Werecrocodile [Lycanthrope]

As humans, werecrocodiles are tall and lean with pinched, sharp faces, long noses and chins, and an obvious overbite. As crocodiles they are enormous, long and immensely strong. They speak the common tongue, can talk to crocodiles at will, and those from a certain prime world also speak the language of an old desert kingdom.

They like to start a fight looking human and harmless, and they are notorious for feigning grief to draw sympathetic strangers near. Once the victim is close, they change and strike with a 2d6 bite and a 1d8 tail lash. Their strength equals an 18 Strength, and a favorite trick is to seize a foe, haul it deep underwater, then become a crocodile and hold it down until it drowns.

Only the bite spreads the curse: each point of bite damage adds 1% to the odds that the victim transforms when the moon is next full, so 20 points of bites in one encounter means a 20% chance. A werecrocodile can also summon 1d3 crocodiles, which show up in 2d6 rounds and follow every command.

They live in small families led by the mother, breed only with their own kind, and bear live young who gain the power to transform at puberty. Homes are mud huts along riverbanks or in swamps, well away from towns, and they gather no treasure or belongings. Typically they hunt as crocodiles and sleep as humans at night. Fiercely territorial, any trespassing human, demihuman or humanoid is attacked, but try to keep their ambush as quiet as possible until it is sprung.

Their maker is a crocodile-headed god of an ancient desert pantheon, and they worship him. A werecrocodile may become a cleric of his, limited to 5th level, or a specialty priest with no level limit; either kind adds 1d4 hit points for each priest level.

Apart from their lycanthropy, werecrocodiles are biologically human. They eat swamp fish and warm-blooded animals, and devour any wererats sharing their marsh. Killing humans gives them no special pleasure, but people simply taste too good to pass up. Only humans hunt them, so they try hard to avoid trouble with large human groups.

Few of the crocodile god's children remain in the old desert kingdom, since the god-kings' servants drove them out five centuries ago, but they flourish in a snake-infested swamp of a neighboring land.