Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Frostbite_Ravenheart 08-15-07, 12:46 PM	Welcome, In my world, Goblins, Hobgoblins and Bugbears have all become civilized and accepted members of society and in their 600-700 years owning this acceptance has lead to the creation of a large, civilized and slightly Rokugan-esque themed Empire. I have slightly modified each of those three races to fit my world a little better as well as making them slightly more equal amongst themselves. I have changed this a quite a lot of other things, but sparing you the details I want to let you criticize and advise the creation of a new set of orcs in my world. “Savage Orcs” as I shall be referring to the standard MM Orcs from here on out, still exist in large tribes and are quite the barbarians. But there have been a large amount of Orcs that have become civilized and have been “adapted” by the Goblinoid Kingdome (with some other, less common, races.) These “Cultured Orcs” should and will be more powerful than regular Orcs simply because they didn’t loose any physical ability and have only gained the discipline and intelligence to fight more tactically. They are also FAR more spiritual and serve a customized, pseudo-shinto-type religion that’s very nature oriented that I have crafted for my world. So this is just my rough draft, I’m shooting on the LA= +1 to keep them align with hobgoblins, but I’m flexible on this and I will adjust ANY racial abilities to fit the contextual idea I have but I’m flexible to ideas on their culture as well. “Wise Orcs” • +2 Strength, +2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma. These Orcs retain their physical strength and gain a newfound spirituality but have gained little in the way of social skills because instead of being loud and savage they have become somewhat cold and stoic. • Medium: As Medium creatures, Wise Orcs have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size. • Half-Orc base land speed is 30 feet. • Darkvision: Wise Orcs can see in the dark up to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and half-rocs can function just fine with no light at all. • No Light Sensitivity: Wise Orcs have adapted to a primarily day-time lifestyle like their Goblinoid Countrymen. Level Adjustment: +1? Now I have some extra ideas, I only want to add one, maybe two if appropriate and I'll try to expend this potential list of ideas with my own creation as well as the ideas of others willing to help. • Orcs gain a +4 racial bonus to Knowledge (Nature) and Knowledge (Religion) due to growing up in a spiritual environment. • Orcs gain a +4 Racial bonus to Move Silently? Hide? Listen? Spot? Survival? Due to growing up and surviving in deep forests. • Orcs gain the ability to speak with forest animals’ 1/day like a gnome due to their close connection with nature. • Any other ideas you guy's might have? I wouldn't include multiple of these idea's but I do want to add SOMETHING to give them a unique flavor, not just a race based on being an awsome class. Thanks for any input, -Frosty
Manyfist 08-15-07, 09:16 PM	Hobgoblins are weak for LA:+1. (Btw, I'd change your copy/paste errors [half-orcs]) Using YabaTheWhat's feature points: +2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Cha = 6 FP Darkvision 60' = 4 FP Thats: 10 FP making it a balanced LA:+0 Add: +4 to Knowledge (Nature) and Knowledge (Religion) = 2 FP Add: +4 to Move Silently, Hide, Listen, Spot, Survival = 5 FP For a total of 17 FP so its more of a LA:+.5, It would be a weak LA:+1 and its a slightly powerful LA:+0. So I'd go with the LA:+0, since you'd avoid the Tiefling, and Gensai problems (aka weak LA:+1s) Wise Orcs can have: +2 Str +2 Wis -2 Cha Base land speed: 30ft Darkvision: 60ft +4 to Knowledge (Nature) and Knowledge (Religion) +4 to Move Silently, Hide, Listen, Spot, Survival For LA:+0. Max FP for LA:+0 = 18.
Sunblast 08-15-07, 11:04 PM	I like the orcs. They kinda remind me of the orcs in the more recent Warcraft games (Though I think they're still pretty barbaric). Very cool. :D Hey Manyfist? Where exactly did you get that feature point system? That looks like a great idea. :)
Frostbite_Ravenheart 08-15-07, 11:17 PM	Hobgoblins are weak for LA:+1. (Btw, I'd change your copy/paste errors [half-orcs]) Using YabaTheWhat's feature points: +2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Cha = 6 FP Darkvision 60' = 4 FP Thats: 10 FP making it a balanced LA:+0 Add: +4 to Knowledge (Nature) and Knowledge (Religion) = 2 FP Add: +4 to Move Silently, Hide, Listen, Spot, Survival = 5 FP For a total of 17 FP so its more of a LA:+.5, It would be a weak LA:+1 and its a slightly powerful LA:+0. So I'd go with the LA:+0, since you'd avoid the Tiefling, and Gensai problems (aka weak LA:+1s) Wise Orcs can have: +2 Str +2 Wis -2 Cha Base land speed: 30ft Darkvision: 60ft +4 to Knowledge (Nature) and Knowledge (Religion) +4 to Move Silently, Hide, Listen, Spot, Survival For LA:+0. Max FP for LA:+0 = 18. Thanks, you make good points. I still want to find a way to make my orc unique besides abilitiy modifiers and racial skills. I was even thinking of mabye having a nature-oriented spell-like abilities that increase with class levels similiar to Half-Celestials/Fiends. For example A first-level orcs could cast mabye: Entangle or or Speak with animals 1/day, then be able to cast, speak with plants at say 3rd level, Commune with nature 1/week at sixth level, ect. But I'm not sure if thats really appropriate for a race in place of a class. This is going to be my LA:+0 race until I can find an apporpriate set of abilities to warrant a +1. +2 Str +2 Wis -2 Cha Base land speed: 30ft Darkvision: 60ft +4 to Knowledge (Nature) and Knowledge (Religion) +4 to Move Silently, Hide, Listen, Spot, Survival Thanks for the ideas, I'd be willing to take any more from anyone! -Frosty
Manyfist 08-16-07, 09:03 AM	I like the orcs. They kinda remind me of the orcs in the more recent Warcraft games (Though I think they're still pretty barbaric). Very cool. :D Hey Manyfist? Where exactly did you get that feature point system? That looks like a great idea. :) http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=667683&highlight=Yabathewhat
DethBySquirl 08-17-07, 01:16 AM	The "Wise Orc" Stats remind me a bit of the Gray Orcs from Races of Faerun, only dumbed down a bit. You should look it up and change the flavor a bit. They're, to my memory, a bit more powerful statwise, with a LA of 1.
AtsuiShoto 08-17-07, 04:20 AM	Swap the Hide/MS/Spot/Listen bonus out for the 1/day spell-like ability. That adds flavor while toning down the power level a bit (toward an average +0 LA race) Or, drop all of the skill bonuses to +2 and add the spell-like ability. Remember, you already boosted the Orc's skills by ditching the Intelligence penalty. Yep, I like the sound of that. Hope it helps.
AMGriffin 08-17-07, 11:49 AM	Thanks, you make good points. I still want to find a way to make my orc unique besides abilitiy modifiers and racial skills. I was even thinking of mabye having a nature-oriented spell-like abilities that increase with class levels similiar to Half-Celestials/Fiends. For example A first-level orcs could cast mabye: Entangle or or Speak with animals 1/day, then be able to cast, speak with plants at say 3rd level, Commune with nature 1/week at sixth level, ect. But I'm not sure if thats really appropriate for a race in place of a class. This is going to be my LA:+0 race until I can find an apporpriate set of abilities to warrant a +1. +2 Str +2 Wis -2 Cha Base land speed: 30ft Darkvision: 60ft +4 to Knowledge (Nature) and Knowledge (Religion) +4 to Move Silently, Hide, Listen, Spot, Survival Thanks for the ideas, I'd be willing to take any more from anyone! -Frosty No way in hell that's LA+0, but still not quite LA+1. I'd throw in some natural armor and a constitution bonus or bump their strength back up to +4.
Waldo_di 08-17-07, 01:57 PM	Just drop the +4 skill bonuses to +2 and he should be perfect... It's also funny how you used "wise" and "Orc" in the same sentence without a "not" somewhere. Anyways a diffrent take on orcs they'd make great Clerics of war/strength. EDIT: what's there favored class and Languages?
Frostbite_Ravenheart 08-17-07, 05:27 PM	Just drop the +4 skill bonuses to +2 and he should be perfect... It's also funny how you used "wise" and "Orc" in the same sentence without a "not" somewhere. Anyways a diffrent take on orcs they'd make great Clerics of war/strength. EDIT: what's there favored class and Languages? Favored Class would probably be Druid. It's not that there wouldn't be a lot of rangers but I'd want to make it a point that these Orcs are almost never Clerics in my world. It's not that there aren't gods, but when these Orcs shifted away from there savage brothers there were no appropriate Gods for them to turn to nor do I have racial deities. As for Languages most "normal" races all speak Common. Orc, Goblin, Elven, Dwarven, may have all existed but have more or less fallen out of usage and aren't common knowledge for those races. -Frost
Mr_Seth 08-18-07, 09:03 AM	So language is a function that isn't used much in your campaign world? That'd be an interesting twist... but it'd make it pretty annoying when you had to decipher ancient dwarven runes.
Hebitsuikaza 08-18-07, 07:37 PM	-Deleted- Misread something.
Frostbite_Ravenheart 08-21-07, 02:05 PM	So language is a function that isn't used much in your campaign world? That'd be an interesting twist... but it'd make it pretty annoying when you had to decipher ancient dwarven runes. Its just that in my world pretty much EVERY race is civilized. Even minotaurs and Ogres, while not exactly building empires, have the intelligence and "civility" that orcs normally posses. My world is dotted with large empires each with extremely high-level leaders. I want to give off the feeling that while the players are "special" that can't just run around doing whatever they want. There are large gaps where races such as Ogres rule in such numbers that an Individual empire cannot take over that land without loosing a great deal of resources nor can the Ogres form a society that could work well enough together to bring down an empire. While my players are not yet Epic, the world very much is and I've *tried* to perfectly craft the world so that I don't have to remove them from it once they become epic. They won't need to go looking hard to find epic challenges when there are 20+ empires each with Epic Level Leaders, Champions, Priests, ect. The only downfall to this world I've encountered is that my players have talked about slowly working their way up the social ladder for one Empire or Conquering their own land to start their own Empire. While it's an interesting challenge as a DM, I would severely like to avoid Army Vs. Army combat as that doesn't translate well into DnD. -SoH