Lycanthropy by levels, underpowered (Dragon #313)

[candidus_cogitens]

First of all, I love the option of level-by-level advancement as a lycanthrope, per the November issue of Dragon. It goes a long way toward making lycanthropy more workable for PCs.

On the other hand, the advancement progressions given in that article seem weak to me. They get slow BAB advancements, few (and irregular) skill points, and although the abilities are cool, many of them are offset by some of the disadvantages of being a lycanthrope.

For one thing, lycanthropes cannot wear armor when they are in animal form--offsetting the advantage of natural armor. Secondly, the natural weapon abilities are offset by the fact that you cannot use the weapons that you are or would otherwise be trained for.

Does anyone see what I'm talking about? Has this matter already been discussed in another thread? Has anyone come up with other "templates," either as alternatives to these weak ones, or templates for different animals?

 

[candidus_cogitens]

(Bump)

I really need some solid opinions on this.

 

[Pyrex]

In our current game, one of the players is playing a WereTiger and it's anything but underpowered. The DR completely makes up for being unable to wear armor in virtually all encounters and the stat-boosts are just insane.

Just shift into whichever form is Large and start a grapple. Very few opponents within your CR range will have a chance. It gets even worse if you take 'Improved Grapple'. :shudder:

 

[candidus_cogitens]

In our current game, one of the players is playing a WereTiger and it's anything but underpowered. The DR completely makes up for being unable to wear armor in virtually all encounters and the stat-boosts are just insane.

Just shift into whichever form is Large and start a grapple. Very few opponents within your CR range will have a chance. It gets even worse if you take 'Improved Grapple'. :shudder:

Well, when you say it is powerful . . . I want to ask in comparison to what? Are the other characters in your party equivalent in level when the weretiger's ECL is taken into consideration? Are the encounters balanced for the weretiger's ECL?

 

[candidus_cogitens]

One last plea for help ....

I'm running a session this week, and I need to know what I might be getting my players into. I am considering bumping up the power level a bit, but I don't trust myself so much that I would tinker with a class or template without consulting some wise advisors. (That means you!)

I'm considering bumping the BAB to that of a cleric, and giving 2 skill points every level except first. I figure that at first level, they have to devote themselves completely to becoming familiar with their new innate abilities. Besides, they probably get racial skill bonuses anyway.

 

[BSF]

Well, the levels are built to distribute the skill points and feats and features across all the hit dice the "book" lycanthrope would get. I don't recall the article in Dragon, but the template on the WotC site might be similiar. (If not identical. Did Sean K. Reynolds write the article?) On the WotC site, it is under Savage Progressions, or follow the link. WotC Savage Progressions

I will comment based on the class templates listed there since I am at work and don't have Dragon with me.

The lycanthropic templates listed there don't give you any of the normal level bonuses. They are simply representative of taking levels to handle your ECL. This provides a scalable approach so you could, in theory, start off with a 1st level were creature that didn't have a class. They could then choose to advance the template (sacrificing BAB, skills, feats, etc) or advance in a class. The addition of a progression to handle the underlying creature is another nice feature. That will give you BAB, skills, saves, and other features as well. In this manner, you could build a lycanthrope that would develop from level 1 onward. To really use the lycanthropic abilities, they would want to take all the template levels they could, as well as the animal levels. But, they could intersperse legitimate class levels in there as well.

In this way, you could have a ftr1 with 2 levels of lycanthrope (wereboar) and 2 levels of boar. Which would be equivelant to a level 5 character. At level 6, the character might complete the boar template, the lycanthrope template, add a level of fighter, or any other option. Personally, I think it is kind of neat.

Your concerns are valid in that a player might not like to give up BAB, save improvements and skills. But, how is this different from building a character and adding the ECL levels? After all, using a pure wereboar template is something like a ECL +6. So, you would need to be a 1st level fighter wereboar in a party of 7th level characters. Or you can mix and match your levels to what you are comfortable playing. The difference is that you can start with a lower level party if you are using template levels and you might not ever aspire to the top of the templates.

As far as power differences go, 3.5 DR is pretty nice now. Your magic weapon no longer bypasses DR Silver. Sure, the bonuses help overcome the DR, but it doesn't bypass it. As well, most of the templates grant stat bonuses.

If you don't mind my asking, how are you thinking of applying this in game? Perhaps more people will respond if you can give us an idea on what you are looking at doing.

 

[candidus_cogitens]

Well, the levels are built to distribute the skill points and feats and features across all the hit dice the "book" lycanthrope would get. I don't recall the article in Dragon, but the template on the WotC site might be similiar. (If not identical. Did Sean K. Reynolds write the article?) On the WotC site, it is under Savage Progressions, or follow the link. WotC Savage Progressions

I will comment based on the class templates listed there since I am at work and don't have Dragon with me.

The lycanthropic templates listed there don't give you any of the normal level bonuses. They are simply representative of taking levels to handle your ECL. This provides a scalable approach so you could, in theory, start off with a 1st level were creature that didn't have a class. They could then choose to advance the template (sacrificing BAB, skills, feats, etc) or advance in a class. The addition of a progression to handle the underlying creature is another nice feature. That will give you BAB, skills, saves, and other features as well. In this manner, you could build a lycanthrope that would develop from level 1 onward. To really use the lycanthropic abilities, they would want to take all the template levels they could, as well as the animal levels. But, they could intersperse legitimate class levels in there as well.

In this way, you could have a ftr1 with 2 levels of lycanthrope (wereboar) and 2 levels of boar. Which would be equivelant to a level 5 character. At level 6, the character might complete the boar template, the lycanthrope template, add a level of fighter, or any other option. Personally, I think it is kind of neat.

Your concerns are valid in that a player might not like to give up BAB, save improvements and skills. But, how is this different from building a character and adding the ECL levels? After all, using a pure wereboar template is something like a ECL +6. So, you would need to be a 1st level fighter wereboar in a party of 7th level characters. Or you can mix and match your levels to what you are comfortable playing. The difference is that you can start with a lower level party if you are using template levels and you might not ever aspire to the top of the templates.

As far as power differences go, 3.5 DR is pretty nice now. Your magic weapon no longer bypasses DR Silver. Sure, the bonuses help overcome the DR, but it doesn't bypass it. As well, most of the templates grant stat bonuses.

If you don't mind my asking, how are you thinking of applying this in game? Perhaps more people will respond if you can give us an idea on what you are looking at doing.

Well, first of all, thanks for the comments. I had not read that article on the WotC website.

What I intend to do in my campaign is to attack my players with lycanthropes. Specifically, I was thinking of werepanthers. (I have a tendency to make things difficult for myself, so I chose an animal type that is not given a specific lycanthropy template.)

The way you describe the template idea, it sounds very reasonable. The problem is that it doesn't work exactly as you describe. The templates in Dragon 313 spread the abilities out over more levels than the ECL rating would suggest. Thus, if the ECL is to be trusted as an accurate measure of power, and if these templates are intended to replicate as nearly as possible the power level of the book monsters, then indeed these templates are underpowered. For example, a weretiger is an ECL +5. But Dragon gives us a nine-level template.

If you ask me, the bottom line is whether the template matches the power of the standard character classes. I suppose the easiest character class to compare with would be the monk, since the monk has a d8 hit die, and gets unarmed attack abilities. Still, the comparison is not easy. It's difficult for me to calculate what is equivalent to what. That's why I asked for others' opinions. My intuitive sense is that these templates are somewhat weak, but I'd like to know what others think.

 

[Alchemist]

The way you describe the template idea, it sounds very reasonable. The problem is that it doesn't work exactly as you describe. The templates in Dragon 313 spread the abilities out over more levels than the ECL rating would suggest. Thus, if the ECL is to be trusted as an accurate measure of power, and if these templates are intended to replicate as nearly as possible the power level of the book monsters, then indeed these templates are underpowered. For example, a weretiger is an ECL +5. But Dragon gives us a nine-level template..

The weretiger is ECL +3 by my MM, not including the 6 levels of tiger (animal class) the monster has. That's probably where you're hanging up. ECL adjustments don't take the "level" (HD) of the creature into account, only the extra-nifty powers it posesses.

The 9 level class given takes the +3 ECL bonuses as well as the 6 levels of animal from the animal form. That's 3+6=9.

So a book weretiger has, essentially, taken 3 levels of shapechanger powers and 6 levels of tiger. That's where the 9 level advancement comes from. The advancements given on the Wizards site are for only the lycanthrope portion of the race, not the animal portion. It tells you to take levels of the appropriate animal to round out your lycanthrope and make him the same as the book.

Does that make any sense?

 

[BSF]

The way you describe the template idea, it sounds very reasonable. The problem is that it doesn't work exactly as you describe. The templates in Dragon 313 spread the abilities out over more levels than the ECL rating would suggest. Thus, if the ECL is to be trusted as an accurate measure of power, and if these templates are intended to replicate as nearly as possible the power level of the book monsters, then indeed these templates are underpowered. For example, a weretiger is an ECL +5. But Dragon gives us a nine-level template.

As Alchemist indicates, the ECL in the MM is a +3 for a weretiger and it is slightly misleading. If you look at the stat blocks, the weretiger gets 1d8+1 plus 6d8+18 Hit Dice. The 6d8+18 is from the "tiger levels". The +3 ECL is on top of this.

Personally, I think this was less than clear. My first inclination was to assume that the 6d18 were part of the lycanthropic curse. As it turns out, it is not. So, the 6 levels of "tiger" and the +3 ECL for lycanthropy are where the Dragon article bases it's 9 level progression from.

But, enough with repeating Alchemist.

Yes, on the surface, turning the template into a class progression looks weak. I'm not sure this bears out in practice if your players recognize the strengths of the template classes. The WotC site does not have a progression for the tiger. But, it does have one for the bear. If you take a look at that, the bear will gain +16 to Str over the course of 6 levels. It will also gain a +8 to Con, +2 to Dex, +5 to Natural Armor, and a few other things that could be very tasty to play with. This is in addition to the Wis bonus, Natural Armor bonus and damage reduction that the lycanthrope has. Coupled with the hybrid form, this bear can now use a great axe.

Now, contemplate your Barbarian character looking at those bonuses. A hybrid raging werebear is a bit intimidating. Now, would a Bar5/lycanthrope2/bear6 be the equal of a Bar13? Good question.

Assuming the stats are the same...
The werebear will have a BAB of +9, the normal barbarian will have a BAB of +12. But, the werebear will have an additional +8 attack/damage from Str bonuses, a +1 to AC from Dex, +7 Natural armor bonuses, etc. There are trade offs, but in this case, I can see where playing a werebear barbarian could be a lot of fun.

Still, if you permit the characters to take template class levels, they can mix and match as they please. They don't have to take any levels. Or they could max it out. If you are a wizard, you might not be as interested in taking bear levels. Maybe the lycanthrope levels would be nice for the damage reduction, but that is at the expense of spells. What about the werepanther rogue that uses sneak attack? Could be interesting. So, I wouldn't classify the templates classes as weak. But, they may not be optimal selections for all characters.

 

[Alchemist]

I don't think it is so much that one of his characters wants to play a werepanther (Although one of mine wants his monk to be bitten by a weretiger. ) but rather that he wants to use them against his players and wants to know if the enemies are going to be too soft.

Judging from Mr. Fox's evaluation, they will not be weak if their strengths are played to, not much different than any other race. Even then, the levels advance the CR of the beastie by 1/2 per level rather than 1 per level.

So your werepanther wizard could pile on the levels and still only be approximatly as dangerous than a werepanther fighter of half the class levels.

*****-----*****

As an aside, you can just do what I do when balance is uncertain. It's an ancient DM trick, but it works: Manipulate the combat. If the bad guys are too easy, bring more on as a second wave! Too mighty? Adjust HP behind the screen and have them retreat instead of fight to the death. That way, you can judge how they interact with the party without it being an absolute joke or a TPK. And you'll know better for next time, and your players will be none the wiser.