I just wanted to hear your thoughts about this issue, I am seriously pretty fed up with my female half-orcish thief/assasin RP. As you would imagine the point of that RP was not spending points in CHA. I was also planning to continue with my low (6) BE and as the RP was planned to be a though char havent dressed those elegant dresses neither (for 20 reaction bonus), just my oiled thief's leather. The problem is without proper back side licking, I can not even initiate dialog with more than half the quest givers! I was content with not speaking with followers as this was already planned to be a solo go (as most of them does not speak with me unless I tell them how lowly and inferior I am for a few times). But without getting most quests game is beginning to stray form being Arcanum. I was playing this char for half-orcish RP with all the prejudice against them, and not bowing down to insults or trying to supress my half-orcish nature (with additional BE or dresses). I am fine with getting insulted by many and paying additional cost for inns for worse rooms; but not getting the quests at all? what do you think and what is your experience with half-orc RP so far?
There are ways around the main plot without having to talk to people, more often than not they entail picking people's pockets etc. Only other thing I could think of without breaking the RP of your character is obtaining blessings and perhaps a medallion of beauty, there is no reason why your orc cannot be deceptive?
I found the racism against half-orcs pretty annoying too. With one character, I finally got fed up and spent a point on Beauty just to avoid having to sweet talk general store clerks into letting me buy more bandages. With another, I stumbled across a Medallion of Beauty in the Wolf Cave so I just wore that all the time. At least if you're female, you can buy that fancy dress at the character creation stage. That makes life easier. I imagine playing a male half-orc is all kinds of irritating until you get to Tarant and decide whether or not to buy a smoking jacket. But yeah... Obviously, having to role-play more is a reasonable trade off for starting with some combat bonuses and better physical stats. It's still frustrating in a way that might tempt you to start over as an elf since practically everybody likes (or at least tolerates) them. And a smoking jacket or fancy dress is enough to keep the occasional elf hating NPC civil. I played a female half-orc who was Raised by Orcs once. I was a fairly awesome fighter/mage, but crappy reactions from everybody made it hard to stick with my plan for the character. And I was constantly muttering things to myself like, "What do you mean I'm not hot enough to be a prostitute? Have you seen me in my leather armor?" It was really tempting to start the orc rebellion and take out my frustrations on random humans. If I knew I could do that without "breaking" the game, I would have done it purely out of spite.
When I play a low Beauty female Half-Orc, I use Ring of Influence, Jewel of Hebe & that dress in the start shop to flux NPC reactions. After groveling for a better reaction, I then equip the stuff and gain the benefits of higher reactions than if I played a character with normal beauty. But then my game play is more focused on manipulating things to my advantage than role playing. One way to increase your BE without spending skill points is the Pristess's Blessing in Stillwater. (BE +1)
The only problem with the blessings and magical items is that you'll probably have to wait until you've been playing for a while to take advantage of any of that stuff. So, basically, you just have to suck it up for a while. Especially if you're a technologist. I was mostly fine with that by the time I played my last half-orc character (a gun smith). But still... It got old that my character didn't really have any problems getting along with people... until I tried to buy components.
Well I can think of three ways to improve the way people think about you at the beginning of the game. Arbalah or whatever that fellow's name is, the gypsy lady in the docks district of Tarant and of course the priestess in Stillwater.
I don't consider Stillwater early in the game. You're supposed to go the Isle of Despair and a bunch of other places first and you'll probably be somewhere around level 25 to 30 before you get there unless you force the location sooner. Arbalah's blessing is always nice, but it didn't help much with the stuff I was whining about. And the Gypsy blessing mostly just made it easier to recruit Magnus. That extra point of Charisma does seem to help with some NPCs, but it doesn't do as much as I might have hoped. I did notice that I was generally better off being polite to people who started spewing anti-orc rhetoric than relying on the bonus from my nice clothes, because NPC reactions would go up more and then I could change into my fancy dress and have them suddenly be a lot friendlier to me. Whereas, if I just equipped the dress I would get a low neutral reaction that didn't seem to do me as much good. For example, reactions from NPCs who recognized me from the Tarantian article about the blimp crash were all over the place depending on what I was wearing when I panhandled loose change from them. I suppose that's more realistic than everybody generally liking half-elves (except for Sogg and Magnus, which drives me nuts) or most people reacting really well to elves just because they're (usually) slightly better looking than an average human. But it's a little too much like work and games are supposed to be fun.
In my half-orc raised by orcs game, I read all of those "I'm not worthy" lines with a sarcastic and sneering tone, thus changing my attitude from self-demeaning to arrogant while still getting a positive reaction from people.
Sounds like a pretty positive approach, might try that out. for the moment I am back to my half-orc idiotic dialogs (Frankenstein background) along with Virgil and handtohand combat character. When I forget all these bad memories from my previous half-orc I will try that out.
