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I really think the better option would be "hobgoblins can look like hobgoblins in either edition of Pathfinder or any edition of D&D or WarHammer or so on all depending on what region they are coming from"

We are told that every other humanoid has wild variations in appearance depending on their region. I really don't see why one can't say that hobgoblins can be gray or red or yellow or green or purple with no noses or big noses or hairy or scaly or so on-- because they are a race fairly influenced by chaos that breeds and adapts quickly to various terrains. And the various tribes/clans utterly disdain each other far too much for much interbreeding to go on to even out these adaptation.

It would really be the best solution that would make the most people happy.


I made one back around when the Platest was first released. Mine isn't so different, but is admittedly more based on Forgotten Realms Gray Orcs and Eberron Orcs.

Orc
Hit points: 10 | Size: Medium | Speed: 25

Ability Boosts
Strength
Constitution
Free

Ability Flaws
Intelligence
Charisma

Languages
Orc
Common

Bonus Languages
At first level, if your intelligence is 14 or higher, you can also select one of the following languages: Dwarf, Elf, Giant, Gnome, Goblin, Undercommon

Darkvision

Bonus Languages
Orcs are naturally a nocturnal or subterranean race. When in bright daylight or in the presence of a comparable light source, you are Dazzled.

Ancestry Traits
Fearsome Presence
While Orcs may not be the most articulate of people, they can express threats non-verbally quite fine. When using the Intimidate skill, you do not receive a penalty for not speaking the same language as your target.

Heavy Lifter
Every Orc must be strong to survive, and that strength has uses beyond fighting. Their large lumbering frames can take quite a burden. You are not encumbered unless you are carrying Bulk equal to 6 + your Strength modifier and you can carry a maximum of 12 plus your Strength modifier.

Keen Nose (Heritage)
Orcs are not completely reliant on eyesight, their keen porcine allow them to sniff out their enemies. When you seek a creature within 60' of you that you cannot see, but does not have its scent concealed you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to your roll. If the creature is within 30', you gain a +2 circumstance bonus.

Longstrider
As often nomadic creatures, Orcs are adept at moving both quickly and steadily. With a bit of practice, there is no escaping them. Your speed increases by 5. In addition, you may travel 25% longer before becoming fatigued.

Orc Ferocity
(See Half-Orc section)

Orc Weapon Carnage
(See Half-Orc section)

Orc Weapon Familiarity
(See Half-Orc section)

Shamanistic Blessing
Once in a moon, the spirits seem to favor a particular Orc child who is blessed with some supernatural abilities. While the biggest, strongest Orcs rule, you are one of the specially blessed that are revered for their ability to communicate with the unseen. Choose 1 cantrip from the Primal spell list. You may cast this spell as an innate spell at will. The cantrip is heightened to a spell level equal to half your level rounded up.

Superstition
(See Half-Orc section)

Wilderness Dweller
Orcs are not only able to dwell in places others would not dare to go, but they absolutely thrive there. Where others could barely scrap out a living, you feel nicely at home. You have a +1 bonus to your Survival checks when searching for food, water and shelter even in the most dire of wilderness. In addition, whenever you would take damage from temperature, the damage is reduced by half rounded down.


Well, I think the above link just shows that Elves and other "demihuman" races take on the same skin-tones as the humans around them.

But I suppose one could take this to mean "Of course there are blue Orcs with long arms, stubby legs, hunch-backs, pig-noses and big tusks. Just because the entry says that Orcs are green and tall, that just means the Orcs here. The Orcs who live way up north can be another matter entirely."

Or "yeah, no one going to mistake the 6'4" red guy with big pointy ears and sharp cat-like teeth as anything as other than a Hobgoblin. When it said Hobgoblins were 5'4" gray skinned guys, that just meant the ones who lived in the most setting-default region of the world where they are mostly semi-subterranean. That doesn't mean they don't look totally different from over there in the desert region for example."

or "Just because an Elf has purple skin or a Dwarf has gray skin doesn't mean they are from the evil subrace. Those physical traits could completely manifest themselves in other tribes/clans."


How much do you think it is fair to play around with the appearances of races before they are no longer suitable for Pathfinder?

For example, could High Elves be Chinese-inspired in appearance and Wood Elves be the one that have pinkish/purple skin inspired from WarCraft? Maybe the only blond/blue eyed Elves are the Snow Elves.

Could typical Dwarves have generally stone-like skin, often marble gray but other times having various mixtures of brown in stripes across their body with jet black hair and only the exiled surface dwelling dwarves having more pinkish-beige skin tones and wood-colored brown hair?

Could the Orcs be all green/blue/gray with a mixture of boar and gorilla features while Hobgoblins are red/brown/yellow with very wolf/cat-like features so that no one could ever possibly mistake them for each other?

Could Kobolds come in all the colors of the Dragons and tend towards the alignment of that particular dragon color?

Just how much can the appearances of the races be played around with before it just isn't the same setting? Do you change the appearance of various creatures from what the book says when you play Pathfinder?


Quandary wrote:

I don't really like the idea of watering down Orc stats to fit the "PC" norm.

P1e already did that with Half-Orc, removing their inherent STR bonus relative to Humans.
(Personally, I would prefer to see them return to have stat mods distinguished from Humans, same for Half-Elves)

One could argue the exact same thing being true of Elves and Dwarfs who were methodologically well above anything a humans could hope to achieve in terms of physical and mental prowess and general skill.

Meanwhile, the very first instance of "Orc" within fiction saw them being slaughtered by the dozens with ease as mooks by protagonists and despite being created/bred specifically for war, not a single one was sufficiently dangerous enough to win a fair battle against those protagonists, rather even the best of them simply got dispatched easily in humiliating fashion and could be by even the weakest of the protagonists.

Granted, protagonists benefit from invincible plot armor ensuring that they win every conflict they are in unless there is an out and they can escape. So it is possible that an average human would be just as easily dispatched by the protagonists, but such is never really demonstrated within the narrative.

The singular reason that the difference between an Orc and a human was not exactly the same amount of difference between an Elf and a human was because Half-Orcs were simply designed as "good guy Orcs" and thus when it came to designing the actual Orc, the designers just lazily doubled the differences.

But most certainly narratively Orcs were not depicted as being twice stronger than a human than Elves were depicted as being more graceful. If anything, quite the opposite with humans quite commonly overpowering Orcs in physical matches but Elves being universally superhumanly agile.

So anything being watered down? I am afraid that idea lies solely within your own head. Once Half-Orcs get statted up as Half-Human, that inherently opens up the door for a less ridiculous and unrepresentative form of the regular Orc to exist.


Derry L. Zimeye wrote:
I'd argue against a +2 to strength/con and a -2 to cha/int, if only because it'd make people go wild with martial orcs and martial orcs only. No variety, no potential for variety.

I am afraid that is always necessarily going to be the case with any race that has Strength as its primary focus.

Spellcasters and Rogues get benefit out of Constitution and Dexterity as those make them tougher and harder to hit and are the saving throws..

But Strength? Strength has no meaning to or benefit to any class that is not a melee striker (and even some of those can substitute Dexterity for that). There are only a couple classes in the whole game that would not generally benefit from taking every point out of strength possible and assigning it to well.. just about any other attribute. Well, outside of the potential of a once in a while skill check. But those skill checks are surely going to come up less frequently than checks based on any other attribute.

As long as the race requires that one of its skill bonuses be Strength, it will be inferior to any other race for all but those few classes that actually use Strength.

At least giving them +2 Strength and +2 Constitution and not tanking their Wisdom stat opens up a LOT more possibilities for classes than if one were to insist on giving them +4 Strength and tanking all mental stats simply because that is what they were given in D&D 3rd edition and thus carried over directly to Pathfinder. At least that +2 Constitution is useful regardless of class-- and then you get 1 more raise which you can use for either Dexterity or Wisdom.

That means that Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue can be possibilities without feeling too hampered in addition to the obvious Barbarian and Fighter.

That is far more diversity than an Orc in Pathfinder 1st edition could ever hope to have.

Yes, they will be at a significant disadvantage at being an Alchemist, Bard, Sorcerer or Wizard, but none of those strike me as being particularly "Orc"

It is also why I didn't add any abilities that were not already in the beta test materials that further strengthened their melee combat capacity like you see on Dwarf. I specifically focused on things that would make them a good race to go wandering around in the wilderness with. Things that are generally going to be worthwhile regardless which of the above possible classes I laid out.


I already put together a homebrew version of Orcs if you are looking for one.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs429ho?Ideas-for-Orc-Ancestry


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Hobgoblin, Orc, Aasimar, Lizardfolk and Tengu.

I would kind of like to see the most traditional, broadly known ones covered first and then narrow down on their more unique things.


I hope I am not violating any board rules by replying to my own post here, but I am a bit taken aback by having received no feedback. After 5 days of popping in to check.

Is homebrewing stuff this early considered a faux pas? I have to think that even if these sorts of ancestries aren't in the player's book, that it is very likely going to be in the monster book soon after. I would have thought it would be helpful for the community to put forward a general outline of what we would like to see for those who want to play these races.

I don't know whether to think that other people just didn't see this thread (there is no view count) or people saw this thread.. and if they did, was this just so far off that they didn't feel it was worthy of critiquing or so spot-on and inoffensive that no one thought much of saying so.

I had planned to move on to other popular races and convert them into ancestries (Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Drow, etc.) if this had sparked any interest, but if no one has any interest at all maybe it just isn't worth continuing such a project.


Ascalaphus wrote:
don't make sense to learn in the middle of your career (weapon familiarity). Can only be taken at level 1

I really don't understand in the slightest why learning weapons most commonly associated with your people or becoming better as using them ought to be something that can only happen at level 1.

Becoming proficient or skilled at using new weapons seems exactly in line with what I would expect from leveling up.

I mean, sure, it might not be an ability that would pop out of no where in the middle of a dungeon, but so long as there are breaks between the adventures and you could head back to some place your race is common, spending some time getting some training doesn't seem out-of-the-ordinary.

Besides-- it is hardly the only ability that one can suddenly learn out of no where that feels like some sort of training period out to be involved in its development. How do spellcasters instantly have new spells they didn't have before, for example.


Since many agree that it seems to be one that the game could do with, I think I would like to put forward some ideas on how to handle the Orc ancestry. My initial ideas are almost certainly not the best, so I invite all the constructive criticisms and ideas on how to improve it. This is just an initial idea.

And I am probably not being 100% faithful to the Golarion interpretation of Orc here. I am taking some inspiration from D&D and WarCraft and such a bit, but I believe the parts I am carrying over are fairly applicable.

Orc
Hit points: 10 | Size: Medium | Speed: 25

Ability Boosts
Strength
Constitution
Free

Ability Flaws
Intelligence
Charisma

Languages
Orc
Common

Bonus Languages
At first level, if your intelligence is 14 or higher, you can also select one of the following languages: Dwarf, Elf, Giant, Gnome, Goblin, Undercommon

Darkvision

Bonus Languages
Orcs are naturally a nocturnal or subterranean race. When in bright daylight or in the presence of a comparable light source, you are Dazzled.

Ancestry Traits
Fearsome Presence
While Orcs may not be the most articulate of people, they can express threats non-verbally quite fine. When using the Intimidate skill, you do not receive a penalty for not speaking the same language as your target.

Heavy Lifter
Every Orc must be strong to survive, and that strength has uses beyond fighting. Their large lumbering frames can take quite a burden. You are not encumbered unless you are carrying Bulk equal to 6 + your Strength modifier and you can carry a maximum of 12 plus your Strength modifier.

Keen Nose (Heritage)
Orcs are not completely reliant on eyesight, their keen porcine allow them to sniff out their enemies. When you seek a creature within 60' of you that you cannot see, but does not have its scent concealed you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to your roll. If the creature is within 30', you gain a +2 circumstance bonus.

Longstrider
As often nomadic creatures, Orcs are adept at moving both quickly and steadily. With a bit of practice, there is no escaping them. Your speed increases by 5. In addition, you may travel 25% longer before becoming fatigued.

Orc Ferocity
(See Half-Orc section)

Orc Weapon Carnage
(See Half-Orc section)

Orc Weapon Familiarity
(See Half-Orc section)

Shamanistic Blessing
Once in a moon, the spirits seem to favor a particular Orc child who is blessed with some supernatural abilities. While the biggest, strongest Orcs rule, you are one of the specially blessed that are revered for their ability to communicate with the unseen. Choose 1 cantrip from the Primal spell list. You may cast this spell as an innate spell at will. The cantrip is heightened to a spell level equal to half your level rounded up.

Superstition
(See Half-Orc section)

Wilderness Dweller
Orcs are not only able to dwell in places others would not dare to go, but they absolutely thrive there. Where others could barely scrap out a living, you feel nicely at home. You have a +1 bonus to your Survival checks when searching for food, water and shelter even in the most dire of wilderness. In addition, whenever you would take damage from temperature, the damage is reduced by half rounded down.

---------------------
Commentary: Giving them too physical stats and extra hit points seems a bit much, I am not sure giving them an extra ability penalty and the light sensitivity entirely balances things out. Maybe the Constitution bonus can be moved over to Wisdom.

A lot of these are extremely similar to what other races get, but consistency isn't a bad thing. The ones that are basically just a swapped version of what another race gets are reliably balanced so long as the original trait was.

I tried to avoid strictly battle-applicable abilities as that seemed to already be covered by the 4 abilities under the Half-Orc section. I wanted to focus more on abilities that would allow them to shine in the exploration part of the game and help a bit in the social.

If this is well received and we can fix it up however much it needs to be, I will be happy to tackle a different race next.


Isn't an attack roll inherently a check against the DC of the target's AC?

As long as it is "roll a D20 and add a modifier from your character sheet (and possibly other in-game bonuses) and compare it to a set number" it is a check.


Tilnar wrote:
- The character had years, maybe decades, of training/practice to (..use the curve blade / kill goblins / dodge giants / etc. ) - so, then, either you have that training or you don't... Instead, we're now saying the training was actually some sort of post-hypnotic suggestion that gets activated weeks/months/years later -- without needing to, you know, be pracribg or working on it in the interim (might not have touched a curve blade or seen a goblin in years, but suddenly...). Basically, these sorts of things should only be selectable at level 1, reflecting that either your dwarf trained in goblin-killing, or he spent his time doing something else (training in rune-casting, for instance) -- otherwise what we're saying is that all PCs, even the Wizards with 18 into, are real slow learners. [Plus, if you can figure out this thing on the road, why can't your colleagues of other races?]

Maybe the descriptions of these abilities need editing.

You are presuming years and decades of training in something that doesn't come up until later. But that shouldn't be it at all-- it should be a natural aptitude towards those sorts of things.

So once you try actually learning that skill, you learn it faster/better than someone who didn't have the natural aptitude towards it.

Let's say for example that your character's race naturally has superior hearing. But if you never spent any time actually focusing on that, then someone who has spent time training being alert to sound is more likely to pick up on odd footsteps than you with your better hearing which is naturally on all the time and you've probably had to learn to just ignore most sounds you aren't trying to focus on lest you be terribly distracted all the time.

But, once you decide to actually put effort into learning how to do it, you can probably quickly learn to be better than the person who is skilled but didn't have the same initial aptitude.

Of course, it is difficult to see how that applies to Dwarfs and axes or their ability to fight certain creatures better. But it isn't unimaginable that there could be some excuse... for example, maybe it is something about the dwarfish stocky build, or maybe because they learn to use such things as tools so that if they try to figure out how to use them as weapons, they have an easier time learning it. And maybe they are told lots of war stories about certain creatures, so if they ever spend time thinking about how to apply what they heard in the stories to the real situations they encounter, they have an advantage there... but, if they don't bother doing that, then those just remain random stories with no special meaning or benefit.

I mean, honestly, I am not sure special weapon proficiency or racial hatreds should even necessarily be part of heritage benefits, they are only really there because of the momentum of tradition.


sherlock1701 wrote:
Rysky wrote:

No Humanoids have innate Alignments.

"I just feel that for tabletop RPGs, it'd just be more realistic"

This doesn't make any sense, Pathfinder isn't the only tabletop setting, and it's not the only bit of media with Goblins. What Goblins are runs the gamut all over the place.

Goblins are goblinoids, not humanoids.

All Goblinoids are humanoids. Goblinoid is just a subgroup within humanoids that is used to describe a group of races that are more closely related than most other races.

Although, I imagine from a goblin's perspective, they would categorize humans, dwarfs, elves, gnomes, etc. all as "Goblinoids" as they would presumably describe anything that has similar body structure and features as them as a "Goblinoid" as they wouldn't see humans as the central race.

You could similarly group Dwarfs and Gnomes into a category called "Dwarfoids" or Elves, Nymphs, Dryads, etc. under a category called "Elfoids" while if those races used those terms, they would probably include humans under that umbrella term.

But-- it isn't a species thing at all. Anything that is basically human but with some odd features (usually borrowed from other real life animals) is a "humanoid".

It isn't a term native to D&D/Pathfinder and is instead a more general term to describe a lot of beings in fiction. For instance, most aliens in fiction are "humanoid" from the Predator to the Navi to the Twi'leks to the Cardassians and so forth.

Of course, the term has a bit of fuzziness to it. For example, if you have Centaurs or a lot of fantasy world's interpretations of Naga, instead of legs they have something different there so it becomes somewhat debatable whether they term applies. Similarly, if something has a different number of arms or eyes or whatever, there is some fuzziness whether the term should apply. After a certain number of differences a creature stops being a humanoid, but generally one or two differences in body shape or features don't disqualify the term from being used.

Although, with Goblinoids-- it isn't even questionable. They have 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 ears, 2 eyes, 2 nostrils, 1 mouth, stand upright, use hands to manipulate objects... yeah, they are definitely within the human family of creatures. One could easily imagine them existing as some other off-shoot of Australopithecus.

Also, a lot of things that are categorized differently under the rules such as Succubi or Satyrs or Pixies and such are actually still Humanoids by definition, it is just that their magical natures are considered more important mechanically than their general human shape and appearance so they get stuck in a category separate from the mundane humanoids.


I can certainly see that with Goblins there is a fundamental biological reason why they wouldn't generally be found in classes that require years of training, dedication, study and focus.

They just don't live all that long and they don't have time for that crap. They need to have babies NOW, as many as they can, or just fundamentally fail the simple task of a biological organism to pass on their genes.

But a hard-line "Heritage X is forbidden to be Archetype Y" is too much of a hard line to take on the matter. Rather than printing that, in a more expanded rulebook it would be good under the Heritage section to explain why, purely from a thematic and narrative perspective rather than mechanical, why certain heritages might be drawn to certain archetypes and avoid others. And in that case, explaining why Goblins would have issues becoming Paladins would make sense.


I do hope that the Drow can be incorporated into the Elf heritage rather than making it a whole separate thing. But, there have been so many unique abilities attributed to make them powerful and formidable opponents, that I am not sure that a single feat would properly cover everything they have been depicted as being able to do.


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I think the Charisma and Wisdom should be reversed entirely.

+2 Wisdom and -2 Charisma.

Think about the few things that Goblins are actually necessarily good at..

1) Having keen senses to detect predators or intruders.
2) Being good with animals, particularly the ugly, nasty animals
3) Being at home in the wilds where other races struggle to survive
4) Figuring out the motives of others and how trustworthy (or not) they are.

Those are all Wisdom skills, aren't they?
Sure, I would agree that they were also weak-willed, as well as their unfounded superstitions and irrational fears, and giving them a bonus to Wisdom would give them a bonus on saves that one would expect them to be weak to-- but that's always going to be an issue so long as we have base attributes dictating a lot of kind of unrelated stuff.

I don't know that there is a good solution to this. Goblins should have a bonus to the skills bundled under Wisdom, but should have a penalty to the Willpower save.

But, Charisma? Sure, there have been some depictions of Goblins in some media where they would be smooth-talking, tricksy liars, but that idea just doesn't fit with all the other things Pathfinder Goblins are defined by.

Charisma doesn't work because they are supposed to be a people that is kind of hated and despised by everyone, seen as no better than vermin and automatically doubted on anything they would say even if one was inclined to listen.

So Charisma really doesn't seem to fit at all.

In terms of archetypes?

Well, a Goblin Druid or Goblin Ranger or Goblin Cleric ("Shaman") all sound quite right to me. I am not sure a penalty that makes these combinations off limits makes any sense at all.

Granted... a Goblin Sorcerer does seem like something that could happen and... maybe the idea of a Goblin Bard could also be entertained, so then... yeah, I suppose a Charisma penalty is still going to cause issues.

In terms of Archetypes, the attribute that seems more unfitting would be Intelligence, because Goblins just don't live long enough nor have the necessary attention span for me to see them becoming a good Alchemist or Wizard.


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I think Orcs would make more sense than Goblins too.

First, the groundwork for Orcs as a playable race in a fantasy game already has the ground work laid out.

They are a popular race in WarHammer (where they are completely evil), in WarCraft (especially World of Warcraft), in games like of Orcs & Men and in the Elder Scrolls, naturally Skyrim which has been released over and over to great success.

Basically, there are people who want to play Orcs.

The way D&D and, consequently the original Pathfinder by just copying D&D nearly word for word, mechanic by mechanic, got around this (and still gets around this) is by basically treating Half-Orcs as "good Orcs" with no hint of human heritage at all. Even in 4th and 5th edition the Half-Elf started getting clearly human traits, but Half-Orcs were treated like something as distinct from humans as an Elf or a Dwarf.

That is why the normal Orc stats were so wonky in D&D 3rd Edition and in Pathfinder 1st Edition as a result. Because they stated up the Half-Orcs as "good Orc" and then felt compelled to make the Orc stats twice whatever they had given to the Half-Orc. The Half-Orc was given a +2 to Strength, so Orcs had to be given double that.

But, already the intention has been made clear that the designers actually intend to make Half-Orcs as Half-Human just like Half-Elves rather than having no heritage.

Which in itself already creates a whole second need for having a fully fleshed out idea of Orcs and a selection of Orc heritage traits nearly as long as that for Elves so that a player of a Half-Orc Human would get a reasonable selection of feats to choose from.

And, I know, there are some grognards that are resistant and would even claim that their resistance is based on "realism"-- but, that just isn't the case-- it couldn't be further from the case.

However brutish, nasty and bad you can expect your typical Orc you meet out there in the wilds to be, it never needed to mean that they were universally that way.

Simply from the very fact that they are a race that breeds, has children naturally, raises babies to adulthood and mature only marginally faster than humans-- and perhaps, especially so, the fact that they seem to be able to do that in environments that humans and the like struggle to even survive. Out in the icy tundras, or deep in dank caves, or out there in the desert sands, somehow they are able to raise their children to adulthood and feed their tribes in order to grow into these large disorganized bands that within only a generation are a serious threat to the settled and far richer lands around them.

Just exploring that very concept ought to lead to plenty of possibility to depth for them that need not disregard previous depictions, but simply put forward that previous experiences were with militia, bandits, raiders, etc. and if you meet a bunch of armed orcs in the middle of a dungeon or out there in the wilds, that is probably what you are going to get. But-- then again-- you meet a group of armed humans in the middle of a dungeon or out there in the wilds, and that is what you are probably going to get too.

Entire races need not be locked into a particular alignment. Not all humans are good, but humans shouldn't be the only race that can be on both sides of the spectrum. And even if a race tends to be on the bad side of the spectrum, it shouldn't apply universally --unless maybe they are demons or certain kinds of undead whose whole existence kind of requires them to inflict harm upon the world and if they chose not to, would stop existing.

There is no reason that all fair skinned dwarfs and elves must be absolutely good, altruistic and benevolent with only intentions to help you while all dark skinned dwarfs and elves are necessarily evil, cruel, and sociopathic with only intentions to enslave or kill you. And so it should go forward-- you meet a band of armed Orcs out there in the middle of no where, they are probably raiders. You meet a couple in a pub on the outskirts of a city, they are probably manual labor or mercenaries who will work for whomever will pay them or, once in a blue moon, sure-- one could be a generally tolerable adventurer with benevolent intent. Although I would suspect that most good-aligned Orcs probably give up violence.

Plus, there are plenty of generally evil cities/kingdoms out there in the lands where one would expect more evil races to appear-- and, by their nature, good-aligned civilizations will at least try to be tolerant to those peoples who tend to behave badly lest they become by definition, no longer good.

And even if the main patron god for the Orcs would drive them towards constantly attacking all non-Orcs out there (though that really has to be questioned given how often they are found working with other generally evil races), not all Orcs would necessarily "keep the faith" and there are surely tribes who have been beaten down again and again and again to the point of being subjugated and, to whatever degree, incorporated into other races society. After all, if the good guys are constantly defeating the Orcs, then there are going to be survivors unless the "good guys" insist on complete genocide which inherently seems not "good". Whether as slaves or prisoners or refugees, it seems inevitable that there would be Orc members of those societies unless Orcs literally appeared for the first time yesterday.

And, in terms of benefit to a society, it is far more likely that a good or neutral aligned Orc would bring far more benefit than a good or neutral aligned Goblin who never progress much beyond children both mentally and emotionally. While one would certainly expect there would be a lot of discrimination against Orcs in general, especially by people who have been harmed by the ongoing wars against most Orc tribes, it would be far less difficult to understand why, for as much prejudice there is against them, the society at large would at least be somewhat tolerant of a few Orcs who do grunt labor, and can serve as functional militia against bigger threats, than explaining why they would let Goblins, who tend to act very much like wild animals, even within the gates of their city at all.

Of course, besides Orcs, the other one I would like to see is Hobgoblins. Because tackling Orcs and Hobgoblins as races at the same time actually creates a great opportunity. The two started off as practically the same thing in the initial D&D conception of them and various editions of D&D since have tried to do more to clearly separate them as distinctly different things.

So if the Orc heritage and the Hobgoblin heritage are tackled together, it creates the need to clearly distinguish one from the other. And the more traits one adds to each of them and notes the similarities and differences, the more well defined and unique one can make each.