[3.5] Lycanthrope Help

[Thurbane]

Even though I've played 3.5 for a long time now, the lycanthropy rules still confuse me.

Say I've got an Ogre Were-Lion Fighter 2. What order do the hit dice go in?

Would it be Giant 4/Animal 5/Fighter 2? Or do the animal HD always come last?

Also, I believe that it gets the animals feats as bonus feats (in this case Alertness and Run): is that in addition to the normal feats at 1, 3, 6, 9 etc., or instead of those in the animal HD?

Cheers - T

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The Hill Giant Dire Wereboar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lycanthrope.htm#hillGiantDireWereboar) lists the Giant's 12 HD before the Dire Boar's 7 HD in the stat block, so I think this is a clear indicator that any humanoid/giant racial HD are gained before the animal HD. I would actually combine the class skill lists for the base creature and base animal, as standard for any other case of combining two creatures.

You have all the feats that the base creature and base animal have printed. Calculate how many feats you would normally get from your number of racial HD, if there are more feats printed for the base creature/animal then any extras are gained as racial bonus feats.

For the Ogre Were-Lion, you have Giant 4/ Animal 5, or 9 HD (four feats). Ogre has Toughness and Weapon Focus (Greatclub), Lion has Alertness and Run, so those four feats you get from the first nine HD must be those four feats.

As an example, an Ogre Were-Dire Wolf would be Giant 4/ Animal 6 (10 HD, four feats), still with Toughness and Weapon Focus from Ogre, and with Alertness, Run, Track (B), and Weapon Focus (Bite) from Dire Wolf. That's six feats, one of which is already a racial bonus feat, but you only have four to spend. So your four feats are spent on four of those and one becomes a racial bonus feat.

[Mr Adventurer]

Also, I believe that it gets the animals feats as bonus feats (in this case Alertness and Run): is that in addition to the normal feats at 1, 3, 6, 9 etc., or instead of those in the animal HD?

Cheers - T

This doesn't seem quite right:

"Add the animal’s Hit Dice to the base character’s own Hit Dice to determine how many feats the character has. All lycanthropes gain Iron Will as a bonus feat."

And

"Add the base animal’s feats to the base creature’s. If this results in a lycanthrope having the same feat twice, the lycanthrope gains no additional benefit unless the feat normally can be taken more once, in which case the duplicated feat works as noted in the feat description. This process may give the lycanthrope more feats than a character of its total Hit Dice would normally be entitled to; if this occurs, any "extra" feats are denoted as bonus feats."

[frogglesmash]

I'm pretty sure that the animal hd are added after if you contract lycanthropy, and before if you are born that way.

[Thurbane]

So assuming an inherited lycanthropic Ogre Were-lion Fighter 2, it would look like this (the feats marked with an asterisk are selectable, the others are not):



HD

Type

Feats

Bonus Feats



1
Giant 1
Toughness*
Iron Will


2
Giant 2




3
Giant 3
Weapon Focus (greatclub)*



4
Giant 4




5
Animal 1




6
Animal 2
Alertness



7
Animal 3




8
Animal 4




9
Animal 5
Run



10
Fighter 1

Fighter bonus feat*


11
Fighter 2

Fighter bonus feat*



..and at next character level, he will get another selectable feat?

[The Viscount]

That is all correct.