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how would warforged & shifeters be handled in ravenloft?

Warforged are not very gothic per se, more steampunkish, I don't see a race of construct being easy to integrate in the Core.

What are shifters again?

People with a very small amount of Lycanthropic blood. There are also Changelings, which are the same only with Doppel blood.


I would actually argue that in very small numbers, as unique characters, they can be interesting.

A Warforged is somewhat out of place (unless you want a more intelligent, cautious golem, more akin to the actual Frankenstein in character.)

A Shifter could make for a very interesting Verbreker. Perhaps he's a quarter werewolf, or some such. More likely, they'd make for good Lycanthropic cultists, enemies you can toss at the PCs before they're ready for actual werewolves, while still keeping the flavor.

A Changeling (while we're on the subject), is the most interesting of the three. They might make for an excellent rogue type, some kind of serial killer gifted minor shape-changing by the DPs. Some sort of urban predator.

That said, I would shy away from using any of them enmasse in Ravenloft. They're just too bizarre to be anything but isolated creatures.

Shifters are semi-lycanthropes that can channel beast powers a number of times each day.
Both, as presented, are not very gothic but easily adapted (I'm planning on doing a Races of the Mist sub-article on them and changelings at some point).

Warforged I view as created (golems) with a soul, some manner of conscience and sense of morality or humanity. They may be humans reincarnated as metal suits and armour or transplanted souls (much like Al in Full Metal Alchemist), metal men with human brains or failed attempts to raise the dead.
They’re not a race per se but rather unique or rare beings that arise as accidents or flukes. They don’t look like traditional warforged but rather more medieval like humans in metal suits, sometimes empty and sometimes filled with odd machinery or even semi-living parts.

Shifters are just people touched by lycanthrope but not fully cursed. The children of people infected by the curse or those attacked at a young age that were not fully tainted. Perhaps a few are the result of failed cures. Others might be those born into a line of true lycanthropes where the curse has been dilutes through generations of breeding with only humans and not other were. They’re rare but probably more common than other demihumans (like gnomes), especially in lands like Verbrek or Richemulot, but the common man just assumes they’re werewolves and the like.

Jester of the FoS wrote:Warforged I view as created (golems) with a soul, some manner of conscience and sense of morality or humanity. They may be humans reincarnated as metal suits and armour or transplanted souls (much like Al in Full Metal Alchemist), metal men with human brains or failed attempts to raise the dead.
They’re not a race per se but rather unique or rare beings that arise as accidents or flukes. They don’t look like traditional warforged but rather more medieval like humans in metal suits, sometimes empty and sometimes filled with odd machinery or even semi-living parts.

I'm actually introducing, in my future campaign set in Darkon, a warforged Outlander...
After the rumor of "strange talking armour" for about a month, the mind-sweeping quality of Darkon made him to beleive he's a normal man cursed to be trapped inside his armor.
Of course, he'll ask the PCs help to escape his "curse"...

I could certainly see the were-rich realms (Richemulot, Kartakass, Verbrek etc) having shifters as the result of generations of cross breeding. They would probably have a high OR (3 or 5 in were-rich areas where superstitions about were creatures are rife) because of their feral look (shaggy hair, pointed ears, perhaps they have the characteristics that are supposed to denote lycanthropes such as eyebrows joined in the middle and hair on the palms of their hands). perhaps like Calibans they are shunned (with shifter families living up in the mountains or in the woods).

Paridon just shouts out for changlings (or half-dopplegangers, which have appeared in at least on Dragon magazine).

Warforged would be a harder sell, unless as suggested above they were a class of sentient created found in Lamordia perhaps. The idea of having an outlander warforged in service to a villain as a powerful henchman (with the metal exoskeleton modified to more closely resemble armour with lots of spikes, demonic screaming faces etc). Or even a outland warforged who loses power checks (and the dark powers remould his warforged skin into something more suiting to their tastes), hmm that would be fun as a one off NPC/villain.

doctor-evil wrote:Paridon just shouts out for changlings (or half-dopplegangers, which have appeared in at least on Dragon magazine).

This issue will be addressed in the VRF:D ... although simple dopp/human hybridization, a la Eberron, will not account for their origins. (Mating with humans is how normal dread doppelgangers are produced, after all.)

Weren't the von Zarovich Knight and Ebon Gargoyles warforged- changelings-ghost offsprings?

(Sorry, even after all this time I can't help it...)

This is a very interesting topic. OTOH, I can see Warforged and Changelings as something rather unique in RL. Depending on how they are introduced they can work though.

But the main reason I am writing is because I know next to nothing about Eberron. I was wondering if someone could explain the setting quickly through the eyes (if possible) of a RL-fan? This way, I (and maybe others) would know if it's worth looking some more into it.

Somehow I do get the feeling it won't be my cup of tea, but you never know. (I mean this from a personal taste perspective, not from a quality-wise POV.)

Patrick

Jonathan Winters wrote:But the main reason I am writing is because I know next to nothing about Eberron. I was wondering if someone could explain the setting quickly through the eyes (if possible) of a RL-fan? This way, I (and maybe others) would know if it's worth looking some more into it.

Somehow I do get the feeling it won't be my cup of tea, but you never know. (I mean this from a personal taste perspective, not from a quality-wise POV.)

There's a fairly basic rundown here.

Thanks Malus,

That was very thorough, my head is still spinning from so much info...

It seems like a decent setting. I don't see it as too RL compatible, though.

(I wonder why I keep seeing Eberron-bashing around here?)

Patrick

Eberron gets bashed because it's popular and Ravenloft isn't. We're the middle-child and it's the baby so we resent the continued attention.
And because it's different.

As settings go I actually prefer Eberron to alot of settings. It's high-magic but low level and surprisingly cohesive. It has a strong emphasis on story and character as well as some appealing elements (fiendish posession, villains as characters, indeterminant alignment/shades of grey, gods that don't walk with mortals)

Jester of the FoS wrote:Eberron gets bashed because it's popular and Ravenloft isn't. We're the middle-child and it's the baby so we resent the continued attention.

Painfully true.

That said, I see a lot of Eberron Bashing on forums that are only loosely, if at all, connected to Ravenloft, so there must be something more to this. It can't all be jealousy and 'sour grapes'.

I know we're getting sidetracked here, but I think some of the Eberron-bashing (in general) probably has to do with some people not liking anything mainstream.

I know I was guilty of quite a bit of that in my teens to early twenties. (I'm 35 now.)

Sorry to digress.

Back to topic.

I might take a look at that Eberron book next time I'm in my FLGS. (God knows when I'll have time to integrate another game, but still...)

Patrick

Jester of the FoS wrote:Eberron gets bashed because it's popular and Ravenloft isn't. We're the middle-child and it's the baby so we resent the continued attention.

Uh, no, in fact I'm an Eberron basher because I think it's full of very bad ideas (beside very good ones) and mechanically very power-creepy.
And come on, the magic train! Not the magic train!

Back on track, I don't think warforged can be used for more than one specific villain/character, even if how they are used in Full Metal Alchemist is after all very gothic, but the campaign there is quite high magic compared to RL. I can easiliy see Al as a warforged, and the other armors too (after spoiler mini-alert )

Shifters could be really good fluff-wise, but the specific feats and rules they use are quite unbalanced, again mainly in a low-magic setting.

Changelings are great as sub-doppelgangers, as long as they're not allowed as PCs (or else Accidents Will Happen!).

"And come on, the magic train! Not the magic train!"

Yeah its ridiculus that in a setting where magic is omnipresent that it replace science Honestly the magic train is really a great idea! It allow the characters to move quickly from place to place, a bit like the magic mist in RL...


I think the ebberon races are better suited to ravenloft than the traditionnal dnd races. I mean the changeling, the shifter and the warforged look a lot like calibans to me except that they are spawned from dopplegangers, lycantrope and golems. I think there could be a couple of warforged in darkon, lamordia, falkovnia and even hazlan. As for the changeling? They could be a cursed vistani tribe or some failed experiment in paridon by the church of mankind(they tried to turn doppleganger human if I remember well right?). As for the shifters? Isolated tribes or village like the quevari.