How to Abstract Moon Phases&Lycanthropy In-Game?

[unseenmage]

How does the Playground handle phases of the moon and infected lycanthropes?

If it matters this would be for Faerun where weeks are tendays.

Edit: Just got the okay from my DM to use the Pathfinder rules for building Constructs by CR and the Monstrous Lycanthrope template from Advanced Bestiary to build some Effigy Human Were-Effigy Shadow Dragons as an honor guard for my very powerful Techsmith character.

This should be fun. :smallbiggrin:

[Yogibear41]

well I don't know how Faeruns months and years work, but my DM uses a 12 month calendar with 28 day months, the new moon is always on the 1st and the full moon is always on the 15th.

[Phelix-Mu]

I am all in favor of non-traditional lycanthrope triggers. The moon thing is definitely iconic, but is kind of a dead give away, and from a metagame perspective forces some annoying record-keeping.

Statistically, if you go with a lunar calendar of 28 days, then about 1/9 days is going to be one of the days of the full moon. If it's a 30 day month, 1/10 days is a full moon. So, the DM could just roll at the start of any mission to see if the full moon has already passed for that month. If it has, it's irrelevant. If it hasn't, now the DM has to figure out what day of the month it is.

I have had lycans with raw-meat triggers, with eclipse triggers, with hypnotically-implanted triggers.

It's key to determine if the DM is tying the lycanthropy to the mystical energy of the moon, which is the traditional thing, and if your mechanical lycanthropes need to follow that pattern (since you are making them from scratch, I'm not sure that you need to follow the actual rules). If you don't need to follow the rules, I'd just make a random spread, so that on any given day, x% of your lycans would be in the midst of their three-day trigger.

Honestly, Shar and Selune are like mega-enemies, and Malar confuses the issue farther. I don't see any of them being thrilled to have a bunch of robots mooching off their energy (Shar for the shadow dragon bit, but I guess they don't worship her, per se...but who gives a damn what they think?). My point being that I don't feel that you should really have a reason for these robots to work off the normal energies that drive lycanthropy. They are emulations, after all, and derive all their other qualities from simulated bodies and so forth.

[unseenmage]

I am all in favor of non-traditional lycanthrope triggers. The moon thing is definitely iconic, but is kind of a dead give away, and from a metagame perspective forces some annoying record-keeping.

Statistically, if you go with a lunar calendar of 28 days, then about 1/9 days is going to be one of the days of the full moon. If it's a 30 day month, 1/10 days is a full moon. So, the DM could just roll at the start of any mission to see if the full moon has already passed for that month. If it has, it's irrelevant. If it hasn't, now the DM has to figure out what day of the month it is.

I have had lycans with raw-meat triggers, with eclipse triggers, with hypnotically-implanted triggers.

It's key to determine if the DM is tying the lycanthropy to the mystical energy of the moon, which is the traditional thing, and if your mechanical lycanthropes need to follow that pattern (since you are making them from scratch, I'm not sure that you need to follow the actual rules). If you don't need to follow the rules, I'd just make a random spread, so that on any given day, x% of your lycans would be in the midst of their three-day trigger.

Honestly, Shar and Selune are like mega-enemies, and Malar confuses the issue farther. I don't see any of them being thrilled to have a bunch of robots mooching off their energy (Shar for the shadow dragon bit, but I guess they don't worship her, per se...but who gives a damn what they think?). My point being that I don't feel that you should really have a reason for these robots to work off the normal energies that drive lycanthropy. They are emulations, after all, and derive all their other qualities from simulated bodies and so forth.

That's a very good point.

The character is a Gnome gestalt Cleric of Gond/Techsmith Artificer.
That in mind what lycan trigger would you suggest?

We're already treating the crafted mecha lycans as if they were Natural Lycanthropes who don't need to make Control Shape checks. But their Natural Attacks will be able to confer contracted lycanthropy to other intelligent humanoid constructs.

The Sacred Guardian template, Awaken Construct spell, and other Techsmith's Gondsman are all things in our game so encountering and fighting Intelligent Constructs isn't going to be as hard as it may be in other games.

[Urpriest]

Faerun is one of those settings that goes into a fair bit of detail about their calendar system, so I imagine it expects you to actually keep track of all this stuff.

[Phelix-Mu]

We're already treating the crafted mecha lycans as if they were Natural Lycanthropes who don't need to make Control Shape checks. But their Natural Attacks will be able to confer contracted lycanthropy to other intelligent humanoid constructs.

Be very careful with that. Spreading lycanthropy can cause some hardcore evil, and unless you are very thorough with annihilating every infected person, you could easily have a huge ripple effect, as the average person is thoroughly incapable of being cured before they likely spread it all over the place (especially in cities and such).

As for triggers, I'd suggest theme-appropriate stuff. The destruction of artificial life, the burning of books, the desecration of knowledge, the use of spells to make things stupid.... Something along those lines. If you want a chronological and not easily duplicatable one, I'd suggest picking a holy day for Gond, and having the curse trigger once a month on the numbered day of that holiday.

In any case, while lycanthropy can be great fun, it is also a powerful curse that causes great suffering among normal (non-pc) humanoids that contract it. Make sure that all of your constructs know who is vulnerable, how it is transmitted, and the moral implications of such. Awakened constructs develop a moral compass generally in line with their creator if aided, but if left to their own devices could easily become evil at some later point (such as after the death of the creator). Creating long-lasting, open-ended instruments capable of vast evil has moral implications, even if you never personally use them for such.

Finally, beware Malar. He pretty much is the god of bad-end-from-lycanthropy, and I'm sure he'll notice your experiment (especially if normal people are infected with an evil brand of lycanthropy).

Omg. Are the normal people going to turn into were-shadow dragons? Cause that would be horrific. Malar would give your character a big thumbs up, for sure.

[animewatcha]

As for moon phases, if you can find the location of moon-warded ranger sub level in dragon magazine, there are articles around that that talk about incorporating effects that astrology and sterf ( including phases of the moon ) would have on gameplay ( they even do a day version IIRC). Note that this was made for a 3.5 not PF game, but your DM might be able to think up something that adds it in.

[unseenmage]

Be very careful with that. Spreading lycanthropy can cause some hardcore evil, and unless you are very thorough with annihilating every infected person, you could easily have a huge ripple effect, as the average person is thoroughly incapable of being cured before they likely spread it all over the place (especially in cities and such).

As for triggers, I'd suggest theme-appropriate stuff. The destruction of artificial life, the burning of books, the desecration of knowledge, the use of spells to make things stupid.... Something along those lines. If you want a chronological and not easily duplicatable one, I'd suggest picking a holy day for Gond, and having the curse trigger once a month on the numbered day of that holiday.

In any case, while lycanthropy can be great fun, it is also a powerful curse that causes great suffering among normal (non-pc) humanoids that contract it. Make sure that all of your constructs know who is vulnerable, how it is transmitted, and the moral implications of such. Awakened constructs develop a moral compass generally in line with their creator if aided, but if left to their own devices could easily become evil at some later point (such as after the death of the creator). Creating long-lasting, open-ended instruments capable of vast evil has moral implications, even if you never personally use them for such.

There's this thing already with my Artificer causing big trouble for Gond through me using cheese found on these forums to rock my DMs gameworld. All with my DM's permission and blessing of course.

After the 'accidental billions of Constructs' fiasco my character got a dream visit from Gond who explained that my character's inspirations (the ideas gleaned here) were not coming from Gond as my character thought.
Gond was cool with my character's innovation and creativity, but we agreed i would Commune before implementing anymore crazy schemes. :smallbiggrin:

So yeah, long term moral implications are just a bonus at this point.


Finally, beware Malar. He pretty much is the god of bad-end-from-lycanthropy, and I'm sure he'll notice your experiment (especially if normal people are infected with an evil brand of lycanthropy).

Omg. Are the normal people going to turn into were-shadow dragons? Cause that would be horrific. Malar would give your character a big thumbs up, for sure.

IIRC the Monstrous Lycanthrope template makes it so the lycan's are only infectious to creatures of their own type. But then again that template is already prety vague, so I might be giving it too much credit.

I've already implemented some additional restrictions of my own and I havn'e even built one yet.
a) I have to be able to build both involved Constructs separately before I can build a lycan combining them. (keeps me from taking two things with HD above what I should be able to build using Effigy or Elder Eidolon and building them anyway via PF CR pricing).

b) The "human" side has to be humanoid, and has to be Sentient.

c) the "animal" side has to be nonhumanoid and Int 2 or less.

d) I can only build Effigys and Elder Eidolons of creatures I've encountered and whose form I've learned the same way a Wizard learns Custom Spells.

So it's going to be Effigy or Elder Eidolon Shadow Dragon lycans. Though checking my notes the only Shadow Dragons I've had chance to study were Adults and their 19 HD is beyond me at the moment. :smallannoyed:

Good thing I encountered those Juvenile Red and Copper dragons then huh? :smalltongue: