Quote from: Randy;811767Oh, right. Thank you, not familiar with much Warhammer stuff. Sounds pretty interesting.

For an Ork, running into battle to bleed and possibly die is a reproductive act. Yes, for Warhammer Orks, fighting is sex!

Quote from: Doctor Jest;814241For an Ork, running into battle to bleed and possibly die is a reproductive act. Yes, for Warhammer Orks, fighting is sex!

I always found that stupid.

I think that only applies to the 40k orks? The 40k orks are made of distilled goofball.

Quote from: Omega;814658I think that only applies to the 40k orks? The 40k orks are made of distilled goofball.

I don't know for certain, not enough of a Warhammer fanatic.  In my WFRP campaign I certainly wouldn't have used that, but then again I never had any orcs show up then.

Why half-orcs?

From a mechanical design standpoint, orcs are often designed to fulfill their classic role as opponents, which means their stats are internally unbalanced as PCs.

Even if a +4 strength, +2 Con, -2 Int, Wis and Cha comes out at a lower total stat bonus than the traditional PC races, it is not hard to see why this stat distribution is seen as problematic at many tables.

Introducing half-orcs allows players to play "almost" orcs, that are mechanically in line with other PC races without inconsistency between PCs and NPCs and the advantage of keeping orcs bestial in their mechanical portrayal.


From a background perspective, there are two big reasons I can see:

The first is very similar to the mechanical reason.

If you want your orcs to be truly bestial, always CE monsters, the half-orc allows you a backdoor to include sympathetic orcish PCs and NPCs and fill the, in D&D, uncovered role of a brutish PC race, without whitewashing the entirety of orcs in your setting or introducing another entire humanoid race that is "orcs, but not orcs".

The other reason is that some people just seem to like playing half- and crossbreeds. I sure don't, but I also just as sure had players that played various crossbreeds almost exclusively.

Just look at the lasting popularity of half-elves, that never ever added anything to the worlds and tables of D&D than "Hey, look, they are half elf, half human!"

Then lets have a look at all the other crossbreed PC races of various stripes we have gotten in D&D through the decades: Tieflings, genasi, aasimar from planescape, shifter, changeling, kalashtar from Eberron, half-dwarfes, half-giants from Darksun, half-ogres, fucking dhampyrs, half-dragons and now dragonborn. I propably left out a lot of options.

And often these are a fuckton more popular than similar, but original races. I bet you, an almost identical race to dragonborn that doesn't look like a mandragon and wasn't implied to actually be some form of crossbreed would be much less popular. Similarly, if I made a book that included player races for githyanki, githzerai and a mechanically weaker half-gith, a fuckton of people would propably play the half-gith.

Quote from: Omega;814658I think that only applies to the 40k orks? The 40k orks are made of distilled goofball.

Originally, it was a 40k only thing and even there, only since around third edition and Gorka-Morka. It was later ported into Warhammer Fantasy.

This is all in the light of GWs general stance on canon and consistency, which basically says that GW doesn't give a crap about either. This drives self declared background sages and fluff nazis up the wall, which is a minor reason why I like that stance so much.

The main reason being that it makes using the background as one sees fit in home campaigns of the wargames and RPGs that much easier.

Quote from: Gold Roger;815214And often these are a fuckton more popular than similar, but original races. I bet you, an almost identical race to dragonborn that doesn't look like a mandragon and wasn't implied to actually be some form of crossbreed would be much less popular.

Didn't the 4th edition Player's Guide list "want to play a character that looks like a dragon" in the reasons to play a Dragonborn section of the race description?

Also, I think you are completely correct.

Quote from: Simlasa;811268I saw someone on G+ asking for a half-orc write-up for DCC.
This got me thinking about why someone might want to play a half-orc...

I don't get it, any thoughts?

My question would be why does someone want to play a half-orc in DCC? The system core is pretty explicitly anti orc, goblin, kobold..... they do throw a couple of examples in the monster section right after they implore you to change them up.

I haven't seen any published adventures featuring orbs for DCC either.

As a home brew  campaign with race as class I would suspect mechanical advantages.

But probably just re-skinning the fighter class would get the same effect.

That might be as simple as carrying over the wrong setting expectations from one game or setting to another.

"I want to play a half orc."
"There are no orcs in Dragonlance, so No half orcs."
"But I want to play a half orc! I...um... fell out of a spelljamming ship... yeah..."
DM can work with the player, or stand firm and say no. Choose something else.

We ran into that from the opposite direction in Dragon Storm. Everyone, except orcs and my Vorn, were shapechangers, actually some fantasy critter. But we had one player who wanted to play a straight up human. Not a dragon or Werewolf human. That did not fit the theme. But Sue introduced later a flaw called Denial. Which if you took it, meant you were stuck in your human, elf, or dwarf form and could not change because you refused to believe you were a shifter.

Quote from: jibbajibba;811375Yup.

Drow have intelligence and choice. They choose to be bad and so can choose to be good.
Orcs, like goblins, are all bad or killing their babies and setting light to their warrens/dens becomes problematic.

It is worth taking into account though that for both of those races a large part of why they are evil is because there god tells them to be evil. The orcs are probably more likely to be evil when separated from that influence anyway then the drow are but its still something to take into consideration.

Quote from: jhkim;811432Well, not in the Player's Handbook. As I understood it, they were supported but only as a relatively exotic option that allowed you to play just about any suitable monster as a PC, from gargoyle to minotaur.

savage species yes. But its not really that exotic it is the only creature without a level adjustment that is not already in the players handbook (there are ones in other books but im sticking to the core books and savage species here) (well there are goblins and kobolds but they are below average power and there are also the other type of elf). Although i think the stat requirements were given for it in the monster manual anyway although that may have been added in for 3.5.

Quote from: Gold Roger;815214Why half-orcs?

From a mechanical design standpoint, orcs are often designed to fulfill their classic role as opponents, which means their stats are internally unbalanced as PCs.

Even if a +4 strength, +2 Con, -2 Int, Wis and Cha comes out at a lower total stat bonus than the traditional PC races, it is not hard to see why this stat distribution is seen as problematic at many tables.

Introducing half-orcs allows players to play "almost" orcs, that are mechanically in line with other PC races without inconsistency between PCs and NPCs and the advantage of keeping orcs bestial in their mechanical portrayal.

well as i mentioned above the orc has a +0 level adjustment so im going to have to disagree with you on that point im sure the design team knew what they were doing.

Of course that may not be the case in dcc but as i understand it dcc is a osr game and i dont think the power level of orcs would have changed much between the red box and 3.5

Quote from: Omega;814658I think that only applies to the 40k orks? The 40k orks are made of distilled goofball.

40K orks are a species of fungi. Since they reproduce by "sporing", which I guess might occur when they are blown up by Space Marine weapons, that might be the origin of that idea.

Warhammer Fantasy Orcs are not related to their 40K counterpoints, except in culture and religion. They are pretty much "standard" D&D type orcs, although its more likely the modern gamer concept of orcs as a primitive, shamanic culture of green-skinned barbaric creatures actually owes far more to Warhammer fantasy than D&D.

I do wonder how much the elder scrolls series has to do with that image as well probably not a whole lot but its something that allows for orc characters with ease.

Quote from: TristramEvans;816577Warhammer Fantasy Orcs are not related to their 40K counterpoints, except in culture and religion. They are pretty much "standard" D&D type orcs, although its more likely the modern gamer concept of orcs as a primitive, shamanic culture of green-skinned barbaric creatures actually owes far more to Warhammer fantasy than D&D.

Not really. Even early on D&D was showing orcs as not being allways evil kill mongers. Alignment is a guide, not a set in stone thing. (usually.) Orcs and Drow both have obsure good aligned gods. 2e later took it further and opened up all sorts of usually evil races for play as whatever alignment you wanted.

Warhammer presented orcs as brute marauders and not much else for a time and then evolved them over time.

WHFRPG presented orcs thus "They are repulsive monsters who love inflicting pain, and delight in cruelty and slaughter." Games Workshop version from the mid 80s.

Quote from: Omega;816611Not really. Even early on D&D was showing orcs as not being allways evil kill mongers. Alignment is a guide, not a set in stone thing. (usually.) Orcs and Drow both have obsure good aligned gods. 2e later took it further and opened up all sorts of usually evil races for play as whatever alignment you wanted.

Warhammer presented orcs as brute marauders and not much else for a time and then evolved them over time.

WHFRPG presented orcs thus "They are repulsive monsters who love inflicting pain, and delight in cruelty and slaughter." Games Workshop version from the mid 80s.

Alignment really has nothing to do with what I said though. I still remember when D&d orcs looked like Gammorean guards.

One with orc blood who is unable to 'pass' as human is likely to get slaughtered out of hand, whereas a half-orc as Mr Gygax described in AD&D has more interesting problems.

Quote from: TristramEvans;816615Alignment really has nothing to do with what I said though. I still remember when D&d orcs looked like Gammorean guards.

Pink porky orcs! There's a firm in Britain that makes them (and old-style demons & devils, and a clear resin gelatinous cube ...).