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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
What are your current 3.5 House Rules?
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<blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 1657463" data-attributes="member: 926"><p>Well, the feat bit is something that I'm going to have to watch, but when I thought about giving them a +1 skill point per level, I realized that all I would be doing is cancelling out the intelligence penalty. I've always thought that playing to advantages was far better than balancing weaknesses in a character. Spend time balancing weakneses, and you end up with mediocrity across the board; play to strengths, and you get much more interesting hills and valleys of ability <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> </p><p></p><p>When I started, I went about it trying to balance them to dwarves. Dwarves get +1 hit point per level, -1 on all charisma based skills and spellcasting, a +1 to hit a few creatures (including half orcs!), armor movement, poison and magic save bonuses, darkvision, weapon familiarity with two weapons, stability, AC bonus vs giants, stonecutting, +2 appraise bonuse, and +2 craft bonuse. Now, half orcs get a +1 to hit and damage against everything, -1 skill point per level and -1 on intelligence based cheks and spellcasting, darkvision, a +3 to intimidate... and nothing else. It STILL seems in the dwarfs favor to me. </p><p></p><p>As to the lack of charisma penalty, charisma is force of personality, not appearance or eloquence. Every description of half orcs among orcs I have ever read portrays them as leaders and champions from the advantages of thier human heritage. A half orc raised among humans is seen as a half human monster, stupid and ugly, and his self confidence and personality are going do be severly dampened by such an enviroment. A half orc raised among orcs is going to be viewed as something special, a cut above the norm, and encouraged to positions of leadership and influence. That kind of enviroment will only bolster his charisma. </p><p></p><p>That, and in my setting half orcs among orcish tribes have a tradition of sorcery!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aaron L, post: 1657463, member: 926"] Well, the feat bit is something that I'm going to have to watch, but when I thought about giving them a +1 skill point per level, I realized that all I would be doing is cancelling out the intelligence penalty. I've always thought that playing to advantages was far better than balancing weaknesses in a character. Spend time balancing weakneses, and you end up with mediocrity across the board; play to strengths, and you get much more interesting hills and valleys of ability :) When I started, I went about it trying to balance them to dwarves. Dwarves get +1 hit point per level, -1 on all charisma based skills and spellcasting, a +1 to hit a few creatures (including half orcs!), armor movement, poison and magic save bonuses, darkvision, weapon familiarity with two weapons, stability, AC bonus vs giants, stonecutting, +2 appraise bonuse, and +2 craft bonuse. Now, half orcs get a +1 to hit and damage against everything, -1 skill point per level and -1 on intelligence based cheks and spellcasting, darkvision, a +3 to intimidate... and nothing else. It STILL seems in the dwarfs favor to me. As to the lack of charisma penalty, charisma is force of personality, not appearance or eloquence. Every description of half orcs among orcs I have ever read portrays them as leaders and champions from the advantages of thier human heritage. A half orc raised among humans is seen as a half human monster, stupid and ugly, and his self confidence and personality are going do be severly dampened by such an enviroment. A half orc raised among orcs is going to be viewed as something special, a cut above the norm, and encouraged to positions of leadership and influence. That kind of enviroment will only bolster his charisma. That, and in my setting half orcs among orcish tribes have a tradition of sorcery! [/QUOTE]
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What are your current 3.5 House Rules?
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