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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8346047" data-attributes="member: 82106">4e? Alignment is rather less important/emphasized in 4e, but I don't think anything hints at humanoids who are other than evil. That is orcs have CE for their alignment, I think goblins in general are listed as LE. Lizardfolk are neutral, as always. Anyway, orcs themselves are described in the 4e MM pretty much the way they were in the 1e MM, though the description is a bit briefer and thus misses a few tropes. Still, orcs are &quot;savage, bloodthirsty marauders&quot; and &quot;can be coerced or bullied into serving any dark overlord or wicket monster powerful enough to command their obedience.&quot; Suffice it to say 4e has nothing GOOD to say about orcs, at least at this stage.There was, IIRC, an article about playing orcs, and they had a PC stat block in the back of the MM, though I don't think they got the kind of writeup that some other humanoid races did (IE gnolls). half-orcs do avoid the stigma of being an inferior result of cross-breeding, at least explicitly (in PHB2 where they appear). The MM orc picture also depicts them as distinctly dark-skinned and attired in a rather crude fashion. They appear to be ugly, dirty, and violent! The lore section says more of the same negative stuff, lazy, grasping, preferring to take rather than build, bloodthirsty, cannibals, etc. So, no kudos on 4e there, and I think you'd have to count that edition as 'evil orcs', though some later materials are a bit more nuanced. Still, Monster Vault presents them in the same terms as MM1 did 5 years earlier, and their picture if anything, doubles down on the 'dark-skinned' aspect.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8346047, member: 82106"] 4e? Alignment is rather less important/emphasized in 4e, but I don't think anything hints at humanoids who are other than evil. That is orcs have CE for their alignment, I think goblins in general are listed as LE. Lizardfolk are neutral, as always. Anyway, orcs themselves are described in the 4e MM pretty much the way they were in the 1e MM, though the description is a bit briefer and thus misses a few tropes. Still, orcs are "savage, bloodthirsty marauders" and "can be coerced or bullied into serving any dark overlord or wicket monster powerful enough to command their obedience." Suffice it to say 4e has nothing GOOD to say about orcs, at least at this stage. There was, IIRC, an article about playing orcs, and they had a PC stat block in the back of the MM, though I don't think they got the kind of writeup that some other humanoid races did (IE gnolls). half-orcs do avoid the stigma of being an inferior result of cross-breeding, at least explicitly (in PHB2 where they appear). The MM orc picture also depicts them as distinctly dark-skinned and attired in a rather crude fashion. They appear to be ugly, dirty, and violent! The lore section says more of the same negative stuff, lazy, grasping, preferring to take rather than build, bloodthirsty, cannibals, etc. So, no kudos on 4e there, and I think you'd have to count that edition as 'evil orcs', though some later materials are a bit more nuanced. Still, Monster Vault presents them in the same terms as MM1 did 5 years earlier, and their picture if anything, doubles down on the 'dark-skinned' aspect. [/QUOTE]

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