So I have a concept that's too good not to share. I've used versions of this idea a few times, but this variant is for a low level game that's going to be doing a bit of a dungeon crawl.
How do you make a party scared of giant rats? Even level 1 characters will often kill them in a single hit. But that's the thing - there are always more rats. So how to make the party believe that?
You start out by telling them of the beady eyes that watch them from the darkness. Just on the edge of light, glittering and wary. You describe them scuttling out of the way, and the little noises as they clear out as the party arrive.
Around a third of the way through the session, the rats attack. The party come to an open space, and you describe the hundreds of eyes watching them. You tell the party that only the boldest rats are attacking them... yet. Then, you take a huge jar of beads or tokens - I've used a bowl of black go stones before - and you scoop out eight or so (eight giant rats is exactly a deadly encounter for a level 1 party). There's a nasty fight, and the rats flee when they're down to two or so. You take the dead rats, and put them in an empty container. The fled ones go back into the jar.
You tell the party that the eyes are still watching them, hungrily. If they ever try to kill a rat, you take a stone out of the jar and dump it into the 'dead rat' container. Make the rats a little more wary, so the party can't just take pot shots - if the party end up killing a few of the watchers, the watchers either vanish for a bit or they get a new deadly combat. Make it clear that the number of potential rats is both finite and huge. From that point on, any time something edible gets taken down, a rat will join the fight. It will ignore the combat and just try to eat the bodies. It will snap at anyone who comes between it and food, and flee if it's hurt. Every round, another rat joins the feast (in addition to every time something gets killed). If there are ever a group of five or more rats eating, they hold their ground and don't flee until there's only one or two left. If there are five or more rats at the end of a combat, and anyone in the party is at half health or less... then the rats will attack.
Every time you add a rat, you take it from the jar, and every time a rat dies you put it in the 'dead' container. Every fleeing one goes back to the supply.
The rat supply should be enough so that, even if the entire session goes to absolute hell, you will not use up more than half of the rats.
The jar - preferably one where the players can see how deep it is - should be on display the whole time, making it clear to the players that if the rats were more clever - or more desperate - then the party wouldn't stand a chance.
How do you make a party scared of giant rats? Even level 1 characters will often kill them in a single hit. But that's the thing - there are always more rats. So how to make the party believe that?
You start out by telling them of the beady eyes that watch them from the darkness. Just on the edge of light, glittering and wary. You describe them scuttling out of the way, and the little noises as they clear out as the party arrive.
Around a third of the way through the session, the rats attack. The party come to an open space, and you describe the hundreds of eyes watching them. You tell the party that only the boldest rats are attacking them... yet. Then, you take a huge jar of beads or tokens - I've used a bowl of black go stones before - and you scoop out eight or so (eight giant rats is exactly a deadly encounter for a level 1 party). There's a nasty fight, and the rats flee when they're down to two or so. You take the dead rats, and put them in an empty container. The fled ones go back into the jar.
You tell the party that the eyes are still watching them, hungrily. If they ever try to kill a rat, you take a stone out of the jar and dump it into the 'dead rat' container. Make the rats a little more wary, so the party can't just take pot shots - if the party end up killing a few of the watchers, the watchers either vanish for a bit or they get a new deadly combat. Make it clear that the number of potential rats is both finite and huge. From that point on, any time something edible gets taken down, a rat will join the fight. It will ignore the combat and just try to eat the bodies. It will snap at anyone who comes between it and food, and flee if it's hurt. Every round, another rat joins the feast (in addition to every time something gets killed). If there are ever a group of five or more rats eating, they hold their ground and don't flee until there's only one or two left. If there are five or more rats at the end of a combat, and anyone in the party is at half health or less... then the rats will attack.
Every time you add a rat, you take it from the jar, and every time a rat dies you put it in the 'dead' container. Every fleeing one goes back to the supply.
The rat supply should be enough so that, even if the entire session goes to absolute hell, you will not use up more than half of the rats.
The jar - preferably one where the players can see how deep it is - should be on display the whole time, making it clear to the players that if the rats were more clever - or more desperate - then the party wouldn't stand a chance.
