Centaur race melee questions

[Delta_tea]

I'm at looking Centaur for a PC. I notice it does the Charge and gets an extra bonus attack with Hooves.


Charge. If you move at least 30 feet straight toward a target and then hit it with a melee weapon attack on the same turn, you can immediately follow that attack with a bonus action, making one attack against the target with your hooves.

Hooves. Your hooves are natural melee weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with them, you deal bludgeoning damage equal to ld4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.


Charge (30 ft) + melee weapon attack (hits) => get free Hooves attack

1) I'm assuming I'll be using my weapon very turn. So are Hooves available as a bonus action without a charge? Or ONLY after a charge and successfully weapon attack?

2) What if I Charged and used a reach weapon to hit the target 10 ft away (instead of normal 5 ft). Would Hooves attack still trigger? It doesn't define a distance and its probably extremely limited use as is.

The Charge feature with 40 ft of movement almost cries out to do hit and run with a reach weapon. But if Hooves doesn't trigger, it seems a lot weaker after thinking about it.

Thanks!

[Gurgeh]

1) You can always attack with your hooves in lieu of a normal weapon attack, but you can only do so as a bonus action if you satisfy the conditions for charging.

2) Your hooves are a natural weapon and have the normal reach for your character's size unless specified otherwise - so 5 feet, in the case of a medium character. You cannot use the charge follow-up attack unless you're within 5 feet of your target. A generous GM might allow you charge, hit at 10 feet, and then move 5 feet after the initial hit in order to bring yourself into range with your natural weapons - alternatively, if you want to use a reach weapon more generally, then you can just make a point of picking one that doesn't suffer disadvantage at close range and attack from 5 feet rather than 10.

[Chronos]

1) You can always attack with your hooves in lieu of a normal weapon attack, but you can only do so as a bonus action if you satisfy the conditions for charging.
Or if something else lets you make an unarmed attack as a bonus action. A centaur monk, for instance, could use their hooves to make the bonus attack allowed by Martial Arts. There wouldn't be much point to this, because any unarmed attack a monk makes does at least 1d4+mod damage anyway, but it would matter for some edge cases that the hooves explicitly count as a weapon.

As for regular attack at 10' and then hooves at 5', you're explicitly allowed to move between attacks, so long as you have enough movement for it. You'd need at least 35' of movement to pull it off (30' before the first attack to qualify for Charge, then 5' more to get to hoof range)-- How much movement do centaurs have?