One quite disappointing, and actually surprising, moment came with 4th Edition's themes - specifically that of Dragon Magazine 410's Howl at the Moon section by Robert J. Schwalb. It isn't what was added with this particular issue's release that made it disappointing, it was what it was lacking.
In D&D terms we're all familiar with the term lycanthropy applying to all were-beasts rather than just wolves (the correct term should be therianthropy - zoanthropy can apply at times as well), but we're also all equally familiar with the fact there are a lot of various were-beasts. Of course the werewolf is well known, and to most Western culture the only one we're readily familiar with, but others certainly exist as archetypes of fiction and D&D included them as well. Issue 410 displayed three playable themes for characters, werewolf included, the other two being the wererat and the werebear - both fairly iconic among D&D players (most have at least heard of them) - but there's one in particular missing...
What happened to the weretiger?
I honestly haven't an idea - maybe Schwalb really hates cats or lost his first character to a were-feline's affliction - joking aside, I'm surprised no such thing exists at all. So, that said, here's my take on the weretiger using Issue 410's basic mechanical frame as well as a slight (actually quite significant) homage to my favorite member of Felidae.
Realistically, as another note, the weretiger could be repurposed or re-fluffed to represent most any werecat.
Weretiger
"I cannot help but find myself so thoroughly amused that you think I am as invested in your troubles as I am mine - I have plenty of my own to contend with. If you cannot bring yourself to believe that, do stick around for a few days, surely the moonlight will change your opinion of me."
Creating a Weretiger
While werewolves hunger for human blood, wererats sulk in their rubbish filled barrows, and werebears achieve a sense of fulfillment in the name of Melora or primal spirits, weretigers are frequently the upper crust of society. Like the felines they in part descend from, it is not unusual for weretigers to assume themselves superior in regard to most other creatures - after all, anything but their feline sect is quite possibly prey, or at least beneath them. This arrogance, though not a defining feature of weretigers, is often rumor at absolute best and at worst a more kindly and accurate representation of their lot's description. Unlike other lycanthropes, weretigers are exceptionally few in number and do not frequently gather; a family bloodline being the largest "collective" of individuals, all of whom might not even tolerate one another's presence.
Most adventurers of weretiger blood are the offspring of such disagreements; mother and father may be tolerable, but siblings can prove irritating. While this certainly isn't definitive, many weretigers are loners and cooperate with others (typically those unaware of their shapeshifter lineage and talents) only when most beneficial to them. While in part self serving, weretigers aren't as brash or barely restrained as a werewolf, honor bound as a werebear or backstabbing as a wererat. Weretigers as individuals have many talents, from the art of stealth as rogues, to the combat finesse of a fighter, but few of them have the patience or interest in combat from afar when their own blood is shed. As combatants, they thoroughly enjoy the element of surprise and their extreme evasiveness, combined with the thrill of the hunt and the pay off of a successful and almost artistic kill.
Starting Feature
Any semblance of physical civility - or lack thereof - you may have can disappear in a startling transformation when you will it. Thick orange fur marked by ebony stripes cloak your body while your teeth sharpen and nails grow to razor-like claws; your form adjusts to become far more savage and markedly animal. Your blood, forever twisted by feline influence, grants you unusual ferocity even while you are not in your tiger form. However, silver is your bane, and the bite of weapons forged from its unique purity pain you more than most any other.
Benefit:
- You gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls on a charge.
- You have the shapechanger subtype subtype. As such, you are subject to effects that affect shapechangers. In addition, any enemy has combat advantage against you when attacking you with a silvered weapon or implement. Also, you are immune to moon rage.
- In addition, you gain the tiger shape power.
Tiger Shape --- Weretiger Utility
By either dedicated concentration undone, or forced transformation in a fit of anger, your humanoid form leaves you as you take on the bristling shape of a fierce tiger.
Encounter ♦ Polymorph
Minor Action --- Personal
Effect:
- You change from your humanoid form to a beast form—a tiger—that lasts until the end of the encounter. Alternatively, you can end the form as a minor action and shift 1 square. While you are in beast form, you can’t use weapon or implement attack powers that lack the beast form keyword, although you can sustain such powers.
- While in this form, you have low-light vision. The form is your size, and it doesn’t otherwise change your game statistics or movement modes. Your equipment becomes part of the form, but you drop anything you are holding, except implements you can use. You continue to gain the benefits of the equipment you wear, except a shield.
- You can use the properties and the powers of implements as well as magic items you wear, but not the properties or the powers of weapons or the powers of wondrous items. While equipment is part of the form, it cannot be removed, and anything in a container that is part of your form is inaccessible.
- Until the form ends, you can use the secondary power at will.
- Secondary Power (Beast Form)
-- Standard Action --- Melee touch
-- Target: One creature
-- Attack: Highest ability modifier + 3 vs. AC
--- Level 11: Highest ability modifier + 6
--- Level 21: Highest ability modifier + 9
-- Hit: 1d8 + highest ability modifier damage, and the target is slowed until the end of your next turn.
--- Level 21: 2d8 + highest ability modifier damage.
-- Special: You can use this power in place of a melee basic attack.
Additional Features
5th Level Feature
Your feline empathy, wanted or not, comes naturally to you; you can sense, perhaps almost outright read the thoughts of felines at times. This unusual familiarity grants you insight into what it means to be both a mortal and a feral beast.
Benefit:
- When interacting with tigers or similar creatures, you gain a +2 bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate checks.
- In addition, while tiger shape is active, you gain a +1 power bonus to Fortitude and Reflex.
10th Level Feature
Through thoughtful and repeated practice, or perhaps raw animal tenacity groomed by your humanoid intellect, you have been able to make some sort of peace with the beast within. No longer forced to become the tiger, you may become something vaguely in between; a mingling of your qualities and your more savage form's. Instead of always becoming a tiger you can now adopt a hybrid form, retaining all the boons of both forms.
Benefit:
- When you use the tiger shape power, you can assume the form of a humanoid-tiger hybrid, instead of a tiger. While in hybrid form, your equipment does not become part of your new form, and you are not forced to drop any items you are holding. You are also not limited to using implement and weapon attack powers that have the beast form keyword.
Optional Powers
To come to terms with the animal that is also you provides benefits you may have thought not of - some of which are talents unique unto your now arguably not cursed blood. Over time, or through sheer violence and conflict, you are able to establish a bond with your weretiger heritage, tapping into powers you otherwise would never know.
Level 2 Utility Power
The first boon granted to you for coming closer to your true nature is a remarkable sense of vengeance. When the enemy thought you weak, you proved strong; when he thought you battered, you struck harder than before. Surging with retributory strikes and hastened healing, you might walk away from this fight - after all, you have at least nine lives.
Tiger's Fury --- Weretiger Utility 2
A certain rush of vengeance wells within you following your enemy's assault, and with a flexing of your claws, you can't help but flay your enemy alive with just that much more ferocity.
Encounter ♦ Beast Form, Healing
Minor Action --- Personal
Requirement: You must have started this turn bloodied.
Effect:
- Until the end of the encounter, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls against enemies you have combat advantage against while you are in beast form. In addition, while you are bloodied and in beast form, you have regeneration 2.
--- Level 11: Regeneration 4
--- Level 21: Regeneration 6
Level 6 Utility Power
When you strike as a tiger you unleash an unexpected assault; the swiftness and grace of your attacks are both beautifully stunning as well as horrifically surprising.
Evasive Pounce --- Weretiger Utility 6
Swiftly dodging axe and club alike, you hurl yourself at your target, wrenching your claws into his flesh all the while your enemy's comrades seem bewildered by your elusive burst.
Encounter ♦ Beast Form
Free Action --- Special
Trigger: You must have initiated a charge.
Effect: As part of initiating your charge the target of your charge grants you combat advantage until the start of your next turn. In addition, up to 2 squares of your charge's movement instead counts as shifting. All other normal benefits and drawbacks of a charge still apply.
Level 10 Utility Power
All felines are predators first and foremost, and that inner hunger, that want and desire to prey on lesser things surges through you when you wrench spirit from body in brutal combat. Something about it seems so rewarding to your killer instinct that you almost cannot wait to repeat the cycle again - perhaps this time a bit more swiftly, too.
Hungering Claws --- Weretiger Utility 10
With a bloody flourish you rip your slick claws free of the prey, truly hungering to land further blows with such supernatural fluidity.
Encounter ♦ Beast Form
Free Action --- Special
Trigger: You reduce an enemy to 0 hit points during your turn.
Effect: Your melee attacks in tiger shape can now score a critical hit with a natural dice roll of their regular critical range value +1. Hungering Claws' effect cannot improve the critical range of melee attacks beyond 18-20.
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Weresaber
"Something that should be so long lost is my burden to bear; I cannot deny its influence, for it overwhelms me through raw strength and primal determination. Is it as much me as I am it, or am I merely the means for it to continue to live when it has since passed?"
Creating a Weresaber
Perhaps in eras long past did such horrors exist - ones where simple men and women took on shapes far outside their grasp by supernatural means - but for some reason yet, these beasts of legend live on through a select few still. How, or in reality why, one becomes such a dreaded and vicious beast is unclear. Some, namely expert scholars who study the quirks of lycanthropy and its history, believe it is as much in their blood as it is for any lycanthrope; a curse of sorts, one which is destined to continue, if only in miniscule amounts and pockets of population at greatest. But even to these talented and studied minds the name "weresaber" can prove to be quite a conundrum - a beast mostly extinct as it is reasonably shouldn't have any measurable lycanthropic members, should it?
The Smilodon, the sabertooth cat, is a powerful, brutish cat that relies on extreme durability and raw muscle in order to bring its prey down, where it delivers it mortal bite to the throat. Weresabers are not much different, as they are hulking, humanoid-feline creatures, who unleash brute force assaults to devastating effect.
In some of the deepest, most primal aspects werewolves and weresabers have more in common in the sense there is a dedicated shift in personality and control, but as to how they react is quite different. Most weresabers revel in the rush of bestial power and incredible strength, a rewarding sense of fierce satisfaction and blood hungry glory; the thrill of a successful annihilating blow. But there are others yet who fail to fully understand what it means to be half-beast in this sense, and rightfully fear that same strength they possess.
Starting Feature
Whether you know you are an ancient bloodline still manifest, or an unwilling servant to that long forgotten feline within you, your transformation is savage and fierce. A dense, rolling pelt of tan envelops your body and your canines elongate tremendously as you warp and twist into a far more dense and thick animal form. This ancient power grants you its strength and urges you to unleash its lost rage. Of the few things that truly wound you, silver is the most notable, for like any lycanthrope it strikes truer versus your kind and those similar.
Benefit:
- You gain a +1 bonus to melee attack rolls.
- You have the shapechanger subtype subtype. As such, you are subject to effects that affect shapechangers. In addition, any enemy has combat advantage against you when attacking you with a silvered weapon or implement. Also, you are immune to moon rage.
- In addition, you gain the smilodon shape power.
Smilodon Shape --- Weresaber Utility
With the alteration of your shape a time forgotten and primal force walks the earth again, as your body is now an imposing saber fanged beast.
Encounter ♦ Polymorph, Primal
Minor Action --- Personal
Effect:
- You change from your humanoid form to a beast form—a sabertooth cat—that lasts until the end of the encounter. Alternatively, you can end the form as a minor action and shift 1 square. While you are in beast form, you can’t use weapon or implement attack powers that lack the beast form keyword, although you can sustain such powers.
- While in this form, you have low-light vision. The form is your size, and it doesn’t otherwise change your game statistics or movement modes. Your equipment becomes part of the form, but you drop anything you are holding, except implements you can use. You continue to gain the benefits of the equipment you wear, except a shield.
- You can use the properties and the powers of implements as well as magic items you wear, but not the properties or the powers of weapons or the powers of wondrous items. While equipment is part of the form, it cannot be removed, and anything in a container that is part of your form is inaccessible.
- Until the form ends, you can use the secondary power at will.
- Secondary Power (Beast Form)
-- Standard Action --- Melee touch
-- Target: One creature
-- Attack: Highest ability modifier + 3 vs. AC
--- Level 11: Highest ability modifier + 6
--- Level 21: Highest ability modifier + 9
-- Hit: 1d12 + highest ability modifier damage.
--- Level 21: 2d12 + highest ability modifier damage.
-- Special: You can use this power in place of a melee basic attack. This attack is treated as having the brutal 1 weapon property.
Additional Features
5th Level Feature
Your connection to felines, even those modern, is so primal and true that the smallest and simplest of these is the ability to almost empathetically influence and or understand them significantly better than you should. Unsurprisingly with this natural link to modern cats is a deepening connection to the ancient one you represent; becoming more sturdy and tenacious, you are ever closer to realizing what it truly means to be a lycanthrope.
Benefit:
- When interacting with Smilodon or similar creatures, you gain a +2 bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate checks.
- In addition, while smilodon shape is active, you gain a +1 power bonus to Fortitude and Will.
10th Level Feature
Whatever resistance you have put forth is ultimately futile, for you are, by heritage wanted or not, weresaber. Whether you come to embrace this fact and make the most of your family's obscure and primally influenced past is up to you. Regardless, now and forever, are both your forms united - the result of which is titanic by most proportions.
Benefit:
- When you use the smilodon shape power, you can assume the form of a humanoid-Smilodon hybrid, instead of a Smilodon. While in hybrid form, your equipment does not become part of your new form, and you are not forced to drop any items you are holding. You are also not limited to using implement and weapon attack powers that have the beast form keyword.
Optional Powers
If by some chance a weresaber manages to resist his or her heritage, he or she later may come to know within themselves just what their fear has cost them. To others who embrace this obscure and strange past a new fountain of unimaginable animal might and power lies so ready to be drawn and called upon with little effort or time.
Level 2 Utility Power
Ancient Endurance --- Weresaber Utility 2
Your hide, spattered with blood - your blood - bristles as you enter a state of heightened resiliency and recovery, shrugging off the repeated harm you are sustaining.
Encounter ♦ Beast Form, Primal, Healing
Minor Action --- Personal
Requirement: You must have started this turn bloodied.
Effect:
- Until the end of the encounter, you gain resistance 2 to all damage while you are in beast form. In addition, while you are bloodied and in beast form, you have regeneration 2.
--- Level 11: Resistance 4, Regeneration 4
--- Level 21: Resistance 6, Regeneration 6
Level 6 Utility Power
You seize the moment to land a great strike against your enemy; planting your weapon, or your fangs, deep into the prey, you know they're hurting far more than they anticipated.
Death Blow --- Weresaber Utility 6
With a crushing blow you land a decimating strike on your enemy, driving your killer fangs far into the softest and most vulnerable points, attempting to end this conflict in one fell swoop.
Encounter ♦ Beast Form, Primal
Minor Action --- Special
Trigger: You bloody an enemy with an Encounter power or your smilodon shape's secondary power.
Effect: Your attack deals an additional 1[W] if the attack was made with a weapon, or an additional 1d12 if the attack was your smilodon shape's secondary power.
Special: On a critical hit all damage dice rolled as part of this attack gain the brutal 1 weapon property. This bonus does not replace or improve previously existing brutal weapon properties.
Level 10 Utility Power
Your body embraces the power of the change, no matter how painful, drawn out, or even remarkably fluid and swift it may be, and answers further yet to the grand call your heritage has bestowed upon you. Becoming alike the great cat itself, or somewhere between, you find yourself with new, most useful capability.
Primal Scale --- Weresaber Utility 10
You erupt into a leviathan feline form that towers over other creatures, threatening them with your awing scale, one of which they were hardly suspecting or prepared for.
Encounter ♦ Beast Form, Primal
Free Action --- Special
Trigger: You use your smilodon shape.
Effect:
- If you use your smilodon shape to enter your animal form, you become a Large creature with a natural reach of 1. In addition, your melee attacks in smilodon shape's have their critical ranges expanded by +1. This effect cannot increase their critical range beyond 18-20.
- If you use your smilodon shape to enter your hybrid form, you become a Large creature with a natural reach of 2.
Additional Rules
As discussed in Dragon Magazine 410, Howl at the Moon, under the "Variant Lycanthropy" section, it is possible for characters without a lycanthrope theme to gain one through infection with the respective lycanthrope's disease. However, gaining a lycanthrope theme removes any previous theme and effectively replaces it, but mentions that the player can choose to replace any components such as Utility powers lost with new ones from his or her class, skills, or the new theme.
Here are the variant rules for a weretiger and weresaber's moon rage disease;
Moon Rage --- Level 11 Disease --- Endurance improve DC 21, maintain DC 16, worsen DC 15 or lower.
Success Effect: The target is cured.
--- ↑ Improve ↑ ---
Initial Effect: The target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls as its hands begin to grow fur and claws.
--- ↑ Improve / Worsen ↓ ---
Secondary Effect: The target gains a Strength-based claw attack that deals 1d6 damage. The target can no longer wield weapons or hold implements. This effect remains as long as the subject is diseased.
--- ↓ Worsen ↓ ---
Final State: The target becomes a weretiger (if afflicted by one) or weresaber (if afflicted by one) on the next full moon. The target loses any previous theme it had and gains the Weretiger Theme or Weresaber Theme (same as the lycanthrope that afflicted it), but may select any lost Utility powers with new ones gained from his or her class, skills or the newly gained theme.
Change Log
[ 9DEC13 / 18:26 ] Change: The melee basic attack enabled as part of Smilodon Shape now has the brutal 1 property.
[ 9DEC13 / 16:26 ] Change: Added an Additional Rules section for how transmission of lycanthropy to gain these new themes can occur based on the information provided in Issue 410.
[ 9DEC13 / 16:06 ] Change: Fearsome Scale has been renamed to Primal Scale to better reflect the mechanic and story components. In addition, Smilodon Shape's animal form now expands the critical threat range of all melee attacks made while in that shape rather than just your secondary power.
[ 9DEC13 / 16:04 ] Change: Smilodon Shape now correctly has the Primal key word.
[ 9DEC13 / 15:34 ] Change: Evasive Pounce no longer states it allows your beast form's melee basic attack to function with it as part of a charge; that is already implied. Evasive Pounce now instead grants you combat advantage against the target of your charge until the start of your next turn.
[ 9DEC13 / 15:34] Change: Death Blow now contains the Primal key word.
[ 9DEC13 / 15:34 ] Change: Acclimation has been renamed to Ancient Endurance and has gained the Primal key word.
[ 9DEC13 / 06:19 ] Change: Acclimation changed from "damage resistance 2" to "resistance 2 to all damage" - Acclimation should effectively reduce any source of incoming damage. This change is based on a weird rules quirk that makes it debatable if "damage resistance 2" should be all sources of damage (magical, non-magical, etc) or just actual damage (physical).
