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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Khaalis" data-source="post: 3088833" data-attributes="member: 2167">True, and it is meant to be a melee race, just as are dwarves, half-ogres, half-giants, half-orcs, etc. They are not banned from being something else but they have advantages to being a melee class. However, they could make a hell of a battle cleric or nasty druid if you use UA options as well.I am trying to keep the race to a minimum of LA adjustment firstly, and secondly, being a race prime for melee, I didn’t want to add a speed boost that could be so easily abused with the barbarian speed boost.Yes, the campaign world being developed has a strong draconic flavor and a large number of “dragonblood” subtype options. I thought it would be a bit much to allow this race to acquire the dragonblood subtype on type of everything else, or god forbid be mixed with half-dragon. I am not 100% set in stone on this, and would be open to arguments as to why it should be allowed. However, in trying to make the race as unbroken as possible while keeping the core ideal, I figured that adding dragonblood could just be too abusive.Well I wanted the race to have “something” while in humanoid form. I didn’t want their only schtick to be in hybrid form. Low-Light vision is ok, but nothing special. I wanted to avoid Darkvision due to its being more powerful than low-light vision.  Scent also gives the race at least one nice ability while in humanoid form and I kept this aspect direct from lycanthropes who gain it in any form as well.I can see this. Using the Shifter as an example, they gain +2 to 3 skills. I can make it so that each affinity gets slightly different skills, giving the class one mechanical difference from affinity to affinity rather than going pure genericized.I can see the argument to this. However, while I agree on skills, I can’t agree on ability scores. The key problem with Lycanthropes is that they are NOT balanced from one species to another. One of the core reasons is that the ability scores are not balanced from one to another. I wanted the race to have a set racial ability score adjustment. They are similar in almost all respects from one to another, they just “look” different in hybrid form – showing their personal affinity. I didn’t want to get into big racial differences between wolf-lycans and bear-lycans for example, each with its own culture and subculture. They are all one race.  The skills though, do add a mechanical flare to the flavor of the different affinities without getting into the broken aspect of inequality due to ability scores.Again, see my argument above. For a lycanthrope or something taking a true animal form this makes perfect sense. However, the feel I am going for is a more unified, or dare I say genericized, race. Remember that these are a descendent race of lycanthrope-human breeding, similar in idea to Shifters in Eberron but not as distantly related. Yes they take on the appearance of different animals, but the racial traits of the Lycan are the same for all of them. If necessary I can remove reference to say Boar who doesn’t fit the same physical characteristics as the others (i.e.: claws).Yet even in the MM, most of the example lycanthropes show stats with a hybrid using a weapon. The point of powerful build is to gain only some of the advantages to being Size Large without actually giving all of the advantages. As for specific to an animal, see above.This still isn’t possible without extra feats. A Greatsword is still a 2-handed weapon. Bastard sword still requires a feat to be wielded 1-handed. By saying “A lycan can also use weapons designed for a creature one size larger without penalty.” This means they could wield a Large Longsword in one hand rather than a Medium Longsword (thus doing 2d6 damage instead of 1d8). So even a decent TWF Lycan would be using a Longsword and Shortsword but doing 2d6+1d8 instead of 1d8+1d6.The skills will be reduced to the same as they are for the shifter. This brings it more in line to trade out in the equation for the half-giants +2 to saves vs. fire.  Overall, after the discussion and doing the comparison line by line with the half-giant, I do think a +1 LA is appropriate, especially if I limit the shapechange to X/day.Thanks for the input.</blockquote>

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