Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Centaurs and Minotaurs

As a Dragonlance junkie, it’s interesting to see how they’ve pulled back the damage on the minotaur to make it more workable as a player race (I imagine that working with the Volo races gave them a better baseline). The Hybrid Nature mechanic is interesting here, especially given the number of Fey Ancestry races that we’ve seen so far (who aren’t both Humanoid and Fey), as well as the planar-descended races.

 

[Yaarel]

View attachment 97495

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Your size is Medium with regard to your human upper body, such as for size of weapons and armor. But your size is Large with regard to your equine lower body, such as for armor, the amount of space that you occupy, or weight of equipment carried in saddlebags.

The problem with Large size is in fact also the space occupied, 10x10 feet means they threaten at least 12 squares as opposed to 8, 32 squares with reach weapons. But that's not counting difficulty with squeezing and other issues from being 10x10 feet.

 

[AriochQ]

Large PC races would also lead to even more silliness with grappling rules.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Minotaur as sailors is probably based on the Ancient Minoans of Crete.
The Minotaurs were never presented in the Chronicles of Narnia as having any aptitude for sailing.

The Dawn Treader has a minotaur crewmember.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Character size is always a bit of a weird thing as it's less about the mass of the creature as much as it's about the space they occupy or more accurately the space they control. A Centar having a Human upper torso and human size weapons controlling the same space as a human makes sense to me.

But obviously the lower body is the size of a horse which is large.

In the end I'd just hand-wave it away.

All in all I'd let any of my players play either of these even if I never would myself.

 

[Jester David]

I think I’ll just stick with the centaur and minotaur in Kobold Press’ Heroes Handbook.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Gnomes and goblins should be fey.

The planar origins can come with benefits (such as prerequisite for cool magic items) as well as disadvantages (such as target of cool magic items).

Right now I don't see a lot of benefit to the PC. The player is paying an opportunity cost so they can say "my warforged is a construct." That could change if artificers get some kind of "power up construct" spells, clerics get "power up celestial" spells (etc.), or there are some new racial feats (become more celestial/fey/undead/fiend, etc.). I would be good with any of those changes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Size is a bit weird anyway. Horses aren't generally 10 feet long.

 

[Yaarel]

Right now I don't see a lot of benefit to the PC. The player is paying an opportunity cost so they can say "my warforged is a construct." That could change if artificers get some kind of "power up construct" spells, clerics get "power up celestial" spells (etc.), or there are some new racial feats (become more celestial/fey/undead/fiend, etc.). I would be good with any of those changes.

Planes can have strange properties. A native of that plane would better exploit those properties.

4e did and 5e should distinguish between ‘planar origin’ and ‘creature type’.

Planar origin:
• Material

• Ethereal
• Fey
• Shadow (includes undead)
• Elemental

• Astral
• Celestial
• Fiend
• Aberration



Creature Type:
• Humanoid ( = player character)
• Beast
• Monstrosity
• Dragon
• Giant
• [Elf]
• Construct
• Plant
• Ooze

 

[Zarithar]

I just hope these become official at some point. In the meantime I'll continue to use the Midgard Heroes versions of these races as they seem both more interesting and address some of the inherent issues with playing centaurs in particular.