Centaur-kins

I’ve had an idea since I started working on the zoveri, but haven’t posted anything about it yet. I’d like to create more centaur-like races for D&D – hey, it could work! we could use a humanoid, monstrous humanoid, giant, fey, or outsider for the top half, and a animal, magical beast, or whatever for the bottom. I believe there is a template for this already in MM2, but we can make things more interesting than just any old template!

Let’s start by listing all the races that fit the bill, to avoid doing something that has already been done. This includes anything that has an ordinary humanoid torso, and an animal (or fantastic creature) for the bottom – from any edition of D&D.

Centaur – horse
Merfolk - fish
Lamia – lion
Wemic – lion, also?
Hybsil – deer
Zoveri – octopus
Yuan-Ti – snake
Pegataur – Pegasus
Centaur-kin from MCA2 (it had something like a gnome-goat, halfling-pony, zebrataur, and a few others)

What I’m not looking for are creatures that don’t fit the mold: this includes creatures that are basically humanoids with animalistic features (lizardfolk, sahuagin, gnoll, etc, etc…), beasts with a humanoid head slapped on (sphinx, lammasu, manticore), or critters shaped up to be sort of like humanoids (thri-kreen, aarakocra, bullywugs). You get the idea, right?

Is there anything I missed?

Hm - nifty concept. While I can't think of anything you're forgetting offhand - my memory of second edition MM's being sketchy, at best, and it looking like you've got all the 3.x ones listed - other animals that may have been used (might that make it easier to look up?) include:
- Elephant
- Cheetah (I seem to remember a "chetaur" from something, though that may not have been D&D.)
- Rhinocerous
- Hippopatamus (ok, I'm grasping.)

I'll put some thought into it, but I certainly think you named all of the even semi-prominent ones. One thing that may be worth checking, if you've got the Dragon Magazine Archive, would be to load up the tool and search through the library for "*taur". It certainly wouldn't grab everything, but it might pull up a few hits. If no one else has looked by tomorrow, I'll do a quick search - I'm just really lazy, and don't feel like installing the bloated software unless I need to.

BOZ said:

Is there anything I missed?

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You might include Harpies. (Human Head and torso, Vulture wings and legs.)
I remember a Half-humanoid Half-snake, but I'm not sure of the name (posibily Lolth)
And of course you left out Dryders, Half-Drow Half-Spider

Lolth is a god. Do you mean these?



You might have missed a seacat if that counts? and one of those bug-bodied sprites?

What about Hyena/goblin
A something/howler?
Doppel ganger/Displacer beast?
Thrii kren/Chuul
Something/delver?

I'm running out of humainoids so I'll just list some base creatures:

Basilisk, bullette, ankheg

Yeah, those MC2 centaur-kin were the zebranaur (human-zebra), dorvesh (dwarf-donkey), gnoat (gnome-goat), and ha'pony (halfling-pony). In the MC4 we also got the pegataur (elf-pegasus, already converted by Boz to 3.0) and the manotaur (minotaur-bull).

Elephants, Rhinos, and Hippos would make excellent choices, i think.

i had thought of the grig, harpy, and drider, but not before i posted this thread. basically, the purpose of listing what has already been done is to avoid being repetitive... hadn't thought of the manotaur, but you got that right filby.

here's one: balor/red dragon. also thinking of a kobold mixed with wolf, and/or dire rat.

Ferret said:

Doppel ganger/Displacer beast?

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ooooh, nice!

some thoughts on how to approach this... i'd say, first of all, we can run both creatures through the tauric template and see what comes up. then, we can raise or lower the HD, as well as ability scores as makes sense. once we reach that point, we can add or remove SA's and SQ's, and make whatever other changes that sound good.

basically, i want to run this thread similarly to my "converting..." threads - that is, i will post what we are working on, then i leave it open to brainstorming and discussion until we come up with a final product. the main difference is, that since there will be no real conversion going on, it will be all new ideas and discussion. i'll pick something to start on, tomorrow. when these are done, i will post them on the CC's "new monsters" page (you remember blacksway's site don't you?).

Oh, yeah... also, in last month's "Elite Opponents", there was a tauric ettin/elephant and, in another one previous, a tauric human/dire wolf.

ah, i wouldn't worry about those - they sound more like example creatures than anything that is a separate race. that is, i wouldn't remove those animal types from consideration over a couple templated examples from Dragon mag.

BOZ said:

I’ve had an idea since I started working on the zoveri, but haven’t posted anything about it yet. I’d like to create more centaur-like races for D&D – hey, it could work! we could use a humanoid, monstrous humanoid, giant, fey, or outsider for the top half, and a animal, magical beast, or whatever for the bottom. I believe there is a template for this already in MM2, but we can make things more interesting than just any old template!

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The Centacornus in the Book of Beasts
is kind of a flying mountain sheep/humanoid combo. Kinda weird, but it works. Wouldn't mind seeing a Half-Elephant/Half Stone Giant combo.