The Way of the Weredodo

 Back in December, I wondered aloud about the Wereraven stats in the 5e Ravenloft book. It was, at the time of publish, the only official Lycanthrope that could regenerate. It had this Regen instead of the Resistance to non-magical Slashing, Piercing and Bludgeoning damage that all Lycanthropes had. As I mentioned in that post (Transitive Property of Gaming: Wereraven Throwbacks) this made the Were-Raven much more powerful than most Lycanthropes. They're really hard to kill, in a way that none of the other lycanthropes are, and that seemed odd to me.

Since then, I picked up the Deck of Many Things set, which included stats for a Werevulture. This Werevulture was almost identical to the Wereraven. Identical except for more hitpoints and higher damage. The mimicry power is removed, but there wasn't anything added to make it more like a vulture. 

When I noticed that Werevulture about a month ago, I wondered if maybe the upcoming 2024 edition of the Monster Manual was going to give all Regeneration instead of Resistance. There'd been rumblings for a while that Resistance to non-magical weapons was going the way of the (were)dodo. So I suspected that Regeneration was going to be added to all the Weres as a way of making them feel like the dangerous hard-to-kill shapeshifters that they are in the lore. 

Well, now I've got the 2024 (aka 2025, aka 5.5) Monster Manual, and I can see that no, there's no new Regenerating Lycanthropes. So, I guess just bird-based lycanthropes can regenerate, for some reason. I don't understand why. I suspect it's just a case of "the left author doesn't know what the right author is writing".  

There's no lycanthrope section in the new Monster Manual, but there are stats for Werewolves, Weretigers, Wereboars, Wererats, and Werebears (and Jackalweres in the "J" section). The rules for contracting Lycanthrope are abridged heavily, and just shoved into the individual monster stat blocks. Overall, they are a lot less likely to turn you into a Lycanthrope, and I think it's a bit of a shame as that downplays the most interesting thing about them. On the other hand, if you don't make the initial save, and they also manage to reduce you to zero HP after that failed save, then you transform and become an evil lycanthrope instantly. On the rare cases where that first save is failed, you'll now really be sweating, assuming you know how the rest of the power works. That scariness is kinda cool... but it does make fights very swingy, as a PC going down is a double-whammy to the action economy when they get back up and join the enemy. 

It's also unclear from the Monster Manual whether or not its possible to restore the newly-evil newly-NPC character to their original status. The MM doesn't make it clear if Remove Curse works or not after you've transformed. It's pretty clear Remove Curse works between when you get the Curse from the first bite to when you fall to 0 HP, but once you've been KO'd you "become a werewolf under the GMs control". Is that new status an ongoing symptom of the curse, or is it a permanent change of status? Is "you're now a werewolf" the equivalent of "you're under an enchantment" or is it the equivalent of "you died"? I could make see an argument for either interpretation. 

Nothing in the Monster Manual takes a stance on it, and the Remove Curse spell in the 2024 Player's Handbook is vague as well. So I went looking in the DM's Guide, where it says: 

"Some monsters are associated with curses, whether as part of their origins or due to their ability to spread curses—werewolves being a prime example. You decide how a spell like Remove Curse affects a creature with accursed origins. For example, you might decide that a mummy was created through a curse and it can be destroyed permanently only by casting Remove Curse on its corpse."  

So, officially, the answer is "it's up to the DM". This is actually a bad answer. Everything is always up to the DM. What's a Werewolf's AC? How many HP does the werewolf have? Those are also things that a DM can (and often will) choose to change, but having a default answer is really helpful. It makes DM-ing prep run faster, and provides a default the DM can use if they want a baseline experience. If the Monster Manual said "AC: DM's Call" and "HP: Whatever the DM things is appropriate" we'd be annoyed that this monster entry was incomplete. Being vague, and not providing a default lethality setting for a werewolf's curse is lame. But this is worse than saying "Damage: DM's choice", because they don't even say in the monster description that this is up to DM fiat. They talk around it, thereby implying that the rules must be somewhere else. A new DM could well throw a werewolf encounter at their party without having thought this through at all, and then get stuck with a situation where a PC turns mid-battle. That player will naturally be curious as to how final/fatal this new condition is, and the DM's going to be caught checking two other books (like I did) only to find that in the end there's no guidance offered at all. 

I'm also not happy that their vulnerability to silver went away. I get that a design goal of 2024 was to try to bridge the martials vs spellcasters gap. Monsters that have Resistance to non-magical weapons makes them much harder for low-level non-caster PCs to battle, in a way that benefits spellcasters. Which is a shame, because spellcasters already have some big advantages especially later in the campaign when high-level spells do crazy things. So closing that gap is a noble goal, and I understand why that was something 2024 edition leaned into hard (see Weapon Mastery for another example), but I'm still not happy with the impact here. Silver weapons though were a really cool thematic element, so their removal detracts from the lore, and makes lycanthropes just a tiny bit less interesting. 

What makes a lycanthrope a lycanthrope? What separates them from other monsters now? Two things:

1) They can transform as a Bonus Action, but those different forms have identical stats, so this is kind of meaningless. It's narratively cool, and I'll certainly use it in play. But it doesn't do much, and since only Weretigers have anything else they might do with a Bonus Action instead, it's not meaningful.

2) If they kill you, there's a 50% chance you'll get up instantly as an NPC Lycanthrope and attack your fellow PCs. That's certainly interesting and meaningful, but it's got serious potential to cascade into a full TPK. Even if it doesn't do that, it's likely to ruin a player's fun, and/or result in an argument that boils down to DM's fiat after you've searched in 3 books for a rule. And the implications of what this means in-universe are kind of crazy. Because there's no delay now, any Lycanthrope ought to be able to convert any village into a full-on wolf's den faster than you can say "One-Night Ultimate Werewolf". I mean I guess it's good that you don't need silver to damage them, as now its possible that the villagers could get lucky and kill the new werewolves as fast as they are made. 

Lycanthropes in previous editions (including 2014 5e) were very hard for commoners to kill, so the scenario of "we need to hire the PCs to save our village" was very believable. At the same time, those older rules delayed the onset of lycanthropy until the next full moon or other trigger, so the PCs had some time to get hired and conduct an investigation. Now there's less need for the commoners to hire the PCs, and it takes the werewolf a lot less time to co-opt the entire town. I'm not crazy about any of that.