Re-balancing the 1/2 Orc for my own campaign

[Viktyr Gehrig]

In my games, they keep the +2 STR -2 INT/CHA, but they get Human skill points, +2 racial on saves vs. Poison and Disease, and +2 racial on Survival and Intimidate checks. The other thing I do for them is give them Favored Class: Any. Why should Half-Orcs be less versatile than Half-Elves?

I keep Orcs around for the "savage" PC race. They get the saving throw bonus and a bigger Intimidate bonus (no Survival), and a free Toughness feat. (Toughness is +3 hp and +3 MDT in my games.)

 

[Destil]

There's two problems with the 1/2 orc:

A) Is +2 Str, -2 Int, -2 Cha balanced ?
B) Is darkvision alone enugh of an 'other' bonus compaired to what other races get.

In my campaign I've decided that the answer to both is no.

A)I don't like hitting mental stats too baddly (expertiese is a good feat, skillpoints are good. +Str -Int seems almost fair. +Str -Cha less so). In place I've allowed half orcs +2 Str, -2 Cha, -1 skill point per level.
B)Again I don't think this is as good as the other races (mostly because of the dwarf). So IMC half orcs get a bonus feat at 1st level and I've created the following feat:

Human Adaptavity [Half-elf, Half-orc]
Prerequisites: 1st level only. Half-elf or half-orc.
Benifit: You gain 4 bonus skill points at 1st level and 1 bonus skill point per level beyond first.

 

[Liquidsabre]

IMC here are the additions I ended up making to the half-orc:

Strong Hands: +2 grapple and to resist disarm attempts. A half-orc’s strength provides them an advantage when fighting with their bare hands. Their ferocity in combat also makes it notoriously difficult to separate a half-orc from any weapon they wield.

+2 Intimidate and Survival: Half-orcs are notoriously violent and are skilled at surviving in adverse conditions.

Weapon Familiarity: Orcs may treat the orc double-axe as a martial weapon, rather than an exotic weapon.

 

[Arkhandus]

I generally consider half-orcs to be needing a bit of a boost in non-combat stuff....a feat or skill bonus here and there, generally, or dropping the Int penalty.

Then again, in my campaigns and the ones I've played in, anyone in the party is a likely candidate for needing to negotiate or think through a problem to survive (or at least to make the problem less of a pain in the rear to deal with). Mages have had to talk their way out of a dragon's ire, warriors have had to think their way through a dungeon complex or tricky set of fortifications, etc. Often including multiple Int, Wis, Cha, Knowledge, Bluff, Diplomacy, and/or Sense Motive checks.

In my Aurelia setting, most standard races are a little beefed-up (humans themselves get an immediate +3 bonus to a skill, and an extra feat every 10 levels beyond 1st), and half-orcs are no exception. Out of these stats for them, one or both morale bonuses could be removed to make them equivalent to standard by-the-book humanoids.

Basic Stats: Medium Humanoid (Human, Orc); Base Speed (30 feet); +2 Strength, -2 Charisma (Half-Orcs are strong like their full-blooded Orcish brethren, but are also nearly as ugly and harsh. They’re not quite as tough as full-blooded Orcs, but they’re not as dim-witted either.); Darkvision (60 feet); Orcish Blood (treat as both an Orc and a Human for purposes of what affects them and what they may use); +2 morale on Intimidate checks; +4 morale on saves against fear; Automatic Language (Orcish or one regional language); Intelligence Bonus Languages (any except restricted languages); Favored Class (highest-level class at any given time).

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I save racial bonuses against fear effects for Hobgoblins. (Though I'm still working out how I want to handle goblinoids.)

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Put me in the "half-orcs are just fine" category.

If you want more data than the anecdotes of people on the boards with an axe to grind, this is about the best I can think of:

www.nyrond.org/turbine/charstat-people

It's a list of all of the Living Greyhawk characters in the Nyrond PC registry. Granted, it is self-selected as people voluntarily report their PCs and therefore probably overreports the PCs of people who are highly motivated and involved in the game--a casual gamer is less likely to put his PCs into the database. It is also, being originally a Nyrond database (also used by the Pale with a different front-end), skewed towards Nyrondese characters and players. (And, with half-orcs officially discriminated against in Nyrond for several years of game play, that may have had a slight effect upon the results). However, I can't think of a larger public survey of what kind of characters people actually play. It also has several advantages for our purposes. Living Greyhawk sticks fairly close to the RAW and only PHB races (plus, deep and tallfellow halflings, wood elves, grey elves, and a limited number of Sandstorm or special race characters) are available. Thus it serves as a decent comparison point for how popular various races are.

The raw data for non-retired characters shows human as the top choice (at 22.63%) and two (mechanically identical) human subraces in 2nd and 3rd place (7.7-7.3%). Half-orc comes in fourth at 5.93%. Dwarf follows at 5.52%.

That may be a bit misleading though since some reporting options split other categories. If you add "elf" and "high elf" together, you come up with 6.03%. Adding the mechanically identical "dwarf", "mountain dwarf", and "hill dwarf" together, you come up with 9.18% Add Gnome and rock gnome together and you get 4.68%.Add Elf (grey) and Gray elf together and you come up with 6.38%. Add all of the halflings together and you come up with 7.12%.

So, if you crunch the numbers to come up with more meaningful results, it is:
Human about 46%
Dwarf 9.18%
Halfling (all varieties): 7.12%
Grey Elf 6.38%
High (PHB) elf: 6.03%
Half-orc: 5.93%
Gnome 4.68%
Wood elf 4.09%
Half-elf 3.91%

If one discounts humans, and assumes that popularity corresponds to the mechanical strength of the race then half-orcs fall right in the middle. They're well below dwarves and slightly behind halflings and grey elves, but well ahead of half-elves. That seems fine to me.

However, if you want to make half-orcs more attractive, here is my suggestion (usable in whole or in part):

Orc weapon proficiencies. All half-orcs are automatically proficient in javalin, falchion, and greataxe.
Weapon Familiarity: Orc Double axe
+2 intimidate, +2 fort saves against disease.
+1 morale bonus to attack dwarves and elves

That avoids eviscerating the human advantage of the bonus feat (the compelling reason, other than "why play a short/skinny/ugly/bearded human when the real thing is mechanically viable" to play a human) or the human skill points (also a big advantage that helps to make up for the lack of darkvision, etc). And it gives half orcs what a previous poster described as the miscellaneous bonuses that make the package a bit more attractive.

 

[airwalkrr]

It is my experience half-orcs don't need a break since they are already popular enough as is, even though mechanically, they are not the most powerful race.

IMC, I use a 1e form of half-orcs, converted to 3.5. +2 Str, +2 Con, -4 Cha, darkvision 60 ft. Seems to work well so for balance so far, especially considering will saves are based on charisma.

 

[irdeggman]

Put me in the "half-orcs are just fine" category.
However, if you want to make half-orcs more attractive, here is my suggestion (usable in whole or in part):

Orc weapon proficiencies. All half-orcs are automatically proficient in javalin, falchion, and greataxe.
Weapon Familiarity: Orc Double axe
+2 intimidate, +2 fort saves against disease.
+1 morale bonus to attack dwarves and elves

That avoids eviscerating the human advantage of the bonus feat (the compelling reason, other than "why play a short/skinny/ugly/bearded human when the real thing is mechanically viable" to play a human) or the human skill points (also a big advantage that helps to make up for the lack of darkvision, etc). And it gives half orcs what a previous poster described as the miscellaneous bonuses that make the package a bit more attractive.

I agree.

IMO I have found that people who really want to change half-orcs are those that want to gain things (munchkins) and those that think that all abilities are equal and thus the net pluses should equate to the net minuses.

Really the only way a half-orc could be built to more maximize their favored class: barbarian would be to have a Con bonus instead of a strength one (or in addition to one).

The race is pretty much "designed" to be the "best" barbarians there are (of the pHB races, that is).

 

[Spatzimaus]

IMC, we added a custom ECL 0 Half-Ogre, which meant that Half-Orcs shifted from being THE brute force race to being something more moderate. So, we gave them a few minor things:

> First, Half-Orcs became the only race to have both Darkvision 60' AND Low-Light Vision x2.
> Then, we allowed Half-Orcs with WIS of 13+ to take Limited Scent as a Feat (Limited Scent is like Scent, but at 1/3rd the range, +5 to any DCs, and you can't localize a target to a single square)
> Finally, we switched their Favored Class to Ranger.

The result is that Half-Orcs become the best trackers and wilderness types in the game. But frankly, we didn't feel they needed much in the first place; it's already a good race for someone who wants to play a WIS-based caster, and I never liked those limited "flavor" abilities like "+4 dodge bonus vs. giants".

 

[Quartz]

Can someone please explain why the INT penalty is such a big deal? Sure it militates against half-orc wizards, but if you're so concerned about skill points, why can't you just take levels in a class that grants lots of skill points? Both Rogue and Ranger classes mesh well with Barbarian.