Werewolf Human Form

[Colarmel]

If a werewolf switches to human form in order to try to save its miserable life, how do its stats change? Does it still have full ST, full DR, regeneration?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Colarmel

If a werewolf switches to human form in order to try to save its miserable life, how do its stats change? Does it still have full ST, full DR, regeneration?

Alternate Form is largely a "color" ability in the DFRPG (read: a way for the GM to engineer an interesting encounter), but I'd say the human form would retain everything that doesn't rely on having "a beast's head, claws, fur, and tail." That's up to the GM, but the traits I would have go away would be the cutting bite/claw attack and No Fine Manipulators (no wolf claws or teeth); Acute Senses, Discriminatory Smell, Disturbing Voice, Night Vision, and Penetrating Voice (no wolf ears, eyes, mouth, nose, or throat); Silence (no furry, padded paws); Temperature Tolerance (no fur); and negative Appearance (obviously!). This would get rid of Stealth bonuses and reduce Tracking to 11. I'd leave attributes and other abilities (including ST, DR, and Regeneration) alone . . . but the same would go for other flaws (like Dread and Vulnerability).

[Colarmel]

Boo, hiss.

I mean, this approach is much easier on the GM; but it does sort of leave me wondering why on earth the werewolves fight in wolf form at all.

Sure cutting hands and teeth are nice, but swords are nicer, and no one's going to guess they need to use silver on a dude in armor swinging a sword.

[Kromm]

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!

[Colarmel]

In my own games I'd absolutely stat them as regular humans, in Zuljita's DoA game, they were statted as you described, which is fine too, I suppose.

[Imbicatus]

I remember how much of a pain it was to do the forms for multi-phase werewolves in the old 3rd edition gurps version of Werewolf: The Apocalypse. As a GM you’re free to go into as much detail and variation as you want, but it seems like more work than needed for a non-pc.

[Kromm]

There's no right answer.

There's plenty of fiction where the "human" forms of monsters are essentially cosmetic: The human-form dragon still has draconic senses, emanates an aura of power or fear, casts spells that draw on huge reserves of strength, lives almost forever, etc. The human-form lycanthrope still regenerates and ignores attacks that aren't silver, and still has problems with silver. And so on.

My personal preference is to have the traits associated with gross physical features go with the form that has those features. As a dragon shifted into human form lacks claws, scales, sharp teeth, wings, and massive size, it won't be able to fly, resist blows, and tear people apart. But if a trait is more along the lines of a mystical blessing or curse nobody can see, I like to keep it in all forms. A werewolf as written is just a furry, clawed human-sized figure – there are no scales that go away and there's no big change in size.

But that's only one possibility.

And you could have more than one possibility in the same game world, region, dungeon, or even encounter. There's no good reason why "elder" werewolves can't have all their powers in all forms, "greater" ones can have some of their powers, and "lesser" ones just turn into wimpy humans.

For that matter, there's no reason why some dragons might actually turn into super-powered humanoids, others might remain in dragon form but project an illusion (which means they'll have to be really careful about picking their surroundings!), and still others might become ordinary Joes.