Comments on this new "Half Orc" race

[FoxWander]

I've always felt that half-orcs kinda got the shaft in 3E. They just don't stack up to the other player races. So I've made a new version and I'd like comments on how balanced it is to the other races.

New Half-orc
+2 Constitution, -2 Charisma
Medium creatures, land speed- 30 feet
Darkvision
+2 to Spot and Survival skill checks
Racial feat: Endurance
Hard to kill: Half-orcs gain a +20% on rolls to stabilize when below 0 hit points
+2 racial bonus on saves against poison and disease
Weapon proficiency: Half-orcs are naturally war-like and gain automatic proficiency with all simple weapons
Orc Blood: For all effects related to race, a half-orc is considered an orc.
Automatic Languages: Common and Orc. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Giant, Gnoll, Goblin, and Abyssal
Favored Class: Barbarian

I base this on the way I picture orcs in the D&Dverse- tough, hardy, natural scrappers and tenacious. Please let me know what you think.

 

[Ferret]

That looks cool, it'd make a real good druid!

 

[Winternight]

New Half-orc
+2 Constitution, -2 Charisma
Racial feat: Endurance
Hard to kill: Half-orcs gain a +20% on rolls to stabilize when below 0 hit points
+2 racial bonus on saves against poison and disease
Weapon proficiency: Half-orcs are naturally war-like and gain automatic proficiency with all simple weapons

I am not shure, but inthe DMG is somewhere a list what ability modifiyers are balanced.
I am preatty shure, that Con vs Cha is not.
Simple Weapon prof is nice, but you don`t need it. Either you go for a melee class (Barb, ftr, clr, pal, ...) or you don`t melee anyway. so this is a non-ability.
Give them Great Axe and/or battle axe

+20% is really tough, I wuold give +10% (= roll of 9 and 10)
+2 Save vs magical Diseases, too?

Just my 2 copper

 

[FoxWander]

That table is the Ability Score Equivalencies. I don't have the 3.5 books but Charisma was on the Constitution list in 3.0. But besides that it's the same stat adjustments dwarves get. The main thing is that it's not a +2 to Str which is big enough that it merits a -2 to TWO scores.

As for Simple Weapons being a "non-ability", the same argument could be made for the elf getting proficiency with swords and bows. It just seemed annoying to me that the 'violent and warlike' Orcs (or half-orcs) didn't start with weapon proficiencies but the 'enlightened' elves do. I originally intended to make it all simple weapons and any one martial weapon. What would everybody think of that idea?

Yeah the +20% is really tough. That was the point. And it's something that doesn't make you any deadlier in a fight, just abit more surviveable. I doubt it's a situation that will come up enough to be unbalancing but it does add some nice flavor. (Quick story -The idea came from a GURPS game my wife ran and she made an Orc race and gave them the "Hard to Kill" advantage. If you've never played GURPS before- whenever you get knocked down to negative HPs equal to your Health score you have to make a Health check or you keel over dead. If you make the check you can keep on fighting if you want (although with increasing negatives). "Hard to Kill" gives you bonuses to that Health check. And there was this one orc that just kept making the check! I mean they were still the cannon-fodder they usually are, so we would quickly knock it even further into the negatives- and then she'd make it's Health check and make this "Grr" sound whenever he kept making it. He just wouldn't die! And it made her Orcs pretty cool. It turned them from a monster you plow through without thinking about, to one that you at least made darn sure they were really down when the fighting was over. )

Finally, no I wouldn't apply the +2 to magical diseases. Not that magical diseases come up very often in the game (for that matter non-magical ones don't come up too often either), but the fact that they're UNnatural means that NO race should have a natural resistance to them. But with the typical squalid conditions orcs are described as living in, they should have some kind of resistance to (natural) disease or there wouldn't be enough of them to be a menace.

Does anyone else have comments or suggestions? Even things like "looks good to me" or "who cares about half-orcs anyway"? I see alot of thread views but no comments.



Editted to fix my stupid typing mistakes

 

[Knight-of-Roses]

It looks fairly balanced. I see no game balance problems with the way you have structured it.

If it was me, I would make the following changes:
Drop the bonus to Spot (or reduce it to +1).
Add a +2 racial bonus to Intimidate checks.
Make it a +10% bonus to stabalization checks.
Clarify that the save bonus again disease and poisons is only against non-magical diseases and poisons.
Make their automatic language Common or Orcish, depending on which culture they were raised in.

Let us know how it plays out.

 

[FoxWander]

Good point about the skill checks. I'm not sure why I thought of a Spot bonus. Nothing about orcs strikes me as unusually perceptive. But I did think of something else. I often picture orcs working with wild beasts, so maybe a Handle Animal bonus. (Based mostly on intimidation and their own somewhat feral nature.) And I still don't think the stabilization thing will be unbalancing- but I'll check it in playtest. So how's this new write-up sound?

+2 Constitution, -2 Charisma
Medium creatures, land speed- 30 feet
Darkvision
+2 to Handle Animal, Intimidate and Survival skill checks
Racial feat: Endurance
Hard to kill: +20% on rolls to stabilize when below 0 hit points
+2 racial bonus on saves against non-magical poisons/disease
Weapon proficiency: Simple weapons
Orc Blood
Automatic Languages: Common OR Orc. Bonus Languages: Common/Orc, Draconic, Giant, Gnoll, Goblin, and Abyssal
Favored Class: Barbarian

Any comments, complaints, improvement ideas?

 

[clark411]

Little too close to a dwarf for my tastes. I'd rather have a suboptimal half orc that stands alone in its bonuses (as inferior as they may be) rather than have players going "Well.. If i'm going to be a plate wearer I may as well go Dwarf, while if I'm going light armor, I may as well go Half Orc." as the main difference is their base speed and their favored class.

Also, isn't everyone proficient with simple weapons?
The Endurance feat makes them powerful, but that just calls for players saying "well Diehard at first level sure is a no-brainer."

 

[Desdichado]

Too dwarf-like. As far as I'm concerned, the whole concept of the half-orc is about the + to STR.

 

[Sejs]

If you feel the +2 con / -2 cha is too close to dwarves, maybe swap the cha penality with an int penality? Also removes the problem of halforcs having a penality to their intimidate skill. Heck, lemme just offer an alternate version

Half-Orc

Medium size Humanoid (Orc)
+2 Constitution / -2 Intelligence
Speed 30'
60' Darkvision
+2 racial bonus to Survival and Intimidate checks.
Weapon Familiarity: Half-Orcs treat the Orcish Double Axe and the Orcish Shotput as martial weapons, rather than exotic.
Bonus Feat: Endurance as a bonus feat at character creation.
Orcish Blood: Half Orcs are treated as Orcs for racially restricted effects.
Automatic Languages: Common, Orcish. Bonus Languages: Giant, Goblin, Draconic, Abyssal, Gnoll, Dwarven.
Favored Class: Barbarian

 

[pogre]

If you feel the +2 con / -2 cha is too close to dwarves, maybe swap the cha penality with an int penality? Also removes the problem of halforcs having a penality to their intimidate skill. Heck, lemme just offer an alternate version

Half-Orc

Medium size Humanoid (Orc)
+2 Constitution / -2 Intelligence
Speed 30'
60' Darkvision
+2 racial bonus to Survival and Intimidate checks.
Weapon Familiarity: Half-Orcs treat the Orcish Double Axe and the Orcish Shotput as martial weapons, rather than exotic.
Bonus Feat: Endurance as a bonus feat at character creation.
Orcish Blood: Half Orcs are treated as Orcs for racially restricted effects.
Automatic Languages: Common, Orcish. Bonus Languages: Giant, Goblin, Draconic, Abyssal, Gnoll, Dwarven.
Favored Class: Barbarian

Now this is interesting and balanced. Charisma penalties for races did not make much sense to me.

I always thought charisma should have a cross race penalty - i.e. half-orcs find half-orcs more attractive generally and so on. A good looking smooth talking Dwarf is going to be attractive to a Human but not as much as to another Dwarf. I would use a straight -2 for racial differences, much like WFRP.