Most people are going to bring a well formed idea of an orc with them to D&D, lifted straight from the pages of Tolkien or the movies. It can actually be a heavy lift to get the players to think of them as anything different and there is nothing wrong with a DM leaning into those tropes of savage tribes of barbaric marauders terrorizing the more civilized races. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, though if you like to go ahead. Maybe make them misunderstood, displaced, aboriginals pushed to retaliate by the ever encroaching imperialism of the so called gentle races. Sometimes it is nice to have unsophisticated adversaries though.
And on paper orcs are not all that sophisticated. All strength and constitution, low intelligence. Their one flavorful feature is Aggressive, which can be a great surprise to the party in the first round when that orc that was 60' away is now in your face. I could see them doing this mid combat, even drawing an attack of opportunity in the process, to attack the last thing that hurt them. The warlock thought they were safe in the back ranks, well, maybe not so much.
In the goblinoid talks I kept saying how not every creature is going to want to fight to the death, and may surrender or flee if their health falls low enough. I play orcs as the exception to this usually. In fact, here's a little homebrew hack that I use to make them way more interesting but definitely tougher. Half orc PCs have relentless endurance, when they drop to 0 hit points they come back up to 1. So where's that coming from? Orcs of course, so I give mine relentless endurance and now the party has to kill them twice essentially. And I really ham up the Orc being out on their feat and shaking themselves out of it to take another swing with their great axe. Maybe then, once they've had a taste of meeting their maker, Gruumsh, do I have them consider backing off of a fight.
I love Gruumsh One-Eye and I think that is solid lore and culture to make your orcs a little more interesting. I love just saying it, Gruumsh, you can almost hear the protruding tusks. Give your players a taste of deeper Orc culture and capabilities by throwing in a one eyed shaman with a giant spectral spear and the ability to bless it's allies and command it's enemies. Or throw in a Orog and now the Orcs are doing maneuvers like hobgoblins and we've got a real battle on our hands.
Again I will say that sometimes less is more, but if you want more Volo's goes into the orc pantheon of demonic deities and each one has it's own angle and orc variations with their own abilities. If I was going that route I might focus in or one or two, but variety is the spice of life and if you wanted an orc based campaign that's a great place to start.
You'll also find orcs getting cozy with ogres, cozy enough in fact to make half-ogres. Ogres are giants, maybe the lowest wrung of the ladder but still giants, so it's easy to Kevin Bacon orcs to giants if you want to continue escalating the stakes and CR levels, or your giant's need some infantry.
Up next we're talking about one of my favorite little lowbies: Kobolds.
