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My warforged bard has the Find Greater Steed spell. As a reflavouring, the steed is created from animating scrap and nearby objects.

Would giving it the construct type instead of celestial/fey/fiend cause any unintended or gamebreaking issues?

(Yes, I've asked the DM and he said yes. I'm just wondering if there's anything to watch out for.)

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This should be fine

In 5e, the creature types are merely tags that interact with other game features (MM, p. 6)

A monster's type speaks to its fundamental nature. Certain spells, magic items, class features, and other effects in the game interact in special ways with creatures of a particular type.

So by default, being a construct does not confer any immunities or other traits such as not needing to eat, drink or sleep, like often cited for individual monsters under the Construct Nature lore entry.

If you do not add those, any imbalances introduced would stem from interaction with other features such as spells like protection from evil that specifically only work or do not work on those types or on constructs.

I do not think that these effects are important enough to constitute a major imbalance. The most relevant here is more of a disadvantage, as you cannot use healing like cure wounds on constructs, but you can simply resummon the steed should it die. A reflavoring to construct should be fine.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ And for the one time it might have mattered because the BBEG was going to use detect evil and good, he used detect machine, a spell I made up, instead. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 21 at 11:10
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No.

There is no mechanic that interacts with anything summoned by the find greater steed spell that would be meaningfully affected by it having the construct type instead of Monstrosity or Beast or what have you.

This is literally like someone casting Beast Sense, a spell that comes up in a blue moon even if then, and not being able to see through the eyes of your robot griffon (or whatever). It might be good for you, it might be bad for you, but it's hard to tell and it's so unlikely to come up that it isn't any kind of balance concern much less 'game breaking'.

Although, on second thought. You can't heal a construct with cure wounds or healing word, so the mecha-pegasus would be healing only via hit-dice. That's not really game-breaking, especially as you can resummon it whenever, but it is annoying. I'd talk to the DM and see if there can be an exception to that for a warforged spellcaster, or if you can use the Mending cantrip to fix the damage more slowly or something.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ The spell description stipulates that it has creature type fey, celestial, or fiend, so your first paragraph is simply incorrect. There are several features that interact with those creature types that would cease to interact with the steed if it were a construct. So that's why I downvoted. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 21 at 11:09
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ThomasMarkov The first paragraph does not state that there are no features that interact with celestial/etc vs construct. It states that the ones that do are not meaningful, which is elaborated on in the second paragraph. Did you miss a word while reading it? \$\endgroup\$
    – user2754
    Jan 21 at 16:10
  • \$\begingroup\$ Then you should state which ones they are and actually support the assertion that they aren’t meaningful, because I know what they are, they are meaningful, and the change invalidates them completely. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 21 at 16:30

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