Warforged, my player insists that because he is not biological in nature; poison, lack of oxygen, drowning, etc. doesn’t affect him. Is this true?

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3 thoughts on “Warforged, my player insists that because he is not biological in nature; poison, lack of oxygen, drowning, etc. doesn’t affect him. Is this true?

  1. Justin says:

    IIsee a lot of bad advice in the tweets, specifically from Jeremy Crawford.

    1:They didn’t say which edition they are playing.
    Warforged are living constructs in most/every edition though, I think? It should be on the page with their racial information.

    Living construct is a type of construct.

    2: In 5e they have advantage on saving throws against poison, as well as resistance to poison, but not immunity.
    They also don’t need to breathe, eat, or sleep (and areaimmune to magical sleep).

    Not needing to breathe means you can’t be drowned or suffocated.

    3: Humanoids refers to the body shape. Meaning it is generally shaped like a human.
    You could describe many things in D&D as humanoid, and it does not affect their type.

    • Justin says:

      I may have been a bit too harsh there. I apologize. Jeremy’s advice wasn’t bad, he just got a detail wrong.

      Upon reviewing the page for Warforged in 5e, I would have to agree that they aren’t labeled as constructs, but as living humanoids.
      Although the key word is still “living”, not “humanoid”. As humanoid should still just be referring to their shape.

      I did jump to that conclusion after having played as a Warforged in a biweekly campaign for two years (3.5e). But I should have read through carefully before making an assertion like that.

      Jeremy is right to say that you should just check the Warforged page though, it has everything you need to know on there.

      Lore-wise, in previous editions, they had similar effects, because they were considered to be living constructs. Now, it’s not officially labeled that. So for lore, you can think of them that way, but anything designed to effect constructs would no longer work the same way, unless it gets errata’d in the future, or the effect specifically mentions Warforged.

      TL;DR:
      In 5e, Warforged are no longer labeled as constructs, but still have similar racial traits. So just read the Warforged page, it specifies all of their traits.

    • tideoftime says:

      In Re: citing which edition they are playing. That isn’t relevant. Sage Advice, as of 2014 to the current day, only directly addresses rules and content concerning 5E (with any incidental mentions of previous editions being completely coincidental and usually only in the context of noting such as “…may have been true in previous editions, but is not relevant to 5E’s mechanics/metaphysics…”, or similar…). If someone is asking about “x”, all applicable responses will be relative to 5E regardless of citing or not citing a given edition.

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