May UA's Up: Ever Wanted To Be Part Horse?

[Boverk]

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm taking notes for next month's UA feedback survey....

I have so much feedback

[Tectorman]

Wile this is a Medium Humanoid:

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See, I look at that and I totally buy her fitting into a 5-foot square and only having difficulty climbing due to her lower body rather than it being impossible. No more doubts here; WotC making playable Centaurs Medium is a very good idea that I hope stays all the way to print.

And yeah, maybe I'd care less if 5E were entirely "Theater of the Mind", but if a grid's involved, then I simply don't want to be potentially surrounded by 12 enemies, and I don't feel like I need to threaten the same (or 32 squares with reach).

As for the whole "mobile tower of Centaurs", I feel like that would be mitigated by their carrying capacity alone. Except for outlier circumstances, they're only carrying Str score x 15 x 2, which caps at 600 lbs. That's, what, maybe one extra Centaur, plus both of their gear. But even then, their Equine Build allows "A Medium or smaller creature". "A" means one, no plurals. Though I do agree that the language about how they're not a controlled mount needs to explicitly describe how mounted combat works or if it doesn't at all (as I don't believe it's meant to here).

[Ralanr]

If Centaurs received a bonus to Dex instead of Strength, they would make very good Monks.

I could definitely see myself playing a Centaur Monk (Speed, Unarmored Defense, and Proficiency in all saving throws? Yes please) and one of my party members playing a Cavalier Fighter in the future.

Centaurs with wall running would be hilarious.

[Angelalex242]

So, the Wizards of the coast want to tell me that:

This is a Large Beast:


Wile this is a Medium Humanoid:


I think something implyed is politically incorect here. I knew the Wizards of the Coast were secretly Death Eaters!

I know Season 8 Dawn when I see her! Well met, fellow Buffy fan!

[Laserlight]

I think giving the centaurs a racial charge ability was...not the best design decision. It's basically saying "WOTC really wants you to play centaurs as melee fighters. Those of you who think centaurs should be skirmishing archers, or squishy casters, well, your racial ability is never going to do anything for you."

I think the charge bonus should have been a racial Feat instead.

[DracoKnight]

I think giving the centaurs a racial charge ability was...not the best design decision. It's basically saying "WOTC really wants you to play centaurs as melee fighters. Those of you who think centaurs should be skirmishing archers, or squishy casters, well, your racial ability is never going to do anything for you."

I think the charge bonus should have been a racial Feat instead.

I mean, the 5e races are full of those design decisions. And Centaur is kinda designed to be a melee fighter anyway, getting a substantial STR boost.

[LudicSavant]

I mean, the 5e races are full of those design decisions.

Doing something lame more often does not make it stop being lame.

[DracoKnight]

Doing something lame more often does not make it stop being lame.

I didn't say it doesn't. I'm just pointing out that it tends towards the trappings of 5e racial design.

[Kaliayev]

During today's Dragon+, JC talked about experimenting with the application of hybrid nature to other PC races (monsters like night hag as well, theoretically). Potentially, an aasimar would be hybrid human/celestial, an elf would be hybrid humanoid/fey, etc. I'm curious what people think about this approach. Personally, I think it can be neat from a narrative perspective, but very problematic when applied to the broader mechanics landscape. For example, would someone who cast detect evil and good in an elven city just be completely overloaded with sensory input? To what extent is your party hindered when fighting a demon with a tiefling in your party? I think it would make the game clunkier, which runs counter to RAF.

Discussion about hybrid nature

[Regitnui]

During today's Dragon+, JC talked about experimenting with the application of hybrid nature to other PC races (monsters like night hag as well, theoretically).

I'm of the opinion that they had the game almost as perfect as D&D can be at launch, and only need content (settings, race options, feats) to make this one if the best editions ever. My rule of thumb is: If it makes things more complicated and/or raises the barrier to entry, it's a bad idea. Hybrid nature on core races? Does both. "Mearlshawk" initiative just made things more complicated. Now putting the complexity as optional is better. I have no objection to monster races like minotaurs and centaurs being complicated, but the core game should be as simple as possible for newbies while still keeping crunch.

[nickl_2000]

JC has seen a lot of grief on twitter about Centaur's being medium sized.

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/...46635072126976
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/...30792158318592
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/...55801727647745

[DracoKnight]

At this point, I don't think it's actually gonna be a huge deal for centaurs to be Medium. They're just going to take up a 5ftx10ft area on the grid. For gear and all else that matters mechanically anyway, they're not gonna need anything more than medium-sized shiz.

EDIT: I'm more annoyed that Minotaurs don't get Powerful Build and Darkvision. Unless I'm forgetting something and they don't actually get Darkvision as a monster.

[Ralanr]

At this point, I don't think it's actually gonna be a huge deal for centaurs to be Medium. They're just going to take up a 5ftx10ft area on the grid. For gear and all else that matters mechanically anyway, they're not gonna need anything more than medium-sized shiz.

EDIT: I'm more annoyed that Minotaurs don't get Powerful Build and Darkvision. Unless I'm forgetting something and they don't actually get Darkvision as a monster.

They do actually. Horns must be taking to much of the power budget.

[strangebloke]

They do actually. Horns must be taking to much of the power budget.

I would get rid of the charge, personally, or combine the charge and the horns into one thing.

[Chaosmancer]

I'm of the opinion that they had the game almost as perfect as D&D can be at launch, and only need content (settings, race options, feats) to make this one if the best editions ever. My rule of thumb is: If it makes things more complicated and/or raises the barrier to entry, it's a bad idea. Hybrid nature on core races? Does both. "Mearlshawk" initiative just made things more complicated. Now putting the complexity as optional is better. I have no objection to monster races like minotaurs and centaurs being complicated, but the core game should be as simple as possible for newbies while still keeping crunch.

I think I agree it should be an optional rule, not a base rule.

However, I love the idea of this optional rule A LOT. I think it will help the tone of certain things. I've actually played with this when people used Divine Sense or Primal Awareness, letting them know that Tieglings or creatures corrupted by the Far Realms give off a faint signature. Getting something more official that might give me more ideas on how to expand upon that, or feats or boons that might reflect that "corrupting" influence of extraplanar forces. That'd be kind of awesome

[Willie the Duck]

They do actually. Horns must be taking to much of the power budget.

Really? These horn rules?

If they were convenient d10+str weapons with shoves you might reasonably ever use I might see it. This, no. I know what I'm putting down for my feedback.

[Regitnui]

I think I agree it should be an optional rule, not a base rule.

However, I love the idea of this optional rule A LOT. I think it will help the tone of certain things. I've actually played with this when people used Divine Sense or Primal Awareness, letting them know that Tieglings or creatures corrupted by the Far Realms give off a faint signature. Getting something more official that might give me more ideas on how to expand upon that, or feats or boons that might reflect that "corrupting" influence of extraplanar forces. That'd be kind of awesome

Oh, I like that idea, but it should definitely be put in a DM's options section, along with how it alters detect spells. Like do tieflings, aasimar and elves now trigger detect good and evil?

[Finback]

For example, would someone who cast detect evil and good in an elven city just be completely overloaded with sensory input? To what extent is your party hindered when fighting a demon with a tiefling in your party? I think it would make the game clunkier, which runs counter to RAF.

For the former, rather than overwhelm them with sensory overload, it'd be more like just a wall of manageable noise. You couldn't *pinpoint* something if you're surrounded by it. It'd be like picking one particular wildebeest with an odd pattern out of a migration. Or picking out a single out of tune vuvuzela at the World Cup.

[HolyDraconus]

Thinking about it some, the hybrid type is a surprisingly good way of introducing vampirism and lycanthropy into official PC usage. I can see thralls, minions, half dragons, half elementals and a number of other things using it as a gateway to player availability.

[Regitnui]

Or picking out a single out of tune vuvuzela at the World Cup.

So basically a demon in disguise just needs to stock their city with tieflings, and bam, undetectable by magic. After all, there's no such thing as an out-of-tune vuvuzela.

[Glorthindel]

For example, would someone who cast detect evil and good in an elven city just be completely overloaded with sensory input? To what extent is your party hindered when fighting a demon with a tiefling in your party? I think it would make the game clunkier, which runs counter to RAF.

Heh, thats a point - they specifically went out of their way to change Detect Good and Evil to remove its ability to detect the alignments of player characters and NPC's, and now are looking to wedge that problem back in again.

[Tectorman]

Heh, thats a point - they specifically went out of their way to change Detect Good and Evil to remove its ability to detect the alignments of player characters and NPC's, and now are looking to wedge that problem back in again.

I agree that's a problem with races that would be both Humanoid and a type that triggers Detect Good and Evil spells, but is the combination of Humanoid and Monstrosity a problem? I was taking it as a workaround to low-level PCs being immune to Charm-, Hold-, and Dominate Person, and I don't think Monstrosity has other issues the way Celestial, Fiend, and Fey do.

[Chaosmancer]

Heh, thats a point - they specifically went out of their way to change Detect Good and Evil to remove its ability to detect the alignments of player characters and NPC's, and now are looking to wedge that problem back in again.

Wasn't that problem more of a "the vizier registered as evil, kill him, he's the one who poisoned the Prince" or a "the rogue registered as evil, I'm good, I must smite him as my god demands"?

I never heard of it as a "the demon is hiding in this crowd but I keep getting false positives from the warlock" type of problem.

Honestly, I think the bigger thing is that they should have renamed those spells, but the boat has sailed

[NaughtyTiger]

Mearls has stated that they basically can't do a straight-up Large creature because the extra damage die for Large weapons would overwhelm everything else and make them too good as brawlers. (That's a rough paraphrase, obviously; he went into more detail on one of the Happy Fun Hour streams. Maybe the one with the Giant Soul Sorcerer.)

Anyway, this is UA, so here's the time to give your feedback. Personally, I think the centaur in particular—with her normal, human-sized hands—is a perfect candidate to try out templating such as "this creature is Large, but counts as Medium for weapon sizes" instead of "this creature is Medium, but counts as Large for carrying capacity".

EDIT: Out of curiosity, does anybody have any other statements from the designers about non-weapon-dice-related issues with Large PCs? I suppose they would also have a troublingly large threat range, especially when wielding reach weapons.

Does the rule book explicitly say Large creatures get double dice?
I thought it was design guidance.
I mean, Enlarge spell doesn't double your weapon die.

[Finback]

So basically a demon in disguise just needs to stock their city with tieflings, and bam, undetectable by magic. After all, there's no such thing as an out-of-tune vuvuzela.

If the demon is dumb enough to try to hide in a city with a heavy alignment skew to good, they probably deserved a party detecting them. And if the party is silly enough to try detect evil in a city full of a huge abundance of alignments (or worse, say, a city in the Abyss or nine Hells) then they probably deserve the horrible feedback of a billion vuvuzelas.

(Is there such a thing as an *in*-tune vuvuzela?)

[Dr. Cliché]

Centaurs being medium seems really silly to me.

I'm also dubious of them being able to climb at all. But maybe I just want to see a party having to create a rudimentary pulley system to get their centaur friend up the cliff.

[Glorthindel]

"the rogue registered as evil, I'm good, I must smite him as my god demands"?

I never heard of it as a "the demon is hiding in this crowd but I keep getting false positives from the warlock" type of problem.

The problem is the combnination of the two - "the demon is hiding in this crowd and while looking for him, I've just discovered the tiefling/elf/genasi is registered as evil, I'm good, I must smite him as my god demands".

When they altered Detect Good and Evil, it removed the trick of using the spell to sweep the party (and every NPC interacted with) for evil. This was a good change in my mind. If they retcon these races into being dual-natured (and into a nature that is detectable by the spell), then it means those races have a severe drawback for players, since they are "exposed" to alignment-checking, while other races aren't. Its probably a minor thing, but worth considering.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The problem is the combnination of the two - "the demon is hiding in this crowd and while looking for him, I've just discovered the tiefling/elf/genasi is registered as evil, I'm good, I must smite him as my god demands".

When they altered Detect Good and Evil, it removed the trick of using the spell to sweep the party (and every NPC interacted with) for evil. This was a good change in my mind. If they retcon these races into being dual-natured (and into a nature that is detectable by the spell), then it means those races have a severe drawback for players, since they are "exposed" to alignment-checking, while other races aren't. Its probably a minor thing, but worth considering.

I wish they had renamed those spells or abilities--"Detect Abnormal" or something. Because they don't detect alignments. There's only a single ability that actually mechanically tells what something's alignment is--the sprite's heart sight. Detect Evil and Good pings on a lot of things that aren't of fixed alignment--aberrations, elementals, and fey don't have fixed good or evil alignments. So anyone saying "it pings, so it's evil" with that spell is mistaken.

Divine Sense (the paladin ability) does only ping on celestials, undead, and fiends. So you'd get tricky consequences there if you mixed those creature types with humanoids. Monstrosity, aberration, elemental, plant, construct, and fey would have their own issues, but not the "evil = smite" issue.

Edit: I have a homebrew class (in the Base Class Contest) that has a ribbon ability that changes their type. Doesn't hybridize it, changes it to aberration. From what I can tell, it only affects a few spells and makes them ping on detect evil and good.

[Sigreid]

Centaurs being medium seems really silly to me.

I'm also dubious of them being able to climb at all. But maybe I just want to see a party having to create a rudimentary pulley system to get their centaur friend up the cliff.

Don't see why they can't just say centaurs are large but treated as medium for weapons and reach instead of they are medium and treated as large for carrying capacity. Just flip the script and it's fine.

[Dr. Cliché]

Don't see why they can't just say centaurs are large but treated as medium for weapons and reach instead of they are medium and treated as large for carrying capacity. Just flip the script and it's fine.

Yeah, that would make a lot more sense.

Still wouldn't let them climb, though.