Now you do too

They shoot you with their bow.

Steam Deck.

Damn that's cool

This is just another reminder how weird a centaur is as a concept. Vertebrates don't have more than 4 limbs. Land vertebrates mostly have 4 legs, but the structure of their forelegs is very similar to human arms and wrists. Bats have wings, but their wings are basically arms with a membrane of skin between the bones. Even a Naga (human / snake hybrid) makes more sense than a centaur.

Also, think how unbalanced a centaur would be. Instead of a trunk that merely has to support a neck and a head, a centaur has to support a full half-human right at the front of its body. That would shift the centre of mass way forward, so most of the weight would be on the middle limbs. That would affect its ability to gallop, because in a gallop most of the running power of a horse comes from the back legs. If the back legs are almost completely unloaded because all the weight is at the front, the back legs wouldn't be able to push with much force.

A more realistic centaur would have the trunk weight shifted backwards, so instead of having a human torso replacing its neck and head, it would be like a rider on a horse but without the rider's legs or the horse's head.

Fun fact, horse heads/necks weigh about as much as human torsos do. Depending on the horse, and the human.
Modern horses are fuckin huge. It's not unreasonable to think that a horse body could support a human upper body without much additional musculature.
- That just raises the question about how big a human torso would be mounted on a modern horse's torso. A huge clydesdale mare with a typical jockey's torso would look pretty ridiculous. But, maybe a clydesdale-type-centaur would have an Andre-the-giant torso, or maybe something even bigger. Maybe it would be a humanoid torso which, if it had legs, would stand 4m tall.
  But, even if it is an Andre the Giant head, imagine how much grass he's going to have to eat to keep his body fed. Andre has a big mouth compared to me, but it's still small compared to a horse.
A human torso’s weight would be almost inconsequential compared to a whole ass horse body, not to mention the human part has abs and shit and will be coordinating with the horse part, cause it’s all one creature. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a ridiculous creature, I just think it could theoretically work

They shoot arrows with a bow?!

They hold a polearm. Always.

or a bow
- Or my axe!
- Finally the correct answers have arrived

they clack together two halves of split open coconuts to confuse the enemy

I would be holding on to my dick and balls so they don't smack me in the asshole every gallop.

I'd hold my hands like when you stick your hand out of the car window and surfs on the air.
- Like the centaurs in fantasia
How do horses solve that problem?
- The saddle apparatus has a cock holster to prevent chafing.
How?

Maybe they Naruto run while galloping

- That is absolute nightmare fuel. This image alone is enough reason to ban ai.
- Perfect
- Credit? You can have my upvote if this isn't "genAI".
- This but the kids from Weapons.
- ai slop
Immediately what came to mind. It's gotta be this.

Centaurs (and other *taur types. Looking at you, furries) are overall an incredibly dumb design.

The more you think about them, the more they just don't work. I went from meh, to dislike, to hate for centaurs over the years.

The more you think about them, the more they just don’t work.
Wait till you get into the math of
<insert any mythological creature with wings>
.
A Pegasus, if it were to fly in the same way as a bird, would require extremely large wings relative to its body size, likely much larger than commonly depicted. Calculations suggest a wingspan of at least 30 meters (about 100 feet) for a horse-sized creature. This is due to the constraints of the square-cube law and the need for sufficient lift to support the horse's weight.
A study of dragons from movies and video games suggests they would need to fly much faster or have wings 45 times larger to stay aloft.
Don't even get me started on Sphinxes and Manticores.
- Several fantasies just give em required secondary powers. Griffins use wind magic. Dragons use some form of antigravity or flight magic.
  Iirc in Stormlight, the ... gigafauna?(Googles and finds it has been cooked for how I want to use it...huh) have gems in them that allows em to sorta reduce gravity in order for them to be able to survive at such a size (the planet also has lower gravity than earth,at 0.7G)
- That is why I like unicorns. when they fly, nobody starts calculating. Everybody just accepts the magic
- For the pegasus, are they factoring in possibilities like having hollow bones like birds do to reduce weight? Granted, that would severely hamper their abilities to be a horse, but maybe they're not supposed to be beasts of burden?
- That's why I like my winged mythical creatures with really big wings.
  Sphinxes are bad, but still not as bad as centaurs, as Sphinxes don't have an entire additional body attached to their body.

With the whole upper half bobbing up/down like a horse nodding it's head while it runs.

By that description, I imagine a centaur walking like a chicken.
It's my failure, not yours.
I might need to make chicken-centaurs in my game. Comical at first until you realize they're raptors.
- oh no not a 4 legged, hooved, larger utahraptor
  does the horse part have fur and the raptor part have feathers or does one of them just take over the other?
insert centaur baby meme

They hold crossbows.

Two smaller ones, yes, while multiclassing as a rogue/ranger for multiple shots per turn.

They cross their arms since they also don't know what to do with them.

Hmm, humans swing their arms while running to counteract angular movement. Presumably, the horse undercarriage wouldn't have this problem, because there's more legs in an offset motion and just some distance between the pairs of legs to hold the body straight.

But horses nod their heads during gallop, so maybe the centaurs would do a little chug-chug motion with their arms instead.

This is a great anwser, actually
this is how centaurs are usually animated i think

I have visual references

They hold the reins.

What do humans do with their arms when they are sprinting?

They swing them in sync with the opposing leg.
Centaurs have four.
- So they swing twice as fast according to project managers.

Hold a shield and spear or somethin like that maybe?

So you think centaurs are always going to fight someone? That's racist.
- I think, canonically, they're always going to rape someone.
- Ah nonono, thats just their sense of fashion. Both are actually made out of cardboard and they take great pride in the intricate ways that they paint them.
That or prepare their bow and arrow

they actually just bend down and use the human arms to help walk (more legs = faster, since less time without touching ground, more time propelling themselves forward)

The human centipede is the world'a fastest animal.

Spank the butt

One hand scrolls through tiktok and the other holds an iced coffee, just like humans do while driving a car.

Does no one watch Xena anymore?

Random, but I've just now realised centaurs can't shake hands with the milkman.

?
- (masturbation)

They place them majestically on their hips, as if they're the captain of a boat.

"HMS Centaur, coming through!"
- "Ow, you just elbowed me in the face, asshole!"
  "I SAID HMS CENTAUR COMING THROUGH!"

Naruto run.

or

maybe you can't stop thinking about it but I'm built different

Just windmilling their fists like wrecking balls.

They play the accordion!!

If you'd imagine how much something like a centaur would need to eat, they'd probably carry snacks.

Got me thinking of a centaur version of "West Side Story" and snapping their fingers while performing and dancing to "Cool."

In all the media I've seen the arms basically just stay in place, half bent.

In Krapopolis, they hold their arms half bent and move with the running motion, like a jogging human.
edit: Wording clarification.

"Humans can't run, what would they do with their arms?"

Human legs and horse legs are very different
- Horses legs are mostly fingers.

Rubik's cube

I prefer windmill, in time with their hooves.

They do the Choo Choo train with their arms.

I'm just imagining the human half doing like a naruto run.

That paddling thing that puppies do when you hold them above water.

Trex arms

They use them to hold the fishing pole with a carrot on it.

The same thing as a human do when they sprint.

But we move our hands for balance as we run, 4 legged animals don't need that. Also how would they time it with the movement of the legs?
- Well, they are half human so their human half’s genetic memory drives them to swing their arms unnecessarily
Humans do this to balance our side-by-side walking method. But galloping horses have a foward-backward movement.
Would the arms go do the running thing, but synchronized?