These are Dragonbane Orcs. No muss. No Fuss. Just Orcs.
From the Dragonbane Bestiary:
Countless battles have been fought between orcs and other kin. However, few besides yours truly will acknowledge the cause of these misfortunes. The orcs I have spoken to during my travels said they encountered arrogance and ignorance wherever they went, that they were often subjected to outright oppression after accepting false promises of peace and mutual respect. As far as I can tell, the orcs’ collaborations with other kin – be it humans, elves, dwarves, or wolfkin – always end the same way: with a betrayal where their contemptuous, supposed allies bring them to their knees in the mud. But mark my words: sooner or later the roles will be reversed. In fact, although I am familiar with almost every legend in existence, it cannot be ruled out that it has already happened, somewhere, at some point – that the orcs gained the upper hand and had the chance to settle old scores.— From the Diary of Theodora Sneezewort, One-of-a-Kind.
Player Character Orcs, per the Dragonbane Bestiary are still Nightkin, meaning they take damage in direct sunlight. This is not a quality I look for in a PC in my game. As an aside, there are no Half Orcs in Dragonbane. There are no Half Elves, either, but that could potentially change in future sourcebooks either official or Third Party. But, as-is we are led to believe that the various kin are not genetically compatible. (Good, because I don’t want to explain Halfling/Karkion mixes.)
I am, however, reconsidering the stance on Orcs for my own personal worldbuilding efforts. I’m going to want a group of shock troopers that are tougher and beefier than humans who aren’t humans. So far the only core rulebook kin that have come up are humans. If Orcs don’t come up directly, I still want an excuse to use the Heroic Ability, Tough, on PCs. The name might change and they might get re-skinned statistically so to speak, but they’re still Orcs for all intents and purposes.
The only thing that makes me scratch my head is why Dragonbane NPCs get night vision, but PCs do not. How does that reconcile? I may have to go pick on the poor Dragonbane forum guys again. They love me over there.
If you want tough, hardcore armored living troops, Orcs are going to be the template in almost any game. Humans are okay, but we see those all the time. Most fantasy worlds no one looks surprised to see a human, but they almost poop their pants when they see an Orc because they know trouble usually follows. There is a reason why I play two different Orc armies for wargaming. It’s because they’re pretty bad dudes to come up against.
That’s all for this week. Good luck. More next week.
Jeff's Game Box 