Finally a lycanthrope template that recognises an animal's natural actions! Wolves are pack animals so why are werewolves solo? Bears can be grumpy and dangerous especially if you get between them and food - so look out Goldilocks. And similar interpretations for other weres. This book takes a bit of work and thinking but is much more in line with non villainous roles for weres. Designed for D&D 3.5 but that is fine with me as I don't like the 4th edition.

A great product that I use to put the fear of god in to several or my players in my D20 Ravenloft game. And the feats we incredibly helpful to make the most dangerous of PCs and NPCs.

An interesting take on lycanthropes by an excellent game designer.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Clean, excellent layout<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some original artwork would have been nice<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Sean Reynolds provides an excellent, simple answer to the problems of handling lycanthropes in the game<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Excellent explanation of the 'why' behind the rules and easily adaptable rules.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some of the pics were a bit odd...<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Let me preface this review with a quote from Sean K Reynolds Games? mission statement:

?The goal?is to publish quality games that help you make better choices about your gaming. They may teach you something about game design in general, the d20 System in particular, or even some part of the real world; ideally, my d20 System products should leave you understanding the rules better so you can make better choices for your game, whether in designing your own material or evaluating published books to determine if they're balanced, campaign-appropriate, or worth reading at all.?

I wanted to include that paragraph because it really sums up what I like best about Curse of the Moon. Throughout the book, the author takes the time to explain his motivation for writing it, what he sees as the shortcomings of the lycanthrope template in the core rules, and his reasoning for the design decisions he made in changing that template. Sean?s insights are interesting and informative, and they?re of great value to anyone wanting to tweak these rules.

Sean?s answer to the lycanthrope template is something that he calls the ?Simple Lycanthrope.? Basically, all that this template grants at its core is the ability to change shape into an animal or animal-humanoid hybrid, heightened senses, a bite attack, and a hit point boost. A simple lycanthrope isn?t that much more powerful than the base creature.

From this basic starting point, the DM (or player) is free to increase the lycanthrope?s power by taking special feats that add hit points, expand movement, grant special attacks or abilities, etc.. This design style insures that a simple lycanthrope?s CR is based entirely on its character level. A werebear isn?t inherently any more or less powerful than a wererat. Compared with the overly complicated rules in the Monster Manual, the Simple Lycanthrope template is brilliant in its simplicity.

Another of Sean?s goals in designing these rules was to make lycanthropes more palatable to players wanting to run were-creature PCs. As Sean points out, the addition of animal hit dice in the Monster Manual template makes the LA of most lycanthropes a burden many players don?t want to bear. The templates in this book, by tying most of the lycanthrope abilities into feats, keep the LAs fairly low.

Perhaps the most innovative new mechanic in Curse of the Moon is the addition of ?Moon Hit Points.? These are a special kind of temporary hit points that the were-creature gains whenever in its animal or hybrid form. Most kinds of damage take away Moon Hit Points first, making the lycanthrope hard to kill via conventional means. Silver weapons, on the other hand, ignore Moon Hit Points and go directly to regular HP damage. Moon Hit Points are a clever alternative to the Damage Reduction rules, and they?re one of my favorite things about Curse of the Moon.

In addition to the Simple Lycanthrope template, Curse of the Moon contains two more templates meant to simulate different kinds of werecreatures. There is an entire chapter of feats, a few were-creature themed magic items, and a handful of gods (original and historical). There?s also a miscellaneous assortment of sidebars, rules discussions, and interesting observations.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Curse of the Moon meets the goals set out in Sean K. Reynolds Games? mission statement. It?s well-written, informative, entertaining, and it gives great insight into the decisions behind the design process. I really like the new rules, particularly the Simple Lycanthrope template. I wish some of the larger RPG companies would take a cue from Sean?s design style. Rules explanations are infinitely helpful whether you?re trying to assess a particular rule?s power, create house rules, or simply understand why the designer did what he did.

I look forward to more products from this company, and I?ll definitely be adding some of these new rules to my home game.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I really don?t care for photographs in my RPG books. Something about a picture takes away from the fantastic feeling of the genre. Curse of the Moon contains a number of full color photographs of wolves, foxes, bears, and other animals. While they?re nice pictures, I just don?t care for the way they look in the context of an RPG.

Other than that, my only other complaint is the somewhat limited scope of this book. If you agree with Sean and think that lycanthropes in the core rules need some attention, you?ll probably love this book. If you?re happy with the status quo, this product might not be for you. At just $5, though, it?s probably worth checking out either way.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Curse of the Moon is the most refreshing product I?ve yet to see for the Fantasy d20 system. By Sean K. Reynold, it presents therianthropes (lycanthrope should really only apply to werewolves, but the author uses it here to mean any kind of were-creature; this is a minor point) in new ways to better explain their abilities and personalities than the Monster Manual ever has. In addition it contains a template with Level Adjustment low enough for serious player consideration, and then presents feats to allow the player to build their character back up to full lycanthropic wildness.

It starts off with a chapter discussing how the MM lycanthropes differ in concept from mythical lycanthropes and how many of the features of these lycanthropes?silver damage reduction and alignment are two of the issues?and then goes on to explain how the simple lycanthropes template from Chapter 2 was created. In a few parts of the chapter and particularly at the end there are variants on lycanthropic abilities to allow for custom lycanthrope ideas.

Chapter 2 contains the simple lycanthrope template (basically you change into the animal, except it is your size and has all your statistics) with an LA of only 1 for player use. There is also a cursed lycanthrope which is a lycanthrope that only transforms into hybrid form and has several combat enchancements but is useless to players because it will attack anyone in range. The last template is basically the simple lycanthrope with some spell-like abilities, a special vulnerability to cold iron (a variant damage system introduced in Chapter 1), and the fey type. However, this is still an interesting idea and does not really suffer from seeming odd.

Chapter 3 contains feats that grants the lycanthrope templates access to the more powerful lycanthrope abilities, two feats that add silver to damaging abilities and spells, and a couple of just random but interesting feats such as one that lets you turn into a wolf with a special skin and beer. Some of these seem a little overpowered.

Chapter 4 is lunar-associated gods. There are the obvious (Artemis) and some that are real but obscure (Nanna).

Chapter 5 is magic items. This is a very short chapter, mostly stating the prices for placing the spells in Chapter 6 into magic item form.

Chapter 6 is spells. These spells generally deal with a few issues: moon hit points (from the new templates), moonlight, the scent ability, and changing into specific animals. The moon hit point healing spells will only see use if you use that system, and the moonlight spells may have too narrow a function to see much use. However the animal changing spells could replace some of the various morphing spells, and the scent spells are so logical you wonder why the aren?t in the core rules.

Chapter 7 is just two ?racial classes? or levels you can take if you are the correct race (in this case lycanthrope) which pretty much focus on gaining lycanthrope-related bonus feats.

Curse of the Moon is almost a must-have product. It presents lycanthropes in a much more interesting and versatile way and showcases rules and variant rules that are applicable in other situations. If you?re comfortable with lycanthropes as they are presented in the Monster Manual than this product still has spells and feats you may want. If you want some variety, you can?t go wrong.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The art. The rules. The feeling of imagination.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some of the rules may need to be looked at.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Curse of the Moon is a new sourcebook from Sean K Reynolds Games. The zipped file containing the product is almost exactly 3.5 megabytes. It contains a single PDF file, almost a megabyte larger at 4.4 meg. No printer-friendly version is given, either as another PDF or as options to remove the art from the main file.

The PDF weighs in at fifty-five pages. Each of the two covers takes up an entire page, along with a page for the credits and table of contents, a page for the OGL, and a single-page introduction by the author. The PDF is fully bookmarked, and the table of contents is hyperlinked.

The product has quite a bit of artwork. The majority of it is in full color. Only a few pieces are drawn; most of the color art is actually photographs of people, animals, and in a few cases, things. The remainder of the art consists of black-and-white drawings, usually of the deities presented in the book, though a few other pieces are scattered about. Each page has a dark border across the top, complete with text telling you what chapter you?re in.

The Introduction sets the pace for the entire product. In it, author Sean K Reynolds explains that while he likes lycanthropes in general, he doesn?t like the lycanthrope template in Fantasy d20 very much. It doesn?t exactly match the lycanthrope in popular culture, and it is very hard to use as a PC, due to the hit dice and level adjustment. This product is his answer.

The first chapter is largely exploratory. In it, the author goes over basics of what lycanthropy is, and discusses changes that can be made to make the lycanthrope more playable, and more like what we?ve seen in contemporary depictions. A large number of changes are discussed here, along with the reasoning for why they?re good changes to make. While it may seem like this chapter is one long ?Behind the Curtain? section for the rest of the book, a number of other options are given here. Several variants are presented, such as a lesser scent quality, how to stop an infected individual from transforming with silver, or how lycanthropy manifests on the Astral Plane. In short, the first chapter showcases a wide variety of options, most of which can be easily adapted into your d20 game.

Chapter two takes a more concrete orientation. This chapter presents three new lycanthrope templates, meant to replace (though they could supplement) the standard Fantasy d20 lycanthrope template. The first of these is the Simple Lycanthrope template. This template adds no hit dice, and has a Level Adjustment of +1. There?s also a template for the Cursed Lycanthrope, a person who always involuntarily becomes a hybrid-form lycanthrope under the moon, and a Fey Lycanthrope template.

Chapter three gives us almost three dozen new lycanthropic feats. Here, the book?s versatility is shown. While several of the feats here are meant to supplement the new templates from the previous chapter (giving them benefits that the standard Fantasy d20 lycanthrope already has), the majority of these new feats add new and interesting powers for any lycanthrope, regardless of whatever template they?re built with. Moonflame Breath, for example, gives you a fiery breath weapon that?s also treated as being silver.

Chapter four gives half-a-dozen moon-themed deities. Four of these are real-world gods, while the two new deities are fictitious. Each entry gives the deity?s name (and nicknames, if any), symbol, alignment, portfolio, domains, and favored weapon, along with several paragraphs of description.

Chapter five is notably short, giving only two pages to new magic items. The first page simply covers minor changes integrating new and existing materials (such as scroll costs for new spells in the next chapter), and the second page presents five new wondrous items.

Chapter six showcases over twenty new lycanthropic-themed spells. The chapter opens with spell lists for each of the core classes with the new spells, along with the Moon domain for clerics. The spells here are quite innovative; some deal with the specific mechanics of the new template presented, but many, such as scentblock or the very creative moonlight to sunlight spell, are excellent additions to any Fantasy d20 game.

Appendix 1 gives us the three-level Lycanthrope racial class, based on the Simple and Fey Lycanthrope templates. A variant racial class is given for spellcasters, so they don?t lose too much power. Interestingly, the Lycanthrope Spellcaster racial class adds ?1/2 level in existing class? to the creature?s spellcaster level. However, the rules for gaining one-half of a caster level aren?t here, with the product instead referring you to the Sean K Reynolds Games website. Appendix 2 is a half-page discussing the effects of nine specific PHB spells on lycanthropes.

Altogether, if you want to play a lycanthrope PC without having to deal with a huge Effective Character Level increase, then Curse of the Moon is an absolute must. If you don?t mind the ECL, or otherwise want something to spice up the were-creatures in your campaign, then this product is still extremely useful, but not quite to the same degree. Curse of the Moon gives you new feats, spells, variants, and more for lycanthropes of any stripe, but it?s when you use the new lycanthrope presented in the book that the product truly shines. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: This product not only provided a wealth of new options for lycanthropes, but reasonably presented the reasons for many of the changes it made. Most of the new options the book gives are useful whether you use its new lycanthrope templates or not.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: It was mildly frustrating that the book discussed (albeit very briefly) gaining "1/2 caster level" for the Lycanthrope Spellcaster racial class without then discussing what that meant. Even though it said where to go for more on that, it should have included that material in the book. Also, having no printer-friendly version of this book will hurt somewhat if you want to print large sections of it out.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>