Wererat Wererats ( alternately known as ratmen ) are lycanthrope s common in urban areas . Wererats could transform into dire rat s . Physical Description . A wererat in humanoid form tended to be a thin , wiry individual of shorter than average height . The eyes constantly darted around , and the nose and mouth may have twitched if he or she was excited . Males often have thin , ragged mustaches . The animal form of a wererat was that of a dire rat two feet long from nose to rump . In hybrid form , the wererat was shorter than in its human form and its head , torso and tail were those of a rat while its limbs were a little more humanoid in appearance . Culture . A wererat never lived alone if they could help it , though they did not tend to form strong interpersonal relationships beyond a pack mentality - love and marriage were almost alien concepts to them . They delighted in pitting their superior cunning against surface - dwellers , seeing the cities that tended to be above their lairs as hunting grounds where they could steal food and wealth by killing its inhabitants in an almost parasitical manner . Wererats would steal anything that they determined to have any value , resulting in accumulation of piles of junk that could however contain valuable treasures . When in human form , the stench of the sewers remained , leading to wererats on the surface being relegated to the seedier parts of the city - this suited the lycanthropes though , as those areas frequently contained the dives that served the strong alcohol that they favored and made it easier to attack drunks . . Ecology . In second edition D & D , ratmen were cannibals , eating uninfected humans and subsisting on what they could scavenge or steal . Wererats were noted to rarely mate with other wererats , instead mating with uninfected humans . The progeny of a male wererat and a human woman was human , but the child would inherit many of the physical characteristics of its father in his human form . The child of a female wererat and a human male were giant rats with paws that resembled human hands known as ratlings . These ratlings grew to maturity by the age of two and had the ability to transform themselves into human children who appeared to be roughly three times their real age . Dungeon magazine 55 introduced the Wererat Lord , a creature regarded as almost divine by its lessers . They were self - centred to the extreme however and despite an initial increase in the pack ' s power , the Lord would eventually lead the pack to ruin as it sacrificed its followers and diverted resources to itself . Habitat . Wererats recognized their relative weakness and congregated in numbers in the sewer systems beneath surface cities . Not only did those who live on the surface maintain their lairs for them but they unknowingly protected the wererat lairs with their fortifications , allowing the wererats to frequently leave their defenses lacking . Abilities . In second edition D & D , wererats were weaker than normal humans but they were more intelligent . Only silver or magical weapons could harm them and they were adept at surprise attacks . In third edition D & D , wererats shared the animal instinctiveness of all lycanthropes and were markedly more dextrous than humans as well as a little more hardy . Any damage caused by a weapon not made of silver or coated in alchemical silver would be reduced . Wererats were often carriers of filth fever due to the environments that they lived in .