Werewolf Den

This post will mostly be about werewolves and the Curse of Lycanthropy. The combats in the den are pretty straight forward. Make sure to read up on the different factions of werewolves and make yourself a little cheatsheet with their names and whom is loyal to whom if you need to. It will save you a lot of flipping. (reddit)

Werewolves

Werewolves are a really difficult proposition to balance from the standpoint of game design. Their difficulty hinges greatly on how well prepared the party is and what the party composition is. A party of Fighters with mundane weapons will be hard pressed to beat even one werewolf, but a group of magic users or warriors with magic weapons will blow through them with ease. The problem is that Werewolves are hard to kill but don't do much damage (I think they do the most damage in Hybrid Form, so have them shift to that when it's battle time). This makes for a pretty boring encounter all things considered. My PC's dispatched all the werewolves they needed to with relative ease. "But Paintraina, aren't you forgetting something about werewolves?" I hear you ask. Yes. The Curse of Lycanthropy makes the Den of Werewolves a little bit of a nightmare to DM. (reddit)

Lycanthropy

In the MM they have a little blurb on PCs as Lycanthropes and it is pretty much worthless. There are several reasons why. First and foremost is the way it is contracted. When a PC fails their save, the rules seem to imply that they contract the curse and can then "Embrace" the curse or not. WTF does that even mean? If they choose not to embrace it then it does nothing? Why bother with the save then? If people could just choose not to be a werewolf, why would anyone decide to do it? Damage Immunity? (reddit)

The Damage immunity brings up a whole other set of issues which no one thought through. How the hell are the werewolves supposed to fight each other like we are told they did when they can't even hurt one another? Nope. Not working. I rewrote this little blurb to be something more along the lines of this: (reddit)

Player Characters as Lycanthropes A character who becomes a lycanthrope during a full moon, or after embracing the curse retains his or her statistics except as specified by Lycanthrope type. The character gains the lycanthropes speeds in nonhumanoid form, damage immunities, traits, and actions that don't involve equipment. The character is proficient with the lycanthropes natural attacks, such as its bite or claws which deal damage as shown in the lycanthropes statistics. The character cannot speak while in animal form(all the same from the MM until here). (reddit)

A humanoid hit by an attack that carries the curse of lycanthropy must succeed on a constitution saving throw (DC8+the lycanthropes proficiency bonus+the lycanthropes constitution modifier) or be afflicted with the curse of lycanthropy. The Dungeon Master rolls this saving throw in secret, and does not tell the player the result. On the next full moon, the character will noisily transform into the hybrid form of their lycanthrope until the next morning. The characters alignment temporarily changes to the alignment defined for the lycanthrope. The DM is free to decide that a change in alignment places the character under DM control while the alignment is changed. Following the first night of the transformation, the player can choose to embrace the curse which makes permanent the changes that took place during the full moon. If they do not embrace the curse, they will continue to transform on the night of the full moon until the curse is lifted. (reddit)

I also suggest changing the damage immunity to add a little rider on there to this effect - Creatures with natural weapons and damage immunities are able to overcome damage immunties of their own or a lesser level. I.e. werewolves can hurt other werewolves, but cannot hurt a Lich who has immunity to non-magical weapon damage. (reddit)

This version of the curse is much easier to manage as a DM and it make it more fun from a narrative perspective. (reddit)

Lycanthropy in CoS

With our changes to lycanthropy, we can do some fun stuff with the curse. After two of the PCs got infected by the curse, I basically had the rest of the party auto-pass all their con saves. I wanted some, not all of them to be infected. Then I roll a d4+1. That is the number of days before the next full moon. My party had Van Richten with them as their ally, and he can just remove the curse with his magic which is really boring. Instead I DM fiat and say that Van Richten has seen the curse of lycanthropy before, and his curative magic won't work if he doesn't have access to Nightshade root, which only grows in Barovia on the banks of the river in the ruins of Berez. Now that group has a reason to go to Berez aside from the gem. (reddit)

Now we also have some fun with a Strahd encounter. The PCs head back from the Den in the evening. They encounter Strahd on the road. Strahd says "Ah. It seems you have spent some time at the werewolf den. Was it a transformative experience? It looks to be a full moon in just a few days. Do you think you will rid yourselves of the curse in time?" The PCs will probably answer yes with some braggadocio. Then Strahd says "How about now?" and gestures to the moon as it magically turns into a full moon. Cue werewolf transformations and the ensuing fight as the PCs disable their transformed allies. I liked this encounter a lot as it reinforced the idea that the Demiplane of Dread is an extension of Strahd's will, and he controls everything - even the cosmology. (reddit)