Dungeons and Dragons Lore : Centaur 

Though they resemble Human/horse hybrids they are neither, so they may develop differently.

All babies are different my son was a week early and he was looking around the room the same day

The only reason humans come out so weak and helpless is because humans are born at the very last moment the skull can still fit through the pelvis of the mother. Because a centaur will give birth through a horse pelvis they can afford letting the offspring mature more before being born, as the head will fit through the mothers pelvis when it’s far larger than any human body could handle That’s how id imterpret it based on what i know about humans and horses and animals in general

remember, long pointy sticks best, bows and arrows are debatably good, shorter melee weapons are progressively worse the shorter they are, shields are almost useless considering their bulk, and a rider mounted on them in reverse is an excellent tactic for flank protection.

I still remember that video: Lances are a no-no because they'll break the centaur's spine on impact. Bows are culturally encouraged (probably because of Chiron), although according to Shad they don't have a good enough physiology for that (mounted archers can stand up while riding for better accuracy), but perhaps centaur archers have their own archery techniques for dealing with that. Two-handed weapons like great swords are probably the best because normally a rider wouldn't be able to swing one without accidentally decapitating the mount, but centaurs don't have this issue. Perhaps the best centaur unit would be a great weapon/polearm centaur ridden by a humanoid archer/lancer (perhaps one a medium humanoid for the lance and support offensive, and preferably a small humanoid with a short how for covering the retreat and sniping down targets)

@@Randomdudefromtheinternet the glaive looks like a best bet. Long blunt weapons as well.

Bravo, that's some good stuff right there.

Best dad

@Kat Murphy thanks! It's fun to merge things we enjoy, so we can have fun together. Btw, I just read Hasbro is in the process of working out 5e compatible/based RPGs for My Little Pony, Power Rangers, GI Joe and Transformers through Renegade Games. But I'm glad I got there independently. 😊

Ok but isn’t the main trick of a cavalier based on being mounted

@@charlottewalnut3118 true, the "Born to the Saddle" feature is explicitly intended for the character being mounted, but all of the other and more beneficial features are applicable to and especially suitable to use by a centaur. In keeping with the character's personality the other subclasses seemed a poor fit, with the possible exception of a Battle Master with the right maneuvers.

I didn't include this in the video, because 5th edition added a stealth penalty to them as a balance issue.. but Centaur just strap cork to the bottom of their hooves if they need to move around quietly (this is from the Dragon Magazine ecology), in the older editions, rogues and assassins could but cork soled slippers to do the same.

true. still i am now thinking on Horse ninja's

Dungeons and Dragons ladies and gentlemen.. Where cork shoes are a valuable basic item.

rich guccione You'd be stupified to know the kind of things you can do with mundane items. If you're creative enough, you can come close to replicating almost any minor wondrous item with things that together would cost about 3-5 gold total. Want to sneak but you're wearing full plate? Buy one sack for every loose piece of metal on your armor, call it 30 for an ornate set. Before your stealth mission, spend a bit of time tieing a sack over each piece of metal. Not only will that shiny armor look like you're wearing a burlap suit, but you'll no longer clank when you walk because of the padded cushions now coating your protection. Want a trap detector? Small barrel full of rocks. Roll it down the hole. Rags and simple lamp oil make surprisingly effective molotov cocktails. Chalk to find your way, salt for finding cracks in the floor, flour for detecting invisible crearures, impromptu smoke bombs to blind enemies, or a great cloud of flour and a torch to blow the whole damn room up. A sack of marbles makes a great sap as well as a replacement for the grease spell, and Rope. Never Ever underestimate rope. If you find yourself without a weapon, tieing a monkey's fist not will produce a fine flail. There's even evidence in history that some cultures used rope armor, which would probably be equivalent to padded armor. Don't be afraid of taking wierd skills. Basket Weaving can make you a small boat, improvised armor, weapons, carrying space etc. Cooking is always good. Calligraphy is essential in forgery. Study stage magic and see some of the things they can do, then use the perform skill to be able to do the same thing. How cool would it be to be cornered, and to use the perform skill to perform a vanishing act to escape, without an ounce of magic. Imagination is the key, and if you can get your dm to play along for the fun of it, it makes for an amazing character.

As the old military wisdom goes nothing rattles nothing shines (or nothing jiggles nothing shines, there's variations), shoe polish is your friend for darkening a shiny blade.

I commented recently about two Centaurs I made that are effectively goats. Athelete gets rid of any movement penalties to climbing. Not a climb speed, but now not hindered as much. With high athletics/acrobatics I think you could almost never fail an average climb check. Mobile gives extra movement and are not impeded by rough terrain. Unstoppable Goat-taur that can chase you up a wall/tree/etc.

Monks are just kind of broken anyway, see, back in the day, in order to be a highly disciplined class like a monk of cavalier, you had to role-play the crap out of your character, they were a real pain in the ass with all their restrictions on behavior. These days, you get all the perks and none of the responsibility.

Nah man nah it’s wrong to have a medium centaur

Cats live with us because we attract their prey, also, they quite like us and how we dote on them.

Iron Reed *background Papyrus screaming*

Kidn of takes you in to the world, love the imagery

Bard

Thanks, I am really enjoying it as well.

When the bard is feeling *horse* in the voice

Makes sense. Girraffes give birth in 15.5 months. Cows give birth in 9.5 months. Elephants give birth in 22 months.

Without knowing what world we are talking about, I can't offer much help as to why. We are as much shaped by our environment as anything else, so a city Centaur would be very different from indigenous centaurs living outside cities and within their own culture.

Probably more likely in a large Elven City.

Efraim Lances and tower shields.

Efraim: Shadiversity is one of my all time favorite resources on RU-vid along with AJ.

Incorrect, you don't want a lance as a centaur.

@@nullvoid4063 a human on your back with a bow

Oh no...this brings up the odd centaur kilt controversy. With humanoids, it's obvious how the kilt fits...hangs on the waist or hips. But with horses, does it go around all four legs, or just two, or...? What is your opinion?

@Kat Murphy Good point.

*Naruto runner races by*

Besides the life span of only 60 years that's kinda sad 😅

Yog Sothoth What is intresting, while mostly percieved as nomads, Scythians also had some settled tribes, who were known to use the fertility of their land to grow enough wheat to not only sustain themselves, but to sell it to Greece. And also that scythian mercenaries served Athens as archers in times of war and police in times of peace, so there always can be reasons to meet centaurs without getting into wilderness.

Aye, and even nomads can have winter camp. Go there in the last weeks of Autumn, slaughter your excess livestock, bring the remaining animals in doors, preserve the meat, then leave for green pastures straight after your animals give birth for green pastures.

They use their horse liver for bitter plants and their much smaller under-development humanoid liver for drugs. Creating selective tolerants

Lubu amongst centaurs Dian Wei among Minotaurs. Thoughts on Lubu Fengxian being a centaur

@@ironheadgaming6270 To be fair, that specific booze was a gift of the god of booze and made EVERYONE near kinda drunk

Go for it! Let us know how it goes. Welcome to D&D, where you can do pretty much whatever you can imagine, and it seems you can’t: bend the rules so you can!

I read a very interesting conversation where some doctors were having a chat about, in theory, resuscitating a centaur who was having a cardiac arrest. Seemed perfectly reasonable to them that the centaur has a heart and lung in the torso mainly to support the brain, while the heart and lungs in the horse thorax support everything else, and yeah, the humanoid torso lung is a cavity the expands as the main lung is drawing in air. It works,

Some people say they only have two big ones in there human torso and the horse part has the digestion organs, also I can see them having two hearts which would explain a lot.

Yeah, sure, "a" centaur wife.

Agreed

A Centaur with a haste spell, a morning star, mace, poleaxe, club, or glaive could end your sad life from 40 feet away in one move...

They could be processed by peeling them and soaking them in running water for 24 hours to remove tannins, maybe they use them as a famine food or to make alchohol

@@benadams5557 Acorn wine...

D&D is like a really complex board game mixed with an acting class and there is no board.

@@andrewmorgan2537 there can be a board (grid).

True.

To quote Gandalf, when directly asked by Sarumon why he smokes it so much it "gives patience, to listen to folly without anger."

>XD

THIS

Favorite brand

Goliaths don't tend to come down from the alpine areas that often, so they rarely interact with Centaurs, I could not predict how that would go. If you are thinking about Planar Centaurs, consider that Centaurs in Bytopia have unlimited territory in which to roam, they can literally travel forever, in any direction.

AJ Pickett great, centaurs in Bytopia also. Bytopia is going to be one of the stops I do in economics in outer planes, due to representing things like free trade, and housing the gnomish pantheon where Garl predominantly fits in what I am calling the wealth domain. And now the economically complex centaur are also involved. Wait is Bytopia a place for living creatures, an afterlife , or both?

Both.

i can so picture that centaur verses goliath arm wrestling competition. 👍

Cursed, the word is CURSED.

@@AJPickett 😂

happy birthday, William

LOL, Hoofists is now a word in my lexicon.

i could see a monk who at first traded some knowledge to travel safely though centaur lands. only for the next season to have a few young come to learn the ways the next year. also id add at3 level a two hove double kick does 2D10 damage and propel it victim 5feet plus 1 foor for every damage. roll con ves a dc of the taken damage or be knocked prone for 2 rounds

Agree, centaurs would be an excellent race for monks, specially with the 3.5 version centaurs who have +8 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +4 Constitution, +2 Wisdom, -2 Intelligence and +3 natural armor. Their hoove attacks will end making insane quantities of damage, specially if they get magical horseshoes enhanced as weapons. They would move at incredible speeds in the battlefield and the Monks ability to cancel fall damage negates one of the centaur's main weaknesses.

horseshoes of speed + monk = charge fu fist

also, bear in mind that centaurs' hooves are natural weapons. Kensei monk and any of the Smites may very well be applied to your centaur's "feet" as well as their hands. Food for thought.

Not likely and I don't know.

3dagalathor I think that it could be possible for a half-orc centaur to exist, and I would say in hybrid form a centaur werewolf would turn into a form with the lower body somewhere between wolf and horse and the upper body of a hairy clawed humanoid. I believe a centaur could be a lycanthrope because lycanthropy is a curse and centaurs are not immune to curses.

Warwick: The Uncaged Wrath of Zaun the monster manual for 5e allows for nonhuman lycanthropes at the DM's option and lycanthropes are considered humanoid shapechangers not monstosities. It is possible in 3.5e because they are considered monstrous humanoids and thus fit the description of humanoid. I am uncertain about other editions.

Until you run into the rare and elusive, but bullshit centaur ninja. Light steps + grappling hooks can get them into all sorts of improbable places. It's actually a pretty good class for them if you base it off of the "isolationist small tribe of hill/mountain people". Good at survival, able to use poison, sneak attacks, able to cover their tracks and avoid notice etc.

Tatsusama I had to Google Asinine Centaurs, thinking that was a pretty rude name.... lol

Tatsusama the antelope ones are called Hybsil.

@Hexx Bombastus If I were the creators I would have added an 'S' to make it "Assinine" Centaurs just so people got the reference, haha @Devin M. Thanks, it was bothering me, but I held off on just Googling it since I was hoping my fellow audience members would relieve me of my ignorance:D

Tatsusama your welcome, + sometimes googling things doesn't result in what you're looking for anyway, unfortunately.

Tatsusama the moose are Alcetaur.

Well, on that note, I am working on some other projects today (though I am still reading through a lot of stuff for the next few vids, I am not scriptwriting today). I guess uploading almost daily is a bit much :)

The term "Gift horse" refuses to trading work houses, so a gift centaur would be a slave Just saying Have a good rest of your day/night Bye

They're in the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.

yea, but you can always change it to something more befitting the creature. the rules are more like guild lines.

That's a cool idea.

A wolf.

That would be the were-horse from Castlevania.

@@AJPickett a _big_ wolf? XD

You might want to give them disadvantage on the climb check, but yes, they can climb trees.

AJ Pickett *mind blown*

Absolutely, they are not horses, their bodies are not horse bodies :)

@@AJPickett I guess it makes sense

I was going to say the reason horses usually have to be put down from broken limbs is because it's hard to keep them from moving for long periods of time. Like you can put a cone or cast on your dog and they'll be okay , but it's a lot harder to manage on a 2-ton animal that needs to run, so I think with centaurs they can survive broken legs because they have the sentient"human" part that tells them to rest, or they have like harnesses that keep them upright during long healing times

Mountain goa- ... You mean a Bariuar sir.

@@AJPickett Thank you. Looked it up. You are not incorrect, but lacking actual STATS for that particular race as a playable race? It is officially a Centaur... Even if you and I know what it really is. Again, Thank you! I knew of this creature, but it never went through my head before you brought it up!

@@AJPickett Also Bariuar sounds AND looks so much better than "goat-taur". I am absolutely happy to have been corrected.

I.K.R.

Michael Kelligan pants are for the weak!

PhantomDragon1992 lol

They can be, but they tend to migrate around a lot, so, they hunt for game and keep animals that can be moved along with them, they will also cultivate groves of plants and trees that they can travel to when they are in season and just leave them after, moving to the next harvestable area.

tell me how that goes for ya sounds different

I know you meant Thief, but a Centaur Rogue wouldn't be too odd if given the Scout subclass.

Irish maybe?

I have always thought it had a slight sing song quality, kind of like welsh, but when spoken by native speakers there is an almost overlay effect of natural phenomena. So depending on whose speaking it might sound like there are leaves rustling faintly, or the soft sound of rain, or a waterfall. True Sylvan folk almost seem to be singing their words, without intention, not like in a musical where people break into the structure of song, but the way they speak it sounds like it is flowing naturally in a lyrical fashion, backed by the music of nature and the stars. This is, to my mind at least, why so many fae speak in rhyme when speaking in mortal languages, it is how their minds format speech. Elves always sound like they are reciting poetry, it too is musical, but in a less literal fashion. Celestial literally sounds like the tones of various brass and crystal chimes or bells. When mortals speak it it is a base approximation using words that structurally have the same note signature, and which still seems to ring in the air. Those are my takes anyway.

@@Lurklen I don't understand "and the stars", but wow.

@@devinm.6149 Oh, well if you go by many stories of fairies and the like, or Tolkien, and I think even some interpretations of Biblical verse, the stars resonate with celestial music, the light we see transcends sight, and is also heard and felt. In other words the stars sing, we just lack the ears to hear them. But elves, and fae and other beings do not. Tolkien's elves(his dwarves as well) even managed to imbue this light and music into objects, rings and necklaces and the like. It's mostly just a pretty turn of phrase, but with a little imagination I think it's quite evocative; what does the music of the stars sound like? I have no idea but I bet it's pretty astounding. And honestly when you tell your players: "When she speaks, the music of the stars sings in her speech, and unbidden tears come to your eyes as you feel the stirring of memories you did not know you possessed." At the very least you'll have their attention. Even if it's only to ask what that sounds like. (I always ask them to tell me, as it sounds different to each person.)

Centaur, statistically.

@@AJPickett Really, interesting. I'll have to look at those statistics. I couldn't imagine the mountain dwelling Goliath race would have many encounters with the plain roaming nomadic race of the Centaurs. So not many tactics would be developed by the, what I imagine to be Spartans, Goliath race. I want to see that animated. That could be a whole channel right there. A channel dedicated to animated D&D battles. Like that one channel, DEATH BATTLES!!

I think the Goliath, as they tend to live in harsher climes, and would be far more likely to have more experience in taking down a non-humanoid about the same size as a centaur but with more teeth and less civility. Especially barehanded.

He said in a wrestling match, a centaur had the benefit of center of gravity, four legs and arms. The Centaur would almost certainly win in a wrestling match.

As centaurs are intelligent beings (sapient, for the pedants who always stress I must be specific about this), its an individual choice and attitudes run the spectrum from those who love to do it, and those who absolutely hate it.

Thanks Maestro!

No implication, it absolutely only applies to older male and younger female.

I mean, they could just "sow it up" as a punishment Since surgery doesn't seem viable like other cultures

@Kat Murphy true true

if they have access to metal, absolutely. they are extremely important for horses, and would be equally for centaurs. just like us and shoes.

@@darrylviljoen6227 Who nails a horseshoe on a centaur? How flexible does a centaur have to be to accomplish this task?

@@joshuarichardson6529 AJ said they are flexible enough the braid their own tail, in which case they would be more than flexible enough to maintain and shoe their own hooves, though I imagine maintaining the health of the herds hooves would be one of the duties of the herd's healer. Also I have little doubt that a herd that trades with outsiders would make use of the farrier that would undoubtedly accompany any reasonably sized caravan.