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

[Scribe]

Well I’m sure those will still exist, I just don’t think they’ll be categorized as subraces of a single parent race. They’ll just go back to all being “full” races again.

Isn't that what the multiverse book did? Like fizbans?

Pretty sure. Huge waste of space, but it is what it is.

 

[MGibster]

The half-orc used to represent the archetypical outsider who may be treated poorly by others for their lineage. This is something that many of WotC's target audience finds offensive. And as others have pointed out, a lot of people are used to orcs being good guys at least part of the time. So WotC might as well ditch the half-orc and just make orcs a playable race.

 

[bedir than]

If you want to be able to play a "Half-Orc" the flavor text of the race in the 5.5e PHB could just say "you can be a half-human, half-orc, but you are mechanically identical to a regular Orc".

My friends that are clearly both part of, and ignored by, both 'races' of their parents absolutely love the half-orc. It helps them feel like themselves, with a foot in both worlds. Telling such a person that they're really just an orc doesn't enable their story - it ends it.

 

[Charlaquin]

The half-orc used to represent the archetypical outsider who may be treated poorly by others for their lineage.

That’s Tieflings now.

This is something that many of WotC's target audience finds offensive.

Not inherently so - again, that’s Tieflings’ shtick now, and they’re incredibly popular. The key is, the basis for the prejudice has to be something purely fantastical. It gets a lot more uncomfortable when the prejudice your character faces closely resembles prejudice real people face (especially if you or someone else you play with personally face such prejudice.)

And as others have pointed out, a lot of people are used to orcs being good guys at least part of the time. So WotC might as well ditch the half-orc and just make orcs a playable race.

Or carve out a new niche for half-orcs. But I agree just getting rid of them seems more likely.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'd rather see the Horc become something on its own with the orc taking one of the big guy slots. Maybe they're more of an all around athlete, being good at both Athletics and Acrobatics due to having the dense muscle of the orc and the wiry sinew of the human. Maybe they'll be super-robust like ligers; bigger and tougher than both orc and human. There's plenty of things that can be done with them.

Also, just because they've lost their purpose doesn't mean D&D will ever let go of them. Even if they don't come up with something, we can be sure they'll clutch desperately to their corpus to dear life until it rots in their grasp.

 

[JEB]

MOTM's orc explicitly includes half-orc traits, which I think makes it pretty plain where this is going in 2024. (Though I'd suspected that would be the case for a while before that.) I do hope they still include half-orc lore in 2024, as @AcererakTriple6 suggests, to help support legacy players who still want that specific background. There were players in my last group whose characters were built with that in mind.

I wouldn't be surprised if half-elves stick around, though.

 

[Raduin711]

My friends that are clearly both part of, and ignored by, both 'races' of their parents absolutely love the half-orc. It helps them feel like themselves, with a foot in both worlds. Telling such a person that they're really just an orc doesn't enable their story - it ends it.

I think this is an important point. And I think what it speaks to is a need for D&D races to become more interchangeable, allowing for halfling/elves and dwarf/tieflings and such without saying "just pick one and use it"

 

[Kurotowa]

Not inherently so - again, that’s Tieflings’ shtick now, and they’re incredibly popular. The key is, the basis for the prejudice has to be something purely fantastical. It gets a lot more uncomfortable when the prejudice your character faces closely resembles prejudice real people face (especially if you or someone else you play with personally face such prejudice.)

In-game prejudice is also less troublesome when it isn't supported by game mechanics. Tieflings often get accused of being tainted by the infernal planes, but they don't have a "Kicks Puppies For Fun" racial trait so it's easy for players to decide for themselves if they want to embrace their heritage and kick the puppy or defy their fate and pet the puppy. Half-orcs, meanwhile, have often leaned all the way in on racial traits and ability score modifiers that confirm all their negative stereotypes as sinister half-breeds or crude rage monsters.

I've never seen someone argue in favor of happy shiny D&D worlds that are completely free of discord and prejudice, outside of people railing against strawmen. What I have seen is people saying, "This group in the setting is being painted with the same slanders that I've experienced in real life, and maybe the best story ideas are stolen from the real world, but when the game mechanics then try to justify those stereotypes it really hurts." It's like, the new hobgoblin stats don't mean they can't still be the conquering iron legions of Maglubiyet, it just means that role isn't hard-coded in their fantasy DNA via racial stats.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Not inherently so - again, that’s Tieflings’ shtick now, and they’re incredibly popular. The key is, the basis for the prejudice has to be something purely fantastical. It gets a lot more uncomfortable when the prejudice your character faces closely resembles prejudice real people face (especially if you or someone else you play with personally face such prejudice.)

I still maintain that it takes a special kind of stupid to develop an open prejudice about a people whose superpower is to set people who harm them on fire.

 

[Andvari]

Orcs explicitly were not always evil in 3rd edition, and I would have missed half-orcs there as well. Don’t know about 4th.