How do centaurs figuratively and literally fit into fantasy worlds?

[Sapphire Guard]

Goblin caves shouldn't be scaled for humans, yet usually are for PC convenience.

Horses are powerful and dangerous as it is when they have a mind to be. Scale that up, and you have very dangerous creatures.

How do humans deal with places too small to enter. Smoke out the prey, or send in the dogs. It's not such a big obstacle.

[Scarlet Knight]

I once had a dwarf PC who was reincarnated as a centaur decades before such strange PCs were allowed.

If today you look at the stats of a Mule (or other equine, depending on level), they fit well within the range for a PC.

Back then I simply kept his intelligence, HP's, & his level as a fighter before he was killed. Yes, his speed was high but the monk could outrun him, and he served as a mount for another PC.

His biggest foe? Ladders.

I loved playing him.

[Grim Portent]

Why would centaurs be less flexible than humans? I am a sexagenarian and can still stand and touch my toes, change my socks, and wash my feet. I have trouble standing while working at ground level, but can do so if I have reason to.

Why would centaurs be less flexible than horses? They graze at ground level all day with no problems, can use their teeth to groom from chest and shoulders to tail.

I don't see them having any trouble tending fire, working with tools, or performing any other task. Plus, horses can and do crouch and lay down. Extended laying or any other form of immobility is bad for them due to an exceedingly high cellulose diet. Carnivores and omnivores are less discomfited by immobility. A centaur with a high meat diet would not have to eat like a horse because it wouldn't have to turn fiber and starch into sugar, and a high protein diet would require much less volume to meet its caloric needs.

It would still need to eat a lot, but lions and tigers don't have to eat as much as ponies of similar mass because what they are eating is much easier to digest.

They have a ribcage in a vertical neck, or a waist and legs that's substantially longer than ours, depending on if you want to compare them to horses or humans. Unless they have a snake spine for their upper body they're going to have flexibility issues while standing up, even if their horse body is absolutely tiny relative to the human part. Even sitting down reach would be awkward unless they have disproportionate gangly arms.

Working with tools is not in itself a difficulty, though making something like flint tools and then working up would be harder than it was for humans I think, it's developing tools in the first place. Centaurs are, generally speaking, big, rugged, fast, hairy and have hooves. They would be pretty good predators able to kick pretty much anything in the natural world to death and eat it if they want to, resistant to cold temperatures and able to follow herds of wild animals with comparative ease relative to humans. Combine that with the general awkwardness of doing anything when you have a horse body, which means that even when sitting on the ground they are higher off the ground than a human sitting on the ground is, they have little incentive to go to the effort of making tools to do anything much. About the only tool I can see them really wanting is a knife anyway, everything else is fairly inconsequential to them. Even the knife is only really because they lack claws or sharp teeth in most depictions.

Fire is unnecessary, because they have a long gut and a lower surface area:volume ratio than humans. That means they can digest uncooked foods more easily than humans and lose less heat to their environment. This also means they don't have a whole lot of need for clothes, except maybe something to protect extremities like fingers from frostbite, and something to carry things in. Unless they live in an area that routinely hits temperatures that would kill a wild horse, I imagine they could go nude more or less constantly.

The two big limitations I see centaurs having that would make tool use desirable is their lack of natural tearing/cutting parts, and their possession of human jaws. Human hands/teeth aren't suited to ripping apart bodies or grinding down bones or fibrous vegetation, two of the more common diets for wild animals. The vegetation issue could probably be solved by assuming centaurs have teeth that grow constantly like horses do, but they'd have one hell of a sore jaw if it's the size of a human's and they want to eat grasses and shrubs, or even just raw grains and nuts. Our mouth shape is not cut out for tough foods.

Drinking would also likely be a bit of a pain in the ass. Water, by nature, tends to be very low to the ground, and with the aforementioned flexibility issues a centaur would have if the torso is built like a human's it would be basically impossible to lower the mouth to water while standing, and cupping your hands to drink isn't all that efficient. There could be room for the usage of some sort of bowls or cups to drink with, perhaps even ones with a very long handle so the centaur doesn't need to sit or lie down to drink, but cups and bowls don't require complex tool crafting to get. Drinking is a very vulnerable position for a lot of animals, having to sit to do it would be even more dangerous for a quadruped, so it's a strong inventive to find better ways to do things.

[Mechalich]

The vegetation issue could probably be solved by assuming centaurs have teeth that grow constantly like horses do, but they'd have one hell of a sore jaw if it's the size of a human's and they want to eat grasses and shrubs, or even just raw grains and nuts. Our mouth shape is not cut out for tough foods.

Horse teeth don't actually grow constantly. What they do is erupt constantly, meaning the tooth pushes further up from the gumline over time to counteract tooth wear while taking advantage of a high-crowned tooth structure. A horse's permanent teeth begin at ~5 inches in length and are ground down around 1/8th of an inch each year. Elderly horses can wear away their teeth completely. Centaurs, with a human jaw structure, cannot have this kind of tooth mechanism (which is found in almost all grazing ungulates).

Goblin caves shouldn't be scaled for humans, yet usually are for PC convenience.

Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? D&D elides a lot of problems with size incompatibilities regarding the built environment that crop up any time you choose to take the worldbuilding seriously. This has even come up in D&D novels. In the Azure Bonds trilogy, one of the earliest FR novel series, the halfling bard Olive complains repeatedly that trying to get up human-sized flights of stairs is brutal. And, of course, OOTS has made jokes along these lines using Belkar, like the time he proved impossible to hang.

[Scalenex]

Magic is involved so heavily with centaurs logical evolution and biology rules always apply.

That being said. I made some assumptions. I understand might have different assumptions.

-I don't think centaurs would be any better eating grass than humans. They have human teeth after all. Also, it'd be more inconvenient (and weird looking) for a centaur to bend down to eat grass than an actual equine.

-I think centaurs would eat the same sorts of food that humans do, they would just eat a lot more of it.

On the small to average end of horses, they would way about 1000 pounds. Realistically, they would need to eat four or five times as much as humans though with "a wizard did it" hand waving, maybe they only eat double.

This lady has a hilarious Youtube series where she roleplays as a centaur. Her character is an immortal creation of Artemis so she says she doesn't need to eat to live, she just eats for fun.

I guess the more innately magical a centaur is, the easier it is to explain why they don't need lots of food.

Without something akin to traditional agriculture, I think centaurs would have an easier time finding adequate food in a forest than in a wide grassy steppe. That said, unless they have a cultural barrier encouraging them to avoid becoming too civilized, I don't think anything is stopping a group of centaurs from practicing pre-industrial agriculture. Sure they cannot bend down as easily as humans but they can kneel so it's not impossible. They cans also pull their own plows, and do it more intelligently and precisely than a horse borne plow.

-A lot of centaur folklore have them go crazy with alcohol. Maybe they have less alcohol tolerance than humans for supernatural reasons or maybe they just drink large quantities. In stories inspired by ancient Greaco Roman myths, usually Chiron is super serious and dignified while almost other centaur is something of a party animal, either a gentle and nice party animal or a terrifyingly violent party animal.

Most 20th century reimagining of centaurs tend to lean more heavily on Chiron the wise mentor, possibly inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. Though Rick Riordan, my favorite contemporary fantasy author plays the old myths straight with Chiron as a major mentor character and almost all other centaurs being wild party animals. The Greek centaurs tend to be friendly party animals and the Roman centaurs tend to be more evil.

Shadiversity made a detailed theory video on how centaurs would realistically fight with medieval weapons and the Centaur of Attention centaur cosplayer made a hilarious rebuttal video.

Without getting too detailed, I think even without overt supernatural powers a trained centaur warriors would be superior to most human cavalry because they would have far more precise control than a human directing a trained horse with his legs. For one thing, centaurs are smarter than horses and for another thing, a centaur would be able to sync his human and horse torso better than a separate human and horse ever could.

Shadiversity pointed out that a centaur would have trouble using a lance at full charge, but I don't think that would be a huge problem, since a centaur could use a spear just fine and make up for lack of a lance by charging faster.

I think centaur archers would generally outperform human mounted cavalry since they don't have a horse head in the way and they would be used to the jostles and bumps better than a human rider though as Shadiversity pointed out, a human cavalry archer can stand up in the stirrups for a bit of stability and a centaur cannot do that.

I'm running a homebrew, not a D&D setting so I have more creative freedom to customize how powerful centaurs are within reason.

When I world build, it's a delicate balancing act. I believe that humans and human-like species can be competitive *******s. A new mortal race or new monster cannot be so powerful that they would completely crush all the other creatures and drive them out or dominate them completely and they cannot be so weak that humans (or someone else) decide it would be convenient to genocide them.

I think even on the low end, a centaur would be able to outfight several humans but centaurs could never reach the same population density of humans. I guess a centaur-human team would be a powerhouse, but I'm not sure if that would most likely involve a partnership of equals or one side holding the other over a proverbial barrel.

If centaurs in my world are fae creatures or extraplanar creatures they could be natives of another plane and a lot of the space issues with humans would be solved. It's also tempting to have two flavors of centaurs, a highly magical other planar variety and a less magical mortal flavor of centaur.

[brian 333]

1) The flexibility issue is not a limit of centaur ability, but of real-world human thinking. Assume a human torso from the point of the attachment to the hip, at human scale, attached where the horse neck attaches to its shoulders. The human torso is longer than the horse's neck. If the torso can bend like a human torso can bend from human hips, a centaur could put its head on the ground while standing. If the human torso could twist the way a human torso can from human hips, a centaur could comb its tail without a strain. I don't see a centaur shoeing itself, but maintaining its four feet would be no more difficult than for a human maintaining two.

2) Centaurs would have all the same needs for tools that humans have. Digging root vegetables, planting crops, hunting, fishing, predator defense, war. In proximity to humans, centaurs and humans would cross pollinate, and innovations by one would be copied by and improved upon by the other. Centaurs would be no less able than humans with tool use. The only issue would be that centaurs could not work at the smallest scale humans can, but humans would not be able to work at the largest scale centaurs can. Centaur mines would be larger than human mines, but so what? Centaurs could move more bulk in a given day. I think it would be an even trade: humans mine less waste, but both produce the same amount of ore each day.

3) The presumption that centaurs are barbaric is simply that. The earliest centaurs of which I am aware were demigods who taught arms, rhetoric, and science to the children of mortal kings. There is no reason centaurs could not become sedentary herders and dirt farmers, (and they wouldn't need to support a draft animal to pull the plough.) There is no reason centaurs could not become wizards, librarians, or teen vampire novel writers. It would need a strong scaffold, but a centaur could paint the Sistine Chapel. Or sculpt like Rodin.

Okay, now I need to sculpt The Kiss using centaur models.

[Enixon]

I like them as my fantasy horseriders. Why put humans on horses to fulfill that role when I have a built in fantasy race to work with?

I always loved how in the old Shining Force video games had your cavalry characters be centaurs instead of just normal mounted knights. I know that realistically a centaur's spine and what no would actually make them not very good at doing the classic cavalry charge with lances but the image is still cool

[brian 333]

Scimitars and sabres would work. Rangers would have two.

I like samurai archers for centaur characters. For military companies, the Scythian Archer comes to mind.

[Mechalich]

Without something akin to traditional agriculture, I think centaurs would have an easier time finding adequate food in a forest than in a wide grassy steppe.

This is something of a misnomer, and one that applies more broadly that to just centaurs. Thick forest, and especially old growth or tropical jungle, is in fact a very bad environment for foraging of human-style foods and hunter-gatherers have traditionally lived in such environments at extremely low densities. Megafaunal densities overall are much higher, sometimes by a full order of magnitude, in mixed environments than beneath a closed canopy.

Short-grass steppe, admittedly, offers limited vegetative resources for foragers, but the productivity of tallgrass prairie, savannah, and similar environments is much higher due to seasonality (which induces plants to store resources in structures like bulbs and durable nuts that are an important food source), soils development, and other factors. It is also easier to gather resources like acorns or plums (the American Plum, which grows as a large shrub in these kinds of environments, is an ideal seasonal food source for centaurs) in a semi-open environment compared to a closed canopy.

Of course, these areas are also ideal for agriculture and are almost universally converted to that purpose once the relevant technologies are available. I'd note that while tillage agriculture is a poor fit for centaurs, they might be very well suited to orchard-based agriculture, able to pick fruit at 1-3 meters off the ground easily all day long without straining themselves. In this way I could see a dynamic where centaurs are forced off their traditional foraging lands by the advance of human agricultural societies through weight of numbers but who adapt to a role as specialized laborers picking fruit, serving as herders (while milking is difficult, they make perfect sense for any herding task that doesn't involve milking), and certain other specialized tasks. So long as the climate is mild enough to allow centaurs to live either outdoors or in semi-enclosed shelters year-round, I can imagine a small population of centaurs integrated into a larger human one. Truthfully, in a mixed species fantasy setting this kind of division of labor and housing within society is likely to be common.

[brian 333]

Again, I don't see why milking would be harder for a centaur than a human. Humans must crouch, kneel, or sit to milk cows, and sheep and goats are worse. Specialized milking stools help, but humans complain about the pains associated with milking. Why could centaurs not simply crouch or have a hammock type affair to hold their horse-chest at the right height for milking?

And agriculture?

There is an old 'joke' about women of the southern Appalachian region being chosen by their husband because of their ability to pull the plough. For centaurs, this could be literal. What part of ploughing, planting, nurturing, weeding, and harvesting would be beyond their ability?

Centaur traders would have advantages of speed and endurance on the road.

Centaur beekeepers would have the advantage of thick hides.

Centaur winemakers would have advantages stomping grapes.

Centaur diplomats would have the advantage of mobility.

Centaur stonemasons would have the advantage of strength.

Centaur thieves would make excellent guild enforcers.

Centaur wizards would be able to carry more books and scrolls.

Centaur cabbies wouldn't need to feed and shelter a mule.

Centaur police would be difficult to outrun.

Centaur nobility would have a majestic bearing.

Name a civilized human occupation and I can show how a centaur would be perfect for the job.


Centaur status:

Low caste barbarians. Adaptable to any terrain except ice cap or lava lake. Can subsist on virtually any food, and can construct protective and preservative stashes against lean times.

Nomadic herders. Have no trouble keeping up with hers migrations. Hands can shear, card, and spin wool, and in winter quarters, knitting and weaving would be pastime, practical art, and source of additional income.

Dirt farmers. Physical strength and intelligence combine the brute force of draft animals and the planning and organization that makes farming successful.

Townsfolk: millworkers, jewelers, shopkeepers, innkeepers, smiths, construction workers, teachers, warehouse workers, all require a degree of intelligence and manual dexterity, which centaurs possess.

Low nobility, including titled landowners, squires, knights. Town officials and administrators, guild craftsmen depend on qualities of leadership rather than physical qualities.

A centaur could be anything a human can be. one simply has to imagine the centaur culture in his world then extrapolate a place for his character. If one desires forest dwelling barbarian tribesmen, then certainly, create a barbarian who enjoys a good stag hunt and excessive quantities of cheap wine. If one desires a city-building centaur culture, then create a centaur character who is the daughter of the Emperor's sixty-third concubine who attended university and holds a degree in architecture who builds elaborate monuments and tombs.

The only limit to what centaurs, imaginary beings which could not exist if modern biology has any say at all, are able to do are the limits you set in your world.

In mine, centaurs are the great grandchildren of demigods, and are well educated in ancient lore. They live a territorial pastoral lifestyle, preferring lands on the margins between Sylvan forests and grasslands. They typically hold titles bestowed by elven kings.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mechalich
Thick forest, and especially old growth or tropical jungle, is in fact a very bad environment for foraging of human-style foods….

This is completely, utterly untrue. I can only quote Luke Skywalker on how amazing this sentence is.

First, you keep assuming that “forest” is some kind of monolithic and forbidding ecosystem type, but it isn’t. There are many different kinds of forests with countless variations on every scale, and this kind of global statement—“thick forests are bad for foraging”—shows a complete absence of understanding of forest ecosystems and their resources.

Tropical rainforests are the most productive and biodiverse terrestrial habitats on the planet. For those who know where to look, they’re loaded with food resources. You can literally walk through the trees, grab actual low-hanging fruit and eat as you keep walking along. Game is abundant and fish even more so. It takes time, patience, and most of all local knowledge, but the resources are there.

In fact forests are so rich in resources that native cultures can afford to be selective in what foods they eat. I’ve seen examples of this firsthand. They are not quite the starving scavengers you make them out to be, and dense forests are not the food deserts that you seem to want them to be.

Originally Posted by Mechalich
Megafaunal densities overall are much higher, sometimes by a full order of magnitude, in mixed environments than beneath a closed canopy.

Not sure what this has to do with anything, and it depends how you define “megafauna.”

You don’t seem to be aware that in tropical rainforest, the majority of the grazers aren’t on the ground, but in the trees. Sloths can occur at very high densities in some areas, and centaurs can use bows as well as any human. There are plenty of other creatures living in the canopy, and if you don’t mind eating possums, primates or arboreal rodents, you’ll have plenty to choose from.

Originally Posted by Mechalich
It is also easier to gather resources like acorns or plums…in a semi-open environment compared to a closed canopy.

You’ve clearly never gathered acorns before. I have. What you’re saying is nonsensical.

Canopy cover is irrelevant to ease of gathering, and in the case of acorns it’s easier to gather them from a non-cluttered forest floor than from down between the shoots of dense grasses.

But what you’re really missing is that it’s easiest of all to gather them direct from the tree, and here the centaurs will have an advantage, since they can reach higher than humans. I always pluck acorns fresh off the branch, and being taller creatures, the centaurs will have access to a broader area of branches.

As for plums and other fruit, again the degree of canopy cover has no effect on ease of access or collection. If you’re standing under a tree with fruit, then how you go about collecting it isn’t dependent on whether or not other trees are nearby.

I’m willing to bet you’ve never spent much time in equatorial rainforest, and never done much foraging in any environment. You seem to be on this mad quest to show that centaurs shouldn’t exist in forests, but you’re overlooking a great many potential food resources.

There are certain specific forest types (e.g. várzea) where your case might have a smidge more traction, but you don’t seem to have the personal experience or professional grounding to know what these are. You’re making some tremendously inaccurate statements as a result.

[Wintermoot]

I think centaurs are cool, and I like reading ancient stories about them and I think they are used well in the novels of Rick Riordan.

That said, I have yet to use centaurs in my own fantasy world.

I don't think they would work as a PC because there are a lot of places they physically can't go.

I'm not sure how they work as NPCs. On a world building set up, I'm not sure how centaurs would create a niche for themselves in a world dominated by humans with large minorities of elves, dwarves, and gnomes.

Unlike normal horse flesh, which is tough and gamey, Centaur flesh is succulent and pork-like, so centaurs are bred for flavor and raised in stock pens. Young centaurs are fed milk and oats and kept in small cages so they don't build too many tough muscles to spoil the veal-like flavor.

A few Centaurs are allowed to grow out of the delicious stage, and find use as plow-draggers, having the benefit of not needing a driver to guide them to keep to straight farrows. It allows for far more land cultivation to grow the feed for the future generations of Centaur meat. Most large scale centaur feed lots involve several acres of pens to keep the meat-centaurs and ten times as much land cultivating feed.

[Scarlet Knight]

Unlike normal horse flesh, which is tough and gamey, Centaur flesh is succulent and pork-like, so centaurs are bred for flavor and raised in stock pens. Young centaurs are fed milk and oats and kept in small cages so they don't build too many tough muscles to spoil the veal-like flavor.

Horses make delicious mortadella and Pezzetti di cavallo.

Magic is involved so heavily with centaurs logical evolution and biology rules always apply.

That being said. I made some assumptions. I understand might have different assumptions.

...I think centaurs would eat the same sorts of food that humans do, they would just eat a lot more of it.

...Without something akin to traditional agriculture, I think centaurs would have an easier time finding adequate food in a forest than in a wide grassy steppe. That said, unless they have a cultural barrier encouraging them to avoid becoming too civilized, I don't think anything is stopping a group of centaurs from practicing pre-industrial agriculture. Sure they cannot bend down as easily as humans but they can kneel so it's not impossible. They cans also pull their own plows, and do it more intelligently and precisely than a horse borne plow.

...-A lot of centaur folklore have them go crazy with alcohol. Maybe they have less alcohol tolerance than humans for supernatural reasons or maybe they just drink large quantities. In stories inspired by ancient Greaco Roman myths, usually Chiron is super serious and dignified while almost other centaur is something of a party animal, either a gentle and nice party animal or a terrifyingly violent party animal.

Most 20th century reimagining of centaurs tend to lean more heavily on Chiron the wise mentor, possibly inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. Though Rick Riordan, my favorite contemporary fantasy author plays the old myths straight with Chiron as a major mentor character and almost all other centaurs being wild party animals. The Greek centaurs tend to be friendly party animals and the Roman centaurs tend to be more evil.

...I think centaur archers would generally outperform human mounted cavalry since they don't have a horse head in the way and they would be used to the jostles and bumps better than a human rider though as Shadiversity pointed out, a human cavalry archer can stand up in the stirrups for a bit of stability and a centaur cannot do that.

I'm running a homebrew, not a D&D setting so I have more creative freedom to customize how powerful centaurs are within reason.

...I think even on the low end, a centaur would be able to outfight several humans but centaurs could never reach the same population density of humans. I guess a centaur-human team would be a powerhouse, but I'm not sure if that would most likely involve a partnership of equals or one side holding the other over a proverbial barrel.

If centaurs in my world are fae creatures or extraplanar creatures they could be natives of another plane and a lot of the space issues with humans would be solved. It's also tempting to have two flavors of centaurs, a highly magical other planar variety and a less magical mortal flavor of centaur.

From what I read , your world would be fine if you base Centaurs off of the plains Indians. Plenty of food from buffalo hunts, open area, sensitive to alcohol, excellent mounted archers. If you worry about human competition, give them a lower level of technology so humans can compete. Perhaps Greek bronze age?

[Mechalich]

First, you keep assuming that “forest” is some kind of monolithic and forbidding ecosystem type, but it isn’t. There are many different kinds of forests with countless variations on every scale, and this kind of global statement—“thick forests are bad for foraging”—shows a complete absence of understanding of forest ecosystems and their resources.

I am fully aware that there are many types of forests, however it is necessary to summarize for the purpose of forum posting. I did add

Tropical rainforests are the most productive and biodiverse terrestrial habitats on the planet. For those who know where to look, they’re loaded with food resources. You can literally walk through the trees, grab actual low-hanging fruit and eat as you keep walking along. Game is abundant and fish even more so. It takes time, patience, and most of all local knowledge, but the resources are there.

In fact forests are so rich in resources that native cultures can afford to be selective in what foods they eat. I’ve seen examples of this firsthand. They are not quite the starving scavengers you make them out to be, and dense forests are not the food deserts that you seem to want them to be.

Prior to the development of agriculture tropical rainforests had much, much lower population densities than surrounding seasonal forests (some large areas of tropical forests, such as those on Kalimantan, appear to have had no significant human population in the interior at all). Rainforests are survivable, but they are an extremely long way from the ideal.

Not sure what this has to do with anything, and it depends how you define “megafauna.”

Large animals - the traditional delineation of megafauna is animals above 46 kg or more - are much more efficient hunting targets than smaller ones. Many of the largest and more efficiently hunted food sources, such as large ungulates, occur at a 10 to 1 abundance in open or semi-open environments compared to closed ones, even animals that live in both.

You don’t seem to be aware that in tropical rainforest, the majority of the grazers aren’t on the ground, but in the trees. Sloths can occur at very high densities in some areas, and centaurs can use bows as well as any human. There are plenty of other creatures living in the canopy, and if you don’t mind eating possums, primates or arboreal rodents, you’ll have plenty to choose from.

Hunting for arboreal resources is inefficient compared to those on the ground. Especially for an animal like a centaur that can't climb at all. Any game they manage to shoot that gets stuck in the branches is just wasted projectiles.

[brian 333]

Centaurs may be obligate carnivores which subsist only on forest stags.

It really depends on how you create your centaurs. My world has a thematic style of scrublands tribal hunter/gatherers. I'm in progress writing up a civilized, (city-dwelling,) culture. The only difference is in your vision for them.

What we deem scientific fact doesn't matter. What matters is, what do you want in your setting? In mine, centaurs are often rangers, occasionally druids, and seldom more than hedge wizards. Your world's archmagi could be city-dwelling centaurs. You choose.

But aside from the number of times the scientific experts got it wrong, when magic is involved, science services setting like a 2 copper harlot.

[Asmotherion]

In my World, Centaurs, Mermaids and other "hybrid" creatures are able to shift between their Hybrid Form and a Humanoid form as they like. So, having one as a PC is less of an issue.

The lore around them is that they are essentially Humans (or some other humanoid species) who have either gone through a ritual that allows them to shift into an Animal or inherited the trait from a parrent. This can go on for generations.

Other than their Animal form, they can also take a Hybrid form.

[Deepbluediver]

I don't think they would work as a PC because there are a lot of places they physically can't go.

It's a little harder for them to go some places, yes, but that's just a problem to work around. Any party with a Goliath (or other big race) might not want to go into a cavern full of gnome-size tunnels, but then it's up to the GM to not set plot-critical elements there and/or it's up to the party to work around it.

We had a centaur in our party once and having to deal with this issue added interesting moments to the game. A rope-and-pulley can help them get up or down cliffs, assuming a Levitation spell isn't available, or there could be extra hazards to account for, etc. Like that half-rotted stairway that the rest of party navigated successfully but that the centaur crashed through, leading to us getting separated and having to navigate through darkened mines while trying to reunite and not get picked off by monsters.
But then when we were out in the open being able to put squishy casters (or just unconscious party members) on the centaur's back where they were protected by his speed and combat-prowess was good tactic. There are tradeoffs, basically.

I'm not saying that they NEED to be a PC race, or at least not a common PC race, but neither do I think that allowing them is an insurmountable obstacle if that's what you want.


Edit: A few comments about size, if that's a make-or-break problem for you.
Several people have brought up other issues regarding biology, but I just want to note that even something like size is flexible in the game-world when you are writing the rules. And in D&D horses are classified as Large size, but IRL they cover a broad range, from clydesdale to shetland pony. FURTHERMORE many horse are big because IRL we selectively bred them to be big.
Think about why did chariots fall out of favor? Well they were popular in the first place because horses used to not be large enough to reliably carry a fully-armored warrior for a long distance at speed, so we used them to pull a cart instead. Once we made them bigger we didn't needs the carts any more, but you could have centaurs in your world be more like ancient horses instead of modern ones. You don't NEED the horse-half of your centaur to be 18 hands tall at the shoulder.
Don't believe me? Try this experiment- get a couple of your friends together (ideally a couple that are around 6 ft tall and 200 pounds but any close approximation will do), now have one stand up straight and have another bend over and wrap their arms around the the first person's waist (don't make this weird bro dur hur hur ). What you now have is a shape that represents a creature that is about a 6-ft tall and weighing ~400 lbs, in a roughly-centaur shaped configuration, that totally fits inside a 5x5 ft square, meaning it meets all the requirement to be Medium-sized. Problem solved.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mechalich
I am fully aware that there are many types of forests….

And yet you continue to present “forest” as a monolithic category, which you seem to be using to obscure the diversity of habitats and resulting abundance of resources in actual forest ecosystems.

It’s not an argument grounded in any experience or understanding of real forests.

Originally Posted by Mechalich
Hunting for arboreal resources is inefficient compared to those on the ground.

This is not a claim that holds up in light of actual experience. I’ve spent time with people who provided themselves with meat by hunting arboreal mammals. If you told them the way they hunted was “inefficient” and they couldn’t feed themselves that way, they’d either laugh in your face or just smile and offer you another helping of freshly hunted arboreal mammal.

Originally Posted by Mechalich
Any game they manage to shoot that gets stuck in the branches is just wasted projectiles.

For experienced hunters this is a nonissue.

And really, this kind of argument is just reaching. You’re making claims that seem to be based on fragmentary googling, without any real understanding of what you’re getting wrong.

Originally Posted by brian 333
Your world's archmagi could be city-dwelling centaurs.

And now I have another centaur character concept.

Originally Posted by Asmotherion
In my World, Centaurs, Mermaids and other "hybrid" creatures are able to shift between their Hybrid Form and a Humanoid form as they like. So, having one as a PC is less of an issue.

The lore around them is that they are essentially Humans (or some other humanoid species) who have either gone through a ritual that allows them to shift into an Animal or inherited the trait from a parrent. This can go on for generations.

Other than their Animal form, they can also take a Hybrid form.

Interesting, very similar to the Pathfinder approach to werecreatures. Never thought of applying it to a centaur.

But I feel like you'd get dizzy shifting from four legs to only two.

Originally Posted by Deepbluediver
And in D&D horses are classified as Large size, but IRL they cover a large range, from clydesdale to shetland pony.

And let’s not forget the Falabella, another competitor for world's smallest horse breed.

.

[Composer99]

The answer to the question posed in the OP is the same answer that Michael Okuda gave whenever anyone asked how Heisenberg Compensators work in the transporters of Star Trek: "Just fine, thank you."

If you're not going to espouse some sort of misplaced purism towards worldbuilding, centaurs will fit into your games just fine. (Indeed, as has just been noted only a few posts before this one, given how small wild horses are, it'd actually be trivial to imagine a Medium-sized centaur.)

[Forum Explorer]

No, kids would be goat-man children. Horse-man children should be "foals".

You've got me there.

They have a ribcage in a vertical neck, or a waist and legs that's substantially longer than ours, depending on if you want to compare them to horses or humans. Unless they have a snake spine for their upper body they're going to have flexibility issues while standing up, even if their horse body is absolutely tiny relative to the human part. Even sitting down reach would be awkward unless they have disproportionate gangly arms.

Working with tools is not in itself a difficulty, though making something like flint tools and then working up would be harder than it was for humans I think, it's developing tools in the first place. Centaurs are, generally speaking, big, rugged, fast, hairy and have hooves. They would be pretty good predators able to kick pretty much anything in the natural world to death and eat it if they want to, resistant to cold temperatures and able to follow herds of wild animals with comparative ease relative to humans. Combine that with the general awkwardness of doing anything when you have a horse body, which means that even when sitting on the ground they are higher off the ground than a human sitting on the ground is, they have little incentive to go to the effort of making tools to do anything much. About the only tool I can see them really wanting is a knife anyway, everything else is fairly inconsequential to them. Even the knife is only really because they lack claws or sharp teeth in most depictions.

Fire is unnecessary, because they have a long gut and a lower surface area:volume ratio than humans. That means they can digest uncooked foods more easily than humans and lose less heat to their environment. This also means they don't have a whole lot of need for clothes, except maybe something to protect extremities like fingers from frostbite, and something to carry things in. Unless they live in an area that routinely hits temperatures that would kill a wild horse, I imagine they could go nude more or less constantly.

The two big limitations I see centaurs having that would make tool use desirable is their lack of natural tearing/cutting parts, and their possession of human jaws. Human hands/teeth aren't suited to ripping apart bodies or grinding down bones or fibrous vegetation, two of the more common diets for wild animals. The vegetation issue could probably be solved by assuming centaurs have teeth that grow constantly like horses do, but they'd have one hell of a sore jaw if it's the size of a human's and they want to eat grasses and shrubs, or even just raw grains and nuts. Our mouth shape is not cut out for tough foods.

Drinking would also likely be a bit of a pain in the ass. Water, by nature, tends to be very low to the ground, and with the aforementioned flexibility issues a centaur would have if the torso is built like a human's it would be basically impossible to lower the mouth to water while standing, and cupping your hands to drink isn't all that efficient. There could be room for the usage of some sort of bowls or cups to drink with, perhaps even ones with a very long handle so the centaur doesn't need to sit or lie down to drink, but cups and bowls don't require complex tool crafting to get. Drinking is a very vulnerable position for a lot of animals, having to sit to do it would be even more dangerous for a quadruped, so it's a strong inventive to find better ways to do things.

That might all hold true from an evolutionary stand point, but centaurs aren't alone in our fantasy worlds. There are plenty of humans to discover forging and for the Centaurs to learn about it from them and adapt it for their own.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Grim Portent
Water, by nature, tends to be very low to the ground….

This is a good point, but worth noting that not all water is down on the ground. In steep hilly or mountainous areas there will be creeks spilling over rocks in tiny waterfalls, and it’s not hard to find a spot near one that’s suited for drinking, like a natural water fountain. And of course you can stand under a larger waterfall and drink from your hands.

For centaurs in flat areas this will be more of a challenge, but I’d expect they would know the springs in their home territories. And, unlike horses, centaurs also have the option of building wells and cisterns, so it won’t be too difficult for them to build basins or pools that are at centaur drinking level. An Archimedes screw and some clay pipes should do the trick. The Romans had complex water systems for their baths and centaurs should be able to manage the equivalent.

Originally Posted by Forum Explorer
There are plenty of humans to discover forging and for the Centaurs to learn about it from them and adapt it for their own.

Very definitely, and this is something that tends to be overlooked. There’s been constant cultural exchange throughout real-world history, and that should hold true between humans and centaurs in a world where they coexist. Technology can be transferred even between cultures that are mutually hostile (e.g. stories of how paper reached the Middle East) and it’s reasonable to assume that, with equal intelligence and manual dexterity, humans and centaurs will be learning from each other.