Half-orcs and why people think they are/aren't powerful

[Pax]

Rolling 4d6k3 is still *very* unlikely to produce an 18. Granted, probably more likely than a 25 point buy.

MUCH more likely, as luck would (literally) have it. I no longer have it available to me, but I once did an analysys of proabilities, and it turnsout that no less than two thirds (actually, more like "sixty-eight-and-a-fraction-of-a-percent") of all characters generated using "4d6 and drop thelowest" for attributes, willhave at least one attribute that is at least a 16. Of those two thirds, several will have multiple scores, and/or scores reaching 17 or 18.

Mind you, I didn't use fancy math ... I did it the hard way, and counted out every possible permutationof the dice (at the time, I simply didn't KNOW the right formulae). Pure brute force.

So the statement that those who roll their attributes are, unless singularly and repeatedly unlucky, more likely to have a 16 to convert into the "Holy 18", especiallyin light of the number of folks who roll multiple sets until they get one they "like", is entirely too accurate.

Of thirty character sets rolled, ten will have their highest score(s) be below 16. Even assuming "one rolled set, one character" ... that still means most of them get that sacred starting 18, after racial modifiers.

With a standard 25-point-buy, however ... it's not that common to see starting scores above the 14/15 mark, because above there, it just gets too darned expensive to justify the expense, without eviscerating other attributes, especially considering racial penalties.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

So the statement that those who roll their attributes are, unless singularly and repeatedly unlucky, more likely to have a 16 to convert into the "Holy 18", especiallyin light of the number of folks who roll multiple sets until they get one they "like", is entirely too accurate.

I have to agree here. My most recent game was 4d6 drop the lowest, and after everyone looked at their first set of scores, we agreed that you could keep rolling. You just had to keep a full set (no keeping the 18 then rolling the next five over and over again.) As a result, there are several 18s in the party, and one character with two 18s.

 

[Thanee]

Chance to roll an 18 with 4d6DL (rolling once) is quite exactly 2%.
Having a 16 or more with 4d6DL (rolling once) is a bit more, roughly 11%.

To have one or more within a set of six rolls is higher, of course.
In that case it should be just six times as high, IIRC.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Pax]

Chance to roll an 18 with 4d6DL (rolling once) is quite exactly 2%.
Having a 16 or more with 4d6DL (rolling once) is a bit more, roughly 11%.

So; the chance to have one or more 16's is the inverse of the chance to have all scores 15 or lower. IOW, the inverse of 0.89%^6 ... that comes to ~49.7%; that produces just over a 50% chance to get one or more stats 16 or higher.

Of course, that's not factoring out the "unplayable" sets - the ones the 3E rules already tell you to reroll: when you have no scores over 13, or when your attribute modifiers total up to +0 or less, before racial adjustments. ^_^

 

[Tetsubo]

I allow Half-Orcs to buy the Scent Feat at 1st level if they want it. I have also replaced the Darkvision with Low-Light Vision. Orcs and Half-Orcs are surface dwelling races in my campaign.

The idea of a Free Toughness or Improved Toughness Feat sounds like a good idea. And it plays into the "just won't fall down" meme of Half-Orcs.

One idea a friend had was to base HD on the race of the character. So Halflings would get a d4 but Half-Orcs would get a d12. The character class they choose would give a flat bonus per level. Plus your CN bonus as well. I like this idea but I've been far to lazy to do anything with it.

 

[Thanee]

So; the chance to have one or more 16's is the inverse of the chance to have all scores 15 or lower.

Ah, yes, you're right there, of course. Doh, should've known that myself, really!

50% sounds about right. And about 11.5% to have an 18.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Pax]

Now figure, an average of two sets rolled per character (fewer for some, many more for others).

That's a net of roughly 75%of all characteshavingone or more scores in the 16, 17, and 18 range (pre-race, ofc). And almost 22% of them will have at least one natural 18 - meaning, 22% of characters have an 18, 53% of them have "only" a 16 or 17, and the remaining 25% have a high score of 15 or lower.

Well, gee, if one in five characters will have an 18, then HalfOrc does become marginally moreattractive, for a no-frills training-wheels barbarian.

And that still doesn't account for the range of stats that get rerolled even by Core PHB Rules.

Thanee, what's the chance to roll a 13 or above? More importantly, what's the chance to roll a 12 or lower?

Accounting for the "all modifiers add up to +0 or less" will be muchharder (my pitiful math-fu is NOT up to that task), but we can eliminate the "no score 13 or higher" rolls, and see what's up THEN.

 

[Creamsteak]

On this board and others, there have been a number of fights over half-orcs, with some people violently proclaiming them wonderful or even over-powered, and others proclaiming them weak and useless, with very few people (at least amongst those who post) anywhere in the middle.

I probably don't post in any such threads, but I'm pretty moderate about the half-orc.

Now, the usual explenation of why people have such opposite opinions is playing style. If you dungeon crawl, half-orcs are great; if you do city-based adventures with lots of diplomacy, they suck. I've never found this explenation satisfactory. I'm a power-gamer, sometimes a munchkin, and I would *never* play a half-orc.

I think they are "cool..." but then again I've grown up on Warcraft brand orcs. Half orcs are rarely more survivable than a dwarf in my experience, so if I was trying to really build for the strength of it, I would probably go for a dwarf using the dwarven waraxe. If you want to get into the numbers, it's a reasonably similar increase in damage and you don't sacrifice necessary skill points, but get an HP boost.

I think I've found the real explenation, though. After many an argument, it suddenly occured to me that there was a real difference between the two camps of half-orc haters and half-orc likers: how they generate ability scores.

That's genious. It never occured to me, but I think you hit something!

However, if you create characters with dice rolling, scores of 18 are not uncommon. Let's face it: if you're rolling dice to generate ability scores, it's highly likely that you're not just going to roll 4d6 six times. You're probably going to do that several times until you get a "decent" character -- and you're probably not cheating, either. Your DM is highly likely to be going along with you. For dice-rolled characters, scores of 18 are not all that uncommon. It's kind of expected, really. So getting an 18 Str score is really not all that special. And, while it's kind of nice to have a 20 Str, it doesn't mean as much under this system. It's not nearly as hard to get or as special.

I don't know about all that. Everyone's groups are different, and although I do agree that "most" games use something slightly or significantly better than 4d6-L, I still think that a good portion of games use the standard if they roll at all.

So. What do y'all think of my analysis?

I have some discrepencies with some of the premisis (based on my personal experience being different from yours), but the conclusion you reached is the same one I get using my own experiences.

I feel enlightened just slightly.

 

[Thanee]

Thanee, what's the chance to roll a 13 or above? More importantly, what's the chance to roll a 12 or lower?

Accounting for the "all modifiers add up to +0 or less" will be muchharder (my pitiful math-fu is NOT up to that task), but we can eliminate the "no score 13 or higher" rolls, and see what's up THEN.

That's definitely not very high, so I'd just ignore that part. Won't change much.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Pax]

It'd probably account for the jump form half to two-thirds that I got before, though.