1) "Evil, strong, dumb" is not a niche our race selection is having trouble filling. It's a pretty good bet that given the existence of orcs, minotaurs, duergar, and fire giants, we're looking in other directions.

2) As proposed, you're suggesting a race with unprecedented power from inherent and other natural abilities- damage resistance, combat inherents, enhanced dodge/etc., more attacks, etc. The drawbacks dealing with gear and weapons are pretty minimal- you're most similar to a shifter who retains a full host of class abilities like Bash. Being forced into changing into a killing machine is not a real drawback, and the vulnerability to a fairly rare weapon material like silver is not a big problem for a high-CON (i.e. not fragile) form with enhanced physical defenses. 250 XP is a non-factor.

3) I don't see this as a 'race' (they aren't born that way) or a 'class' (it's not an occupation). It's most similar to a disease- one that has no real precedence in CF lore/history. It's also fairly overdone- there's any number of werewolf movies, books, roleplaying games, etc out there. I'm not sure how much ground we could break there, and it would carry too much baggage ("It says here on werewolf.com that purple is a disfavored boot color!") that I wouldn't want to have to design around.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com