Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana May 2018: Centaurs and Minotaurs

[AmerginLiath]

Centaurs and Minotaurs are the topics of this month's Unearthed Arcana!Centaurs gallop into Unearthed Arcana this month—a playtest option for when you choose your character’s race. Another type of character from Greek myth joins them: minotaurs. We first showed off minotaurs in a 2015 installment of Unearthed Arcana, and we present revised versions of their traits today.

View attachment 97490


​

 

[AmerginLiath]

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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It shows how determined they are not to allow large PCs, given that is states centur PCs are medium, even though they are normally large (as are horses).
Nerfing minotaur horn damage seems reasonable, 1d10 was a bit OP. Shame they lose the Dragonlance nautical fluff (which I think was originally inspired by Voyage of the Dawn Treader).

 

[AmerginLiath]

The nautical nerf is sad but understandable in that they still haven’t really come out with good rules on running a game on the high seas (like mass combat, that’s a genre-motif expansion that seemed effectively promised early on but never appeared).

 

[Guest 6801328]

I don't like the Charge being 1/rest. Yeah, yeah, I get why they did that, but it just feels so artificial. I'd rather it came with some kind of downside or risk.

 

[Parmandur]

It sure seems they ought to have had a finer grade of sizes when they designed the game, to allow for Large PCs rather than making them all Medium-Plus.

 

[TwoSix]

Not much here.

1) Natural weapons that are no better than a simple weapon. Has some utility if your running into issue with hands, so you can hold a shield and a focus and still attack. Otherwise pretty much a ribbon.

2) Str/Con is overdone, and kind of boring. Str/Wis for Centaurs is a little better.

3) Goring Rush doesn't even synergize with Hammering Horns. You can run at a monster and hit with your horns, but not shove it, or you can stand next to it and shove it? Seems counterintuitive.

4) Equine Build might have some utility if you have a party member with Mounted Combatant.

 

[Bitbrain]

It shows how determined they are not to allow large PCs, given that is states centur PCs are medium, even though they are normally large (as are horses).
Nerfing minotaur horn damage seems reasonable, 1d10 was a bit OP. Shame they lose the Dragonlance nautical fluff (which I think was originally inspired by Voyage of the Dawn Treader).

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.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

So Hammering Horns can be done on a melee attack that isn't horns?

Like a Minotaur can swing with a greataxe and then shove with their horns as part of a reaction.

As for the size thing, I always felt it was ridiculous when they made all large creature occupy a 10'x10' space. I remember the joke back when 3.5e came out about how a parade with horses had to be cancelled because suddenly horses were too wide to be in formation.

 

[jgsugden]

s is, neither of these races grab me.

I'd rather that Charge had been a duplicate of Goring Rush...

The medium Centaur doesn't suit me. Make it a Bariaur if it is that size. A centaur should be as large as a horse.

An idea I wish they'd explore would be "race classes". For some of these races that are too strong to be a first level PC, start them our weaker, but give them a class that only creatures of the race can take, and that they must have more levels in than all other classes combined. Then, give the class only so many levels as necessary to make the PC equivalent to the monster version.

I used this technique to make several monster races and it works great.