Rat as an Animal Companion

[The DeathKnight]

I am a level 4 ranger and want to have a non-dire rat as an animal companion. My guy would very likely have a tiny companion over, say a medium/small pet. I prefer the role playing aspect over having an optimized character, I was wondering what drawbacks there were to doing this, and whether it is even viable (to the DM's discretion).

[Ashtagon]

Ordinary individual rats basicaly don't have stats in game terms. Just say you have a pet rat, and your animal companion slot is unfilled.

[The DeathKnight]

Ok cool thanks

[AtlasSniperman]

Ordinary individual rats basicaly don't have stats in game terms. Just say you have a pet rat, and your animal companion slot is unfilled.

Unless he's talking about Pathfinder, which I don't know, Rats can be found in Monster Manual 1 on page 278.

I would recommend actually that you swap out your Animal Companion for a Urban Companion from the Cityscape web enhancement (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) it's basically a familiar, which rats are an option for.

[Troacctid]

There are a bunch of benefits to getting a rat with the Urban Companion variant (as opposed to as an animal companion).


It has 3/4 of your hit points, rather than the standard HP total for a rat (AKA only a single hit point).
It gives you the Alertness feat and a +2 bonus to Fortitude saves as long as it's within arm's reach.
You can talk to it, and it's intelligent, so you don't need to fiddle around with Handle Animal tricks, you can just tell it what to do.
It can talk to other rodents.
At 7th level, you can also talk to all rodents.


So yeah, it's definitely viable. Rats are one of the best standard familiars, after all. Just don't expect it to play the same role that a beatstick animal companion would.

[The DeathKnight]

Unless he's talking about Pathfinder, which I don't know, Rats can be found in Monster Manual 1 on page 278.

I would recommend actually that you swap out your Animal Companion for a Urban Companion from the Cityscape web enhancement (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) it's basically a familiar, which rats are an option for.

AH wow, this is exactly what i was looking for.

So many books out there, i didn't even know where to start.:smalltongue: