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Message: <blockquote data-quote="vej" data-source="post: 7340271" data-attributes="member: 6909926">Thanks for the thorough review! I'll include some replies to each below.I hadn't considered this, thanks! I'll mention this in Centaur Weapon Training.Yes, this was the hardest tradeoff to commit to. As I mentioned in the OP, I do worry it may scare folks away from using this race as a melee class. AC is one of those abstract, composite numbers like HP that a lot of factors play into, including size -- size may not be "directly" correlated to AC, but it is correlated, albeit very subjectively. I may take this limitation out altogether because perhaps the feat alone justifies all the other downsides. Speaking of which...I fully realize that this feat selection is going to be the most controversial part of this race, but I still feel like it's a great idea. Yes, only the human variant gets bonus feats, but what's to say there couldn't be a homebrew tiefling variant that got a bonus feat for some reasonable tradeoff? Feats IMO are in fact an option for races in general, if they're balanced. The feat is also limited to small list of them, so it's not even as beneficial as the human variant, making it a bit less of a balancing concern.I think the feat helps the player get more excited about creating a bestial race like this since the the player can really solidify the character's raw bestial power through this special ability. For example, an archer centaur Fighter with Sharpshooter would really live up to the legendary marksmanship abilities of centaur, or a Barbarian centaur with Polearm Master, raging as they closed the distance, would be absolutely terrifying. My Druid player is actually going to pick Tough, so his centaur is going to have a huge sack of HP, which I think is also quite appropriate for a centaur of nature: it knows the magic, but this druid is built like a tank.I did think of this, and of making two separate traits for each skill. Although I'm going to trim down Equine Limitations a little, I still like it being an inspirational reference describing the daily hardships a horse-like person would face without adding verbiage about skills. I combined the two into one trait to emphasize there's a trade-off being made, which I think makes it easier to remember and understand.I'll just remove the speed reduction part. I agree it's probably just unnecessary bulk. Thanks!I'll remove all the complexity about swimming and just say the swim speed is 15 feet. I suspect a human with good form could probably outswim a horse IRL, but I don't have anything to base that on.I'm not familiar with the "normal squeezing rules" you're referring to, but if I don't know about it, I suspect other DMs and players might not know about it either. Even if there is slight redundancy with RAW, I think saying something about this challenge is expected of a centaur race description and it very well may be the case that DMs simply don't let centaurs through normal doors, justifiably so (and therefore could use this trait in their justification). Imagine trying to navigate a large building with normal doors to every room -- if the 9' Large centaur can just pass through them all without issue, it would seem a little broken. The centaur should think carefully about each door he/she goes through, and should expect an innkeeper to have a major "WTF?!" reaction.Normal rules for "centaur riding"? I do think it should be explained, and it's important to limit it to Medium or smaller. About the "embarrassment" details: it's almost cliché that centaurs do not like to be ridden. They shouldn't have the limitation removed, but it should always be roleplayed at least once: "You want to ride me?? I AM NOT YOUR HORSE!!" This is another instance where I want the race description to help explain what should be expected of a centaur.The direct reference for this is Firbolg, who also have Fey Ancestry. It may be the case that some die of old age after 300 years, but I noticed the wording is "the oldest of them can live for 500 years". It seems shocking to me that the wood elf hanging out in a tree might be 700 years old, but that's what Fey blood gives you. In a way, living only 500 years could be seen as nerf if you accept elves as the baseline comparison. If Firbolg have it, I think centaurs probably should too, and ultimately it doesn't much matter.I should also add that the MM centaurs are "monstrosities," not "fey". This is controversial, especially since official descriptions of the Feywild say that centaurs live there. It's a minor quibble but I think this reclassification should be made in worlds that feature centaurs and the Feywild prominently.Yeah, I simply used what was in the MM. My player's centaur is chaotic neutral which I think is perfectly fine.I like the doubling (or maybe 50% increase) of the cost of armor. I wanted to preclude centaurs from being able to wear two sets of magical boots with four legs, but I also think it's silly to imagine Boots of Elvenkind reshaping into pancake-like Horseshoes of Elvenkind or becoming some unheard of horse-boot that's the size of a watermelon and wraps around the hoof up to the first joint. Centaurs can have magical lower body stuff, but it should probably originate from other centaurs or be custom crafted/enchanted.Armor is one of the trickiest things to deal with for a centaur, but I think my formula is fair and it should only have to be calculated a few times a campaign. Consider this: you're a fighter centaur with full plate armor, but you later obtain Dragon Scale Mail. It's strange to imagine the Dragon Scale Mail resizing to become barding, but it's easy to imagine the humanoid upper body donning it. So the centaur has plate armor over half its body, and magical scale mail over the other half. D&D 5e wasn't designed to allow this, but I think my formula makes up for it fairly. The 18 AC from the plate and (max) 16 from the scale mail would become 9+8=17, so a happy and logical medium. I realize now I should have mentioned that magical armor bonuses (e.g. Dragon Scale Armor is +1) should be added to the final total. Yes, this is a calculation that will have to be done, but I don't think it's beyond what is reasonably expected from a creature essentially wearing two potentially very different sets of armor. As a DM who'll be running a game with this race, I don't think this would ever give me a problem.The weapon shown in the 5e MM image of centaur is a glaive, which is a slashing weapon. I don't agree that centaurs just kill wild animals: they kill ogres, trolls, gnolls, humans, etc.I agree it seems like a lot, but I wanted to grant proficiency in everything Polearm Master could use, and I want playing a centaur to feel like you're a player on a mount. Lance isn't used by Polearm Master, but it's such a weird and rare weapon that maybe a centaur PC would be a rare case when the weapon actually had some playtime in a real game, and that novelty factor could make playing the race more memorable. I'd disagree that having "too many" in this list would be a bad thing in any way, nor should it affect balance very much beyond what's intended.Forest gnomes did originally come from the Feywild too, supposedly. As I mentioned before, my inspiration for this is the Firbolg. The part about not being put magically to sleep I thought was an interesting and subtle reference to one of the centaurs' closest friends: the satyr. Satyrs should know you can't pull those tricks on a centaur. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Sylvan isn't niche in my setting! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />This was taken verbatim from Firbolg, but I think it perfectly fits a centaur. Shouldn't affect balance much but it could lead to some interesting roleplay moments for your party member who is a wild sylvan fey creature.I'll add some kind of strike option, thanks! Need to do some research and ruminate on it a bit.Again, thanks for all your input! Much appreciated. Apologies if I didn't agree with everything you said, but I've been thinking about this race for a long time now and I didn't spend much effort trying to explain everything beforehand in my preamble.</blockquote>

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