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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009571" data-attributes="member: 9860">This is not a playtest review.Heroes Of High Favor: Half Orcs (HOHFHO) is the second in a series of race-related books by Bad Axe Games, which concentrate on the relationship between the particular race and their favored class. This one is for Half-Orcs.HOHFHO comes in at $9.95. It consists of 62 just-larger-than-A5 pages, which I approximate to somewhere around the equivalent of 35 A4 pages. This makes it relatively expensive when compared to offerings of similar page count and type in terms of content volume. Partly because of the page size, and partly because of the layout itself, space usage is not great either. The internal mono art and the blood-spattered front-cover are good. Writing quality is also good, whilst the editing is average (e.g. mixing 'deity' and 'diety' up, which a simple spellcheck should have picked up).HOHFHO uses a similar format to its predecessor on Dwarves. There are five chapters - an introduction, feats, skills, prestige classes, and advice on roleplaying half-orcs.The introduction focuses in on the importance of the barbarian class to half-orcs, and particularly the concept of multi-classing barbarian. The book takes quite a traditionalist approach - "Be warned that this book is not for the faint of heart; if your desire is to play a troubled half-orc orphan desperate to escape his barbaric heritage, you should look elsewhere."Twenty-two feats are offered up, specific to half-orcs, but adaptable to barbarians in general. Several of the feats concentrate on the Rage ability, allowing Rages to be swapped out for other abilities, such as fast healing, going berserk, enraged casting, and damage reduction. Other feats offer mastery of savage weapons such as spears and axes. One particular feat, Tribal Focus/Totem Focus is dealt with in more detail at the end of the chapter. This feat defines different tribes (e.g The Black Hand) or animal totems (e.g. wolf) that are linked with a specific set of feats (e.g. The Horse Lords tribal feat list consists of Leadership, Mounted Combat, Refined Skill Focus (Ride), and Trample. If your Half-Orc character dedicates himself to following the feats of his tribe or totem as he gains levels, he gets a +1 kick-back on a limited choice of skills appropriate to either a tribal or totemic society, each time he picks up one of the feats.The Skills chapter looks at new uses for old skills - Craft (Craft Rope, Craft Savage Weapons, Craft Savage Armour, masterwork components, using tough hides to create naturally tough armour, and shoddy craftsmanship), Handle Animal (Breed/Cross-breed Animals/Beasts), Intimidate (used to make an opponent shaken dazed, frightened or panicked), Knowledge (Half-Orcs), and Wilderness Lore (Fashion Savage Tools, Preserve Meat, Preserve Hide, Harvest Components, and Harvest Poison).The Prestige Classes chapter takes the Barbarian class as the basepoint, and then multiclasses with each of the other core classes. Advice is given on standard multiclassing for the combination including the character's role in half-orc society and in an adventuring group, then an 'iconic' 10-level prestige class (best achieved by this multiclass mix) is offered:* The Agitator (Barbarian/Bard) continues progressing with his bardic abilities, but learns to use his music to infuse a crowd with different emotional states, particularly fear and anger.* Favored Of The Eye (Barbarian/Cleric) - gains additional orc domains whilst continuing to progress in spellcasting. Can also cast spells while raging, use the smite ability and gain divine inspiration to improve spellcasting at later levels.* Moulder (Barbarian/Druid) - continues to improve in spellcasting, rage, and wild shape. Gains the ability to mould together himself with an animal companion or two animal companions together, allowing the remaining being to gain extra abilities. He can also enrage an animal companion.* Horde Chieftain (Barbarian/Fighter) - continues to gain extra rages and feats, whilst gaining the ability to call and control a barbarian horde.* Lost One (Barbarian/Monk) - combines monk-type abilities (flurry of blows, furious strike, mental fortress) with barbarian-type abilities (damage reduction, mighty grapple, improved evasion).* Fervent Antagonist (Barbarian/Paladin) - retains paladin spellcasting, aura of courage, special mount, smite and divine grace with the barbarian's rage but also gains bonuses to charge/rage, the ability to enrage his mount, and may perform a coup de grace as a free action when combined with a full attack.* Dire Stalker - (Brabarian/Ranger) - develops various additions to the Favored Enemy Ranger class ability such as raging at his favored enemy, and intuitively sensing their direction. Also gains a Totem Focus at 1st level (+ bonus feats), but loses 'virtual feats' such as Two-Weapon Fighting in balance. Has a cool ability to rip out the hearts of fallen enemies and eat it, thus gaining temporary bonuses depending on the challenge the enemy provided.* Coal-Tongue Raver (Barbarian/Rogue) - insane from poison addiction, gains abilities such as poison spittle, poison resistance, and poison blood, as well as some standard thief abilities.* Wyrd (Barbarian/Sorcerer) - slower spellcasting advances but gains the ability to feed of others' emotions to focus his rage into more powerful spellcasting - this has the potential to seriously screw him up if it goes wrong.* Hoodoo (Barbarian/Wizard) - witch doctor type, who can summon enraged monsters, is skilled in divination, gains a limited ability to convert spells into arcane healing, and advances more slowly than a standard spellcaster.The final 2-page chapter on roleplaying half-orc characters is amusingly forthright as exemplified by one section heading - "'Violence Never Solved Anything' - Wrong!". There is also a short section on defining the half-orcs fighting style, such as 'All Power Attack, All Of The Time'. Short, but good.Conclusion:Half-Orcs are my least favourite race, but if anything I enjoyed this more than 'HOHF: Dwarves'. The highlights were the Tribal/Totem Focus feat, the section on naturally tough armour, the Dire Stalker's 'Grim Feast' ability, and the Coal-Tongued Raver's poison abilities. I also liked the section on roleplaying, even if it was too short. Like its predecessor, HOHFHO is long on crunch and short on fluff - its ideal for players, 'merely' interesting for GMs. Much of the information could, however, be extrapolated in order to provide ideas on half-orc society and in fact barbarian societies in general. Few of the feats, skill uses or prestige class abilities stood out as unbalanced - even those that seemed over-powerful at first glance had a less obvious balancing feature hidden within the text. Prerequisites were also good; my only disappointment was that several of the prestige classes gained very similar (or the same) abilities as a standard multiclass combination would gain. For me, a prestige class should have a defined role in the campaign setting, and have their own unique abilities - not all the prestige classes in the book achieved that expectation.</blockquote>

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