What's the deal with half-orcs?

[Brother MacLaren]

I don't like the idea of half-orcs at all. To me, orcs should be alien and monstrous, not merely mean and dumb humans with funny makeup. In fact, half-anything makes the species too close together when one of the biggest challenges is making the various species distinct from humanity. (Part of my problem with Star Trek.) Even in a world without DNA or mitochondria, PCs and NPCs will still understand that a dog and a bear can't produce offspring, even though they look and act similar in some ways (unless, because it is a fantasy world, you wish to change that too). I'd be more open to magical creatures such as dragons or angels interbreeding with the PC races, but orcs are too mundane to just hand-wave and say "It's magic."

One way around this is to postulate reasons why the species can interbreed. Perhaps elves are humans touched by the Realm of Faerie, so they can interbreed with humans. Perhaps orcs were a tribe of humans who experimented with demon magic to give themselves great strength. The ability to interbreed hints at this relationship.

A second way is to develop alternative mechanisms for the half-breeds. Perhaps a "half-elf" in the above example is a human who was altered by the faeries but chose to live in the world of men. Maybe "half-orcs" are produced when orcs feed human flesh to the gargantuan Orc Mothers (think Aliens) during the breeding cycle, thereby producing smarter offspring. This one is my favorite. Or maybe "half-trolls" are produced when a troll's blood enters a warrior's wounds during combat... and the trollish characteristics slowly start to take over.

Finally, a third way is to whole-heartedly use the "it's magic" explanation and really let the players know that you are throwing biology out the window. Reproduction is governed by magic and the will of the gods. The relationship between the gods of the humans and the gods of the dwarves determines whether or not they can interbreed. But the point is, make it fantastical. If reproduction works just like it does IRL, and humans can breed with orcs, then you have just said "Orcs are simply a stronger, dumber race of humans."

 

[Klaus]

Claudio - I liked your half-orc variants.
Much better than the WotC version, hands down. What a pathetic performance by WotC. The really insulting part is that they didn't fix the obvious problems when 3.5 came round, and they said they were going to fix the half-race problems!

Thanks, reaper!

IMHO, +2 Str isn't all THAT great, since it provides what? +1 to attack and damage over a race that doesn't have it? -2 Int effectivelly takes away an entire maxed skill throughout all 20 levels (that's 24 skill points at 20th). So I say that's balanced enough.

That whole half-orc human/half-human orc thing spawned from my own character in the somewhat-not-happening Fiery Dragon internal campaign, where I played Leksy, a half-orc raised by isolated humans. He was big and commanding, and was going to take a couple of barbarian levels (to follow his wild heart), several sorcerer levels (after his hedge wizard mother) and then head into the Coleromancer Prestige Class (very different from the Rage Mage in CW).

As for the non-rape half-orc babies, take a look at Ultimate Fighting combatants. Some are ugly as hell, built as an ox, and still some get very attractive girlfriends. Half-orcs (if you take away the -2 Cha) can have a raw animal attractiveness that some may find appealing.

Take Krusk, for example...

My next PC will likely be a CN half-orc barbarian/rogue follower of Gruumsh that is very Conan-like (with Gruumsh replacing Crom).

 

[Eli-kun]

Would that be a dwork?



Unless you're playing in a party with a half-orc monk (brother), a tiefling sorceror (brother), and an aasimar paladin (sister).

Dad got around a whole lot!

--G

Or a party with a half-orc monk(baby sister), half-celestial sorceror(sister),and a half-dragon fighter(brother). Their father was a fiend.
If it was rape in the case of this half orc, then the orc was the victim.

My first character was half orc/half halfling. I usually use "drunken night of fun" as an explanation of how the half orc was conceived. Most of my characters were half-orc/half humans that were human raised. I'm usually the only half orc in the party.

 

[Vindicator]

Despite the GM Hold Music, I want to know why more campaigns don't have half-dwarves...

Aren't the duregar (sic) half-dwarves? Or maybe it's the derro. I'm sure one of them is, though.

 

[Vindicator]

Finally, a third way is to whole-heartedly use the "it's magic" explanation and really let the players know that you are throwing biology out the window.

The moment you pretend that orcs even *exist*, you're throwing biology out the window.

Never mind beholders, mind flayers, gibbering mouthers, etc.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

So what's the deal with half orcs? I don't much care for the idea, myself. Seems like it's something they built into the system primarily to let players build better barbarians.

How many use them in your campaigns?

None in any campaign I've run in the last 14 years.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

So what's the deal with half orcs? I don't much care for the idea, myself. Seems like it's something they built into the system primarily to let players build better barbarians.

How many use them in your campaigns?

None in any campaign I've run in the last 14 years.

 

[William Ronald]

Aren't the duregar (sic) half-dwarves? Or maybe it's the derro. I'm sure one of them is, though.

The derro are half-human, half-dwarves. As I recall, they first appeared in the adventure The Lost Caves of Tsojcanth in the World of Greyhawk setting. Later, an explanation of their origins was tied to the Suel Empire, with the derro being the result of crossbreeding by Suel wizards to create better miners.

As for half-orcs, I do not particularly have a feeling about them one way or another. However, I like some of the ideas on this thread. Jrugen Hubert's suggestion is an interesting sociological take on the half-orc.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

The moment you pretend that orcs even *exist*, you're throwing biology out the window.

Well, I disagree, at least for the mundane creatures. Like I said, PCs will still assume that dogs and bears cannot breed and that children will usually look like their parents. You may be postulating a different set of creatures than exist in our world, but it takes more than that to say that the rules of biology don't apply. I've known DMs who consider orcs to be another species of primate, in fact using that terminology.

Sci-fi has a horrible time with this, since it often tries to maintain the current laws of science while adding some ways to break the rules. If you say "the Star Trek Earth was just like ours in 1945" but you then introduce cross-species interbreeding that defies the known principles of biology (a copper-blood lifeform and an independently evolved iron-blood lifeform?), you have some explaining to do. B5 made all the aliens fundamentally different from humans and reinforced this separation by avoiding interbreeding -- with two interesting "cross-breeds" that got that way other than by birth.