Use in Gameplay
I could give a chapter by chapter description of the book, name you some headlines and whatnot, but lets just give you some summaries of what you can look forward to, then I’ll move on to what “I” get out of it, and you can see if maybe it could apply to your campaign.
The book begins with a section explaining the problem with how WotC solved the lycanthropy problem, as I’ve elaborated on above. Sean comes up with a few alternate templates to solve the problem, then provides sections with a good-sized set of feats, magic items, and moon-based spells that can be used with his alternate templates or even pulled out for moon-worshipping cults or whatnot. Regarding moon-cults/religions, Sean goes ahead and gives some information regarding Earth moon-deities that can be useful either for campaigns set in fantasy-Earths or to use directly in your campaign.
What would I use this for? “If” I was going to base a campaign around lycanthropes, I would seriously consider Sean’s alternate rules. The rules make sense, and make lycanthropes more of a starting race and less of their own overpowering template.
For example, you could have a campaign world where lycanthropes exist in multiple tribes. With the rules as they exist in the Monster Manual, this world would have tribes filled with either very similar individuals or very overpowered ones. Where would the heroes be? What need for heroes when every weretiger is so tremendously powerful? With Sean’s system, a lycanthrope would be known for their personal power, experience, and training. A weretiger, like my character was, doesn’t suddenly become a CR7 monster at adulthood purely by virtue of his race, he has to prove himself as any other adventurer/hero does.
I like this, and like I said, I think its fantastic for campaigns that would have lycanthropes as a central focus. For that matter, his information on mood deities and moon spells could add to a campaign based around a moon cult, god, etc.
Having said that, this book may be overkill if lycanthropes aren’t intended to be a major presence in a campaign, due to the extra rules and changes in challenge rating, and thus may not be for everyone. Why? Quite simply, if you’re running a module and it lists a CR 6 weretiger, a DM might be hard pressed to create a CR6 weretiger using Sean’s rules on the fly. Sean does provide sample werewolves of the iconic animals (wolves, rats, bears, etc), but under the new rules they are all CR ½, you have to add levels (either class levels, NPC levels, or the included lycanthrope racial class levels) . What he doesn’t do is provide readymade comparable lycanthropes for DMs to seamlessly replace module lycanthropes with the alternate lycanthropes.
Really this is a small thing, and DMs who decide to replace all lycanthropes in their campaign with better thought out rules (or even just partially adjust them with some of the optional rules provided) are probably the types that are more willing to do a bit of extra prep work to adjust their encounters to the proper challenge rating. Further, there is nothing to stop a DM from using the base monster manual rules in a pinch.
Am I happy I purchased this book? Definitely. The background information is interesting, the rules are well thought out, and his discussion of how templates are designed from a game designer’s point of view helped me with how I decided to build a custom template for my upcoming play-by-forum campaign (an article of which is here). The next challenge is just to come up with a campaign that can make use of these rules, and to find time to run it… ;)
Ultimately, for a 5 dollar pdf download you get a great read on lycanthropes in D&D. How can you go wrong?