How to RP a charisma of 4?

I don't want to say strawman, but no one does that. Goblins tend to be stupid but there are shamans and soothsayers among them, or even industrious techno goblins like Warcraft.

Orc foot soldiers are dumb too, but all foot soldiers are dumb. There are dumb humans too but you don't see anyone crying about that. Meanwhile, orc leaders must be good tacticians cuz they're constantly at war with civilization and haven't been exterminated yet.

The way I look at it is that races in D&D just embody tropes, but that's not a racist outlook unless you make it one. Every race has characteristics that we can identify with, so i think of them in terms of those characteristics. Take halflings - they're portly and love to eat, lay around and enjoy the simple pleasures... does that seem like a racialized statement? There are lots of people who act that way, and it's not a stereotype of any real work parallel.

The point is that too many people have this imprint of stereotypes being bad, and if orcs are dumb that must mean that you hate black people. But that's your projection. That's your scope of looking at the world, and has nothing to do with the person portraying those orcs.

/r/dndnext Thread Parent