An Orc Wizard with 14+ INT (cause pre-tasha's your maximum is 13 I think if you pick normal Orc? (Not talking Half-Orc in this example)) could be statistically a rarity but a player might play that because the Orc in question was raised by non-orcs who were scholars and therefor spent his life reading and studying and not training up his martial prowess. His story could depend on the fact that he is not a musclehead and has mixed feelings about the Orcish culture he did not experience and a weird sense of lack of belonging to either.
It is all character specific and the Optional rule enables people to play against typing mechanically and roleplaying wise, and doesn't lock anyone away from options, and it doesn't force itself on any player either.
How can you play out the struggle with your orcish ancestry when you, thanks to Tashas, have no orcish ancestry?
For a role player the Int penalty of orcs would be part of the character. In your example probably a central one. But what you then describe is not role playing, but power gaming pretending to be role play. Yet its obvious the the primary concern is power and not role.
The racial ability adjustments are not education or training. Those things are represented by where you place your highest ability score and which stats to increase during the game. The racial modifiers represent pure, unalterable biology (aoart from things like reincarnation) which are the same for ever member of that race.
Absolutely. The (optional) Custom Origin rule opens doors that the (equally optional) Point-Buy rule locks close, in terms of roleplay and story.
That is why Custom Origins increases roleplay opportunities.
No, it only lets powergamer pretend to be roleplayer.
You can do a simple test. Do you have a character idea you want to play but in the end don't do it because you miss out on a +1 modifier? Then you are a power gamer.
The reason I use Orc Wizard so much as an example is I did try it, it did not go well at all. He was supposed to be a competent wizard who was taught by his parents and fairly smart. I had 12 int which is a +1 but compared to everyone else with +3s that feels weak, which is already a bad start but something I could roll with. I could roleplay but when the game part came along I might as well of not been there other than wasting the time that could be spent on other people's turns cause I only missed and the saving throws on my spells were always passed. Out of combat I had some utility spells but that did not make anyone see my character as useful. So essentially I did nothing in the combat encounters, which could be attributed to dice but also the fact my plus was low, and other than normal RP the character was a dud.
The aspect of my character being smart and competent as a mage was ruined and so at the end of the session he was reduced to a bad mage and a bad orc cause the initial concept and the mechanics became disparate. Other factors did not continue that campaign, but my character was essentially a joke in the end.
Heck, a friend of mine who DMs removes the -2 to Int because it is way to restrictive and acts as a character penalty.
Ancestry is not all in how strong or weak you are, you can have physically strong ancestors but be weak, or have ancestors considered weak and end up being strong. Also there is culture, language, and customs my character missed out on, which is where that conflict would come from. He didn't know how to interact with tribal orcs, and if that campaign continued it would have been a major part of his character arc. People saw him as a big orc but he didn't act nor feel like one, and depending on how things went I would have given him some sort of conclusion, perhaps getting more and more in touch with his lost culture or accepting he was different and carving out a nook for himself.
Absolutely. The (optional) Custom Origin rule opens doors that the (equally optional) Point-Buy rule locks close, in terms of roleplay and story.
That is why Custom Origins increases roleplay opportunities.
You are, once again, using "roleplay" when you should be saying "power game".
Powergaming can have a lot of meanings, and I am assuming you are using a previously stated one where the person just wants to min max and have a character that is the strongest they can be at level 1? I tend to make characters around concepts and grab anything that goes into that regard, so in a sense I can be powergaming if I grab only fire spells for my basic fire sorcerer. But I don't really care about having the best stats or reaching 20 in a stat down the line, or I'd have long ago only went for races that allow me to have +17 instead of 'settling' for 14s. I just care that concept and mechanics match so I can play my character both through roleplay and the game aspects of dnd. If all I can do is roleplay but when it comes to the game I suck, that doesn't feel fun. And if I only focus on the combat, and none of the roleplay, that also is not fun. I want them to be balanced and connected, so I can smoothly roleplay in both and enjoy a cooperative session.
Furthermore, I like to play characters that either fit a type to a T or go completely against type, yet many characters that go against type are punished mechanically while those that go toward type are rewarded. This makes it that I see many of the same type of character because other people do power game for what is the strongest. Tasha's detaching of ASIs and Race means playing against type is equally mechanically viable AND means many people who do powergame will likely have more varied or unique characters which will facilitate more natural and rewarding RP. Also from a mechanics standpoint, there will be more variance in how people use the racial abilities provided with class kits that normally would not have interacted with them.
In short, Elves can be bulky, Orcs can be smart, and Tortles can be stealthy because it is fun to play that kind of character.
Sorry if this is rambly, I have had very little sleep, also the tone is supposed to be very neutral and tired cause of lack of sleep lol
