The Slayers Guide to Centaurs

[Tuerny]

The Slayer's Guide to Centaurs, designed by Matthew Sprange, is the third in Mongoose Publishing's Slayer's Guide series of d20 products. Designed to be used in most any setting, the Slayer's Guide to Centaurs provides details for centaur culture that can be dropped into most any campaign setting.

The Book
The Slayer's Guide to Centaurs, a standard laminated, stapled, booklet, is thirty-two pages long. The inside front cover has an anatomical drawing of a centaur. The inside back cover has a map and a well-drawn side of the centaur village detailed in the module. The margins are filled with weapons hanging on a wall.
The cover illustration, by Anne Stokes, provides a superior picture of a female centaur standing, with bow drawn, in a sylvan setting. The interior art, by a variety of different artists, is comprised of a variety of scenes that alternate between individual character poses, battle scenes, and more peaceful group scenes. The artwork is generally of high quality, with different levels of detail depending on the artist.
The maps are flavorful and interesting, providing Mongoose's typical high quality of in formativeness and usefulness.

The Meat/The Good/The Bad
Like its predecessors, The Slayer's Guide to Centaurs is divided into sections detailing the centaur's physiology, habitat, society, and methods of warfare as well as role-playing tips, scenario hooks and ideas, details on centaurs as player characters, a sample settlement, and a statistical reference list. Scattered throughout the work are bits of fiction related to both centaurs and their foes.
The Guide draws upon existing material on centaur culture (mostly from the Player's Handbook) and elegantly creates an in-depth and real feeling culture that still holds some surprises. It has sensible reasoning for the centaur's matriarchal culture, the male's desire for alcohol, and its religious structure. Its role-playing tips are sound and consistent with the existing material as are the adventuring hooks. The Centaur Reference list also is able to avoid many of the mistakes of the previous Slayer's Guides and the sample centaurs are largely compliant with the rules for characters in third edition. Unfortunately the sample characters, and the suggestion for centaurs as PCs, deviate from the standard found in the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide. They failed to even follow the base provided in the Centaurs as Player Characters section, leaving out the additional hit dice that centaurs are granted at first level. The Centaurs as Player Characters section also encourages you to start any potential player character centaurs once the other PCs are higher level but does not give you any set level at which to do so.


Rating: 4/5
The Slayer's Guide to Centaurs is an easy fit into any campaign that lacks a well-detailed centaur culture. Its mechanical problems only detract minorly from this, and are much improved over those found in the previous two guides.

 

[Scupper]

"The Slayer's Guide to Hobgoblins is an easy fit into any campaign that lacks a well-detailed centaur culture."

I sense either confusion or sloppy cutting and pasting.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This was the "Slayer's Guide" that I was the most suspicious about. First, contrary to the prior two, it deals with the race that is rarely used in the campaigns. Second, it is a race that, contrary to the other two, has a fairly strong development in mythology. I was affraid therefore that I will have a little use for the book in my campaign and also that the book will either rehash the ancient greek centaur lore or abandon it completly neither of which woulod have been satisfactory.

Out of those two fears, second one proved to be entirely unjustified. The interesting aspects of the Greek Centaurs have been incorporated in the book (do not serve Centaurs strong spirits on a feast...) but the culture presented is unique and interesting one.

Again, very good prose and art give life to the fantasy race and I am an order of magnitude more likely to use centaurs in my campaign after getting this book then before. However, they will still be way less ubiquitous then either Gnolls or Hobgoblins and the book will thus be of less use to me then the first two "Slayer's Guides". I still have to give it a 5 though as it is a exceptionaly well executed book - both good read and a valuable sourcebook - combination so rare in the roleplaying games.

Concerning the future of the Slayer's guide series, this fan of the Moongoose Publishing wuld realy like to see the other "common" monster races being dealt with rather then the totaly obscure ones. Troglodytes might be a good idea as I have never ever had an idea when and how to use them but Amazons has me rather sceptical.

At any rate I have to say that this book is written tothe highest standards altrough its utility in a variety of campaigns can be somewhat questioned.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Good art, mostly flavor text rather than rules. good price.
Not for everyone, but for a DM looking to perk up an old familiar monster, it's OK.
Slightly better than their guides on Hobgoblins and Gnolls, but not so much better as to deserve a higher rating on a 5 point scale.

 

[Tuerny]

Sloppy Cutting and Pasting
Fixed it

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.

The Slayer's Guide to Centaurs is a sourcebook about centaurs. It costs $7.99.

Presentation: This is a softback book with a page-count of 32. The front cover shows a topless female centaur standing at the edge of a forest stream, arrow nocked to a partly-drawn bowstring. I thought the setting was very evocative, but the centaur lacked texture. The back cover contains a brief outline of the book. The front inside cover contains a good quality anatomical drawing of a male centaur. The back inside cover contains a drawing and map of Lanhyd, a centaur village from the main text.The first page is contents and credits, the last two pages OGL and D20 Licence info. The internal black and white artwork runs from mediocre to good, and generally relates well to the accompanying text.

Whats Inside: The Slayer's Guide to Centaurs follows much the same pattern as the previous two Slayer's Guides. After an introduction and flavour text, the four page section on Centaur Physiology deals with clothing, diet, woodland senses, centaur psychology including two pages of flavour text to back up the main text. The two page Habitat section tells of the importance of the deep forest and the balance of nature to centaurs. The seven page section on Centaur Society looks at the centaur village (including a sidebar on centaur traps), the boisterous male, the guidance of females (there is also a sidebar on funerals on this page), druidic life, and relations with other races. The Methods Of Warfare section deals with arms and equipment (including a brief sidebar on centaur missile attacks), archery, and the charge. Roleplaying With Centaurs (1 page) really does deal with some of the roleplaying aspects that pertain to interaction with centaurs (unlike 'Hobgoblins') and has a sidebar with 15 example names. Two pages of short adventure hooks and ideas follows. Next is 1 page on Centaurs as PCs with a sidebar on armour for PC centaurs. Three pages outline the centaur village of Lanhyd and another page gives statistics and description of the female druid centaur who is the spiritual leader of Lanhyd. The two page Reference List gives stats for various NPC template centaurs (Village Leader, Adult Male, Infant, etc.) and the book finishes with a page of flavour text.

The Good: The strengths of previous Slayer's Guides - the example settlement and the adventure ideas - still work well for 'Centaurs'. In addition, there is more effective information for roleplaying and the main text did include some new ideas which hadn't crossed my mind before. A few game rules were also introduced, which added to its usability.

The Bad: Still too much white space, still too much flavour text, still too much repetitive description of stereotypical ideas about centaurs.

Conclusion: Again, an improvement over the previous Slayer's Guide, but not enough to be more than average. I found this more interesting than 'Gnolls' or 'Hobgoblins', but then I like centaurs. Worthwhile getting only if you want to focus in on centaurs for an adventure or need detail for developing traditional centaurs in a campaign setting.

 

[DM_Jeff]

The Slayers Guide to Centaurs
32-full-sized pages, $7.99, written by Matthew Sprange
Following on the heels of the previous slayers guides, this one covers Centaurs. For reasons that I find important, this is a great undertaking. Truly becoming part DM`s sourcebook and part player`s guide, as even more than gnolls and bugbears, players have and will continue to play centaur PC`s in D&D.
A wise move was to have Anne Stokes continue to do cover design and art, it gives the series a distinct look and her work is very good. Interior layout remains the same as the others (crisp, clear and well organized, why fix what isn`t broken?) and the interior artwork and cartography are still way above most small press offerings.
Also keeping with the series, there are various shaded areas that offer roleplaying commentary in the form of documents, letters, and the like from fantasy adventure characters and their experiences with centaurs, which I feel helps with flavor and switches from just the textbook presentation of hard facts with how these are seen from a characters perspective, and I applaud that.
In the beginning we get an introduction to Centaurs, their physiology, habitat, society (full differences between male and female centaurs, beyond the obvious), and their relations with other races. More so than the other guides, the text is even meatier, taking bold strides to add flavor and substance to these creatures above and beyond a stat block (centaur funerals, their outlook on keeping the balance, and their special sixth sense). A wealth of roleplaying material comes up in the differences between the sexes, and the sections “Into the Minds of Centaurs” and their special in-tune ways with the woodlands. Druidic life and religion is covered in detail, an important part of the centaur culture.
Next section covers Methods of Warfare where we learn the tricks and ideals of centaur combat. Their preferred arms and equipment, archery and their use of charge tactics and more are covered.
Following this is a brief section on roleplaying with centaurs (short in that much of the info deemed worthy roleplaying material shows up in the first section already). Centaur names are examined as well as advice for players who have characters who will be interacting with centaurs, and advice for helping DM`s play them more effectively.
Towards the end we are treated to a section with scenario and plot hooks, good launching points for DM`s to flesh out to full adventures, and then a beautiful section on centaurs as Player Characters. Along these themes, a centaur village named Lanhyd is offered for the DM to use, populated with some interesting centaur NPC`s, and both a map and image version (both crisp and very well done) to accompany it.
At the end of the book we get full Centaur d20 stat blocks to help the DM populate a village or create a war party or whatever. Village leaders, druids, males females, young, etc are all detailed with good detail and faithful attention to d20 mechanics.
DM`s and players looking for tons of crunchy bits won`t find that here in the form of stats. There are no feats, prestige classes, spells, or weapons. While it would be nice to have these, for creative DM`s who can get more out of book than numbers this excels, using their space to give us mental exercises with their ideas instead of just hard game data. As playtesting of the hobgoblin guide shows below, there is more than enough good reading to help a DM and players fully realize the potential of Centaurs in their D&D game.

-Jeff Ibach

 

[blade]

Note that I didn't write above average from the score. This is not to say the product is bad. But this is what I expect to see in a quality product. There are points I'd like to see more of, there are some points I wouldn't. But overall this is a good product.

Some of the artwork I felt was not quite up to quality of a print product, but overall it was good.

The cover art, while it wasn't spectacular drew me in to pick up the book. Definitely it served its purpose.

I'd love to see more detail about the culture and pschology of the centaurs. This books hits on it, but only glancingly covers it.

I do love the amount of crunchy bits in it. Although I wonder more about Centaur PCs, and whether there would be any specific religious symbols, or weapons.

While I don't believe I've ever actually used centaurs in my campaigns but this product makes me want to. I am definitely glad I picked it up. I look forward to hopefully detail on creatures that I do use in my world.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Whilst it is true centaurs are a highly secretive race, there are those who have had prolonged contact with them. Most swear themselves to silence with regards to the things they have seen and heard in their time with the enigmatic creatures, but a few have seen fit to record and relate their experiences. Whole generations of adventurers are in debt to such people. The Slayer’s Guide to Centaurs compiles the knowledge of all these wise people into one invaluable tome, though no responsibility can be taken as to what adventurers might actually do with this resource. Only this will be said – if you plan foul play against centaurs, be prepared to face the most capable of enemies. Evil to he who thinks evil.