D&D 5E What Makes an Orc an Orc?

[Warpiglet-7]

Wrong. This is the fault of many of the PLAYERS.
They don't have to make these choices. They don't have to limit their own RP. They CHOOSE to.

This is exactly right.

I play against type a fair amount for novelty because some people do not or because I traditionally did not.

what’s amusing about a halfling barbarian? Why are half orc paladins cool? Why was Drizzt such a hit?

the answer is not because everyone is doing it. (Until everyone wanted to clone drizzt of course).

Playing against type or contrary to bonuses makes things fun. When culturally and bonus scores make everyone equally good from the start, it’s just a character skin in a video game.

I also think people are missing the point. Any character can have a 20 in a score but maybe have to work harder to get there. The orc is stronger but if the halfling keeps lifting apple barrels he will get there. I don’t see how this is a problem.

this probably goes to the current mind set. People have trouble playing with penalties or dealing with setbacks.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Wrong. This is the fault of many of the PLAYERS.
They don't have to make these choices. They don't have to limit their own RP. They CHOOSE to.

This is wrong.

D&D is two games: it’s a mechanical game and a role playing game. As designed (with racial ability bonuses) the game asks players to often choose between those two games.

Now, that trade-off might sometimes be unavoidable, but in this case it is easily, trivially solved.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So I just caught up with this thread again, and I want to address the two ongoing narratives in this thread. First, lets start with ability scores.

Honestly, I am curious what the optional system in X2.0 is going to be. I can't imagine it's as straight as "pick the ability score you want your bonus to go to" because not all races have a +2/+1 breakdown. Mountain Dwarves have a +2/+2 net. Half-elves have a +2 and two floating +1s already. Tritons have +1/+1/+1. Changlings and Warforged have a floating +1, and both types of humans have odd ability mods (6 +1s or 2 +1s). Those races are going to need to be updated if a "pick a +2/+1 for your character" system is implemented.

Yeah, currently the differnt bonuses and their method of assignment are part of the race balancing. If you get rid of that you need to alter the races otherwise too.

And honestly, all this is patchwork. They could have changed the point-buy system to allow more points and a cap of 16 and allowed PCs to buy higher strengths for thier orcs, higher dexes for thier halflings, etc to replicate the bonuses. It'd be even more intuitive than giving floating bonuses to everyone. As for rolling scores? I don't think that will be supported much longer; its already been an afterthought in the last two editions and if you want to roll for scores, you just take what you get. Luck of the dice.

Indeed. People come up with all sort of convoluted background/culture/class/phase-of-the-moon based methods to assign the bonuses differently which ultimately amount to anyone getting to put the bonuses wherever the they want. If that's the goal just skip the nonsense and do point buy with higher cap and more points. And yeah, having races impose ability minimums and maximums in the point buy would be an elegant way to handle the capabilities of different species, but I doubt people who don't like racial bonuses to begin with would be pleased with that either.

Ultimately the issue is due the main stat of the classes being too important in comparison to anything else. This is not only an issue with the races, it leads to cookie-cutter statlines in general. One somewhat counter-intuitive method I considered was making your class' main stat cost more point in the point buy. So you basically had a choice between having your main stat to be 16 and two secondary stats to be 14, or your main stat to being 14 and two secondary stats being 16. Then that might lead to there being an actual choice instead of maxing your main stat always being the optimal route.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Only if you have to play an optimum build rather that roleplay a character with flaws

In a theoreticalgame without any mechanical difference between races, playing "an orcish wizard who becomes the greatest wizard ever" has nothing particular, it's not different than playing "a human wizard who becomes the greatest wizard ever". If there are mechanical differences, it can amount to two things in my opinion: either the player cannot become the greatest wizard ever (because his friend playing a wizard from a wizarding race will always have an advantage) or he can but then the mechanical difference won't explain why orcs were thought not to excel at magic before. The appeal of playing an orc wizard can be to "go against the flow" and prove yourself, and it's much less epic to do that by becoming "an above average wizard but not the best because he was born in the wrong race".

Solutions leading to harmonisation between races will make them even less distinctive that they are now. Differenciation could comes from the fluff, but I am not sure it would work in worlds with established settings (for example, race A could be good at magic because they have readily available magical training so they "spot" all the good students and teach them, while race B has only 1 on 100 people able to wield magic and therefore they only get haphazard training). It could work (since your PC could be the one in 100 and train during his adventure instead of training under a barely competent village magician) but impose a race-wide attitude toward some career paths in worldbuilding.

 

[Doug McCrae]

ENWorld thread, Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda? from March 2019. For most of the past year, any thread on the topic got locked. That might be one reason it seemed fine.

These two books cover the subject:
Roger Echo-Hawk, Tolkien in Pawneeland (1st ed 2013)
Helen Young, Race and Popular Fantasy Literature (2018)

The 3e Living Greyhawk module The Only Good Orc... (2005) references the phrase "the only good injun is a dead injun" attributed to 19th century US general Philip Sheridan. The module features an orcish paladin of St Cuthbert, the "good orc" of the title.

Some further examples of the discussion -

Dimitra Fimi, Tolkien Race and Cultural History (2010)

Blog post Tolkien's Racial Theories from 2009 comes at the issue in the context of rpg-ing.

Anderson Rearick, Why is the Only Good Orc a Dead Orc (2004)

Rearick argues against the idea that Tolkien and his works are racist, which had been proposed both by Guardian columnist John Yatt and Steven Shapiro of Warwick University in 2002. "Racism is a philosophy of power, but The Lord of the Rings functions with the Christian idea of the renouncement of power... Nothing could be more contrary to the assumptions of racism than a Hobbit as a hero."

In his 1978 essay Epic Pooh, Michael Moorcock criticises Tolkien heavily, partly for classism:

The Lord of the Rings is much more deep-rooted in its infantilism than a good many of the more obviously juvenile books it influenced. It is Winnie-the-Pooh posing as an epic. If the Shire is a suburban garden, Sauron and his henchmen are that old bourgeois bugaboo, the Mob - mindless football supporters throwing their beerbottles over the fence the worst aspects of modern urban society represented as the whole by a fearful, backward-yearning class for whom "good taste" is synonymous with "restraint" (pastel colours, murmured protest) and "civilized" behaviour means "conventional behaviour in all circumstances".​

He doesn’t say that orcs are racist but he hints at racism in Tolkien's writing with this reference to Rhodesia:

Their theories dignify the mood of a disenchanted and thoroughly discredited section of the repressed English middle-class too afraid, even as it falls, to make any sort of direct complaint ("They kicked us out of Rhodesia, you know"), least of all to the Higher Authority, their Tory God who has evidently failed them.​

 

[Remathilis]

As for races themselves, I'm predicting (and not necessarily advocating for) race will be a footnote element in the next revision of D&D. In specific:

• The word race won't be used. Species, Ancestry, or some similar nomenclature will take over.
• Speciess will be stripped down to only a handful of traits: Size (S, M, L), Speed (movement in ft), Age, Sight/Senses (Darkvision, etc), and a biological single perk unique to that species (fey ancestry, dwarven resilience, dragon breath, gnome cunning, halfling nimbleness, nimble escape, aggressive, or hellish resistance).
• Other abilities (stonecunning, elven weapon proficiencies, infernal heritage, etc) will be part of a "package" system that you add on. Packages can represent subraces, ethnicities, nations, orders, or organizations that a PC associates closely with. They can grant proficiencies (skill/weapon/armor/tool), cantrips or other minor spellcasting, special traits, and your languages.
• The PHB would contain species info for Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Dragonborn, Tiefling, Orc, Goblin, Hobgoblin, and Drow. Packages would include Martial, Savage, Arcane, Devoted, Skulker, Urban, Fey-Touched, Shadow-Touched, Fiendish, Draconic, and Underdark. A species can take any package in the PHB.
• Specific settings could introduce specific packages (Aerenal, Mezzobarrazan, Harper, Draconian, etc). The option to limit certain packages to certain species might exist at the setting level.
• Ability Score mods are handled either by class or (preferred) just rolled into the point-buy system with more points.

A few points I'm not sure about: What species trait do humans get? What should be done with half-races (half-elves and half-orcs)? Would the packages overlap with or replace backgrounds?

Anyway, It's a draft that, if we are going to redo races from the ground up, might work for some future version of D&D. It would allow PCs to build traditional OR go off in wild tangents, as well as separate biological elements from cultural ones.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

"I want certain races to favor certain classes, and dis-favor others. For example, I think Halflings should be rogues, and should not be Paladins."

Its probably worth pointing out that unless you're a serious min/maxer, racial bonuses do not prevent halflings being paladins.

Because while certain classes may benefit slightly more (or less) from a 5 ft speed bonus, it doesn't make enough of a difference that it should dissuade you from choosing a race simply because it appeals to you (as opposed to choosing a race because it optimizes your character design.)

If we're judging that racial abilities that improve the performance of one class over another are acceptable, the discussion is simply over where on the optimisation spectrum you personally draw the line.

Furthermore, there are lots of tropes in the game itself that go against the current racial ability modifiers. High Elves are supposed to favor longswords. Since when have you seen one do that in game?

PC? Occasionally. NPCs Quite often. For example the elven soldiers accompanying my PCs at the moment use longswords. As elves, they are more dextrous than the equivalent human soldiers would be, and a little less strong, but as soldiers, they are still stronger than they are dextrous.
Outside of extreme player character optimisation, racial bonuses indicate predilictions rather than defining the race.

Because your ability to move 5 extra feet is very rarely a dealbreaker in you being a Rogue or Monk. Missing a +2 to Dex and a +1 to Wis because you're playing a Half-Orc instead of a Wood Elf certainly is.

I'm really going to have to say that I disagree with you there. The existence of non-wood elf monks and rogues would seem to indicate that missing a +2 to Dex and +1 to Wis is not in fact a dealbreaker.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Granting bonuses based on culture would need to be done rather carefully lest the narrative simply shift from racist to nationalist.
Many cultures in FR for example, but even also Eberron have parallels with real-life cultures, whether obvious or not.

For example deciding that people from the the America-equivalent are more intelligent and charismatic than those of the East-Asia equivalent.
Or that the Middle-East-equivalent cultures have a predilection for being Rogues (by the optimisation=class argument used in this thread) due to having a Dex bonus.
- Seems like as much of a minefield as the "Strong races should have a Str bonus" argument.

 

[Bagpuss]

either the player cannot become the greatest wizard ever (because his friend playing a wizard from a wizarding race will always have an advantage)

There aren’t many campaigns where if you say your playing a wizard your “friend” will try and one up you.

Also 5% difference in one stat doesn’t determine who the greatest wizard is your actions do, what you do with the hand you have been dealt.

And finally in 5th Ed characters have the same upper stat limit so the orc can become the greatest wizard (even if you believe the rubbish about stat difference) they just have to overcome a minor disadvantage at the start.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Granting bonuses based on culture would need to be done rather carefully lest the narrative simply shift from racist to nationalist.
Many cultures in FR for example, but even also Eberron have parallels with real-life cultures, whether obvious or not.

For example deciding that people from the the America-equivalent are more intelligent and charismatic than those of the East-Asia equivalent.
Or that the Middle-East-equivalent cultures have a predilection for being Rogues (by the optimisation=class argument used in this thread) due to having a Dex bonus.
- Seems like as much of a minefield as the "Strong races should have a Str bonus" argument.

It is way more serious minefield. I am pretty perplexed how some many people have seriously suggested something like that, especially as those same people seem to be worried by racist connotations of having orcs be stronger than hobbits. When we start to assign mechanical bonuses to direct analogues of real-life cultures we are in a pure racism zone. Like minotaurs and halflings having different capabilities is somehow a problem, but people from 'Fantasy Africa' having different capabilities than those from 'Fantasy Europe' is fine and dandy? Really? This must be some sort of a critical fumble on 'correct problematic portrayals' roll...