I've been wanting to include a playable Centaur race for my campaign setting for a while now. I originally toned down the MM one in 3.5, reducing its hit dice and LA a bit and getting rid of the odd loophole that allowed a centaur to wield large sized weapons (since its torso shouldn't really be any larger than a normal human's). With Pathfinder, I'm tempted to go back to the drawing board. I originally just got rid of the +1 LA that I'd had before, but I'm considering getting rid of the hit dice entirely. If you'd be so kind, could you look this over and give me your thoughts about how well it balances next to the PF races?
• Type: Monstrous Humanoid
• +2 Strength, +2 Constitution, –2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom. As larger creatures, Centaurs are stronger and hardier. They are also gifted with good instincts, but are not as bright as some races.
• Large: As a large creature, a Centaur occupies a 10' space in combat. He suffers a -1 size penalty to attack rolls and Armor Class, a -4 size penalty to Stealth checks, and a +1 size bonus to CMB and CMD. In addition, his carrying capacity is twice that of a medium sized creature of comparable strength.
• Long: As a long creature, a Centaur may move through a 5' wide space such as a corridor without suffering penalties for squeezing, so long as there is always at least 10' of space for him to fit into. However, while squeezing, a Centaur suffers a -2 penalty when attacking flanking opponents, and suffers a -2 AC against attacks from flankers. In addition, his reach is only 5', like a medium creature.
• Medium Build: A Centaur counts as a medium creature when determining penalties for weapon usage. Typically, a Centaur wields weapons sized for medium creatures.
• Centaur base land speed is 50 feet.
• Low-Light Vision: A Centaur can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. He retains the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions. Despite being a Monstrous Humanoid, a Centaur does not have Dark Vision.
• Stability: As a quadruped, a Centaur gains a +4 bonus to resist being tripped or overrun, as normal.
• +3 Natural Armor bonus. A Centaur has a tougher hide than most humanoid races.
• Saddleborn Charge: A Centaur employing a lance deals increased damage when it charges, as if it was a rider on a mount.
• Natural Horseman: A Centaur gains a +2 racial bonus to Handle Animal skill checks made with horses and ponies.
• Natural Weapons: A Centaur can kick with its hooves, making two natural secondary attacks (-5 penalty to attack rolls at highest Base Attack Bonus). These hooves each do 1d3 + half the Centaur's Strength modifier damage.
• Favored Class: Ranger or Scout. (I am still using specific Favored Classes in my games).
It seems balanced to me, even a little underpowered. I would give a racial bonus with survival and k. nature. Maybe a racial training with spears or a charge bonus.
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I like centaurs too, but I always thought they'd be tricky to implement in a campaign -- especially dungeon/urban crawls.
Regarding the proposed racial features: I think the land speed of 50 is a tad generous for a PC race -- I would go with 40 -- and the +3 natural armor seems really too high as well -- I would go with +1, or +2 at the most. I know the centaur in the SRD is better, but I'd err on the side of caution and see how it plays with more modest values. Besides, one can say the PC version stems from a slightly smaller and more organized/civilized variety than the kind known to exist in the wild...
Heladriell's remarks regarding skills are good ideas to consider I think.
Btw: Did you know that in RL female horses rule the roost so-to-speak? In other words, horse herds are socially matriarchal -- something to consider when writing up some fluff for your centaur race maybe... :-)
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The problem I have with centaurs in general is that they have two halves that are quite different.
I like what you've done with the Large size, but Medium Build thing, for instance, as previous Centaur write ups have often considered them size Large, and thus able to use Large weapons, despite having human-sized limbs and torsos.
You might want to use the encumberance rules for size Large quadrupeds, as well (PHB p. 162).
In theory, a +2 Strength might not even make sense, as the upper torso of a Centaur needn't necessarily be stronger than a human torso (although the Centaur might get a significant bonus to Str checks where he can make use of his lower-body strength, or even have a split Strength score, so that his hooves hit harder than his longsword).
Since only their horse backside has the +3 natural armor, and their human torso wouldn't necessarily be any tougher than human skin, perhaps their natural armor could be toned down to +1 (making them thicker skinned than humans, but thinner-skinned than horses). They can make up the difference with armor, at an increased 'barding' cost.
Allowing a centaur to wear a chain shirt or breastplate and get full value from it could be dubious, considering how much of their body will not be protected by that armor (unlike a human, they'll have a plethora of vital organs still exposed in their horse-half).
If you want to deal with it (and it sounds like a bit of a pain in the rump!), allowing some sort of half-and-half armor (half value for a chain shirt, half value for a suit of chain barding on their lower half, adding up to the same sort of AC bonus in the end), could be do-able, but there may end up being corner cases that result in the armor rounding up or down bizarrely. Perhaps torso armor is half value (round down) while horse barding is half value (round up)? Meh, I just realized what a nightmare that would be dealing with Armor Check penalties and Max Dex bonus stacking. Stick to Barding!
No need to fiddle with barding and so on. There are already rules in the basic book for armor for non-humanoid creatures. Armor for a Large sized, non-humanoid creature costs four times the base price and weighs twice what a Medium humanoid's armor would weigh.
The extra costs associated with the armor was one of the reasons I wasn't too terribly concerned with the natural armor bonus.
I was considering getting rid of the STR score boost, though. They already can carry more, by virtue of being large quadrupeds.
I don't know about the natural armor being reduced to +1. At that point, they're paying more for armor bonuses, and their natural armor only serves to offset their AC penalty for large size. Perhaps a +2 would be better.
They may also need a penalty on climb checks, because, let's face it, they shouldn't be the best at climbing walls/ropes/etc. I do like giving them a bonus on Survival checks...
• Type: Monstrous Humanoid
• +2 Constitution, –2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom. As larger creatures, Centaurs are hardier. They are also gifted with good instincts, but are not as bright as some races.
• Large: As a large creature, a Centaur occupies a 10' space in combat. He suffers a -1 size penalty to attack rolls and Armor Class, a -4 size penalty to Stealth checks, and a +1 size bonus to CMB and CMD. In addition, his benefits from increased carrying capacity, as a large quadruped, as described on page 170 of the PFRPG.
• Long: As a long creature, a Centaur may move through a 5' wide space such as a corridor without suffering penalties for squeezing, so long as there is always at least 10' of space for him to fit into. However, while squeezing, a Centaur suffers a -2 penalty when attacking flanking opponents, and suffers a -2 AC against attacks from flankers. In addition, his reach is only 5', like a medium creature.
• Medium Build: A Centaur counts as a medium creature when determining penalties for weapon usage. Typically, a Centaur wields weapons sized for medium creatures.
• Centaur base land speed is 40 feet.
• Low-Light Vision: A Centaur can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. He retains the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions. Despite being a Monstrous Humanoid, a Centaur does not have Dark Vision.
• Stability: As a quadruped, a Centaur gains a +4 bonus to resist being tripped or overrun, as normal.
• +2 Natural Armor bonus. A Centaur has a tougher hide than most humanoid races.
• Saddleborn Charge: A Centaur employing a lance deals increased damage when it charges, as if it was a rider on a mount.
• Natural Horseman: A Centaur gains a +2 racial bonus to Handle Animal skill checks made with horses and ponies.
• Wilderness Lore: A Centaur gains a +2 racial bonus on Survival and Knowledge (Nature) checks.
• Awkward Climber: A Centaur suffers a -2 penalty on Climb checks.
• Natural Weapons: A Centaur can kick with its hooves, making two natural secondary attacks (-5 penalty to attack rolls at highest Base Attack Bonus). These hooves each do 1d3 + half the Centaur's Strength modifier damage.
• Weapon Familiarity: A Centaur is proficient in the longspear and the lance. In addition, they treat any weapon with the word "centaur" in the name as a martial weapon.
• Favored Class: Ranger or Scout. (I am still using specific Favored Classes in my games).
This is pretty nice. I might borrow this for my own. I've been looking for a non core race to have and Centaurs have always been a favorite of mine.
As a side note, are there any weapons in 3.5 splat books for centaurs?
Not to my knowledge. I'm planning on creating a centaur lance type thing that allows them to maybe either do more damage or attack adjacent or something. Not 100% on it yet...
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Not to my knowledge. I'm planning on creating a centaur lance type thing that allows them to maybe either do more damage or attack adjacent or something. Not 100% on it yet...
A lance that locks onto the arm with a built in half-shield / armored sleeve sort of affair (originally made of hide, wood and bone, but also can be made of metal) could be neat. Sort of like a ginormous Shoanti Klar, only with a lance sticking out of the end, and armored plates going all the way up the forearm, instead of a short sword.
The 'shielded lance' could give the character a +1 AC bonus while charging, as a minor perk.
Lances often had a fairly long heavy handle as well, to try and counterweight the shaft. A centaur lance might have a slenderer handle with the weight at the end, like the head of a mace, and allow the lance-user to attack foes in adjacent squares using the mace-head at the other end (light mace damage, due to the awkward nature of the swing, even if the weapon is large enough to more closely resemble a heavy mace). Various jousting movies sometimes show knights bashing someone who got too close in the face with the haft of their lance, this would just be a lance designed for that sort of thing (and giving the lance-user something to use in close combat, or to take an AoO on someone next to him). Someone not proficient in centaur lance wouldn't get these AoOs, and would suffer a non-proficiency penalty attempting to bash someone with the hilt, although he could still use the centaur lance as a lance using the standard proficiency.
My own mental image of centaurs has them using lots of bows (fighting mongol style, and probably being considered to have the equivalent of mounted combat for free (although gaining none of the benefits of that feat), allowing them to qualify for feats further up that tree) and spears / lances. Other plains Indians style weapons, such as throwing axes and daggers (and bolas?) better suit the 'feel' of Centaurs for me than swords, big axes or maces. They would also completely ignore the penalties for mounted archery (and never need the feat of that name, since they aren't 'mounted').
Of course, that's just my mental image. The centaurs of a given world could be less plains Indian and more Roman Cavalry inspired, with gleaming bronze breastplates, crimson banners atop eagle-crested poles, shields, spears and short swords!
Or both. 'Free-range' centaurs might live a tribal nomadic existence, while a 'settled' centaur community lives deep within civilized Taldor, serving as elite cavalry in full fancy dress and swift messengers for the Taldan military.
A lance that locks onto the arm with a built in half-shield / armored sleeve sort of affair (originally made of hide, wood and bone, but also can be made of metal) could be neat. Sort of like a ginormous Shoanti Klar, only with a lance sticking out of the end, and armored plates going all the way up the forearm, instead of a short sword.
The 'shielded lance' could give the character a +1 AC bonus while charging, as a minor perk.
Lances often had a fairly long heavy handle as well, to try and counterweight the shaft. A centaur lance might have a slenderer handle with the weight at the end, like the head of a mace, and allow the lance-user to attack foes in adjacent squares using the mace-head at the other end (light mace damage, due to the awkward nature of the swing, even if the weapon is large enough to more closely resemble a heavy mace). Various jousting movies sometimes show knights bashing someone who got too close in the face with the haft of their lance, this would just be a lance designed for that sort of thing (and giving the lance-user something to use in close combat, or to take an AoO on someone next to him). Someone not proficient in centaur lance wouldn't get these AoOs, and would suffer a non-proficiency penalty attempting to bash someone with the hilt, although he could still use the centaur lance as a lance using the standard proficiency.
I do like this idea a fair bit.
My own mental image of centaurs has them using lots of bows (fighting mongol style, and probably being considered to have the equivalent of mounted combat for free (although gaining none of the benefits of that feat), allowing them to qualify for feats further up that tree) and spears / lances. Other plains Indians style weapons, such as throwing axes and daggers (and bolas?) better suit the 'feel' of Centaurs for me than swords, big...
Oh, I don't think that even involving Mounted Archery is a good idea. They just move and shoot, like any other creature. Mounted Archery would allow them to double move and shoot, and I don't know if that's such a good idea, though I suppose there could be a specific feat for it. Allowing them to count as having "Mounted Combat" for the purposes of things like Ride-By-Attack would work well enough, though.
I would still add the str bonus. A horse's body can make some blows hurt a lot, and when fighting, people doesn't just stand still moving weapons with the arms. The lower body adds a lot to the strength of the hits.
The speed of 50' shouldn't be overpowered eighter. It is balanced with the inability to go to certain places, or to fight in narrow places. They are half horses, they can't just run like some random barbarian.
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Oh, I don't think that even involving Mounted Archery is a good idea. They just move and shoot, like any other creature. Mounted Archery...
Mounted Archery just halves the penalties for using missile weapons while mounted (which Centaurs should ignore anyway, not being 'mounted'). It's pretty much an irrelevant feat for them, and since it's not even a prerequisite (unlike Mounted Combat), the Centaur can safely pretend it doesn't even exist.
Mounted Combat, on the other hand, should not be given to the Centaur (since, mechanically, it makes no sense for them anyway), but the Centaur should have it as a 'virtual prerequisite' to qualify for other stuff (like Spirited Charge).
Just thought I'd point out that I've also posted a homebrewed Minotaur race here if anyone would care to look it over, as well. I'm appreciative of the support.
I liked the bonuses from the 1st posting. I played a Savage Species Centaur in a short campaign once and the STR bonuses weren't overly bad all things considered.
Being half horse, sure they can carry more but a lot of that STR can be derived from the lower torso. Think about modern athletes, a lot of sports use lower torso in conjunction with the top half. A shot putter for example needs a good solid lower half to start the throw.
So count me in for an STR bonus of some kind at some point.
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Okay, so, are we thinking something more like this:
• +2 Constitution, –2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom. As larger creatures, Centaurs are hardier. They are also gifted with good instincts, but are not as bright as some races.
• Large: As a large creature, a Centaur occupies a 10' space in combat. He suffers a -1 size penalty to attack rolls and Armor Class, a -4 size penalty to Stealth checks, and a +1 size bonus to CMB and CMD. In addition, his benefits from increased carrying capacity, as a large quadruped, as described on page 170 of the PFRPG.
• Long: As a long creature, a Centaur may move through a 5' wide space such as a corridor without suffering penalties for squeezing, so long as there is always at least 10' of space for him to fit into. However, while squeezing, a Centaur suffers a -2 penalty when attacking flanking opponents, and suffers a -2 AC against attacks from flankers. In addition, his reach is only 5', like a medium creature.
• Medium Build: A Centaur counts as a medium creature when determining penalties for weapon usage. Typically, a Centaur wields weapons sized for medium creatures.
• Centaur base land speed is 50 feet.
• Low-Light Vision: A Centaur can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. He retains the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions. Despite being a Monstrous Humanoid, a Centaur does not have Dark Vision.
• Stability: As a quadruped, a Centaur gains a +4 bonus to resist being tripped or overrun, as normal.
• +2 Natural Armor bonus. A Centaur has a tougher hide than most humanoid races.
• Saddleborn Charge: A Centaur employing a lance deals increased damage when it charges, as if it was a rider on a mount.
• Mounted Combatant: A Centaur counts as having the Mounted Combat feat for the purpose of meeting all prerequisites, though he may not take the feat itself. (Maybe also roll Saddleborn Charge into this ability...)
• Natural Horseman: A Centaur gains a +2 racial bonus to Handle Animal skill checks made with horses and ponies.
• Wilderness Lore: A Centaur gains a +2 racial bonus on Survival and Knowledge (Nature) checks.
• Awkward Climber: A Centaur suffers a -2 penalty on Climb checks.
• Natural Weapons: A Centaur can kick with its hooves, making two natural secondary attacks (-5 penalty to attack rolls at highest Base Attack Bonus). These hooves each do 1d3 + half the Centaur's Strength modifier damage.
• Weapon Familiarity: A Centaur is proficient in the longspear and the lance. In addition, they treat any weapon with the word "centaur" in the name as a martial weapon.
• Favored Class: Ranger or Scout. (I am still using specific Favored Classes in my games).
I supped up the speed and hoof damage, as per the horse, but I'm keeping natural armor for the moment - the cost of armor for the centaur, along with the general likelihood of finding magic armor in treasure hordes makes me want to give them a bit of a boost in the AC department, and it's a net +1 after the large size penalty. Still not 100% on the STR bonus, especially given the +2/+2/-2 "standard" of the PFRPG races. Perhaps take a page from my minotaur rewrite and make it a feat...
Your dual nature has made you stronger than a normal man.
Prerequisite: Centaur
Benefit: You gain a permanent +2 bonus to your Strength score.
Normal: Centaurs have no bonus to their strength scores.
Came up with something a little while ago. Couldn't a normal Medium creature ride a centaur? I see no mechanical reason they couldn't and even if centaurs wouldn't normally allow others to ride them, a PC centaur would have considerable leeway in the matter.
But with a Medium creature riding a Centaur, an intelligent and dextrous creature, couldn't the centaur itself assist the rider and vice versa? I once had an idea of a fantasy army of Elves and Centaurs allied together with Elven bowmen riding Centaur lancers into battle...
Came up with something a little while ago. Couldn't a normal Medium creature ride a centaur? I see no mechanical reason they couldn't and even if centaurs wouldn't normally allow others to ride them, a PC centaur would have considerable leeway in the matter.
But with a Medium creature riding a Centaur, an intelligent and dextrous creature, couldn't the centaur itself assist the rider and vice versa? I once had an idea of a fantasy army of Elves and Centaurs allied together with Elven bowmen riding Centaur lancers into battle...
I've gotta admit, I'm not super fond of centaurs being ridden by medium creatures, but I certainly can see a PC centaur doing it, just because he can. I know that I've seen people take, say, pegasi with leadership and given them class levels, so it's not unheard of.
Hrm, there are a lot of really great sources for information on Centaur PC's in legacy sources. (e.g. the Dragon magazine archives have several good articles)
I built a Centaur for a recent 3.0 game, and the LA was actually +5 as implemented there. (Which SUCKED, in case that needs saying.)
One thing that might need to be addressed is racial hit dice. A 0 level Centaur is still going to be more butch than a 3rd level human wizard for straight blow-by-blow damage. You could swap the natural AC for that.
Also, there might be a penalty to Stealth checks (Hi! I've got hooves and make noise!)
Otherwise, very good writeup. Brava!
Hrm, there are a lot of really great sources for information on Centaur PC's in legacy sources. (e.g. the Dragon magazine archives have several good articles)
I built a Centaur for a recent 3.0 game, and the LA was actually +5 as implemented there. (Which SUCKED, in case that needs saying.)
One thing that might need to be addressed is racial hit dice. A 0 level Centaur is still going to be more butch than a 3rd level human wizard for straight blow-by-blow damage. You could swap the natural AC for that.
Also, there might be a penalty to Stealth checks (Hi! I've got hooves and make noise!)
Otherwise, very good writeup. Brava!
I don't think those are converns that need to really be added. This version has no racial hit dice, for one. In addition, large size already gives a -4 penalty on stealth checks. Glad that it's a good write up, then. I'll probably just implement it like this in my games.