Half-orc

Half-orc
Characteristics
Alignment	Any
Type	Humanoid
Image	Wizards.com image

The half-orc is a fictional creature born to mixed orc and human parentage in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The half-orc is a playable race for D&D player characters. Half-orcs are typically born in wild frontiers where human and orc tribes come into contact. Half-orcs are between six and seven feet tall (180–210 cm) and usually weigh between 180 and 250 pounds (80–110 kg). This makes them less bulky and more agile than pure-bred orcs, but still taller and stronger than most humans. Half-orcs have pale green skin, jutting jaws, prominent teeth and coarse body-hair.

Half-orcs also appear in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. In Tolkien's Middle-earth, the half-orcs were the creation of the wizard Saruman and bore several similarities to Sauron's Uruk-hai (greater Orcs) but were taller (man high) and appeared more man-like; there was also another type called Goblin-men which were also said to be man-high but less muscular with sallow skin (instead of black skin like the Uruk-hai) and squinty eyes (one encountered by the hobbits at the Prancing Pony in Bree, and also present among Saruman's forces at the battle of Isengard).

Half-orcs have been a part of Dungeons & Dragons since the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. However, in second edition the half-orc was no longer a standard player character race, and half-orcs were largely removed from the basic rules, as part of a wide attempt by TSR to remove controversial topics from D&D (as part of the same move, demons and devils were renamed tanar'ri and baatezu, respectively, among other changes). With Wizards of the Coast's takeover of D&D and the release of 3rd Edition, half-orcs were reintroduced into the series. Although they did not appear in the first core rulebooks for the 4th edition of the game, they were introduced in the Players Handbook 2 released on March 17, 2009.

The half-orc was introduced in the first edition Player's Handbook (1978) as a player character race.

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