Wereshark [Ravenloft]

Fishermen dread sharks, and they dread the wereshark more. It is a ravenous blend of shark with a human or, worse, a sahuagin, devouring good catches and better men alike. Its human shape is a huge, muscled brute, and transformed it becomes a great white shark. It is vicious in humanoid form and more so as a shark. Survivors of its attacks are often maimed or crippled as humans, though their shark shape shows no sign of it.

A wereshark opens by gliding beneath its targets to strike at their legs, an ambush that is nearly impossible to guard against. If that sneak attack hits by more than 5 over the number it needed, the shark engulfs the victim. Inside, the victim takes 15 damage each round unless it can cut its way out, which requires a sharp-edged weapon and dealing enough damage to bring the wereshark to half the hit points it had when it swallowed him. Each round the victim's attacks suffer a growing penalty: -1 in round one, then -2, and onward until freedom or death.

If swallowing fails, it switches to pass-by attacks, though it keeps trying to swallow until that clearly will not work, since passes expose it to needless harm. If swimmers defend against pass-bys too, it settles for gnawing as it goes by. A pack of common sharks usually attacks with it, and in shark-thick waters blood can summon frenzied swarms. Only silver or enchanted weapons affect it; others glance off or cut skin that heals instantly.

Human weresharks are solitary, form no societies, and only occasionally work with each other or with sahuagin, being self-serving individualists. Sahuagin weresharks are different: they work closely with ordinary sahuagin, and becoming one is a high honor. Every wereshark can speak to and partly control normal sharks (35%).

Human weresharks are extremely rare, since few humans get on well with sharks. They claim a wreck or cave and will die before giving it up, plundering it for personal gain. In human form they breathe water for one hour, then take 1d10 per round until they drown, surface for air or become sharks.

Sahuagin weresharks are far more common, serving as noble bodyguards or as masters of the sharks that ring a sahuagin city. Adult sahuagin may volunteer for the trials that create them; roughly 10% survive and are raised above most of their kin. Any wereshark returns to human or sahuagin form within two rounds of death.