Background: My group and I got together a bunch of races we wanted to see as PCs in our local game, or at least to be options as PCs. Some are Pathfinder, some brought over from 3.x. Most of them are fairly easy to figure out, but really running into trouble figuring out what the Centaur is all about.
Ok, so, four questions:
28 rp for a Centaur - how unbalanced is that going to be next to a 24 rp Svrfneblin?
How does it make any kind of sense to give Centaurs darkvision? (I understand that all monstrous humanoids have darkvision, but it still doesn't make sense to me)
What is this natural armor that Centaurs are supposed to have? Do horses have really thick skin or something?
All of the stat adding: +4str, +2dex, +2con, +2wis. I'm not sure - did I read that right?
Thanks for any help you can give. I've researched what people have done online, but still find myself baffled.
4 RP is the cost of a bonus feat, so the difference shouldn't be that great.
Concerning the darkvision and natural armor, that's how they built it. Horses don't get a natural armor bonus, but Centaurs are not horses. What they are depends a lot on how you look at it just like most mythological beings that are presented in RPGs. What is a Dullahan? Fey or Undead? I would say Undead Fey but that's not an option. Just go with it that the centaur has skin that is thicker than normal, it's a "monstrous" race, not everything about it has to make sense.
The attributes are like you read it as far as I can tell.
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4 RP is the cost of a bonus feat, so the difference shouldn't be that great.
Concerning the darkvision and natural armor, that's how they built it. Horses don't get a natural armor bonus, but Centaurs are not horses. What they are depends a lot on how you look at it just like most mythological beings that are presented in RPGs. What is a Dullahan? Fey or Undead? I would say Undead Fey but that's not an option. Just go with it that the centaur has skin that is thicker than normal, it's a "monstrous" race, not everything about it has to make sense.
The attributes are like you read it as far as I can tell.
I would say 4 RP isn't a huge deal, but one way to balance these things out would be to give a bonus feat to any races that are lower, evening them out. In the case of the Centaur and Svirfneblin, just let your Svirfneblin character choose a bonus feat at first level, or pick two feats that have no pre-reqs that match the Svirfneblin vibe in your campaign, and give them those.
It depends how comfortable you and your players are with characters at different power levels. If others choose less powerful races they risk that the more powerful races will take more of the spotlight during early levels, however the rules for adjusting the average party level could work in their favour. If a few play lower-RP races they would be supposed to face foes for a 2nd-level party instead for a 3rd-level one at the beginning.
I never liked Centaur as a player race. There are far too many negatives.
Your basically playing a horse. How often do you take your horse down into a dungeon?
I still remember the funny forum post about an entire group trying to figure out how to get their 1000+ pound centaur paladin out of a pit trap.
How about when you need to climb something? What about getting through tight spaces?
How does it work in town? You cant even fit comfortably in most buildings. Where the heck do you sleep? The stables? Where do you use the bathroom?
Alot of this can be negated in later levels when you get magic items (Flight, Ring of Reduce person, ect), but for the first few levels you are just a pain in the neck.
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I never liked Centaur as a player race. There are far too many negatives.
Your basically playing a horse. How often do you take your horse down into a dungeon?
It depends on what type of campaign you are playing. You don't want Gillmen in a desert campaign, you don't want Tieflings in Mendev, you don't want Drow at a high-elven court and you don't want a Paladin in a mafia campaign. The Centaur isn't that good for dungeon-delving or maneuvering in houses. But outside he's in his element.
I'll use this opportunity to ask something that I've been wondering about for a while... how does a centaur Cavalier work? Like, are they considered their own mounts or something?
Thanks for the explanations and warnings.
@Nav: great explanations, thanks. We're houseruling no natural armor, and low light vision, as well as Ptolus-style -2 Int.
@Dragon: Great warnings for people who are interested in playing Centaurs, and good balance imho for some of their stats. If you play a Centaur, you might get left behind if you get stuck at the wrong time.
It depends on what type of campaign you are playing. You don't want Gillmen in a desert campaign, you don't want Tieflings in Mendev, you don't want Drow at a high-elven court and you don't want a Paladin in a mafia campaign. The Centaur isn't that good for dungeon-delving or maneuvering in houses. But outside he's in his element.I never liked Centaur as a player race. There are far too many negatives.
Your basically playing a horse. How often do you take your horse down into a dungeon?
This. I have a Centaur Barbarian in my currently-running Kingmaker campaign. Other than not being able to fit inside the Kobold mine, he's done perfectly fine, as the entirety of the game is exploring the wilds and chasing down bandits (to start). But if I was running another plot, say Shackled City, he probably wouldn't work out well at all and I would likely request the player pick something else.
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I'll use this opportunity to ask something that I've been wondering about for a while... how does a centaur Cavalier work? Like, are they considered their own mounts or something?
This would be a great candidate for a racial archetype. However, I would think that a centaur Cavalier would choose an archetypes that doesn't include a mount. In the case of Cavalier, there's only one such archetype, the Musketeer.
Which is unfortunate, because I know that not only was I pushing for the design team to create a non-mount dependent variant for the Cavalier (note I did not say archetype*) when they made the ARG, but people have been wanting to play a Cavalier without having to put up with a mount ever since it first came out (and I mean just with the standard races).
*Putting into the form of an archetype requires it to be mutually exclusive with any other archetype that shares one or more of the class features that get replaced. That should not be the case. I should be able to play an Honor Guard or a Standard Bearer or a Strategist and not need a mount without worrying about whether this hypothetical mount-getting-rid-of archetype interferes with one of those others.
I.e., it would have to supercede the archetypes in the same way the Ranger's choice of AC or Hunter's Bond occurs before you get into archetypes.