D&D half-orc lore and roleplay tips 

Thank you, that just made my day :)

Not to knock on your idea, but I hope to give you additional plot hooks for your character. Technically this combination of Orc and Drow mixed is impossible. Not because there's a physical issue, but in the early days of the lore. Gruumish and Korelon the Orc and Elf gods respectively, they fought, it was bloody messy and a disaster. They fought over where their races would first settle on the material world. Short answer is, orcs got nothing, and so Gruumish told his orcs they can have all the land, take what they want, build homes wherever, and breed with whomever. However, Gruumish made it impossible for orcs to breed with elves, they are mortal enemies. So for your character I think you could have a crazy explanation for why this abomination even exists. Gl buddy!

@@LoreFoundry maybe Lolth’s rebellion breaks the enmity between Gruumish and her children? Hell, maybe they could plot Correlon’s downfall together

The concept sound amazing, the "forbidden child" of two opposing civilizations whose very own god are mortal enemies

Oh heterosis... You just took me back on a nostalgia trip back to my colege years :) But yes, that's a very good point, and it would produce a more interesting creature to explore through roleplay, without doubt

My point was not so much that they shouldn't exist because they're not fun characters, but more that since they share almost everything with orcs, but orcs have much more lore and depth, I believe WotC should have made the full-blood orcs the main playable ancestry instead of only going halfway with the half-orc. Sorry for the confusion

​@@TheFirstArcadianDnDthe problem with playing full blooded orcs is that they are kinda irredeemable in the forgotten realms setting.

@@SonicSanctuarynot grey orcs.

​@@SonicSanctuary Cool. Change that. Make half-orcs a subrace of playable orcs that, rather than being half orc, half human. Are just a more intelligent, and thus more capable of moral and ethical thought.

@@justinhigginbottom8668 i'd totally use this homebrew. I was just speaking "rules as written" kind of thing.

Obrigado e um grande abraço de Portugal ehehe :D

Man... I'm not even sure I agree but that's one hell of a fantasic concept! I might need to apply that to my homebrew world XD

It makes perfect sense. A memory wipe would overwrite any behavioural biases and social paradigms indoctrinated by average orcish culture. It really seems an amazing concept. Actually, I might steal your idea for an npc :p

My main argument is that half-orc shouldn't exist because canonically there is little to no distinction between half-orcs and orcs, and in almost all situations where significant differences exist, orcs are more interesting. I agree orcs score higher than humans in many areas (I'd even argue that they score higher in average)

Sounds awesome, and in a way I think it justifies a bit more the existence of a half-orc ancestry since they become more distinguishable from regular orcs. Also, that setting sounds amazing to play in :D

@@TheFirstArcadianDnD I appreciate it :). Its a setting I've been passively working on for a few years but I dont know if I want to write down with 5e rules in mind or make my own system considering theres a lot of different mechanics I want to do with it that arent in 5e, like faction approval, and unique perks based on faction alignment. For instance, theres an order of warriors called 'mournguard' which defend their home city of sleeping spire and hunt down evil necromancers and the restless dead. Their souls are owned by a more benevolent lich and their biggest faction perk is they cant die. When they fall in battle, the liches magic raises them back up and its treated as a long rest. Only other liches can permakill them. So if players join the mournguard, it's a massive commitment but it completely changes the way they'll play the game, allowing for more difficult encounters since death isnt a threat, only losing time in very important time sensitive quests. A race restriction I did put in my setting was Elves and gnomes though, since I wanted elves and gnomes to be more like how they're presented in gaelic mythology, so they kinda take similar positions to devil's, leaning in from the faewild to make faustian bargains or launching raids for slaves, plunder, and souls. Half elves are viewed with extreme suspicion because of this and are generally pretty rare. I called the setting Wostroya, but focused more specifically on 1 region, wostroya itself, which is a mountainous region with a climate similar to the alps and po valley, but the size of the Tibetan plateau, and focused on just really fleshing out everything there so my players will have plenty to do

It's a kind of structure system for multi-level constructions, like stage roofs, exhibition roofs, etc. Google it.

​@@TheFirstArcadianDnDlol! I love it! 😂

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, but what I meant was actually the opposite. In my opinion, half-orcs fail as a half-species concept precisely because they aren't more than the sum of both its heritages. An example of a good half-species concept is the half-elf, since they're not really elves, but neither are they humans. They draw from both heritages but at the same time provide a new, different, hybrid concept that brings a completely different roleplaying experience, capitalizing on their close proximity with both different cultures. Half-orcs, on the other hand, fail to be as distinct as a species, and I find that people often play them as humans or orcs, but rarely as their own thing. And note as well that this isn't the half-orc's fault, as an ancestry concept, but rather on WotC for not providing additional lore to help flesh them out better. In your own campaign, this could be easily corrected by homebrewing, but I make these videos using Forgotten Realms lore as a base, so that's all I can really comment on. I also need to point out I never said biracial people of any kind shouldn't exist, and I never will. The purpose of this video was to discuss a fictional fantasy ancestry. Not only it does not reflect anything related to real life matters, but also pertains a hybrid between two different species, not a child of two humans of different ethnicities. I kindly ask that you don't draw those inferences from this video. Not only they are very different from the point I wanted to make, but they don't reflect my personal opinions either.

Making an argument using FR as a base is not invalidating the argument. FR is not only the most proeminent D&D setting but it is the official and default setting for 5e. We do have books on other settings, but they are not as comprehensive and there is no point making an argument for each setting, since some settings don't even have orcs officially, like Theros. If you play most of the adventure modules, they will be taking place in FR, so unless you have a heavily homebrewed FR, his points are pretty solid from a default setting and lore point of view.

In these videos, I'm sticking to FR lore only. I'd love to cover every major setting in existence, but that would take waaaay too much time :p

Also, you made me remember one of my favorite player characters of all time, a half-orc paladin named Garth. That player wrote me a full 12-page short story for his background, divided in two chapters. The first was called 'Garth the half-orc' and the second was called 'Garth the half-man'. It was amazing!

I played a pretty incredible Life Cleric Half Orc Grin. He had suffered at the hands of orcs, so he swore he would ease the suffering of others. He worshipped Illmater and used life transference to take damage and heal his allies up. And gotta remember the warding bond to soak up half the damage someone takes.

and you know what i mean by that

This is quite possibly the worse statement read so far no offense. “child born from not loving couples” Well welcome to real life human reality, especially with African Americans in the USA. Humans rape and babies are born, so if it’s real why can’t it be in something of imagination…?

Which is sad, even people who play dwarves are soft and kind to everyone. Just remember Bruenor from Drizzt books, and how great his character is.

I’m currently working on my first half orc, and I’d agree. I’m working on figuring out a way to incorporate Gruumsh into his traits as well as what I’d like the character to be, and it’s honestly really fun and interesting trying to find a balance

Dude... I said multiple times I love them...

I think that the new D&D interation was attempting to provide a similar framework where people would be able to mix all ancestries in half-half hybrids. I would point one thing in defense of the half-elves, though. Since they go through the whole "part of both worlds but belonging to none" thing, they're actually very interesting to explore psychologically. If they live among humans, they're doomed to see their childhood friends and most people they know (and their children, possibly) age and die before them, but if they live among elves, it seems time is stopped for everyone aside from them, and stays the same while they wither away. In that sense, since they're distinct from elves and humans, it might be worthwhile keeping them as a main playable ancestry.

Why isn't it lovespeech towards orcs?