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Old 03-09-2018, 01:51 PM   #4
Kromm
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
Default Re: Werewolf Human Form

You can gimp their special abilities if you like . . . nothing really prevents that. I'm just saying what I would do! You could propose a whole range of forms that gradually get less strong and less damage-resistant as they grow more humanlike – lots of fiction does that. But lots of fiction makes the beast form mostly scary for its claws, teeth, and faster four-legged gait, and has werewolves mostly driving around in cars and shooting guns because being a tool-using human who can regenerate and shrug off wounds is just better than being a beast that can regenerate and shrug off wounds. It's up to you!

When werewolves can control their change, the big problem with depriving them of all their special gifts in human form is that it becomes hard to understand why they'd ever be in human form in a violent genre where social interaction is essentially a postscript. In a more social game than the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game, there would be large gains to be had by posing as ordinary people – large enough that the risk of being killed in such a fragile form would be worth taking. But in hack 'n' slash, it amounts to a really fatal flaw with no upside.

Perhaps a good compromise, if you're going to totally remove special powers, is to have most werewolves' human form be a capable adventurer type. If nearly every werewolf can turn into the equivalent of a 250-point or better barbarian, druid, scout, or whatever, and exploit weapons, spells, and the like in that form, there would be a good in-game reason to assume a human form without werewolf abilities even in hack 'n' slash!
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