Rules/Crunch of Eyros

Don't forget though, that you don't need to just be a bard to need a highish charisma. After all, the half-orc are going to be rulers as well. Not just the King, but there's got to be plenty of half orc scions hanging around, in administrative functions, governors of outlying territories on behalf of their house, and such. Cha is necessary for Diplomacy and Bluff, both very needed for a diplomat/ruler.

I'm thinking we should maybe just drop the Cha penalty. Like you said, in this setting, a raging half orc unlikable barbarian doesn't make much sense, considering they're about as cosmopolitan as you can get.

In reference to your first point, I agree that the leaders need good charisma skills, that's what my feat does: gives them back the edge on the Charisma-based skills without actually raising Charisma (that's why only the bards would suffer, as the highborn would effectively regain the Charisma for their skills but not for bard magic). For the latter, I do agree, but I'm still pondering balance issues...here's a possibility, in fitting with the WotC view on half-orcs that as long as there are plenty of penalties, its OK if the penalties all go somewhere that can be ignored: building on the point in the other thread that the half-orcs are poor spellcasters: replace the -2 Charisma with the following- Spellcasting Impotence (Ex): Eyrian half-orcs suffer from a genetic mutation caused by the antimagic protections used by their ancestors against the elves long ago. Treat their base spellcasting stat as 2 lower for purposes of determining bonus spells and DCs.

Rystil Arden said:

In reference to your first point, I agree that the leaders need good charisma skills, that's what my feat does: gives them back the edge on the Charisma-based skills without actually raising Charisma (that's why only the bards would suffer, as the highborn would effectively regain the Charisma for their skills but not for bard magic). For the latter, I do agree, but I'm still pondering balance issues...here's a possibility, in fitting with the WotC view on half-orcs that as long as there are plenty of penalties, its OK if the penalties all go somewhere that can be ignored: building on the point in the other thread that the half-orcs are poor spellcasters: replace the -2 Charisma with the following- Spellcasting Impotence (Ex): Eyrian half-orcs suffer from a genetic mutation caused by the antimagic protections used by their ancestors against the elves long ago. Treat their base spellcasting stat as 2 lower for purposes of determining bonus spells and DCs.

Click to expand...

How about this, since we've greatly altered the nature of half-orcs in this setting, and they have to serve multiple purposes:

Half-Orc Ability Adjustments: All half-orc characters must have a total of a -4 penalty, taken from two of the three mental abilities. Upon character creation, the player may choose whether he suffers penalties to Intelligence and Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma, or Wisdom and Charisma.

I like choice, and given the various ways half-orcs are bred in Eyros, it makes sense they wouldn't all have the same traits, IMO.

I think either of those could work.

The ability adjustment seems a bit like we're getting away from DnD more than we wanted. But I really like the spell casting impotence. Especially for Bards, because the majority of what makes a bard effective is based on his charisma, but isn't actually a spell, just a different way of using music.

And what do we want to do with full Orcs? I don't think we've seen any of them as mentioned NPCs, but they're obviously going to be about half of the ruling class.

I like the idea of giving them a choice, and I think this could work well combined with the Scion of the Six Pillars feat at full +3. Then I thought of an even cooler idea: Since the mental stat penalties clearly come from the orc side (what with the humans having no modifiers and all) we can make the mental stat that doesn't fall dependant on the orc Pillar that the half-orc belongs to (House Vajar could be good at Charisma, since they have a lot of leaders, or Int because hobgoblins have -Wis and -Cha but not an Int penalty).

Rystil Arden said:

I like the idea of giving them a choice, and I think this could work well combined with the Scion of the Six Pillars feat at full +3. Then I thought of an even cooler idea: Since the mental stat penalties clearly come from the orc side (what with the humans having no modifiers and all) we can make the mental stat that doesn't fall dependant on the orc Pillar that the half-orc belongs to (House Vajar could be good at Charisma, since they have a lot of leaders, or Int because hobgoblins have -Wis and -Cha but not an Int penalty).

Click to expand...

Now that's a good idea. Among other things, it makes the families different. You pick your family background, and that determines your stat penalties.

domino said:

Now that's a good idea. Among other things, it makes the families different. You pick your family background, and that determines your stat penalties.

Click to expand...

Works for me, too.

OK, I think I reached a good compromise between all of these approaches and domino's well-taken point that orcs are thrown into the mix. Orcs normally have -2 to all three mental stats, and half-orcs only two. If we make the Orcs have -2 to two mental stats of their choice, as per Mouseferatu's suggestion for half-orcs, then the Half-Orcs have -2 to one mental stat of their choice, and we stick them all with Spellcasting Impotence, so that if they put their newly relieved stat into Charisma, they still keep with the flavour of weak at directly casting spells. Also, since our orcs basically turn all the tenets of orcdom upside-down (read the society description for chuckles to see that we have directly opposed pretty-much everything there, which is a good thing in my book) our orcs have cultured gardens and the like, so they probably don't have Light Sensitivity, so I eliminated Darkvision and Light Sensitivity from both races (we need more than two races without Darkvision anyway to make the game more interesting!). Thanks to this set-up, we may see NPC half-orc bards who are unable to cast spells due to Spellcasting Impotence, which in my opinion makes for a better aristocratic character or officer than the Aristocrat class (rally the troops with inspiring oratory, but can't fight as well as a front-liner).

This is still open to my changing it, since the Orc and half-orc definitions here are so crucial to Eyros, just taking a stab:

Eyrian Orc Traits:
--+4 Strength, -2 to any two of Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma
--An Eyrian orc's base land speed is 30 feet
--Spellcasting Impotence (Ex): Eyrian orcs suffer from a genetic mutation caused by the antimagic protections used by their ancestors against the elves long ago. Treat their base spellcasting stat as 2 lower for purposes of determining bonus spells and DCs.
--Automatic Languages: Vulgar Eyrian; Bonus Languages: High Eyrian, Orc, Human, Elven, Gnome
--Favoured Class: Fighter

Eyrian Half-Orc Traits:
--+2 Strength, -2 to any one of Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma
--An Eyrian orc's base land speed is 30 feet
--Spellcasting Impotence (Ex): Eyrian half-orcs suffer from a genetic mutation caused by the antimagic protections used by their ancestors against the elves long ago. Treat their base spellcasting stat as 2 lower for purposes of determining bonus spells and DCs.
--Automatic Languages: Vulgar Eyrian; Bonus Languages: High Eyrian, Orc, Human, Elven, Gnome
--Favoured Class: Bard

Those look great. I've got a big mad on for favored classes, but that's not a big issue. One question though. Why did you give them Dwarven as a bonus language when it's a forbidden language, that is punishable by either death or cutting out of one's tounge (I forget which.)

Houses and their corresponding mental stats:

I'm reserving this space underneath my orcish write-up for when we have a more complete picture of the houses. Here's what we know so far:

House Zhal: Orc Member stats ?, Half-Orc Member stats ?
House Vajar: Orc Member stats ?, Half-Orc Member stats ?
House Taljik: Is it Orc? Is it Human? Nobody knows until someone describes it or the sixth Pillar, since we have five right now.