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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 1917975" data-attributes="member: 13098">I probably sound like a broken record for the number of times I suggest the Savage Progressions article.  <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20031114a" target="_blank">Savage Progressions:  Werebear</a><a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030912a" target="_blank">Savage Progressions: Wererat</a>I would suggest going with these.  Let the PC take the levels they choose between animal, lycanthrope, and monk.  Do not apply multi-class penalties for animal or lycanthrope.  If you want a lycanthrope that doesn't match, use these articles as guidelines to creating a new lycanthrope.  If the PC is a natural lycanthrope, he has control of his forms per the description.  He also has access to level 3 of the lycanthrope template.  This is the one that grants full DR, and allowsthe curse to be spread.If the PC is afflicted, then he will probably be interested in the Control Shape skill.  HE will not have access to level 3 of the lycanthrope class.  Your DM should consider the implications carefully.  DR in 3.5 is powerful.  Particularly at lower levels.  This is offset by the lack of feats, BAB, saves, HD and skills for those levels.  Basically, this is buying into the ECL.  Some players are not as aware of these drawbacks, so do your friend a favor and point them out to him.  Animal levels are where the PC gains HD, BAB, skills, saves, and natural armor and stat increases when in animal or hybrid forms.  It is possible to make some very interesting characters using these rules since you could take 2 levels of lycanthrope, 1 of animal and 3 of class if you choose.  It is also possible to dip in with one level in lycanthrope just to have involuntary shapechanging + limited bonuses.  It can be a slightly unbalanced PC if the werecreature provides good synergy to the base class.  But with a little more work and care by the DM, it is still possible to have a relatively balanced and fun game.  One note on a game with lycanthrope PCs in 3.5:  By necessity, more NPCs will need to have silver weapons.  This is more of a threat to the lycanthrope PC without increasing the threat to the other PCs.  The player of a lycanthrope PC might feel this is picking on them specifically, and to a lesser degree it is.  At low levels, DR is powerful and can make a PC nearly invulnerable compared to his peers (the other PCs).  The DM has to use some of these tricks occasionally to create challenges that affect each PC equally.  You might point that out to the DM and the player ahead of time so everyone understands that the point is to have a fun, challenging game for everyone. One PC always overshadowing the others is no fun.That being said, a monk werebear has great synergy.  DR + evasion and good saves.  The PC will not have all the features of a pure monk, but will have a definite niche.  He will need to carefully balance the improvement of monk abilities with the stat bonuses for the animal form.  And yes, I have had PCs play lycanthropes in a game.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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