Jeremy Crawford's comments on the direction races are taking going forward in D&D.

The short of it: They're slowly heading towards treating all things which are labeled "humanoid" to drop Intelligence debuffs and the mandatory evil alignment, like orcs, drow, and Vistani (which is a gypsy analogue in Ravenloft) as being on their radar for some changes that recognized a wider range of morality, or "Any creature with the Humanoid type should have the full capacity to be any alignmnet, i.e., they should have free will and souls."

They will likely also reclassify some "humanoids" in the monster manual like Gnolls to be "Fiends" and keep the mandatory evil alignment, as that aspect is directly sourced from "spawned hyenas who fed on demon-touched rotten meat". Maybe similar for minotaurs. But if a particular setting does not use that type of origin story for something like gnolls, it might keep them as humanoid but without the mandatory evil alignment.

Will they still get the strength and Con buff?

Quote from: oggsmash;1134250Will they still get the strength and Con buff?

They said they are heading more in the direction of Player's Guide to Wildemount, which says "Exandrian orcs are not bound to commit acts of evil by nature. An orc character has the following racial traits...Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1." They also get Darkvision, Aggressive, Powerful Build, and Primal Intuition.

So...all the good to being a raging barbarian culture, but no drawbacks?

Quote from: oggsmash;1134254So...all the good to being a raging barbarian culture, but no drawbacks?

Pretty much, though they also don't have the "Menancing" trait that grants them an automatic proficiency in Intimidation. It's more in line with all the other PHB races, which also don't get negatives to ability scores, just positives.

No tone down I can see.  I wonder what spurred the change?

I had no idea any 5e humanoids had a mandatory evil alignment?!

No INT debuffs - heh.

Honestly i prefer race as class, but for people that like them, there are already very few negatives on 5e races so this doesnt surprise me. Though, they might wanna take a few of the positives of the yuan-ti

Why is it ok for fiends to be inherently evil though? Even Satan was a fallen angel, he was not created evil. And there's lots of fiction where a demon gets saved.

Quote from: S'mon;1134259I had no idea any 5e humanoids had a mandatory evil alignment?!

In older versions of D&D, demi-humans (elves, dwarves, etc) were the good guys and humanoids where evil. Being evil was the thing that separated the two groups. But players demanded that they be able to play the monster and are now demanding that the monsters aren't monsters anymore.

If you read the comments on this thread, it's clear that all these people want to play the most super special, trope-defying character possible. We're at the point now where the only way to subvert a trope is to not subvert it.

So glad I'm not buying any of their shit.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1134266Why is it ok for fiends to be inherently evil though? Even Satan was a fallen angel, he was not created evil. And there's lots of fiction where a demon gets saved.

5e changed all the alignment-oriented spells and magical powers to detect and impact, "aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead." As to why those things are inherently good or evil, that's tied to the fluff description of them.  I think you could change the alignment of those things, but I think it would be more difficult than just using persuasion. You'd need magic.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1134267We're at the point now where the only way to subvert a trope is to not subvert it.

I kinda agree. I am playing a good-aligned halfling druid in a Ravenloft campaign where all the other players are neutral or even tend slightly evil (though the DM didn't set it up that way). And, he's got a solid good compass and is good-natured and light-hearted. It comes off as almost edgelord to not be evil and edgy in that group. At one point I wanted to take some foes prisoner and turn them into the local town guard to deal with, and everyone else looked at me like I had just said, "Let's all roast and eat the orc babies".

Quote from: Mistwell;1134275...I am playing a good-aligned halfling druid...

I've always thought D&D's alignment system was downright idiotic, but that statement just seems so wrong!

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1134285I've always thought D&D's alignment system was downright idiotic, but that statement just seems so wrong!

He's a small man in a big world who wanted to be able to turn into a big bear.