What's with Constructs having no skills or feats?
What if you wanted a race of intelligent machines, sort of like the Terminator or the Sheens from an old Dragon, how would you design them in D20. As a construct or what?
Is it easier/better to break the rules and give Constructs skills, etc. Or to break the rules somewhere else and give another racial type construct like abilities?
Quote from: BagpussWhat's with Constructs having no skills or feats?
What if you wanted a race of intelligent machines, sort of like the Terminator or the Sheens from an old Dragon, how would you design them in D20. As a construct or what?
Is it easier/better to break the rules and give Constructs skills, etc. Or to break the rules somewhere else and give another racial type construct like abilities?
[cough]Eberron[/cough] [cough]Warforged[/cough]
Yeah but they are more like cyborgs, from my understanding. I'm talking machine intelligence.
Quote from: BagpussYeah but they are more like cyborgs, from my understanding. I'm talking machine intelligence.
umm, have a look at some of the old second ed spelljammer monsters...
Radiant Golem and Clockwork horrors spring to mind as intelligent constructs. the horrors are kind of a hive-mind machine intelligence, and the radiant golem is something like a crazy version of DATA from star trek.
So you want a contruct that is intelligent but is still under the controll of its creator? You may want to check out Mongoose's Encyclopaedia Arcane: Contructs as it has some options. And I also seem to remember running across something that actually had a Living Contruct template that could be applied. The Awaken Construct spell gives them Int, Wis & Cha but also makes them free willed.
Quote from: BagpussYeah but they are more like cyborgs, from my understanding. I'm talking machine intelligence.
Not really seeing how you are trying to split the difference. Warforged are constructs that are sentient. That's what you asked for that's what they are. They have skills, can think and have classes and yes they also have souls.
You could drop the 'soul' aspect from it and that's what you are looking for.
if you design a Construct with an Intelligence score, it will have Skills (2+Int/HD) and Feats as any other creature with an Int score.
it's as simple as that. :)
Warforged are excellent examples of what you're looking for. If you want to know more but don't want to go buy Eberron just to read a race... I think you can find some stuff online that describes them...
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20050408b
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warforged
http://www.dmchronicles.com/pb/wp_eb18a6c7/wp_eb18a6c7.html