Spatzimaus
First Post
BLACKDIRGE said:
As written? ECL +2. The first day I saw the SS version, I plugged the numbers into Soldarin's ECL calculator (which is still a far better system than I've seen anywhere else, IMO) and it spat out 2.2, which rounds down to 2.
Anyway, the way you described it, the three people you mention each chose a very combat-optimized race and picked low-skill melee classes in what you then describe as a very non-combat oriented campaign. Just because they're having problems now doesn't mean the race is fine at +1 ECL. If they picked Half-Orc, they'd be having the same problems, but that doesn't mean the Half-Orc is too weak to be +0 ECL.
Of course, I don't play the Savage Species version. Uglut, my character, was made way back when the first Half-Ogre article came out in Dragon Magazine (entitled "The Best Darned Door-Opener There Is", I think), and when 3E came out we made our own Half-Ogre race to get the party converted. We weren't going to wait two years to convert one character, after all.
Our version was ECL 0, and was a Medium race that was basically "half-Large" in the same sense that Dwarves are halfway to Small. Lots of annoying little drawbacks (my favorite being "Favored Class: None"), to balance some nice combat plusses, but nothing that turned you into a combat-only machine.
Actually, we first tried an ECL +1 version that was Large size (including the 10' reach), and after two combats decided it was too potentially unbalancing. The DM was being forced to make all enemies use ranged attacks and/or gang up on the Half-Ogre, just to prevent all the movement AoOs.
When SS came out, we looked at the "official" Half-Ogre, looked at ours, and decided not to switch.
