The Theory and Practice of Rat-Men

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking constantly about rat-men, but I haven't been writing things down.

One thing seems clear: I want to make things more challenging and more consistent than they were in the first session.

With seven members, the party is close to being a CR 3 party (assuming that the CR system of two levels for a doubling in size holds for parties too). No wonder that they had so little trouble with the CR2-3 opening adventure.

Instead of modeling the rat-men on goblins, I'll try to model them on halflings, which are similarly quick and deft.

Some categories to organize my thoughts:

Rat-men can:
climb
crawl
ambush
get character classes (especially as rogues)
Use tactical opportunities (flank attacks and so forth)

Rat-men can't:
use complex technology
coordinate sophisticated attacks

Rat-men are:
cunning
quick
lithe
feral
bestial
hungry
numerous
overcrowded
trapped against other pressures

Rat-men are not:
well-organized
technologically advanced
patient

Rat-men will:
Create traps and ambushes to the best of their ability
collect treasure, particularly shiny objects
patrol

Rat-men won't:
Do complicated attacks without a leader
stand still and guard


Dani's questions:
Are they experienced? Yes, mostly experienced.
Have they fought together? Yes, though they haven't trained together.
How organized are they? Not very organized, except under the command of their leaders.
How much planning will they have done (and can they tolerate)? They know their situation is desperate, and those who can plan have done the best that they can to plan. But they can't tolerate that much planning.
What is their perception of the odds? They are feeling trapped and doomed unless they manage to scare the PCs off. (They'll have to scare off the town, too.)
Do they have an objective, or is this a random encounter? Their short-term objective is survival, but they can't survive in the long-term without more space and better resources (particularly food) than they have.


I want these things in the dungeon:
A rat-men treasure store
An ambush set up by the rat-men
An area that the rat-men haven't been able to penetrate
rat-men children (I have no good answer to what to do with those.)
tunnels into the town above
Blocked access to the nasties that the rats are facing off


-- this note was made public on September 21, 2001.