Dungeons and Dragons lore : Wererat

hello everybody its AJ back again with the TMZ channel the mighty glue stick and more on our we're creature series and today I'm going to be covering as promised my favorite weird creature the where Rhett I've used we rats before and to great effect and they were most perplexing and mysterious and scary to the player characters until they really figured out what was going on and then it was just a big slaughter really but so how you use where rats is quite different from how you would use a werewolf in your game so I'll go over the basic stats get that other way and then we'll talk about how you use where rats and what their what their society and ecology is like so there are medium humanoid shape changer lawful evil and the lawful evil is that they they're definitely evil but they follow their own strict hierarchy and rules and they organize themselves so they have a disposition much like Devils they have an up class of twelve head points 33 they've got a speed of 30 feet they're very adept at climbing as well although it's not really reflected here but as either made if you've ever seen rats moving around they can climb up feeling sheer surfaces quite easily while in rat form so give them an equal speed whilst climbing in as a rat they're got plus two to perception plus four to this stealth the strength is 10 they've got a high dexterity of 15 Constitution is 12 their intelligence wisdom and charisma eleven ten and eight around human level they are able to see in rat form in darkness out to sixty feet and their passive perception is twelve they can speak common and whatever other languages are common to the area they can't speak while they're in the form of a rat although as a half rate hybrid they can they have damage immunities which are common to all of the we're we're creatures the lycanthropes which is bludgeoning piercing and slash damage from non magic weapons that aren't SIL wood does no damage not a bit or you could rule that they regenerate it from it instantly the our shape changes and they can use that polymorph into a rat hybrid form or a giant rat form or back into its true form whenever they like they don't transform their equipment as well so yeah and they revert to their true human form if they're killed they have a keen sense of smell which they use their wisdom perception modifier for and they have advantage when if they use a perception skill which is related to this smell and in human or hybrid form they attack twice and one of those attacks may be a bite but typically they'll use a short sword or a hand crossbow something which is easily able to be dragged with them around tight confines of their suity homes so with a short sword that would plus water hit and do five points of piercing damage and a hand crossbow plus water hurts range 30 or 120 feet and it does five points apiece and damage and their bite which is the way that they the only way that they can transform others into where it's by transmitting the lycanthropy virus is plus water hit and does four points of piercing damage to the target they can only bite in rat or hybrid form and if the target is a humanoid it must succeed on a DC 11 Constitution serving through it or be cursed with we read lycanthropy now somebody asked me by humanoid do you mean any humanoid and the answer is yes so that can include giants that can include mind flares that can include basically any creature which is a humanoid which is alive although it doesn't technically specify that it must be alive so perhaps you could have a where zombie who knows it's up to you really but they leave it fairly open to just humanoids but yeah that can include giants I would say that most Giants do have a quick way of dealing with this virus and would have remove curses available to them Hill Giants which are more savage and sort of ignored by their present probably not so they're most likely encounter that you'll have with her a lycanthrope giant would be a hill giant a hill giant where we're at would be kind of hilarious okay on to the ecology of the way erect so they operate as an an organized society much like a Thieves Guild they prefer to have numbers on this side they although they do operate alone a lot of the time and they do prefer not to get into great combat with anybody they always prefer to have things weighed in their favor they know that they're one of the weakest of the we're creatures but they also know that all they need to do is get one bite in or to confuse and twist and torment their attackers and conceal their their actual existence and they will thrive and this is what they do they generally head to centers of civilization so they'll go to a major city or somesuch they will make their way down into the sewers or set up a network of safe houses such as ethics or abandoned buildings old crates and warehouses that they've stacked up in a consignment that they're paid for but nobody ever picks up that sort of thing and they will make these safe houses or also trash heaps and and so lumpy yards with big heaps of scrap timber or something like that or they'll set themselves up inside a dam or even hollow out a network of old rotten trees but typically they'll conceal themselves and they'll make sure that they stay out of the way then they go about their duty work which is larceny theft greed avarice nests they are sneaky they're underhanded and they have a strict sort of hierarchy amongst themselves and they operate as I said much like Thieves Guild one of the ways that I've used them in the campaign and feel free to steal this for yourself is what they did was nobody was aware in the town that they were actually where rats and a huge network underneath their sewer system what they thought was going on was that they would just walk to a particular point in town each day and a gold coin was sitting on the ground waiting for them with no strings attached and various individuals and various stages of all parts of society were had these regular pickup points where they would just walk along and there's a gold coin on the ground every single time they went round there at the scheduled time there would be and it was usually close by to a sewer grate or a gutter outlet or something like that where the rear rats could deposit this without being seen because sometimes the interest town folk would wonder where this gold was coming from and they'll try and find it but each time they were thwarted by some distraction going on which they turned to look at and in that short space of time the where it has ducked up put down the coin and then disappeared again or found some ingenious way of depositing it there with a fishing rod in a in a detachable coin or somesuch so the town's folk become accustomed to this extra wealth this extra pocket money of having this extra gold coin and it becomes precious to them and they never ask any questions until one day the gold coin is not there there's a note and the note gives them a very specific instruction of something to do that may not necessarily be a bad thing I mean it could just be a minor thing like stand in the middle of the street and don't let anybody pass between this hour and this hour keep this door unlocked make sure that the supervisor of this group of children is distracted at reception by you trying to sell them something or some such and what they do is they organize the town's folk to actually commit a crime for them or to make it so easy for them that they just walk on in snatch a child of some important official that they can blackmail or break into a vault or assassinate someone or gather information on anything they choose walk in and check the log books whatever go into the the coach masters office and find out whoever is arrived or is departing and what time in the manifesto you know anything like that and they have basically free reign to walk around because they've infiltrated the town and they have a network of basically double agents working for them unaware of who they're actually working for so that's classic sort of wear out behavior ultimate concealment manipulation and then control and greed is greed and in spreading their their disease there's all part of it they are very selective about who they choose to become a wedge they won't bite you at random unless they're desperate and if they're doing that and they don't intend to turn you into wear out then they will be plating to kill you not necessarily to let you leave typically they will bite you in the they will take you as a hostage and you'll be terrified you'll be strapped to a plethora pole or some such thing they will bite you and make sure that you turn and if you haven't turned immediately then they'll keep on biting you and healing you and biting you and healing you until they absolutely sure that you've failed you're saving through and the lycanthropy has taken hold and once that actually happens then you are essentially indoctrinated into their clan and they let the virus they won't let you add you of this site and you're still very much under knee control and very much a victim until the virus starts to work its way on your personality and the red light trades and your first transformation and you lose all hope of ever being anything other than a cursed creature we're red and then they start to build themselves up and tell themselves that they are actually blessed this curse is in fact a boon they have a new world the world underground and everything that is built above it is just theirs for the taking they are they are entitled they are a necessary part of society they are chosen and they puff up their egos so that they justify doing whatever they do and they start to relish this this superiority they have that nobody knows that they're there that they can just do this whenever they want that people are so greedy and stupid that they would do whatever they want them to just because they're putting some stolen coin on the ground for them or they've blackmailed them and these humans are so weak they just cave if you threaten their loved ones so where it's they they do have listed here a short sword in a hand crossbow and then bite they prefer to use their rat form for stealthily moving around now it is a very large rat there's a giant rat form but they do typically use it to sneak around without being seen because they might look like out of the corner of your eye a stray dog if they're not doing anything particularly threatening a lot of people will just ignore a giant rat because it very much does look like some sort of a dog and very clever where rats will actually breed giant rats themselves passive possibly even tame them possibly even introduce them into the culture as a food item possibly introduce them as pets or guard animals so that they're ubiquitous so that there's giant rats everywhere people just take them for granted oh you've got bin bio giant red that's unusual well we'll have to put it down what was that down the side le Oh spun to giant rats no matter their common so where rats tend to accumulate other rodents they tend to hang out with trained rats or packs of wild rats or you know feral rats are at their beck and call you could say that it's part of that disease that rats are drawn to them but typically they just operate in the same environment as rats so they just cohabitate and quite happy with each other they also have the capacity of since they retain their reason they're not overly aggressive such as the werewolves or where boars they retain the reason and they're very clever and they've got a lot of time on their hands to learn skills they're quite capable of breaking into an alchemists lab stealing his formulas working it out for themselves training and studying and learning how to create poisons alchemical items that sort of thing wondrous items even they've got a lot of time to go and steal magical items they've got a lot of time to steal bits and pieces from blacksmith spikes and rods and line and wire and rope and that sort of thing so then network of sewers will be at least at least rigged with trip wires that will ring bells that will let you let them know that somebody is coming somebody is walking uninvited into their lair and then they will either flee make themselves very scarce fill their lair with rats and possibly even starved rats that are ready to do attack anybody comes in which may throw you off your trail they may throw have some other captive creature such as some rather sniveling and pathetic kobolds that they've captured and kept fed that they release into the sewers that come running out and applying panic and you would never ask a question such as Oh perhaps it's something else it's not just these kobolds these desperate and and and starving kobolds who are babbling something about monsters and you may not even know that the real words we arrested were there you might happen to catch a where rat just out of random sheer chance you've stumbled across one and they weren't expecting you to be there and that unveils the whole the tangled weave of secrecy that they have so that they all of a sudden you're the target of an entire group of we're rats who are trying to silence you because they don't want to be discovered and yeah they so they set up poison traps and things like that al chemical agents possibly sleep agents that would knock you out and then you'd be taken and deposited somewhere far away wondering what the hell happened to you and perhaps these are tough to wear red fur that's got caught in your belt buckle that you didn't notice until afterwards that will lead you back onto that trail but it should be mysterious that the confrontation with the rear rats is probably going to happen after a significant period of mystery or it's going to get very intense very fast and all of a sudden you're gonna think dear God there were rats here all the time and we had no idea and it may even be a big big reveal we think we're some sort of information you stub across information that there's we're it's under every city on the sort Coast or some such thing or there's there's we're eight operating in the city of doors and sigil on the inner ring that we were unaware of that have been running things for a long time that sort of thing yeah so we're it's good fun great for city and urban plots and intrigues they're a perfect monster for throwing at low level characters and when you're just starting out and they need to get to know a lot of the NPC's in a city or where canisters or that sort of thing and yeah you should use them all the time and because it's great to get that sort of ninjas we're rats man this place is just infested thanks listening everybody next video uh pursued

Channel: AJ Pickett

Views: 49,679

Keywords: RPG's, Role Playing Game, Dungeon Mastery, lycanthrope, disease, sewer, urban, monster, ecology, rat, werecreature, wererat, ratmen, dire rat, giant, giant rat, D&D 5E, AJ Pickett, TMG, The Mighty Gluestick, creature, dungeons and dragons, role playing games, fantasy

Id: 22tf0mHvIao

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2016