Since most PCs will have Fire as their Flame Weapon/Darkfire default choice, and so many offensive spells use fire, it does appear to be overkill to give these highly common enemies 50% immunity just so their owns sorcs don't kill them all.
I have a suggestion for how this could be balanced better. Remove Immunity, and give Wild Orcs really good Fire Saves. That way Flame Weapon still hits normally, but they'll more often make the Fireball save and take half damage. Also weapons with bonus fire damage/initial Combust damage etc are still viable.
They should be equally fodder to their caster's fireballs imo. I mean, if we have to put up with our own casters fireballing us, so should they!
I think the orcs have been fireballed enough that their race is suddenly gaining fire immunity (le gasp!)
Perhaps a different element will end them much more quicker...
Cruzel has a good point.
5/- fire immunity on those guys would be sweet >_>
Constant subject to their prophet's own fireballs have given these orcs supernatural resistance to fire, flames and infernals... It might be from years of evolution. It might be from the demonblood that is slowly awakening in their veins or it be due to them being born out of earth and flames.
But it is there.
Yes, but....
Orcs are probably the most common serious enemy.
Fire is the damage type used by the best offensive damage spells (Fireball, Flame Arrow, Combust, Firebrand). It's a giant poke in the eye for magic users to have most of the the few powerful damage spells they can fire into combat safely (Flame arrow, Firebrand and Combust) sliced in half. Firing a L9 Firebrand against wild orc mooks and seeing it do a nice 15 damage to all of them rather sucks.
I think that ExileStrife's suggestion of 5/- Resist would be a lot better,. Flavourful, some protection from their own fireballs, but not completely eviscerating fire attacks. It would also promote using something other than flame weapon unless you have it up to 1d8.
Not every monster can be beaten easily by throwing flames at them, its the same for everything else that cant be hurt by simply swinging a sword at them.
Every monster has some sort of plus to them, it just so happens that the orcs have fire immunity.
Nightrisers and Werecreatures cannot be hurt by any weapon which is like every fighter, rogue, monk, paladin, ranger, barbarian! change this
Haha. Nightrisers/Werewolves can be easily beat by slapping a Magic Weapon trinket on or using a blunt weapon or one of the undead killer or silver weapons. The counter is trivial. However, if you're set with fire spells, that's it. No override possible, no spare weapon or consumable that will bypass the advantage. This really rips up fire-based sorcs for example.
It's worse in server invasions. They always seem to degenerate into a chaotic fight, and it's not safe to throw Acid Breath about or find something to target with Lightning Bolt (which can't be aimed at the ground).
Unlike Nightrisers with SR they were the regular enemies you *could* be useful throwing fire at in big battles. Yes, a lot of spells still work, but 50% immunity is huge! I haven't bothered to find out if they've got some corresponding weakness. The Orcs' thing was "numbers", having a huge amount of goons to throw at PCs. They never used to have fire immunity, and worked fine.
Yeah, but not going to change. Sorry.
if this was the case they'd probably kill half their own men with the fireballs making the quest 10x easier.
its called evolution thousands of years of getting blasted by fireballs have evolved the Orcs to withstand fire so keep the fire immunity in my OP F the haters Mort.
Exile's suggestion of 5/- Fire Reduction is good, it'll give the orcs good resistance VS fire, as well as nullify most Flame Wep/Darkfire, which is what happens mostly now.,
As you said, fighters only have to switch weapon or apply magic weapon when fighting nightriser/lycans..
Use scintillation sphere or what its called instead of fireball maybe?
If you've faught orcs so many times you should know they're resistant to magic, so preparing other spells might be a smart move.
I've used Isaac's lesser Missile Storm against the orcs and that works quite well.
Scintilating sphere, change your flame weapon to something else... lightning bolt, mestil's acid breath.... There are lots of options, and if you've fought these mobs before I wouldn't say it's metagaming to know that some orcs are more resistant to fire than others. Plan accordingly.
You can't change your flame wep to something else. It's a char creation option or DM request AFAIK, not a chat command or player tool.
Well you can stop memorizing flame weapon and prepare more Gedlee's Electric Loops. Win.
All you have to do is switch spells!
For a wizard that might be easy. He just needs to be wealthy and ask his fellow wizards to make scrolls for him. A sorcerer will have trobule though. Fireball has more range than it's electric counterpart, why would a sorcerer take it then, rather than fireball? same goes with gedlee's and stuff, besides the offensive power of gedlee's is nothing compared to comburst, nor is acid arrow.
Switching spells is not as simple as it sounds.
We're asking to change monsters because sorcerers can't easily switch out spells for more effective ones now? Its not like that is one of the defining characteristics of sorcerers or anything.
So pedantic.
Isn't that sort of like asking for the slashing immunity to be removed on skeletons so that they're easier to cut with a 1d10 bastard sword instead of a 1d8 hammer?
Not really. Anyone with a bastard sword should be packing a hammer in case skeletons turn up anyway :P. You can't as easily change dmg types with a spell and maintain the same effect. And since you've said it's not changing, Mort, can you lock this before we go round in circles?
This is like saying The umberhulk Guardians shouldn't have true seeing. Tough luck. CRUUUUUUSH.
Kill two birds with one stone.
Give orcs 50% ice dmg vulnerability!
I have firebranded many orcs and doing 20+ damage to 10 orcs is not scoffable. In fact I did not even realize they had fire immunity as they seemed to take plenty of damage!
I also beg to differ on everyone carrying around a hammer to replace their bastard sword for dealing with skeletons! It cuts just fine.