Special Conversion Thread: Lycanthropes and their ilk
Cleon
Legend
Updating the Wererat Lord Working Draft.
The tactics would do as-is if we changed the summon rodents to summon ratkin and the "ratwere underlings" to "wererat underlings", but I'd rather tweak it to emphasize that their default option it to use their minions to do their fighting for them.
The background needs complete reworking. Wererat lords don't shun common wererats, they rule over them. They aren't "infected" with ratwere plague, but are a more powerful line of natural lycanthrope.
freyar
Extradimensional Explorer
A start:
Wererat lords are a powerful form of natural lycanthrope, rulers of their close kin, the common wererats. A tribe of wererat lords surrounds itself with their infected creations as obedient servants, but other wererats sometimes congregate around wererat lords, who they worship with nearly religious devotion.
Wererat lord society is often mobile, with a group of wererat lords and their lycanthropic entourage moving on once they've drained a town of its most valuable possessions.
Combat
Wererat lords are fond of ambushes, preferentially using their common wererat minions to do the actual fighting. Given time, they use summon ratkin to call rat allies to send into combat. When forced into combat themselves, wererat lords prefer to fight with manufactured rather than natural weapons, using their class abilities extensively.
By the way, I noticed that they should be able to force their common wererat slaves to transform according to the original text. Shouldn't we add that to the Command Cursed Wererat ability?
Wererat lords are a powerful form of natural lycanthrope, rulers of their close kin, the common wererats. A tribe of wererat lords surrounds itself with their infected creations as obedient servants, but other wererats sometimes congregate around wererat lords, who they worship with nearly religious devotion.
Wererat lord society is often mobile, with a group of wererat lords and their lycanthropic entourage moving on once they've drained a town of its most valuable possessions.
Combat
Wererat lords are fond of ambushes, preferentially using their common wererat minions to do the actual fighting. Given time, they use summon ratkin to call rat allies to send into combat. When forced into combat themselves, wererat lords prefer to fight with manufactured rather than natural weapons, using their class abilities extensively.
By the way, I noticed that they should be able to force their common wererat slaves to transform according to the original text. Shouldn't we add that to the Command Cursed Wererat ability?
Cleon
Legend
Hmm, that's missing a few points.
Firstly, Wererat Lords live up to 200 years - twice as long as a normal human.
Secondly, as an addenda to that, are all Wererat Lords human? I'm suspecting they are, since there's no mention of Wererat Lords of other races.
Thirdly, the original text implies they like missile weapons: "Even better, they prefer to use missile weapons from a safe place, or else set traps and ambushes".
Fourthly, the text has "Wererat lords are born, not made, and must be sired by two wererat lords" which I'm assuming means both mother and father must be a Wererat Lord rather than that Wererat Lords all have two fathers, which is what it means literally...
How about:
Wererat lords are a powerful form of natural lycanthrope who regard themselves as the aristocratic rulers of wererat kind. Many ordinary wererats worship wererat lords with nearly religious devotion, but most wererat lords view their lesser kin as nothing but expendable pawns.
Wererat lords live by themselves or in small family groups surrounded by obedient (and usually dim-witted) servants, usually common wererats created by the wererat lord's infectious bite. They prefer to live in large settlements such as cities, where they can murder, devour and steal from humanoids while hiding in their midst. Their normal strategy is to take over a small guild or noble house by infecting all its members with lycanthropy, and then live in luxury off the labour and wealth of their infected slaves. Thieves guilds are a favorite target. They quickly move on to the next town once they've drained the neighbourhood of treasure or if the locals become too suspicious.
All known wererat lords have been human, but extraordinarily long lived ones - a wererat lord's lifespan is fully twice that of a normal human. Wererat lords are very rare, probably because they only produce more of their kind when they mate with another wererat lord.
COMBAT
Wererat lords are cowardly creatures who would rather use their summon ratkin power and wererat minions to do their fighting for them. They prefer ranged attacks, ambushes, and traps over melee combat. Wererat lords prefer to fight with manufactured rather than natural weapons, using their class abilities extensively.
A wererat lord will quickly abandon its followers to save its own skin, but may be willing to take a few risks to save another member of its tight-knit family.
That seems a good idea, although it's worth noticing that in the original it was only the "clan leader" who could force this transformation. Maybe we should set a minimum HD/level for this ability, like we did with the summon ratkin ability?
Speaking of summon ratkin, I just noticed we've got "at 8 Hit Dice it gains the ability to summon wererats" in the text but the table shows it getting that ability at 6 HD.
Oops!
I suggest making the 6-7 HD row for the summon wererats "—" like the 4-5 HD row.
freyar
Extradimensional Explorer
All the text is good.
I'd be ok with 8HD for summoning actual wererats. The question is if we then shift all the numbers down the table or just start with 1d6+1 at 8HD.
As far as Command Cursed Wererat goes, I suggest adding a line as follows: "Commands from wererat lords with 8HD or more are able to cause cursed wererats to change forms."
I'd be ok with 8HD for summoning actual wererats. The question is if we then shift all the numbers down the table or just start with 1d6+1 at 8HD.
As far as Command Cursed Wererat goes, I suggest adding a line as follows: "Commands from wererat lords with 8HD or more are able to cause cursed wererats to change forms."
Cleon
Legend
Updating the Wererat Lord Working Draft.
I suggested changing the table to make the 6-7 HD row "—", which leaves all the rest of the column unchanged.
Shifting the Wererat numbers down wouldn't make much sense, since a common wererat and a rat swarm both have the same Challenge Rating.
How about keeping the sentence structure similar to command ratkin, e.g. "At 8 HD, a wererat lord can command cursed wererats to "transform", which forces them to involuntarily transform into hybrid form."
Cleon
Legend
Updating the Wererat Lord Working Draft.
Well there's no definition of what a "clan leader" is apart from that they have extra powers.
My idea was we'd just treat a "clan leader" as a particularly high-level wererat lord rather than a special variant.
We could cover them with a sub entry, I suppose. e.g.:
Wererat Lord Clan Leader
Most colonies of wererat lords are headed by a clan leader who possesses heightened supernatural powers, as follows:
Command Cursed Wererat (Su): A clan leader's Command Cursed Wererat power affects cursed wererats created by any member of its clan, not just those it created itself.
Rodent Empathy: A clan leader's Rodent Empathy affects common wererats with fewer Hit Dice than the clan leader as well as animals and magical beasts of the rodent family.
Summon Ratkin (Su): A clan leader's Summon Ratkin power can summon greater numbers of rodents than a standard wererat lord. It uses the following table:
Clan Leader Summoning Table
| Hit Dice | Cursed Wererats | Rat Swarms | Dire Rats |
| 4-5 | 1d4 | 1d4 | 3d6 |
| 6-7 | 1d6+1 | 1d6+1 | 4d8 |
| 8-9 | 2d6 | 2d6 | 5d10 |
| 10-11 | 3d6 | 3d6 | 8d10 |
| 12+ | 4d6 | 4d6 | 10d10 |
freyar
Extradimensional Explorer
I don't think we need a separate sub-entry. I like the idea of their just being "higher level" wererat lords, but I think "higher level" could start at 6HD rather than 8HD, that's all. But I'm not fussy, so just pick what you like (as long as you give me something later 
).
).
Cleon
Legend
I don't think we need a separate sub-entry. I like the idea of their just being "higher level" wererat lords, but I think "higher level" could start at 6HD rather than 8HD, that's all. But I'm not fussy, so just pick what you like (as long as you give me something later
I prefer 8 HD for the "leader".
If we made it 6 then the clan leader may only be 3rd level, which seems too low. Making it 8 HD means the clan leader is 5th+ level, which seems more appropriate.
Actually, shouldn't we incorporate that into the Organization?
e.g. "Solitary, pack (2-8), infestation (2-8 plus 4-16 wererats), troupe (2-8 plus 11-20 dire rats or rat swarms) or clan (2-16 plus one 5th-8th clan level leader and 6-24 wererats and 2-40 dire rats or rat swarms)".
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