D&D (2024) The Half Orc. Are they still needed?

[jgsugden]

If I were designing the next edition of D&D, I'd change character creation as follows:
1.) (EDITING)

 

[DND_Reborn]

What would be best IMO would be the following:

• Each race as two strong and two weak features.
• Mixed-race chooses one strong and one weak from each of its parents' race, or for more fun, make it random.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

It wouldn't be a new thing. I played a half-ogre in the 1980s, from a magazine, I can't remember which.

I didn't play one, but I created one and introduced it as a DM PC for a bit. I was a subscriber to Dragon magazine at the time, which is where I found it. Is this what you're thinking of?

 

[Synthil]

Mixed-race chooses one strong and one weak from each of its parents' race, or for more fun, make it random.

I like that. That would also allow for mixed children of already mixed parents. Just choose from the features of your parents.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I like that. That would also allow for mixed children of already mixed parents. Just choose from the features of your parents.

Yep. For example, an orc and dwarf have a kid. He choose one strong and weak trait from each parent.

Later, he has a child with a dwarf. That child can still chose the strong orc trait from the mixed father, but in all other respects be a dwarf.

This could continue for generations of children with later dwarves, always carrying the strong orc trait....

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No, they're really not needed, they're not conceptually significantly dissimilar from normal orcs.

However, D&D race design is characterised by having mindboggling amount of separate races which overlap with each other thematically. Recently this has also included whittling away the mechanical tools of differentiation, as well as making the lore extremely vague and noncommittal. So in this paradigm half-orcs might as well exist. It doesn't really make much sense, but the whole race design paradigm doesn't make much sense anyway.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I didn't play one, but I created one and introduced it as a DM PC for a bit. I was a subscriber to Dragon magazine at the time, which is where I found it. Is this what you're thinking of?

Yeah, that was the one.

 

[beancounter]

WoTC will do what it will do. I personally have no problem with half orcs, half elves, orcs, Drow, or any D&D species for that matter.

I suspect that within a generation, D&D species will be nothing more than a "skin" that you can gumball random abilities to.

 

[Steampunkette]

So... Evil is irrelevant.

Antagonistic is the point. It's also why Tieflings are so much more popular than Aasimar.

See... you don't have to be evil to be the bad guy. Klingons aren't evil. Most of them are jerks. But we get Worf on the Enterprise D, anyhow, to show that the antagonists that the Federation has been fighting throughout the Original Series and movies aren't actually Evil. Sort of the same thing with Seven of Nine and Borg, even though they're much closer to capital E evil than the Klingons we've gotten a lot of exploration of their identity and stuff through Picard to show us that they could even be a force for good.

Orcs don't need to be CE as a race or culture to be antagonists to various kingdoms. And the birth of their children can thus still have various stigmas that replicate a specific upbringing that a player might wish to embody in their roleplay. One of being the social outcast because they're considered "Bad" or "Ugly" or "Stupid" or whatever other epithet is applied to this half-caste character.

Could someone play an Orc, instead? Sure. No problem. No reason not to. Unless the societies in the game space wouldn't tolerate having a full blood orc walking through town carrying a giant axe for... some reason. Possibly relating to warfare or other ongoing struggles...

But a half orc? Well. They're easier to stomach for most people in such a setting. Easier. But not Easy.

 

[bedir than]

I can get behind that as a player.

But, from a larger perspective, the feeling of having one foot in two worlds is a trope as old as time, and there are other ways of doing it, as opposed to being "mixed race." I think the new ideal will be a person of a race (say an orc) that was raised by elves or dwarves or humans or whatever. They will strongly associate with their culture but feel a longing for the ancestry.

Being adopted isn't the same as being mixed race. Both stories and realities are valid