Centaur

No one mistakes a centaur: a human head, arms, and torso rise from the body of a big, strong horse. They have their own language, and roughly one in ten can also speak Elvish.

Centaurs never go unarmed. In a typical band, half swing oaken clubs that hit like morning stars and a quarter carry composite bows with 10-30 arrows, flight or sheaf depending on how dangerous the region has become. The rest are leaders (AC 4, HD 5) bearing medium horse lances and medium shields. Each centaur attacks three times a round in melee: one weapon blow and two hoof kicks.

In the lair there are 1-6 more males, twice as many females as males, and 5-30 young. Females (3 Hit Dice) and young (1-3 Hit Dice) fight only with hooves, and only when their lives are at stake.

Centaurs avoid humans and live in remote clearings and meadows, but among their own kind they are cheerful and social. A tribe is made up of family groups, anywhere from 3-4 families to more than 20. Males take the risky jobs of hunting and guarding, so females outnumber them two to one. Centaurs mate for life and the whole tribe helps raise the foals.

The lair is a big concealed glade and pasture deep in the woods with fresh running water, perhaps with huts or lean-tos in harsher climates and cooking fires out in the open. Skilled gardeners, they often grow useful plants nearby, and in monster-ridden country they may ring the lair with dense thornbushes, snares, and traps. Every tribe has a priest who counts as a leader and casts spells as a 3rd-level druid.

They live by hunting, gathering, fishing, farming, and trade. They will deal with elves, often buying food and wine, and may even share land with them. Visitors get different treatment by race: humans and dwarves are politely asked to go, gnomes and halflings are put up with, and elves are welcomed. Monsters are handled by how much danger they pose: the tribe packs up and moves if a dragon or giant arrives, but orcs, trolls, and their kind are killed.

Centaurs loot their slain enemies and know exactly what the spoils are worth. Most males keep a few coins, leaders have double the normal individual treasure, and the tribe holds a shared treasury that may contain magic items. That wealth buys food and pays ransom (90% likely) for captured or endangered members.

Though generally neutral or chaotic good, centaurs can become loud, crude, and belligerent when drunk. They guard their females and young fiercely and, peaceful as they are, answer threats to their way of life with violence.

Centaurs live in step with the natural world and spend their lives protecting the resources around their homes, with an instinctive sense of how to keep that balance. A centaur that must fell a tree plants a new one. Unlike many human communities, they never strip an area of fish or game but pick their quarry carefully and take only what they need.