Lycanthropes in 4E

[alhoon]

So, I thought a bit for a fun hit&smack adventure for 4E since I convinced my sis to play.

I decided on a wererat + more lycanthropes infestation in the mountains by a cult of wererats that want to consume everything etc etc. You know the drill.

Short story short (yeap that was right): PCs go to mountains. Kill some lycanthropes on the way. Reach Ruined city. Kill some lycanthropes. Find and enter sewers. Kill some wererats. Reach pits of filth (like Richemulot). Kill some wererats + cultist wererats. Return trip, no trouble. King's happy gives money. The end!

Two characters, 11th level (on their way to 12th). I open the Monstrous manual and I find...

Wererat level 3 and Werewolf level 8.
so I have to make the following because the 4E personel didn't think anyone would care for them, although werewolves are a major theme of fantasy.

- A couple of type of werewolves (brute and soldier) level 8-9. Perhaps one elite? Who knows.

- Wererat that hides and throws things. (Lurker) level 8
- Wererat that fights like a rogue (skirmisher) level 8
- Wererat that with creepy abilities like throwing curses and necrotic damage level 8-9 (Skirmisher)
- Wererat with flashy abilities like throwing lighting, conjuring swarms of rats etc level 8-9 (artillery)
- Shifter cleric-like
- Big bad wererat! Elite level 10 Controller Leader.
- Big bad shifter cultist! Elite level 9 controller.

And last but not least:
- Wererat victims that die horribly by the dozen under the might of the heroes. (minions level 7)
- Wererat victims that die horribly but have something more interesting to do rather than rush to the PCs, and just die horribly. (minions level 8 with something)
- rats, rats, rats.

And I wonder:

How on earth I'll manage to do these in a single hour and a half?!? Why on earth there are just two werecreatures?

At least I have the shifters, that I can add a single level and use them.

[Igor the Henchman]

Cut the number of required monsters by half. There's no way the players will face all of these in a single session (unless you run an extremely action-packed game. If you do, yes, well, you have a problem). Try and fill the first session with monsters that *are* in the monster manual. And roleplaying encounters. In a pinch, customize existing monsters that fill the same niche. Change a few power description and make them into wererats.

I think these here would require only minimal adjustment to make fine wererats:

the Foulspawn Mangler
the Foulspawn Seer
the Worg, remake into a giant rat
the Deathpriest of Orcus (Orcus)
the Crimson Acolyte (Orcus)
the Snaketognue Assassin (Yuan-ti), with the ability to turn into a rat swarm instead of a snake (I suggest customizing the Rot Scarab Swarm (Beetle), which has the right level)
the Quickling runner
the Skull Lord (remake into a three-headed rat-king thing that reanimates fallen wererats)
the Blade Spider (remake into a giant rat mount)
the Berbalang (with the ability to conjure/absorb rat swarms instead of clones)
the Bog Hag
the Demonweb Terror (spider)

Like I said, include some roleplaying encounters in there and you won't have to worry so much about needing so many monsters.

Good luck and tell us how it went.

[alhoon]

Thanks Igor. Interesting approach. And yes, indeed I made monsters for 3 encounters. I changed a few things, stole abilities from other monsters and I'm good.

I'm looking forward for a few hours of gaming. Bye now, and thanks.

PS. Yes, it is an action packed game, but it has description and talk like all games.

[Mortavius]

In case you weren't aware Alhoon, the MM2 has stats for the Wereboar (level 6 Brute), the Weretiger (level 11 Elite Skirmisher), and the Werewolf Lord (level 13 Elite Brute (Leader)).

[alhoon]

Well, I wasn't aware but still I find it underdeveloped to have 1 lycanthrope from each breed, and just one elite. Oh well...

Igor: Blade spider turned to a rat. Bite instead of claw. Thanks.

Foulspawn - mangler: Instead of 4 attacks twice per encounter I'll change it to 2 attacks and increase damage from the attack to 1d4+4 that does 4 continuing damage.
- Seer: well, acidic blobs of filth instead of warp and a black cloud of corruptive acidic dust that does acid damage instead of Distortion blast and he's set.



EDIT: And before all of you start wondering how on earth I decided on a level spanning adventure against wererats of all kinds, I have to admit that I got my ideas from MouseHunt of Facebook.

[Jester of the FoS]

Still easier than 3e where you'd have to template on lycanthrope to an NPC of the right levels.

But, yeah, 4e monsters tend to really eat-up the pages and unless they're a very popular monster there's precious few. We have orcs and gnolls and kobolds of many, many levels but precious few lycanthropes.
(it'd make a good DDI article. Bestiary: Lycanthropes).

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Still easier than 3e where you'd have to template on lycanthrope to an NPC of the right levels.

Heh... here I was thinking, "man, this would be so easy in 3e. Just grab an NPC of the right level and slap the template on him." Not having DMed in 4e (though I finally got to play it!), maybe I just don't know what I'm missing. But templating NPCs has become 2nd nature to me..

[Ornum]

Still easier than 3e where you'd have to template on lycanthrope to an NPC of the right levels.

Heh... here I was thinking, "man, this would be so easy in 3e. Just grab an NPC of the right level and slap the template on him." Not having DMed in 4e (though I finally got to play it!), maybe I just don't know what I'm missing. But templating NPCs has become 2nd nature to me..

3e template love from here, too. I've never played 4e, but templates for certain undead and lycanthropes always made sense to me and it wasn't that hard as long as you had the NPC already made. Mooks are easy enough with the pregenerated NPC's. Also, E-Tools was a great help when you needed a higher level NPC made from scratch without it taking too much time.

[Igor the Henchman]

Sorry, gotta defend 4E. The shortest, sweetest monster stat generation system in D&D so far.

Back in 3E, I remember preparing a "demonic zombie plague" adventure for a level 2 party. The PCs were tracking down a group of evil NPCs only to discover their quarry has fallen prey to an unnatural disease. Then the local animals would start turning into zombies as well. I have to tell you - I grint my teeth with every new stat block. Generate 2nd level fighter/rogue. Apply Zombie template. Do same with evil wizard. Then wolves. Then bears. Then hawks. That last one was a bad idea: I spent most the combat trying to figure out the flying manoeuverability rules. Then of course, being an incorrigible tinker, I had personal powers to add, like demonic spore infection and corruption of nearby healing magic.

I spent four hours glued to the monster manual opened at the "Z" section. All I wanted was some zombies with a demonic spore-spreading salient power. The system put me through a hell of HP recalculation, stat changes due to feat variation and complications of flying manoeuverability.

Fast forward to 4E. Two sessions ago, I had to hastily throw together a Darkon murder mystery adventure with a few hours of prep time.

I ended up making up a Penanggalan (sp?) vampire infestation in Neblus, tied to suspicious activity in the chuch of the Eternal Order. In under an hour I had the stats for:

Penanggalan vampires (converted from 2E)
Penanggalan vampire mastermind (customized brain in a jar)
skeletal church guardians
a crawling claw swarm
local halfling thieves guild leader
his devious daughters
Elven militia archers
elven militia swordsmen
elven militia mage
elven cultists of the eternal order
Human thugs
Merilee Marcuza
Merilee Marcuza's vampire spawn.

And most of that time was taken by just typing the stats on the computer for monster card printing. I think I didn't even get to do any math. I just adapted existing monsters by playing around with power descriptions. I finished planning the plot in the bus, and the players pretty much had a great time (except they didn't care having their butt handed to them by Merilee, but hey)

3E had me struggle for hours with animal zombies.
4E let me make stats for Merilee Marcuza in under two minutes.

That's why I'm not looking back.

[jaer]

Gotta agree with 4e ease.

In the case of Werewolves, I'd have looked to using gnolls and simply calling them werewolves--the names and descriptions of of their powers make sense without needing to changing anything but "gnoll" to "were-X". And then add the regen power and lycan curse power to give them all the similar feel to make players realize they are unified.

I find using other creatures and simply renaming them works well in 4e. For instance, when my players came across Falkovnian military, I used the stats for Hobgoblins, but just described them as humans. Everything else about the hobgoblin's powers work for a military feel.

And if you want to make some minions that do a little more than regular minions, increase their hits. Instead of gone in 1 hit, they are gone in 3 hits. Easy to track without making it seem like they are wusses--players might freak when they see how many opponents are coming at them and that none of them went done on 1 hit.

In the case of werewolf minions, you can make them only go down when hit with silver or fire (to give some way for casters to take them out). All other attacks count as a 'miss.' Bump up the EX reward a little and it's done.

I found the rules in the DMG for making monsters to be quite easy to use. Need a Skirmisher of 9th lvl? Here are the stats and defenses, and grab a couple powers from the were-creatures already listed and just make sure the to-hit and damage follow the charts. Making things from scratch is much faster than 3e's adding a template.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I haven't really looked at monster creation in 4e, but everyone who's talked about has said it's easy, so I believe them. But I just want to point out that the "same stats, different name" trick works just fine in 3e too (and earlier editions too, no doubt). I needed a flock of werebats on short notice once, and didn't have Monsters of Faerun handy, so I used the sample loup-garou from DoD and gave them a fly speed. Viola, werebats! (Not the most accurate conversion, but it sufficed).

And I think alhoon was complaining about there not being the exact monster he wanted for a lot of the roles he was looking to fill. The template system might not be perfect, but it's perfect for that particular need. If you want a "wererat that fights like a rogue... level 8", give me the sample NPC chapter of the 3.x DMG and the Wererat page of the 3.x MM, and I can have one for you in 5 minutes.

[Garudos Celestar]

One more 4E lycantrhope: there's a werebear priest in the "Sunfields" Vicious Venues article on the WotC website dated 15 July 09. He's statted for both level 10 and level 13.

[alhoon]

Indeed, making a templated Wererat in 3.5 was fast and easy.

Indeed, making a couple of changes on mosters in 4E to make your wererat in 4E is faster and easier.

But making a couple of changes on a 3rd edition monster to make another in 3rd edition is also as fast and as easy.

Note: I made a few wererats from the beginning. It took me about 30% less time than it would take me in 3rd edition.
And in 3rd edition, I'm so used to making monsters that I could just pick the pen and start writting. Actually... the same works for 4E. It's that the stat block is shorter that saves me time.



NOTE 2: I'll make some 4E wererats for QtR.

[Jester of the FoS]

I'm mildly insulted you didn't turn to my Manual of Monsters which has a L6 and L7 wererat, and a L6, L9, and L12 werewolf as well as a L11 wolfwere.



Also, in case you haven't seen, WotC dropped the beta of the first of the adventure tools, a revised Monster Builder. It'd probably greatly speed-up the creation of beasties.
(I'll also eventually be using it to double-check the math behind my beasties)

[Mortavius]

I second Jester's comment on the Monster Builder; Alhoon I've played with this program, and this seems to be just what you need. You can take existing monsters, tweak them, or you can create entire new ones from scratch using lists of hundreds of different powers and such. And you just put it all together in the program and then print it off.

The only downside (not that I consider it one, but I can see the other side) is that you have to be a DDO subscriber to get any access to the Monster Builder beta.