D&D General Player lycanthropy

[Pamphylian]

I'm generally of the philosophy of giving transformed PCs as many of the benefits but also as many of the drawbacks of their cursed form as I reasonably can. Vampires get to suck blood but get wrecked by sunlight, flowing water, garlic; Undead can be turned by clerics etc. The Werewolf monster in either 5e version doesn't seem to come with many mechanical drawbacks so I'd probably lean on the mythology to emphasize the cursed aspect: semiregular forced transformation into a wolf form the player that they can't control, and so might go off and do damage, kill innocents/important NPCs, get hunted, etc. (every full moon? but maybe more frequent/random?), vulnerability to silver weapons, get hunted by Paladins, etc.

 

[Corinnguard]

Back in 2e, there was a D&D accessory called Creature Crucible: Night Howlers for anyone who wanted to play as a lycanthropy. It took place in the Greyhawk setting and it covered several lycanthrope classes.

While the lycanthrope on the front cover is supposed to be a werewolf, it looks more like a weredog to me. A Were-German Shepherd to be exact.

 

[Remathilis]

Back in 2e, there was a D&D accessory called Creature Crucible: Night Howlers for anyone who wanted to play as a lycanthropy. It took place in the Greyhawk setting and it covered several lycanthrope classes.

While the lycanthrope on the front cover is supposed to be a werewolf, it looks more like a weredog to me. A Were-German Shepherd to be exact.

I remember that. You were essentially a multi class character (in the old way of dividing xp). Not sure if it would work now, but it was interesting in its time.

 

[Sulicius]

I had a werewolf pc in my Curse of Strahd game. He played a Beast Barbarian, and we talked about his rage being a partway, controlled transformation. His damage resistances wouldn’t work against silvered weapons.

Beyond that, we agreed that he could turn full werewolf when he wanted, but he would turn over control to me. This happened once when the pc’s in-game brother died. I also told him that I would turn him into a werewolf against his will once in the campaign, at a dramatic moment.

This all worked out great.

But how would I do it? The 5.5e rules are actually really close. The only thing I would add is that the werewolf would turn back into a stable, but unconscious pc after being reduced to 0 hp. The only way to kill them would be by using a silvered weapon. I would also tell the player to run the werewolf as a crazed monster, just to give them control of their character back.

The trope of werewolves is losing control, and that is what I like to emulate this way. Working together with the player to make this dramatic and fun is important. I just don’t want ti give players a way to become stronger.

 

[Corinnguard]

Level Up has the Garoul heritage where you are the descendant of werewolves. Most members of this heritage resemble a werewolf in their hybrid form, but there are a few who kind of resemble a wolf Shifter from Eberron. They have two Heritage gifts- Lupine Ascension and Lupine Vigor. The first allows you to assume a wolf form when needed, the other enhances their natural abilities sch as Darkvision.

Garoul | Level Up

Culturally Garoul can come from one of two heritage related cultures- Blood Pack and Moonkeeper.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I like players and NPCs to follow the same rules, which makes lycanthropy tricky. The default statblocks give a werewolf 58 hp and a werebear 135 hp, as well as good Constitution scores, that we cannot assume either a typical PC or NPC would have (and that are rather unbalanced to just give a low-level PC).

You kind of get the impression that the default statblocks should at least be a minimum, otherwise they aren't very dangerous. Our party of 1st level characters defeated a werewolf. There were 5 of them with good stats, but our fighter still didn't have a way to damage them, and we kind of didn't want to kill the poor villager. Of course two of us got infected, but we had a priest (who we were working with in the whole werewolf issue in the first place) tie us up and cast remove curse in a cool scene when we first transformed. If an NPC doesn't get that statblock, a villager getting infected would just be too weak to be a meaningful threat at even low levels.

What I basically decided on for PCs (might tweak some details), is:
A) The rules in the MM apply
B) Additionally, your max hit points are the higher of the statblock or what your class and level would give you. I just reluctantly ignore the Constitution discrepancy.
C) Each form of lycanthrope counts as a certain fixed amount of levels. You are now a (currently too high level) multi-class character. You do get 1d8 HD for each level in this class to treat as part of your normal hp, which at low levels is likely still below the statblock hp so you are probably still using the fixed statblock for a while.
D) You gain no more levels in any class until you have enough XP to be a legal character with those extra monster class levels.
E) You have to follow the transformation rules, which means you do not have control when you transform. Remember that the MM says even werebears turn into ravening monsters. Their typical good alignment is apparently at least somewhat social determined and control relies on experience.
F) Mechanically, gaining control over your transformation can be represented as a feat. I wouldn't allow you use a feat gained with those instant additional levels to acquire it. Expect a long wait.
G) Until you have that feat, I might apply some sorts of rules for involuntary (and berserk) changes at times of stress other than the full moon.
H) If you get cured after you should have gained class levels, you simply revert to your non-lycanthrope self and are now behind the rest of the party, though you still keep your XP total. I would allow you to at level up twice every time you should level to catch up to where your XP should put you (and probably gain your first catch up level with just a few days downtime). Alternatively, you could use those few days of downtime to gain levels in barbarian or something.

So, the damage immunities and hit points are nice, but your class is stalled, and you are a threat to your allies. You are incentived to get cured as soon as possible so you don't fall behind on XP. Definitely a curse. That said, if you like the concept and are willing to push through until you can get the feat to gain full control, it can be fun option. It does require that balance be looked at as an overall campaign sort of thing, since its pretty messy at any particular point until you catch up on your levels and take the feat.

 

[Corinnguard]

I remember that. You were essentially a multi class character (in the old way of dividing xp). Not sure if it would work now, but it was interesting in its time.

It would be tricky, figuring out which class in the combo deserved the XP. There is the benchmark approach.

 

[Enemy Post]

I've had two PC choose to remain infected recently. I found this third party supplement series worked really well for something I feel regular 5e isn't very good at.

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www.dmsguild.com

I might use something else if the PC wanted to be a lycanthrope from session zero, but these are useful if it comes up organically.

 

[jasper]

Player lycanthropy was a lot of fun in 5e, and the 5.5 monster manual killed it, though the organized play adventure to promote the new Ravenloft book brings it back (so maybe the book itself does? I haven't gotten to read it yet).

In any case, while fun, 5e Classic lycanthropy was definitely overpowered. One solution I encountered was having the player become resistant to non-magical weapons damage instead of immune and just saying they were not fully lycanthropized yet (which maybe also means they can't "bestow their gift" to other PCs yet). Another strong alternative was just leaning into it. Damage they aren't immune to is not hard for a DM to come by, and having them once in a while get to tank against a whole legion of enemies they are immune to can be kind of fun, and saves a lot of rolling. I don't know, if the player controlling the were-character is an inveterate scene hog maybe it's terrible, but I never thought it was a problem.

When my character was a wererat in Waterdeep Dragon Heist the DM just rolled with it, but gave me the consequence of occasional thematic consequences, the most memorable being having a rat-form sleepwalking incident that ended with the character waking up naked on the outskirts of town.

During the Critical Role Adventure League campaign, this is what we ended up with. Just resistance for pc were types. The wereaccountant was a beast to beat. Required lots of high numbers,

 

[jasper]

Life in Krynn would be pretty difficult, I'd imagine.

Nope. Just choose one moon as your trigger.