Alchemic Child Questions

[A G Thing]

Eh, it comes down to setting differences. In Eberron, divine magic is powered by faith. The gods may not actually exist at all. Divine forces, like the Silver Flame and the Undying Court do exist, but they are formed from sacrifice and worship, respectively. I'm not really arguing that Warforged don't have souls, but rather that it's ambiguous from the setting's perspective. Mechanically, they are treated as having souls with respect to effects that work with souls. The reason for this, though, is debatable given the setting's slight differences from normal D&D logic. But, again, that's all semantics. The game views them as having souls, or an equivalent.

True enough as I go over the faiths in the campaign setting. Still the concept of gods exists so it is a bit murky. I just tend to view semantic differences from the cosmology as a whole. As Eberron is a material plane connected however distantly to the other planes where gods are more present I always saw it as the gods were just distant from Eberron. Gods exist elsewhere in other planes/settings your player could travel to or from. Eberron just in my mind had different rules. But in the end we both pretty much agree on this point. Warforged have some sort of soul or soul analogue that functions for that purpose.

Wait... oops. I see I missed the premise of this whole thing where you're looking to make a playable version of the Alchemical Child. Good job, me.

I didn't really make that clear enough before... My mistake, not really yours!

In light of my realization that you're trying to make a playable version, let me reframe some of my response. It's true that RAW, an Alchemical Child would not be able to heal normally. But if you want to play it at 1st level, you're right: it needs a little tweak and alteration. And, frankly, I think the easiest way to do it is to replace Lifelike with the Living Construct subtype as a whole, but say that repair spells also only heal half, just like healing magic, while Quintessence fully restores them. If you want to make them a tad more Construct than not, you can check out the Warforged Juggernaut prestige class where a Warforged gradually becomes more and more construct-like. There are four levels of the Construct Perfection ability, each one solidifying its Construct nature. You could use those four sets of abilities as a good breakdown of "closeness to construct" when altering the Alchemical Child to suit your needs.

ADDENDUM: The Reforged prestige class is pretty much the reverse of the Warforged Juggernaut, highlighting a progression that brings a living construct even closer to a living thing, which may also help you choose where the Alchemical Child falls on the sliding scale of Construct to Humanoid.

In part can I say that I appreciate the effort you are making to re-frame. As for using those prestige classes, I do plan to do that somewhat for reference but I want to use the warforged for loose reference as I don't want them to become just another flavor of warforged entirely. I want them if they change at all, to be at the very least, a flavor of "Alchemic Children" at the end.

On that note I was thinking offering certain racial feats that can only be taken at 1st level to replicate some of their more construct traits. The more construct they go the less alive they seem while the more alive they go the less construct they are. I have a bit of work to go on it but I have been looking at the warforged a bit already. I am already working on making the Enlightened Child version like this and also adding penalties to off set the bonuses granted by this since it has to alter them.

Still thank you for your responses Ender and everyone. I will get back to you when I am finished with a bit of a rough draft on them.

[Ender]

As for using those prestige classes, I do plan to do that somewhat for reference but I want to use the warforged for loose reference as I don't want them to become just another flavor of warforged entirely. I want them if they change at all, to be at the very least, a flavor of "Alchemic Children" at the end.

Yeah, I only meant looking at them as reference material for your own design choices.

On that note I was thinking offering certain racial feats that can only be taken at 1st level to replicate some of their more construct traits. The more construct they go the less alive they seem while the more alive they go the less construct they are.

I like that. It gives a player a bit of control at the start as to how lifelike they want to be.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

In the vein of making playable alchemical children, I once proposed the possibility that a party could use them as proxies to enter the Shroud. It would require transferring the psychic link from the creator to the donor, but I've always thought that should be an option, just like it is with traditional homunculi. It was a cool idea to imagine; the party goes someplace safe where they are able to focus on the psychic link, everyone closes their eyes and reopens them in their duplicates in Necropolis. They could all just leave them there in storage somewhere when they are done, because nothing ever goes wrong when you immerse an alchemical quintessence-construct in an unending pool of negative energy.