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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011734" data-attributes="member: 1129">Slaves of the Moon is another entry by Paradigm Press into the OGL Interlink project. This is “The Essential Guide to Lycanthropes”, written by Mike Mearls and is the latest entry in Paradim’s Races of Legend line. In short, if you’re looking for a book of crunch on lycanthropes, Slaves of the Moon is your ticket. Coming in at 96 black and white pages for $19.99, the book is priced at industry standard.The book uses standard two column layout. Todd Lockwood’s cover is a fantastic piece and almost looks more demonic, like the rakasha, than lycanthrope. The interior art is handled by a wide range of talented artist ranging from Ken Burles to Pawel Kopotowski and others whose names I don’t recognize, like Raven Mimura, but whose skill is evident in the book. The artist who did the stout wereboar in humanoid form on page 46 and it’s counter weretiger in humanoid form on the opposite pages for example, does an excellent job of capturing the savagery inherent in these creatures. The top of the book indicates what chapter you’re in, which is useful since the table of contents has no chapter breakdown and there is no index.Included are details for werecreatures of the following types: bears, boars, rats, tigers, and wolves.  There is no grand unifying vision of how the lycanthropes came about as each race provides a different divine origin. For example, the bears are the result of their divine patron offering them a choice. Live among the bears as simple beast or gain lycanthropy and with it, the caretaker’s promise. This version of the werebear puts them as nature’s ultimate defenders as they have to protect the natural world and guidelines for doing that are provided. Those who have a specific vision of how this can best be accomplished have different pacts like the pact of blades, favored by the warrior caste while those who favor magic, follow the pact of magic. Each pact has a set of guidelines and ideas on how to use them.These different sections make for good reading and inspiration, along the lines of the myths from The Book of the Righteous as they rely, at this point, on no game mechanics but rather, information on how that breed of lycanthrope lives and survives. What its outlook on life is. This ranges from the lazy but materialistic wererats to the bullying and short-tempered wereboars.Those looking for crunch have several lycanthrope character classes to look at. These are similar to the progression of levels in Savage Species and other books in that the character gains ability score improvements fairly quickly as well as his innate abilities. It differs in that they gain hit dice and class skills at every level making them a different breed than the Savage Species progressions where hit dice are based on what the designers thought would ‘balance’ the class against other core classes and skill points are only gained when you gain those hit dice. For those who want to customize their werecreature, there are several prestige classes included. Now these may belong to a specific race of lycanthrope, like the Emerald Claw, a monk that uses partial transformations to turn hands into claws or jaws into fangs, or open to all lycanthropes like the Master of Fang and Blade, a warrior trained to fight while in hybrid form using natural attacks and weapons in a devastating combination. While not useful to most campaigns, the Wolf Slayer, a master of battling lycanthropes, would be of use to any GM or player looking to specialize in killing the lycanthropes. Another way to customize your lycanthrope, is through the use of lycanthrope feats. Some of these enable the creature to continue to use it’s human equipment like armored shapechange where the lycanthrope removes it’s armor as a free action or blade grasper where the fast healing of the lycanthrope acts to grab weapons that strike the creature and yank them from their master’s hand. While most of the feats fall into the lycanthrope type, a few are all purpose like Power Slam where you make a single attack at your highest bab and knock your opponent prone in his current square if he fails to beat you in a strength check.Those looking to augment their native abilities via magic have new options as well. Some of these new spells would work for anyone though. Take Bestial Fangs, a 1st level druid or ranger spell that gives the caster fangs and claws. Unfortunatly, no damage is listed with this particular spell so I’d assume that it just turns your base unarmed attacks into armed attacks, which isn’t a great boon. More useful would be Hail of Fangs, a 3rd level arcane spell that inflicts 1d6 points of damage per two levels in a 30 ft-cone. The true curse of the spell though is that it forces those struck to make saves to avoid contacting lycanthropy themselves. The bad news though is that spell only works for a lycanthrope. A few magic items help round out the section including items with long term implications like the Blood Cauldron, an artifact that grants damage resistance and spell resistance to those that use it or the Hunter’s Arrow, an arrow that inflicts movement penalties to those hit by it or Ripper Blades, matched daggers that rend their target if both blades hit.But how can you use all of this information? The author provides a lot of ideas in his section, Lycanthropes in the Campaign. This includes how various kingdoms might handle the issue of lycanthropy, as well as how the humanoid races welcome or handle being lycanthropes. Some like the elves embrace the good and neutral werecreatures while others like half-orcs move into human dwellings. It would’ve been nice to see this section move outside the core races from the Player’s Handbook, but were would you stop? Orcs? Giants? Goblins?Mike does a great job of providing alternatives for the GM to use. These range form the origin and curing of the disease, to phases of the moon that have direct impacts on the campaign world like the Night of Void where the lycanthropes lose their connection to the moon and lose their alternative forms and damage reduction.</blockquote>

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