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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9644083" data-attributes="member: 6877472">All this talk about how were-creatures against low-level parties is a meaningful challenge, something designed to force the players to come up with inspired solutions, is all well and good, but in my experience (having played the game since the late 80's), it rarely works out that way.My first experience was with wererats.  A fairly weak enemy, apparently considered perfectly cromulent to use against low-level adventurers.  When we originally encountered them, we thought they were just a band of thieves- then they assumed their ratman forms and the true nightmare began.  Turning to run, our melee were already engaged, so they couldn't retreat without opening themselves up to free hits.  They didn't make it.My 2nd-level Cleric was loaded up on nothing but Cure Light Wounds (as the older, wiser players had advised me to do), so I valiantly tried to keep my allies alive as we retreated, pursued by wererats.  One by one, the party members fell, until it was down to me, struggling to stay alive.Miraculously, I did manage to escape the wererats- we'd come across a trap earlier, a tunnel rigged to collapse, that the Thief had luckily managed to help us bypass.  I got to the other side, triggered the rockfall (burying a few wererats under debris), the lone survivor.Then the DM decided to check to see if I'd succumbed to the curse.  Turns out, I did, and became a wererat, which meant that the first time I changed, I got myself murdered by my new adventuring companions.  Yay.Much later, in a Ravenloft game, we found ourselves beset upon by a pack of wolves- but oh no, some of the wolves turned out to be wolf-men!  We had a +1 dagger, while the rest of us scrambled to figure out some way to damage the foes- the Thief used his sling to launch silver pieces (the DM was kind enough to let them do d3 damage with a -1 to hit).Not that it mattered, because we discovered silver didn't work on it.  Oh no, it's a Wolfwere!  Out came the iron cooking utensils, pots, pans, and whatever else we had on us.  Unfortunately, this was a Greater Wolfwere- if you didn't take it to 0 in one turn, it would heal all damage done to it completely!  Another TPK brought to you by the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendix!The next time this happened (still in Ravenloft- I'll never understand why the setting is so popular, when all it seems to do is pit nerfed, magic-poor PC's against impossible-to-kill monsters), we were ready.  We had silver.  We had iron.Oh.  It's a Loup-garou, not a wolfwere or a werewolf.  Ok, so what do you need to kill it?  We had no idea until after it killed us all.  Gold.  It was vulnerable to gold weapons.  You can't get more ridiculous than that- who would make a gold weapon as anything more than a display piece?  Do you know how soft gold is?The next encounter was with the werewolf magic-user in White Plume Mountain.  It was her and her Fighter boyfriend.  We had magic weapons.  Absolute slaughter.You get the idea.I'm not saying that you can't run an encounter with were-critters in a low-magic environment. But so much can go wrong, and the Monster Manual entries never say "hey, uh, you need to be careful with this critter".  It's like how in 3.5, your 1st level adventurers could encounter a Wight and be instantly killed by it's ability to hand out negative levels.  Or a cockatrice turning you to stone.Hell, even in 5e, shadows are still an absolute nightmare to deal with- tons of resistances, able to move through walls, and a way to kill you that bypasses hit points and can't be easily dealt with, while potentially nerfing your character's ability to fight into the ground.There's so much that can go wrong when using enemies like this, even if you're an old hand at DMing.  And if you're not?  Yeah.I have lots of experience with how an encounter with these kinds of monsters can be a train wreck against unprepared parties, and an absolute joke against prepared parties.  "Puzzle" monsters in general just encourage absolute paranoia among players, to the point that they are convinced every statue is a construct waiting to come to life, every bunny rabbit is a horrible monster, every treasure chest is a mimic, and every beautiful NPC must be pure evil.To those DM's who have had positive experiences with this sort of thing...who cares what the monster manual says?  Just change them for your campaign and good luck to you!Me?  I'm happy to see the tail end of critters that are more likely to TPK a party before their characters can even effectively figure out how to defeat them (let alone flee).</blockquote>

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