There are an awful lot of orcs in Thar. If you are going to crawl through all the hexes in that particular location, you will fight a very large number of orcs. The default four orc stat blocks aren’t really enough to maintain interest throughout this prodigiously large amount of orc fighting, which means that whipping up a couple of new orcs has been necessary. These are those new orcs.
Orc Archer
Orcs have a terrible dearth of long ranged firepower, forced to rely on short range, limited use javelins. To help give orc warbands more resistance against kiting tactics, sprinkle in some archers with longbows amongst the standard orcs.
Armor Class: 14 (hide armor)
Hit Points: 13 (2d8+4)
Speed: 30 ft.
STR: 14(+2)
DEX: 14(+2)
CON: 15(+2)
INT: 7(-2)
WIS: 12(+1)
CHA: 10(+0)
Skills: Perception +3
Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages: Common, Orc
Challenge: ½ (100 XP)
Aggressive. As a bonus action, the orc can move up to its speed toward a hostile creature that it can see.
Actions:
Shortsword. Melee weapon attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6+2) piercing damage.
Longbow. Ranged weapon attack: +4 to hit, ranged 150/600 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d8+2) piercing damage.
Orc Spotter
A sneaky party can avoid detection almost indefinitely. The orc spotter isn’t strong, but he’s very perceptive, especially whenever sight or smell are useful (and it usually is). Remember that advantage translates to +5 on a passive Perception score, which means that unless the party has turned invisible and become scentless, the spotter’s passive Perception is actually 18. That’s pretty hard to sneak past, but the orc spotter isn’t very tough or deadly, so a clever party can assassinate him from range. Hopefully without alerting the rest of the orcs to their presence.
Armor Class: 13 (hide armor)
Hit Points: 13 (2d8+4)
Speed: 30 ft.
STR: 15(+2)
DEX: 12(+1)
CON: 14(+2)
INT: 7(-2)
WIS: 13(+1)
CHA: 10(+0)
Skills: Perception +3
Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages: Common, Orc
Challenge: ½ (100 XP)
Keen Sight and Smell. The orc spotter has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight or smell.
Aggressive. As a bonus action, the orc can move up to its speed toward a hostile creature that it can see.
Actions:
Greataxe. Melee weapon attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d12+2) slashing damage.
Orc Ranger
The orc ranger has the perception of the orc spotter, but also has decent hit points and attack power and are pretty stealthy themselves. They have decent odds of spotting a sneaking party and also have decent odds of not being spotted themselves, which can turn an ambush into ambushed if there’s enough rangers in the pack to make a fight out of it, especially considering how hard they hit from stealth.
Armor Class: 15 (leather armor)
Hit Points: 30 (4d8 + 12)
Speed: 30 ft.
STR: 14(+2)
DEX: 18(+4)
CON: 16(+3)
INT: 8(-1)
WIS: 15(+2)
CHA: 9(-1)
Saving Throws: Dex +6, Wis +4
Skills: Perception +4, Stealth +6, Survival +4
Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
Languages: Common, Orc
Challenge: 1 (200 XP)
Keen Sight and Smell. The orc ranger has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight or smell.
Aggressive. As a bonus action, the orc can move up to its speed toward a hostile creature that it can see.
Gruumsh’s Fury. The orc deals an extra 4 (1d8) damage when it hits with a weapon attack (included in the attack).
Sniper. When hitting an unaware enemy, the orc ranger deals an additional 7 (2d6) damage.
Actions:
Multiattack: The orc ranger makes two attacks with his longbow or falchion.
Longbow. Ranged weapon attack: +6 to hit, ranged 150/600 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8+4) piercing damage.
Falchion. Melee weapon attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (2d4+2) slashing damage.
Orc Wolf Rider
Orc wolf riders are reasonably nasty enemies by themselves, but the main reason why they’re quite a bit more deadly than most other orcs of similar Challenge level is because they ride wolves, which means every Challenge 2 wolf rider comes with a Challenge 1 dire wolf in tow. Dire wolves are pretty good at sniffing out sneakers and an orc wolf rider and a dire wolf together form a pretty savage encounter for low levels, particularly considering that, just like their mounts, wolf riders tend to travel in packs of 4-6. Four wolf riders are a deadly encounter for any party of five below level 5 or 6.
Armor Class: 16 (half-plate)
Hit Points: 52 (7d8+21)
Speed: 30 ft.
STR: 18(+4)
DEX: 12(+1)
CON: 16(+3)
INT: 7(-2)
WIS: 10(+0)
CHA: 12(+1)
Saving Throws: Con +5
Skills: Animal Handling +6, Intimidation +3
Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10
Languages: Common, Orc
Challenge: 2 (450 XP)
Harsh Tamer. The Orc Wolf Rider can make Animal Handling checks as a STR check instead of a DEX check.
Aggressive. As a bonus action, the orc can move up to its speed toward a hostile creature that it can see.
Gruumsh’s Fury. The orc deals an extra 4 (1d8) damage when it hits with a weapon attack (included in the attack).
Mounted Charge. If the orc wolf rider’s mount moved at least ten feet on its previous turn, the orc wolf rider’s first melee attack of this turn deals +5 damage.
Wolf Rider. When riding a dire wolf as a mount, the orc wolf rider can force any attack targeting him to target his mount instead, and has advantage on any attack rolls targeting an unmounted creature of smaller size than his mount.
Actions:
Multiattack. The orc wolf rider makes two attacks with his greataxe or his lance.
Lance. Melee weapon attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., disadvantage at 5 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (1d12+1d8+4) piercing damage.
Greataxe. Melee weapon attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (1d12+1d8+4) slashing damage.
One thing you may have noticed about all these statblocks is that the formatting is ass. We’ll be cleaning that up for the .pdf release, and one of the ways we can speed up production of new .pdfs is to have someone else take care of the formatting for us. If you’d like to help us with the formatting of the Thar hexcrawl yourself, keep following the blog, we’ll put out a call for volunteers once the text is finalized. If you’d like to help us pay for someone to do that in the likely event that no one volunteers, please support our Patreon.
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