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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 3025905" data-attributes="member: 13966">Do not forget, Kuku, that Ogres are best at being fighters and barbarians, classes which already suck at pretty much everything but combat.When the party's meat shield can only manage a +4 on Diplomacy checks at low level with a decent Cha and some cross-class ranks, the Ogre isn't going to be all that much worse at +1, +2, or +3 on such checks from lower Cha and fewer skill points to spare.  Nobody plays a fighter or barbarian to be a great diplomat or silver-tongued devil, be they Human, Elf, Ogre, or otherwise.An Ogre isn't all that terrible a ranged combatant (after all, with their greater strength and size, they can use composite longbows that are nearly twice as powerful as a human's composite longbow).  Their Dex penalty and size penalty on attack rolls will not be that significant if they advance as a fighter or barbarian, nor if they use one of their feats for Weapon Focus (composite longbow).Size Large is only a drawback in very few situations, which are only common in a few sorts of campaigns (like ones where the party crawls through goblin/kobold tunnels/dungeons all the time, in which case, the DM wouldn't even be able to allow an Ogre PC because they'd never be able to go anywhere with the party).  And besides, Reduce (Reduce Person in 3.5) is a 1st-level spell that can easily shrink Ogres down when they need to squeeze through tight passages (surely the party wizard can spare a meager 1st-level spell slot for his all-important meat shield to stay in front of him at all times?).If an Ogre needs to sneak, he can get the party's wizard to cast Invisibility on him; his size/race do not impose any specific Move Silently penalties (though the Dex penalty is a very minor indirect hit to MS), only a Hide penalty.  If the Ogre fighter is anything like the Human fighter, he's walking around in clanky full-plate and hauling around a massive great sword anyway, so it's not like he's going to be expected to be any more silent than the Human fighter when the party needs stealth; they wouldn't have to compensate for it any moreso than they would for a Human fighter.An Ogre who plays to their strengths, as a typical member of their kind would (being brutish and violent), is going to outperform the party's core-race warrior-types, but at least an Ogre with slightly less significant focus in their racial traits will be less likely to make the rest of the party's warrior-types feel useless and inadequate/redundant.  It's already a given that Ogres are going to be less effective skill-users and magic-users, being less intelligent and charismatic than Humans, but that doesn't affect how much they're going to totally own the combat scene if their racial benefits aren't slightly readjusted to make them only 'moderately better some of the time, rather subpar the rest of the time'.  People like me would still want to play a quirky Ogre bard or somesuch fun/silly concept, but while the race would be absolutely fine for us and our purposes, it would still be too much when used in a combat-heavy game by someone who chooses to play a somewhat-or-significantly more optimized Ogre character.  Thus the need for a bit of redistributing of the race's benefits and drawbacks if wanting to make it a reasonable LA +1 race that doesn't overshadow the other warrior types 80% of the time.</blockquote>

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