Prerequisite: Half-orc

Your fury burns tirelessly. You gain the following benefits:

Increase your Strength or Constitution score by 1, up to a maximum of 20.

When you hit with an attack made with a simple or martial weapon, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice an additional time and add it as extra damage of the weapon’s damage type. Once you use this ability, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Immediately after you use your Relentless Endurance trait, you can use your reaction to make one weapon attack.

Orcish Fury: I’m Really Angry

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

I’ve always found half-orcs to be misfits in D&D, and it's not just because that’s what they’re sold as. Their ability score increases pigeon holed them to the strength based martial classes prior to the Tasha’s race update, typically barbarians, and Relentless Endurance sold that fantasy home with Savage Attacks being a consideration for builds aimed at critting as often as possible (namely with Champion Fighter). There isn’t a lot of space to try out a variety of builds with half-orcs beyond flavor, and while Orcish Fury doesn’t expand that space at all, it does majorly empower the classic half-orc breaks stuff builds we’re accustomed to.

Orcish Fury entered the game as a boon to specifically that character archetype, already narrow, and while I don’t love sticking half-orcs in the “you’re going to rage and hit things” camp 99% of the time, the feat does provide a compelling reason to be a half-orc in ways I hope the designers run with in the future.

Out the gate, a bonus +1 to Strength or Constitution will mean if you’ve got an odd modifier, or plan to take another one of these feats in the future, it's giving you all you need to justify taking it. Getting a +1 to your modifier is exceptional, and mirrors an ability score improvement. You hit more often, harder, and have better AC, or are more resilient with more HP and better Con saves. Both are meaningful upgrades to the archetypes half-orcs tend to play.

The first feature they get is really cool; it lets them add a weapon die of damage on hit once a short rest. This encourages larger dice sizes, as mauls and greatswords hit for 2d6, so you’re only adding a d6 to damage, whereas d12 dice get 2d12, a major upside. It probably doesn’t justify the less consistent weapon on its own, but is enough justification for me to switch things up and play with a d12 two-handed weapon instead of the classic 2d6 variants. The feature being available once per short rest isn’t amazing, as that’s pretty infrequently at most tables, but every martial character can use this ability to get a bit extra damage whenever they’d like.

My favorite element of the feat, though, is the improvement to Reckless Endurance, which was already an excellent frontline tank feature. Getting a reaction based attack roll when you’re not going down lines it up to give you an extra shot at the peak of a battle to land a final killing blow before going down yourself. Paired with the prior feature, this can be a massive swing from the brink of death, the cornered rat unleashing its fury as it faces certain demise. It looks cool as hell, and will feel incredible when it turns the tide of a fight nearly lost towards victory.

If the bonus weapon die happened a bit more often, I’d call this feat a homerun. As it is, it’s two fairly infrequent features stapled to a half an ability score improvement. That’s pretty reasonable. If you’re a half-orc and already have the martial feats you normally build towards, and are ready to start bumping up your ability scores, Orcish Fury is a great option to have access to that will sell the fantasy of wrathful orc ancestry well.

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