often attach less rancor to the words “foe” and “enemy” than do most creatures.

Roleplaying Application: Your character should have a goal and should define others based upon that goal. Other members of your adventuring party should be considered comrades, but if one betrays your trust, you might downgrade your association to that of ally. Also, although created for action, your character was also made to take orders. If no course of action seems clear to your character, consider simply waiting until one becomes apparent or taking a cue from others. It’s not that your character is indecisive or wishy-washy, it’s just that she can often afford to wait—either for the situation to be clarified or for someone with more experience or knowledge to make the decision.

So there you have it. Just a little taste of our favourite buckets of bolts and if anyones interested, I can always provide more either on this or on anything else to do with Eberron. Want to know what the deal is with Xoriat? Want to know about the Eberron Pantheon of gods all you clerics are supposed to serve but don't remember their names half the time, let alone what they stand for?

This is the place.

Tyvm Dark great reply, I now see the warforged in a much better light