Orc tribe size

[Rocky Williams 530]

Howdy. Looking for some advice. How big would you guys make an orc tribe? I'm talking adults, children, combatants and non-combatants. A hundred, two hundred? I'm writing a story / campaign and don't want to say "There's ten thousand orcs" and have that be some insane number, but I also don't want to put so little down that the local city guard could stomp the threat down on their own.

[ImperatorK]

Depends on how big is the local city guard.

[Threeshades]

It all depends on you. Do you want it to be a tribe of savages living somewhere in the wilderness in human lands, or is it maybe in the Hold of Belkzen in Golarion?
The former may be as little as 30 orcs all told while the latter may have huge warbands of several thousands.

Is it your own world? Then it's entirely up to you.

[Deadmanwalking]

Somewhere between twenty or thirty and several thousand depending on local terain, where they live, the proximity of other intelligent beings, the previously mentioned frequency of Orc raids in the area, and the level of the PCs you intend to send against them.

You say you don't want an 'insane number' but whether it's insane is going to depend on context. You don't want so few that the town guard could take care of them. What size town? What size guard? How competent are they?

In other words, it really depends. Please provide more details of the situation in question.

[ImperatorK]

I would say roughly 2 or 3 times the number of local city guards.

[Ope]

It depends. How big is the city and the city guard? 100 orcs wouldn't really be a sufficient threat to a large city. A small, undefended city on the other hand, it would be. Normally, a horde of orcs 10,000 strong would normally have to be gathered by some greater force as orcs tend to fight between themselves and certainly between clans and may not be able to self-organize into such a large horde.

Another thing to consider, even though a city may have a standing guard, they may be preoccupied with other responsibilities and are currently unable to address the threat even though normally they could normally handle it.

[Gnomezrule]

Well the city guard and to some extent the militia has duties other than running around the wilderness laying seige to an orc holdfast. So it is resonable that they seek outside help because of jurisdiction. If the orcs are smart and mobile then it is likely the marauders are not often with the whole tribe. So the search may be more prolonged than those charged with the defense of the town feel comfortable dedicating their time to. The other otion is to push the numbers high but there are clans or other tribes that are unwilling to engage when confronted and will leave when they see that the tribe that is causing trouble presents itself. This means that you can tell them that there is a vast host but only a portion that will put up a fight. Never underestimate missinformation. Those that hire them may be opperating on faulty assumptions. The problem may be real but not as vast as they assume or of a different nature.

[Mergy]

300 all told would seem reasonable to me. Keeping in mind there would likely only be 100 orcs in fighting shape at any time, and many of those would double as hunters, so probably only 40-50 in the hold at any time.