Centaur

Rarely elsewhere

Roamers at heart, centaurs love open spaces and the freedom to travel. A much as they can, centaurs run. They race the wind, hooves thundering and tails streaming behind them.

## Overview

Centaurs were a strong and proud race. Although they typically strove to find peace and balance with nature, they could act with violence when the need arose. Centaurs have to eat a lot to fuel their large bodies and were known to overindulge.

Although some were solitary, centaurs generally lived in nomadic tribes. Hunter-gatherers by nature, they rarely spend extended periods of time in any one location. The tribes most often sleep in shared timber lodges or in cover of trees. They rarely construct anything more complex than a simple shelter from inclement weather.

Centaur tribes often have established trade relationships with other species or intergalactic visitors. They've been known to trade with just about everyone if they are able to successfully communicate with them.

Centaurs have a strong sense of the interconnectedness of the natural world, and they celebrate family and community as microcosms of that greater connection. The birth of a foal is always cause for festivities. At the same time, centaurs revere the traditions of the past, preserving old ways and keeping alive the legends of ancestral heroes.

## Tribes

Centaurs are given personal names at birth. Some tribes reward centaurs with a tribal surname as they come to maturity.

Each herd is made up of several family units, the individual make-up of each is fluid. It is possible for a centaur to be born to one family, be fostered raised by another, then to join the family of a close friend or lover. Each family provides comfort and care to one another, share a common abode (typically a timber lodge), and resources among them are pooled and shared.

## General Stats

* **Ability Score Increase.** Your Strength score increases by 1. **+4**
* **Age.** Centaurs mature and age at about the same rate as humans.
* **Alignment**. Centaurs are inclined toward neutrality.
* **Size.** Average 5’-6.5’ at the withers, 7’-9’ to the top of the head. Your size is Large. **+12**
* **Speed.** Your base walking speed is 40 feet. **+4**
* **Hooves.** You are proficient with your unarmed strikes, which do 1d6 bludgeoning damage on a hit. **+2**
* **Hybrid Nature.** You have two creature types: humanoid and monstrosity. You can be affected by a game effect if it works on either of your creature types. **-1**
* **Equine Build.** Your form requires you to use Barding armor, which is four times more expensive. Additionally, you have disadvantage on Dexterity checks related to climbing. Any climb that requires hands and feet is especially difficult for you because of your hooves. When you make such a climb, each foot of movement costs you 3 extra feet, instead of the normal 1 extra foot. **-5**
* **Charge.** If you move at least 20 feet straight toward a target and then hit it with a melee weapon attack on the same turn, roll the weapon’s damage dice twice and add them together. Once you use this ability, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest. **+6**
* **Survivor.** You have proficiency in the Survival skill. **+2**
* **Subrace.** Three main herds of Centaurs populate Nikerymath: Dunhoof, Wintermane and Swiftfoot. Choose one of these subraces.
* **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and Sylvan.

## Dunhoof Centaurs

Dunhoof centaurs are known for their skill in textiles. By far the largest herd and the most technologically advanced on Nikerymath, they have several cadet branches and are often found travelling seperately in several smaller, more sustainable groups. They maintained their territories with their neighbours through diplomacy and trade. They can turn raw materials into a variety of textiles, preserves, and fine metal work. They have also been known to construct more complex feats of engineering.

The alliances made between Dunhoof centaurs and intergalactic traders have created close ties between them; many have taken promising young centaurs under their wing, and tutoring them in the ways of their world. While not innately tied to magic as other species, through years of practice, meditation, and the guiding hand of a mentor, many centaurs have begun to tap into the magical energies around them.

As time has moved on, the conflicts among planets has inadvertantly pulled the dunhoof herds into their conflict, pitting centaur against centaur as each group struggles to honour the alliances that they have made.

### Skills

* **Ability Score Increase.** Your Charisma score increases by 1. **+2**
* **Diplomacy.** You have proficiency in History and Persuasion. You know one more language of your choice. **+5**
* ***Score Total: 31***

## Wintermane Centaurs

Wintermane Centaurs are perhaps the most martial of the centaur herds. A group most renowned for their bow and spearmanship, the Wintermane centaurs are unrivalled in mobility and ranged combat. With a good eye and steady hand, and taught to shoot before they are taught to read, Wintermane centaurs learn from youth how to shoot accurately while galloping. Masters at the craft of making spears and bows, they commonly use onyx for their spear tips and arrowheads. As such, their quivers are filled with arrows almost too beautiful to use in battle.

A smaller but highly agile herd, these martial centaurs subscribe to the idea that best defence is a relentless offence.

### Skills

* **Ability Score Increase**. Your Dexterity score increases by 1. **+4**
* **Born to Run.** When you take the Dash action, you triple your normal movement instead of doubling it (dashing with a movement speed of 45 feet would allow you to gallop 135 feet instead of 90 feet). **+3**
* ***Score Total: 31***

## Swiftfoot Centaurs

The Swiftfood centaurs are typically foragers. They are constant travellers, with no permanent territory or home. The highly nomadic nature of this tribes means that those unable to keep up due to age or injury are sometimes left behind, or integrated into other herds.

They cover vast distances without resting, and typically travel with nothing more than an assortment of harvested nuts, capable of sustaining a warrior's energy for weeks. Leather pouches filled with harvested oats tossed in sugar and honey makes for hearty, balanced meals.

They do not construct any buildings or structures at all. Instead, they are the only tribe that will commonly inhabit caves for their natural shelter.

The dangers on the road or the potential of encountering unfriendly locals means the strongest males in the herd are trained as beserkers, capable of protecting the rest of the herd. Their trade with other tribes such as the dunhoof is the main way of obtaining axes and swords, which the beserkers learn to dual wield. They are embellished coarse fabric with intricate patterns along its surface as a sign of their achievement. Wearing the stolen sash of a fallen Swiftfoot Beserker will brand you as a target for others in the same tribe.

### Skills

* **Ability Score Increase.** Your Constitution score increases by 1. **+4**
* **Relentless Endurance.** When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest. **+4**
* ***Score Total: 32***

## Notable Centaurs

Other minor tribes include: Ironhoof, Starcatcher and Dustborne

### Notable Centaurs

Belgas Dunhoof, founderFylreh Wintermane, founderJoh Swiftfoot, founderNelnath Dunhoof, matriarchVrol Wintermane, patriarchGwyon Swiftfoot, patriarchLaresh Ironhoof, lonerTimoth Eyesbright, prominent adventurer