Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5739630" data-attributes="member: 386">This is what the werewolf's curse does in the game, in my opinion:1. Strategic Choice"The moon is full, and you hear the baying of hounds on the moor."The players have two basic options; stay and fight or run away.  Let's assume that the players also know about the effects of Werewolf Lycanthropy - or if they don't, when they ask the DM he tells them.Which choice they are going to make depends on what they are trying to do and how their party is built.* If they have a party build that relies on standing next to each other, that's going to hit them harder than if they rely on movement around the battlefield.* If where they are going is within the moor, they might not have the choice to run away.  (They might ask about belladonna and the DM can whip something up: x vs Fort, some (10/20/30) ongoing damage (save ends); both the attack and damage is based on how much you need to eat or drink - which will be set by the strength of the curse, that is, the werewolf's level.)* They might have time to wait out the full moon in the hopes that there will be fewer werewolves.  That will also give them more time to deal with any curses, should one PC be infected.  Then again, they might not have the time.There are other considerations, but if you include this curse, you get some interesting strategic choices to make.  If you set your 4E game up in a certain way (ie. sandbox), you don't even have to do anything as a DM to make this strategic element come up; it could show from a wandering monster roll.2. Player-Driven CampaignsLet's assume that a PC (or more) has contracted the curse.  The curse has a number of sample Quests (which provide XP!) that the PCs can take in order to get rid of it.At Heroic, you need to infect a Good NPC with the curse in order to remove it.  That provides the PCs with some interesting choices; who will they infect?  Are they going to ask for the NPC's consent or not?  What's the fallout from infecting this NPC?  Will you end up with a town full of werewolves?This Quest provides the players with an opportunity to change the direction of the campaign.3. Tactical ChoiceObviously, if someone has lycanthropy, you'll want to stay away from them in combat.  That has a big effect on the choices you make in combat.I think the reason they made it a "manageable robotic quirk" is that you're taking control away from the player and that's a pretty big deal.  The way it's written now, the PC loses total control, but the trigger conditions are clear and it's possible for the players to manipulate them.If it were something like "When you're hit/Bloodied, make a Nature check; if you fail, you fly into a berserk rage, attacking the nearest creature until it's dead or disabled (roll randomly if there's more than one)", the player of the infected PC has no choices to make.As it stands, they might do something like using the infected PC to trigger  Utility powers that trigger off taking damage - you're out of Inspiring Words, so you get a guy who needs some healing to stand next to the infected PC, and then use Inspiring Reaction when he's hit by the infected PC.  Or something like that.4. TimeIf a PC gets pushed to Stage 4, the phase of the moon becomes important.  If you're in a dungeon (or the duke's keep, trying to negotiate a treaty) you don't want one of the PCs to turn into an NPC.</blockquote>

Verification