Ratfolk [Monster Thursday]

Here is our next entry for the Monster Thursday! -Stephen

Ratfolk are a strange choice to devote a Monster Thursday too, and I get it. Who needs rats? Well, sometimes you need a really weird monster to throw at your party (like the Mindcleaver) and you start thinking about where they came from. Lets jump to the conception of these guys.

My party was going through a dungeon developed by an archmage of a questionable mental state. The dungeon was called The Tomb of the Behemoth and had decorations of elephants and mammoths all about the place, but not every level of the tomb has to be themed on fighting elephants or solving puzzles. In fact, several of the lower levels are just a confused jumble of traps, monsters, and anything else Pyroblex could throw at an adventuring party for, as he would put it, the LOLs.

So here come in my Mindcleavers. These strange rats are ethereal spirits designed to cut deep past armor class and leave a lasting impact. They are also the first monsters designed to use what I am terming as Ethereal Weapons, weapons of the ethereal that ignore mundane armor and strike out a default AC of 10 + dexterity modifier. Very scary creatures, especially for a group heavily invested in a high AC and you just want to hit them a few more times in combat!

But, that's where we started. How do you create a society that would get you to a mindcleaver? Ratfolk is a good answer, and not just because the minis I was going to use are rats. These poor ratfolk are ignored, and even hated, by society for being different and for looking like humanoid rats. They are forced to the edges of society where they take part in their own brutal hierarchy always trying to fight for the right to live and thus my ratfolks were breathed into life. The ratfolks exist in a hierarchy, they are brutal and cruel because they have to be or be eaten by their own kind, and they developed the powers of their mind because all other magic was cut off from them. 

I hope you like them, and they can find a home in your world that is gentler than their home in mine. Also, if you want to make your own ratfolk, I created a ratfolk racial guide for the Vermling from the great boardgame, Gloomhaven. Enjoy!