How to handle a half orc / half drow in Golarion?

[vadda]

One of my player wants to play a half orc half drow. We will play in absalom, cheliax, beltzkens behold and mwangi. I am not sure how the people will react to this race. Any advice or idea?

[Dark Midian]

Well, first up, how are you going to handle the mechanics of it? It sounds like he wants to play a half-elf/half-orc. For obvious mechanical reasons, one half is going to have to supplant the other.

This also depends on what time period of the Inner Sea you're playing in. Previously, drow were unheard of to the surface world thanks to efforts of the elven Lantern Bearers basically wiping out all knowledge of the drow to hide their existence. If you're playing after this point, most commoners aren't going to know what a drow is, other than perhaps some kind of exotic elf.

[Yakman]

vadda wrote:

One of my player wants to play a half orc half drow. We will play in absalom, cheliax, beltzkens behold and mwangi. I am not sure how the people will react to this race. Any advice or idea?

ugh. completely repug.

well... that being said...

he's almost certainly from the Underdark. Drow and Orcs are down there, and drow are almost unheard of on the surface. so... he's a recent arrival to the surface.

I'd suggest that people are going to be looking at him like a freak. Which he probably is, maybe some kind of wizard/alchemical experiment.

I'd make the character pick up a mutation or something.

[Torbyne]

Both Half-Elf and Half-Orc can take racial heritage for the other race and effectively be human, orc and elf all at once and there are plenty of alternate racial traits to represent what ever aspects the player wants.

As for reactions and roleplaying... who is to say an Orc-Drow would even be recognizable as such? to most people the character might come across as something entirely different or more closely resemble some kind of elemental kin. So a lot of confused looks but otherwise ignored? to those who really want to know the player could probably make an easy disguise check or bluff check to pass as... basically anything they make up?

[GM Hands of Fate]

eugenics...

[David knott 242]

He could go for a drow sorcerer with the Orc bloodline.

[Bearserk]

In Bastards of Golarion is a part about Drow-Half-elves called Darkborn..shunned by drow and feared by humans...i think the reaction of the other people would be kind the same!

[Dave Justus]

As far as society goes, I would have the world treat them the same as a tiefling, and I would guess that most people would assume that was what they actually were, or something similar. The are going to be weird and face some prejudice but it probably wouldn't be enough to be a focus of the game or mean they couldn't go into town or anything like that.

[vadda]

Thanks for the answers. This helps a Lot!

One more question. What would you do if He tries to convince or persuade someone? Would you give him a penalty (e.g. -4 in a skill roll)

[Bearserk]

Not really. Golarion is full of strange races....it depends on the situation.

[Torbyne]

Think of it from this point of view, we as players and GMs have access to a lot more information about what sapient races exist than almost anyone in the actual setting would and even then i doubt anyone here can list all of the races that exist on Golarion and what sub species of those races there are. being a somewhat unique offspring has probably left this nearly one of a kind individual looking like just another adventurer in a sea of nearly one of a kind unique adventurers.

[FormerFiend]

There's a lot of variables to this question that need to be considered.

By the standard rules of the setting, orcs and elves can't interbreed. The devs are pretty big against that because they feel that adding any more crossbreeds- outside of aasimars, tieflings, dhamphirs, skinwalkers, changelings, and geniekin - would cheapen the uniqueness of half-orcs and half-elves. Or something like that.

So right off the bat, by allowing this you're breaking the rules of the setting. Which is perfectly fine; you're the DM and if you want to allow it at your table, there's nothing wrong with that. But it does mean certain questions need to be asked.

First being; is this something that's just possible in your version of the setting? If it is, then the PC in question wouldn't be entirely unique; drow and orcs live in close enough proximity and both have about the same respect for consent when choosing a sexual partner that this is bound to have happened at some point, either from darklands-dwelling orcs getting lucky and capturingthe occasional drow or from drow abusing their orcish slaves.

And if that's the case then there's going to be some level of pre-existing opinions regarding these crossbreeds, at least among those societies that would be familiar with them. Though admittedly I don't know that orcs would have a drastically different opinion of a half-orc/half-drow than they do of a plain half-orc, and I don't know that drow would have a particularly different opinion of a half-orc-half-drow than they have of anything that isn't a full-blooded drow.

If it isn't a thing that is just possible and the PC is the result of some magical experiment or some such and thus is something truly unique, then I imagine most people would be befuddled as to what the PC actually is and if an orc or a drow actually found out they'd probably be disgusted and outraged.

Aside from that, what, exactly, the character looks like would go a long way towards informing the uneducated layman's opinion of them. Without knowing what they look like I couldn't give you specifics but I could picture it ranging from "Huh, that's a pretty orc-blood. Weird." or "Huh, that half-elf looks like they could lift a horse. Weird." to mistaking it for a tiefling and all the reactions that gets.

I am curious as to the mechanics; are they just playing a half-orc with high dex/cha or a half-elf with high str? Or are you using the race-building rules to make a half-orc/half-drow race from scratch?

[Torbyne]

Rules wise it works out with choosing half-X as the starting point and then taking racial heritage for the other half, take the adopted trait and grab some more aspects of your heritage race. If their charisma is high enough you can also take eldritch heritage for an associated bloodline such as Orc. it does strictly mean there is some human ancestry in the mix as well though.

[Tim Emrick]

FWIW, Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary has a drowblooded template that essentially grafts drow traits onto the base creature. So a half-drow/half-orc would in this case be a drowblooded orc. It adds +1 to CR, and has few if any drawbacks, so may be a bit overpowered for a PC. You may wish to go with one of the other solutions already given.

[Cuup]

Hey, Bill, look at that dark-skinned Half-orc, over there. Yikes, look at his eyes - they're stark white! Poor fella, must have been struck blind....I'll buy him a drink.

[The Raven Black]

IIRC Bastards of Golarion provides guidelines for complicated mixes based on the ARG race building rules