Ogrum (3.5 Race)

[Lysander]

Big, dumb, slow, and bad at pretty much everything! It's the ogre's pathetic but nigh unkillable cousin. They're not even strong, just big and ponderous.

Other races think very little of ogrum and tend to use them as front line soldiers, or for anything else probably fatal.


Ogrum

*+10 Con, -6 Dex, -6 Int, -6 Cha
* Large size. -1 penalty to Armor Class, -1 penalty on attack rolls, -4 penalty on Hide checks, +4 bonus on grapple checks, lifting and carrying limits double those of Medium characters.
* Space/Reach: 10 feet/10 feet.
* An ogrum’s base land speed is 40 feet.
* Darkvision out to 60 feet.
* +5 natural armor bonus
*Obesity - An ogrum starts out with encumbrance 50lb due to natural body fat.
*Thick Head - There's a 50% chance for an Ogrum to automatically fail any int, wis or cha based skill check. There's also a 50% chance for them to automatically succeed on will saves against any hostile mind-affecting effect simply because they're too stupid to be affected.
* Automatic Languages: Giant, Common. Bonus Languages: Goblin, Orc.
* Favored Class: Barbarian.

While this is a bit of a joke, I could see ogrum being a pretty decent barbarian, especially since there's no LA. What do you think?

[The Duke]

If there are a large sized creature they should have a bonus to Str. Just saying.

[Geiger Counter]

Just so you know having huge penalties and huge bonuses is minmaxing and makes races unbalanced.

the penalties (18 total) will get you +6 strength at no cost.
Being large alone is worth an LA and so is +5 armor.
so that makes this thing +3 LA at minimum.

[Kensen]

So it's a joke, but I'll comment on it as though it were a serious homebrew creature. Otherwise it's too easy to counter any criticism with the "it's just a joke" defense. :smallbiggrin:

The Duke and Geiger Counter pointed out a few issues with the race so I won't comment on them again.

Obesity: Creatures that are clumsy for their size - whatever the reason - usually have poor Dex and slower movement rate. Adding 50 lb. to the encumberance is not a good way to do it and there are no precedents for an ability like this in official sources. The weight of a creature never results in an encumberance penalty.

Thick Head: This is not good. You have to make an extra roll, not good. Moreover, why would a particularly intelligent/wise/charismatic individual of the ogrum race be unable to perform mentally 50% of the time? And many partially or purely mental actions don't require skill checks, such as spellcasting. It is be a bit odd that a particularly intelligent ogrum can prepare and cast spells without the slightest problem but anything that requires a skill check fails 50% of the time.

A -2 or -4 penalty on Int, Wis and Cha based checks (and a bonus on saves vs mind-affecting effects) would make more sense, but because of the heavy penalties on ability scores it would be kind of redundant as well. Int and Cha are going to be dump stats for obvious reasons.

The only real penalty the ogrums have is the Dex penalty. The other minor things simply won't matter much if you're making a melee combatant - and melee is the only thing an ogrum could ever be good for.

LA +2 or +3 would be appropriate.