First off: I like the bloodline.
But...
Why is there one? Orcs aren't inherently magical as to pass power down by the blood. I went over the book that has it and maybe I missed it but I didn't find something that would lead to it. It just mentioned in a side bar. Are there some kind of powerful proto orcs that such sorcerers are descended from?
Also, picture if you will a gnomish orc blooded sorcerer. Mwahaha.
First off: I like the bloodline.
But...
Why is there one? Orcs aren't inherently magical as to pass power down by the blood. I went over the book that has it and maybe I missed it but I didn't find something that would lead to it. It just mentioned in a side bar. Are there some kind of powerful proto orcs that such sorcerers are descended from?
Also, picture if you will a gnomish orc blooded sorcerer. Mwahaha.
Personally, my take is that The Orc Bloodline is for 1/2 Orc Sorcerers who are channeling their Orcish nature over their human side. As a GM I would argue against any other races taking the Bloodline without a really good reason.
Also despite it being named 'bloodline' it doesn't mean you have to have a blood relation or otherwise to inherit the power. A lot of people seem to miss this.
Couple examples:
Somewhere in your family's history, a relative made a deal with a devil, and that pact has influenced your family line ever since.
You were born during the height of a great magical plague, to a mother suffering from an eldritch disease, or you suffered an eldritch pox as a child, such that your very soul now carries a blight of pestilence within it.
The power of the elements resides in you, and at times you can hardly control its fury. This influence comes from an elemental outsider in your family history or a time when you or your relatives were exposed to a powerful elemental force.
Generally, yes, I'd imagine in most cases this to be for a half orc or potentially some creature blessed (or cursed!) by Gruumsh (though I think I spelled that wrong) in some settings.
I agree, the orc bloodline doesn't make a lot of sense. Orcs aren't very magical creatures - they're humanoids who tend to like brute force a lot better. It's a humanoid race with a mostly martial bend. There should have been bloodlines for other humanoid races first - especially elves and gnomes.
Yeah, at first glance it doesn´t seem to make sense,
´inheriting the arcane power of orcs´ doesn´t really work.
I see it more as ´Arcane Bloodline: Orc Specialization´,
inheriting the power of Orcish Spellcasters, who (apparently)
focused on evocation, enlarge person, STR boosts, that type of thing.
Probably Orcish Sorcerory would be better, but that probably would sound redundant as well
(Sorceror Bloodline: Orcish Sorcery)
Also, picture if you will a gnomish orc blooded sorcerer. Mwahaha.
Yeah, this is kind of the big problem with it.
I guess Human or Half-Orc, or Half-Elf even could plausibly have a bloodlien connection to Orcish Sorcerors, but other races CAN¨T mate with them. Counterpoint: most races can´t mate with most of the Bloodline species to begin with. I think it would have been better if it was named something more general like ¨War Bloodline¨.
Yeah, at first glance it doesn´t seem to make sense,
´inheriting the arcane power of orcs´ doesn´t really work.
I see it more as ´Arcane Bloodline: Orc Specialization´,
inheriting the power of Orcish Spellcasters, who (apparently)
focused on evocation, enlarge person, STR boosts, that type of thing.
Probably Orcish Sorcerory would be better, but that probably would sound redundant as well
(Sorceror Bloodline: Orcish Sorcery)
I'm not even hung up about it being a bloodline. I tend use a broader definition of the "sorcerer specialisations" that happen to be called "bloodlines". Sometimes it's in the blood (ancestral) but sometimes it's about some circumstance of your life, birth, or evens leading up to your birth. A fey sorcerer, for example, might have a dryad grandmother. Or he might have been taken along to one of the legendary fairy revels where you stumble out of the woods afterwards to find out that while you remember only one night, a hundred years have passed in the real world. Or he was born/conceived in an enchanted wood (or his mother spent most of her pregnancy in one).
Even considering all that, an orc bloodline doesn't make sense. There are no bloodlines for the more common races like humans or elves, after all. Why not?
If you say that these races aren't generally "magical" enough to have a bloodline, why do orcs get one? They're probably less magical than any of the seven basic races, including dwarves. Gnomes and then elves should have gotten bloodlines first, since they are magical races - gnomes having their own flavour of fairy influence (what with talking to animals and being really good at illusions), and elves being generally good at magic (with elven magic and their immunities).
Sure, you could say that fey works for gnomes and arcane works for elves, but why do they get a general treatment and orcs get a special one?
In fact, it would have been a lot more useful if we had a "brute" bloodline. Then the "power of giants" ability would have made more sense (How do orc sorcs get the power of giants? Just what kind of depraved and disgusting orgy were their parents involved in?)
I am now considering doing a rewrite of the orc bloodline as the 'fire giant' bloodline, and making variants of it (similar to how the genie bloodlines vary) for frost, stone and storm giants. Dunno about cloud giants. They are similarly air-themed and might provide the same bloodline as storm giants. Fog and stuff aren't as exciting.
At least the giants are slightly-elemental beings of myth and power.
It is a strange bloodline but I like the idea and really wish there were ones for Elf, Gnome, and Dwarf.