NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 7490855" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Obviously my 'brief but tasteful' explanation wasn't enough. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The '...with anger management issues' was tongue in cheek. The Rage is fluffed as him 'letting the beast out'. The werewolf-iness threatens to break out when he is weak or angry, but it's not the anger per se that gives him the Rage powers, it's how his werewolf heritage manifests itself. So, a supernatural cause.The genesis of the idea was the stats I rolled. Before rolling I wanted to try a Hexblade. When I rolled an 18 and two 17s I realised that if I choose vHuman then I could have three 18s. At last! After 40 years of rolling stats I can finally make a 'physically perfect' human with three 18s in the physical stats! Okay, my Intelligence is only 6, but we take the rough with the smooth, right?Mulling for a few days on the question of why this PC is a perfect specimen (I usually need at least two weeks between rolling stats and a finished character sheet), I was in the state between sleeping and waking and half dreamt/half daydreamed the night of his conception. Daddy, the local squire, was out too late, got bit by a werewolf (who, unbeknownst to my PC, was also in league with a Fiend) but managed to kill it with a silver sword. Later, he recovered enough to go home. Feeling very strange and acting a bit strange, his wife tried to bandage him. He then started to *ahem* make love to his wife, and just at the *ahem* crucial moment the moon came out from behind the clouds and he started to change. The timing of *ahem* events was quite unique, conception/lycanthropic change-wise.The change in daddy caused him to murder his wife moments later. A tragedy all round.Meanwhile, the local cleric had been informed about the day's events re: werewolf and bitten squire. Knowing what the consequences would be, the cleric and the villagers rushed to the Big House (I'm imagining pitchforks and torches here) and get there just as the squire has horribly killed his wife. The cleric and villagers slay the squire/werewolf (proper MM werewolf BTW) because the locals have had a lycanthrope problem for ages and know all about silver weapons.The cleric looks at the tragic mess and does something about it. He uses remove curse and raise dead on them both, making them both not werewolf and not dead.But, not to put too fine a point on it, the *ahem* genetic material from daddy had just started to transform along with the rest of him, but it had *ahem* left his body before the lycanthropic change was complete, and since it had not fertilised the egg yet then it wasn't a person and certainly was not the target of the remove curse. Now, this is not normal! This is not how werewolves are made! But, how can it not have any effect at all!So that was me basically (accidentally) stealing the same origin as Wesley Snipe's Blade character: not quite vampire, not quite human, but basically human with some vampire-like abilities. For me, my PC is a human not a werewolf, but that unique conception had effects that are represented in game mechanics by the barbarian class and the Rage mechanic. I also supported the concept by choosing Alert as my bonus feat at 1st level to represent the preternatural senses of a werewolf, instead of choosing GWM like I originally wanted.   So, no, I'm a human not a werewolf, so I'm not changing how proper werewolves are made. What happened was a unique accident, and 'gave me some werewolf-like powers' is not me giving my PC some unearned game mechanic advantages, just me explaining his RAW level of barbarian.The Flash got his speed powers when a bolt of lightning hit him and some chemicals. Now, this fluff in no way changes how lightning works in the world! The player making his superhero PC is not taking away the DM's control about how lightning works in his world! Wesley Snipes is not changing the way proper vampires work in the DM's world! And I'm not changing how werewolves work in my DM's world!I'm totally willing and happy to work with the DM on fitting my PC into his world. It's the best method of character creation when there is some collaboration. In fact, I wish the DM had done more! We are playing the Dragon Drop campaign and the world/countries are not really defined. If they were I'd be happy to work with my DM to fit my regiment into a kingdom or whatever. My character would be richer for it! My DM says that the guys who wrote the campaign are going to publish that world soon, but right now we have to make it up as we go along, and the DM is happy for us to do the heavy lifting re: our backstories.  I'm not changing how lycanthropy works in the DM's world, but the larger point is this: try making a detailed background for your PC without saying something about the world! You can't do it! You can't be expected to do it. It is within the game's expectations that you make up your PC's backstory and invent parents, a childhood, a house, some crucial events! The DM could veto any part of any backstory, but it's not possible for the DM to veto every part of every backstory on the grounds that "making stuff up about this world is my job not yours! Player entitlement!"If a DM were to do that then he is preventing the player from making their own character at all in fluff terms! But it really is the player's right to make up his own character, that's all players have got! Without it, it's just Magic Story Time.</blockquote>

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