It’s time for my advice column! First point of advice this issue, as in every issue, is to please tell everyone you know about the eldritch horrors waiting for you just beyond the veil of sleep. They’re really bad. You should get your friends and practice lucid dreaming together so that you can locate each other in the Astral Expanse and become dream warriors. It’s your only chance to save reality! Anyhoo, enough of that, let’s get to the letter pile…
Hi there Felix,
I was asked to send my “dilemma” over your way.
The Paladin player in the campaign I’m running got bit by a wererat and failed his constitution save and became cursed with wererat lycanthropy. May have been poor planning on my part while following the adventure (it’s my first time DMing). Now he’s loving the immunities, but hates that it’s a rat and evil and is trying to talk me into letting him become a werebear because it’s good aligned.
Now, I’m not completely opposed to the idea, but I have zero intentions on allowing him the immunities and just gifting him the werebear lycanthropy for no reason. He’s already in the process of finding a cure for the wererat lycanthropy and I adjusted the NPC that gave him the info on the cure to actually be a werebear in secret. I was planning on having the final secret ingredient be some of the Paladin’s blood, drawn from the bite of the werebear NPC, causing a weaker werebear lycanthropy curse, but I feel like I need to present some sort of test that the paladin needs to pass I order for the lycanthropy to happen. He wouldn’t know outright about becoming a werebear lycanthrope because it would be a slow onset.
Advice from Felix
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editors.jod4hap@protonmail.com.
Use “Dear Felix” in the subject line. Ask anything you like, but this column will focus on resolving awkward situations around the gaming table.
Thoughts on what I might be able to present as a test of worthiness for the NPC to decide to pass on the curse? The party has already rescued her before so she knows that he’s not a total arse, but I definitely feel like there needs to be more.
The paladin is lawful neutral, if that matters at all.
Thank you for your consideration,
SneakAttackJak
Hi there SneakAttackJak!
Wow, you and your player really dug yourselves a dungeon-sized hole to crawl your way out of! No worries, I’m here to help. I consulted my brood of friendly flumph game masters (there are thousands of us watching your culture flounder, lol) and they had some THOUGHTS.
First, from a philosophical perspective, we caution you against granting your players a boon when you were trying to provide a challenge. It sounds like you were trying to YES-AND with your player. That’s good! But you might be diverting them from a better time by being too eager to help them with what should be a really fun challenge.
Lycanthropy can be a really fun way to challenge your players at lower levels. It can force players to find help in a situation where they are two or even six levels out of their depth. You’re obviously considering this; having them seek out a werebear NPC is in the right ballpark for how to handle the situation. Yet y’all seem to be getting ahead of yourselves! A LN paladin suddenly confronted with the curse should have to deal with the curse as written. This will vary from edition to edition, but generally speaking, the player should be confronted with the monstrosity of the curse at least a few times. This will challenge the other players at your table to creatively neutralize the paladin-rat as a threat. That’s a lot of fun! It’s in the books for a good reason!
Now, when presenting your player with a way to lift the curse, you want to make it feel like its own sub-quest. Maybe a dryad (who is very dangerous and difficult to find; finding her could be a whole session) will lift the curse in exchange for one of her own curses? The paladin must plant a tree, every week, without fail, for the rest of his life! Should he fail? The wererat curse returns, and the paladin is turned to wood during the day. Sounds harsh, but it’s the sort of curse that could be lifted magically around 8th or 10th level. So it builds character!
But exchanging rat power for bear power? Werebear curses are one of the “secret menu” of pretty good curses to have in roleplaying games (although so is wererat if you play it right).
Every GM I consulted was against giving your player werebear powers as a part of this solution. A paladin should refuse any curse that would influence their alignment.
If your player is more set on becoming a werebear than being a paladin, you could give them the werebear curse in a way similar to your description, but at the cost of their paladin powers. Now they can re-spec and make some interesting character roleplay choices. Just make sure it doesn’t eat into the fun of lifting the initial wererat curse.
Hope that helps!
