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<blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 7010300" data-attributes="member: 32659"><p>The last of the ‘normal’ Orcs, the <strong>Red Fang of Shargaas</strong> is the rogue of the race. The champions among the outcast followers of Shargaas, they are surprisingly potent assassin-style enemies, and have some really cool abilities to offer. </p><p></p><p><img src="https://holiviantales.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/shargaas1.png?w=167&h=225" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>The Red Fang gets a really awesome image in the book - it shows an Orc riding a Giant Bat, as it climbs up a stone tower. The Red Fang has just about the smuggest expression that I’ve ever seen on an Orc’s face, as the Giant Bat peers into an open doorway. It’s a wonderful image, with beautiful composition and the lighting of the scene using the moon and an off-screen torch, giving it just the hint of a time and place. It feels very <em>real</em>, and is the kind of image that I’d love to show to the players and say, “As you look out of your window at night, troubled by nightmares, you see this…”</p><p></p><p>The god Shargaas is the edgelord of the Orc Pantheon, being responsible for darkness, murder, and xenophobia. The Orcs themselves seem to look down on Shargaas, or at least his followers, and so his cult is relegated to the deep, dark places away from the tribal centre. In the map on page 91, Shargaas’ followers have the largest area of any of the cultic groups, but they also share that space with prisoners, the offal pits, and their bat rookery (should that be a battery?). So we can imagine that the common or garden variety Orc only comes in contact with the followers of Shargaas when doing something demeaning or unpleasant, such as guarding the back entrance, going to the offal pits, or monitoring prisoners. Luthic, by contrast, gets a well-lit and centrally located den which adjoins the Chieftain’s cave. However, among the followers of Shargaas there are a few that are more competent and dangerous than the rest; Shargaas gathers the unfit and the outcast to him, and some are capable of being trained in his ways. The result is the Red Fangs, who get some jolly interesting powers as we’ll discuss below. </p><p></p><p>The cult of Shargaas is an odd one, for it combines the unfit and dishonourable Orcs of the tribe with a duty to cull the young that cannot serve as proper Orcs. This feels like a delicate line, since the ‘depraved and twisted creatures’ that follow Shargaas resemble those that they slay, and indeed it appears that many of their number were brought into the cult as a result of being found unworthy in the first place. The cult’s role in this duty, and indeed the cult itself, seems taboo; they exist within the tribe, but the Orcs don’t like to look upon them. That suits the cult fine though, since they like the dark places of the stronghold. </p><p></p><p>The Red Fang is a much sturdier combatant that you might expect, but I think that they needed the high CR to get all their abilities on line. If you wanted the ‘normal’ members of the cult, I’d be tempted to have them be normal Orcs that used shortswords and handaxes single handed, without shields, and didn’t use their <em>Aggressive</em> trait; that would probably feel ‘weak’ and ‘unOrcy’ enough to do the trick, even without other mechanical alterations. The Red Fang is the most powerful Orc statblock after the Blade and the Warchief, and are dispatched by the Chieftains for the purpose of weakening their opponents, although Gruumsh looks down on this sort of thing. Your players are likely to encounter them before hitting the tribe’s stronghold, but after they have slain many Orcs ‘in the field’, and attracted the attention of the Warchief. With decent AC, HP and high melee damage, the Red Fang could be run as a melee combatant no problem. However, there are more interesting options in this statblock. They get the <em>Darkness</em> and super-darkvision combination of a Warlock, the <em>Cunning Action</em> of a Rogue, and the first-round-murder abilities of the Assassin, as well as a decent stealth score. These guys are likely to be a really big problem for your group, if you are the kind of DM who likes ambushes and whatnot. They also work extremely well together, able to take advantage of each other’s <em>Darkness</em> to toss darts with advantage while making it very hard for the party to catch up. If, like me, you struggle to take advantage of this kind of clever abiilty, then the Red Fang is pretty sturdy for a rogue-type enemy, and can still catch attention for creating magical darkness and then swinging around two Scimitar attacks for 3d6+3 each.</p><p></p><p>One last note about these guys - you’ll want to first decide what your take on the <em>Darkness</em> spell is. It can be read a few different ways - characteristically for 5e, they leave it up to the DM to decide precisely how it impacts the game - and you can bet that the players will want to know exactly how it works once these guys turn up!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charles Rampant, post: 7010300, member: 32659"] The last of the ‘normal’ Orcs, the [b]Red Fang of Shargaas[/b] is the rogue of the race. The champions among the outcast followers of Shargaas, they are surprisingly potent assassin-style enemies, and have some really cool abilities to offer. [img]https://holiviantales.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/shargaas1.png?w=167&h=225[/img] The Red Fang gets a really awesome image in the book - it shows an Orc riding a Giant Bat, as it climbs up a stone tower. The Red Fang has just about the smuggest expression that I’ve ever seen on an Orc’s face, as the Giant Bat peers into an open doorway. It’s a wonderful image, with beautiful composition and the lighting of the scene using the moon and an off-screen torch, giving it just the hint of a time and place. It feels very [i]real[/i], and is the kind of image that I’d love to show to the players and say, “As you look out of your window at night, troubled by nightmares, you see this…” The god Shargaas is the edgelord of the Orc Pantheon, being responsible for darkness, murder, and xenophobia. The Orcs themselves seem to look down on Shargaas, or at least his followers, and so his cult is relegated to the deep, dark places away from the tribal centre. In the map on page 91, Shargaas’ followers have the largest area of any of the cultic groups, but they also share that space with prisoners, the offal pits, and their bat rookery (should that be a battery?). So we can imagine that the common or garden variety Orc only comes in contact with the followers of Shargaas when doing something demeaning or unpleasant, such as guarding the back entrance, going to the offal pits, or monitoring prisoners. Luthic, by contrast, gets a well-lit and centrally located den which adjoins the Chieftain’s cave. However, among the followers of Shargaas there are a few that are more competent and dangerous than the rest; Shargaas gathers the unfit and the outcast to him, and some are capable of being trained in his ways. The result is the Red Fangs, who get some jolly interesting powers as we’ll discuss below. The cult of Shargaas is an odd one, for it combines the unfit and dishonourable Orcs of the tribe with a duty to cull the young that cannot serve as proper Orcs. This feels like a delicate line, since the ‘depraved and twisted creatures’ that follow Shargaas resemble those that they slay, and indeed it appears that many of their number were brought into the cult as a result of being found unworthy in the first place. The cult’s role in this duty, and indeed the cult itself, seems taboo; they exist within the tribe, but the Orcs don’t like to look upon them. That suits the cult fine though, since they like the dark places of the stronghold. The Red Fang is a much sturdier combatant that you might expect, but I think that they needed the high CR to get all their abilities on line. If you wanted the ‘normal’ members of the cult, I’d be tempted to have them be normal Orcs that used shortswords and handaxes single handed, without shields, and didn’t use their [i]Aggressive[/i] trait; that would probably feel ‘weak’ and ‘unOrcy’ enough to do the trick, even without other mechanical alterations. The Red Fang is the most powerful Orc statblock after the Blade and the Warchief, and are dispatched by the Chieftains for the purpose of weakening their opponents, although Gruumsh looks down on this sort of thing. Your players are likely to encounter them before hitting the tribe’s stronghold, but after they have slain many Orcs ‘in the field’, and attracted the attention of the Warchief. With decent AC, HP and high melee damage, the Red Fang could be run as a melee combatant no problem. However, there are more interesting options in this statblock. They get the [i]Darkness[/i] and super-darkvision combination of a Warlock, the [i]Cunning Action[/i] of a Rogue, and the first-round-murder abilities of the Assassin, as well as a decent stealth score. These guys are likely to be a really big problem for your group, if you are the kind of DM who likes ambushes and whatnot. They also work extremely well together, able to take advantage of each other’s [i]Darkness[/i] to toss darts with advantage while making it very hard for the party to catch up. If, like me, you struggle to take advantage of this kind of clever abiilty, then the Red Fang is pretty sturdy for a rogue-type enemy, and can still catch attention for creating magical darkness and then swinging around two Scimitar attacks for 3d6+3 each. One last note about these guys - you’ll want to first decide what your take on the [i]Darkness[/i] spell is. It can be read a few different ways - characteristically for 5e, they leave it up to the DM to decide precisely how it impacts the game - and you can bet that the players will want to know exactly how it works once these guys turn up! [/QUOTE]
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