Curing Lycanthropy

[Cheesegear]

So a PC in one of my games has contracted Lycanthropy, specifcally, Werebear.

I'm not totally sure how an alignment shift to NG, immunity to non-magical weapons, Str 19, and Advantage on Smell checks breaks his character. But apparently it does. If any of my characters was ever bitten by a Werebear, I'd love it. Because, y'know, they're a non-Evil Lycanthrope and don't break adventuring parties. Point is, despite all that, the player doesn't want to be a Lycan. I don't know why. But that's it.

Let's go to the MM to see what to do; Well, Remove Curse feels too easy (We look for a Level 5+ Cleric. We find one. Done.), and Wish is too hard.

I want to do a questline involving Selûne and/or Malar. But not totally sure what.

Any ideas for a quest to remove Lycanthropy?

[Greywander]

He has to embark on a quest to steal some magic honey from magically altered bees, which will cure him. Along the way, an evil weretiger, wereboar, weredonkey, and werehare will try to foil him and get him to join their lycan cult.

The weretiger goes on about how he's the only one, and how great it is to be a lycan, and how he should embrace it.
The wereboar is a big pushover and will gladly tell him how to reach the honey if captured, but is extremely annoying and st-st-stutters. A lot.
The weredonkey is suicidally depressed and encourages him to just quit, since the honey probably wouldn't cure him anyway, even if he could find it.
The werehare... I forgot his personality. I think he's just like really angry or something? IDK, it's been a long time since I've seen Winnie the Pooh.

While this is a half-joke, it could certainly make for a fun quest. And hey, magic honey is as good a macguffin as any.

[Aergentum]

He has to embark on a quest to steal some magic honey from magically altered bees, which will cure him. Along the way, an evil weretiger, wereboar, weredonkey, and werehare will try to foil him and get him to join their lycan cult.

The weretiger goes on about how he's the only one, and how great it is to be a lycan, and how he should embrace it.
The wereboar is a big pushover and will gladly tell him how to reach the honey if captured, but is extremely annoying and st-st-stutters. A lot.
The weredonkey is suicidally depressed and encourages him to just quit, since the honey probably wouldn't cure him anyway, even if he could find it.
The werehare... I forgot his personality. I think he's just like really angry or something? IDK, it's been a long time since I've seen Winnie the Pooh.

While this is a half-joke, it could certainly make for a fun quest. And hey, magic honey is as good a macguffin as any.

Isn't someone missing? Like a werepig?

Back on the main topic, it would be "easy" to find a Cleric to cast Remove Curse, but will it be? You can make that pretty difficoult too: they have to travel to a specific Village/Monastery where the PC will be cured, but when the party arrives they find that most of the clerics are off to repel the Evil that spread in the lands (or something) and there is only a novice cleric who's still in training. He could help you, but he's not learnt Remove Curse yet...
You help him with his "little quest" and he will help you (probably).

[Greywander]

Isn't someone missing? Like a werepig?

The wereboar is a big pushover and will gladly tell him how to reach the honey if captured, but is extremely annoying and st-st-stutters. A lot.

But yeah, a 5th level anything might not be easy to find. The levels of NPCs are always a debatable thing. Jesus or Moses might be tier 4 (17+), but the Pope might only be tier 3 (11-16), while archbishops are the only ones to reach tier 2 (5-10). Even then, a priest is not a cleric, so while Moses might be a cleric with spooky god powers, the Pope might just be an ordinary priest with no magic, albeit with a lot of power within the church.

A cleric is more akin to a prophet than a priest. They perform miracles and are chosen by their deities to perform a specific mission. Thus, they might not be priests at all, and might be rather itinerant, much like adventurers are.

You might be able to find clerics working in a major city, but above a certain level they'll probably all be retained by nobles or other wealthy or powerful individuals and not offering their services publicly. It's worth considering how you'll also handle things like resurrection magic, or restoration or regeneration magic. It's generally a good idea not to make these things too freely available to players without a cleric in the party, as this can result in a cheapening of what should be dramatic debilitations. Sure, you can give them an out if a PC dies or loses a limb or gets turned to stone, but you don't have to make it easy for them. The same logic applies here.

[Glorthindel]

Frankly, I would be overjoyed that a player is actually treating this like the curse it should be, and not powergaming it.

If a single spellcast seems too easy (and I agree it does), the trick would be to look into Werebeast mythology, rather than game rules. Quick trip to wikipedia:

"Various methods have existed for removing the werewolf form. In antiquity, the Ancient Greeks and Romans believed in the power of exhaustion in curing people of lycanthropy. The victim would be subjected to long periods of physical activity in the hope of being purged of the malady. This practice stemmed from the fact that many alleged werewolves would be left feeling weak and debilitated after committing depredations.[17]

In medieval Europe, traditionally, there are three methods one can use to cure a victim of werewolfism; medicinally (usually via the use of wolfsbane), surgically, or by exorcism. However, many of the cures advocated by medieval medical practitioners proved fatal to the patients. A Sicilian belief of Arabic origin holds that a werewolf can be cured of its ailment by striking it on the forehead or scalp with a knife. Another belief from the same culture involves the piercing of the werewolf's hands with nails. Sometimes, less extreme methods were used. In the German lowland of Schleswig-Holstein, a werewolf could be cured if one were to simply address it three times by its Christian name, while one Danish belief holds that merely scolding a werewolf will cure it.[17] Conversion to Christianity is also a common method of removing werewolfism in the medieval period; a devotion to St. Hubert has also been cited as both cure for and protection from lycanthropes."

Not sure what of that is useful/interesting, but you could easily concoct a weird, humiliating, and potentially harmful ritual (maybe require that the spell is cast by a follower of a god the character devoutly follows, and mix in some of the other remedies, like requiring him to take some toxic root, while having his hands pierced with silver nails).

Other than that, look into older lore - I know in some fiction, Lycanthropy could not be cured until the original sire had been destroyed. Assuming the Werebeast that attacked the character is already dead (because PC's rarely let hostile monsters walk away), perhaps that werebeast had been turned himself, so isn't the original sire, so the party have got to investigate and backtrack down a line (as short or long as you like) of victims until they find the trueborn Werebear that originated this line of infected victims (who has to be killed before the ritual can be carried out). Really, you can make this as convoluted (or not) as you like, depending on what you think the player will enjoy/tolerate.

[RedMage125]

I had this come up a few years ago, so I'm copy/pasting it for you here.

If you want some more ideas, I suggest looking at the 2e Ravenloft Supplement Van Richten's Guide To Lycanthropes. Converting those ideas in there should require very little work.

Here's the post from the thread I made a few years back:

So, most lycanthropes have a pretty low CR, individually. Remove Curse is a level 3 Spell, so most PCs will not be able to cast the spell to remove the curse of lycanthropy in a decent amount of time.

This is something that has recently occurred in my game. My party got a "random" encounter with a pack of wolves in the dead of night. During the fight, one of the wolves seemed unusually more durable than the rest, and soon assumed its hybrid form and started really tearing into them. Well, it tried to. Really good ACs and effective use of the Shield spell meant there were a lot of misses. I had 2 players fail their CON save against the bite (and they were level 3 at the time, Remove Curse is a bit out of their range right now).

I did, however, come up with an interesting solution. Harkening back to older editions, I allowed them to track down a supply of Belladonna, Wolfsbane, and Powdered Silver (25gp worth). They hired an NPC apothecary to make a Wolfsbane potion. Now, cure or not, Belladonna is poisonous, and I ruled that ingesting it requires a CON save or take 2d10 Poison damage and be afflicted with the Poisoned Condition for 24 hours. In order for the potion to take effect, one must voluntarily fail their save against the poison. The potion is not as effective as a Remove Curse spell, however, and all it does is give the player a new chance to roll the CON save (which I, the DM, make in secret).

The herbs were easy in this case, since they were in a small town that was deserted (kobolds had taken all the surviving villagers captive weeks ago), and they raided the local herbalist shop, and rolled a Nat. 20 on the Perception check to search for the herbs they were looking for. They waited until they had time to rest up in town to have the potion made and drink it (they were bitten on a waxing crescent moon by a natural lycanthrope, so they knew they had some time).

Just thought I'd put this out to the forum community, see if anyone else wanted to use it for themselves.

[Seclora]

I did, however, come up with an interesting solution. Harkening back to older editions, I allowed them to track down a supply of Belladonna, Wolfsbane, and Powdered Silver (25gp worth). They hired an NPC apothecary to make a Wolfsbane potion. Now, cure or not, Belladonna is poisonous, and I ruled that ingesting it requires a CON save or take 2d10 Poison damage and be afflicted with the Poisoned Condition for 24 hours. In order for the potion to take effect, one must voluntarily fail their save against the poison. The potion is not as effective as a Remove Curse spell, however, and all it does is give the player a new chance to roll the CON save (which I, the DM, make in secret).

I like this solution for a potion approach. Remove Curse should also be effective if available. I can see greater Restoration working as well.

I had a vow of Poverty character in 3.5 who became a werebear, and it wound up being one of the most noteworthy things about the character. So if you were playing a character and had a clear vision for the character, then I can see how Lycanthropy might be unwelcome, even with the range of mechanical advantages it grants. If the player wants it cured, let them cure it. But, maybe you want someone to be a Lycanthrope? Why not have whoever they get to cast the spell tell them that he cannot destroy the curse, and someone must take it on in the victim's place?

[Hypno]

In my game we had to deal with wererats. Remove curse isn't readily available but we had a potion recipe we could use. It required samples of the curse as part of the recipe.

So medicine to safely harvest from the wererat, survival to effectively distill what we needed, then a herbalism kit for the potion brewing. Three checks, 150gold for the other potion materials and a moderate medicine check only got enough from the wererat for one attempt.

[DarkKnightJin]

I like this solution for a potion approach. Remove Curse should also be effective if available. I can see greater Restoration working as well.

I had a vow of Poverty character in 3.5 who became a werebear, and it wound up being one of the most noteworthy things about the character. So if you were playing a character and had a clear vision for the character, then I can see how Lycanthropy might be unwelcome, even with the range of mechanical advantages it grants. If the player wants it cured, let them cure it. But, maybe you want someone to be a Lycanthrope? Why not have whoever they get to cast the spell tell them that he cannot destroy the curse, and someone must take it on in the victim's place?

I like the idea of Remove Curse on Lycanthropy only shifting it from one creature to another (willing) creature.
Greater Restoration should allow for the curse to be dispelled entirely, I feel.
5th level spell and I believe 100-200gp worth of material component is a fairly good investment for curing something like that.
And no, I wouldn't handwave it by them deducting the cost from their gold and let it go. They'd need to RP out the buying of the needed material(s), as I would have them do for any other spell.

[Cheesegear]

In the end I've decided to set up a conflict between Selûne and Malar, which the PCs can get involved in - or not.
Because what I didn't want was 'We walk around Neverinter and/or Waterdeep until we find a (good) Cleric who will cure Lycanthropy for [X] gold.'

The problem should definitely not be solved with gold.

[DarkKnightJin]

In the end I've decided to set up a conflict between Selûne and Malar, which the PCs can get involved in - or not.
Because what I didn't want was 'We walk around Neverinter and/or Waterdeep until we find a (good) Cleric who will cure Lycanthropy for [X] gold.'

The problem should definitely not be solved with gold.

Could 'solve' it by having the NPC Cleric give them a quest to get the material Component. But phrases it in such a way that they don't think to just buy it.
"Yes, I can do this for you.. But I need something that you can find at [x location]."
It's what they need to cast Greater Restoration or something, but he doesn't tell the party that.
They can figure that out *after* they bring the item back and the NPC casts the spell.

[Seclora]

Could 'solve' it by having the NPC Cleric give them a quest to get the material Component. But phrases it in such a way that they don't think to just buy it.
"Yes, I can do this for you.. But I need something that you can find at [x location]."
It's what they need to cast Greater Restoration or something, but he doesn't tell the party that.
They can figure that out *after* they bring the item back and the NPC casts the spell.

This is actually a good way to turn any NPC spell casting into a minor quest.

[DarkKnightJin]

This is actually a good way to turn any NPC spell casting into a minor quest.

Thanks. I've been mainly thinking about an NPC magic item crafter I'm putting into my campaign, and how ai want to handle them being able to basically make any magic item the party wants on commission. The biggest thing is gold cost to pay for the crafting and other materials. And then there's the (side-)quest to get a magical ingredient or 2 to help enchant the item. Or perhaps they need to go find some Adamantine to get that set of Half-Plate they want.

[J-H]

Here's what I bashed together for an alternate Lycanthropy option for my Castlevania game. The players will encounter the werewolves next week.


Most of the werewolves are off in the army
What’s left are mostly young ones with a couple of older ones watching over them.
They will be encountered in the forest section, or earlier if the party does anything particularly noisy or flashy (thunderwave, fireball, etc.).

(Perception checks may modify this)
You see human-sized shadows moving in the forest. With long arms and hunched-over shoulders, they look unnatural. One of them raises its head to the sky and howls, briefly silhouetting a pointed wolf-like muzzle.

(K: Arcana 10 “werewolves” 15 “silver weapons do more damage”; K: History 10 reputation for operating in tribes, often traveling and sometimes doing no harm, 15, traditionally linked to Dracula; hold very firmly to agreements and expect others to do the same.)

With quiet snarls and the glint of long, sharp fangs, they move in.

The werewolf hunting party is six wolves (4 regular, 2 shaman).

The werewolves will attack, splitting targets to try to land a bite on as many people as possible. The shamans will give orders in Romani (can anyone speak that? – if so, can translate). Once at least 3 bites are landed, the wolves will back off, and the shaman will give her speech.

“Hold, for I would bargain with you. We are werewolves, the true Romani, and the legends are true – we can make others like us by biting them. I need but do a simple completion of the magic that now flows in your bloods, and you will be cursed to turn into one of our own – subject to the pack leaders, and in turn thus to Lord Dracula.

I believe you are here to try to stop him, yes?”

She stalks to the side.

“We are no mere automatons; our remit as our best fighters are away is to help the pack grow stronger. Rather than taking and breaking some of you, I have an alternative that fulfills the commands given. Our young are good hunters, but unblooded in battle. I would summon them, and have them hunt and fight you. Run if you wish; they will be told well to stop when they reach the snake-headed witch’s domain; if they are fools and continue on, their deaths are on their own head. Other than that – do not kill them. Do not kill them or we will curse you and our soldiers will hunt you down – wherever you are if you yet live – when they return victorious from battle.”

Cue chase scene... or the party rapidly planning an assault on the werewolf village!
...

Curse of lycanthropy (acquired):
Nature, Arcana, or Medicine DC check 10: The bite transmits a passive curse that can be activated by magic; it wears off over time if not activated. If the curse turns live, it takes at least a day to fully enact the transformation, but someone in the process of transforming will not be at his or her best. Werewolfism includes some built-in magical compulsions.
Nature, Arcana or Medicine DC check 15: Lesser Restoration might work; Medicine-specific: You can probably find some herbs that would help, but it would take a while. Most of the early effects of the curse are mental, and werewolves automatically serve their pack lord and those further up the chain of command.
Nature or Medicine DC check 20: Hand the paper to the player

The bite of an adult werewolf transmits a passive curse of lycanthropy. Magical intervention by a shaman can activate stage 1 of the curse as long as it’s done within 1 hour. Each stage of the curse takes 1 long rest to take effect. The passive curse can be removed (Arcana or Medicine check DC 15) by Lesser Restoration, or by an herbal preparation requiring a Survival DC 15 check (Hard) taking 10d10 minutes, a Medicine DC 10 check and healer’s/alchemist/herbalist kit, and ½ hour of prep time per dose. If made active, Remove Curse (Cleric/Paladin level 3 spell) or the herbal preparation is required to stop the curse.

Stage 1: You feel strange, like your body is trying to reshape itself, and your thoughts are slightly cloudy and foggy. Disadvantage on all Int, Wis, and Cha ability checks.
Stage 2: You begin to grow hair all over, your face begins to change shape, and your nails and teeth begin to lengthen. Gain +1 strength and +1 dexterity, but lose -2 to a mental stat of your choice. You are vulnerable to damage from silvered weapons. You gain advantage on Perception checks involving hearing. Any wolf, werewolf, vampire, or other dark-aligned creature has advantage on all charm/domination and related checks against you (or you have disadvantage if it’s a save). You are charmed by werewolf pack leaders (automatically tend to obedience and friendly attitude, even while aware that it’s a magical effect).
Stage 3: You complete your transformation to a semi-human wolf. You gain advantage on Perception checks involving scent. You gain resistance to slashing or piercing weapons (your choice, one only); You gain a bite attack with a base damage of 1d4 and a claw attack with a base damage of 1d6. You lose the disadvantage on mental ability checks. Your alignment changes to some variant of Evil as the magical bonds forged with the werewolf tribes take full effect, and you fight to expand Dracula’s control over the world. You become an NPC.

[Segev]

In a module I wrote and ran as a game for some friends, the witch they sought out said she could cure lycanthropy if they could bring her poison love apples harvested in a graveyard, wheat cut with a silver sickle under the light of the full moon, and cheese curdled by the gaze of a bassilisk. When they did all of this, she made plates of tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches to give to all the kids in the town cursed with pontikosanthropy (wereratism).

[KiltieMacPipes]

In a similar situation, i had my players find an ancient druid, steeped in the Old Ways for centuries, who performed a ritual invoking the spirits to sunder the afflicted player's soul into two parts, the Beast part (I used a sabre-toothed tiger) and the Dwarf part. Then they fought for dominance. If the dwarf won, he had the choice of being cured, or gaining some control over the disease. On the other hand, if the Beast won, well, that wouldn't be good for the Dwarf. It was a pretty dramatic scene.

[DarkKnightJin]

In a similar situation, i had my players find an ancient druid, steeped in the Old Ways for centuries, who performed a ritual invoking the spirits to sunder the afflicted player's soul into two parts, the Beast part (I used a sabre-toothed tiger) and the Dwarf part. Then they fought for dominance. If the dwarf won, he had the choice of being cured, or gaining some control over the disease. On the other hand, if the Beast won, well, that wouldn't be good for the Dwarf. It was a pretty dramatic scene.

Sounds like it took inspiration from Skyrim, and I love it. Might give them that option. They make/acquire a 'vision quest' potion, take it, and the 'human' and 'beast' sides of the character split. The party cannot intervene with direct damage, bit they can try to distract the beast, cheer on their friend, and/or try to biff/debuff with magic as appropriate.
For instance, the Wizard might cast Slow on the beast, or Haste on their friend. The Cleric could try a Bless or Healing Word as a little something to help out.
If the player wins, they can decide to be rid of the curse, or gain a modicum of control over it.
In which case I would let them retain the Str/Dex score, and the hybrid and animal forms. No Resistance or Immunity to non-magical damage.

If they lose, they're stuck in the hybrid or animal form, and probably turn into an NPC if the party can't restrain the beast.

In any case, if they don't shed the curse completely, the Hunters will stay wary of them. Even if they won't actively hunt the Lycanthrope.