Half-Orc Half-Halfling would be unstoppable!
Chronicler
Member Posts: 1,391
Reading up on the half orc.
Apparently they're not as strong as an orc, but the thing is orcs are pretty clumsy, so they combine the strength of the orc with the nimbleness of a human. It's a winning proposition. You don't even need all that much strength if you can direct it effectively.
Nimbleness of a human though? I think we can do better than that. Suppose we combine the strength of an orc with the nimbleness of a halfling! The Orcling would be the Ultimate Physical Powerhouse.
Apparently they're not as strong as an orc, but the thing is orcs are pretty clumsy, so they combine the strength of the orc with the nimbleness of a human. It's a winning proposition. You don't even need all that much strength if you can direct it effectively.
Nimbleness of a human though? I think we can do better than that. Suppose we combine the strength of an orc with the nimbleness of a halfling! The Orcling would be the Ultimate Physical Powerhouse.
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You know, like
Life, uh, finds a way.
Big Dog Mom and Small Dog Dad produces offspring. Big Dog Dad and Small Dog Mom just kills the mom creating a baby that's far too large for her to carry.
Though who's to say, maybe The Realms have some magic to help Babies of Unusual Size.
(What? Nothing to see here. I'm definitely not copying this down for a future pnp campaign)
But in all seriousness the only place that would be safe from these monsters would be the underdark. Which is pretty telling.
The underdark is harsh enough. Let's not give its more insane denizens any ideas
They do?? I smell kender influences from Dragonlance. XD
Sorry my bad. They have advantage to saving throws against being frightened. So they could be frightened but just have a better chance of not being.
A standard half-orc is not as strong as an orc nor as nimble as a human, but by combining both these traits they become a whole new kind of dangerous.
Orclings would just be a further extension of that. Halfings are more nimble than humans so they'd work better for that.
The halfling blood would make more nimble, cancelling orc clumsiness, but also would cancel out the orc side's strength more than a medium race.
A human with dark vision, maybe?
I've read some stuff online about elf/orc hybrids, but near as I can gather it's all been homebrew.
Since Elves and Orcs are both confirmed to be able to procreate with humans, procreating with eachother seems like a no brainer, but there seems to be a conspicuous absence of official lore in that department.
Interesting thing I also read somewhere on this forum once. Allegedly it's laid out somewhere to be a half orc you need at least one orc parent or two orc grandparents. Basically you need to be at least 50% orc to be a half-orc. Same with half elves and such.
Allegedly it's quite commonplace for humans to have some degree of non-human ancestry in the realms, to the point that anything under 50% is just considered human. Culturally nobody thinks anything if you've got a little bit of a tusk situation going on and stat sheet wise you just use the human stats.
If that's true you could make the case that humans are the odd ones out here, being able to procreate with anything and that's why there aren't a bunch of dwarf gnomes running around and stuff.
I don't know what rule book was supposed to say this though.
3rd ed gave orcs a bonus to strength of +4, and -2 to all 3 mental scores, and no other bonus' nearly to balance high strength to a cr of 1/2 for a lvl 1 orc warrior. Halfers got a slew of nice bonus to offset low str. A mix would likely be hard to balance, as even +2 str is a big buff mechanically, though with non phb content, other stats became pretty useful, and you could easily argue that despite what the books suggest, +2 cha is actually pretty damn sweet.
Imho, to get a good mix of both it'd need a LA of +1.
I miss 3rd ed.
I read somewhere in one of the 3.5 core books(phb, or dmg) that any race combination is allowable in the rules, at the DM's discretion of course. It was, as I remember, mute on how this was handled mechanically. Leaving it up to the DM and the group, as usual. This is and always will be the best aspect of DnD, the "rules" are really up to us.
3rd ed wasn't quite crap, but it wasn't perfect by any means. I miss the engine that 3rd edition shoved into DnD, which made the whole thing pretty much strictly pattern based. The CR system was wonky as all hell, and it was very easy to bork a character if you didn't know what you were doing, but I still enjoyed the game.
My favourite was tricking my DM into letting me run a semi-intelligent Bakemono that was essentially an attack dog, with huge physical damage from 3 apr, with high physical stats and minimal intelligence, enough to understand basic commands, like a dog.
I also loved the Fiend Folio to death, especially the delightful infernal prestige classes at the back, which I loved to try to find ways to break. I loved taking them and using a Bloodline build, so they'd get 3 bonus levels of the prestige class for all their abilities, making them quite amazing. For example, you could have a Fiend of Possession that is effectively 9th level, meaning he can add +9 to a magic item he possesses! I actually wanted to some day make a Neutral fiend of Posession, which you could actually do (evil subtype doesn't require you to be evil!), and buy out the level adjustment, and you could technically meet the class requirements for FoP at like level 3 or 4, it was crazy. I think later editions tried to kibosh the whole 'prestige class levels before level 5' thing, but this was a fun build. You needed +5 to will saves IIRC, and some skill points I think, so it required careful multi-classing, and you had to be an outsider, but Savage Species featured a ritual to grant the Evil subtype! So you can qualify, and immediately go from a 2/1 caster multiclass to a nigh undetectable scout, and able to safely buff up the party Barbarian's weapon, making him more effective. You can also buff defences, but this isn't a big deal really until you can get up to +4 or +5. Eventually, the idea was the character would have maxed out cha, and taken Leadership, so he could have a cohort, who would wield a weapon he provided, which this cohort will have taken prestige classes to enhance the weapon further, making for an insanely effective fighter that is likely swinging with a +14 weapon with +5 worth of abilities, ideally including Speed. Just nuts IMHO. The best part, you can also just possess any object you want to and animate it, allowing you to fight without any risk! It was insane enough that no DM would ever allow it.
Still, Minotaurs get a bunch of other nice benefits, such as an additional Gore natural attack, a Powerful Charge ability, the Scent special ability (which means you can more or less never be surprised by invisible or stealthed foes), and the ability to never become lost, which makes for some cool roleplaying fodder, especially in wilderness adventures or in mazes.
Hmm... That's odd. I'm quite sure that Minotaurs got a +4 Strength bonus... Maybe it's a difference between 3.0 and 3.5 rules? Savage Species was released under 3.0 rules, so perhaps I'm remembering the stats for a 3.5 Minotaur? I'll need to dig up my old rulebooks to check.
With it you'd get that nice mix of constitution, strength, and intelligence.
Though I don't know if that was ever a thing in D&D.