Does the Warforged Envoy's Integrated Tool feature give you a free tool?

Question

The Envoy subrace of Warforged (from the initial version of Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, p. 69 - the version quoted here is as it appears in UA: Eberron Races) has the Integrated Tool trait, which states:

Choose one tool you’re proficient with. This tool is integrated into your body, and you double your proficiency bonus for any ability checks you make with it. You must have your hands free to use this integrated tool.

Many backgrounds and classes give you different tool proficiencies. Does the Integrated Tool trait give you the tool, even if the class or background does not give it as equipment?

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Note: This feature no longer exists as of the publishing of Eberron: Rising from the Last War, in which warforged no longer have subraces.

Answer 1

Yes: it gives the warforged a free tool integrated into its body, and expertise (double proficiency) with that tool

It's pretty clearly stated in the Envoy warforged's Integrated Tool feature description:

Choose one tool you’re proficient with. This tool is integrated into your body, and you double your proficiency bonus for any ability checks you make with it.

The feature on its own has you choose a single tool you're proficient with; the tool you choose is then integrated into your warforged character's body.

This is reinforced by the corresponding section of Keith Baker's FAQ on the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron:

An envoy warforged has an integrated tool that’s part of its body, and gains expertise with that tool. In the PHB, tool proficiencies provided by backgrounds include vehicles. So can I have a warforged with a built-in wagon?

All things require the approval of the DM. If your DM WANTS to let you have a warforged with a built in boat, that’s great. But the design intent is that this applies to the specifically identified tools listed on page 154 of the Player’s Handbook. This does not include mounts and vehicles, which are detailed on the following page (“vehicles” are on 154, but not detailed). So again, if you and your DM agree, go for it. But it is not the design intent.

Tinker’s tools weigh ten pounds! Can an envoy have a built in tinker’s tools? Or a full dragonchess set?

Certainly. The intention is that your warforged has a functioning version of this tool. This doesn’t mean that it in any way resembles the tools a human would use to perform the same task. A warforged with an integrated herbalism kit could literally have a garden built into its back, and pull out the herbs it needs when it needs them. Most important, consider that warforged are inherently magical creatures. They CAN physically alter their bodies (as shown by healing and integrated protection) and as shown by the spell prestidigitation it’s possible to create small, temporary objects through magic. So an integrated tool could be fully functional at all times—a warforged with smith’s tools has a hand that can function as a hammer. But it’s just as valid to say that the warforged does either perform a minor transformation to produce these tools or that it literally produces a temporary tool. Your integrated thieves tools could be lockpick fingers, but you could also study a lock and manufacture a key to fit it. Essentially, the FUNCTIONAL EFFECT is that the warforged always has a working version of this tool—but it’s up to you to decide exactly what that looks like.

The first quoted question mentions that the tool is granted by the feature and is part of its body; Keith Baker, creator of Eberron and author of the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, doesn't contradict this claim in his response. The answer to the second quoted question explicitly states that the integration grants the ability to use one specific tool at-will - whether that's flavored as the tool itself being built in to the warforged, or as the warforged having the ability to produce that specific tool (for personal use) at will.

In short, yes, it grants the warforged a free tool. If it didn't, it'd make no sense to only ask for proficiency in the tool as a prerequisite, rather than requiring you to have the tool itself.

Answer 2

Yes, it does give you the tool.

The "Choose a tool" is non-optional. You must choose a tool that you are proficient with. The Warforged race, Envoy sub-race, gives you just such a proficiency, thus ensuring that you have at least one legal option, but it does not separately give you the physical tool to go with it. If you somehow managed to select a starting class with no tool proficiencies, and a background with no tool proficiencies, you would be compelled to choose your racial tool proficiency, and would have no guarantee of a tool to go with it (...especially if you had a nonstandard campaign start that deprived you of your gear). This would not make sense.

Further, the integrated tool itself is not a matter of a standard tool that you then stick into your arm. It must be customized to your body. From a fiction standpoint, having a normal version of the tool wouldn't necessarily help. The only thing that would make sense would be to have it constructed and integrated in at the time the warforged themselves was built.