Tolkien meant well and did some great things and I would never attack his character, but the fact remains that there is vicious racial stereotyping in his books that have lead to an entire culture of fantasy-fiction communities unwilling to engage with the fact that there are still some problems with the assumptions inherent in the genre.
As I said elsewhere upthread: Unintended consequences are no less real. Most drunk drivers don't intend to kill people, but it doesn't make anyone they do less dead.
So what is your answer? Do we have to genuflect and say how bad we were for having Bad-Wrong-Fun "in the good old days" every time we come to a game, so as to not offend anyone? Do we have to have to throw people (WHO ARE DEAD) under the bus who have NO WAY to defend their name/character? Cause I've seen plenty of people talking about Gary being "problematic" as if that's somehow an argument.
Altering maximum ability scores is a very dicey thing. It can be a conversation worth having (if not with the grognards in this gods-cursed thread), but it's not really any less prone to saying terrible things about people than baked-in ASIs are.
Saying "orcs can put their points wherever they want, but they have a racial maximum Intelligence score of 11" is honestly kinda worse than saying "this gnome over here is intrinsically smarter than that orc over there because of weird fantasy pseudogenetics".
Oof, I get what you're saying and how that could go wrong. I hadn't thought of upper limits that low, as my assumption was that I would never consider putting ceilings for any race below 20, which is still double that of an average human in the real world. I would just say that while most races max at 20, Gnomes have the opportunity to get to 22 without the need of a Tome of Clear Thought. It's still not perfect, but I do think there are possibilities there that are less overtly dicey than the pre-Tasha racial stuff.
Tolkien meant well and did some great things and I would never attack his character, but the fact remains that there is vicious racial stereotyping in his books that have lead to an entire culture of fantasy-fiction communities unwilling to engage with the fact that there are still some problems with the assumptions inherent in the genre.
As I said elsewhere upthread: Unintended consequences are no less real. Most drunk drivers don't intend to kill people, but it doesn't make anyone they do less dead.
So what is your answer? Do we have to genuflect and say how bad we were for having Bad-Wrong-Fun "in the good old days" every time we come to a game, so as to not offend anyone? Do we have to have to throw people (WHO ARE DEAD) under the bus who have NO WAY to defend their name/character? Cause I've seen plenty of people talking about Gary being "problematic" as if that's somehow an argument.
Who has said that your fun is wrong?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
Tolkien meant well and did some great things and I would never attack his character, but the fact remains that there is vicious racial stereotyping in his books that have lead to an entire culture of fantasy-fiction communities unwilling to engage with the fact that there are still some problems with the assumptions inherent in the genre.
As I said elsewhere upthread: Unintended consequences are no less real. Most drunk drivers don't intend to kill people, but it doesn't make anyone they do less dead.
So what is your answer? Do we have to genuflect and say how bad we were for having Bad-Wrong-Fun "in the good old days" every time we come to a game, so as to not offend anyone? Do we have to have to throw people WHO ARE DEAD under the bus who have NO WAY to defend their name/character? Cause I've seen plenty of people talking about Gary being "problematic" as if that's somehow an argument.
...no? What insanity is this?
You can acknowledge stuff has room for improvement without taking it as an indictment of your entire character. I'm also not throwing anyone under the bus, as I explicitly called out that I would never impugn Tolkien's character or intent. But his work still contributes to big problems in small ways. No one's asking for apologies or self-flagellation. Gygax was problematic af, too. Doesn't mean everything goes in the bin. We can just...be better? I don't understand what's complex or ungraspable about this concept.
Old stuff having issues doesn't mean that it's completely horrible and that you are/were completely horrible for enjoying it. It just means we can all work together to make new stuff less horrible. That's basically the definition of "progress." Or even "civilization," to a degree.
Also: I'm not Catholic. Your genuflection would mean nothing to me.
"Their only interest is imposing their worldview on others."
Pot, meet kettle. You are objecting to an optional rule being added to a game because it doesn't fit with your world view.
Also, like it or not, there is a large and growing portion of society who take these matters seriously. Many of them are the younger people who WotC want to capture as players for the long term. D&D is a product to sell, and it makes a lot of sense to make changes to it to make it more appealing to their target audiences.
You know, there is a quote feature...A tad passive-aggressive perhaps?
Which matters do these growing portion of society take seriously. Homogenization?
Time will tell if the people in question are long term players with a new perspective, or just just cancel culture types.
Altering maximum ability scores is a very dicey thing. It can be a conversation worth having (if not with the grognards in this gods-cursed thread), but it's not really any less prone to saying terrible things about people than baked-in ASIs are.
Saying "orcs can put their points wherever they want, but they have a racial maximum Intelligence score of 11" is honestly kinda worse than saying "this gnome over here is intrinsically smarter than that orc over there because of weird fantasy pseudogenetics".
Ugh. Someone suggests racial ASIs possibly counting towards raising the bounded accuracy cap and you counter with "max Int 11 orcs is bad"?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Altering maximum ability scores is a very dicey thing. It can be a conversation worth having (if not with the grognards in this gods-cursed thread), but it's not really any less prone to saying terrible things about people than baked-in ASIs are.
Saying "orcs can put their points wherever they want, but they have a racial maximum Intelligence score of 11" is honestly kinda worse than saying "this gnome over here is intrinsically smarter than that orc over there because of weird fantasy pseudogenetics".
Ugh. Someone suggests racial ASIs possibly counting towards raising the bounded accuracy cap and you counter with "max Int 11 orcs is bad"?
Lowering maximum scores is as likely as raising them. And if the gnome can get to Int 22, or the goliath can get to Str 24, or the elf can get to Dex 37 because Timeless Elvish Grace(TM), then we have the same problem we do now except worse - each class has a single 'Good' option and if you don't take that option because you want to tell a different story, you get to feel like a tool. The only saving grace is that it happens at the high end of the level cap instead of the low end, so everybody starts out on more-or-less equal footing. But it still means the orc is never going to be exceptional at anything but smashing frontier villages and creating half-orcs in ways that are best left unmentioned in polite discussions.
The entire idea behind unhooking numbers from species is to avoid that problem in the first place, so why reintroduce it? Why can't training be more important than bloodline in terms of your abilities?
Tolkien meant well and did some great things and I would never attack his character, but the fact remains that there is vicious racial stereotyping in his books that have lead to an entire culture of fantasy-fiction communities unwilling to engage with the fact that there are still some problems with the assumptions inherent in the genre.
As I said elsewhere upthread: Unintended consequences are no less real. Most drunk drivers don't intend to kill people, but it doesn't make anyone they do less dead.
So what is your answer? Do we have to genuflect and say how bad we were for having Bad-Wrong-Fun "in the good old days" every time we come to a game, so as to not offend anyone? Do we have to have to throw people (WHO ARE DEAD) under the bus who have NO WAY to defend their name/character? Cause I've seen plenty of people talking about Gary being "problematic" as if that's somehow an argument.
How did you take this and make it not only about you, but somehow make it into some sort of attack on you? This is baffling. Tolkien perpetuated some racial stereotypes even if he didn't mean to. This doesn't constitute an attack against his character, it just means he was human and made mistakes. Even if they were a result of the culture he was steeped in doesn't mean they were right, he just didn't have the tools or education that we have now about those issues. In the future I fully expect the things we are doing now to have their problems exposed by what will hopefully be even better tools and education. I don't know why you seem to be taking all this so personally. It isn't about you and those authors, alive or dead, certainly don't need you to defend them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Tolkien meant well and did some great things and I would never attack his character, but the fact remains that there is vicious racial stereotyping in his books that have lead to an entire culture of fantasy-fiction communities unwilling to engage with the fact that there are still some problems with the assumptions inherent in the genre.
As I said elsewhere upthread: Unintended consequences are no less real. Most drunk drivers don't intend to kill people, but it doesn't make anyone they do less dead.
So what is your answer? Do we have to genuflect and say how bad we were for having Bad-Wrong-Fun "in the good old days" every time we come to a game, so as to not offend anyone? Do we have to have to throw people (WHO ARE DEAD) under the bus who have NO WAY to defend their name/character? Cause I've seen plenty of people talking about Gary being "problematic" as if that's somehow an argument.
No, no one is saying that at all. You had fun. So long as no one was harmed in the process, I'd say it was good. Did you hurt anyone?
People are complex. You can still be a decent person and, within reason, hold antiquated views or outdated language. You can intend to not inflict harm and still inflict harm through well-meaning actions. The forward march of progress means, one day, we'll all be left behind if we don't adapt along with it. People thought they were being progressive back then; creating all this new stuff. And maybe they were, for that time. Looking back on it today, we can see there was room to grow. And the people pushing for progress today are going to be met with scorn in another couple of decades when our children and grandchildren look back on us today and ask, "What were you thinking?"
To quote Abe Simpson, "I used to be with it, but they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what it is seems weird and scary to me."
"Their only interest is imposing their worldview on others."
Pot, meet kettle. You are objecting to an optional rule being added to a game because it doesn't fit with your world view.
Also, like it or not, there is a large and growing portion of society who take these matters seriously. Many of them are the younger people who WotC want to capture as players for the long term. D&D is a product to sell, and it makes a lot of sense to make changes to it to make it more appealing to their target audiences.
You know, there is a quote feature...A tad passive-aggressive perhaps?
Which matters do these growing portion of society take seriously. Homogenization?
Time will tell if the people in question are long term players with a new perspective, or just just cancel culture types.
I'm well aware that there's a quote feature. However, you'll notice above, this leads to massive posts with large portions of the thread attached to them and makes the forum difficult to read through, and it doesn't seem to be possible to cut out the sub-quotes without screwing up the formatting.
It's normally use a block quote, instead. However, I'm on my mobile, which doesn't show the formatting bar. I'm unaware of any way to add formatting without that here, so I'm stuck with "copy and paste in quote marks".
What matters to this large and growing demographic is equality and inclusivity. I thought that was pretty obvious from context on this thread.
I doubt this is going away. It's been gathering speed for decades. A text which promotes inherent differences between races is never going to be popular with people trying to promote racial equality, even if "it doesn't mean that".
I think that there should be no racial cap for intelligence and wiles based-scores (Int, Cha, Wis) - now *that* is racist. However, Strength, Dexterity and Constitution *is* determined by various things, such as body mass, muscle mass and reaction times, which could be capped. However, that’s not something I personally would do either, I’d just say that smaller creatures get disadvantage on grapples on larger creatures (is that actually the rules? No memory), and play off small creatures dealing tons of damage as either comedy or really, really effective halflings.
Altering maximum ability scores is a very dicey thing. It can be a conversation worth having (if not with the grognards in this gods-cursed thread), but it's not really any less prone to saying terrible things about people than baked-in ASIs are.
Saying "orcs can put their points wherever they want, but they have a racial maximum Intelligence score of 11" is honestly kinda worse than saying "this gnome over here is intrinsically smarter than that orc over there because of weird fantasy pseudogenetics".
Ugh. Someone suggests racial ASIs possibly counting towards raising the bounded accuracy cap and you counter with "max Int 11 orcs is bad"?
Lowering maximum scores is as likely as raising them. And if the gnome can get to Int 22, or the goliath can get to Str 24, or the elf can get to Dex 37 because Timeless Elvish Grace(TM), then we have the same problem we do now except worse - each class has a single 'Good' option and if you don't take that option because you want to tell a different story, you get to feel like a tool. The only saving grace is that it happens at the high end of the level cap instead of the low end, so everybody starts out on more-or-less equal footing. But it still means the orc is never going to be exceptional at anything but smashing frontier villages and creating half-orcs in ways that are best left unmentioned in polite discussions.
The entire idea behind unhooking numbers from species is to avoid that problem in the first place, so why reintroduce it? Why can't training be more important than bloodline in terms of your abilities?
That's fair enough, it was just an angle I hadn't considered before and found it interesting, at least at first glance.
No issue, Avenger. Like I said, it's a conversation worth having from a design standpoint so long as Certain Users keep their noses out of it. I'm just leery of the notion, especially as I have an exceptionally personal stake in the idea that gross body configuration is not the be-all, end-all Sole Determinant Forever of who and what you are. I hate the body I'm stuck with and wish very much that I could get rid of it and wear one more appropriate to what I want people to think I am. Widogast's Transmogrification is an agonizingly beautiful dream that, sadly, no one living will ever see realized.
Someone telling me that one's physical form is the extent of their character and their training, personality and history should have little to nothing to do with their numbers is gonna trigger a Rage Rei Barrage pretty much every time. I won't stand for it, especially in this sacred space where I'm allowed to be what I actually want to be instead of what reality tries to force me to be.
TBH, the whole stat block thing is pure fantasy in any way you try to look at it. An 8 foot Goliath could have a lower Strength than a 3 foot Gnome. Physics says no. This alone is proof that this is a FANTASY game and thus, any kind of "racial stereotyping" is within a fantasy world and thus.....no genuine impact on real life. It's the bleeding heart, emotionally distraught who feel everyone MUST be equal and any differences pointed out are racist and must be eliminated. It's the way society is today, everyone's afraid to point out a difference, for fear of being attacked. To drag this whole equality mentality into a fictional setting is as idiotic as can be. Orcs are GENERALLY not overly bright. Gnomes are USUALLY fairly intelligent. Elves are MOSTLY quite wise. Yes, there are certainly unique individuals among every race, culture, what have you, but again, the races fit with how they lived, where they lived and the societies they developed.
Toss it all away though, because a bunch of kids want to min/max and that is more important than a fleshed out, developed world, with numerous different races, factions and cultures. Make everyone come from everywhere, nobody has any history or culture or background, everyone just sits together around a campfire singing Kumbyah. I know I am quite fed up with every little singular complaint driving the world to CHANGE, to suit the one squeaky wheel. There was a time when majority ruled and we as a society spent a LOT less time dancing back and forth, trying to cater to everyone, one twinkletoed little whiner at a time. My campaigns wont adopt any of it by default. You want your Orc to be a Wizrd? Ok, give me a backstory, using the Forgotten Realms world as created, to explain HOW he came to do that. It isn't that difficult, if you really care. If you simply want an Orc caster, then pretend your human looks like an Orc. Hell, I've seen humans I would believe are Orcs. I'm even friends with a couple.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Altering maximum ability scores is a very dicey thing. It can be a conversation worth having (if not with the grognards in this gods-cursed thread), but it's not really any less prone to saying terrible things about people than baked-in ASIs are.
Saying "orcs can put their points wherever they want, but they have a racial maximum Intelligence score of 11" is honestly kinda worse than saying "this gnome over here is intrinsically smarter than that orc over there because of weird fantasy pseudogenetics".
Ugh. Someone suggests racial ASIs possibly counting towards raising the bounded accuracy cap and you counter with "max Int 11 orcs is bad"?
1) Lowering maximum scores is as likely as raising them.
2) And if the gnome can get to Int 22, or the goliath can get to Str 24, or the elf can get to Dex 37 because Timeless Elvish Grace(TM), then we have the same problem we do now except worse - each class has a single 'Good' option and if you don't take that option because you want to tell a different story, you get to feel like a tool. The only saving grace is that it happens at the high end of the level cap instead of the low end, so everybody starts out on more-or-less equal footing. But it still means the orc is never going to be exceptional at anything but smashing frontier villages and creating half-orcs in ways that are best left unmentioned in polite discussions.
1) is it? Nobody's suggested it here, at least.
2) So having a slightly increased cap on one or two abilities (not counting magic!) turns everything not based on that cap into bad options? Everybody picking a feat over maximizing their prime ability gets to feel like a tool? A character able to run figurative circles around nine out of ten people they run into in their field of expertise isn't exceptional because they're a point or two shy of another race's theoretical potential? I thought this was about giving players more control, but this feels like letting players be controlled by some numbers on a piece of paper.
edit: also, training - stat assignment - is more important than bloodline. Bloodline is 3 points to a single ability at most, via variant human. Training is everything else. Which means that as is, the more innate ability you have from bloodline the sooner you hit the cap on your training. Why is a +2 Str half-orc not able to train his strength as much as a +0 Str halfling?
So what is your answer? Do we have to genuflect and say how bad we were for having Bad-Wrong-Fun "in the good old days" every time we come to a game, so as to not offend anyone? Do we have to have to throw people (WHO ARE DEAD) under the bus who have NO WAY to defend their name/character? Cause I've seen plenty of people talking about Gary being "problematic" as if that's somehow an argument.
Oof, I get what you're saying and how that could go wrong. I hadn't thought of upper limits that low, as my assumption was that I would never consider putting ceilings for any race below 20, which is still double that of an average human in the real world. I would just say that while most races max at 20, Gnomes have the opportunity to get to 22 without the need of a Tome of Clear Thought. It's still not perfect, but I do think there are possibilities there that are less overtly dicey than the pre-Tasha racial stuff.
Who has said that your fun is wrong?
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
...no? What insanity is this?
You can acknowledge stuff has room for improvement without taking it as an indictment of your entire character. I'm also not throwing anyone under the bus, as I explicitly called out that I would never impugn Tolkien's character or intent. But his work still contributes to big problems in small ways. No one's asking for apologies or self-flagellation. Gygax was problematic af, too. Doesn't mean everything goes in the bin. We can just...be better? I don't understand what's complex or ungraspable about this concept.
Old stuff having issues doesn't mean that it's completely horrible and that you are/were completely horrible for enjoying it. It just means we can all work together to make new stuff less horrible. That's basically the definition of "progress." Or even "civilization," to a degree.
Also: I'm not Catholic. Your genuflection would mean nothing to me.
You know, there is a quote feature...A tad passive-aggressive perhaps?
Which matters do these growing portion of society take seriously. Homogenization?
Time will tell if the people in question are long term players with a new perspective, or just just cancel culture types.
Ugh. Someone suggests racial ASIs possibly counting towards raising the bounded accuracy cap and you counter with "max Int 11 orcs is bad"?
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Lowering maximum scores is as likely as raising them. And if the gnome can get to Int 22, or the goliath can get to Str 24, or the elf can get to Dex 37 because Timeless Elvish Grace(TM), then we have the same problem we do now except worse - each class has a single 'Good' option and if you don't take that option because you want to tell a different story, you get to feel like a tool. The only saving grace is that it happens at the high end of the level cap instead of the low end, so everybody starts out on more-or-less equal footing. But it still means the orc is never going to be exceptional at anything but smashing frontier villages and creating half-orcs in ways that are best left unmentioned in polite discussions.
The entire idea behind unhooking numbers from species is to avoid that problem in the first place, so why reintroduce it? Why can't training be more important than bloodline in terms of your abilities?
Please do not contact or message me.
You know, all the other arguments and derailments aside, I'm kinda just bummed nobody wanted to talk about the Maximoff twins with me.
How did you take this and make it not only about you, but somehow make it into some sort of attack on you? This is baffling. Tolkien perpetuated some racial stereotypes even if he didn't mean to. This doesn't constitute an attack against his character, it just means he was human and made mistakes. Even if they were a result of the culture he was steeped in doesn't mean they were right, he just didn't have the tools or education that we have now about those issues. In the future I fully expect the things we are doing now to have their problems exposed by what will hopefully be even better tools and education. I don't know why you seem to be taking all this so personally. It isn't about you and those authors, alive or dead, certainly don't need you to defend them.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
No, no one is saying that at all. You had fun. So long as no one was harmed in the process, I'd say it was good. Did you hurt anyone?
People are complex. You can still be a decent person and, within reason, hold antiquated views or outdated language. You can intend to not inflict harm and still inflict harm through well-meaning actions. The forward march of progress means, one day, we'll all be left behind if we don't adapt along with it. People thought they were being progressive back then; creating all this new stuff. And maybe they were, for that time. Looking back on it today, we can see there was room to grow. And the people pushing for progress today are going to be met with scorn in another couple of decades when our children and grandchildren look back on us today and ask, "What were you thinking?"
To quote Abe Simpson, "I used to be with it, but they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what it is seems weird and scary to me."
I mean, you were pretty thorough.
I know the popular theory for WandaVision is that Agnes is Agatha Harkness. I don't know if I'm ready for the MCU to open that can of worms.
Actually, I think Strucker was a better choice than the High Evolutionary. I don't think the masses are ready for Bova.
I'm well aware that there's a quote feature. However, you'll notice above, this leads to massive posts with large portions of the thread attached to them and makes the forum difficult to read through, and it doesn't seem to be possible to cut out the sub-quotes without screwing up the formatting.
It's normally use a block quote, instead. However, I'm on my mobile, which doesn't show the formatting bar. I'm unaware of any way to add formatting without that here, so I'm stuck with "copy and paste in quote marks".
What matters to this large and growing demographic is equality and inclusivity. I thought that was pretty obvious from context on this thread.
I doubt this is going away. It's been gathering speed for decades. A text which promotes inherent differences between races is never going to be popular with people trying to promote racial equality, even if "it doesn't mean that".
There is a Bova easter egg in episode 2, though! I lost my dumb little nerd mind on that.
I think that there should be no racial cap for intelligence and wiles based-scores (Int, Cha, Wis) - now *that* is racist. However, Strength, Dexterity and Constitution *is* determined by various things, such as body mass, muscle mass and reaction times, which could be capped. However, that’s not something I personally would do either, I’d just say that smaller creatures get disadvantage on grapples on larger creatures (is that actually the rules? No memory), and play off small creatures dealing tons of damage as either comedy or really, really effective halflings.
Frequent Eladrin || They/Them, but accept all pronouns
Luz Noceda would like to remind you that you're worth loving!
That's fair enough, it was just an angle I hadn't considered before and found it interesting, at least at first glance.
I'm...going to have to rewatch that...like, tonight.
It's in the Bewitched-style animated opener, in the bit where Wanda's at the grocery store.
No issue, Avenger. Like I said, it's a conversation worth having from a design standpoint so long as Certain Users keep their noses out of it. I'm just leery of the notion, especially as I have an exceptionally personal stake in the idea that gross body configuration is not the be-all, end-all Sole Determinant Forever of who and what you are. I hate the body I'm stuck with and wish very much that I could get rid of it and wear one more appropriate to what I want people to think I am. Widogast's Transmogrification is an agonizingly beautiful dream that, sadly, no one living will ever see realized.
Someone telling me that one's physical form is the extent of their character and their training, personality and history should have little to nothing to do with their numbers is gonna trigger a Rage Rei Barrage pretty much every time. I won't stand for it, especially in this sacred space where I'm allowed to be what I actually want to be instead of what reality tries to force me to be.
Please do not contact or message me.
TBH, the whole stat block thing is pure fantasy in any way you try to look at it. An 8 foot Goliath could have a lower Strength than a 3 foot Gnome. Physics says no. This alone is proof that this is a FANTASY game and thus, any kind of "racial stereotyping" is within a fantasy world and thus.....no genuine impact on real life. It's the bleeding heart, emotionally distraught who feel everyone MUST be equal and any differences pointed out are racist and must be eliminated. It's the way society is today, everyone's afraid to point out a difference, for fear of being attacked. To drag this whole equality mentality into a fictional setting is as idiotic as can be. Orcs are GENERALLY not overly bright. Gnomes are USUALLY fairly intelligent. Elves are MOSTLY quite wise. Yes, there are certainly unique individuals among every race, culture, what have you, but again, the races fit with how they lived, where they lived and the societies they developed.
Toss it all away though, because a bunch of kids want to min/max and that is more important than a fleshed out, developed world, with numerous different races, factions and cultures. Make everyone come from everywhere, nobody has any history or culture or background, everyone just sits together around a campfire singing Kumbyah. I know I am quite fed up with every little singular complaint driving the world to CHANGE, to suit the one squeaky wheel. There was a time when majority ruled and we as a society spent a LOT less time dancing back and forth, trying to cater to everyone, one twinkletoed little whiner at a time. My campaigns wont adopt any of it by default. You want your Orc to be a Wizrd? Ok, give me a backstory, using the Forgotten Realms world as created, to explain HOW he came to do that. It isn't that difficult, if you really care. If you simply want an Orc caster, then pretend your human looks like an Orc. Hell, I've seen humans I would believe are Orcs. I'm even friends with a couple.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
1) is it? Nobody's suggested it here, at least.
2) So having a slightly increased cap on one or two abilities (not counting magic!) turns everything not based on that cap into bad options? Everybody picking a feat over maximizing their prime ability gets to feel like a tool? A character able to run figurative circles around nine out of ten people they run into in their field of expertise isn't exceptional because they're a point or two shy of another race's theoretical potential? I thought this was about giving players more control, but this feels like letting players be controlled by some numbers on a piece of paper.
edit: also, training - stat assignment - is more important than bloodline. Bloodline is 3 points to a single ability at most, via variant human. Training is everything else. Which means that as is, the more innate ability you have from bloodline the sooner you hit the cap on your training. Why is a +2 Str half-orc not able to train his strength as much as a +0 Str halfling?
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].