Alternative Title: Should probably be a General Edition Thread for all things ratfolk. Mainly discussion on original ideas or existing rats such as Skaven. Feel free to contribute lore or OC such as write or drawfaggotry.
In the interest of getting these threads to last, a couple of Anons last thread suggested that some kind of dedicated ratfolk setting be created. So in addition to the normal discussion, go wild! Get creative! Be it fantasy, modern, or science fiction. Get your creative juices flowing.
My vote goes for some kind of global megadungeon/megafacility setting where rats are the caretakers.
What would make rats qualified for maintenance jobs? I kinda see them as little tinkerers with inquiring minds but short attention spans. They'd probably disassemble the machines and leave them in pieces.
Julian James
>Disassembling the machines and leaving them in pieces >Not constantly filching parts from one machine to work on another
Logan Stewart
In my fantasy setting there's an angelic celestial race who went ape-shit and started doing magic experiments on the earth, wound up going out of control and the magic bled out and affect everything, all kinds of animals were turned into sentient people including Mice and Rats, the humans fled the continent.
The mice are regular people who moved into the abandoned human places, but they shunned the Rats. Now the rats are doubly pissed about being magically fucked up as well as outcast. They live underground in tunnels, kidnap other species, perform all kinds of sick experiments and basically became as bad as the angels except for magic capacity.
They have a secret society called the Alchemists who are trying to devise chemical compounds essentially bioterrorism, first to kill the angels and then to kill everyone else. As decades and centuries pass and more people learn ab out the Alchemists some rats are going rogue and trying to stop them or integrate back into the outside world
Chase Rogers
I've worked with someone like that, it is the most goddamn frustrating thing, I spent 3 years trying to get our system actually working at full capacity, but that shit was still not completely right by the time I had to leave.
Leo Flores
The short attention spans could be a common trait, but with the elder engineers (Cogfathers, if you will) understanding the need for maintenence and competent study and teaching it in their schools.
Jayden Murphy
What's his class, Veeky Forums?
Camden Thomas
One rat disassembles, another rat re-assembles. The world goes round.
Robert Anderson
What happens when the parts break or are lost?
Carson Perry
They have forager rats
Jackson Thomas
They were elevated from little vermin to sapient beings with lifespans lasting more than a couple seasons. What are they pissed about?
Blake Morales
the magic mutated them from the Mice and nobody living on the surface accepted them
Jordan Gonzalez
I like these answers, but I gotta keep questioning. Why do these supposed deposits of pristine machine parts exist?
Landon Rodriguez
lvl -1 Barmaid.
Who the fuck pours like that?
Asher Morales
make toxoplasma gondii cultists a thing
Liam Walker
Toxowhosit what-nows?
Luke Smith
having cats makes you gay
Nolan King
Lazy motherfuckers that throw good machines out because of petty reasons.
Lincoln Howard
Infected rat cultists who offer themselves up as sacrifices to their feline gods?
Angel Allen
The Big-Big Gods leave their works behind for Rats to find, so that we might learn, the making, unmaking, & purpose of their gifts. The Big-Big Gods want us to learn so that we may join them in the Big World, til then we forage in the Small World to find their mysteries & learn their gifts of Teknologi. Keep your whiskers straight & we may find our place in the Big World.
Caleb Diaz
>Rat Tech-Cultists I'm so on board with this. ...Or should it be Rat Tek-Kultists?
Luke White
No no no. We are Teknishins. We are not a cult. We are faithful followers of the Big-Big Gods & the Metal Mysteries
James Wilson
The Big-Big Gods command you to stop chewing the electric wires.
Jace Smith
Excuse me, but those are zap strings and chewing them is the only way to solve their mystery.
Hudson Martin
I'm reminded of Pic-Related with good cause. Keep going.
Brody Butler
Yes-yes. See the zapstrings bring life. Life goes through the strings to make the gifts of the Big-Big God's move. If you touch a dying rat with the zapstrings they will come back to life. That is why we chew them sometimes. We get extra life power to do the Big-Big thinking needed to solve the Mysteries
Jordan Richardson
But is important not to chew too hard or you get much-much life & you can't hold it so you explode
Luis Powell
Ratfolk were the Shudrarashani, they were the street cleaners, the cleaners of sewer pipes, the mount caretakers, the drummers, the cleaners and cooks of the beef, the makers of leather shields, the makers of graves, the weavers of leather armor, the hog's caretaker, and honor the god Shurvaran and his consort, Thujirasi. When a prominent Shudrarashani ratfolk dies, their body is covered in a mixture of pig fat, cinnamon, and thistle, then placed in a closed stone-hut casket, where already prepared wood is then burned with a set of ritual torches. Shurvavan is the god of poetry, and Thujirasi is the goddess of dance, so bard is the preferred adventuring class, most usually, of the Shudrarashani.
Christian Turner
You-you's call it life, but whassabout them spark-flingers who zap-zap all the rats they don't much like-like?
Ryan Nelson
>Cooks of the beef For some reason, I can't help but imagine there's some great religious or cultural taboo that declares only rats are fit to prepare red meat, and that seems funny to me.
Angel Lewis
Beef is made from minotaur corpses, not cows. So yeah, it's kind of a weird ritual thing. There are however some Shudrarashani who practice the Diamond-Studded-Temple path Asceticism, and while they are a minority, (less than 4% of the world population of Shudrarashani), they have different rituals and roles, since they practice a different form of belief.
Everything is about rituals and roles, everyone, from high caste to low, has rituals and roles.
Diamond Studded Temple ascetics meditate 14 hours a day 3 days a week, practice martial arts 16 hours straight 3 days of each week, and take their meditation enclosures (small no mortar stone buildings) up and down once a week, taking it down that morning, building it again that afternoon. They go shirtless, but may grow their hair up to 6 feet long and keep it up to 4 feet long. It is one of the few monastic paths open to ratfolk, and is more generally practiced by slothfolk and high mountain monkeyfolk.
Camden Ortiz
They know the secrets of the zap strings & want to use it to fill us with much-much life & make us explode
Blake Hughes
If by "that" you mean tilting the cup, it's part of latte art. Hitting the corner of the bottom keeps it from swirling and mixing too much. But if by "that" you actually mean looking in the completely wrong direction right when your drink is about to spill? Creative license, I suppose.
Blake Reyes
I don't know but I want to Smooch him.
Leo Bell
So are you all imagining the Rodentfolk here being Rodent sized or closer to Human or Halfling size?
Angel Brooks
I was thinking around 3 feet tall while standing on hind legs.
Josiah Morgan
What's the world of these 'Teknishin' like? What's THEIR tech-level?
Brody Sanchez
Parasite, makes rodents love the smell of cat pee and reduces their fear of cats
Logan Reyes
Oh fuck that's metal as hell. Freaky parasite cultists are a fantastic trope, let's keep that.
Jose Gomez
(They could be dropped in any tech level I expect. Depends on what tech humans are at & how many mysteries they have solved)
We are smart-smart we have solved many Mysteries.We have many-many yet to solve but we will make it to the Big World.
Brayden Torres
Let's assume the rats were somehow uplifted by humanity before... something(?) happened to them and are all left behind. The question to ask is: "What makes a better setting. A Super-Tiny Race like the OP pic, or A Human-Comparable Race?"
Christian Brooks
Depends on the type of campaign
Personally, I'd prefer the Small angle. Gives normal things a nice twist.
However, I don't mind some of the Rodents posted here for Questing. I would like to explore what leads a Mouseperson to such a career. At the same time, interacting with Humans has to be weird to most beast people, since we seem to be able to get so many to get along when we are near
Luke Morales
In the context of the 'Big-Big Mystery' setting, or whatever it'd be called I would vote human-comparable size, makes the rats accessing human tech more believable. But on the topic of questing, that offers a fantastic question that will probably be answered as the idea gets more meat on the bones, that being 'Why do the Rats quest' Because...I mean they gotta go on quests, it's a tabletop setting.
Jeremiah Campbell
In a Megafacility filled with man-sized and intelligent rats, what classes await those vermin who seek a life of adventure?
And what horrors await them? Spitball classes (New ideas or just the fluff for the classics) and monster ideas.
Henry Nelson
Cyber-Soldier (Fighter Archetype) Cyber-soldiers replace fallible flesh with precision crafted machinery. Some seek to exceed the limitations of humanoid flesh, while others become cyber-soldiers through drastic repairs necessitated by horrific injuries.
Iron Priest (Cleric Archetype) Iron priests preach of the messengers from inside the machines. Iron priests can affect robots and other unliving constructs with channeled energy, but lack power over the undead.
Scavenger (Rogue Archetype) A scavenger lives for the discovery of new technological wonders scraped from the depths of the strange ruins, metal caverns, and outlandish junkyards. She is well-versed in all the ways that technology can be used to protect sites, as well as the ways in which it can malfunction.
Savage Technologist (Barbarian Archetype) The into fluff is too setting specific, but the features of the class get bonuses to dex instead of Con and bonuses while wielding a gun. Additionally they get bonus damage for the gun while raging.
Techslinger (Gunslinger Archetype) Techslingers spurn unreliable gunpowder weapons in favor of high-tech armaments. They learn to master the quirks of timeworn technology and methods of keeping weapons charged in a primitive world. Techslingers still start play with the black powder blunderbuss, pistol, or rifle granted by the gunsmith class ability, but they gain specialized powers for use after they gain weapons of advanced technology.
Some stuff taken from the Technology Guide for Pathfinder. God I love the stuff they released during the Iron Gods AP.
So rats with cyber implants, weird twitchy rats who have heard the voices carried in the wires, the little bastards that know how to take apart the laser turrets guarding the room, the feisty bois who like shooting and being angry, and crackshots to dissuade things from stealing the shinies.
Liam Hill
I would argue the opposite. With words like Big-Big Gods & the Big World/Small World they would be rat sized rats, looking to achieve human size
Jackson Perry
How about we settle this by making them in between. They are going to need to be much bigger than your standard rat in order to properly dismantle and tool around with tech. And bigger eyes provide better vision, as regular rat eyes are actually quite terrible and among the lowest resolutions a mammal can achieve. Bigger bodies, longer lives.
So not man sized, thats too big. Instead make them halfling sized, 3 maybe 4 feet standing tall. This gives them nicely sized hands to fiddle around with tech, along with enough precision and strength to really get into the finer stuff. Big enough eyes for clear vision, very much needed for playing with tech. Small enough to find all kinds of neat hidey holes and get access to the good stuff hidden away. This leaves them small enough to still need mechs and tech solutions for very big problems, but big enough to really explore and mess with the world in a much more significant manor.
The Big-Big Gods and such is just the way their language translates, and the rats tend to speak the way their language developed, even in english.
A question still unanswered: Magic, yes or no? maybe all that tech ignited a bit of weird causality, or a loosening of the structure of reality. Maybe people shouldn't play with alien super tech since it does weird stuff to reality and the structures of existence. Psychics are must need, with yellow glowy eyes and weird sparks.
Easton Sullivan
So... kobold-sized ratlings?
Christian Taylor
Essentially. Even precision screwdrivers would be a two-hander for your regular rat.
Eli Sanders
Ya'll a bunch of fucking furries.
Grayson Carter
Standard PF ratfolk barely make 4 foot. That's shorter than Peter Dinklage. They'd probably be about the same height as Warwick Davis, aka Willow. Short, very short, pick-up-able and cuddle short. A kobold on the other hand is basically Verne Troyer. Tiny and nasty and bitey.
user, ratfolk are an age old staple of sci fi and fantasy literature, especially the books that gave rise to D&D and thus the roleplay hobby. Come, sit down and enjoy the neat stuff that a fun and weird race can bring to a game setting.
Landon Walker
This fucking shit is just being a furry. You can't use that excuse to hide the fact that this is just a thread to be a furry on a board where you can't post porn.
John Phillips
user, that looks like a cartoony version of a PF ratfolk in a modern setting. Heck that art could very well be a ysoki barista on Akiton in the Starfinder setting. If youre that upset about that particular style or simply cartoony versions of animal people, you may need to leave the thread so as not to trigger your autism. Im sorry you cannot join and share the fun of posting about rat people from various TTRPG settings and what they may be like in other ones.
I may have figured out the origin of the notMars ratpeople, their name could possibly be a joke about size, wysoki is polish for tall.
Joseph Ross
That's pretty funny if that's the case.
Leo Cruz
We're getting very close to fur-covered jawas. Some user a thread or two ago mentioned the cranium rats from Planescape. Without going down the hive mind road I like the idea of rats from the same burrow, or perhaps litter, having a psychic connection. Just enough to allow them to coordinate their work or share plans, mental pictures and ideas with clarity.
>Vermin >Fleabait >Gutter Mouse >Second Least Relevant Chaos Faction, Being Slightly More Relevant Than Beastmen Because They Fucked Up The World A Bit But Only Just
Huh? They are one of the most prominent factions in Warhammer. Granted, most of the time they play the role of antagonists and get btfo without accomplishing much but this is a fairly static setting where no faction ever "wins" or "loses" decisively.
That's kind of the problem-they exist pretty much to be thwarted by other factions (their ten minutes of glory destroying civilization notwithstanding), but it's fine because there's an effectively limitless supply of them to throw away making other people look good.
Nicholas Brown
To an extent that's true of all the factions other than empire/dwarfs/elfs but yes, they are the writers' favorite punching bag because you can kill them en masse and just handwave it. As a faction they have a lot of fluff and flavour but as individuals they are never more than one-dimensional cartoon characters.
Caleb Harris
I was expecting something like a bit more derogatory, but it works. What about insults ratfolk would use for other races?
Ayden Thompson
I will agree to Verne Troyer sized rat folk. But keep rat proportions, so they are sleek & narrow.
Maybe even have it where they are slowly, over generations, getting bigger. This helps reinforce thier belief in the Big World. They could be growing bigger as a species either as a result of an experiment by humans in the past, magic/psionic fuckery, or exposure to mutative elements (radiation, TNMT purple ooze etc)
I favor the human angle as it gives them a reason to look up to the Big-Big Gods & because I don't see any reason to add magic/psionics if we don't need to.
Liam Edwards
Shit I meant Warwick Davis not Verne Troyer
Jose Cook
No-furs The tailless The weak-toothed
Benjamin Taylor
>Flat-faced >Blunt-clawed >Mange-ape
Christian Richardson
"Hey, small-ears! Why your ears so small-small? No hear-hear with small ear-ear!"
Daniel Scott
>Ya'll >Not Y'all user please.
Liam Lewis
I would say "Dangerous, oftentimes inconsistent psychic powers" Let's do this shit like X-Com, where all the different rat-factions are they themselves very tribal, but have a *decent* understanding of technology and access to some truly wild stuff. Different groups have focus on different technologies and "research paths" (perhaps related to where they are in the megafacility) with different Psychics (Sykiks maybe?) Having different powers based on their group assocation.
Gavin Campbell
user, uhh, Jawas are a rat based lifeform. Rats and tech just goes together like jam and peanut butter.
I like-like Sykiks as a name. It's like Teknishin. Gaptooth watereyed, leech. You fumble with twiststick & almost break! You no know nothing! Furtailed son of a mouse! Your brain must be small-small! So unrat you've never tasted Cheddar I say! You'll never be Big-Big acting like a preening cat!
John Cruz
Don't get me wrong user. I don't mind Sykiks, I just wanted to appeal to the largest audience
Aiden Nelson
We need information on the world these rat-teknishins live in.
Let's start by asking some basic worldbuilding questions: Is their whole world a megafacility?
How intact is it? Is it all overgrown? Are there large parts that are completely pristine?
How do the rats provide for themselves? How do they get the food they need? How difficult is survival?
How varied are the enviroments?
Is the facility abandoned?
Angel Butler
Let's make it a very much upscaled Biosphere 2 with more lab sections.
John Campbell
They started in an abandoned lab (NYHM?), not very big, with extensive wilderness & forests surrounding it. Humans are no longer around the place but they may exist elsewhere. They used to be ordinary lab rats but have grown bigger & smarter as they continue on. (This happens over generations, not with individuals)
The Warren was built in the lower levels & has eletrik flowing through its zapstrings. Nosers are the backbone of society, sniffing out trouble, food sources, & such. Broodmothers nurse, raise & teach the little ones. Teknishins work on the Mysteries & share with the others their findings. They are psuedo-priests who work closely with the Nosers to find new Mysteries.
In the bramblethorn bushes in the New Land, the Nest has become the newest big colony. They are very successful & the forest has plentiful food, but few Mysteries. They are far from the oversight of the Warren & the Ratking (several politician type rats fight to be in charge & get tangled together. They are treated as a single person)
Dominic Scott
>Biosphere 2 Never heard about it until now. That place is wicked cool! Massive Biospheres all over the shop. Abandoned are not tho?
There is some good ideas in here.
Caleb Evans
>Mice are an underclass when among rats >Rats are the common class, albeit in smaller numbers compared to the mouse >Voles live in the wild away from society, some mingle within mouse societies as farmers or merchants selling food >Larger rodents are steeds/mounts or are sentient and live among themselves. Some say porcupines serve as the best defense against the catfolk, but are seldom seen as of late
It would make the most sense if they were abandoned.
Jackson Jenkins
Not going to lie, giant sentinel porcupines seems like an angle that needs to be used.
Isaiah Nelson
Just curious. Do (real) rats and mice occupy different ecological niches or do one species drive the other out when they share the same environment?
Hudson Sullivan
The different sub-facilities vary in size greatly, with the smallest only being the size of a house, and others sprawling over the size of a continent. The entire planet was dedicated to research, experimentation, and production of dangerous and experimental equipment and compounds.
The Teknishins hold a large portion of the Primary Engineering Sections under their banner, where they have ready access to materials, research logs, and ready-access pipelines and paths to other key points of interest. Such as the long-overgrown hydroponics labs and several flooded hydroelectric plants and swamps. With their food and water needs for the entire tribe being covered by their territory, the Teknishins wonder and research their 'metal mysteries' with all the fervor and mysticism of ancient-earth shamans. This free-time and constant research has led them to being able to produce armor and weapons that they regularly produce and sell to other tribes, and maintain a mercenary army to protect their borders and interests. They jealously guard their secrets and methods and aren't above murder in pursuit of their goals.
I dig those weapon designs. Would they be practical in real life.
Luis Morgan
*Would they be practical in real life? Me smart.
Juan Hughes
They don't look particularly well-made, and they show signs of damage; then again, a sharpened chunk of metal on a stick is probably going to hurt regardless.
Brayden Ortiz
Well it's Skaven-make so it's functional garbage, but if these designs were picked up by a competent smith with good materials on-hand, would they make good weapons? And not just "metal goes in other dude so yeah" kinda way.
Luke Gutierrez
The designs themselves appear to be axes, though the size and weight of the blades would probably make them awkward to handle, especially the bottom one.
Jackson Moore
I love the concept of ratfolk, but im pissed there's no race for them in DnD
Christian Ward
user, you can make your own statblock for them and Ms. Brisby all over everything, nothing is stopping you.
Aaron Miller
There's a 3e statblock for Nezumi in the Oriental Adventures 3e, and I think the Rokugan D20 Campaign Setting book's version is a 3.5 update of that.
Pathfinder has a Ratfolk race.
Still, yeah, it sucks that there's no 5e ratfolk, and we're not likely to get one unless they do a Plane Shift: Kamigawa.
William Green
Well, you could take the Dungeon Master Guide's advice and swap an existing race (like halflings), or there's the ratling entry from the Scarred Lands 5e update.