Scion- you really shouldn't have all of the races make the same point buy choices. The Ogre should buy at least a 12 Dex, maybe even a 14, and will eventually be able to get combat reflexes (especially with items that increase Dex). He can buy a 10 Wisdom, since he does not have a penalty in Wisdom (unlike the Orc). The half-ogre is immune to charm person, dominate person and the like, making him quite a bit less vulnerable to will save spells than a humanoid.
I assure you that if reach were a feat, every character would have it. The spiked chain takes a feat to use and has -2 dmg and a 1-step worse critical range than the greatsword (and, iirc, a couple of other minor benefits). Yet, it is not considered a vastly underpowered weapon.
Large size is an advantage on lots of combat maneuvers like trip, grapple, disarm, bull rush and pretty much everything else. Plus, your greatsword does an extra d6 damage. If you compare a ½ Ogre with a 3d6 Greatsword (and an extra feat like, say, Large and In Charge) to a ½ Orc with a 2d4 spiked chain, you see how the damage really adds up.
Additionally, an Orc has the daylight penalties. By the way, if class abilities were better than feats on average, the fighter would be a pretty obsolete class. In fact, unless you have some really good feats to get, it is less powerful past level 2 (the weapon specialization chain helps make up for this).
Additionally, you haven’t really looked at how abilities scale in D&D. The power granted by your base attack itself (for a constant attack bonus) is concave down, meaning that it is much more important to increase it when it is low (+5--+6 BaB is huge, +15-- +16 BaB is usually not). Also, without powerful prestige classes, the other class abilities granted by leveling tend to be concave down.
Your first rage a day is great, your fifth is often unnecessary. Damage reduction would actually be concave up in its power, except that enemy damage scales much, much faster than your damage reduction. Greater and Mighty Rages don’t have this problem- more Str is always good. Strength bonuses, in fact, are concave up, because they increase to hit and damage.
Hit point bonuses are more powerful than AC bonuses, but hit point bonuses are concave down, while AC bonuses are concave up. For example, if your character has 10 HP/level, +2 Con makes you take 1.1 times as many attacks before getting killed. +1 AC, on the other hand, will make you take 2 times as many attacks before getting killed if you are currently hit 10% of the time, or 1.055 times as many attacks before getting killed if you are currently hit 95% of the time.
When you have hardly any feats, getting an extra one is more important than when you have a ton (unless you have very synergistic feats, good feat chains, or really good high level feats, you probably took the best feats at lower levels).
I have seen DM_Matt’s ECL +1 half-ogre fighter 2/Barb 1 in action. At that early level, the character’s power has already overcome the +1 ECL by a substantial amount. Changing the half-Ogre to ECL +2 makes it much worse at the lower levels, but given enough levels, its benefits will eventually even out and possibly surpass other characters. We ended up changing the half-ogre to ECL +1 and 2 giant HD. Since I only saw this change in action for a very short time, I can’t comment too much about it.
Here’s an example using Con to show why there will not be parity between the half-ogre and non-ECL PCs (no matter what ECL you use). Suppose that I offered you +2 Con, but only for the purpose of hit points (so, +1 hp/level), or +1 hit dice. Which would you choose?
Hit dice and Con bonuses are both concave down. The marginal benefit of an extra hit dice (of barb) gives you, rounding up, 7+Con bonus HP. The marginal benefit of +2 Con is Hit Dice HP. So, if your hit dice > 7 + your Con bonus, increasing your Con is more valuable than getting another hit dice in terms of hit points. As your levels keep increasing, your Con score increases at a slower rate than your level. Eventually, the Con bonus will be more valuable than another hit dice.
Since the half-ogre starts with less hit dice, his +2 Con is worth almost nothing at this point. However, eventually his +2 Con will be worth more HP than the hit dice that he lost. This is most certainly not an even point when comparing characters. If you allow players to start at high levels, you will see a lot of half-ogres who take advantage of this. Even if a player took a character from 2nd/3rd -20th level as a half-ogre, there would usually be periods of imbalance, whether you used ECL +1 or ECL +2.
Edit- can't do math. Also can't type.
I assure you that if reach were a feat, every character would have it. The spiked chain takes a feat to use and has -2 dmg and a 1-step worse critical range than the greatsword (and, iirc, a couple of other minor benefits). Yet, it is not considered a vastly underpowered weapon.
Large size is an advantage on lots of combat maneuvers like trip, grapple, disarm, bull rush and pretty much everything else. Plus, your greatsword does an extra d6 damage. If you compare a ½ Ogre with a 3d6 Greatsword (and an extra feat like, say, Large and In Charge) to a ½ Orc with a 2d4 spiked chain, you see how the damage really adds up.
Additionally, an Orc has the daylight penalties. By the way, if class abilities were better than feats on average, the fighter would be a pretty obsolete class. In fact, unless you have some really good feats to get, it is less powerful past level 2 (the weapon specialization chain helps make up for this).
Additionally, you haven’t really looked at how abilities scale in D&D. The power granted by your base attack itself (for a constant attack bonus) is concave down, meaning that it is much more important to increase it when it is low (+5--+6 BaB is huge, +15-- +16 BaB is usually not). Also, without powerful prestige classes, the other class abilities granted by leveling tend to be concave down.
Your first rage a day is great, your fifth is often unnecessary. Damage reduction would actually be concave up in its power, except that enemy damage scales much, much faster than your damage reduction. Greater and Mighty Rages don’t have this problem- more Str is always good. Strength bonuses, in fact, are concave up, because they increase to hit and damage.
Hit point bonuses are more powerful than AC bonuses, but hit point bonuses are concave down, while AC bonuses are concave up. For example, if your character has 10 HP/level, +2 Con makes you take 1.1 times as many attacks before getting killed. +1 AC, on the other hand, will make you take 2 times as many attacks before getting killed if you are currently hit 10% of the time, or 1.055 times as many attacks before getting killed if you are currently hit 95% of the time.
When you have hardly any feats, getting an extra one is more important than when you have a ton (unless you have very synergistic feats, good feat chains, or really good high level feats, you probably took the best feats at lower levels).
I have seen DM_Matt’s ECL +1 half-ogre fighter 2/Barb 1 in action. At that early level, the character’s power has already overcome the +1 ECL by a substantial amount. Changing the half-Ogre to ECL +2 makes it much worse at the lower levels, but given enough levels, its benefits will eventually even out and possibly surpass other characters. We ended up changing the half-ogre to ECL +1 and 2 giant HD. Since I only saw this change in action for a very short time, I can’t comment too much about it.
Here’s an example using Con to show why there will not be parity between the half-ogre and non-ECL PCs (no matter what ECL you use). Suppose that I offered you +2 Con, but only for the purpose of hit points (so, +1 hp/level), or +1 hit dice. Which would you choose?
Hit dice and Con bonuses are both concave down. The marginal benefit of an extra hit dice (of barb) gives you, rounding up, 7+Con bonus HP. The marginal benefit of +2 Con is Hit Dice HP. So, if your hit dice > 7 + your Con bonus, increasing your Con is more valuable than getting another hit dice in terms of hit points. As your levels keep increasing, your Con score increases at a slower rate than your level. Eventually, the Con bonus will be more valuable than another hit dice.
Since the half-ogre starts with less hit dice, his +2 Con is worth almost nothing at this point. However, eventually his +2 Con will be worth more HP than the hit dice that he lost. This is most certainly not an even point when comparing characters. If you allow players to start at high levels, you will see a lot of half-ogres who take advantage of this. Even if a player took a character from 2nd/3rd -20th level as a half-ogre, there would usually be periods of imbalance, whether you used ECL +1 or ECL +2.
Edit- can't do math. Also can't type.
Last edited:
I've always made my stance clear on the fighter, and it is that as written he sucks. I've always given him spot and sense motive as skills on his skill list and upped his feats to one every level. This puts him more on par with others. Oh yeah, core fighter sucks, in case I didnt say it enough earlier..lol.. if you like I can give you a link to at least one of the threads that discusses it.
I simply skipped the hp differential as unimportant, a difference of 8 hp is nice (almost 3 toughness feats.. oh dont get me started on toughness.. bah) but we were looking for bigger and badder things here.
I am just trying to show how some abilities having increasing returns to scale (AC) where the higher your AC is, the more you get out of each extra point of AC (against opponents who kill you with attack rolls). Con, on the other hand, has decreasing returns to scale—the higher your Con score is, the less you get out of each extra point of Con. It still makes you harder to kill! However, the benefit that you get from the next Con increase is not as much as the benefit that you got from the previous Con increase.
