Just on the wereboar note, I much prefer the flavor of B/X-BECM's "Devil Swine" to just "I'm a rude grumpy guy who can change into a guy with a boar head." and have basically rewritten wereboars to be devil swines in my game world setting.
D&D 5E Wandering Monsters: Changing Shape
Very nice! Making friends!
From memory, his name was Heim Hogson.
Excellent! I'd have been tempted to us Spamson lol
howandwhy99
Adventurer
In AD&D Lycanthropy was a curse or disease, not a suite of racial abilities. You did not control it. It controlled you. So this fell onto the DM's shoulders, if only because she's the one who is keeping the world running - including PCs when they become NPCs (usually temporarily).
As a challenge a PC (all the PCs really) could try and deal with this drawback and there were at least a few commonly known ways available from the start, like wolvesbane or higher level clerics in the cities. And like a cursed magic item, creative players might use lycanthropy to their advantage. Whatever their alignment however, deciding to live permanently with the disease means serious limitations on adventuring, especially into populated
As a challenge a PC (all the PCs really) could try and deal with this drawback and there were at least a few commonly known ways available from the start, like wolvesbane or higher level clerics in the cities. And like a cursed magic item, creative players might use lycanthropy to their advantage. Whatever their alignment however, deciding to live permanently with the disease means serious limitations on adventuring, especially into populated
I wasn't a big fan of the way the article reintroduces the whole "remove disease cast by a 12th level cleric" motif. You need to be 11th level to be 13th level to cast Restoration to break an enchantment or lift a curse: just use that as the requirement! (I also couldn't work out who, in the latest packet, can actually cast Remove Curse. It is in the spell document but I couldn't find it on anyone's spell list.)
