Resistance to normal weapons was a terrible gameplay experience in tier 1 and essentially irrelevant in tier 2+, and also had very little mythical basis -- in general mythical creatures are one of
Unkillable if you don't identify their weakness. D&D examples include loup garou, troll, vampire.
Incorporeal, partially or totally unaffected by physical attacks. Those attacks being magical does not generally matter unless the weapon has a special trait, which would typically be represented in D&D by changing its damage type.
No particular resistance to weapons beyond unnatural toughness (represented in D&D by AC and HP).
The legend of killing werewolves with silver came from the beast of Ge'vaudan in France, 1764-1767. Over 100 people were killed by the "werewolf," and it was killed with a silver bullet.
Did a little checking, and there's various versions of what made those bullets finally do in the beast, and the cited examples all seem to come from the late 19th to early 20th century. There was one about the bullets being made from medals of the Virgin Mary, though it looks like that would have been from an early 20th century source. Regardless, relative to the concept of humans transforming into wolves, the concept of silver being the one thing that can seriously injure them is fairly recent, and I stand by the assessment that the Universal Horror movie was what brought the concept into mainstream awareness.
Did a little checking, and there's various versions of what made those bullets finally do in the beast, and the cited examples all seem to come from the late 19th to early 20th century. There was one about the bullets being made from medals of the Virgin Mary, though it looks like that would have been from an early 20th century source. Regardless, relative to the concept of humans transforming into wolves, the concept of silver being the one thing that can seriously injure them is fairly recent, and I stand by the assessment that the Universal Horror movie was what brought the concept into mainstream awareness.
Well probably as mass media is the how things are brought into mainstream awareness. It is like tons of things are now more in mainstream awareness thanks to the internet. The further we move along in the ability to disseminate information/entertainment the more things can enter the general populaces awareness. Though eventually you will hit a point of too much is out there so things get lost in the crowd.
But stories and legends about it go back hundreds of years. Which doesn't mean every story will include it as when things are spread more word of mouth style more discrepancies will arise. When you have a method to communicate a story across the whole populace stories will become more concrete and unified. So when you have a popular movie push one version of the story it will get picked up and followed by later iterations.
I think this was done to address another big problem (that I experienced firsthand).
If 2014's version of Lycanthropy infected a PC, almost nothing mundane would be able to hit him/her. This happened earlier in my Princes of the Apocalypse campaign where a certain lycanthropic water cultist infected the Rogue player in our group. At the lower levels, it's beyond overpowered. The average wandering monster couldn't hit with claws and bites, and most enemies couldn't touch him with mundane weaponry either. We both agreed it was OP, and we retconned (which I hated doing) a failed cure attempt using wolfsbane and belladonna from earlier.
The 2024 rules solve this should someone become afflicted. They won't be godlike at lower levels.
Additionally, Silvered weapons doing an extra die of damage only on a critical hit is nearly useless with a measly 5% chance on any given roll. I'll either house rule it to any hit or increase the critical hit range to 18-20 against shapeshifted enemies. Likely the former as it keeps with the legends of silver being a bane to Lycanthropes.
I really, super-duper don't like that they took away the silver weapons requirement for werewolves. Mechanically they have very little that is unique now; the shapeshifting (again, mechanically) is more or less cosmetic at this point in terms of impact.
Combat isn't everything, but there is something truly chilling about striking a opponent only to find you can't damage it. I generally don't mind a lot of the changes they've made in the MM, but this one for some reason really bothered me. I'll definitely homebrew it. Which I don't mind doing. But it did seem like a misstep that took away an iconic ability from a legendary creature (no matter if it's a relatively recent convention or not).
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Resistance to normal weapons was a terrible gameplay experience in tier 1 and essentially irrelevant in tier 2+, and also had very little mythical basis -- in general mythical creatures are one of
The legend of killing werewolves with silver came from the beast of Ge'vaudan in France, 1764-1767. Over 100 people were killed by the "werewolf," and it was killed with a silver bullet.
Did a little checking, and there's various versions of what made those bullets finally do in the beast, and the cited examples all seem to come from the late 19th to early 20th century. There was one about the bullets being made from medals of the Virgin Mary, though it looks like that would have been from an early 20th century source. Regardless, relative to the concept of humans transforming into wolves, the concept of silver being the one thing that can seriously injure them is fairly recent, and I stand by the assessment that the Universal Horror movie was what brought the concept into mainstream awareness.
Well probably as mass media is the how things are brought into mainstream awareness. It is like tons of things are now more in mainstream awareness thanks to the internet. The further we move along in the ability to disseminate information/entertainment the more things can enter the general populaces awareness. Though eventually you will hit a point of too much is out there so things get lost in the crowd.
But stories and legends about it go back hundreds of years. Which doesn't mean every story will include it as when things are spread more word of mouth style more discrepancies will arise. When you have a method to communicate a story across the whole populace stories will become more concrete and unified. So when you have a popular movie push one version of the story it will get picked up and followed by later iterations.
I think this was done to address another big problem (that I experienced firsthand).
If 2014's version of Lycanthropy infected a PC, almost nothing mundane would be able to hit him/her. This happened earlier in my Princes of the Apocalypse campaign where a certain lycanthropic water cultist infected the Rogue player in our group. At the lower levels, it's beyond overpowered. The average wandering monster couldn't hit with claws and bites, and most enemies couldn't touch him with mundane weaponry either. We both agreed it was OP, and we retconned (which I hated doing) a failed cure attempt using wolfsbane and belladonna from earlier.
The 2024 rules solve this should someone become afflicted. They won't be godlike at lower levels.
Additionally, Silvered weapons doing an extra die of damage only on a critical hit is nearly useless with a measly 5% chance on any given roll. I'll either house rule it to any hit or increase the critical hit range to 18-20 against shapeshifted enemies. Likely the former as it keeps with the legends of silver being a bane to Lycanthropes.
I really, super-duper don't like that they took away the silver weapons requirement for werewolves. Mechanically they have very little that is unique now; the shapeshifting (again, mechanically) is more or less cosmetic at this point in terms of impact.
Combat isn't everything, but there is something truly chilling about striking a opponent only to find you can't damage it. I generally don't mind a lot of the changes they've made in the MM, but this one for some reason really bothered me. I'll definitely homebrew it. Which I don't mind doing. But it did seem like a misstep that took away an iconic ability from a legendary creature (no matter if it's a relatively recent convention or not).