Centaur

Version 0.15: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

This page is about the player species. For the monster, see Centaur (monster).

The Centaurs are another species of hybrid creatures: horses with Human torsos. They usually live in forests, surviving by hunting. Centaurs can move very quickly on their four legs, and are excellent with bows and other missile weapons; they are also reasonable at fighting in general while being slow learners at specific weapon skills. They advance quite slowly in experience levels and are rather sub-average at using magic. Like Nagas, they receive inferior protection from the armour they wear.

Innate Abilities

• Tough Skin 3: Centaurs have extremely tough skin (AC +3).
• Fast 2: Centaurs cover ground very quickly during movement.
• Deformed: A Centaur's equine body fits poorly into armour.
• Hooves 3: Centaurs have hooves in place of feet. They cannot wear boots, but gain an auxiliary melee attack.
• Centaurs may equip centaur barding.
• Centaurs are large enough to attack normally while standing in shallow water (though they still move slowly through it).
• Centaurs require less skill to use shields effectively than other medium-sized races.

Centaurs have a base Strength of 10, Intelligence of 7 and Dexterity of 4 (before Background modifiers).

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Fighter, Gladiator, Hunter
• Warrior-mages: Warper, Arcane Marksman

Level Bonuses

• +1 strength or dexterity (equal chance) every 4th level.
• 10% more HP than average.
• 10% less MP than average.
• +3 magic resistance per level.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Centaurs start with the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exceptions.

• Centaurs start with an extra bread ration.

Difficulty of Play

Despite poor defensive aptitudes and some of the worst Stealth modifiers in the game, Centaurs' excellent movement speed and good HP makes them a very powerful and forgiving species. Centaurs can kite the vast majority of enemies in relative safety, via clever use of ranged combat, polearms, or spells. Fast movement also gives Centaurs the ability to disengage from many foes at will, choose terrain that is to their advantage, maintain greater control over position in relation to enemies, and avoid being surrounded. Only the Spriggan is faster — but far less robust — than the Centaur.

The Centaur's Deformed mutation causes them to receive only half the base armour rating of their body armour, rounded down. This may seem to be a very significant handicap, but it has no impact on AC gains from armour enchantment levels or from the Armour skill (which is calculated using the armour's full AC value), and a Centaur's innate +3 AC helps balance it out even before those modifiers come into play. Centaurs only experience actual numerical penalties when wearing heavy or super-heavy armour, and when wearing light armours, Centaurs actually wind up with better AC than standard races do. Finally, note that Centaurs can wear centaur bardings instead of boots, providing significantly better AC (although bardings are also less common than boots).

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude
Attack		Miscellaneous		Magic
Fighting	0	Armour	-3	Spellcasting	-3
		Dodging	-3
Maces & Flails	-1	Shields	-3	Conjurations	-1
Axes	-1	Stealth	-4	Hexes	-1
Polearms	-1			Summonings	-1
Staves	-1	Invocations	1	Necromancy	-1
Unarmed Combat	0	Evocations	-1	Translocations	-1
Throwing	1	Shapeshifting	N/A	Alchemy	N/A
				Fire Magic	-1
Short Blades	-1			Ice Magic	-1
Long Blades	-1			Air Magic	-1
Ranged Weapons	N/A	Experience	-1	Earth Magic	-1

Trivia

Centaurs are originally creatures from Greek mythology.

History

Prior to 0.15, centaurs were Herbivorous, gaining more nutrition from vegetarian foods and less from meat-based foods. They also had Fast Metabolism 1, causing them to hunger more quickly.