Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Holmes Rules: The Half-Orc

[sorry for the delay in getting this up...as one might imagine, it gets busier 'round these parts the closer we get to the holiday proper. This represents the last of my "Holmes Rules" additions...an index of posts will go up tomorrow or Friday (depending on free time) for folks' convenience]

"What'd you say about
my mother?"
Half-Orcs -- are nearly as tall as humans, but tend to have a hunched, stooped posture and bowed legs. Their features are heavy and there is a definite "orc-ness" to them that makes others uncomfortable (-1 to reaction rolls, unless dealing with monstrous humanoids like orcs and goblins, in which case this is instead a +1 bonus). A half-orc character receives a +1 to both strength and constitution and a -2 to charisma; these adjustments may not take the character out of the normal 3-18 range. Half-orcs have the equivalent of infravision, and suffer no ill effects in sunlight (though they do not love it). Due to their human ancestry, half-orcs enjoy a good choice of classes in which to progress, including fighters (and the ranger subclass), clerics, as well as both thieves and assassins. Not all half-orcs are churlish and ill-mannered; player characters should generally be assumed to have been raised by humans and thus exhibit the full spectrum of human personality.

[EDITED to add the bonus to reaction rolls with evil humanoids]

1 comment:

  1. Nice ideas so far.... Got a unrelated question for you JB. What fonts did you use when making the BX Companion? When I re-formatted my hard drive, I lost some fonts, and now some of the entries in my copy of the companion look "REAL FUNNY".. :-)

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