Monster of the Week: Lycanthropes

Lycanthropes, or Werewolves, are a strong part of our standard mythology. Wolf attacks on humans combined with the human penchant for imagination lead to an obvious result. Oh, look, wolves ate my sheep. It was totally that next door neighbour I don’t like, he’s a Werewolf! Yeah! Burn him, he’s a witch, too!

In other mythologies, such as Indian, there are other shapechanging creatures, which, for simplicity, have been known to names such as Weretigers. Overall, despite the word “Lycanthrope” having its roots in the Greek word for wolf, we now use “Lycanthrope” for all Were-creatures, because saying “Were-creatures” is stupid, and Lycanthrope is such a good word.

Shiny. Anyway, in this article I will cover how to best use any Lycanthrope in your game of 3.5 or 4E D&D.

Setting up (the plot side):

Werewolves and other Lycanthropes are easy. Think of how much effort you need to include something like Mind Flayers. Hah! Throw Lycanthropes in as a random encounter and it makes sense! They’re roaming the countryside killing stuff, it’s what they do!

For a more useful comment, consider these options:

*Standard Werewolf deal: sheep/people/sheeple dying and players need to find out why
*Enclave of Lycanthropes hiding in forest away from civilization, get annoyed when pesky adventurers start trampling their territory
…hmm.

A special note goes for Wererats: they have much more plot potential. As sneaky bastards who fit right into a large city, they can, for example, be an evil Thieves’ Guild, or part of an assassination plot, or anything that you would normally use Rogues or Assassins for: but cooler. Being a Wererat would probably make it easier to escape from jail, too.

Alternatively, you can take basically any plot, involving anyone doing anything, then make them a Lycanthrope. Oh, look, we found the evil merchant responsible for messing up the economy. Oh look, he’s so helpless. Oh look, he bit your head off. The versatility of being a shapechanger really helps lead to versatilityof uses.

Running it (the rules side):

3.5 Edition:

In my last Monster of the Week: Golems, I hit the 3.5 Golems pretty hard because of all their resistances and huge DR. Same for Lycanthropes? No.

Lycanthropes are a well designed monster suitable for normal groups. Sure, they still have DR, but the DR is silver (in an emergency, hammer silver coins to your weapon), and they don’t have a stack of immunities a mile high. They’re still vulnerable to Critical Hits, Sneak Attack, Mind Affecting Spells, and so on, which gives rapier-wielding idiots*, Rogues, and Enchanters and Beguilers a combat option that does not involve sitting in the corner drinking tea. This is good.

*Disclaimer: one of my characters was a rapier-wielding idiot, and great fun

The great thing about the 3.5 Lycanthrope entry is there’s creatures for any situation, including advanced forms of the Wereboar and Werewolf. If you are trying to do a whodunnit and your players are too savvy, mix it up by using a Weretiger or Werebear (ignore the alignments if you haven’t already). Combined with the versatility mentioned above, you really can’t go wrong.

4th Edition:

Well, unfortunately 4E has trimmed us down to just Werewolves and Wererats, but they’re probably the main two that get used anyway, so no worries. Interestingly, it says Lycanthropy is genetic, and no mention of infection is mentioned: reflavour if you desire, I suppose. However, overall, I’m impressed with the monster entry.

Like many monsters in 4E, they have done away with a sensible-but-annoying mechanic (DR), and replaced it with a not-so-sensible-but-a-lot-more-fun mechanic (cancellable Regeneration). You’ve still got the whole “kill it with silver” thing, but without making anyone feel like they’re not doing something. In addition, the 4E Lycanthropes are a bit more DM friendly, because they have just one statblock instead of three. You no longer have to mess around with all sorts of things when they switch forms.

The Werewolves are pretty standard: you fight, someone dies. They work. The Wererats are more interesting: they fit the Rogue-ish role perfectly, including a weak form of Sneak Attack (1d6). A pack of Wererats fighting intelligently is quite dangerous, and if they think they’re losing they can just run down a drainpipe.

The disease is a nice touch, especially since they removed afflicted Lycanthropy. I do like how disease is handled in 4E. The Wererat disease is fairly standard, but the Werewolf one is kinda like Lycanthropy: it makes the target go nuts and attack people. Fun! Remember that a Lycanthrope is probably intelligent enough to target the squishy members of the group which are less likely to pass the Endurance check.

A note on 4E disease mechanics (my group got it wrong, so I expect others will):
If a diseased attack hits you, then at the end of the encounter, you make a Saving Throw to see if you contract the first stage of the disease. You then roll for disease progression at each Extended Rest. See page 49 of the DMG.

A note of the Lycanthrope disease:
There’s been errata that makes the disease a bit less cruel. Since only a few characters even have Endurance, the high DCs were a bit ridiculous. They dropped the DCs by 5, and added the “worsen DC” bit, which should have been in there anyway.

Filth Fever [Revision]
Monster Manual, page 180
Replace Endurance stable DC 16, improve 21″ with “Endurance improve DC 16, maintain DC 11,
worsen DC 10 or lower”.

Moon Frenzy [Revision]
Monster Manual, page 181
Replace “Endurance stable DC 20, improve 24″ with “Endurance improve DC 19, maintain DC
14, worsen DC 13 or lower”.

This means a level 3 character fighting a level 3 Wererat has a a 55/45 stable/worsen chance even with no training or bonuses: this is the same as a Saving Throw, which is a good baseline for this kind of thing.

Well, that wraps that up. Monster of the Week service will now resume at its intended 1/week schedule, after having been delayed by holiday, illness, blackouts, and jetlag. Happy gaming!

Behind the Scenes

Artist's impression of what the awesome Inkscape graphic could have looked like.

I draw all my images in Inkscape, a free vectored graphics program. The problem is that, like all semi-decent art, it takes some time. Getting the lines right, fiddling with nodes, adjusting colours, crying because the computer can’t handle this amount of blur (She cannae handle it, Captain!)… for this blog post, the Werewolf took so long that I had to scrap plans of doing a Wererat.

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