publish: true
aliases:
- Orc War Chief
created: 2026-03-09T12:15:34.100-04:00
modified: 2026-03-09T12:15:34.100-04:00
published: 2026-03-09T12:15:34.100-04:00
tags: - ttrpg-cli/compendium/src/5e/mm
- ttrpg-cli/monster/cr/4
- ttrpg-cli/monster/environment/arctic
- ttrpg-cli/monster/environment/forest
- ttrpg-cli/monster/environment/grassland
- ttrpg-cli/monster/environment/hill
- ttrpg-cli/monster/environment/mountain
- ttrpg-cli/monster/environment/swamp
- ttrpg-cli/monster/environment/underdark
- ttrpg-cli/monster/size/medium
- ttrpg-cli/monster/type/humanoid/orc
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Orc War Chief
Source: Monster Manual p. 246
Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks.
Gruumsh One-Eye
Orcs worship Gruumsh, the mightiest of the orc deities and their creator. The orcs believe that in ancient days, the gods gathered to divide the world among their followers. When Gruumsh claimed the mountains, he learned they had been taken by the dwarves. He laid claim to the forests, but those had been settled by the elves. Each place that Gruumsh wanted had already been claimed. The other gods laughed at Gruumsh, but he responded with a furious bellow. Grasping his mighty spear, he laid waste to the mountains, set the forests aflame, and carved great furrows in the fields. Such was the role of the orcs, he proclaimed, to take and destroy all that the other races would deny them. To this day, the orcs wage an endless war on humans, elves, dwarves, and other folk.
Orcs hold a particular hatred for elves. The elven god Corellon Larethian half-blinded Gruumsh with a well-placed arrow to the orc god’s eye. Since then, the orcs have taken particular joy in slaughtering elves. Turning his injury into a baleful gift, Gruumsh grants divine might to any champion who willingly plucks out one of its eyes in his honor.
Tribes like Plagues
Orcs gather in tribes that exert their dominance and satisfy their bloodlust by plundering villages, devouring or driving off roaming herds, and slaying any humanoids that stand against them. After savaging a settlement, orcs pick it clean of wealth and items usable in their own lands. They set the remains of villages and camps ablaze, then retreat whence they came, their bloodlust satisfied.
Ranging Scavengers
Their lust for slaughter demands that orcs dwell always within striking distance of new targets. As such, they seldom settle permanently, instead converting ruins, cavern complexes, and defeated foes’ villages into fortified camps and strongholds. Orcs build only for defense, making no innovation or improvement to their lairs beyond mounting the severed body parts of their victims on spiked stockade walls or pikes jutting up from moats and trenches.
When an existing territory is depleted of food, an orc tribe divides into roving bands that scout for choice hunting grounds. When each party returns, it brings back trophies and news of targets ripe for attack, the richest of which is chosen. The tribe then sets out en masse to carve a bloody path to its new territory.
On rare occasions, a tribe’s leader chooses to hold onto a particularly defensible lair for decades. The orcs of such a tribe must range far across the countryside to sate their appetites.
Leadership and Might
Orc tribes are mostly patriarchal, flaunting such vivid or grotesque titles as Many-Arrows, Screaming Eye, and Elf Ripper. Occasionally, a powerful war chief unites scattered orc tribes into a single rampaging horde, which runs roughshod over other orc tribes and humanoid settlements from a position of overwhelming strength.
Strength and power are the greatest of orcish virtues, and orcs embrace all manner of mighty creatures in their tribes. Rejecting notions of racial purity, they proudly welcome ogres, trolls, half-orcs, and orogs into their ranks. As well, orcs respect and fear the size and power of evil giants, and often serve them as guards and soldiers.
Orc Crossbreeds
Luthic, the orc goddess of fertility and wife of Gruumsh, demands that orcs procreate often and indiscriminately so that orc hordes swell generation after generation. The orcs’ drive to reproduce runs stronger than any other humanoid race, and they readily crossbreed with other races. When an orc procreates with a non-orc humanoid of similar size and stature (such as a human or a dwarf), the resulting child is either an orc or a half-orc. When an orc produces young with an ogre, the child is a half-ogre of intimidating strength and brutish features called an ogrillon.
Orc War Chief
The war chief of an orc tribe is its strongest and most cunning member. The reign of a war chief lasts only as long as it commands the fear and respect of other tribe members, whose bloodlust must be regularly satisfied lest the chief appear weak.
Scions of Slaughter
Gruumsh bestows special blessings upon war chiefs who prove themselves in battle time and again, imbuing them with slivers of his savagery. A war chief so blessed finds that his weapons cut deeper into his enemies, allowing him to inflict more carnage.
King Obould Many-Arrows
King Obould of the Many-Arrows tribe is a legend among the orc war chiefs of the Forgotten Realms, and he is the most famous orc chief in the history of the D&D game.
Smarter and more intuitive than most of his kind, Obould slew his chieftain to take control of his tribe. Skilled in the arts of war and renowned for his violent temper, Obould proved himself a fierce opponent in battle time and again. Over the years, he subsumed other orc tribes into his own, until he commanded a horde of thousands.
Obould leveraged his strength and influence to carve out a kingdom for himself in the Spine of the World, a mountain range overlooking numerous dwarven, human, and elven strongholds.
After years of bloody conflict with his more civilized neighbors, Obould did the unthinkable and brokered a peace treaty with his enemies. This treaty confused many of the orcs under Obould’s command. It was either a clever ploy by Obould to buy time while he strengthened his army for a final, decisive sweep across the Savage Frontier, or it was a troubling sign that Obould had forsaken the ways of Gruumsh and needed to be destroyed.
A quote from An account of War Chief Hartusk's brutality in the aftermath of the Battle of the Cold Vale
He worked his serrated long knife savagely, tearing out the king’s throat to the howls of approval from his legions. The ferocious orc didn’t stop there, digging and ripping the blade back and forth unrelentingly until he took the head off the dwarf king’s shoulders.
Statblock
title: Orc War Chief
*Medium humanoid (orc), Chaotic Evil*
- **Armor Class** 16 ([chain mail](Mechanics/CLI/items/chain-mail-xphb.md))
- **Hit Points** 93 (`11d8 + 44`)
- **Speed** 30 ft.
|STR|DEX|CON|INT|WIS|CHA|
|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|
|18 (+4)|12 (+1)|18 (+4)|11 (+0)|11 (+0)|16 (+3)|
- **Proficiency Bonus** +2
- **Saving Throws** Strength +6, Constitution +6, Wisdom +2
- **Skills** [Intimidation](Mechanics/CLI/rules/skills.md#Intimidation) +5
- **Senses** [darkvision](Mechanics/CLI/rules/senses.md#Darkvision) 60 ft., passive Perception 10
- **Gear** [greataxe](Mechanics/CLI/items/greataxe-xphb.md), [spear](Mechanics/CLI/items/spear-xphb.md)
- **Languages** Common, Orc
- **Challenge** 4
## Traits
***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 attacks).
## Actions
***Multiattack.*** The orc makes two attacks with its greataxe or its spear.
***Greataxe.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* `+6` to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. *Hit:* 15 (`1d12 + 4` plus `1d8`) slashing damage.
***Spear.*** *Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack:* `+6` to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 20/60 ft., one target. *Hit:* 12 (`1d6 + 4` plus `1d8`) piercing damage, or 13 (`2d8 + 4`) piercing damage if used with two hands to make a melee attack.
***Battle Cry (1/Day).*** Each creature of the war chief's choice that is within 30 feet of it, can hear it, and not already affected by Battle Cry gain advantage on attack rolls until the start of the war chief's next turn. The war chief can then make one attack as a bonus action.Environment
underdark, mountain, grassland, forest, swamp, hill, arctic