Teflon Billy
Explorer
Benjamin Durbin’s Heroes of High Favor series of supplements are designed with the goal of exploring the multiclassing options open to the core PC races in D&D (There are published booklets for Dwarves, Elves, Half-Orcs and Halflings at the time of this writing). I was going to review my old, battered, well-used and well-loved copy of HoHF: Dwarves; but at the request of the author, I’ve decided to instead take a look at HoHF: Half Orcs.
Brave, Mr. Durbin, brave…leading the reviewer away from a product you know he loves and toward an unknown quantity.
Right off the bat I’ll say simply that this is good stuff. Most of the facets of HoHF
warves that I liked are still present; Good art, nice format (small, handy and dense with goodies) and above all, the author’s personal take on the idea of game balance.
First off are the New Feats, and they are a reasonably good bunch for the most part; concentrating on making use of Barbarian Rage ability in new and exciting ways, exploring Totemic Magic (primitive personal identification with a local breed of beast and Tribal Foci (benefits gleaned from an upbringing in a more-organized-than-average Orc tribe). The Rage feats are the most interesting here (bending and twisting the fairly vanilla “Barbarian Rage” ability into myriad new forms…all of which seem decently balanced). The Totem/Tribal ones are really little more than free Skill Modifiers for following certain feat progressions, though it must be said they would make great “regional identifiers” for a homebrew campaign world.
Next are Skills, or rather new uses for already existing skills. Handle Animal is given an extensive retooling with an eye towards breeding. It’s a very workable system that I am assured (by a longtime friend with a background in 4H) is remarkably true-to-life given its simplicity. Intimidate is expanded a bit, and beefed up with actual, mechanical game effects (not that useful since 3.5E actually gave some mechanical effects to the Intimidate skill, but wildly useful when all we had to go on was 3E’s “Can affect NPC behavior” vagaries to go on). Wilderness Lore nicely comes into its own, with rules given for cutting game, harvesting poisons, curing hides and (interestingly) separating magical parts of game animals from the carcass.
As HoHF: Dwarves before it though, the real value in the Skills section is the expansion of the Craft skill (though unlike the Dwarf book, most of the Craft section here deals with the PC’s producing really cheap crap quickly. This, while very much in the character of the Half-Orc Barbarians on which the book focuses, is of somewhat limited utility to most players with whom I have crossed paths.
The Prestige classes come next, and for the most part I love them…not just because I think they are well realized, but because (unlike most prestige class supplements in print thus far) the author actually appears to share my feelings on game balance! Most “options for players” books I’ve come across are all about the power creep; mechanical options to make the players more numerically effective in their chosen fields than the core rules would otherwise allow. HoHF: Half-Orcs (and HoHF: Dwarves before it) both hew much closer to the design concept I prefer: that new classes should not be measurably more powerful than core classes, just different. In short, HoHF:Half-Orcs is filled with ideas rather than power-ups, and for the most part the ideas are sound (shoehorn fits like the Fervent Antagonist—a Barbarian /Paladin—notwithstanding).
If I have a serious criticism of the work it’s that it comes a lot closer to being HoHF: Orcs rather than HoHF: Half-Orcs. There is precious little in the book concerning the human side of being a Half-Orc, or indeed, anything other than being a slavering, savage berserker; but the introduction to the book, with it’s caveat “…if your desire is to play a troubled Half-Orc orphan desperate to escape his barbaric heritage, you should look elsewhere. This book is for players who wish to walk the path of the iconic barbarian: savage, fearless, relentless, and full of rage and fury…” shows at least that this was a design choice and not merely an oversight.
In the final analysis, this is solid book, and though it fails to reach the standard set by its predecessor, it is still everything I like about the Heroes of High Favor series: a nice handy format packed with information, presented very well in terms of layout, editing and art.
I’m satisfied.
Brave, Mr. Durbin, brave…leading the reviewer away from a product you know he loves and toward an unknown quantity.
Right off the bat I’ll say simply that this is good stuff. Most of the facets of HoHF
warves that I liked are still present; Good art, nice format (small, handy and dense with goodies) and above all, the author’s personal take on the idea of game balance. First off are the New Feats, and they are a reasonably good bunch for the most part; concentrating on making use of Barbarian Rage ability in new and exciting ways, exploring Totemic Magic (primitive personal identification with a local breed of beast and Tribal Foci (benefits gleaned from an upbringing in a more-organized-than-average Orc tribe). The Rage feats are the most interesting here (bending and twisting the fairly vanilla “Barbarian Rage” ability into myriad new forms…all of which seem decently balanced). The Totem/Tribal ones are really little more than free Skill Modifiers for following certain feat progressions, though it must be said they would make great “regional identifiers” for a homebrew campaign world.
Next are Skills, or rather new uses for already existing skills. Handle Animal is given an extensive retooling with an eye towards breeding. It’s a very workable system that I am assured (by a longtime friend with a background in 4H) is remarkably true-to-life given its simplicity. Intimidate is expanded a bit, and beefed up with actual, mechanical game effects (not that useful since 3.5E actually gave some mechanical effects to the Intimidate skill, but wildly useful when all we had to go on was 3E’s “Can affect NPC behavior” vagaries to go on). Wilderness Lore nicely comes into its own, with rules given for cutting game, harvesting poisons, curing hides and (interestingly) separating magical parts of game animals from the carcass.
As HoHF: Dwarves before it though, the real value in the Skills section is the expansion of the Craft skill (though unlike the Dwarf book, most of the Craft section here deals with the PC’s producing really cheap crap quickly. This, while very much in the character of the Half-Orc Barbarians on which the book focuses, is of somewhat limited utility to most players with whom I have crossed paths.
The Prestige classes come next, and for the most part I love them…not just because I think they are well realized, but because (unlike most prestige class supplements in print thus far) the author actually appears to share my feelings on game balance! Most “options for players” books I’ve come across are all about the power creep; mechanical options to make the players more numerically effective in their chosen fields than the core rules would otherwise allow. HoHF: Half-Orcs (and HoHF: Dwarves before it) both hew much closer to the design concept I prefer: that new classes should not be measurably more powerful than core classes, just different. In short, HoHF:Half-Orcs is filled with ideas rather than power-ups, and for the most part the ideas are sound (shoehorn fits like the Fervent Antagonist—a Barbarian /Paladin—notwithstanding).
If I have a serious criticism of the work it’s that it comes a lot closer to being HoHF: Orcs rather than HoHF: Half-Orcs. There is precious little in the book concerning the human side of being a Half-Orc, or indeed, anything other than being a slavering, savage berserker; but the introduction to the book, with it’s caveat “…if your desire is to play a troubled Half-Orc orphan desperate to escape his barbaric heritage, you should look elsewhere. This book is for players who wish to walk the path of the iconic barbarian: savage, fearless, relentless, and full of rage and fury…” shows at least that this was a design choice and not merely an oversight.
In the final analysis, this is solid book, and though it fails to reach the standard set by its predecessor, it is still everything I like about the Heroes of High Favor series: a nice handy format packed with information, presented very well in terms of layout, editing and art.
I’m satisfied.
