Imagine an adventurer’s eyes turning pale at the sight of the full moon. Suddenly, shaggy tufts of fur erupt from their pores, and an unbridled howl escapes their lips as they morph into the primal form of a lycanthrope!
These classic shapeshifters are a varied bunch in Dungeons & Dragons, ranging from the archetypal werewolf to the unorthodox wereraven. This article will focus on how to play your character as a lycanthrope, plus the rules surrounding them in the Monster Manual. (If you’re a DM hoping to bring these iconic creatures to the battlefield, we recommend reading our guide on how to run werewolves like apex predators.)
Becoming a lycanthrope
A lycanthropic character typically inherits the curse from their parents or is afflicted after suffering a wound from another lycanthrope. Lycanthropy acquired via an injury can be dispelled by Remove Curse, though a lycanthrope who inherits the condition from their family can only be cured via Wish.
PLAYER CHARACTERS AS LYCANTHROPES
A character who becomes a lycanthrope retains his or her statistics except as specified by lycanthrope type. The character gains the lycanthrope’s speeds in nonhumanoid form, damage immunities, traits, and actions that don’t involve equipment. The character is proficient with the lycanthrope’s natural attacks, such as its bite or claws, which deal damage as shown in the lycanthrope’s statistics. The character can’t speak while in animal form.
A non-lycanthrope humanoid hit by an attack that carries the curse of lycanthropy must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + the lycanthrope’s proficiency bonus + the lycanthrope’s Constitution modifier) or be cursed. If the character embraces the curse, his or her alignment becomes the one defined for the lycanthrope. The DM is free to decide that a change in alignment places the character under DM control until the curse of lycanthropy is removed.
The following information applies to specific lycanthropes.
Werewolf. The character gains a Strength of 15 if his or her score isn’t already higher, and a +1 bonus to AC while in wolf or hybrid form (from natural armor). Attack and damage rolls for the natural weapons are based on Strength.
Werebear. The character gains a Strength of 19 if his or her score isn’t already higher, and a +1 bonus to AC while in bear or hybrid form (from natural armor). Attack and damage rolls for the natural weapons are based on Strength.
Wereboar. The character gains a Strength of 17 if his or her score isn’t already higher, and a +1 bonus to AC while in boar or hybrid form (from natural armor). Attack and damage rolls for the tusks are based on Strength. For the Charge trait, the DC is 8 + the character’s proficiency bonus + Strength modifier.
Wererat. The character gains a Dexterity of 15 if his or her score isn’t already higher. Attack and damage rolls for the bite are based on whichever is higher of the character’s Strength and Dexterity.
Weretiger. The character gains a Strength of 17 if his or her score isn’t already higher. Attack and damage rolls for the natural weapons are based on Strength. For the Pounce trait, the DC is 8 + the character’s proficiency bonus + Strength modifier.
Source: Monster Manual
Lycanthrope traits
A lycanthrope has three different forms: a humanoid state, a hybrid one that combines humanoid and animal traits, and a pure animal form. Lycanthropes have the same stats as normal characters in humanoid form but benefit from the damage immunities and non-weapon stat block actions of their associated werecreature, as well as occasional bonuses in their animal and hybrid forms.
For instance, a character with werewolf lycanthropy gains a Strength of 15 and a +1 Armor Class bonus in their wolf and hybrid forms, as well as Bite and Claw abilities, which they can use for Multiattack. The character also gains immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks but becomes vulnerable to silvered weapons (the main weakness for all lycanthropes).
A lycanthrope player character can thus be supremely strong, but with this strength comes caveats. For example, the player may lose control of their character while in their hybrid form, a possibility hinted at in the Monster Manual.
Setting ground rules for lycanthropes in your game
In order to make the most of the lycanthropic curse, DMs and players should develop answers for the following questions:
1. How did the character acquire lycanthropy?
Is this condition your family legacy, or did you obtain it while suffering injuries from a werecreature ambush in the Shadowfell? Mainstream werewolf movies like "The Wolf Man" and "An American Werewolf in London" tend to depict the latter, but D&D adventures like Curse of Strahd feature families of wereravens who refer to themselves as “kindnesses,” and presumably pass their tendency to sprout feathers down each generation.
The means of how lycanthropy was acquired could be the difference between a frenzied character who has no control over their animal form and a force of nature like Oyaminartok the Winter Walker, a goliath werebear in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden who only passes her curse to pure-hearted souls who impress her with their fighting prowess.
2. What kind of lycanthrope is the character?
The Monster Manual contains info on werebears, wereboars, wererats, weretigers and werewolves, but there are other shapeshifters out there, including werebats (featured in Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage). Fantastical hybrids like werecrocodiles and even weremoles were also present in older editions of D&D, and can be replicated in fifth edition by mixing different monster stat blocks.
For sheer flavor, it’s also worth noting what your character’s transformed appearance resembles. Our typical image of a werecreature is that of a wolfman, but D&D’s myriad races offer grander possibilities. A tiefling wererat might retain its characteristic horns, while an aarakocra weretiger could have vestigial wings.
3. Does the character embrace or reject their lycanthropy?
The Monster Manual states that lycanthropes can either reject their curse or embrace it. Resistance typically results in the tortured werewolf that we see in cinema who buries their inner animal until the full moon arises, while acceptance leads to at-will transformations but a potential descent into bloodlust. In D&D terms, those who resist retain their normal alignment in humanoid form but potentially become uncontrollable during a lycanthropic episode. Those who embrace witness a steady alignment shift, which might result in a character becoming the antithesis of everything they once stood for.
You may be playing in a game that pays less attention to alignment, however. Recent fifth edition releases have steered away from categorizing the personalities of monsters and humanoids with broad strokes, and a DM who wishes to follow suit might ignore alignment shifts in favor of presenting the player with tough questions and significant opportunities for roleplaying their new form.
How might a newly-infected wererat explain his condition to fellow adventurers or family, for instance? Perhaps he knows he’s still a decent man at heart, but will the city guards be as understanding? Let the player interpret their lycanthropy and challenge them with ability checks to keep control of their form and I guarantee that drama will naturally generate at the table.
It’s also useful to ask what a lycanthropic character might think of the potential spread of their condition. A humanoid hit by an attack that carries the lycanthropy curse needs to succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + the lycanthrope’s proficiency bonus + the lycanthrope’s Constitution modifier) or become cursed as well. An evil lycanthrope could use this to their advantage to create an entire pack, while a good lycanthrope might avoid passing his curse on to others. And if he does, how might he repent for creating another furry wretch in his likeness?
Raising the stakes for lycanthropes in your game
In my home games, I’ve tweaked the triggers that cause lycanthropy and made it a trickier condition to get rid of, as Remove Curse struck me as a fairly low-level spell to remove such a life-changing condition. Any DM who wants to follow suit can experiment with these two processes:
Have the lycanthrope character transform more often
Try making the lycanthropic curse appear whenever the player rolls a natural 1 or 20. After all, plenty of real-world medical conditions are triggered by anxiety or excitement, so why should lycanthropy be limited to the full moon? A character can potentially change into a werewolf mid-battle upon delivering a crushing critical hit. Imagine the narrative shenanigans that could result from lycanthropy manifesting during a failed Persuasion check!
Make lycanthropy harder to cure
Perhaps lycanthropy can be a special condition that has evolved over time to be stubbornly resistant to magic. Curing it might require the congealed blood of another lycanthrope, or perhaps rare herbs like wolf’s bane, the plant that has repeatedly appeared in folklore as a werewolf deterrent. Previous D&D editions established wolf’s bane as a spell component coveted by hags, who would be happy to make a lycanthropic character go through the wringer to get a few sprigs of the precious plant.
If your party isn’t one to hunt for herbs or deal with hags, maybe you could have a skilled alchemist sell anti-lycanthropy potions for an outrageous price, inciting desperate players to commit thievery!
Meet Julius, the lycanthropic dragonborn
The light of the full moon illuminates the dragonborn — if indeed he is one. His fine waistcoat and robe resemble wizardly garb, but his physical appearance is downright primal. His body is hunched. He has serrated scales extending from the ridges of his face and a tail that has tufts of fur sprouting from a spiked tip. Prodigious fur also grows from his chin, giving him the bizarre appearance of a bearded lizard. He has a bushy beard.
With a growl, the creature downs a vial of liquid into his frightfully toothy maw. Within a few seconds, his scales shrink and the fur disappears. After letting out several grunts, he vigorously shakes his head and straightens his back. At last, the dragonborn speaks, and it is in a pleasant voice.
“Salutations!” he remarks. “I hope my condition does not cause you distress. My name is Julius Ozdemir!”
Julius Ozdemir is a dragonborn lycanthrope who I most recently played in the fifth edition revision of The Sunless Citadel from Tales from the Yawning Portal. I developed him with lycanthropy in mind and intentionally chose a dragonborn to subvert the typical idea of a wolfman. When Julius transforms, he’s less like a wolf and more like a feathered dinosaur who also happens to have a breath weapon!
Julius is the owner of the library of Saltmarsh. He’s an aspiring wizard whose bumbling drive for knowledge often puts him in situations that most normal folk would run from. During a research expedition — where he planned to observe several werewolves from afar in the hopes of writing a paper on lycanthropic pack habits — Julius was bitten and barely escaped with his life. A few days later, he was found atop the roof of the Saltmarsh library in tattered pajamas that had burst from his burgeoning lycanthropic form.
Being one to appreciate the nuances of life and the humor in becoming a guinea pig for his own lycanthropic research, Julius accepted his strange new form and found himself reluctantly enjoying the sordid urges that came with every full moon. His scholarly side remained ashamed of his antics, however, especially when he went on a feeding spree one evening, inadvertently slaughtering three hens and consuming all of the meat pies in Saltmarsh’s bakery.
Luckily, Julius’ alchemist wife developed a potion that miraculously suppresses the lycanthropic curse for extended periods of time. Mixing the potion requires a constant supply of wolf’s bane, however, and so Julius often finds himself travelling to odd parts of the world in search of this rare bit of vegetation.
Julius is a chaotic good eccentric who noticeably shifts into a chaotic neutral firebrand upon transformation. In social situations, he’s keen to negotiate in his normal form and quick to resort to violence in his hybrid form. In combat, normal Julius acts like a traditional wizard and uses his magic from afar, whereas werewolf Julius is a ball of reckless energy, dashing across the battlefield and making use of spells, melee attacks, and his innate draconic breath in an unpredictable manner.
Meeting Julius in your game
In your games, Julius will work well as a quest-giver or mentor for any player coming to grips with a newfound lycanthropic condition. His wife’s knowledge of wolf’s bane can also be a great hook to push parties into a variety of adventurers as they attempt to locate the plant.
Alternatively, Julius could also be played as a darker Jekyll and Hyde character and inserted into any campaign to surprise players who think they know everything about their NPC companions. Imagine their surprise as the seemingly innocuous dragonborn wizard suddenly changes into something far more frightening!
Julius is but one example of the storytelling potential that lycanthropes can bring to your D&D game. Whether you’re creating a werecreature-infested Domain of Dread ahead of Van Richten’s Guide to Everything or simply seeking to add a little shapeshifting to your home game, let your inner beast break free, embrace the call of the wild, and howl in glory at the moon.
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Jeremy Blum (@PixelGrotto) is a journalist, gaming blogger, comic book aficionado, and fan of all forms of storytelling who rolled his first polyhedral dice while living in Hong Kong in 2017. Since then, he's never looked back and loves roleplaying games for the chance to tell the tales that have been swirling in his head since childhood.
In my pirate game I'm running, one of my players was cursed by a sea hag and is now a weresea-lion. It's a lot of fun!
Wereoctopi.
Depends on your definition of "OP". One of my favorite things about DnDB is that the DM can look at all the players sheets while doing game prep. My new definition is that "OP is when the DM can't keep up." Full disclosure: I only play in person with my friends - so busting each other's nads is a huge part of the fun.
We've had a good Forever DM wreak havoc on otherwise "OP" characters. One instance is when our Tier 3 party started into the caverns of a vampires to clear them out. With our staves of power, legendary weapons, min/max characters but just past the entrance we met the Skulks - but no one could see the damned things! No mirrors, no special unknown corpse wax candles, no small children in the party. Attacks out of no where. Heck we only had one item that had one charge of Faerie Fire (the druid was out that day), and the DM said RAW would allow that spell to help us see them. The three Skulks we could now see, then left the area of effect and dropped the Ranger's concentration. We were force to retreat until the Druid returned.
Another PC in another part of that same campaign had been allowed to use a homebrew armor which regained his hp from the blood of his enemies during combat. Sounds like an OP Tank, right? Well, "Mr. Invincible" ran headlong into a Green Dragon's Lair - where the DM had a bunch of Vine/Needle blights and a couple of types of myconids waiting for the party. Bad News: None of them Bleed! The Wizard quickly erected a Wall of Fire leaving Mr. Invincible to fight as we gathered a better plan. He was finally desperate enough to leap through the WoF (taking even more damage) just to get to the party cleric - whose healing abilities he had previously called "a waste of my time" .
A clever DM can make any encounter memorable, and deadly. You might even have a BBEG who uses Remove Curse to nerf that Lycan PC.
I have a problem with this kind of play. It means that the DM has to constantly artificially change and alter encounters and weapons on mundane creatures in order to make them a threat to the characters. A quick glance at the MM shows that a lycanthrope is immune to the damage of most of the creatures attacks in there. A dragon's breath will hurt, but not its natural attacks; claws, wings, tail and bite are useless. Dinosaurs are moot. Goblins, hobgoblins, orcs...all melee forms are incapable of harming the Lycanthrope as written. Beasts are inconsequential. After a while, if a DM is constantly altering encounters in order to overcome character's resistances and immunities, the players will start to resent it and in my experience the game breaks down. It's why I encourage the tradeoff with lycanthropy...you can control it if you get the blessing from a priest/priestess of a moon god, but you only get resistance and not immunity. Good point on the remove curse though, clever divine spellcasters will do this if they can get in range.
I have never been a fan of the way lycanthropes are done in 5e. The immunities make it way more a blessing and not a curse. If with the added nerfs it is still pretty powerful. All the party would have to is have him bite everyone and they would all be cursed and immune to the attacks if one does lose control. I would want to rewrite the rules for it completely before I allowed a playable character to have it.
basically, they left it up to the DM to figure it out but yes why wouldnt the whole party become were creatures ...
I am glad to see D&D sticking with the forced alignment shifts of lycanthropy, even if it is largely throwing out all the 'tropes' of classic good v. evil monsters and races. Like the author I feel the sting of the 'curse' is too light in RAW, and have turned it up a bit in my homebrew. I have added a sentience to the curse (much like the virus in World War Z movie), that represents pure chaos. The player then needs to roll against a shifting DC based on a few factors that make the DC harder. Gore, Character's engagement (observer<-->participant) and how close to death the character is. Then I add the alignment of the destination were-form (wererat, wereboar, werebear) to that DC. I toss in some other abilities of the sentient curse (blood lust and desperate bit) to represent the curse's desperation to spread before it's host expires....AND you have a truly horrific and powerful chaotic curse everyone should fear, both in your character and in your party. Good motivation to find a cure to something like that at your campfire I tell ya. Heck of a good time for a party to discover in their new-to-party and meek little warlock friend... as they two weeks out to sea and the full moon rises as the storm clouds fade. I'll try to share a google doc here to see my homebrew rules on this, but message me if you want a link and this one doesn't work. Rational Lycanthropy
I tend to downplay alignment in my campaigns but it probably wouldn't be much of a stretch to replace "forced alignment shift" with "overpowering, unbearable hunger and territorial urges" if that's more your particular style as a DM. It also means that even characters who already match the "default" alignment for a lycanthrope will have to decide how to deal with a whole new set of powerful instincts that pull them in directions they might not be comfortable with.
1) Lets talk Multi-Attack: From the rules as written it appears that a lvl 1 PC that gets lycanthropy also obtains Multi-Attack.
"The character gains the lycanthrope’s speeds in nonhumanoid form, damage immunities, traits, and actions that don’t involve equipment"
The way I interpret this line is that a character doesn't inherit the weapons (great axe for werebear, scimitar for weretiger) but still gets to multi-attack with whatever weapons they do have.
2) Now lets talk Damage Immunities: From the rules it appears that any PC that gets lycanthropy is immune to all non-magical attacks with the exception of silvered weapons.
I have heard the argument that the line "in nonhumanoid form" applies to every stat the character gains; that is a PC that gets lycanthropy only obtains the stats when in hybrid or animal form. I refute this claim based on how commas work in sentences. Only the speed of the lycanthrope is conditional on the form taken.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk
Thanks for the positive feedback. Like I said, we're a group of old friends. You know, a bunch of guys who have grown children and some grandchildren. Maybe we've mellowed as we age but we get a bit of a kick out of situations where someone says "I lived through two world wars, a hanging, a a goat (expletive), and I ain't never seen nothing like this!" The key is Moderation, like Poor Richard talked about. Mess with the Party, but not too much. Make them work for the wins and we have those stories we can reminisce about years from now.
As DM, I think modules are a good start to be molded to both challenge and entertain my players. It's my style, for my group, but it works. Example: I recently took a turn in the DM chair for a short "one-shot" game when the wives (Forever DM and mine) wanted to learn to play. I nerfed the as written, most likely TPK scenario with the BBEG with a homebrew retreat when his minions were all dead. The party had rescued an elderly woman. Mission Accomplished. In the module, the elderly woman was a widow so I rewrote the ending. The party had been actually hired not by the guy who recruited them - a priest - but the real group patron was a divination wizard. This wizard had loved the old woman from afar, never gotten up the nerve, but became worried into action when he no longer saw her in his visions. "The Futures are always brighter when I can see you in them." So a nice module with a homebrew love story twist ending... and the wives demanding more gameplay so their characters to find that BBEG and kick his ass for trying to mess things up. Hooked! Know your players, change as needed and be sure everyone still has fun, right?
As a PC, I love when Spells are used effectively to F with me - like the time when Forever DM had a bad guy had Anti-magic Field to mess with my PC who was relying a bit too heavily on Vampiric Touch. (old man voice) "In my day, we've played Magnificent Seven scenarios where we all died valiantly - and we liked it!" Again, depends on the players.
Good point on homebrewing some small nerfs like Resistance vs immunity. For lycanthropes, I'm really looking forward to the Grin Hollow stuff coming out as I've heard it has some meaningful balances to the supernatural classes.
It's no ones fault but your own by linking a source for your players to read without checking its contents first.
I agree that the title should reflect more of what the article entails but they gave insight through the Dragonborn example.
And what is the price for being a were-something? A feat?
The price is that there (might) be an alignment change. Also if you follow the mods in this article the curse might come out at inconvenient times.
Wow! Great article! Very helpful as well! One of my characters just became a werebear last session, and he doesn't really know how to play it. I think I'll point him to this article! Thank you!
I enjoyed this article--fun food for thought on my absolute favorite monster.
Didn't see any mention of it in the article or in the comments so I'll share here: I enjoyed the heck out of the Order of the Lycan Blood Hunter character I made. If you like the idea of this article but worry about the damage immunities and other imbalances it's worth a look. It can get you some of the flavor of having a character who can wolf out at will. https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/blood-hunter#OrderoftheLycan
For my homebrew setting, I keep playing around with the idea of lycanthropes being servants of gods/archfey(?). So it ends up sort of like a vampire, where "true" lycanthropes are empowered by these gods and are able to spread the curse to create "lesser" lycanthropes.
I hope they bring back the Loup-garou from Ravenloft.
Its not easy but using the spell Ceremony for it's Atonement feature may work as a possible tool to manage some of the worse side effects of Lycanthropy but its situational and dependant on how the Lycanthrope views the alignment change in general.
I hate to be that guy, and if this article was about anything but Lycans, which have always been one of my favorite mythical creatures, I wouldn't bother. The term Lycanthrope is not a general term like werecreature is. It is synonymous with werewolf and denotes a specific type of shapeshifter, just like Ursathrope would refer to a werebear. The general term you would want to use is therianthrope to bundle them all together.
Can we recognize that etymology doesn't absolutely dictate usage?