Complete Guide to Wererats

[Messageboard Golem]

Imagine a race of lycanthropes so devious, so cunning, and so insidious that they conquer entire kingdoms without ever being seen. These are the wererats. Their secretive broods infiltrate key posts in the government, military, and guilds, ensuring political protection from their enemies. When fighting can't be avoided, the mystic Council of the Flesh unleashes its horrific cross-bred monsters, which never give a hint as to their wererat origins. When nothing else works, the hard-hearted Weavers spread filth and disease, eliminating entire cities with a single contaminated breath. Kingdoms fall, power changes hands, and the enemies of the wererats are exterminated, without a single outsider ever knowing how.

The Complete Guide to Wererats is a stand-alone, world-neutral sourcebook covering everything you ever wanted to know about wererats. It includes:

* Detailed background material on wererat broods and their insidious plans, including social structure, cultural habits, and combat tactics.
* Details on the secretive Council of the Flesh and their lycanthropic madness, including stats for the horrible creatures they have created.
* New feats, classes, and skills for wererats and other shapechangers.
* Supplemental material online.

The Complete Guide to Wererats is the fifth volume in the Complete Guide series. Each Complete Guide is exactly what it sounds like: a complete guide to playing a given kind of monster. As a GM, you'll learn how to run that monster, both in combat and role-playing situations. And since every Complete Guide includes guidelines on playing the monster as a character race, players have new options, too.

The Complete Guide to Wererats can be inserted easily into any fantasy setting.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Complete Guide to Wererats isn’t quite Goodman Game’s answer to the Skaven of Warhammer Fame or the Rat Men of the Scarred Lands but does add depth and dimension to the wererats.

The book starts off with a piece of fiction that provides a background reason for the creation of lycanthropes in the campaign setting. A long time ago a gathering of spellcasters were deciding what shape to take and it was decided by the majority that the rat, due to their ability to thrive among men, would be the proper form. Others disagreed and that’s why we have other were creatures. Some of those who disagreed were the cause of the wererats not having the perfect form, so even among the rats there is dissension. One of the nice things about this set up is that it allows the GM to not include any new gods or pantheons in his campaign as it was a group of spellcasters that did this.

The book does a good job of providing the GM with different uses for the wererat by breaking them up into different factions. While this is indeed reminiscent of Skaven and the Rat Men, I’ve long ago decided that there is little new under the sun and can either blast something for not being 100% new and creative or find ways to use what’s presented to me.

These factions or Broods, include the Asyra, mystics who focus on creating the perfect wererat. Of course this involves lots of experimentation but hey, what’s a rats, dire rats, or human’s life really worth in comparison to crafting the ultimate survivor? Then there’s the Grayking, manipulators who work behind the scenes in human empires. How about the Oath of Flesh, an order of assassins that hunts down other lycanthropes. Want something a little more exotic? Try the Redtooth, a clan of humanoids that are infected with lycanthropy.

Now some of you might be saying, “I don’t’ want to add broods and factions. I just want some physiological information for random encounters and other good stuff.” Well in that case, you’ll probably want to use the Ravers, groups of independent wererats who are often unaware of the greater wererat society. This allows the GM to bring in other brood when he’s ready and still keep using a good portion of the book.

Now for those GMs concerned with how best to use these creatures, the section Combat Strategies, provides some insight into darkvision, damage reduction, healing, rat empathy, and shapechanging. Other tactics, like lying in ambush, using others to attack your enemies, and using dire animals and other creatures, are all popular with the wererat. Of course no strategy would be complete without mentioning one of the things rats are famous for, and that’s carrying disease.

Now one of the broods, the Dorian, are masters of crafting plagues so there’s another chance for the GM to use something that rarely gets brought up in the campaigns. One of my favorite combat methods though is simply infection. Why fight at all when you can literally turn the enemy into a friend.

Those looking to play a wererat or customize existing NPCs can use the racial traits to get quickly rolling. Some new classes like the Shifter, a wererat devoted to developing their full rat potential or the weaver, a modified wizard that specializes in transmutation. New skills include Control Shape and Fleshweaving. The former allows the lycanthrope more control over their shapeshifting abilities while the latter allows the user to create disease or use torture techniques with expertise beyond the standard.

Those looking for that special wererat ability won’t be disappointed by the feats. Alternative Forms include both bat and rat, allowing the wererat a slightly different change of form. Improved Damage Reduction provides the character with augmented damage reduction while improved healing grants the creature better healing when shifting forms. I can hear the concern now about power balance, but several of these abilities are available only to the Shifter class.

Within the Appendix, we get statistics for a wererat in all three forms, human, hybrid, and rat with a leader, the Examplar, in addition to other NPC templates like warriors and weavers. Those looking for something a little more exotic can thank the Asyra Weavers who’ve crafted the Dragon Rat as well as the monsters from the free download.

So what would this product have to do to get a four star rating? Well, this whole series is in direction competition with the Slayer’s Guides which don’t cost as much and make use of the front interior cover to provide an anatomical drawing of the race in question. To counter that though, there is web support for the various products from Goodman that tends to be superior to Mongoose’s material. In this case we get several new wererat creations from Keith Baker including the Draconian Wererat, a creature featured on the cover of this book. The bad news is that in my opinion, a book has to stand on its own merits. Web material is nice and can lead to further uses of a book prompting further sales but it’s got to stand on its own.

This gets back to what this would need for a four star rating though. I’d say either drop the price or use the interior covers. With some creative layout use, the web material could’ve fit into this book. Another weakness is maps. There is some talk of various lairs but maps make a world of difference. If the art could be kicked up just a slight notch and the layout improved just a tad more, then for a guidebook, this could get a five star rating.

Those looking to add some depth to their wererats without making a lot of world changes will enjoy the Complete Guide to Wererats.

 

[GameWyrd]

The Complete Guide to Wererats is a classic example of an "on the ball" RPG product. At 32 pages long and only $11 the Guide falls safely in the budget end of the gaming spectrum. The Guide works, there’s plenty in the book that can be taken into your own campaign and so being on the budget end of the scale is a boon, not a bane. There are already well established "were" RPGs and supplements, although perhaps not so much in the d20 mechanic. There’s certainly quite a few famous ratmen in the d20 camp. Given this it would be all too easy to rehash what’s done before, scrape the barrel in search of something new or loose any really convincing wererat atmosphere or feel for the book. This would be dropping the ball. The Complete Guide to Wererats manages to give us something new and yet safely wererat, it’s focused, it’s on the ball. The size of the book acts as a safety net in some respects, it acts a cap in others. In 32 pages a tight focus is possible, for example, we’re told about different families of wererats, different broods, and there’s room for just a bit of information on each but not enough space to stray too far. On the other hand, 32 pages isn’t really enough space for the successes to become run away successes.

It all started with the Council of Flesh, so say the wererats. The Council was a group of mysterious wizards who sought perfection by blending their bodies with that of an animal. In the infamous Council meeting the debate was over which animal would be best for such a blending. The Council finally agreed that the rat was best. It wasn’t a smooth ride though; some of the wizard members disagreed and left, some quitting almost immediately and others waiting for secrets to be shared before slinking off treacherously. It’s a good creation myth and it comes with some inherent advantages. It didn’t matter which races composed the Council of Flesh, the heated debate was over the animal form. This makes it easy to explain where there’s no sign of racism amongst the wererats with regards to the apparent race of the non-rat form. The creation story also opens up two great goals for the wererats; to finally achieve the perfection that the Council of Flesh was seeking and to deal with the rebels, the other non-rat lycanthropes, for their treachery.

The wererat broods are those families that can trace their bloodlines to original members of the Council of Flesh. As such the Complete Guide to Wererats really concentrates on natural born wererats, those with wererat parents. There is room for one line of wererats, the Ravers, who aren’t really a family line at all but a collection of lycanthropy infected wererats who aren’t able to or don’t want to claim any such inheritance. The different broods have different goals and different ways to achieve them. These Ravers are most likely those wererats encountered randomly in dungeon crawls or more preciously by player characters before the DM bought the Complete Guide. I always appreciate it when the supplement makes itself easy to integrate into a currently running game. The other Broods tend to be concerned with reaching genetic perfection, by experimenting with transmutation spells or on the lycanthropy disease itself, the extermination of the other lycanthropes or the manipulation of human civilization.

Mucking around with mutation is a great excuse for new feats. The Complete Guide jumps straight in there. It is a new feat that explains the bat-like wererat on the book’s front cover. We’re told that a bat is just a rat with wings. Well, I’m not sure I buy that but perhaps the wererats do and perhaps in many fantasy worlds it is true. A different feat allow the wererat to shift down into a normal size rat rather than a dire rat and plenty of the feats get to work without hesitation on producing a whole slew of "Improved" power-ups for the race.

There’s a strange new class in the Guide. The Shifter is a ten level class but it isn’t a prestige class. It’s only ten levels by design and is described as something between a core class and a prestige class. The Shifter is open only to wererats and even then they may only take ten levels in it. Intelligently, the Complete Guide combines flavour with function and makes mention of other positions and maps these on to perfectly adequate core classes. The Ratcaller is a Cleric to the Rat god and Weavers are wizards specialised in transmutation.

The two appendices are helpful. The first provides quick access to stat blocks; ideal for busy GMs. The second finds room to include a beastiary entry for the dragon rat.

There’s an awful lot in the Complete Guide to Wererats; the book manages to squeeze that little bit extra by keeping text size down and illustrations to a minimum. The scarcity of illustration is something you’ll notice when you pick up the lightweight book and open it. Unfortunately there’s something of a brochure feel to the physical book, that’s something that stapled 32-pagers are prone too but my copy might be faring particularly badly since its devolved the habit of opening itself at pages 16 and 17 to show off the staples.

The Complete Guide to Wererats has given me very little to grumble about and a nice new line for a popular enemy race. The Guide is one of those books that make you want to use it in your games.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[AnthonyRoberson]

DISCLAIMER: This review is based on a complementary copy of the book. If that freaks you out then please move on...

The first thing that impressed me about The Complete Guide to Wererats was the cover – a very nice painting of a wererat squatting on a roof leading some sort of dragon/wererat creature on a leash. Opening the cover and looking inside I was initially disappointed when I saw a list of ‘broods’ in the table of contents. Was this going to be some hack D20 conversion of the Skaven clans from Warhammer? Not hardly. It’s not even just another mediocre D20 sourcebook. In fact, it’s quite good and I think I understand at least in part why Keith Baker won Wizard of the Coast’s setting competition. He’s a darn good writer with imaginative ideas and an excellent grasp of the D20 mechanics.

Instead of numbered chapters, the Guide is divided into several major sections and two appendices. There is a table of contents, but no glossary or index. Ten b&w illustrations of above average quality are scattered throughout and that number feels about right for a book of this length.

The first section focuses on wererat physiology and society. The wererat’s three forms (human, hybrid and dire rat) are covered and the concept of the brood is introduced. The author plays up the wererat’s lawful alignment, describing a structured society with clearly defined ranks and roles. Other topics covered include the various types of warrens, family life and even rituals. The short section on combat strategies covers topics like how wererats put their damage reduction ability to good use in combat, how they use ambushes and traps, and even how they make use of their ability to infect others with lycanthropy. The first half of the book is packed with good information and it is all boiled down nicely into short, easy to read sections.

The section on wererat characters introduces wererats as a character race and three new wererat character classes; the ratcaller, the shifter and the weaver. The ratcaller is the name for wererat priests who venerate the Rat, a lawful evil force. They have access to the domains of Animal, Earth and Trickery. The shifter is a quasi-prestige class. It is available to any lycanthrope from first level, but they may take a maximum of only ten total levels in the class. Shifters focus on developing unique wererat abilities, including the book’s new wererat feats. Weavers are basically wizards that specialize in transmutation. They do get access to a few additional spells and skills.

I normally don’t care for new skills in a D20 book, but the two introduced in the Guide are pretty logical and add appropriate flavor. Control shape allows a lycanthrope a chance to control his involuntary shape changes and also several other tweaks. Fleshweaving is a nasty skill that weavers can employ to torture and even create new diseases. The book introduces seventeen new feats. Several (like alternate form-bat and improved control shape) focus on the lycanthrope’s shape shifting abilities. Others (like Plague Bearer and Swarm Master) off unique new abilities.

The campaigns section devotes about half a page each to five wererat broods; the Asyra Brood, the Graykin, the Oath of Flesh, Ravers and the Dorian Brood). Each description briefly outlines the brood’s history and objectives, and includes several adventure hooks involving that brood.

The first appendix gives three MM style entries for the wererat, one for each of its forms. Stat blocks are also provided for eight sample NPCs, including one from each of three new wererat classes. The second appendix introduces a single new monster, the dragon rat.

The Guide shows that Goodman Games is maturing nicely as a D20 publisher and it is a step up from their previous efforts like the Aerial Adventure Guide series. It satisfactorily walks the line between being a generic supplement and introducing unique campaign material. Also, if the Guide is any indication of Keith Baker’s design and writing abilities then I really look forward to getting a look at his contest-winning campaign setting from Wizards of the Coast. I would normally rate the CG a 3+, downgrading it slightly for only delivering 32 pages for eleven bucks, but Goodman Games has posted not one, but two web enhancements that add a total of eight extra pages of solid material (including the stats for that critter on the cover). You can find the web enhancements HERE. With that, I give The Complete Guide to Wererats a solid 4. Crouch slightly, rub your hands together frequently and scuttle over to check it out at your friendly local game store.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

The Complete Guide to Wererats has become an integral part of my campaign. Considering that my campaign deals with both wererats and a disease cult this fact is not surprising. Mind you, I picked the book up after the campaign was underway, so I wasn't looking for a complete overhaul of the scheming rodent-men, but rather some meat to hang on the bare bones of the lycanthrope template presented in the Monster Manual. The Complete Guide promised to give me that and I think that it delivered.

The book provides a great justification for the existence of lycanthropes as well as explaining their word view through the introduction of an ancient order of arcane casters: the Council of Flesh. Wererat society is broken down into broods, each of which shares the common goal of elevating the wererat to its rightful place at the top of the food chain while subjugating the rest of the world. Each brood has its own focus - its own way of reaching these goals. For example, the Graykin brood manipulates societies from behind the scenes while the Dorians unleash specialty plagues to eliminate their enemies.

Each employs Shifters and Weavers to attain their ends. Shifters are a 10-level class that focuses on the benefits of shape changing and its alternate form. They are the wererats' elite warriors. Weavers are a variant Transmuter with some extra available spells. It is they who create the diseases, monstrous crossbreeds (such as the draconian wererat pictured on the book's cover), and mutations (represented by a generous offering of feats geared toward lycanthropes) that will ultimately lead the wererats to supremacy.

Why aren't there more lycanthropes if it's so easy to transmit and so hard to cure? Why are all wererats Lawful Evil? Can a PC be played as a wererat? The Complete Guide answers all these questions and many more. The back of the book is chock full of stats for generic NPC wererats - warriors, shifters, weavers, etc. - for quick insertion into your game.

This book has a narrow focus, to be sure, but that acts as a benefit rather than a detriment, allowing for increased depth instead of unnecessary breadth. There isn't a lot of clutter in this book, which I think is a good thing, but I was surprised to not find the Dorians' insidious plagues or the Weavers' mutant crossbreeds (especially the aforementioned draconian wererat) included. Not to worry, however; they're available in a pair of web enhancements on the Goodman Games website. My players are even now being bedeviled by an outbreak of Magebane!

I can give this book a solid four without reservation.