“I am a victim of your carnivorous lunar activities.”
Gerald Bringsley, An American Werewolf in London
As I mentioned in my first Preparation article, I design my own campaign world and like to throw my players into it with very light direction. That means I need lots of potential villains. I create my villains by making up lots of NPCs and giving them odd quirks and – in the beginning of the game – a brief tie into one of the PCs. The ones that are fun to play and survive get to become villains. In my current campaign the party returned to the home town of one player character, and I decided to drop a character based on Gaston from Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast. Why Gaston? Because it is a complete character I can drop in, see if the players bite, and either toss away or incorporate into future plotting if the NPC is fun at the table. I named him Gregor.
Gregor was the local bully growing up. His father was wealthy. Gregor was handsome and inherited his father’s wealth. Naturally he rose to a position in leadership – becoming the mayor of a small rural town with – to quote my notes – “typical superstition tropes re: outsiders.”
Gregor thus had a personality and a little dominion to terrorize. I needed a twist on the character to make him credible villain material, rather than just a low-level thug. So I made him a werewolf.
I love werewolves. They bring a few unique features to the table: (1) the ability to pass themselves off as something else (usually human); (2) classic damage immunities that everyone knows fairly well (use silver or go home crying); and, (3) the ability to curse a character at the table with lycanthropy and therefore, have a lasting effect on the game even if they die. Werewolves are great.
In fiction, werewolves are wonderful horror-fodder specifically because they blend the civilized face of the human and the terrifying wildness of a wolf. This does not always translate well to the table. Decades of wolf-man movies have primed many players to say “oh, a werewolf, I grab a silver weapon and try to kill it.” Which is boring and tears away much of the horror that goes with the classic monster. To avoid having Gregor go down in one quick and not terribly interesting combat, I decided to keep him from revealing his more dangerous side. He would stay in human form until the inevitable showdown. I gave him a pair of werewolf lackies that could attack the PCs in wolf or human form, and, worse come to worst, hold the PCs off while Gregor attempted his escape to become a true villain – villains are born if they survive one combat.
As it turned out – the PCs decided to just murder Gregor and his two allies anyway. The best laid plans did not survive contact with the party. Gregor, however, did. So did his two allies.
This is a good time to go look at the D&D 5th edition werewolf on page 49 your copy of the DM’s Basic Rules. Note that they are immune to most damage. At the time the PCs were not packing magic items and silvered weapons. They had no choice but to cut and run. Gregor graduated to minor villain status.
The next time the PCs ran into werewolves Gregor had sent his two goons to stop the PCS as they were trying to get away from the village – unfortunately Gregor’s allies didn’t survive the fight (werewolves don’t fare well at a D&D table).
So, I’d established that Gregor was definitely a bad guy and probably a werewolf (or maybe a vampire with some power to walk in daylight). Then the players decided to throw me a left hook and took off mid-storyline for parts unknown – so I had Gregor conquer a few nearby towns.
Now, more than a year of play later, and five levels higher (8th level party), the Players decided to go back and finish what they started – taking out Gregor – now a self-styled duke with over a dozen towns and hamlets under his direct control. Werewolves, at level 8, are not much of a match and the players were expecting werewolves. I wanted to stick with the werewolf motif, but retain some of the surprise and shock of that first time the man turns into a monster. I also wanted to give Gregor some back-up muscles, monsters that the players would recognize as “evil” without immediately giving away their nature as werewolves. Something familiar that I could scare them with.
I needed ogre werewolves.
To do that I started with a target Challenge rating of 8. I used the table on page 274 of the D&D 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide “Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating” to get a basic idea of what my target AC, Hit Points, Attack Bonus and Damage output per round should be. I based the starting attributes off the Ogre (p. 38 of the D&D 5e basic rules) and then added some of the specials and attack profile of the Werewolf (p. 49 id.).
Overall, the result was tough, but manageable. It was worth building for the look on the players’ faces when the pair of ogres I put into the battle turned into wolf-monsters and attacked.
Here’s what I built:
Ogre Werewolf
Large giant, chaotic evil
AC: 14 in Ogre form, 16 (natural armor) in wolf or hybrid form.
Hit points: 187 (18d10 + 90)
Speed 40 (50 in in wolf form)
Abilities: Str: 24 (+12), Dex: 12 (+1), Con: 20 (+5), Int: 6 (-2), Wis: 10 (-), Cha 4 (-3)
Skills: Perception +4; Stealth +1
Damage Immunities: bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from non-magical weapons that aren’t silvered.
Senses: passive Perception 14.
Challenge: 8 (3,900 xp)
Special: Shapechanger: Spend an action to shift forms (See, p. 49 of the D&D 5e Basic Rules); Keen senses: Advantage on perception tests using smell or hearing when in hybrid or wolf form.
Actions:
Multiattack: make one bite attack and two claw attacks.
Bite: +8 v. AC, on hit do 2d8 +12 piercing damage; DC 16 con save or contract lycanthropy
Claw +7 v. AC, on hit do 2d6 +12 slashing damage.
It’s a bit of a beast – two of them made a good fight for my group. Make a few tweaks (I recommend lowering the hit points) and see if you like it.