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

[Eltab]

Playable orcs, instead of the earlier "orc = monster and always-evil", took over the half-orc's niche but that has not been fully digested yet.

I do not see a crunch reason to keep both orc and half-orc character races, and the fluff reasons are being edited away steadily.

 

[Laurefindel]

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.

I cam here to say something similar.

Orcs being good (or not) is irrelevant to the pertinence of half-orcs as a PC race. Perhaps Orcs could also be a PC race in its own right, like elves and half-elves both exist, but I like half-X because they add a bit of (mechanical) variety and options for PCs without going too far into an alien mindset.

Either that or make half a dozen human regional/ethnic/cultural variants but somehow, I don't see WotC going into any subdivisions of humans beyond "you come from there, you speak that regional language but you know common anyway". Besides, these regional variants would be setting-specific, and so should Orcs as a PC race as far as I'm concerned.

Half-humans have the advantage to played and look like either of their parent races. Spock doesn't look much less than a Vulcan, Elrond doesn't look much less than an elf, and the fighting uruk-hai don't look much less than orcs and yet, all are a bit more relatable because they aren't completely inhuman.

That deserves to stay IMO.

 

[Bedrockgames]

One of the things I really enjoyed about 3E was the return of races like Half Orc and classes like Barbarian. It brought some of the rough edges back that the game had lost during 2E and late 1E (and I am a big 2E fan). Just in terms of flavor that immediately added something interesting to the game. I don't think one can say anything is 'needed'. But it is about what makes for a better game overall. Second Edition didn't have half orc, it worked fine without Half orc, but it was missing a bit of the sword and sorcery flavor that a lot of people enjoyed

 

[Scott Christian]

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

In real life, yes. For game clarification, it's easier make it straightforward for players, especially for internal consistency. That's all I am saying. Game design, not real life.
Every half-race begs to question where all the others are? Half-orc, sure. Half-dwarf, no? If they want to make rules for that - cool. No problem with it. But then, what about the quarter-races? And then, why so human centric? What about the elvish-dwarvish-minotaur-halfling? The point is game design, and acceptance of game design walks the fence line.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There are many reasons why I do not like half-elves and half-orcs and would like how they are represented in D&D changed. I don't mind the idea of children of two different lineages (and think it can definitely be a wonderful narrative to play)... I just don't like how they currently are represented in the game.

1) The humanocentric idea that they are half "elf" and half "orc" as the group names for people of those lineages. Why does Human get the obvious pass? The supposedly obvious default? The fact that neither of these lineages ever get called "half-humans" denigrates the half that is used as the defining characteristic. If we are going to define these two specific mixed lineages as their own thing, there should be a different name for them.

2) Why are elves/humans and orcs/humans the only two that get defined by their mixed lineage (and thus their own entries in the Player's Handbook?) Where is the dwarf/human entry? Where is the elf/gnome entry? The halfling/goblin entry? The human/halfling entry? If we are assuming that most of these humanoid races can interbreed... they there is no reason to single out the elf/human and orc/human as the only two that get their own entries for lineage selection. This is one of the things that's been grandfathered into the current game from editions past... but I do not believe they warrant any specialness in getting their own PHB entry-- especially because the grandfathered reason for including "half-orcs" is so distasteful for how the interbreeding has been portrayed in the first place.

3) Like all lineages in the game... mechanically they are just three or four special features. If we want to give players the ability to mix lineages, then these two specific lineages shouldn't have unique abilities. Instead a player should select half their features from one of the lineages and then the other half from the other lineage, that way you can have every cross-lineage combination you want. Again... these two specific mixed lineages are no more important than any other and shouldn't get special treatment by their own entry in the PHB.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is a solved problem if you use the Level Up origin system. Heritage and culture are split, first of all, so you can mix and match freely. A heritage has traits (which all members of a given heritage share) and a gift (which is a 1st level choice that represents differentiation between individuals, similar to the old sub-race idea when there are actually physical differences involved). If you want to play a mixed heritage character, you choose the traits of one heritage and the gift of another. Done and done.

WotC's drive to make everything simpler and simpler for the teeming masses of new players is homoginizing differences as fast as they can publish, IMO, and options like half-orc are going away regardless of their RP validity.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In short, no.

I see no point in having it as a distinct entity. Just call it Orc, and assign those floating ASI as you see fit.

Same as Half Elf really.

Those races used to have meaning, at this point, I just don't see how they will continue to have relevance in whatever D&D is turning into.

I fully agree, except that you seem (unless I’m misreading you) to be expressing this with resignation or disgust, whereas I see it as a positive trend.

What I think might be cool is a system without “half” anything, but with rules for making your own half races, like tabaxi-tiefling.

For example, each race could have abilities assigned to tiers…e.g. “ribbon”, “lesser”, and “greater” and at each tier you can pick one ability from either parent.

Or maybe it would be a hot mess. :-/

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

What I think might be cool is a system without “half” anything, but with rules for making your own half races, like tabaxi-tiefling.

For example, each race could have abilities assigned to tiers…e.g. “ribbon”, “lesser”, and “greater” and at each tier you can pick one ability from either parent.

Or maybe it would be a hot mess. :-/

Level Up, Fantasy AGE, and to some extent Pathfinder don't have a problem with this.

 

[Reynard]

Different races with lor attached is really a strange legacy thing that can probably just go at this point. Give people a menu of "heritage abilities" and let them slap horns or pointed ears on their characters as they see fit. Some people will have all human worlds and some people will have Mos Eisley cantina worlds and everybody wins, rather than trying to make a list of allowed races. Of course the campaign setting books would have specific races and lore, but the core doesn't really need it.

 

[MGibster]

That’s Tieflings now.

Is it? You're right, the description is right there in the PHB's description. But I don't think I've seen tieflings treated as outsiders in a long, long time. What does it really mean to be an outsider when your adventuring party is made up of a kenku, a fire genasi, a halfing, a goliath, and a bugbear? But really, this applied to the half-orc as well. It's been a long, long time since I've seen them treated as outsiders in any game I've played in.