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[Jesterdwarf]

Most of the time I ignored werebeasts, not bothering with them besides killing and\or throwing them into magma. Recently I decided to actually try and make some interesting stuff - werebeast militia, traps, the usual.
Then I realised that I have no idea how werebeasts work, so to the wiki I went. After reading about werecreatures I still have some questions.
1. It is said that werecreature may assume form of any mammal or reptile. How exactly is decided if animal is eligible to be, er, 'curseable', I guess? For example, bats are considered vermin, but there are giant bats, and even description explicity says they are mammals. Is a werebat possible to create?
2. How exactly is created new hybrid form of werecreature? Humanoid body, but covered in scales\fur and with a head of an animal? What about size or hybrid form? Wereelephant must be bigger than weredeer.
3. If werecreature gets wings in it's hybrid form, will it get the ability to fly?
4. Wiki mentions that when you become a werebeast, you get bonuses to strength and agility. Exactly how big are these bonuses and do you get them permanently or only for a duration of your transformation?
5. Let's say we have a werecrocodile that is weak to bronze. Then it infects someone else with werecurse. Will the new werebeast gain weakness to bronze, or his weakness will be generated independently? How exactly does this weakness work?
6. IIRC in Adv mode you learn werebeast's weakness by talking to people. How do you learn about it in Fortress mode? Answer is probably 'by repeatedly impaling it on spikes made of different materials', but maybe there is less time-consuming way?

I'm sorry if these questiions were already answered somewhere else, but I didn't find anything.

[PatrikLundell]

1. Presumably (I'm guessing) the base creature has to be considered an animal (not vermin) and only base forms are eligible (i.e. not giant forms, luckily: a giant were mammoth). In addition to this, I strongly suspect that marine only and cavern creatures are excluded.
2. Were creatures are essentially the animals, i.e. no humanoid features are blended in. I believe the size is the average of the source creature and the were creature, so a were deer based on a human is a little larger than one based on a dwarf.
3. They should be, provided the base creature can fly (cave dragons have useless wings, as an example of non flying winged creatures: I'd consider it draconian rather than reptilian as well (6 limbs)). They probably would if you provided a modded creature and were lucky enough to get a deity to use that creature as the curse base.
4. The bonuses are for the were form. I don't know about their magnitude.
5. I think the weakness is part of the curse, and thus transferred with it. As far as I understand the weakness is a factor only for adventure were players, but can be ignored otherwise.
6. You don't bother.

[Fleeting Frames]

Do note that when your two military werebeasts see each other as they transform back they'll kill each other, causing loyalty cascade. Suggested solutions have included distant individual burrowed drink stockpiles, but I don't know if anybody has tested that.

2. It's typically something like "an ass twisted into a humanoid form". They can wield weapons, and possibly keep hold of armour, given they're small enough (there's tale of fort utilizing weregophers, iirc). Looking in 43.05 world's raws with dfhack, werebeast species have set size in raws, that ranges from 80k to up to 9 million in case of weremammoths. An item created by werebeast in werebeast form (ex. in strange mood) will be sized for that werebeast species, not the original species.

4. Should be doubled physical stats, much like the vampire, but without so many awesome tags (husk them to get the no-exert tags and the like). But the biggest benefit of a werebeast is their regeneration; allowing them to survive repeated limb loss (which you can then reanimate) and not-quite-as-fatal-syndromes. They also don't need tavern to drink booze.

[bloop_bleep]

1. Presumably (I'm guessing) the base creature has to be considered an animal (not vermin) and only base forms are eligible (i.e. not giant forms, luckily: a giant were mammoth). In addition to this, I strongly suspect that marine only and cavern creatures are excluded.

In fact, I think werebeasts can only transform into [MUNDANE] creatures -- I've never seen were-unicorns and the like.

[thatroleplayerGal]

1. Presumably (I'm guessing) the base creature has to be considered an animal (not vermin) and only base forms are eligible (i.e. not giant forms, luckily: a giant were mammoth). In addition to this, I strongly suspect that marine only and cavern creatures are excluded.

In fact, I think werebeasts can only transform into [MUNDANE] creatures -- I've never seen were-unicorns and the like.

Werebeasts actually have their own list of eligible animals hidden within the coding. They don't extract anything from any editable RAWs. That's why there are "wereapes" when "ape" isn't a creature in Dwarf Fortress, and similarly "werechameleons" when there are no chameleons.

Most of the time I ignored werebeasts, not bothering with them besides killing and\or throwing them into magma. Recently I decided to actually try and make some interesting stuff - werebeast militia, traps, the usual.
Then I realised that I have no idea how werebeasts work, so to the wiki I went. After reading about werecreatures I still have some questions.
1. It is said that werecreature may assume form of any mammal or reptile. How exactly is decided if animal is eligible to be, er, 'curseable', I guess? For example, bats are considered vermin, but there are giant bats, and even description explicity says they are mammals. Is a werebat possible to create?
2. How exactly is created new hybrid form of werecreature? Humanoid body, but covered in scales\fur and with a head of an animal? What about size or hybrid form? Wereelephant must be bigger than weredeer.
3. If werecreature gets wings in it's hybrid form, will it get the ability to fly?
4. Wiki mentions that when you become a werebeast, you get bonuses to strength and agility. Exactly how big are these bonuses and do you get them permanently or only for a duration of your transformation?
5. Let's say we have a werecrocodile that is weak to bronze. Then it infects someone else with werecurse. Will the new werebeast gain weakness to bronze, or his weakness will be generated independently? How exactly does this weakness work?
6. IIRC in Adv mode you learn werebeast's weakness by talking to people. How do you learn about it in Fortress mode? Answer is probably 'by repeatedly impaling it on spikes made of different materials', but maybe there is less time-consuming way?

I'm sorry if these questiions were already answered somewhere else, but I didn't find anything.

1. Already answered above. Werebeasts don't borrow raws from regular animals, but instead have their own list of werebeast creatures with werebeast-specific raws.
2. "Twisted into humanoid form." So basically, think of more modern depictions of lycanthropy, such as werewolves with wolf-like heads. Size varies on creature, but all werebeasts have a minimum size of 80,000.
3. There are no flying werebeasts. Lot of rodents, reptiles, canines, and assorted (elephant, mammoth, ape, etc), but no avians.
4. The boost is only available in werebeast form, and it doubles all your stats. However, due to the size increase of werebeasts, the double in strength is more effective than that of vampirism.
5. The new werebeast will gain weakness to bronze. The weakness is strain-specific. However, keep in mind there can be two different strains of werecrocodile, each made by a different god (or sometimes even the same god) and thus with a different weakness for each. Each werecrocodile will spread their respective strain, however, and thus their own weakness and not the other strain's.
6. Honestly, werebeasts are a lot less dangerous in fortress mode so their weakness is irrelevant. You can just atom-smash the thing if you want it dead, or you can use it to create a werebeast militia.

[Nolimit]

In one of my current forts I made the werebison converter. But using it on your own citizens is such a pain in the ass. It requires a lot of micromanagement, barrows, overwatching infected dwarves all the time and keeping track of the date. So I used it on more useless part of the fort - visitors. I got a werecreature by making wild troll killing random visitor on the arena (to make him a historical figure), then releasing him into the temple with statues (worked on the first try for me, but could also be cursed with vampirism after topping the statue). Troll then can be easily recaptured by a cage trap while in his normal form. Then I built a small room full off cage traps and with a pit above it. Using zones placed tavern on top of the traps. When first visitor came in to check out new tavern I locked the door behind him, then closed the bridge and waited for the full moon. When troll transformed, I dropped him into the pit. As soon as visitor passed out, he was trapped in a cage, and when troll transformed back, he also got trapped. It is better to use one visitor at the time, this way i got about 6-8 werebisons right now. I haven't used them yet, and it would require some good timing and making siege wait for the next full moon. I probably just gonna create another breed of werebeasts and use them on the arena against each other.

6. Honestly, werebeasts are a lot less dangerous in fortress mode so their weakness is irrelevant. You can just atom-smash the thing if you want it dead, or you can use it to create a werebeast militia.

Small correction: not all of werebeasts can be atom-smashed because of their size (bridges don’t work under my werebisons), but most of the time they are still easy targets for armored militia.

[Jesterdwarf]

Thanks for the answers everyone!

Werebeasts actually have their own list of eligible animals hidden within the coding. They don't extract anything from any editable RAWs. That's why there are "wereapes" when "ape" isn't a creature in Dwarf Fortress, and similarly "werechameleons" when there are no chameleons.

Argh, that's unfortunate. But somewhat predictable.
As for flying werebeasts... Well, if I correctly understand how flying in DF works, creature must have tag [FLIER] on top of having wings. So the question was more about 'does transformation transfer relevant tags from parent creature to hybrid form'. But, seeing that werebeast will always have humanoid (with exactly 2 arms and 2 legs, I suppose) form, it is irrelevant.
Bonuses lasting only while creature is transformed is less than optimal.
I know that werebeast's weakness is a non-issue in Fortress mode, as there are numerous ways to dispose of werebeasts without much trouble. But, I just wanted to know exactly how it works in case it affects newly-made weredwarves too. After all, it would be just embarassing to make a squad of werelizards and then lose it in the first fight just because they all happen to be weak to copper. If weakness does affect non-player werebeasts, that is.
I think I'll run some tests, just to see how different from eachother in bodyform and size are werebeasts.

Also, totally unrelated question: do dwarven vampires still suffer from alcohol withdrawal?

[Fleeting Frames]

Yes, but it can be fulfilled via tavern 'poisoners'/performers. Luckily, overconsumption of alcohol can't drown a vampire.

[thatroleplayerGal]

If weakness does affect non-player werebeasts, that is.

Yes, it does. A whole squad of werebeasts are pretty much unstoppable against ordinary sieges (even ones wielding your weakness), however, and forgotten beasts don't wield weapons, so you're pretty much in the clear.

[MrLurkety]

Wait, werecreatures have weaknesses? I didn't know that.

[bloop_bleep]

Yes. I didn't know that either -- I looked in the DF wiki, and it just makes one vague, passing reference to weaknesses. Someone should fix that.