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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7492888" data-attributes="member: 6775031">I feel like you haven't read the DMG. It's both. You start with the narrative, and then the system translates that into a mechanical language so that we can resolve it, and then it translates back into narrative so that we know what happens. If the mechanics didn't actually reflect anything within the narrative, then the narrative we end up with after the mechanical resolution would be meaningless, since it would just be whatever arbitrary story someone felt like telling.Consider the example at hand. We could say that this semi-werewolf has the equivalent of leather armor, or we could say that it has the equivalent of Unarmored Defense. The difference between them may well be a +4 bonus to AC. Let's pretend that the DM allows the latter option. Later in the campaign, there is a very difficult fight, and this character is the last one standing against the boss; the boss makes an attack, which misses by a margin of 2, and then the PC goes and finishes off the boss (and then goes on to revive all of the other PCs, and they continue about their business). In this case, the party didn't ultimately triumph because they were actually stronger or smarter than their enemies; they only triumphed because the DM made the decision that this character should arbitrarily have a +4 bonus to AC. The correct outcome, if the DM had actually cared enough to model these things consistently, would be that the party is defeated.We also have stats for lycanthropes. If we need to represent one, we should use those. If we want a lycanthrope that somehow acts like a barbarian for some reason, then you get nonsensical results, just as though you'd used stats for a dragon to represent a giant spider. (As for that particular example, it was something that happened to me while I was running a 4E game, and experimenting with their own philosophy of mutable fluff.)I'm saying that if you can't bother to read the book, or you're too lazy to follow the guidelines listed, then you should keep your home-brew at home, where it can't bother anyone else. The topic at hand is a jerk player who shows up to a new game and tries to bully the DM about how their own world is supposed to work. As members of the community, we are obligated to stop this sort of bullying before it starts. That kind of anti-social behavior should never be tolerated, and the jerk player in question would be doing everyone a favor if they learned to check their sense of self-entitlement.</blockquote>

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