Giant Werebear [Lycanthrope]

A polarwere is a frost giant born with the ability to turn into a giant polar bear. In its giant shape it looks like an unusually wide-shouldered, shaggy frost giant, though it seldom bothers with that form because frost giant tribes are clannish and cold toward outsiders. As a bear it measures 10 feet high at the shoulder and rears to 20 feet. Where its werebear cousins are good-hearted, the polarwere is bitter and self-centered, caring only about the next meal and somewhere warm to sleep.

Polarweres dislike fighting and seldom start trouble; when they do battle, it is usually for food and almost always as a bear. If one fights as a giant, it uses typical frost giant gear, thrown boulders and battle-axes. The bear attacks with two claw swipes and a bite. Any Medium or smaller creature struck by a claw must pass a Dexterity check or fall prone. Any Medium or smaller creature bitten must make a Dexterity check at -2 or be caught in the jaws, taking 3d10 crushing damage each round from then on, and its clothing and gear must save vs. crushing blow.

Its affliction spreads only to frost giants, who catch it at the normal 1% per point of damage; other victims are safe. In bear form only, it ignores normal weapons and can be hurt only by silver or weapons of +1 or better. It cannot call bears to its side as smaller werebears do, but it heals at three times the human rate and is immune to every kind of cold. A slain polarwere reverts to bear form.

Though some have spent years living alongside frost giant tribes, most polarweres are loners. They seek out enormous caves deep in polar mountains, well away even from frost giant holds, and are most content when the only other creatures in sight are about to become dinner. Mating is a chance affair that produces a single cub. The mother raises it only until it can survive alone, then it wanders off or she drives it away.

A party meeting a polarwere cannot predict the outcome. Much depends on how hungry the bear is and how tasty the adventurers look, though it usually leaves alone anyone who does not provoke it. Its lair is another matter: intruders caught inside or close by may be chased for miles across the ice.

Nothing preys on a polarwere. Frost giants are its only natural enemy, since they prize its massive pelt, and a starving polarwere will eat a frost giant in turn. Feeding a 21-foot bear strips a region bare, so its hunting grounds are even emptier than the surrounding arctic and cover a radius of many miles; patrolling one can take the bear several days.