Why do Half-Orcs have 19 str?
SmilingSword
Member Posts: 827
Half-Orc high str rating confuses me, yes your average half-orc should be stronger than your average human, but isn't 19 str a bit excessive?
19 str is Hillgiant str right? or at least the the average Hillgiant str.
For a half-orc to be able to match str with a 5m tall 650kg monster seems kind of implausible.
Does anybody know the standard str of a Orc?
19 str is Hillgiant str right? or at least the the average Hillgiant str.
For a half-orc to be able to match str with a 5m tall 650kg monster seems kind of implausible.
Does anybody know the standard str of a Orc?
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Actually, in the 3rd Edition and the 3.5e half-orcs receive a +2 modifier to strength and -2 modifiers to intelligence and charisma ability scores. So, 19 STR for half-orcs in BG is a kind of an adaptation of it.
Removing it and giving fighter classes innate bonuses would be much cleaner.
I'm glad 3rd Edition corrected this.
Tolkien also describes a special sort of Orc, the Uruk Hai, a more recently-developed breed which is indeed somewhat bigger and stronger than normal (and in particular is noted for having a resilient constitution). However, even the Uruk Hai are not enormously bigger and stronger than an Elf or an ordinary Orc - they're not like a Giant, they're just a particularly big and tough Orc.
Therefore, I've often wondered if the super-strength "half-Orc" designed for D&D may not have been the result of a simple typographical error, or maybe a moment of confusion. It'd all make more sense if the intention had actually been to introduce half-Ogres as a playable species ... but then maybe someone accidentally wrote "half-Orc" instead of "half-Ogre", and no-one ever fixed the error. Unlike Orcs, Ogres are indeed meant to be substantially bigger and stronger than Elves/Humans/etc., part-way to being a Giant, so STR 19 wouldn't be so ridiculous.
Human average strength - 10 (+0)
Orc average strength - 15 (+5)
Half orc average strength - 12 (+2)
Exceptional values are , as the name implies, rare and heroic . In fact, adventurers are a minority in a world of fantasy, and only an even rarer part of them reaches exceptional attributes.
So my answer to your question would be "because it's a game and rpg characters are way more bada$$ in videogames."
Str19 half orcs tend to be as rare as min maxed humans
How many people have any of us met who would be str18 dex18 and con18?
With enough money you can get perfect eyes and get all the training in shooting you need for 18 dex
With enough money you can buy any degree you want, making everyone see you as having 18 int
With enough money everyone will dawn over you like you have 18 cha
And with enough money you can afford yes-men to tell you that you have 18 wis
Re-rolling is certainly possible if you can afford it
I started a thread recently talking about heights of races and this is exactly why I find it unplausable that a halfling can have that kind of strenght when its mass and size is so minor. If it was of magical nature, then it can just be explained with the ultimate "Magic, duh!" argument, but in the case of rage it just feels weird.
This can be applied to orcs and other races as well ofc. Having the strenght of a giant without the use of magic is indeed fantastically unrealistic.
Personally I prefer the stat tables from 3e and later, where the progression is linear and there's no such thing as an extraordinary Strength value; I like 5e even better, where the player's stats are capped at 20, thereby eliminating cases like the one described in this thread (even if your half-orc PC has a Strength of 20, there's going to be plenty of monsters with Strength scores higher than that).
EDIT: That being said, I would support a request to change the engine's handling of exceptional Strength to make it more like an extension of the Strength table--so that, for instance, if you rolled a Strength of 18/01, you could shift a point from Dexterity to raise it to 18/26, and so on. And then making it so that a bonus to Strength would follow that same progression--even with a max Strength of 19, a Half-Orc would have to spend not one but several points to bump their score from 18 to 19, making it a much more expensive proposition.
I don't know how complicated that would be engine-side, though. But on principle, I like the idea.
But like many things, I view that as being the purview of modders.