Weretiger [Lycanthrope]

Weretigers are humans, mostly women, who can take tiger shapes, and they feel a deep bond with every kind of cat. As humans they are tall, sleek, powerful and very agile, with husky voices and a rolling r.

The hybrid is about a quarter larger than the human, covered in striped hide, with a 3-foot tail, feline legs that walk on the toes, and claws for nails. A tiger's muzzle, nose, ears and fangs sit on a head whose eyes and outline remain human, and long hair remains. With a good disguise it can fool distant observers. The third shape is a full-grown tiger with nothing human left.

In either tiger shape a weretiger punches, rakes and bites. Its punches hit for 1-4 and its raking claws for 2-5. The jaws are worst, able to tear a body apart or crush a throat, but it usually bites only as a full tiger.

In human form it is skilled with many weapons and is also a dangerous unarmed fighter, keeping its heavy punch along with keen smell and night vision.

Weretigers know the languages of all cats. Ordinary felines, great cats included, have a 75% chance to be friendly, and feline monsters a 25% chance. Even so, only 5% travel with true tigers.

Weretigresses outnumber males five to one. They live alone or in small prides, never marry, and take favored mates who may be human or tiger. Litters are one or two cubs born in hybrid shape, like furry babies with tails. Within days they crawl, by a month they walk, and inside a year they hunt, sized like a human child three times their age. At six they reach adolescence and can turn fully human; at 12 they gain the full tiger shape, the sign of adulthood. A male's child by a tigress or a human woman looks like its mother until adolescence, when the changes start.

Weretigers eat everything and claim a wild range of 1d4+6 (7-10) square miles. Homes are neat cabins near human villages, with herb and vegetable plots, poultry and many cats. They avoid cities, where their nature would be hard to hide, and any found there are usually one or two in human form on some errand, mission, revel or shopping trip. Self-assured, they seldom attack unless provoked.

Treasure comes from past fees, adventuring loot or the leftovers of defeated foes. They love gems and often hide a small stash near home.

No lycanthrope adapts better. Weretigers are as comfortable among humans as among cats or monsters.