D&D 4E Rules for PC werebears in 4e?

[nightwyrm]

If you're not adverse to a bit of houseruling, take a look at the wildshape mechanic and rules of the druid and take what you like from there. Maybe give him one of the wildshape at wills for when he turns into bear form. If this is more of an RP thing, it would probably be enough.

 

[Rekka360]

Wildshape Druid stuff, got it..that seems like a good sugguestion, thanks.

 

[Coldwyn]

Using RAW, lycanthropy isn´t a contractable disease anymore.

Outside of that, retrain the Dwarf as a druid hybrid, half the old base class, half druid, reskin the druid powers with bear and be happy.

 

[FireLance]

In this case, multiclassing into Druid with Initiate of the Old Faith (PH2) would probably be good enough. You get the druid's wild shape power and you can use a druid at-will attack power that has the Beast Form keyword once per encounter. At higher levels, you can use power swap feats to exchange one encounter, one utility and one daily power for appropriate druid Beast Form powers.

An alternative that would require more work but which might allow you to get closer to your idea of what a werebear PC should be like would be to homebrew a multiclass-only Werebear class. The initial multiclass feat might provide an at-will claw attack, and you could develop specific werebear encounter, daily and utility powers that could be obtained with power swap feats.

 

[DEFCON 1]

In this case, multiclassing into Druid with Initiate of the Old Faith (PH2) would probably be good enough. You get the druid's wild shape power and you can use a druid at-will attack power that has the Beast Form keyword once per encounter.

To build on FireLance's suggestion... if your player did not want to spend feats on druid power swaps later on, or more importantly wanted to be able to use all of his fighter powers while in his werebear form... another alternative is to let him have some fun and just make "duplicates" of each of his fighter powers-- giving them alternate "bear form" names and flavor text.

The mechanics would be exactly the same, just the flavor terms would be different to represent his new form. So for instance, 'Cleave' might become 'Swipe'... 'Reaping Strike' might become 'Reaping Bash'... 'Rain of Steel' becomes 'Rain of Claws' etc. When in the midst of an encounter the dwarf changes form (and for myself, I would use the Druid Beast Form encounter power he gets from the Initiate of the Old Faith feat as the trigger to symbolize he has gone 'bear')... all of his fighter powers now begin using their new names to symbolize his transformation. He then stays in bear form until the end of the encounter.

It doesn't end up being anything more than just a reflavoring for rp reasons. The character is exactly the same fighter mechanically. It will just give him what he wants for roleplaying without unbalancing the character in comparison.