5 Tips For Playing As A Half-Orc In Baldur’s Gate 3
Check out the best ways to play as a half-orc in Baldur’s Gate 3 to get the most out of it.
As a half-orc in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can play as a cruel martial arts master. Half-orcs are a staple of the fantasy genre and are known for being mean and green. Even though there is no wrong way to play a half-orc, there are some combinations of class and feat that work best with the way BG3 works, especially on harder levels.
Half-orcs have some benefits and disadvantages in story and conversation, but they are made to deal damage and stay alive in battle. There are a lot of things to think about if you want to make sure you’re making the most of the half-orc’s unique traits.
Exploit Your Relentless Endurance
Relentless Endurance is one of the most important traits of any race or subrace. It is a trait of half-orcs. The first time you would lose all of your hit points during a long rest, you only lose one instead. This won’t help if you’re taking a lot of damage, but it will save you in close fights and let you take more moves.
If your half-orc’s health is very low and their Relentless Endurance is available, you won’t want to run away to heal or hide. Wait until you only have one hit point left, and then use your extra turn to drink potions, use the Dodge action, or even make a move that could end the fight right away.
Don’t Overlap Your Unique Skill Proficiency
The half-orc’s extra skill in “Intimidation” is useful for evil characters or for staying out of trouble in enemy land. Since you get a free proficiency, you can now choose another skill besides Intimidation if you were already going to take it.
Make sure your Charisma doesn’t have a negative factor so you don’t waste the Menacing ability. If not, the bonus for being good at something will make the tool almost useless on its own. You should avoid the Soldier background unless you’re doing it for role-playing, since it also comes with proficiency in intimidation, and you’ll start with less overall proficient skills than if you picked any other background.
Optimize Your Savage Attacks
As a raging half-orc, your critical hits are especially dangerous because when you roll a critical hit on the attack roll, you get three damage dice instead of two. Even though it only happens maybe once every other fight because of how hard it is to roll a critical hit, it’s enough to help weaken harder enemies and kill smaller ones outright.
You can choose the Great Weapon Master skill at certain levels. This lets you make an extra attack as a bonus action when you roll a critical hit. When you get a critical hit, magic items like the Intransigent Hammer will knock down close enemies. This makes your Savage Attacks even more dangerous.
Recommended Class Options
Half-orcs are built to be physical fighters because of their Relentless Endurance and Savage Attacks traits. If you want your half-orc character to make the most of these traits, don’t choose classes or fighting styles that focus on spellcasting or long-range attacks.
Barbarian
With the Relentless Endurance trait of the half-orc and the average health of the Doodle Baseball, your half-orc character will be very hard to knock out. With the extra damage from Savage Attacks and the damage bonus from the Barbarian’s Rage, most monsters near your level will die in one hit.
Fighter
Fighters don’t have as much health as Barbarians, but they have a healing skill called “Second Wind,” which also makes your half-orc harder to kill in exchange for a free action. If you want to be a tank, don’t choose Archery as your fighting style. Instead, choose either Defense or Protection, or Great Weapon Fighting or Two-Weapon Fighting if you want to be a fighter.
Paladin
Just like Fighters, Paladins have a healing skill that can also be used on other people in your party. They can also use “Smite” spells that make your hits do more damage. When you get a critical hit, these spells do twice as much damage, and with Savage Attacks, your physical weapon attack does three times as much damage.
Recommended Feat Options
Feats are extra skills that all classes can use once they hit levels 4, 8, and 12. Some feats have requirements that mean a martial half-orc can’t use them, but most can be used to improve your fighting skills.
Savage Attacker
Savage Attacker is similar to the half-orc’s Savage hits in that it lets you reroll the damage dice for one of your weapon hits each turn. Even though this will make your average damage higher, you can use it with Savage Attacks to reroll the increased damage dice on a critical hit, which is the better choice.
Tough
Tough is the best protective feat because it directly increases your health with each level. You should take this feat as soon as possible so that you can use the extra health right away. At level 12, you’ll have 24 more hit points, which is enough to take a lot more damage from weapons.
Great Weapon Master
If you want to make sure that your critical hits do as much damage as possible, Great Weapon Master will give you an extra action that lets you make more moves on critical hits while increasing the damage by ten. If you pick this feat, make sure it’s not for a martial class like Monks or Rogues that needs an empty bonus action.
