How Do You Kill a Werewolf?

We all know that werewolves and other were-s are susceptible to silver.  Your game rules may state that they cannot be harmed by any means other than silver weapons, or perhaps magical weapons.  I always hated this.

In that much earlier game, certain creatures could not be affected by weapons that were not magical or, in case of werewolves, not silver.  So - a catapult stone could hit them full in the face and nothing?  OK, later on they added a rule that monsters of a certain power level (number of dice) were effectively magic weapons.  I hated this more.  If a creature is supposed to be immune to “mundane” magic - what’s more mundane than a troll’s fist?

I ran several variants, none of which I really liked.  One was that if your bonus to damage was equal to what the magic weapon was supposed to have been, then you too could hit the creature.  After all, isn’t that effectively what the high level monster rule was supposed to be saying?  So what did I finally decide?

In Legend Quest - werewolves are really tough to kill.  Maxed out they are roughly 150% of humans, but in reality they take about twice the damage that a human warrior can.  To me, double is pretty tough.  But if you hit them with silver weapons, then they take more damage.  So a werewolf can withstand double what a soldier can, unless its silver, which brings him down to a level pretty much on-par with that human soldier.  I like the way that works.

But I have been messing around with an optional rule.  It is clearly stated in the rule book that chopping a werewolf or vampire to little bits is effectively beheading them and beheading pretty much kills anything in the game.  But LQ is often referred to as being “gritty”, because we have bleeding rules and other things that make it tougher to be insanely heroic in goofy situations.  As a means of granting the werewolves a touch more power, I do not apply the bleeding rules to werewolves, unless a silver (or otherwise non-mundane) weapon was used.  So you could chop a werewolf to bits with a steel sword, but you would have to work at it.  If you push a werewolf to unconsciousness (Life’s Blood = 0), but then walk away assuming it will bleed to death like every other living creature, it won’t.  It may take a bit of time, but it will eventually pull itself together (figuratively, not literally) and get out of there.  Even if you do a coup de grace and spear it through the chest with a mundane weapon - it will survive.  It won’t be happy about it, but it should survive.

I think our modern concept of bullets makes it easier to see a werewolf surviving “deadly damage”.  The idea of a bullet passing through a werewolf and not killing it could make sense.  But when facing battle axes and tridents, it just doesn’t make as much sense.

One thing I do think you have to consider even if you stand by the no damage if not magical rule is knock back.  Does your game have knock back rules?  They’re optional in LQ (a soon to be released optional rule).  So imagine that that catapult stone hits the werewolf in the face.  It may not crush its skull, but it will knock it back with the appropriate amount of force.  The wolfman may be able to stand up, dust himself off and keep going, but he’s going to know he was hit.

Having special and specific ways to kill certain creatures can be great fun, but there is a point at which it gets overwhelming for GMs and players.  If every different magical creature is allergic to a different substance, how many weapons do the adventurers need to carry?  I like this “short-cut” of using silver to kill a werewolf because it can still be done the other way, but silver makes it easier.  That feels like the right balance.