Golem / Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: Item Crafting rules let a Hermetic mage create "Automata" with a year-long process. They can be highly customized, but each comprises a Body that determines its physical power, an animating Impetus that determines its agility, and a Heart that houses its mind at minimum.
• AT-43: Golems are the basic troops of the Therians, only here they are made out of Nanomachines (the sci-fi clay), and have creepy doll faces.
• Chronopia: Golems are a rarity in this setting. These are artificial beings are made through Summon Magic and are unique to the Lotus Eaters are two particular elven noble houses, House of the Crystal Lotus can call up Frost Golems while House of the Obsidian Serpent can summon Adamantite Golems.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • As mentioned in the trope description, D&D has tons of golems, from the classic clay statue to stained glass, bone, or doll golems. They and various Living Statue enemies eventually necessitated the "construct" creature type, making them immune to numerous Status Effects such as poison or paralysis. The distinguishing feature of golems is that they're animated by a bound elemental spirit that isn't necessarily happy with its situation, which means some golem types may go on berserk rampages after too many rounds of combat. As of 5th Edition, golems are innately resistant to spells, but for most of the game's history they were immune to magic with a few listed exceptions for each golem. There are also varieties of the Manual of Golems in the game's treasure tables, allowing players with the time and resources to make their own servitors.
  • The iconic four D&D golems are flesh, clay, stone and iron golems, each with its own quirks. Flesh golems are traditionally slowed by fire or cold damage, but healed by lightning damage. Clay golems can give themselves a haste effect, may deal cursed wounds with their slam attacks, heal from acid damage, but are vulnerable to spells like move earth, disintegrate or earthquake. Stone golems can hit foes with a slow effect, but are slowed and damaged by a transmute rock to mud spell, and conversely healed by transmuate mud to rock (though stone to flesh only makes them more vulnerable to physical and magical attacks). And iron golems have a Breath Weapon of poisonous gas, are slowed by electricity damage, healed by fire damage, but vulnerable to spells like rusting grasp.
  • The old Basic/Expert/etc. rules had even more of these than AD&D, with "living statues" as low-level golem equivalents, and juggernauts or iron gargoyles for when regular golems just aren't a challenge anymore. The 3.5th Edition Epic Level Handbook meanwhile went with the "bigger is better" mindset with colossi, basically golems of stone, flesh or iron that happen to be over 80 feet tall.
  • The 3rd Edition Monster Manual II introduced the "half-golem" template, allowing humanoids to replace one or more limbs with a golem equivalent. This gives them additional strengths based on the golem in question, but also the same vulnerabilities, and in a Magitek variant of Cybernetics Eat Your Soul, each golem limb requires a character to make (an increasingly high) Will save to avoid switching alignment to Neutral Evil and becoming a functional construct themself. The entire process is pure Body Horror as well, as the materials of the creature's new golem limb spread across the rest of its body like creeping vines, and its voice becomes harsh and strangled.
  • In the spirit of Frankenstein, golems in the Ravenloft setting are often animated by the sheer power of their makers' obsessions, rather than by magic. Such "dread golems" have a nasty track-record for turning on their creators, to whom they have a psychic connection. There's even a direct expy of Frankenstein and his monster as a Darklord duo.
  • Eberron introduced the warforged player race, sentient constructs who reference the golem myths by having a fingerprint-like ghulra appear on their forehead when animated (given the number of Black Boxes involved in warforged creation, no-one is sure why this happens). Unlike golems, warforged have the "living construct" subtype, so that they are actually healed somewhat by cure wounds spells, and even have souls, so they can be raised or resurrected if destroyed.
• Exalted has the Alchemical Exalted, which are clay and magical material constructs, animated with the souls of repetitive (through reincarnation) heroes who are created to serve their people and Patropolis/Metropolis. As they advance in power they receive huge bodies, and ultimately become a living city themselves.
• Harebrained Schemes has the digitally enhanced miniatures board game Golem Arcana, set in a world where Religion is Magic, magical "Knights" control golems and colossal golems and use magic by invoking Ancient Ones.
• In Nomine: Constructs, also known as homunculi, scarecrows and golems, are artificial beings made by sorcerers, created by crafting bodies out of some type of substance (potentially including flesh), imbuing them with Forces, and attaching a scrap of parchment to their bodies with the name of a living person inscribed on it; this person will be the construct's master, and the construct will be compelled to obey them. Constructs with only Corporeal Forces are the most common type, and are mindless automata; constructs with Ethereal Forces are intelligent but not self-aware, and are much rarer; constructs with Celestial Forces are nearly unheard of and self-willed, although still obedient to their masters. Most constructs are made from stone or clay; others, including most of the kind with Celestial Forces, are made from human or animal body parts. Making a construct from vegetable matter is much more difficult, but it has reportedly happened. If their attached parchment is destroyed, most constructs become inactive; ones with Celestial Forces instead become free-willed, but also very unstable.
• Magic: The Gathering numbers quite a few golems among its artifact creatures. (Which is a bit of Retcon for some of the older ones since artifact creatures originally didn't have creature types of their own.) Possibly the most famous of them is Karn, the pacifist silver golem who eventually became a planeswalker in his own right.
• Munchkin has the Stoned Golem, who has the munchies and thinks halflings look tasty.
• Mutant Chronicles: As the Apostle of War, Algeroth is especially fond of producing these. His faction has the Bio-Giant, which is a Flesh Golem made from chopped up humans with some necrotechnology, the Dark Golem, which is a Mechanical Abomination composed of necrotechnology and twisted robotics that's grown out of an artificial womb, and the Brass Apocalypts, which is simply a pre-Dark Golem yanked out of the womb at an earlier stage.
• Pathfinder adopts the classic flesh, clay, stone, and iron golems of D&D, and adds many new ones, like fossil golems, brass golems, coral golems, wax golems, alchemical golems, and cannon golems (steel golems with a literal Arm Cannon built in). Additionally, all golem types can be alternatively created as shield guardians^note also from D&D, but considered a separate monster from golems in that game, granting them magical defensive abilities and an amulet that allows the bearer to command it.
• Princess: The Hopeful features the Golaenu, spirit-lieutenants of the Queen of Storms. In order to interact with the material world, they need a Vessel, an artificial body built of a blend of flesh and clay in varying proportions. While a mostly-clay body will look fairly inhuman, it is more able to withstand the destructive energies of its animating Golaenu, allowing more use of Reprisals.
• Promethean: The Created has the Tammuz, also known as the Golems. Like all Prometheans, they are made from corpses, not clay, but they identify the Golem of Prague as one of their ancestors. (Well, most Tammuz are made from corpses - they're the most likely Lineage to try making Constructs, actual clay Golems.) Some of them even have the Word of Life on their foreheads, which makes them easier to animate, but vulnerable to being knocked comatose if it's damaged. They're known for being slow to act, but very determined once they set themselves to a task.
• Rifts: Golems are colossal figures created by drawing a pentagram in animal blood, placing a rough humanoid clay form within it, giving it two onyxes for eyes and an iron heart, and placing a single drop of the magician's drop on its forehead to spring it to life. Golems have no will of their own and no emotions, and exist only to obey the commands of their creator; if their maker dies, they will just keep following their last command until destroyed. They're ungodly tough and entirely invulnerable to anything meant to affect something with biology or a mind — they cannot be charmed, hypnotized or sent to sleep, or harmed by most harmful spells — and are highly resistant to physical and energy damage. Even tougher stone and metal variants also exist.
• RuneQuest: Artificial beings are the domain of the Mostali (aka Dwarves) specifically the Tin Dwarves. Among their creations are the Jolanti which are humanoids made of stone. The Mostali once had the knowledge of creating Giant Jolanti but it has since become lost, so they can only create the regular human-sized Jolanti. However, it's not over for the Giant Jolanti. A lost group of these during the wars of the Second Age were discovered and befriended by the Mostali's archfoes, the Elves. Among the gifts the Elves gave their enormous friends the power to reproduce, instead of relying on more of them being manufactured.
• Underworld has Junkmen as golem PCs too, along with little bitty mini-golems that look like ambulatory soda cans.
• Warhammer:
  • The Ushabti, living statues carved into the likeness of the gods the Tomb Kings used to worship and who house the spirits of powerful Nehekharan heroes.
  • Anything within the Tomb King's army labeled as a "construct" falls into this. While it's implied they did use the bones of long-dead creatures, they're still largely constructed out of wood and stone. The Sphinxes are the extremes, impossibly tall animated statues, some of which are capable of flying on stone wings.
  • The Orcs have Rogue Idols, gigantic stone warriors animated by the power of Gork or Mork.
  • In 3rd Edition Dwarfs used to have the Collossi of Azram The Mighty. Created by the then dwarf god Azram The Mighty, they are giant rock constructs in the form of a dwarf that would appear when said dwarfs would be in dire need.
    • Later media like the 2nd Edition Warhammer RPG presented the Rune Guardians. Ogre-sized runic constructs that are the brainchild of the Runesmiths and Engineer Guilds who utilize runic magic to animate, along with the complex cog system made by the engineers. They are considered lost technology as the blueprints and knowledge to create them are lost to time and due to the turbulent events of Time of Woes. The ones that exist guard ancient dwarf tombs and they will attack anyone without exceptions. The Dawi want to get back as much of their golden age power as possible, and anyone who manages to bring at least one intact in order to reverse-engineer the compex cog system and the Master Rune of Waking that each of them have that allows to animate them. It's easier said than done...
    • Rune Golems, who are the new incarnation of the above collossi, are giant constructs powered by runic magics that draw the powers of the earth in order to animate them. The first Rune Golem was forged by the Ancestor God of runes, runecraft and Runesmiths Thungni. He forged the first Rune Golem and then taught the Runesmiths the knowledge and techniques to forge more of them. Only a Runelord could animate one of those mighty constructs, but in current days they now only collect dust due to the Vortex of Ulthuan sucking out all the magic (including the same magic that used to animate said golems) and the last time someone attempted to animate them was before the Dwarfs went to fight the Elves during the War of Vengeance. The last Runelord who attempted to do this turned into a stone statue instead...
  • Grand Cathay in its newer incarnation has the Terracotta Sentinels. Giant animated terracotta statues with a dual-bladed guan-dao nearly as big as themselves. In older editions they also had Terracotta Automatons which are smaller versions of the above Sentinels.
  • The Barrow Legion, Heinrich Kemmler's army, have the Simulacra wich are Vampire Counts versions of Ushabti. Unlike the Ushabti, the Simulacra were completely soulless unlike the Ushabti who house the soul of a dead Nehekharan hero.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Eldar wraith-constructs are made of psychically-sensitive wraithbone and animated by the souls of the dead. The setting being what it is, of course, they are armed with one of the more horrible BFGs ever devised.
  • Chaos has various Daemon engines which are usually clanky mechanical creations that have a daemon implanted inside to power and control the constructed husk.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Rock creature type consists of essentially any living creatures made of non-metallic parts (their robotic, technological counterpart being the Machine creature type).

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