So a little while ago when i first started playing i remember asking about how does becoming a werewolf would work for a player? Is it a class or a race feature? Originally i was told it was more of a race thing which seemed a bit complicated and honestly felt like it could make the player way to powerful or way to weak depending on what the DM decided to go with.

Now that I have had lot more time playing I started to wonder if a werewolf/werebeast could be more useful as a class more then a race?

I've never dipped into making my own class before but the basic idea i got was that it would sort of resemble a barbarian in a way with the rage component where the character can only turn so many times in a day before needing to take long rests to restore their points. For now lets just call them 'Beast Points' instead of rage.

So like a barbarian depending on the level the player is you can have a certain amount of beast points to turn into your beast form which will last about a hour unless the player decides to turn back. Because of this tho i would personally go with maybe cutting down on how many points they have since they can stay in their form compared to a barbarian rage mode which can end if they are not attacking (i feel like im wrong here so if i am my apologies).

Weapon wise i would say they could have their claws, even in a none beast form they could draw their claws, tho in a none beast form they will do less damage with their claws.

Beyond that, im still thinking over how to fully write down the class without making it to powerful because i personally feel i could easily do that with this class. But beyond that what do you guys/gals think? Do you think having elements of the barbarian class would work for something like this or should i maybe seek out a different way?

Lycanthropy is a Template. It modifies the base race, you can find information on implementing the curse on your player's in the MM. That being said.

It sounds like you are trying to make a kinda feral barbarian. I could see this being a Barb subclass restricted to Shifters if we ever get them back. And placing it as a subclass will take a lot of the heavy work off the generation as the Barb frame is already there. I would recommend lifting the Tabaxi's claw features to handle the claws, as well as some of the Totem Barb features. Anything that doesn't really fit you can reskin or replace with pure homebrew. Good Luck.

*Edited for spelling, grammar, and tone. 

Greetings, I have vampire players in my game and someone else is looking in to becoming a werebeast. I have some rules and the player understands they are liable to change if they become too powerful. 

(For various reasons Vampires were created by elves (all evil Cthulhu worshipping warlocks) as a warrior race - the Fey made the werebeasts to be their equivalent....both races now have won their freedom but old habits die hard.) 

Try your idea and see how it goes...have fun with it.

I to actually have a player who is a vampire as well, took us a while to balance it out but so far so good.

I am doing up a rough write up of the werebeast class right now but honestly this might take a bit of time to do, but once I get it done and maybe do a few tests on it i'll let you know.

Nice.