Warforged 5e [DnD Race Guide]

Posted on by Matt Zane

Warforged are a race of synthetic creatures, built of organic and inorganic materials. In DnD 5e, Warforged come from the campaign setting of Eberron, where they were built as weapons of war.

For players, Warforged offer a unique roleplaying opportunity to play a humanoid creature with many robotic qualities. Let’s get into what makes Warforged unique, what classes pair well with their features, and answer a few rule questions about the Warforged.

Warforged 5e Features

Warforged’s four defining features are Integrated Protection, Constructed Resilience, Sentry’s Rest, and Specialized Design. Here’s more info on each of those, as well as the details of their more basic features.

  • Integrated Protection. Several benefits:

    • +1 AC

    • Donning/doffing armor takes 1 hour, as it becomes incorporated into your body. Can rest while doing this.

    • Armor can’t be removed from your body against your will.

    This is an S-tier racial feature, as a free +1 AC is incredibly powerful in a system of bounded accuracy. The second and third bullet points are basically ribbon, and won’t come up very often.

  • Constructed Resilience. Several benefits:

    • Advantage on saving throws against being poisoned; resistance to poison damage.

    • No need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep; immune to magical sleep.

    • Disease immunity.

    A great set of defensive perks, as the poisoned condition and poison damage are both fairly common. Diseases and magical sleep, less so, but still nice to have immunity there as well. Not needing to breathe also makes you the go-to character for underwater missions.

  • Sentry’s Rest. Must rest 6 hours for a long rest, but not unconscious during this time.

    Basically, you never need to set the Alarm spell or worry too much about getting ambushed during a long rest. Great flavor feature that’s also helpful when resting in dangerous places.

  • Specialized Design. +1 skill and +1 tool proficiency.

    Very nice to have total freedom and two things to select from. Grabbing an important skill proficiency that your class lacks is big, and if nobody in your group is proficient with thieves’ tools, this is a great and easy way to get it.

  • Abilty Score Increase. +2 Constitution and +1 ability of your choice. Note that, with the rules for Customizing Your Origin in Tasha’s Cauldron of everything, the +2 bonus can be assigned to any ability, not just Constitution.

  • Age. Lifespan is a mystery. No signs of aging and immune to magical aging effects.

  • Alignmment. Lean towards Lawful/Neutral.

  • Size. Medium.

  • Speed. 30 feet.

  • Languages. Common + one of your choice.

Best Classes for Warforged in 5e

Here are some of the best classes for a Warforged in DnD 5e:

  1. Barbarian. The many defensive Warforged features make it an optimal choice for frontline classes, none more so than Barbarians.

  2. Fighter. If you’re playing a melee fighter, the extra AC and resistances will be very useful.

  3. Rogue. Even more tool and skill proficiencies, and the defensive boons are nice for a Rogue, who will often find themselves in dangerous places.

  4. Paladin. Again, Warforged are great for tanks. It’s also easy to imagine a Warforged dedicating itself totally to one oath, as paladins do.

d&d 5e dice

Warforged Names

  • Anchor

  • Banner

  • Bastion

  • Blade

  • Blue

  • Bow

  • Cart

  • Church

  • Crunch

  • Crystal

  • Dagger

  • Dent

  • Five

  • Glaive

  • Hammer

  • Iron

  • Lucky

  • Mace

  • Oak

  • Onyx

  • Pants

  • Pierce

  • Red

  • Rod

  • Rusty

  • Scout

  • Seven

  • Shield

  • Slash

  • Smith

  • Spike

  • Temple

  • Vault

  • Wall

I also have a Warforged name generator if you want to select a name at random.

What Are the Rules for Warforged in 5e?

The rules for Warforged in DnD 5e are as follows:

  • Warforged are humanoids, not constructs. So they can be healed by any spell that heals humanoids, and humanoid-based spells (like Hold Person) work on them just fine.

    The source material also says that they “are living humanoids…resting, healing magic, and the Medicine skill all provide the same benefits to warforged that they do to other humanoids” (ERftLw 35).

  • Warforged cannot be detected with Detect Magic. Because that spell requires the presence of active magical effects, which are not present in a Warforged. They are merely given life by magic, but that life itself is nonmagical.

Warforged FAQ

  1. How long do Warforged live? Nobody knows the maximum lifespan of a Warforged, according to the source material. However, they show no signs of deterioration due to age and are immune to magical aging effects. A typical Warforged is between the ages of 2 and 30 in Eberron.

  2. What book is Warforged in 5e? Warforged are a playable class found in Eberron Rising from the Last War, a campaign setting and adventure book published in 2019.

  3. How are Warforged made? The Warforged were originally made as mindless automatons, but House Cannith improved them by making them sentient via a blend of organic and inorganic materials and magic.

  4. What are Warforged made of? It’s unclear exactly what Warforged are made out of — the source material merely states that they are made of a blend of “organic and inorganic materials” and that they’re made “from wood and metal.”

    Other clues include that they have “root-like cords infused with alchemical fluids” as muscles, and that they’re wrapped around “a framework of steel, darkwood, or stone, and the eyes are made of crystals. Otherwise, the precise materials of a Warforged “vary based on the purpose for which it was designed.”

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