There Wolf!
Happy Halloween, Heroes! Did you spend the weekend enjoying your mandatory annual spooky session? If hope so. And I hope that your Halloween adventures gave you more treats (loot) than tricks (horrible death). Assuming you survived, what do you say we talk about the critters that tried to kill you?
First of all, a question: Have you ever noticed how many monsters are contagious? You’ve got werewolves and vampires of course, but plenty of other creatures share that same “you become the monster” schtick. Ghouls and shadows can cause you to rise as one of them, for example. Wander into an aboleth’s mucus cloud and you may find yourself a permanent denizen of the deep. Kytons want your soul, intellect devourers want your brain, and the lich’s club is always looking for new members. What’s interesting to me is that, in so many of these cases, monstrosity comes accompanied with a mechanical bonus. That makes the transformation into terrifying creatures of the night an upgrade. And that sets PCs up for a temptation story arc.
In the same way that the living room represents a whole class of creature, I think that these you-become-the-monster monsters are all designed to give a similar player experience. The World of Darkness is an entire setting predicated on the concept. Any of you guys remember the Vampire: The Masquerade tag line, “A game of personal horror?” That’s the story I’m talking about. Monsters are powerful, but they’re also less than human. Figuring out whether you want to make that trade is a compelling question for any adventurer, Van Helsing, Jack Sparrow, and Illidan Stormrage included.
Question of the day then: Have you ever “become the monster” in a game? Was it worth it? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Not a straight example, but in one campaign I ran a wizard obsessed with magic, and in a sequal campaign a century later he turns up as an npc who’s become a lich. Tgough through wish magic he was accidentally responsible for turning two fellow pcs in a half-dragon and a werewolf.
What I find more fun to play is starting as a monster. This was a huge part of the appeal of warforged, shifters, and changelings from Eberron, as well as “We Be Dragons” in Pathfinder. Of course, starting as a monster and gaining a monstrous template have incredb
Ugh, accidentally submitted before I was finished typing. Anyway, starting as a monster and gaining a monstrous template have very different RP implications. In the latter the PC was normal (or as normal as PCs could be) before becoming monstrous, which lends interesting questions to the PC’s identi
…I really shouldn’t be responding on my phone. The PC’s identity, while in the former the being a “monster” has always been a part of their identity.
The biggest problem I’ve run into is inter-party balance; a vampire fighter of equal level to a human fighter is sooo much stronger, which can be a pain for setting proper encounters. 5e hasn’t even bothered to try monstrous PCs yet with the exception of were-creatures who get rather dismal benefits compared to PF and 3.5, while 3.5’s level adjustment system was utter garbage. Yes liches get some sweet benefits, but are they the loss of 4 caster levels relative to the party and encounters you’re gonna face? (no). Ironically, those templates meant to tempt the players actually made them mechanically weaker because the LA was simply murder on your health, saves, and skills, and the features weren’t as strong as the class features you’d have to give up due to LA and monstrous hit dice.
I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a disconnect between designer optimization and player optimization. By that I mean that designers may decide to create options at X power level where players (specifically ones with a high level of system mastery) are creating characters at X+∞ power level. My very tentative theory is that templates are aimed at the middle of the bell curve, whereas guys with high performance builds are not the target audience.
I dunno… Even as I write that it sounds like an excuse for poor design. Bleh.
Depends on the system. In 5e they’ve become obsessive about keeping everything around the same power level with a low ceiling and high floor, but that also greatly lowers customization. In 3.5…yeah it was poor design. In Savage Species they walked through how they were balancing the monstrous races as characters. They’re point of reference? A single class, core-only feat options fighter. They weren’t aiming for the middle, they chose the tail end of the bell curve. Needless to say, monstrous PCs in 3.5 in particular were almost always a subpar option.
That really seems to be the crux of the issue, doesn’t it? If you release more Magic Cards, a clever player will be able to build more powerful decks. If you can only play with one set, then your power is going to stagnate. Enter the linear fighter and quadratic wizard. The same theory applies to systems as well. 5e is playing smart and extending its lifespan by trickling out the player options, but the amount of available customization doesn’t have the same wahoo gonzo fun as a GURPS or a 3.5 D&D.
Walk not the path of lycanthropy for along with feral urges it comes with an even worse affliction – Level Adjustment. I know many of the readers roll their eyes whenever I talk about 3.5e like an old man remembering “the good old days”, but one thing it does right is that it makes the player think long and hard whether or not they wang to play a monster.
If there is a transformation involved there is an actual cost of the character not being able to follow their path (level adjustment) or even fogetting what they’ve trained to become (turning class levels into racial hit dice).
…of course that makes it a bit more difficult when one actually wants to play as a monster, but I think that orcs, goblins, and the occasional warforged (to name a few) do that job pretty well.
I always liked the idea of templates as treasure rather than level adjustment. If you can calculate the gp value of a template, then you can hand the other players the requisite loot to stay on par with the suddenly-a-werewolf character. Of course, that’s a load of work on the GM’s part, and “you get a holy avenger, you get lycanthropy” is a bit of an oddball loot pile.
I tried that once when I was running a game and liked the results. My plan was to restrict magic item access, but give each player a nifty one early on that scales as they level to emphasize their rarity and piwer and help them feel attached to them. One player mentioned he wanted to be a werewolf, so I swapped his item for a custom lycanthropy template. It was RPed as a rewars from a feral god of nature for reconsecrating a desecrated holy shrine.
Not my character but in the longest-running campaign I’ve ever played, one of the other players had to miss one summer for personal reasons. This left him a few levels behind the rest of the party and the DM wanted to fix that but rather than say “You had a few adventures of your own while you were split from the party; gain a handful of levels” he though it would be mpre fun to say “You had a few adventures while you were split from the part /and you got bitten by a were-(black-)bear!”.
Were-bears are LG so there weren’t any issues rampaging around eating peasants.
It was a cool idea. However, as the game played out he started to feel that it wasn’t worth it. The stat gains were ok-ish but mostly only accessible when he was transformed but he couldn’t transform reliably. Transforming /back/ was even worse. He had to keep taking his plate armour off and on.
It was supposed to catch him up to the rest of the group but it fell short, even if were-bears by-pass the whole “being a monster” aspect.
I think one of my very first characters was a 3.5 lycanthrope sorcerer. I haven’t thought about her in years…. I’m sure her character sheet is entombed within a trapper keeper in some municipal dump in a Portland suburb.
Anywho, I remember hating that roll to transform. Backed into a corner, no touch spells, and desperately needing to hulk out: the perfect time for your d20 to stab you in the friggin’ back.
I always found the good-aligned werebear to be a bit of an unusual concept. I like to imagine that they turn into Winnie the Pooh.
Care Bears.
I once played a Eberron game where my Warmage was bitten by a werewolf.
He failed the DC but my DM gave me an option. He had a old Dragon magazine where it had 5 level progression for werewolves. By the end i had control (minus if i failed a save on a full moon) and was just damn scary.
11 Warmage, 5 levels Havoc Mage (put spells into weapons), 5 levels Werewolf, and 1 level Cleric (we got to epic levels near the end).
It was fantastically over powered and a lot of fun to play.
Werewolf as class, eh? Any clue what issue # of Dragon Magazine that was? I might need to go digging.
Don’t know about that dragon mag, but in one 3.5 boom (IIRC Races of Eberron) there is the weretouched master, which is a prestige class that basically lets shifters become full werewolves. The pre-errata one is so much fun. The post errata one makes me want to cry.
I’ve become a vampire-like thing because of a curse. It was totally worth it. The DM probably should have come up for some downsides to the curse, because it sure didn’t have any.
But, I just started Curse of Strahd for one of my groups, beginning yesterday with Death House. There are plenty of opportunities for them to become the monsters in this campaign, and they certainly have the wide variety of alignments for it.
You’ll have to tell me how Death House is. My group skipped it in favor of homebrew. I didn’t realize for a while, but apparently we’re still in the starting village after a year of play.
Wow, that’s some next-level muckin’ about. I’m not sure how well i’ll be able to tell you about Death House, because they are tearing through it, and I have a feeling they will appease the cult in the end.
I played a character once, a human man who SWORE he was a red dragon trapped in human form by a wizard who had cursed him to be as weak as any mortal until he learned to quit being an evil twisted bastard.
Everyone thought he was crazy. But he did end up saving a city. Turns out being ‘a hero’ was an IMPROVEMENT on being a dragon. Turns out the squishies have all kinds of fun stuff he’d never thought to try as a dragon, and when they LIKE you they GIVE it to you! Who knew right?!
So he decides to fool the town into thinking he’s some grand hero by protecting it. Which he does, very well. Pretends to be good and noble so they give him gold, magical items, works of art, fine food and drink… All the typical murderhobo rewards.
Turns out he’s alignment shifting over time. Can’t pretend to be something for that long without internalizing some of it.
One fine day a red dragon he used to know attacked the town, pushing an army of orcs and goblinoids in front of it to hit the defenses. Long story short Mr. Dragon does something actually _noble_ in saving a family by jumping in front of an orc axe to buy time for them to escape. Alongside the alignment shift the act broke the curse, which was a very real thing, and Mr. Red Dragon is now an Adult Red Dragon with PC levels in Fighter and a Chaotic Good alignment.
Who kicked the other dragon’s ass so hard the other dragon left a crater when he hit the ground. And that’s how a town I don’t remember the name of got an Adult Red Dragon with 12 levels in Fighter as a mayor, and a new pond outside the city walls that the dragon still looks at and bursts into uncontrollable laughter over.
Well then. That’s unreasonably awesome. A lot of gamer stories are full on you-had-to-be-there walls of text. That shit had an arc and a satisfying conclusion and everything. I award you full points and +2,110 XP.
It was actually a fairly short game that only ran a few months, the DM wanted a one-off break from his more serious, darker, slower campaigns, so we were allowed to get a little ‘unreasonably awesome.’ So we usually levelled up every session, got lots of loot, that kind of thing, because he wanted to focus on just doing crazy awesome stuff. For comparison the other two players were a third party Pokemon trainer class that captures weakened monsters with an SLA (this was ultimately the fate of the red dragon,) and a warforged who was a very, very thinly veiled Optimus Prime joke. Then there was Mr. Dragon – never forget the ‘Mister.’ Who was totally normal Human Fighter (Two handed weapon variant) until the end.
I guess this is the closest I’ve been to a were-creature:
I have a Pathfinder cheese character where I took my 18 ability roll, applied it to STR, took the Orc race (+4 STR), as a barbarian (rage for +4 STR), and multiclassed to ranger, with some obscure template that allows me to shift to bear form (+4 STR). For a few glorious rounds per day, he could tear the head off a demigod (with his 30 STR), but other than that he was totally useless.
That one-shot turned into a whole campaign and I was left scrambling trying to get the build to work.
A remember hearing about a “no more than one level of any class” build. I believe it threw alchemist in there for mutagens and slayer for studied target. Basically any class that gave temporary buffs. You could never pull off all the buffs at once, but the build always had another trick up its sleeve. I’m sure it would be a tremendous pain in the ass to play in reality though.
I haven’t become monsters much myself, but the players have in my games.
In my “nordic” campaign with tons of fey stuff, the players found various circles of standing stones that could grant them different transformations, with the proper combination of timing and occasionally materials.
The first standing stone they found was for becoming a werewolf. For this, all you had to do was stab yourself onto the wolf tooth on a pedestal in the middle of the ring on a full moon. The players did it of course, and pretty soon the entire party except for the stubborn barbarian were lycanthropes. Thus began a 2-3 hour long combat known as “the battle of the spruce tree” wherein the barbarian climbed a tree and defended himself for ages by repeatedly shoving the werewolves off when they climbed up. Eventually one of them managed to beat him in a strength check out of pure luck and they were able to get him onto the ground to infect him too.
Much murderhoboing later, the PCs found another set of standing stones for becoming half-dragons. The stones had another pedestal in the middle, which had to be filled with dragon blood and then drunk out of. In search of more evil powers, the PCs then set off in search of dragons.
Due to some stealth on their part, they were easily able to butcher a young green dragon (the aforementioned barbarian grappled it to the ground while the rest of the party hammered it in melee) and tap its blood. They sailed back to the standing stone island on their stolen boat and performed the ritual, becoming half-dragon werewolves one and all.
The rest of the campaign was just murder after murder after murder, but it was a lot of fun. They eventually enslaved a herd of mammoths and an adult white dragon, using them to turn the campaign’s final battle into a cakewalk. It was good times.
I always wondered what Haku’s backstory was like.
Proof number #I’velostcount that The Fighter thinks he’s playing Skyrim.
You’ve made the mistaken assumption that Fighter thinks. I’m pretty sure there’s just a loot-obsessed hamster running around in his head.
I absolutely LOVE contagious monsters. They are my favorite thing, and I wish there were more of them.
Got a favorite?
I actually had a Dhampir PC Sorcerer/Ranger in a homebrew campaign who was a sort of jack of all trades since able to assist in most I was late joining the party and all the major roles had been filled already turn into a full fledged vampire. During a fight against a demon, it offered the party members all a wish, but with the implication it’d put you under the demons influence, well my character was the only one that botched the will save to not take him up on this clearly wonderful offer, and after spending a combat turn dazed as I couldn’t come up with something on the spot immediately he wished he could become a full vampire like his father. Then spent the rest of the combat with the template haphazardly applied trying to find the least effective ways to kill my teammates until they finally killed the demon. When the session ended I got with the GM and using the Blood in the Night source book, found the recommend level adjustment for running a vampire with normal PC’s so I ended up dropping all the levels he had in ranger and went from there, RP wise things weren’t a huge shift for the character as he had taken the racial feats that let him feed from drinking the blood of dead humanoids, and had already made use of the spells that block out daylight to offset the racial perception penalty in the light. That said, he was distinctly less trusted after that incident, but managed to keep the situation largely under control since he already had been dealing with much of the same impulses a full on vampire would and was able to justify in RP sticking with the party to see the campaign to it’s finish, though we arguably got the bad ending because his living compatriots failed to trust him at the very end, and if the setting ever got revisited he’d likely have a bone to pick with the living after having tried his best to work with them only to be met with distrust at the end. Good way to turn a character into a future BBEG really
You ever see the follow-up animations to The Reward? First of all, if you aren’t familiar then go watch The Reward:
https://vimeo.com/58179094
After that, check out these sweet sketch stories. Lots of cool PC vampirism that I think you’d like. Start here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqMVH-tsqMM
Find the rest here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/SunCreatureStudio/videos
One of the few serious and long-lasting game i was in i played a wizard who was obssessed with immortality and power for theire own sake. He had this sort of “dog running after car” mentality where he constantly amassed power in all its forms (favors, magic items, magic powers, etc etc) but he ultimately had no idea whatsoever what he would do when he finally reached all his goal. And thats the gig, there was never gonna be an end goal. Until he would meet his demise, he would vie for power solely for its own sake.
How this meet the topic of the day is that he spent a ludicrous amount of time studying and planning how to achieve immortality and get away with it. Becoming a lich was a lot of work better spent elsewhere while vampire was easier but he would have to find a way to scheme his way out of the vampire that transformed him, etc. The easy way is often the more horrible one too so it made for an interesting story
So how’d it go? Did he ever achieve immortality?
Well, in the Curse of Strahd game I’m in, my character *almost* got lycanthropy in the first round of the first combat of the game (on the first page). They’ve also encountered several vampire spawn. And my character has been cursed (or something) by a Hag. We’ve made some OOC joking that we might do the classic Ravenloft thing where my character will replaces Strahd and become a horrible mixture of all the cursed things you could be. Of course since they’re a monster hating do-gooder they would be a self-hating monster on a fruitless quest to purge Ravenloft of all the monsters. So… basically exactly the fate a Lord of Ravenloft is meant to have.
Other than that… well I’ve played a mixed bag WoD game and wound up a werewolf. I’m played another as a vampire. In a WoW inspired 5e game I played an Undead. And a variety of other stuff I’m probably forgetting right now.
But in case Friend Computer is listening, I have certainly never ever evvvvvveeeerrrrrrr been a mutant. Nope.
It must be the time of year, but I find myself dodging Ravenloft spoilers left and right. Suffice it to say I read the first line, skipped down to the last line, and got very confused. I can’t seem to fit a Curse of Strahd / Paranoia mashup in my head.
Oh sorry. The last paragraph is perfectly safe. And honestly there’s not too much in common. My mind just connected the concepts curse and mutant as “thing you don’t want to be and have no control over”.
Well i played a Chaotic Neutral age old Lich Wizard in a High Lvl Pathfinder Oneshot. It worked fairly well. Partly because the rest of the Party were, a my Planar Bound Devil Butler, a Dwarf Druid, and a very weird Snythesist Summoner in the form of a two Headed Snake. (All PCs.)
Well now there was one Monster Coming out that shocked the Party. We were doing some Quest on the Moon yada yada we are trying to rescue some Humans from Demons who have abducted them. Bad thing the Cages are Enchanted and i don’t have the right Spell to open them. Cue me casting Antimagic Field, to get my Devil Butler to break the Cages open while the Magic is supressed, revealing my True Form.
Synthesist summoner immideatly retreats to the next Wall in the Room. Dwarf Druid is shocked by our new Forms. I am shocked that my oh so safely Planar Bound Devil was in Fact an unbound Glabrezu, who now had me Defensless in my own Antimagic Field, Grinning at me.
Druid legs it and Melds into the next Wall. Synthesists Summoner politly backs off to the Next room. And my Lich manages to TALK the Demon into contiuing to help us out promising him an Augur Cyton as a Reward. (Those can really help im collecting Souls.) Also he wants to devour that Llilend Azata, which was also captured with the humans. We come to an agreement and later i ressurect the Azata via limited wish. She complained of course, but hey it worked out in the End!
Everyones Happy!
That must have been an interesting conversation with the azata.
“Look, in the interest of group dynamics, you really need to let this demon eat you. Be a team player!”
Yes! I mean why can’t she understand? It’s in everyones best interest, and look, he helps rescuing the Humans, so it’s for the greater good as well!
“Oh com on, don’t be like that, i can ressurect you later anway, just do us this small Favor! It’s no big Deal really. Also he is a Demon! These guys have no restraint! I bet he’ll eat you quickly so it won’t even hurt that much!”
This is by no means a straight example of becoming the monster, but this was for a one-shot prelude to a campaign that never happened. The one-shot was to make sure we could work well together without stepping on anyone’s toes. This was a 3.5 game.
Anyway, I was a Dog-Hengeyokai with a couple demonic-blooded feats. My class build was Barb1/Fighter3/Warshaper4/Shapeshifter1/MasterOfManyForms 2. We were tasked with clearing out a house of a lich-infestation.
My character turned into a frightening dog with horns, a bony tail, long claws and teeth, and glowing red eyes. While the rogue was taking too long disarming a chest (like, four rounds), I had the bright idea of attempting to break the lock of another.
It was here that I was Magic Jar’d with the lich dominating me. He turned me into a tiger and then proceeded to kill one character before seriously maiming another. Out of a party of four, I was killed, the cleric was killed, and two retreated (one of those two with single-digit hit points).
Since then that group has banned me from playing any build that has less than a +3 to will saves at level 10. But not from playing shapeshifters, which is the real lesson they should have learned.
I’ve got a buddy who has decided to run a Trox barbarian. +6 Str and -2 Wis. I am certain that means TPK the first time we encounter a dominate effect. Any advice for surviving the mind controlled barbarian problem?
Prepare a lot of mirror image spells, it’ll save you from friend and foe alike.
I played in a Pathfinder all-monster campaign a little while ago. The DM foolishly allowed me to play a troll. I had always wanted to, and most DMs are too smart to let me.
I immediately took levels of barbarian, got the Diehard feat (which lets you stay conscious when in negative HP), spent every copper and Rage Power I had to get resistances to acid and fire, and only then did I point to where the rules said that regeneration means you can’t die unless it’s deactivated on the round when your HP is low enough that you would die normally.
Thus was born Torgal, son of Torgal, son of Torgal, son of – look, it be Torgals all the way down. Torgal, who inexplicably sounded like an evil Cookie Monster, kept finding himself in situations where self-inflicted grievous bodily harm was the smartest option. Like hurling himself off a cliff to get ahead of the enemies who were fleeing down the nice, safe pathway.
Skipping ahead, I solo’d a demon who was almost double our level because he couldn’t get through my resistances, and therefore was physically incapable of killing me. I finished the fight not just at negative HP, but several hundred points in the negatives (mostly because my Armor Class was so low that I was hit on anything that wasn’t a critical miss). It took me all of about 20 minutes to heal back up to positives.
The moral of the story is do NOT let PC’s play trolls.
Did you ever have to face fire/acid wielding enemies with the potential to get through your resistances? I mean to say, did the GM ever throw out anything to threaten you?
I’ve played my share of monsters, but most of them started out that way. Though one of my characters in the Living World game I was in was fairly recent, though it wasn’t by choice. He was a soldier from Nidal who died searching for some relic in Qadira, but didn’t let that stop him. He came back as a Skeletal Champion and wouldn’t rest until he found the relic and brought it back.
Also on the subject of templates, in the successor game to the living world campaign, there’s this semi-canon combat area called the The Pit, and there are two parties being assembled for it. One’s a group of normal characters who all have taken the Antihero option (that’s the group I’m in), and the other is a bunch of intentionally super edgy characters with templates. It’s going to be great fun!
Intentionally super edgy characters? Time to dig out my geisha catgirl and get Dark Shadow Nightbringer on the phone.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/special-snowflake
Well, I have an alchemist who’s trying to “Ship of Theseus” herself into an abomination via implants of stolen monster organs, but I feel like I’ve gone over that one already.
There was one time in a WoD Hunter game where I wanted to make an MMA fighter-turned-hunter who had a bit of werewolf heritage that he didn’t know about. The Merit for that kind of thing was 4 points, pretty costly. So the GM offered me the choose-your-own-price 1-5 version instead.
I chose the 5 point version with renewed enthusiasm. So the whole ‘werewolf’ thing actually ended up manifesting. My hunter buddies found out, and, well…. it wasn’t the first time that campaign where I’d have to make a new character, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Friggin’ retrieval packs. Where were they on the rescue mission? Bunch of slackers.
I once made a Fighter for a 3.5 campaign where every character had a randomly-GM-Rolled secret to their backstory. Mine? Secretly a Wear-bear. If you are unfamiliar with the template it’s essentially werewolf but better (+16(!) to STR, +8 to Con) and better inclined to working in a party (Tends towards LG alignment).
Needless to say I played him as a lumberjack. The campaign didn’t last long but it was wrongbadfun while it lasted.
I cut down trees, I eat honey
Salmon and garbage
I wish I’d been a werebear, just like my dear Papa!
While it didn’t start that way, i had a 5e warlock not only get possessed by a Drow spirit (haunted pair of twin daggers, of all things), but a few sessions, and by module discression, was cursed with the form of an ocher jelly.
Best. Curse. Ever.
Because of my elder one pact, I could communicate telepathically, so no real need for lip flapping. I also had all of the jelly’s abilities and physical stats, save for it’s splitting ability; that’s perfectly fine, i was more a fan of the wall climbing….and consequent ceiling crawling as well. Managed to turn two minotaurs who were having a friendly little argument with one another full on against each other because of that.
You’ve got “lycanthropy” for werewolves. What kind of -thropy would an ochre jelly be?
Lycanthropy Alchemist – Skinwalker (or Human if you’re playing PFS without the Boon) Alchemist into Master Chemyst. At level 7, you’re able to mimic everything about the Werewolf 3/day – except for the DR/Silver. (One of my first characters, he (me) was obsessed about Lycanthropy and unlocking its power. GM said “No Lycanthropy characters!”. So, instead, I made a Mutagen character. It was a fun Jackyl/Hyde character.
Master Chemyst always looked like a fun excuse for the dual personality, but I shied away from the challenge. It’s hard enough for me to keep one accent straight!
No, not for lack of trying. Whether you’re roleplaying the horror of the monstrosity or reveling in its power, it’s just fun to be turned into a monster. I tend to be a bit more reckless around those contagious monsters.
You gotta get some of that world of darkness, man.