The Living Machine: 

Guide to Warforged Enhancements

By Darkgolem

Warforged are the most unique of the playable races in DDO.  With unique immunities and vulnerabilities, an fascinating background and mindset, and powerful advantages, they are a very interesting and fun race to play.  However, hand and hand with these qualities are the difficulties and complications with playing such a different race.  With the complexity and variety of the enhancements found for warforged in DDO, these complexities are are increased.  However, by carefully planning your character ahead of time, a warforged character, be it warrior, wizard or rogue can be very powerful.

The Basics

A quick summary for those unfamiliar with the way enhancements work for DDO is in order.  First, you get 4 action points every level.  They are earned gradually as you work your way to your next level. You use these action points to purchase enhancements.  You much qualify for an enhancement to purchase it.  Enhancements require a certain amount of action points to already have been spent, less powerful similar enhancements and sometimes for you to have a feat, before you can purchase them.  Because of the requirements for various enhancements, you should plan on how you wish to spend your action points when you begin character creation.

Choosing Your Role

Warforged can function excellently as warriors of any type, including a mixture of classes, or specialists in melee, ranged or defensive combat (tanking).  As rogues they have immunities which are very useful for avoiding the effects of traps, and they are much more survivable than many other races that choose to be rogues.  As arcane casters
they can heal themselves, and are much less "squishie".  The only role they are not well suited to is that of the priest, since they have poor wisdom and charisma scores.  With all these choices, it's important to decide on a appropriate role for your warforged before you begin character creation.  After doing so, you can pick the enhancements and feats and class choices that best fit that role.

The Expert Combatant

Warforged can function excellently as expert warriors, using a deadly collection of combat feats to keep their opponents off balance and helpless while the warforged brings about their defeat.

• Warforged Constitution - the extra hit points help a warforged quite a bit, and in some cases, the fortitude save.
• Warforged Construct Thinking - if there is any weakness a warforged warrior will have, it is spells with will based saves.  This enhancements helps mitigate this weakness a lot.
• Warforged Damage Reduction - Ironically, this enhancement benefits warforged with fighter classes more than those with barbarian classes, because the barbarian damage reduction does not stack with this type.  This is a huge benefit for warforged who must survive in close combat.
• Warforged Healer's Friend - because warforged gain less benefit from healing spells than non-construct races, this does a lot to mitigate the reduced benefit they derive from healing spells.  Very useful indeed, especially when combined with a warforged's damage reduction.
• Warforged Mechanics - While a lot of points spent in this enhancement isn't ideal, it helps when there is no one in your adventuring party with the repair skill.
• Warforged Tactics - This is key toward a expert combatants use of the various combat feats.

The Warforged Destructor

Warforged make excellent barbarians, especially because they do no suffer the exhaustion penalty that most barbarians do when they come out of rage.  However, it is a poor choice to spend points on damage reduction enhancements in some cases, because they do not stack with barbarian damage reduction, so take care.

• Warforged Constitution - This is a key enhancement, a barbarian lives and dies by his or her constitution score.
• Warforged Construct Thinking - like most warriors, the barbarian has a poor will saves, and this is a key ability to avoid being affected by spells that can affect warforged.
• Warforged Healer's Friend - With the massive amounts of hit points warforged barbarian has, this enhancement is absolutely necessary to keep your party cleric from crying.
• Warforged Mechanics - This is very useful to mitigate the fact that repair skills are cross class.

The Tank Mage

Warforged are competent mages.  They can repair themselves with their own spells, and are resistant to damage, in addition to being immune to many of the things that threaten a regular caster, such as poison.

• Warforged Combat Training - Nothing is arcane or spectacular, nor as deadly, as lying on your back waiting to be killed.
• Warforged Constitution - This accentuates the benefit from the damage reduction warforged enjoy.  However, only spend action points on this if you can spare them, since the goal of a caster is to avoid being hit with weapons in the first place.
• Warforged Damage Reduction - Very handy to have this enhancement, but remember that you can gain damage reduction by using stoneskin if you need to, which is limited in duration in absorption, but absorbs much more damage from each strike.
• Warforged Hardiness - This enhancement is very good for covering the weakness casters have toward spells with fortitude saves, though because warforged are immune to certain fortitude based effects, the benefit of this enhancement is less than it would be for another race.
• Warforged Inscribed Armor - Key toward being an effective warforged arcane caster, since it removes most or all of that pesky arcane spell failure chance.

The Enhancements:

Name	Cost	Progression	Requirements	Benefit
Warforged Combat Training 1	1		Level 1 Warforged	Grants a +1 passive bonus to the Balance skill.
Warforged Combat Training 2	2	10	Level 4 Warforged, Warforged Combat Training 1	Grants a +2 passive bonus to the Balance skill.
Warforged Combat Training 3	3	25	Level 8 Warforged, Warforged Combat Training 2	Grants a +3 passive bonus to the Balance skill.
Warforged Combat Training 4	4	40	Level 12 Warforged, Warforged Combat Training 3	Grants a +4 passive bonus to the Balance skill.
Warforged Constitution 1	2	6	Level 3 Warforged	Grants a +1 to Constitution score.
Warforged Constitution 2	2	24	Level 8 Warforged, Warforged Constitution 1	Grants a +2 to Constitution score.
Warforged Construct Thinking 1	1		Level 1 Warforged	Grants a +1 saving throw bonus against Will-based enchantments.
Warforged Construct Thinking 2	2	18	Level 8 Warforged. Warforged Construct Thinking 1	Grants a +2 saving throw bonus against Will-based enchantments.
Warforged Construct Thinking 3	3	41	Level 12 Warforged. Warforged Construct Thinking 2	Grants a +3 saving throw bonus against Will-based enchantments.
Warforged Damage Reduction 1	2		Level 1 Warforged	You gain damage reduction 1/adamantine, or improve your existing damage reduction by 1/adamantine.
Warforged Damage Reduction 2	4	16	Level 6 Warforged, Warforged Damage Reduction 1	You gain damage reduction 2/adamantine, or improve your existing damage reduction by 2/adamantine.
Warforged Damage Reduction 3	6	34	Level 11 Warforged, Warforged Damage Reduction 1	You gain damage reduction 3/adamantine, or improve your existing damage reduction by 2/adamantine.
Warforged Hardiness 1	1		Level 1 Warforged	Grants a +1 bonus on Fortitude saving throws.
Warforged Hardiness 2	2	18	Level 8 Warforged, Warforged Hardiness 1	Grants a +2 bonus on Fortitude saving throws.
Warforged Hardiness 3	3	41	Level 12 Warforged. Warforged Hardiness 2	Grants a +3 bonus on Fortitude saving throws.
Warforged Healer's Friend 1	2		Level 1 Warforged	Benefit from healing spells is increased by 15%.
Warforged Healer's Friend 2	4	12	level 5 Warforged Healer's Friend 1	Benefit from healing spells is increased by 20%.
Warforged Healer's Friend 3	6	26	Level 9 Warforged Healer's Friend 2	Benefit from healing spells is increased by 25%.
Warforged Inscribed Armor 1	1	3	Level 2 Warforged	Removes arcane spell failure from base Warforged Composite Plating.  Reduces arcane spell failure chance of the warforged's Mithril Body feat to 10% and the Adamantine Body Feat to 30%.
Warforged  Inscribed Armor 2	2	18	Level 6 Warforged, Warforged Inscribed Armor 1	Removes arcane spell failure from base Warforged Composite Plating.  Reduces arcane spell failure chance of the warforged's Mithril Body feat to 5% and the Adamantine Body Feat to 25%.
Warforged  Inscribed Armor 3	3	33	Level 10, Warforged Inscribed Armor 2	Removes arcane spell failure from base Warforged Composite Plating and Mithril Body.  Reduces arcane spell failure chance of the warforged's Adamantine Body Feat to 20%.
Warforged Mechanics 1	1		Level 1 Warforged	Grants +1 passive bonus to the repair skill.
Warforged Mechanics 2	2	10	Level 4 Warforged, Warforged Mechanics 1	Grants +2 passive bonus to the repair skill.
Warforged Mechanics 3	3	25	Level 8 Warforged, Warforged Mechanics 2	Grants +3 passive bonus to the repair skill.
Warforged Mechanics 4	4	40	Level 12 Warforged, Warforged Mechanics 3	Grants +4 passive bonus to the repair skill.
Warforged Tactics 1	2	2	Level 2 Warforged, Warforged Mechanics 3	Grants a +1 bonus to the DC of combat feats, making it harder for your enemies to resist your combat maneuvers such as trip, hamstring and stunning blow.
Warforged Tactics 2	4	16	Level 6 Warforged, Warforged Tactics 1	Grants a +2 bonus to the DC of combat feats, making it harder for your enemies to resist your combat maneuvers such as trip, hamstring and stunning blow.
Warforged Tactics 3	6	30	Level 10 Warforged, Warforged Tactics 2	Grants a +3 bonus to the DC of combat feats, making it harder for your enemies to resist your combat maneuvers such as trip, hamstring and stunning blow.

Think you could build a better warforged than us?  Say so on our forums!