You say Werewolf, I say...

Lycans

The Lycan race is relatively young when compared to the humans, elves, hobgoblins and dwarves. They were not some horrible side product of nature. Their past lies in the powers of the divine and in tragedy.

Many centuries ago the foul god Wolfen(this is going to change as soon as I think up a better name) chose his favorite beast from the mortal world, wolves, and gave many of them a curse. A curse that whoever they bit would become like them when night-fell. He sent these cursed creatures into the oblivious world below. And he waited.

Decades passed and stories rose of strange creatures. Creatures that could assume a normal form by day and a wolf-like one by night. These stories were passed off as nothing more than stories. Until a village in the kingdom of Thamlor(from my up coming campaign) was ransacked, most of it's inhabitants killed, and the survivors infected with the curse.

Thamlor(a god from my campaign) decided to deal with these creatures himself, until he realized that their curse was divine in nature. He then decided to dispatch a group of paladins from his temple to deal with the wolfmen.

The plan went smoothly. The paladins arrived at the village and slaughtered all but one of the wolves. The last one ran into the forest. The paladins pursued the creature, who seemingly had control over when he transformed, for three days. When they finally caught the beast, they were exhausted and in no condition to fight. The wolfman didn't care and attack the group anyway, but he didn't attack to kill. He attacked to infect.

The werewolf incapacitated the paladins and fled. When they awoke they could feel their sanity slipping away. The god Thamlor, feeling responsible for what had happened to them, did everything in his divine power to ward of the foul curse. When Wolfen realized what he was doing he fought back. He hit the paladins with an extra strong curse. One that would forever hold them in the form of a wolf. With the power of two divine curses the paladins ceased being human and became the lycans.

Over time, evolution, with some divine prodding, helped lift the curse. They regained the ability to walk on their hind legs and even regain humanoid thumbs. Their biggest challenge to over come reteaching themselves to speak in human tongue.
Lycans Statistics

• +2 Dexterity, -4 Charisma
• Medium Size: As Medium creatures, lycans have no special bonuses or
• penalties due to their size.
• Lycan base land speed is 30 feet. However, when lycans are wearing no armor or light armor, carrying a light load, and running on all fours, a lycan can increase their base land speed to 40 feet. This does not stack with the barbarians Fast Movement ability.
• Low-Light Vision: A lycan can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. She retains the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions.
• Thumbed Paws: The bizarre relearning and re-evolving that the lycan species underwent produced some odd results. Instead of having hands or paws attached to their forearms, they have a hybrid. A paw with 4 slighty extended toes and a thumb-like appendage. This is the closest the lycan species has come to normal humans hands. These "thumbed paws" have some drawbacks. A lycan suffers a -4 penalty to being disarmed and when they are cast an arcane spell with a somatic component they must make an arcane spell failure role, as if they were wearing armor.
• Natural Weapons: A lycan can use the claws on her front two paws/hands as natural weapons. They can only be used when the lycan is standing upright and her hands empty (not carrying any manufactured weapons, shields, torches, etc. EX. a lycan can't be carrying a shield in one hand and attack with the other). These attacks do 1d4+strength modifier for damage.
• Lycans have Scent as a Special Ability.
• Lycans have a +4 racial bonus on Survival checks when tracking by scent.
• Lycanthrope Immunity: Lycans are immune to the curse of lycanthropy.
• Automatic Languages: Common. Bonus Languages: Elven, Gnome, Halfling, Sylvan.
• Favored Class: Ranger. A multiclass lycans’s ranger class does not count when determining whether he takes an experience point penalty for multiclassing.

There are various types of lycanthropes. You might wanna make contingencies for Werebears, wererats, or werebadgers.

Interesting idea, but I have some comments...

1) Your race gets a bonus when tracking via scent, but do not have the scent ability.

2) You fail to mention whether this is a wolf-like humanoid or a human-like creature with claws and animalistic traits.

If you are worried about your player being a werewolf, perhaps you could allow him to play a shifter from the Eberron campaign setting. Just rationalize him as a descendant from a lycan.

Cool.

I've though of creating a creature that has the options of acting bipedal or quadruped at will, but you have it right here.

Suggestions:
List Sent as Special Ability
Add a bite attack (secondary attack if upright)
+1 Natural Armor
+1 LA
+2 Various other Skills (Listen, Jump, etc)

Also consider consider changing "all-fours run" to "Alternate Movement"
* Alternate Movement: As a move action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity a Lycan may shift to a fours legged stance, doing so causes all items carried in its hands to be dropped. When in this stance they are considered to by quadruped with a base speed of 40 ft. Standing up is also a move action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity.

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Low-Light Vision: A lycan can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. She retains the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions. This does not stack with the barbarians Fast Movement ability.

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What does fast movement have to do with low light vision? Or is is supposed to be on the previous ability of racial fast movement?

It seems a touch powerful for a +0 LA, but not too overpowering. I'm also a little worried about the stats, Int doesn't always balance to Dex. Maybe Int *AND* Cha?

Your right, Shneekey, it was supposed to be on the last ability.

Tarkahn, Lycans are wolf-like humanoids.

I'm sorry...Every time I see the word "Lycan" I just want to hunt down the makers of Underworld and demand the stolen two hours of my life back. Man, that movie was crap. I'll take Night Watch any day...

aside from that... nothin'

Looks OK to me.

Educated guess suggests that's where the name comes from.

I'd say this racial concept isn't bad. It's more than a little threadbare; this race could definitely use some fluff. But mechanically speaking, it is interest, & fits the theme well.

I will say, however, that this is almost certainly an LA+1 race. Negating a level adjustment for the creatures makes them unbalanced. Also, adding a +2 Wisdom due to their connection to nature would be nice, especially if they were LA+1.

It seems a bit wierd that the Lycan' claws are vehicles for unarmed strikes rather than natural attacks. It seems like it would make more sense for the race to simply have two primary Claw natural attacks dealing 1d4 damage.

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Originally Posted by mabriss lethe

I'm sorry...Every time I see the word "Lycan" I just want to hunt down the makers of Underworld and demand the stolen two hours of my life back. Man, that movie was crap. I'll take Night Watch any day...

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What! Underworld and Underworld: Evolution are two of my favorite movies to date. Action? Check. Hot chick? Check. Vampires (or silly vampyre spelling)? Check. Werewolves? Check. Vampires and werewolves fighting one another! Check check check!!!

Why doesn't the speed bonus stack with fast movement?

No offense intended, but the Winning Races article in Dragon #325 is about the Lupins, who are basically humanoid wolf-creatures, and you might find these a bit more suitable for your player. I can post the racial stats if you're interested.

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What! Underworld and Underworld: Evolution are two of my favorite movies to date. Action? Check. Hot chick? Check. Vampires (or silly vampyre spelling)? Check. Werewolves? Check. Vampires and werewolves fighting one another! Check check check!!!

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[tangent]Underworld bored the crap out of me. To me it was only the shiny shell of a good movie. I almost fell asleep during the opening subway fight.

Evolution was actually pretty watchable though.

Like I said, you want supernatural beatdowns that'll make you cringe see Nightwatch and Daywatch. (I'm specifically thinking of the barber shop scene.)[/tangent]

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Lycan base land speed is 30 feet. However, when lycans are wearing no armor or light armor, carrying a light load, and running on all fours, a lycan can increase their base land speed to 40 feet. This does not stack with the barbarians Fast Movement ability.

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You might want to specify that they need their hands free. Just in case. I know it's implied in the "running on all fours" part of the description, but nonetheless, is probably a good idea to include in the description

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Originally Posted by Tarkahn

Interesting idea, but I have some comments...

1) Your race gets a bonus when tracking via scent, but do not have the scent ability.

2) You fail to mention whether this is a wolf-like humanoid or a human-like creature with claws and animalistic traits.

If you are worried about your player being a werewolf, perhaps you could allow him to play a shifter from the Eberron campaign setting. Just rationalize him as a descendant from a lycan.

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Shifter was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this. There are several shifter abilities that mirror what this one has - temporary bonuses to scent, claw attacks, etc - but only while shifting. Since Shifters are LA 0, this would be significantly more powerful. I personally think Shifters are on the low end of the LA 0 scale, but having the bonuses on all the time strikes me as a bit much.

This somewhat humiliating, but everything that I know about 3.5 I learned from the d20SRD site. Due to a lack of funds and no one in my area hiring a 15 year old, I'm slightly limited on info.


Shadow, if you could post the stuff from Dragon that would be great.

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Originally Posted by cody.burton

Why doesn't the speed bonus stack with fast movement?

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A 50 ft movement speed? That doesn't sound a little too fast?

I wouldn't say so, given the fact that they can't do it while armed, or at least with drawn weapons. I'd give them a slam attack that only functions when on all four feet, something for the end of a four-legged charge.

And you might find the link in my Sig just as useful if you're short on funds, or like me, unable to find rulebooks in brick and mortars.

Speaking as the boards (Newly) resident biologist, shouldn't you remove the intelligence penalty? Wolves(and thus, I believe, werewolves) are not stupid animals.

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Originally Posted by Osiris_Shadowblade

Shadow, if you could post the stuff from Dragon that would be great.

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Sorry kid, but there's a little thing called copyright that you either grow to hate, subvert & try to repeal, or it will one day be your livelihood.

Here you go:

Complete d20 Modern System Reference Document

Enjoy.

All right I changed some abilities around and added a little bit of back story. Was does everyone think?

Good, but the way you've written it makes it sound like the lycan's can't attack on all fours (or at least not with their claws)
I like everything except the spell check but it fits into their backstory nicely.
I second the bite attack, but shouldn't they still have some sort of infection to pass on through the bite:smallconfused: ? i think anyway.
Cool idea.

The speed should stack with the barbarian's fast movement. 50' is not too fast, worgs and true wolves move that speed. Also, it seams ridiculous that a barbarian Lycan would be moving at the same speed upright as on all fours.

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Originally Posted by Leliel

Speaking as the boards (Newly) resident biologist, shouldn't you remove the intelligence penalty? Wolves(and thus, I believe, werewolves) are not stupid animals.

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i agree fully with you Leliel, animals are not as stupid as we think.
as for the name of your wolf god try basing it on another language like latin
(Lupus=wolf / Deus=god)