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[D&D] What is a 'Half' Orc?
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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7425065" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>Humans and orcs are genetically the same species, so a half-orc is anyone with ancestors and traits of both. They could be the off-spring of two half-orcs, or they could be the cross between a human and an orc. The could even have one parent that is entirely human, or entirely orc, where the other has mixed blood.</p><p></p><p>In game terms, a half-orc is a character to whom the half-orc racial adjustments are a better representation than either the human racial adjustments or the orc racial adjustments. If two half-orcs get married and have three children, one of them might be a half-orc while another is considered a full orc and the last one is considered a full human; but even the human is likely to show some minor cosmetic features of their mixed ancestry.</p><p></p><p>I can't speak for the Realms, in particular, but one of the founding assumptions from earlier editions is that half-orcs are <em>incredibly</em> rare. There aren't enough of them to form a self-propagating race, because it's rare for humans to mate with orcs in the first place, so the chance that two half-orcs would ever come across each other (in a pseudo-Medieval European setting where teleportation magic is almost unknown) is not worth contemplating. Look at Middle-Earth as an inspiration, and consider how many half-elves there are.</p><p></p><p>Faerun isn't Middle-Earth, though. Faerun is a <em>ludicrously</em> high-magic setting, where travel is much easier than you might expect. Maybe there <em>are</em> places where human civilizations are immediately adjacent to orc civilizations, and they have a border with a substantial half-orc population.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7425065, member: 6775031"] Humans and orcs are genetically the same species, so a half-orc is anyone with ancestors and traits of both. They could be the off-spring of two half-orcs, or they could be the cross between a human and an orc. The could even have one parent that is entirely human, or entirely orc, where the other has mixed blood. In game terms, a half-orc is a character to whom the half-orc racial adjustments are a better representation than either the human racial adjustments or the orc racial adjustments. If two half-orcs get married and have three children, one of them might be a half-orc while another is considered a full orc and the last one is considered a full human; but even the human is likely to show some minor cosmetic features of their mixed ancestry. I can't speak for the Realms, in particular, but one of the founding assumptions from earlier editions is that half-orcs are [I]incredibly[/I] rare. There aren't enough of them to form a self-propagating race, because it's rare for humans to mate with orcs in the first place, so the chance that two half-orcs would ever come across each other (in a pseudo-Medieval European setting where teleportation magic is almost unknown) is not worth contemplating. Look at Middle-Earth as an inspiration, and consider how many half-elves there are. Faerun isn't Middle-Earth, though. Faerun is a [I]ludicrously[/I] high-magic setting, where travel is much easier than you might expect. Maybe there [I]are[/I] places where human civilizations are immediately adjacent to orc civilizations, and they have a border with a substantial half-orc population. [/QUOTE]
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[D&D] What is a 'Half' Orc?
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