Talk:Psiforged (4e Race)

Origin

The concept and flavour of the psiforged race is derived from the 3.5 ed. Magic of Eberron source book. The mechanics are simply a revision of the 4th ed. warforged race as presented in Eberron Player's Guide.

As intellectual constructs adept at psionics, Int & Con seemed the obvious stat bonuses.

Balance

A PC race with Con & Int stat bumps is something of a holy grail for players of certain arcane classes. You often hear them talking about whether Wizards of the Coast will finally release a Con & Int class in the next player's handbook. It's optimal for certain builds of artificer, warlock, wizard, and sword mage. It's also probably pretty decent for psions.

The reason why we haven't see this race yet, and in fact, the reason why Dex & Con PC races have only appeared as Dragon magazine content, is that Int or Dex and Con is really munchkin-y. Con bumps HP, Dex or Int bumps un-armoured AC. If those are also your attack stats, then why bother bumping anything else?

That being said, there are Dex & Con races in the Dragon magazine (Revenants and Gnolls), which are supposedly balanced and playable. There is also a Con & Int NPC race at the back of the monster manual (Githyanki).

Con & Int is better than Str & Con, in terms of defence, all class considerations aside. While Str & Con does qualify your character for very nice armour, that doesn't change the fact that your character's reflexes will be awful. To compensate for the improved defences psiforged get, I removed the following warforged powers:

• Removed the +1 bonus to Will.
• Removed the +2 bonus to saving throws against ongoing damage. Albeit, players can get that back by spending a feat.
• Removed the ability to pop back up after a couple of minutes of being on the ground. (A warforged can make a saving throw every 6 seconds. Thus, I naïvely estimate that, on average, after two minutes, a warforged will roll a 20 and rise to its feet). I added the 'Auto Restart' feet, so psiforged players can get this back as well.

Psiforged gain the following abilities:

• An additional second level utility power, which effectively replaces Warforged Resolve as their racial encounter power.
• The ability to multi-class into as many arcane or psionic classes as they like, reflecting a psiforged's never ending thirst for knowledge of all kinds and their innate psionic abilities.
• Proficiency in leather armour. For warforged and psiforged, their armour is essentially their skin. As most classes grant you leather proficiency, this is really only relevant if you are playing a psiforged wizard or psion.

Too little? Too much? Just right?

Allowing a 2nd level power at 1st level falls outside of normal design standards, but perhaps allowable: The "design disclaimer" ought to be applied. Another utility power at second level, on top of the one granted by class, for a total of 3 utility powers, though? No. Marasmusine 01:51, 30 December 2011 (MST)

As the Race is currently written, My only issue is with the race is the ability to take 10 on death saves, this makes the character immortal for most purposes and allows them to get up a literally endless number of times if the monsters chose not to finish the character off, other than that theirs nothing really that wrong with it. --Aitharious (talk) 13:52, 19 August 2016 (MDT)