BX Monsters A to Z: Centaur

 D&D could be accused of being rather Eurocentric in its inspirations, but one thing we can say for it is that it at least steps beyond northern and western Europe on occasion. Case in point: the centaur, a creature of Greek myth. 

Centaurs are kind of cool in that they could easily be either allies or antagonists toward player characters. They're Neutral in alignment, and are depicted variously in myth as savage and barbarous or civilized and scholarly. The centaur Chiron was a legendary doctor and healer, while others are shown to be warlike, wielding spears and bows, and sometimes armored, at least on their human torsos. 

In D&D, centaurs are described as "somewhat intelligent" which is about as vague a statement as I can imagine. It makes them sound a bit stupid. I prefer to interpret it as being, with some notable exceptions, uneducated in the ways of civilization, "book dumb", so to speak, not actually lacking in raw brain power. They organize themselves in small tribes, and dwell in woods or thickets which can only be accessed by difficult and well-defended paths. The description says the tribe's females and young will generally stay in this lair, but nothing is mentioned as to how many of them there will be or what proportion of the tribe's total numbers they comprise. It's likely that the given Number Appearing of 2-20 could represent an entire tribe on a high roll, or a smaller hunting or war party on a lower roll. In any event, it seems centaurs are fond of the buddy system, as you won't ever encounter just one under normal circumstances in the rules-as-written. 

Centaurs are pretty tough customers, having a stout AC of 5 (perhaps indicating some sort of armor, probably boiled leather breastplates or some such, combined with naturally tough hides.) At 4 Hit Dice, they're hardier than a war horse. In damage potential, they're quite formidable, with two hoof attacks and a weapon for 1-6 each, making a maximum total of 18 points. Not bad at all. If that's not enough for you, they're also quite speedy, at a clip of 180'(60') so against a party on foot or mounted on anything less fleet than riding horses, they have a decided advantage. A band of double-digit numbers of centaurs is not to be taken lightly even by middling-Expert level parties. 

A couple of things of note: the text explicitly mentions that they use bows, which makes them among the very few monsters who can employ ranged attacks, an added dimension of danger. Though it's not explicitly mentioned, it also seems plausible to allow them to make charge attacks with lance or spear, perhaps at the expense of being unable to use their hoof attacks in the same round. They're also one of a very small number of monsters for whom stats are provided for their young (2 HD, Damage 1-2/1-2/1-4). They're also listed as having Treasure Type A, which is a HAUL. Not dragon-level, but enough to sorely tempt the murderhobo in every D&D player. 

A centaur tribe would work beautifully as guardians of some woodland area through which the party needs to pass. Depending on how the DM writes them up and/or the outcomes of reaction rolls and negotiations, they could end up being friends, foes, or something in between. It would definitely be worth pondering what centaurs might value enough to accept as a gift or bribe to allow passage. 

One could imagine centaurs working in concert with druids, pixies, or dryads to protect the woodland, or as mercenaries out for their own gain, or even as brigands preying on human traffic through their domain. They're plenty tough enough that they might be the last stubborn holdouts among the noble creatures of a forest succumbing to evil and corruption, too. A wise Chiron-esque centaur healer or sage could be the object of a quest, with his less-astute tribe-mates serving as obstacles to reaching him; the party would have to find ways of dealing with hostile centaur warriors without offending the sage by harming or killing them. Their Neutral alignment makes centaurs incredibly versatile actors in an adventure or campaign; they can be nearly anything you need them to be. 

There's not a whole lot I'd want to change about centaurs. Their toughness and abilities seem pretty well-balanced and appropriately scaled with other creatures, especially the war horses they most resemble. Even their three attacks do identical damage, so it's easy to abstract away the silliness of the "hoof/hoof/weapon" sequence and just make it three generic attack rolls. The TSR team could have been a bit clearer on the demographics of the tribe, but everything that is there is solid.