Rats!

[thatwolfguy]

i'm making a dungeon for a group of lvl 1 characters and i wanted to use rats, i looked up the stats in the MM and i noticed the damage was 1d3-4.... how does that work? do they do any damage? i mean a hundred swarming rats at your feet biting and clawing at you and no damage unless one crits? oh wait, even then you only roll the damage twice, so instead of a possible negative 1 dmg, it could be negative 2 dmg!!!!

seriously, what am i missing? how do you use rats in a dungeon?

thanks

dave / that wolf guy

[Matthew]

The Minimum Damage a successful attack can do before Damage Resistance is 1. Rats basically do 1 Point of Damage. If you use Damage Resistance rules for Armour, then they won't do any Damage unless they score a Critical Hit, and even then maybe not.

Minimum Damage

If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of damage.

Minimum Damage

[Iron_Mouse]

You missed the rule that the damage of a successful attack can not be reduced below 1. So, the rats would just deal 1 damage on a hit most of the time.

Edit: Simu...

[talltwin36]

I would also think that individual rats would be different than a rat swarm. Swarms, which have hundreds of creatures in them, are much tougher than individual creatures.

msquared

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

You can also find stats for a Dire Rat or a Rat Swarm in the MM if you want to use that instead of normal rats.

[Ikkitosen]

Bear in mind swarms can be pretty darn dangerous...

[Valairn]

Rat swarms lol. Level 1 mage dies instantly....

[Pegasos989]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/swarm.htm rat swarm does 1d6 points of damage to everyone in the area...

[Fhaolan]

i'm making a dungeon for a group of lvl 1 characters and i wanted to use rats, i looked up the stats in the MM and i noticed the damage was 1d3-4.... how does that work?

Minimum damage of 1. The reason they don't just say '1 damage' is in case the rat gets enhanced by magic or something similar. Say it get's Bull's Strength cast on it by some weird Druid who has nothing better to do with her spells, that's a +4 to Str (+2 to modifier), which changes the damage to 1d3-2. Still only does 1 damage. But if you had the original damge being '1 damage', it would now be doing a guarenteed 3 damage every time it hits.

Basically, it's an attempt at having scalability in the rules. I wish they had done a similar thing with HD. Instead of fractional HD (like 1/2HD), give the creature a low Con that reduces the hit-point total. Ah well.

[thatwolfguy]

You can also find stats for a Dire Rat or a Rat Swarm in the MM if you want to use that instead of normal rats.

not a bad idea...i'll check those if i have a chance (rough schedule the next 2 days, work, then straight to a friends house to PC in his campaign then not enough sleep, then work tomorow then straight to a different house for the adventure I'm DM'ing with a different group)

- anyone have more free time than me know the CR of those (i'm at work, no books)

thanks

dave

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

The Dire Rat has a CR of 1/3 while the Rat Swarm is CR 2.

[amanodel]

Advanced dire rats! Or a lot of ordinary rats, and a halfling were-rat as the BBEG! Or if it's too strong, than make it a slightly wounded, onehanded halfling were-rat.

[Reidegost]

Stupid rats. A couple rats hiding in filth were the cause of my first character death. Don't underestimate the buggers.

[pestilenceawaits]

This reminds me of baldurs gate dark alliance on ps2 when you play in extreme mode the rats at the beginning kick some serious butt. You could do like they did and have a giant rat as the BBEG after you fight a bunch of other rats.

[daggaz]

*agrees with reidegost*

Remember that rats are tiny creatures and get a good ac bonus for it. For lvl1 PC's, they can be rather hard to hit, while they seem to land that one damage fairly often on the lower ac PC's. If you have enough of them, it can get pretty bad... (was just in a group of 3 lvl 1's, the rogue was bitten half to death, the mage had to run away at one hp, i had 17 ac or some and still lost 5 or 6 hps).

[amanodel]

A couple rats hiding in filth

I'm currently terrorizing my PbP group with 40 wererats. I'm having fun. :)

giant rat as the BBEG

An advanced abyssal dire rat, or a were-rat, depending on the party's strenght. Add some quest background how the boss (were-)rat were ordering the normal rats to attack commoners and collect precious stuff! It could be the most interesting first level rat-fight ever! ;D And even treasure awaits the mighty heroes at the end!

[Matthew]

It's their Weapon Finesse Bonus Feat that makes the difference. Instead of having AB -2 as a result of Strength, they manage to get AB +4 as a result of Dexterity. They hit more regularly than Kobolds, Goblins or Hobgoblins. In fact, they have the same AB as an Orc.

[krossbow]

Ptoleous has Rat men if that helps for a BBEG. My 6th level bard, a 6th level ranger, a 3rd level fighter and a 3rd level cleric went into a fight with about 10 of them (6 ratlings, 4 rat-lords). The fighter died right away, and we barely made it out alive thanks to some well placed tangle footbags and alchemist's fire.



Edit: BTW, if a commoner fought a normal rat, I'd put my money on that rat. Commoners are so easy to kill it's not even funny.
________
NEVADA MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES

[averagejoe]

This reminds me of baldurs gate dark alliance on ps2 when you play in extreme mode the rats at the beginning kick some serious butt. You could do like they did and have a giant rat as the BBEG after you fight a bunch of other rats.

A much better baulder's gate rerference was from BG1 for the PC when one of the first quests you do is to clear rats out of a cellar, which had 1hp and did no damage. Your journal said something sarcastic like, "I go off to do battle with my fearsome enemy. I only hope I live through this day." Later in the game you have a similar encounter with rabid chickens. Yeah, that game was good times.

I did something like this once, except the PC's were at a higher level. I found it made sense to include a Pipe of the Sewers in the treasure, gotten from the BBEG, a wererat.

[Thomas]

It's a pretty standard thing to take the piss out of the whole "kill rats!" quest idea now; in TES4: Oblivion, you're sent off to handle a "rat problem" (the first Fighter's Guild Quest in TES3: Morrowind was rat-killing, and the most common type of low-level quest in TES2: Daggerfall was the xact same thing) - but it turns out the problem is that a mountain lion is attacking the client's rats...

Heck, you even have to kill rats in the Fallout games! (At least they're led by a super-mole-rat in Fallout 2...) And let's not even talk about EverQuest...

[Matthew]

It is also the Introductory Quest to Icewind Dale.

[Dervag]

Hey, it's a common need in a medieval or pseudo-medieval society, and rats are pretty easy to kill in small numbers. That makes it ideal for weaving the twin problems of "OK, we need to give the player a chance to learn how to fight" and "How do we keep the story plausible?" into a single thread.

[Thomas]

Sure, but it was done by rat-catchers, not by fighters or adventurers. (In fact, I should think an adventurer who started catching rats would get in trouble with the rat-catchers, especially if they're part of some guild or organization...)

It's just poor design. Rats. They could give you something less ridiculously pathetic to fight. There's nothing very plausible about a 10th-level character being sent on rat-hunts when he joins a Fighters' Guild.

[pestilenceawaits]

A much better baulder's gate rerference was from BG1 for the PC when one of the first quests you do is to clear rats out of a cellar, which had 1hp and did no damage. Your journal said something sarcastic like, "I go off to do battle with my fearsome enemy. I only hope I live through this day." Later in the game you have a similar encounter with rabid chickens. Yeah, that game was good times.

I did something like this once, except the PC's were at a higher level. I found it made sense to include a Pipe of the Sewers in the treasure, gotten from the BBEG, a wererat.

It has been a long time since I played the first PC baldurs gate all I remember are kobold commandos and minsk(sp)

[JimmyDPawn]

Moon rats. They're normal rats most of the time, but get smarter and stronger during certain phases of the moon.

If you really want to throw them for a loop, have them kill a non-smartened moon rat (basically a nomal rat) and then have a group of moon rats tracking them down for vengence at a higher level.

[wormwood]

One of the interesting things about the Warhammer RPG is that Rat-Catcher is a profession your PC can start in.

[Matthew]

It's also a profession that your Player Character can end up in...

[silvermesh]

Sure, but it was done by rat-catchers, not by fighters or adventurers. (In fact, I should think an adventurer who started catching rats would get in trouble with the rat-catchers, especially if they're part of some guild or organization...)

It's just poor design. Rats. They could give you something less ridiculously pathetic to fight. There's nothing very plausible about a 10th-level character being sent on rat-hunts when he joins a Fighters' Guild.

The problem shouldn't be the rats, it should be the missing rat-catchers. The guild hires the PCs to investigate. surely there'll be lots of rats for them to kill down there, but they need to find out what is happening to these rat-catchers. maybe a group of dire rats killing them off? maybe worse? a were-rat? depends on your campaign. maybe its an evil rat-loving sewer druid...

[MrNexx]

Sure, but it was done by rat-catchers, not by fighters or adventurers. (In fact, I should think an adventurer who started catching rats would get in trouble with the rat-catchers, especially if they're part of some guild or organization...)

Ever think that's why your Wizard HAS that weasel familiar? Sleep spell + Weasel familiar = great little ratter.

[turn.self.off]

Moon rats. They're normal rats most of the time, but get smarter and stronger during certain phases of the moon.

If you really want to throw them for a loop, have them kill a non-smartened moon rat (basically a nomal rat) and then have a group of moon rats tracking them down for vengence at a higher level.

hmm, planescape?