Orc
by Prince Phantom
You know them, you love them, you’ve killed thousands of them across various TTRPGs and video games, the Orc is a tried and true fantasy trope that I could see a lot of people being interested in playing. That’s a shame, because there’s not much of a mechanical reason to do so. Here’s why…
Orc Features
Darkvision: Always nice to have.
Powerful Build: This is mostly a ribbon feature that will only ever come up if your table tracks encumbrance, and at those tables this actually feels very nice, basically doubling your carrying capacity. Those types of tables are few and far between though.
Relentless Endurance: This is the same as what Half-Orcs get, and I don’t really think highly of it on this race either. Once per long rest we get to stay at 1 HP rather than drop to zero. Sounds great, until the enemy hits you with their second attack. Yeah this is really only good at very low levels where this basically acts as an extra hit you can take once per day, which is nice because low level characters can only take a couple of hits to begin with. Still, there are much better racial abilities for durability than this.
Adrenaline Rush: We get to dash as a bonus action and gain a tiny amount of temporary HP when we do so, but only proficiency bonus times per day. This would be decent, except it’s replacing a feature from the old Orc that let us do this unlimited times, just without the temporary HP. As it is, you’ll be happy to have this when you need it, but it’s not anything to write home about.
The Orc feels like it’s missing something. We get two real features, all the others are really just ribbons, both of those features have very limited uses, and I hope you don’t have to make use of Relentless Endurance very often. That’s a problem with a lot of features that trigger on almost dying, if you play well they should never come up. I’d rate this better than the Half-Orc, it’s closest comparison, but not by much.
Final Rating: 2/5
Orc (Legacy, Eberron, Wildmount)
This is a legacy race and may not be available at all tables. Check with your DM before selecting this option.
All three printings of the Orc before the revision are identical, just with different lore. They also get some pretty different abilities, and honestly I like these more than the revision. We lose Relentless Endurance, but that isn’t a big loss, and Adrenaline Rush is replaced with a new feature: Aggressive. We also get a brand new feature in Primal Intuition. We’ll only go over the new stuff here, as the rest is identical.
Aggressive: This lets us dash every round, but does limit us to only dashing towards enemies. We must end the dash closer to an enemy than when we started, but that should be pretty easy to fulfill. Most of the time I assume you’ll want to dash towards an enemy anyway, but if there is a specific point on the map you need to make it to, you can sequence your turn to make sure you can use this dash. For example, you can use this dash before you move, then use your normal movement which isn’t restricted. It’s a bit hard to put it into words in an article, but if you play with it you’ll see what I mean.
Primal Intuition: You’re definitely grabbing Perception with this, but the other pick is a bit more interesting. Insight and Intimidation are probably the next best options, but both depend on your build. Survival could be good in some campaigns that focus on exploration a bit more. Nature could be good for harvesting poisons, and Animal Handling might, MIGHT be useful if you plan on playing a mounted character for most of the time.
With just a couple of skill proficiencies and a better movement option, I actually like this Orc quite a lot more than the revision. I recommend this assuming the ability scores line up with what you want for your character or your table uses the Tasha’s rule.
Final Rating: 3/5
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