D&D 5E Let’s Read Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.

[Thommy H-H]

I tried to remake the orc statblocks from Volo's to be 'setting agnostic' a while before this book came out, not because I particularly objected to including the standard orc pantheon in my homebrew setting, but just because I wanted them to be a bit more generic, like standard NPCs. I ran into problems straight away with finding themes that actually worked with the stats. The Blade of Ilneval ("Orc War Blade") worked quite well as a more strategic variety of orc leader, but beyond that I pretty much ran out of synonyms for "priest in a tribal culture" that weren't incredibly problematic. "Witch doctor" for example has a tremendous amount of cultural baggage attached to it.

All of which is to say that, once you remove the different deity-related flavourings for those statblocks, all you end up with is Tactical Orc, Cleric Orc, Another Cleric Orc, Sneaky Orc and Gross Exploding Orc. They can't really be anything except themed followers of gods that may not exist in other settings which, as has been pointed out, they're trying to move away from. Even if you do somehow manage to successfully file off the serial numbers, what are the variant clerics bringing to your game that the Eye of Gruumsh isn't? Or that you couldn't get equally well by using a generic NPC statblock? If they want to move orcs into being a core race (which it seems they do), and feature them in art being different adventuring types, like the orc rogue and warlord featured in this book, why even bother with these guys which are bogged down with unfortunate, problematic, "savage" theming?

I can see why they sidestepped the whole thing, to be honest.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I tried to remake the orc statblocks from Volo's to be 'setting agnostic' a while before this book came out, not because I particularly objected to including the standard orc pantheon in my homebrew setting, but just because I wanted them to be a bit more generic, like standard NPCs. I ran into problems straight away with finding themes that actually worked with the stats. The Blade of Ilneval ("Orc War Blade") worked quite well as a more strategic variety of orc leader, but beyond that I pretty much ran out of synonyms for "priest in a tribal culture" that weren't incredibly problematic. "Witch doctor" for example has a tremendous amount of cultural baggage attached to it.

All of which is to say that, once you remove the different deity-related flavourings for those statblocks, all you end up with is Tactical Orc, Cleric Orc, Another Cleric Orc, Sneaky Orc and Gross Exploding Orc. They can't really be anything except themed followers of gods that may not exist in other settings which, as has been pointed out, they're trying to move away from. Even if you do somehow manage to successfully file off the serial numbers, what are the variant clerics bringing to your game that the Eye of Gruumsh isn't? Or that you couldn't get equally well by using a generic NPC statblock? If they want to move orcs into being a core race (which it seems they do), and feature them in art being different adventuring types, like the orc rogue and warlord featured in this book, why even bother with these guys which are bogged down with unfortunate, problematic, "savage" theming?

I can see why they sidestepped the whole thing, to be honest.

That's reasonable, but again, why only orcs? Why not any other of the plethora of intelligent humanoids in D&D?

 

[Parmandur]

Orcs (Not appearing in this book)​

I'm going to do a bit of a weird thing today, for a "Lets read" thread anyway.

There are no Orc monsters in this book. There is the Orc PC race, which has been revised from its previous incarnations, but not one NPC stat block. Even monsters that previously had the Orc tag lost them for their reprinting (looking at you, Tanarukks). The rest of the Orcs from VGtM are technically lost in the limbo of legacy content.

Which naturally begs the question: Why am I pointing this out?

Well, I started this thread as an attempt to analyze the changes to the monsters in this book, as it is functionally a preview of what we can expect in the upcoming 5.5 (or whatever they are going to call it) edition that will be coming out in 2024. And while it is hard to do anything other than wildly speculate as to why Orcs were abandoned, speculation is a hobby of mine, and what the dev team cut is arguably just as important as what they saved and what they changed.

Orcs also have a history of being problematic, even Tolkien himself had criticism levied at him for his depiction of orcs, and D&D does love hinting at Tolkien. But then again, you could say similar things about Goblinoids, and especially the Drow. They were included in this book, and given a cultural face lift, one that gave them wiggle room to be free of their worship-strangled cultures. Orcs and Goblinoids even have similar PC race write ups. In paraphrasing: “Yeah, this god is a really big influence on this race, but it's totally cool to not care about that god too, you do you.”

So despite these similarities, why were Orcs cut?

The best answer I can come up with is speculation based upon this Sage Advice:

Book Updates | Sage Advice | Dungeons & Dragons

This Sage Advice provides updates and errata for a number of books, as well as answers to rules questions.

dnd.wizards.com

Orcs in different settings are just too different from each other to provide a “multiversal ” take on orc NPCs. And apparently, that is why they were cut from this book instead of cleaned up.

More importantly, what does this imply about the new 5.5 books? Not very much, other than a confirmation that the books are going to be mostly setting-agnostic or tied into the multiversal setting. Beyond that, who knows? Perhaps there is some Fay based campaign setting coming up and that's the real reason why Goblinoids and Drow got a pass.

Wild speculation? I think that Orcs may play into the book the latest UA (Giant Subclasses) was for, and give Orcs a new "cosmic" and multiversal take.

More specifically about this book: it seems to recast Gruumsh as Chaotic neutral, so that a True Neutral Druid, Chaotic Good Bard, Chaotic Neutral Fighter and Chaotic Evil Rogue could all be tied into his religion...

 

[Thommy H-H]

That's reasonable, but again, why only orcs? Why not any other of the plethora of intelligent humanoids in D&D?

Because I think the other variant race statblocks had a strong enough theme that they could stand alone without the specific flavour they had before. "Drow that turns into a spider" and "drow magic assassin" are pretty cool ideas even if your drow don't worship a spider goddess who really likes sneakily murdering people. But, as I say, the variant orcs don't really have a strong theme outside of the gods they serve. Take away that, you just have a leader, a couple of clerics, yet another assassin and - frankly - a suicide bomber. It's not like they had any history before Volo's anyway. Even when that book came out, I felt the justification for them was pretty weak.

 

[Thommy H-H]

Also, another thing that just occured to me is that the Claw of Luthic, in particular, was never going to survive the orcs' facelift in modern D&D. Her backstory is that she defends the tribe's nursery and hardly ever leaves it. In other words, the only time a party would fight her is because they'd invaded the orc lair and were just stopping off to commit some infanticide! Even the Hand of Yurtrus sort of implies the same thing but about the elderly, sick and injured. Those two in particular are bad relics of the orcs-as-CE-obstacles concept that Wizards wants to move away from.

 

[Faolyn]

Also, another thing that just occured to me is that the Claw of Luthic, in particular, was never going to survive the orcs' facelift in modern D&D. Her backstory is that she defends the tribe's nursery and hardly ever leaves it. In other words, the only time a party would fight her is because they'd invaded the orc lair and were just stopping off to commit some infanticide! Even the Hand of Yurtrus sort of implies the same thing but about the elderly, sick and injured. Those two in particular are bad relics of the orcs-as-CE-obstacles concept that Wizards wants to move away from.

Luthic's portfolio has traditionally included caves (and cave bears, hence the claws) as well as her "hearth and home" aspects. If they wanted to keep her as an evil god, they could play up the caves and fierce animals aspects while downgrading her role as a god of fertility and medicine.

If, of course, they wanted to keep these gods as evil. Personally, I could see them also emphasizing the nonevil aspects of most of the orc pantheon since honestly, they only reason IMO that they're evil in the first place is because orcs were Always Evil and therefore any god they worship would be the same. Without making any changes to their portfolios and just going with what already exists, Luthic is the god of hearth and home, Ilnevil is the god of tactics and teamwork/armies. Baghtru is the god of loyalty and strength, and Yurtrus is the god of both diseases and the cure for diseases, and Gruumsh is the creator-god who represents storms and demands his people be fruitful and multiply. Shargas could easily just be the boogeyman of their pantheon, no different than any of the evil gods in any other race's pantheon. (Also, I think that having an evil god of darkness could be an indicator that orcs shouldn't have darkvision.)

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Yeah the Orc stats were probably cut because they were all themed around the Orc gods.

 

[JEB]

Hmm. Orcs are going to get a pretty significant overhaul in 2024, aren't they? Much more so than the adjustments around the edges that drow and goblins got. I wouldn't be surprised to see the whole pantheon go except for Gruumsh. (Maybe Gruumsh too.)

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I doubt Gruumsh will go. I imagine his worshipers will remain like Lolth's worshipers. A major and powerful group for the species, but not the only one.

 

[Azuresun]

Orcs (Not appearing in this book)​

I'm going to do a bit of a weird thing today, for a "Lets read" thread anyway.

There are no Orc monsters in this book. There is the Orc PC race, which has been revised from its previous incarnations, but not one NPC stat block. Even monsters that previously had the Orc tag lost them for their reprinting (looking at you, Tanarukks). The rest of the Orcs from VGtM are technically lost in the limbo of legacy content.

At this point, I just don't use orcs. At all. There's no shortage of "brute" creatures if I need that niche filled, and most of the attempts at rehabilitating orcs just feel kind of insipid, ending up as "noble savages" or "green humans with big teeth".