College of Wolves

The Lupicinus is a wolf charmer in tribes dedicating to communing with other canines. The Lupicinus is an ambassador to canines of all types and can howl, yip, bark and growl in their language. Some Lupicinus act as go-betweens for tribes that deal with werewolves; others are bards of sorts, acting as messengers, orators, and verbal historians.

Speak With Canines

When you join the College of Wolves, you can converse with any canine-like being. canines can understand your speech, and you gain the ability to decipher their noises and motions. Most canines lack the intelligence to convey or understand sophisticated concepts, but a friendly canine could relay what it has seen or heard in the recent past. This ability doesn’t grant you any special friendship with canines, though you can combine this ability with gifts to curry favor with them as you would with any nonplayer character. Canines include the following: arcanaloth, barghest, blink dog, death dog, glabrezu, hell hound, hound archon, lycan, mastiff, shadow mastiff, werewolf, wild dog, winter wolf, wolf, yeth hound. The DM may include other canines at their discretion.

Call the Pack

At 3rd level, you can call canines to fight on your behalf, using your attunement to the natural world to convince them to aid you. The DM chooses canines appropriate to the terrain to come to your aid from among those that could hear you and that are within 1 mile of you, in one of the following groups:

• One beast of challenge rating 2 or lower
• Two beasts of challenge rating 1 or lower
• Four beasts of challenge rating 1/2 or lower
• Eight beasts of challenge rating 1/4 or lower

These canines approach you from their current location, and will fight alongside you, attacking any creatures that are hostile to you. They are friendly to you and your comrades, and you roll initiative for the called canines as a group, which takes its own turns. The DM has the creatures’ statistics. After 1 hour, these canines return to their previous location. Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again in the same general area for 24 hours, since the same canines will not repeatedly heed your call.

Alpha Presence

At 6th level, you establish dominance over other canines. As a bonus action, you cast command against a canine, without expending a spell slot, and you appear more powerful for 1 minute or until your concentration ends (as if you were concentrating on a spell). During this time, you can cast command on any canine as a bonus action on each of your turns, without expending a spell slot. Any canine charmed by you automatically fails its saving throw against the command you cast with this feature. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Release the Hounds

At 14th level, you call other canines to follow you. When a canine within 60 feet of you adds one of your Bardic Inspiration dice to its ability check, attack roll, or saving throw and the roll succeeds, you can use your reaction to gain 5 temporary hit points for each canine (up to a maximum number of canines equal to your constitution modifier). Until the Bardic Inspiration ends, the chosen canines can use the following benefit once on each of their turns: when the canine hits a target with an attack roll and deals damage to it, the canine can roll a d6 and gain a bonus to the damage equal to the number rolled. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.