I've been running dragon of icespire peak as my first campaign, and one of my characters has been turned into a wererat after visiting Mountain's toes gold mine (frankly, the party had their collective *** handed to them). He's basically become a wizard tank due to the immunity (nerfed it to a resistance with his permission after he managed to hold off two ogres single-handedly at level 3), and I'm uncomfortable with it. I've tried using an in-game system of my own devising (search for "mistrust table" in this category), but on reflection it seems a tad too complex to integrate well.
Any advice on how to remove the curse in a fair or at least in-game way? Currently I'm thinking of adding a priest NPC or something to forcibly remove the curse.
Well, would could quote from the Monster Manual for player lycanthropes: "The DM is free to decide that a change in alignment places the character under DM control until the curse of lycanthropy is removed". So you could just say that character is now an NPC and then have the rest of the party track down their errant wizard and try to force a remove curse on them. Give the Wizard player a temp NPC to play while this happens or let them create a new character for that little story arc.
A better option might be to role play it over a few more sessions.
Have the character shift into rate or hybrid forms when they sleep and sneak off, the character wakes up somewhere else, with no recollection of what they did or how they got there and likely bereft of their equipment.
Maybe the party stumble on a overtuned wagon and find bodies in the bushes. Along the llines of: "You come across a wagon that has gone off the road and turned over in a ditch. No bodies, some signs of disturbance, faded blood stains, nothing possessions wise remains" DC 10 Survival check show tracks leading off into some nearby woods, If they are followed then the party come upon the remains of two horses and a couple of humanoid corpses. A further DC10 Medicine check on the remains reveals they have not been cooked but have been "gnawed upon". No other tracks are discernable beyond the horses. If the party use speak with dead on the bodies then they get a vague idea of "a beast that walk as a man (or woamn as the case may be)" attacking the wagon at night.
You can also have the wizard start making Wisdom saving throws or feel compelled to go in a particular direction (a colony of wererats trying to reach out to the new convert, to quote the monster manual again: "Wererats that are accidentally cursed or break loose from the (wererat) clan's control are quickly hunted down and killed.").
Have rats follow the wizard around like an unwanted swarm but are beyond his ability to control in any meaningful way (ie they scatter and flee if conflict occurs and return when its safe).
Have the party bump into a reknowned ranger who is huntung Lycanthropes in the area, give him Favoured Enemy Humanoids (Lycanthropes) and silver weapons to make the wizard feel uncomfortable and then you can bring conversation around to how to cure lycanthropy and why you should, paint them a bleak picture. This can then become a bit of a stand off with the ranger if need be.
The boring answer is remove curse. The more interesting answer is you go on a quest to do it. Perhaps you cast remove curse and instead of removing the curse, you learn information relevant to the process of removing it.
Or if the party is not high enough to have one of their members cast Remove Curse, have them be sent on a quest by the church (or demon?) and have Remove Curse as the reward.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Thanks for the advice all! I'll certainly give it a mull over, but considering that this guy went out of his way to become a wererat I think I may have to be a bit more blunt. Let him play around with being a wererat a bit more, then have the local wererat population begin to hunt him.
If you run Lycanthropy as a disease, greater restoration should do the trick. If you want to make it hard to get rid of, add remove curse AND a quest to get rid of it.
For a different direction, consider the blood hunter class. If the character embraces the lycanthropy, require them to level as a blood hunter & take the lycanthrope subclass at level 3- replace the traits of the disease version with the class features.
If your player is infected with lycanthropy, I'd advise taking them to the doctor.
Ba-dum *tshhh*
...
I'll see myself out.
Seriously, though. I don't know what the rules are for lycanthropes, but I'd have the character function normally in human form and give it full stats when it is transformed, but only allow transformation once a day, or have the character roll saves to resist transforming at inopportune times.
Let the player have fun with it... but you have fun with it too.
Any advice on how to remove the curse in a fair or at least in-game way? Currently I'm thinking of adding a priest NPC or something to forcibly remove the curse.
The problem is mostly that you aren't treating it as a curse. The way you treat it as a curse is:
If you embrace the curse, you become an NPC. Make a new character.
If you resist the curse, you become an NPC (with lycanthropic abilities) during the full moon (at which point, you probably try to kill the rest of the party). The rest of the time, you have no lycanthrope properties.
Now, introducing that rule retroactively may be a problem, but that's a separate issue.
Eh, the rules for lycanthropy aren't as clearly stated as what I gave; what I gave is "how to make sure people actually interpret it as a curse". As written, what it does if you enbrace the curse is change your alignment to match the type of lycanthrope, and is silent about what that means. I choose to interpret radical personality change as "you are now an NPC", but it's not required by the rules.
I know this doesn't really help in your situation, but wererats don't like transmitting the curse
A wererat clan operates much like a thieves’ guild, with wererats transmitting their curse only to creatures they want to induct into the clan. Wererats that are accidentally cursed or break loose from the clan’s control are quickly hunted down and killed.
To be a bit more helpful, there is a little bit at the end of the wererat stat block that talks about player lycanthropy:
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.
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.
I had the same issue - except my PC was motivated to find a cure. I modified the Tower of Storms side quest to with some added rumors to include a gem of lycanthropic healing that sank in a shipwreck there. Worked out well, until the party somehow managed to convince the intelligent giant sea crab to join their party and now I have a giant sea crab sidekick/mascot following them around.....
If you're looking for areas to help cure lycanthropy, I think there is also a friendly witch who lives in a windmill near Phandolin in that campaign. In our game we played a session where she helped cure a player and NPC who had lycanthropy, and the people getting cured did a sort of minigame fighting off spectral enemies to resist the curse.
If you want an incentive for the player to be cured and not just just embrace the were-rattery, I think there are cool opportunities to mess with the player and show that this isn't just a cool superpower, it's got some gnarly consequences. You can provide unreliable narration – telling the player that they feel energized and more powerful, while explaining to their party that they are bathing less, taking on odd mannerisms and chittering under their breath, and starting to smell. Maybe they develop the 'sunlight sensitivity' that many monsters have, or they have to make intelligence/wisdom/charisma saving throws at various points or risk you taking over the character for a moment ( "you look on in horror as the salivating wizard begins to gnaw on the wall tapestry behind the ambassador"). Maybe the curse ups their strength but lowers their all-important Intelligence for spellcasting.
If worse comes to worse and the player gets upset about this, I think you can also have an out-of-game chat to explain to them that lycanthropy is intended to destroy the mind and morality of the player over time, not just as a shortcut to awesome superpowers. Same thing if a player say, makes a pact with a demon to gain some new abilities, and that demon never comes to collect, it just screws with the party dynamic in a way that makes it so they overshadow their friends. Perhaps as a consolation prize, once the player is cured they can retain some cool hints of the curse like an ability to speak with rats or dark vision if they didn't have it before, so it doesn't feel too much like "DM giveth and DM taketh away."
Having just gone through a bit where we got Lycanthropy from a Weregator (Werecrocodile?), there are definitely some tempting stages. The damage reduction is nice. But we had already seen the consequences of not helping our friend early enough and he transformed and attacked our party. At least one of us was able to tell it was him before we just destroyed him and then we tied him up and he kept breaking free all night long. Luckily we were out in the woods and had no consequences, but when he bit two of us and we "acquired" the hunger we were heading back to my characters hometown. Once some of the signs become magnified enough we realized what was going on and the thought of losing control in a city on the brink of war was terrifying. Not only of that many potential weregators/crocs but of who we would be taking out.
Just because there are benefits doesn't mean there aren't social constructs that can help players change their minds. Especially if they don't get to control the character, but have to roll the damage against their friends and associates and innocents. If a player doesn't change their attitude about being a werecreature when they are fully lost and not in control and they still have to participate in hurting others, then that players character needs to become an NPC as it slowly devolves to a place where the player never gets to control them. If they are working through trying to find a cure or are roleplaying the remorse to the full and looking for answers (even if subvertively), then I'm ok with them keeping going for a time. I'm just not ok with murder-hoboing because they got damage immunity and no moral consequences. There is a reason it is called a curse... and if they don't treat it as such... well, may that villain live long and prosper and come back to haunt the party that also allowed it to continue without thought of consequences.
Thanks all, currently I've decided (since I'm not keeping track of the lunar cycle) that whenever he shapeshifts (which he does regularly to prevent the villagers from getting too suspicious- he's already barred from buying weapons) the player has to take a constitution saving throw. On a 1 he comes under my control for the rest of the day, if he fails he's stuck in that form for the day and if he succeeds he shapeshifts normally. I think that making the save harder over time should be enough of an incentive but I'll certainly take these other ideas under consideration ^^.
If I ever DM a game where lycanthropy is relevant, I fully intend to make a few changes to the condition. One of which is that you only have the damage immunity while in hybrid/beast form. So you would have to give in to the curse and become a monster in order to gain the benefits of it.
I assumed that was how it was intended. Personally for players I'd recommend dialling it down to a resistance if they start to abuse it (I had my wererat player end up tanking two ogres simultaneously for instance).
Oh yes. “Snips”. And they convinced a merchant to modify the gauntlets Of ogre power to fit on his claws. So now I have a giant crab with gauntlets of ogre power as an NPC.
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Hello,
I've been running dragon of icespire peak as my first campaign, and one of my characters has been turned into a wererat after visiting Mountain's toes gold mine (frankly, the party had their collective *** handed to them). He's basically become a wizard tank due to the immunity (nerfed it to a resistance with his permission after he managed to hold off two ogres single-handedly at level 3), and I'm uncomfortable with it. I've tried using an in-game system of my own devising (search for "mistrust table" in this category), but on reflection it seems a tad too complex to integrate well.
Any advice on how to remove the curse in a fair or at least in-game way? Currently I'm thinking of adding a priest NPC or something to forcibly remove the curse.
Thanks!
Well, would could quote from the Monster Manual for player lycanthropes: "The DM is free to decide that a change in alignment places the character under DM control until the curse of lycanthropy is removed". So you could just say that character is now an NPC and then have the rest of the party track down their errant wizard and try to force a remove curse on them. Give the Wizard player a temp NPC to play while this happens or let them create a new character for that little story arc.
A better option might be to role play it over a few more sessions.
Have the character shift into rate or hybrid forms when they sleep and sneak off, the character wakes up somewhere else, with no recollection of what they did or how they got there and likely bereft of their equipment.
Maybe the party stumble on a overtuned wagon and find bodies in the bushes. Along the llines of: "You come across a wagon that has gone off the road and turned over in a ditch. No bodies, some signs of disturbance, faded blood stains, nothing possessions wise remains" DC 10 Survival check show tracks leading off into some nearby woods, If they are followed then the party come upon the remains of two horses and a couple of humanoid corpses. A further DC10 Medicine check on the remains reveals they have not been cooked but have been "gnawed upon". No other tracks are discernable beyond the horses. If the party use speak with dead on the bodies then they get a vague idea of "a beast that walk as a man (or woamn as the case may be)" attacking the wagon at night.
You can also have the wizard start making Wisdom saving throws or feel compelled to go in a particular direction (a colony of wererats trying to reach out to the new convert, to quote the monster manual again: "Wererats that are accidentally cursed or break loose from the (wererat) clan's control are quickly hunted down and killed.").
Have rats follow the wizard around like an unwanted swarm but are beyond his ability to control in any meaningful way (ie they scatter and flee if conflict occurs and return when its safe).
Have the party bump into a reknowned ranger who is huntung Lycanthropes in the area, give him Favoured Enemy Humanoids (Lycanthropes) and silver weapons to make the wizard feel uncomfortable and then you can bring conversation around to how to cure lycanthropy and why you should, paint them a bleak picture. This can then become a bit of a stand off with the ranger if need be.
The boring answer is remove curse. The more interesting answer is you go on a quest to do it. Perhaps you cast remove curse and instead of removing the curse, you learn information relevant to the process of removing it.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Or if the party is not high enough to have one of their members cast Remove Curse, have them be sent on a quest by the church (or demon?) and have Remove Curse as the reward.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Thanks for the advice all! I'll certainly give it a mull over, but considering that this guy went out of his way to become a wererat I think I may have to be a bit more blunt. Let him play around with being a wererat a bit more, then have the local wererat population begin to hunt him.
If you run Lycanthropy as a disease, greater restoration should do the trick. If you want to make it hard to get rid of, add remove curse AND a quest to get rid of it.
Of course you could always kill 'm and Reincarnate them. Note neither raise dead nor resurrection get rid of magical diseases. true resurrection will remove Lycanthropy.
For a different direction, consider the blood hunter class. If the character embraces the lycanthropy, require them to level as a blood hunter & take the lycanthrope subclass at level 3- replace the traits of the disease version with the class features.
If your player is infected with lycanthropy, I'd advise taking them to the doctor.
Ba-dum *tshhh*
...
I'll see myself out.
Seriously, though. I don't know what the rules are for lycanthropes, but I'd have the character function normally in human form and give it full stats when it is transformed, but only allow transformation once a day, or have the character roll saves to resist transforming at inopportune times.
Let the player have fun with it... but you have fun with it too.
The problem is mostly that you aren't treating it as a curse. The way you treat it as a curse is:
Now, introducing that rule retroactively may be a problem, but that's a separate issue.
Thanks. I only have the essentials kit which doesn't include lycanthropy rules (at least in any meaningful detail), so I was unaware.
Eh, the rules for lycanthropy aren't as clearly stated as what I gave; what I gave is "how to make sure people actually interpret it as a curse". As written, what it does if you enbrace the curse is change your alignment to match the type of lycanthrope, and is silent about what that means. I choose to interpret radical personality change as "you are now an NPC", but it's not required by the rules.
I know this doesn't really help in your situation, but wererats don't like transmitting the curse
To be a bit more helpful, there is a little bit at the end of the wererat stat block that talks about player lycanthropy:
Huh, the icespire peak adventure just said to give the player lycanthropy if they fail a constitution save after a bite attack. Oh well.
I had the same issue - except my PC was motivated to find a cure. I modified the Tower of Storms side quest to with some added rumors to include a gem of lycanthropic healing that sank in a shipwreck there. Worked out well, until the party somehow managed to convince the intelligent giant sea crab to join their party and now I have a giant sea crab sidekick/mascot following them around.....
Off topic but did they name it?
If you're looking for areas to help cure lycanthropy, I think there is also a friendly witch who lives in a windmill near Phandolin in that campaign. In our game we played a session where she helped cure a player and NPC who had lycanthropy, and the people getting cured did a sort of minigame fighting off spectral enemies to resist the curse.
If you want an incentive for the player to be cured and not just just embrace the were-rattery, I think there are cool opportunities to mess with the player and show that this isn't just a cool superpower, it's got some gnarly consequences. You can provide unreliable narration – telling the player that they feel energized and more powerful, while explaining to their party that they are bathing less, taking on odd mannerisms and chittering under their breath, and starting to smell. Maybe they develop the 'sunlight sensitivity' that many monsters have, or they have to make intelligence/wisdom/charisma saving throws at various points or risk you taking over the character for a moment ( "you look on in horror as the salivating wizard begins to gnaw on the wall tapestry behind the ambassador"). Maybe the curse ups their strength but lowers their all-important Intelligence for spellcasting.
If worse comes to worse and the player gets upset about this, I think you can also have an out-of-game chat to explain to them that lycanthropy is intended to destroy the mind and morality of the player over time, not just as a shortcut to awesome superpowers. Same thing if a player say, makes a pact with a demon to gain some new abilities, and that demon never comes to collect, it just screws with the party dynamic in a way that makes it so they overshadow their friends. Perhaps as a consolation prize, once the player is cured they can retain some cool hints of the curse like an ability to speak with rats or dark vision if they didn't have it before, so it doesn't feel too much like "DM giveth and DM taketh away."
Good luck resolving this!
Having just gone through a bit where we got Lycanthropy from a Weregator (Werecrocodile?), there are definitely some tempting stages. The damage reduction is nice. But we had already seen the consequences of not helping our friend early enough and he transformed and attacked our party. At least one of us was able to tell it was him before we just destroyed him and then we tied him up and he kept breaking free all night long. Luckily we were out in the woods and had no consequences, but when he bit two of us and we "acquired" the hunger we were heading back to my characters hometown. Once some of the signs become magnified enough we realized what was going on and the thought of losing control in a city on the brink of war was terrifying. Not only of that many potential weregators/crocs but of who we would be taking out.
Just because there are benefits doesn't mean there aren't social constructs that can help players change their minds. Especially if they don't get to control the character, but have to roll the damage against their friends and associates and innocents. If a player doesn't change their attitude about being a werecreature when they are fully lost and not in control and they still have to participate in hurting others, then that players character needs to become an NPC as it slowly devolves to a place where the player never gets to control them. If they are working through trying to find a cure or are roleplaying the remorse to the full and looking for answers (even if subvertively), then I'm ok with them keeping going for a time. I'm just not ok with murder-hoboing because they got damage immunity and no moral consequences. There is a reason it is called a curse... and if they don't treat it as such... well, may that villain live long and prosper and come back to haunt the party that also allowed it to continue without thought of consequences.
Thanks all, currently I've decided (since I'm not keeping track of the lunar cycle) that whenever he shapeshifts (which he does regularly to prevent the villagers from getting too suspicious- he's already barred from buying weapons) the player has to take a constitution saving throw. On a 1 he comes under my control for the rest of the day, if he fails he's stuck in that form for the day and if he succeeds he shapeshifts normally. I think that making the save harder over time should be enough of an incentive but I'll certainly take these other ideas under consideration ^^.
If I ever DM a game where lycanthropy is relevant, I fully intend to make a few changes to the condition. One of which is that you only have the damage immunity while in hybrid/beast form. So you would have to give in to the curse and become a monster in order to gain the benefits of it.
I assumed that was how it was intended. Personally for players I'd recommend dialling it down to a resistance if they start to abuse it (I had my wererat player end up tanking two ogres simultaneously for instance).
Oh yes. “Snips”. And they convinced a merchant to modify the gauntlets Of ogre power to fit on his claws. So now I have a giant crab with gauntlets of ogre power as an NPC.