It’s Midgard Monday! Each week, we visit a corner of the wide world of Midgard. Look for standalone content you can drop into your campaign—whether it’s in Midgard or your own homebrew. Find new inspiration each Midgard Monday!
As we continue our tour of Midgard lineages for Tales of the Valiant RPG (on sale now!), we visit the centaurs of the Rothenain Plains. This installment of the series also includes a heritage and a background that centaur characters (or any character!) might use.
Centaurs
Centaurs rumble across the vast Rothenian Plain of eastern Midgard. Blending humanoid and equine features, some scholars opine that centaurs are the original inspiration for cavalry. These four-legged folk voice no opposition in the matter, provided these scholars remain silent regarding centaurs’ suitability as draft animals.
In Midgard, most centaurs can be found roaming the Rothenian plain in small, nomadic tribes. Centaurs often approach their life with a might-makes-right principle, having no qualms with overpowering others and taking their land and chattel. Despite this belief, they have a sense of deep loyalty and honor, never stealing from their friends and family.
While most centaurs spend the majority of their lives with their clan, young centaurs commonly embark on what is euphemistically called their “wild years” upon reaching maturity. During this time, the centaurs band together and work through their aggression and immaturity. If they survive this, centaurs tame their wilder impulses and return to their clan, while others hearken to the call of adventure.
The nations of Midgard tremble when centaur clans gather into hordes and ride off in search of war. Clever rulers bribe the galloping throngs with trinkets and build defenses along the Plain; rulers too shortsighted to see the damage see their cities leveled under hoof.
CENTAUR LINEAGE TRAITS
Your centaur character has certain hereditary traits dictated by their lineage.
Age. Centaurs reach maturity at 15 years of age, living up to 100 years.
Size. Your size is Large. Centaurs stand between 8 and 9 feet tall, weighing in excess of 1,000 pounds.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 40 feet.
Type. You have the Monstrosity creature type instead of Humanoid.
Buck and Rear. You have advantage on ability checks and saving throws made to escape grapples. Once per short or long rest, when you escape a grapple from a creature that is Medium or smaller, you can also cause that creature to fall prone.
Natural Weapons. Your hooves can be used as natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with them, you deal 2d4 + STR modifier bludgeoning damage.
Humanoid Torso. You are able to wield weapons and wear armor sized for Medium creatures due to the proportions of your humanoid torso.
Quadruped. Due to your large size and indelicate hooves, climbs that require hands and feet are particularly challenging for you. When making such a climb, you must spend 5 feet of movement for every 1 foot you ascend.
Rothenian Heritage
Members of this heritage hail from the Rothenian Plain, east of the Margreve Forest and Madgar Kingdom. While many of those who call the Plains home are centaurs, others are the Khazzaki humans, ravenfolk from Vidim, or even tieflings from Demon Mountain.
No matter their heritage, those who call the Plain their home are fiercely independent. They resist tooth, hoof, and nail any effort to fence them in.
Experienced Handler. You have proficiency with Animal Handling. Whenever you are attempting to calm, direct, or handle an animal that you are currently mounted on, you may make your Animal Handling check with advantage.
Plains Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.
Languages. You know Common and one additional language of your choice. Typical Rothenian heritage characters choose Centaur.
Caravan Raider Background
You are the scourge of caravans and merchants, taking what you want with swift tactics to overwhelm your targets. Whether you act alone or with a gang of others, you have studied and tracked the trade routes between towns, cities, or kingdoms, plundering its riches. As a caravan raider, you have lived a life of ruthless means, combining careful scouting with crushing might to pillage the wealth you so rightfully deserve from those foolish enough to travel unprepared and unprotected.
Skill Proficiencies: Choose two from Athletics, Intimidation, Investigation, or Perception.
Additional Proficiencies: Gain proficiency with cartographer’s tools and one type of tool or gaming set of your choice.
Equipment: A bag of caltrops, a hand drawn map highlighting popular caravan routes within your home region, a trinket of unknown value that you kept from your latest raid, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp.
Talent
As a caravan raider, you are no stranger to violence and taking advantage of your target’s weaknesses. Choose a talent from the following list to represent your strategic and physical tact: Opportunist, Quick, or Scrutinous.
Adventuring Motivation
Caravan raiders take advantage of trundling caravans and attack using swift and brutal tactics. As such, they are used to staying on the move and traveling when the money moves elsewhere, or when the local authorities are on their trail. When beginning your adventures, determine why you are on the move and if you are after something, or something is after you.
Adventuring Motivation
| d8 | Adventuring Motivation |
| 1 | Adventuring is the gateway to even more riches. |
| 2 | Adventuring is a good cover for my true intentions. |
| 3 | Adventuring allows me to distance myself from those who pursue me. |
| 4 | Adventuring allows me to travel to new places whose caravans aren’t expecting me. |
| 5 | Adventuring lets me expand my influence and increase my raiding turf. |
| 6 | Adventuring helps me forget the cruelty I used to inflict. |
| 7 | Adventuring keeps me from being captured by the gang I recently backstabbed. |
| 8 | Adventuring helps me hone my skills and gives me new tools to raid more effectively. |
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The Tales of the Valiant version of the Centaur seems way better than the D$D Centaur to me – in every way imaginable. Better lore, cooler stats, etc. The heritage and background are awesome, too.
Obviously this is intended for a future Midgard sourcebook, but if it were to end up in a less setting-specific supplement, the Rothenian heritage would need to be renamed “Steppe heritage” or something similar.
Either way, I look forward to seeing this in a supplement book.
Thanks for having the courage to make a Large PC race. Please do the same for Minotaurs, and consider Tiny ratatoskr and Fairies.
I appreciate the Midgard support each week!
as much as I love the idea of Large PCs, it raises a lot of Questions around radius effects, etc. You can totally go for it but you if you are planning on using this in a book officially, I would consider making it medium with some large traits or having a sidebar on how its meant to interact with effects