Orcs preview

[Lizard]

Also, the orc is almost certainly one of the monster races with a basic PC writeup in the back of the MM, so you could probably create an actual 1st level orc warlord if you want.


Deadstop

Ah, I assumed the 'racial writeup' would be in the race article. That does help.

 

[Peter LaCara]

First off, what's with no 1st level orcs? Dammit, YOU FIGHT ORCS AT FIRST LEVEL. Sheesh.

Two orc raiders and a handful of drudges. First level encounter for ya.

Second...9th level minions have 1 hit point? (Addendum: I prefer '1 hit point' to 'die when they are hit'. It reduces a lot of rules problems.)

Sure. Hit points are a measure of your plot immunity. Minions have no plot immunity. I don't see why that's such a big deal.

Third...fixed damage for minions? Kind of boring, but, meh. I can live with it. I hope there's rules for calculating 'fixed' damage from any weapon, so it's easy to give orc warriors longswords or halberds if you want to.

Fixed damage for minions does two things:

1) It speeds up play dramatically when dealing with a horde.

2) It fixes the problems of minions critting, since a crit is meaningless to someone who does fixed damage.

As for giving longswords to the warriors, that's as simple as increasing their hit bonus by 1 and reduce their damage by 1, or giving them reach 2 if they have halberds. Honestly, you're a big boy. You don't need WotC to hold your hand and tell you how to do this stuff. That took me less time to think of it than it took me to type it out.

Fourth...minions have no skills? None? Well, it does explain the orc lifestyle.

Fifth...why does the Drudge have better armor than the raider? (+4 over reflex vs. +3) You'd think the more elite an orc was, the better armor he'd have. Seems to fit.

Sixth...an orc hospital must consist of a bag of rats. "Whack rat till feel better."

This is so stupid, I barely know why I'm addressing this, but once again, hit points are your plot immunity, not your actual injuries.

Seventh...let's say, Ghu forbid, I *do* want to make my own orcs. I know that's "tedious and dull" and no sane DM wants to actually tinker with worldbuilding, but bear me out. Nothing in the article says "This is what a generic orc is". There's no clear indicator which powers are "orc powers" all orcs get, and which are pseudo-class powers. (To judge by the drudge, there's nothing which ALL orcs get by default.) There's not even a basic racial profile to use if I want to build an Orc Fighter from scratch. Do I staple levels onto the minion? The raider? I want to make a first level orc warlord who has gathered some drudges into a bandit gang. How?

You build a new monster from scratch and use the orc racial stuff from their PC race entry in the appendix of the book. Which, I can already tell you what it's probably going to consist of: +2 speed on a charge, and they get Warrior's Surge as an encounter power, since every single orc has both of those things (the minions don't need to have Warrior's Surge listed since they're never bloodied).

Why do you need a template to start with and just staple levels onto? Why can't you start from scratch. Hell, that seems more fun to me than applying templates and levels and stuff.

Eighth...at least they're chaotic evil. Alignments aren't totally dead.

What it boils down to is, I don't see what this system gives me that "Humanoid+levels" didn't. It seems to be more restrictive and more confusing, and if I want to mix "Pre gen" orcs with "custom" orcs, I need, basically, two sets of rules to do it, the "monster" rules and the "pc" rules. That's more retro than I like.

Can someone elaborate the advantages for me? What do you see that's superior about this, other than the fact it basically provides you with a "Box of orcs" you can pick pieces out of, if you happen to like the pieces you've been given?

You get to the same place as you would with "humanoid+levels," but faster and with less work. I mean, seriously, this isn't hard. If I had access to the right numbers (something they told us we will have), I could write up an orc shaman in like, 5 minutes tops. I don't understand how that could not make someone excited.

 

[jaldaen]

Once every creature's turn. Once on the paladin's turn. Once on the ranger's turn. And so forth.

According to the Scalegloom Rules Appendix:

Interrupts and reactions are immediate actions. Specific powers
define the trigger for these actions. You can take only one
immediate action per round, and you can't take an immediate
action on your turn.

I think you are confusing opportunity attacks with immediate actions... you can take 1 OA/turn, but only 1 IA/round.

 

[Wormwood]

You only get one immediate action per round; presumably, they reset on your action.

Makes sense. Thanks!

 

[Knight Otu]

Level 1 Encounter (538 XP)
2 orc drudges
1 orc warrior
1 orc raider
1 orc eye of Gruumsh

Level 1 Encounter (500 XP)
5 orc warriors

Level 1 Encounter (519 XP)
1 orc drudge
1 orc warrior
1 orc berserker
1 orc eye of Gruumsh

Those should all be valid 1st level encounters, though they may be tough.

As for hacking with clubs - obviously, the club design is exception-based.

 

[Lizard]

I suspect the actual hit points of minions are pretty flexible. Most of the time it's not even supposed to matter.

If one assumes minions will only ever fight level-appropriate PCs whose damage output is greater than their presumed hit points, yeah.

It's pretty clear to me that the "orc power" is Warrior's Surge - you even noted this above, so I'm surprised you're having trouble with it now. The only orcs that don't have Warrior's Surge are the 1-hp minions - who couldn't get any use out of it anyway, so why waste the ink writing it in? They also get +movement while charging.

I looked for a power in all entries, and couldn't find one which was universal. If it's Warrior's Surge, your logic makes sense, but again, why not call this out so it's obvious?

It seems that there's an implicit "Don't worry about how it all works" attitude in the 4e rules. On the one hand, this makes design easy -- pick some random numbers that are 'close to' the numbers in the book. On the other hand, if you don't understand where those numbers came from, it's harder to see the consequences of changing them or know if you've 'cascaded' the values through properly.

 

[Alkiera]

Lizard,

(1&7)You can fight orcs at first level just fine... use the 4th lvl drudge minions(44xp each, quite a few in 500 xp), maybe 2-3 skirmishers, etc. PCs can fight enemies above their level with some success. It'll be tough, but doable. I wouldn't include the controller/leader types until they've got a few levels, though.

(1.b)Personally, I think the intention is that PCs fight goblins or kobolds at first level, though, and that the orcs would be a little more advanced. The 3.x MM even supports this, as being CR 1/2, a level one party should only face a few pairs of orcs a day before being 'spent'. Any group having a leader would be a 'squad' of 11-20 warriors, 2 3rd-level sergeants, and a 3rd-6th level leader. Toss 4 barbarian levels onto an orc, and it's gonna do bad things to a first level (3.x) party, especially if he's not alone or isn't the first encounter of the day.

(4)Drudges have no skills.. that's why they're drudges, and not philosophers. 8) I would guess minions in general won't have trained skills. If they get into a skill vs skill task (somehow) just use the adjusted stat mods at the bottom. Similar with 1 hp and fixed damage. They're not expected to live long, stats are simplified a bit from other orcs, even.

(5) The Drudge has hide armor, the raider leather. Why? Dunno, just the way it is. Maybe the raiders feel that hide armor is too restrictive of their throwing arms. Actually, almost all the orcs have leather armor. Only the drudge has hide, and the chieftan has chainmail. Every other orc is wearing leather armor.

(6) Hitpoints aren't physical damage. A bloodied orc doesn't need a hospital, he needs a nap, maybe a roll of gauze. You don't need a hospital until hp reach 0 or less.

(7) They already gave us rules for adjusting levels of monsters. +/- 1 atk/defense per level you want to go, within 5 levels. Heck, I think you could probably throw 4ish drudges and the lvl 4 berzerker at a level 1 party as is, with no adjustments. Level matter both more and less than in 3.x... it affects more of the PC's stats, but level X players no longer find a level X+4 enemy to be completely insurmountable.

Just some food for thought.

 

[hong]

I looked for a power in all entries, and couldn't find one which was universal. If it's Warrior's Surge, your logic makes sense, but again, why not call this out so it's obvious?

You found the answer. Who cares how you found it?

It seems that there's an implicit "Don't worry about how it all works" attitude in the 4e rules. On the one hand, this makes design easy -- pick some random numbers that are 'close to' the numbers in the book. On the other hand, if you don't understand where those numbers came from, it's harder to see the consequences of changing them or know if you've 'cascaded' the values through properly.

Which is why the prevalence of cascading is much lessened compared to 3E.

 

[Mort_Q]

On the other hand, if you don't understand where those numbers came from, it's harder to see the consequences of changing them or know if you've 'cascaded' the values through properly.

One would hope that there is a chapter or section devoted to this elsewhere in the 4e MM.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I think you are confusing opportunity attacks with immediate actions... you can take 1 OA/turn, but only 1 IA/round.

Actually I was confusing turns and rounds!