New member here, and a first time GM working on my first campaign! I love the system, and once I saw it I had an idea I wanted to try. I'm building a setting that shoots Greco-Roman Mythology into the Renaissance: Humans, Satyrs, Amazons, all running around with primitive firearms and some of DaVinci's most outlandish inventions! I've got most of the Archetypes constructed, but I'm a little stuck on Centaurs. I used Wookies as my baseline, so they start at:

BR: 3 AG:2 IN:2 CU:1 WI:2 PE:2, Starting wounds: 14+, Starting Strain: 8+, and starting skill :Resilience, and 80 XP

Their racial ability is a little more difficult. Trying to capture their mounted nature, I'm toying with some combo of:

Silhouette Lvl 2(obviously)

Starting Encumbrance: 8+Brawn

Going prone costs an action rather than maneuver

Add another difficulty dice to sneaking attempts

Adding an action to let them move two range increments rather than just one

An extra hoof attack.

Has anyone else ever built a Centaur Archetype, and if so how did you deal with them?

Thanks, and sorry for the length of this post!

Sounds like a fun idea! Be sure to check out "clockpunk" fiction if you haven't already; it's right up the alley of what you're trying to do.

As for your Centaurs, I think sticking with a normal stat line (3 Brawn, 1 Presence is what I'd go with personally, since the Greek centaurs were wild and antagonistic to humans), and giving them Silhouette 2 is a good baseline.

For special abilities, I wouldn't get too deep into special exceptions to the rules. For instance, I wouldn't make going prone or sneaking harder for them; these in my mind are side-effects of having Silhouette 2 and should be handled on a case-by-case and GM-by-GM basis. So, for example, "Rorak, your hooves clack off the cobblestone streets, so add +1 Setback to that Stealth attempt." Or, "I'm going to say that the terrain here is a bit uneven, so it's going to take you two maneuvers to go prone." I wouldn't make these penalties universal, in other words.

Instead, you might consider giving them some version of the "Beast of Burden" ability from Star Wars: "Beast of Burden X: Centaurs add X to their encumbrance threshold). This would allow Centaurs to carry more, and wouldn't be all that game-breaking. I also think the idea of a hoof trample is a good idea. The Selonian species in Star Wars gets a tail whack, so you could just reskin this: "Hooves: A centaur's hooves can be used as a Brawl weapon. They always count of equipped, and have the following weapon profile (Brawl; Damage +1, Critical 5; Range [Engaged]; Disorient 2, Knockdown). The centaur may trigger Knockdown with 1 Advantage, but still must spend additional Advantage to knock down targets with a higher silhouette as per the Knockdown quality rules."

The Selonians actually use Agility to power the tail (but do damage per Brawl), but I've never agreed with that decision. And since Centaurs are pretty big, you might consider upping the damage of the hooves slightly and perhaps adding Inaccurate 1 or 2 to the roll to temper them a bit and represent the fact that the centaur can't see behind it when attacking.

Base stats: ok

Wounds: should be 12. 13+ costs more based on the book, and think that they already have Brawn 2.

Strain: 9 seems good.

The "free" skill point: I would let the player choose between Survival or Athletics. Fits better in my opinion, think about this.

Silhouette: I personally think that every Brawn greater than 1 could provide a passive +2 Brawn damage and +2 in encumbrance. This need some tests of course, but big adversaries already have a base damage very high. This was the point of one topic this year, cause Brawn is a very abstratic stat (like everything in the system) and the max of 5 creates some confusion for some players. A human warrior could have Brawn 5 as well as a dinossaur, a minotaur, etc. How we can show, in game, that a dinossaur is much more brute than a human? The basic attack could do a lot of more damage, something like 12 + Brawn, which can easily smash almost every humanoid. But note that there is no rule to create this despite few creatures we can find in some Star Wars books. There are some "invisible rules" in my opinion, like this to increase the encumbrance and damage by +X for every silhouette greater than 1. The problem: it's hard to understand, without testing, if this would be ok or broken for players. OBS.: Greater silhouette could also provide some setbacks for some checks as well, like Stealth. But like I've said, the Genesys is very abstract.

The following abilities are something very particular.

Hoofs looks good, like @SavageBob said.

I would remove the prone, stealth and movement abilites. But I would add something 5 XP worth to complete.

One with Nature?

I'm not sure I would go with Sihouette: 2. I understand that horses may be Silhouette: 2 (do we have any official sources on this?), but even Hutts (who are extremely long) and Arx (who can be 12 feet tall) were Sil: 1 in the SWRPG. Treat them as a smaller-than-usual horse, largely because, otherwise, you'll end up with a species unable to enter most buildings. Also keep in mind that most images of centaurs show their horse legs to be proportionate to their human torsos, and other RPGs, such as D&D and Pathfinder, present them as 6 to 7 feet tall and 8 feet long.

Brawn: 3 | Agility: 2 | Intellect: 2 | Cunning: 1 | Willpower: 2 | Presence 2

Starting Wounds : 12 + Brawn
Starting Strain: 8 + Brawn
Starting XP: 85

Bonus Skill: Centaurs start with 1 rank in Survival. They still may not increase Survival above 2 during character creation.

Strong Back: Centaurs can carry an additional 5 points of encumbrance.

Hooves: A centaur may choose to attack with its fore or hind hooves as a brawl attack. The fore hooves are Damage +1, Crit 4, Engaged, Knockdown. The hind hooves are Damage +2, Crit 4, Disorient 1, Knockdown.

Of all the species with 6 limbs centaurs are the only ones I think should get the ability that the others have in Star Wars. Centaurs should get two free manoeuvres every turn. Alternatively you could write a new ability:

Gallop: The second Move manoeuvre a centaur takes in a single round counts as two for the purpose determining distances traveled. Eg the centaur can move from Short to Long with only two manoeuvres in a single round.

The hoof attack idea sounds great.

I also think they should be a species with two characteristics at 1, that way they have more xp to drop on the abilities:

3/2/2/1/2/1