Ratfolk

## Overview

Ratfolk are a race of bestial humanoids with rodent-like features that take advantage of their small size to form expansive burrows underground. Living in such close quarters with each other creates an incredibly close-knit community bond, and most ratfolk consider even the most distant ends of their extended families as having as much importance as they do themselves. When one has a good or bad experience with a ratfolk, it's said that that experience carries over and applies to every single member of their family as well. Despite their communal, shared lifestyle and strong familial bonds, every ratfolk has an instinctive understanding of private property due to their tendency to hoard, filling up their burrows with every item of interest that they can get their hands on. Ratfolk aren't necessarily greedy, and will often make trades and deals that are far from market value just to get their hands on a particular object that they've taken a liking to, but they find that any day without a burrow full of family and hoarded items is one that fills them with a sense of anxiety and loss. These hoards do have a practical value, however - they provide ample material for alchemical experimentation, and allow for any conflicts between ratfolk to be resolved with an exchange of goods rather than an argument or fight.

## Mechanics

Standard Racial Traits

* **Ability Score Modifiers**: Ratfolk are agile and clever, yet physically weak. They gain +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, and –2 Strength.
* **Type**: Ratfolk are humanoids with the ratfolk subtype.
* **Size**: Ratfolk are Small and thus gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a –1 penalty on combat maneuver checks and to their CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.
* **Speed (Slow)**: Ratfolk have a base speed of 20 ft.
* **Languages**: Ratfolk with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Aklo, Draconic, Dwarven, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, and Orc.

Feat and Skill Racial Traits

* **Tinker**: Ratfolk gain a +2 racial bonus on Craft (alchemy), Perception, and Use Magic Device checks.
* **Rodent Empathy**: Ratfolk gain a +4 racial bonus on Handle Animal checks made to influence rodents.

Offense Racial Traits

* **Swarming**: Ratfolk are used to living and fighting communally, and are adept at swarming foes for their own gain and their foes’ detriment. Up to two ratfolk can share the same square at the same time. If two ratfolk in the same square attack the same foe, they are considered to be flanking that foe as if they were in two opposite squares.

Senses Racial Traits

* **Darkvision**: Ratfolk can see perfectly in the dark up to 60 feet.

## Society

Ratfolk, whether living with other races or not, always are found with their extended family, preferring cramped quarters over all others. If no underground accommodations can be found, they tend to find large, cheap buildings and share a single room. Multiple families of ratfolk in a single settlement quickly reach an agreement over how to operate, negotiating to find a mutually beneficial arrangement. - usually this involves the newer or less advantaged family seeking notably different roles than the older or more powerful family. Ratfolk are very skilled with both their hands and minds, and thus have little difficulty contributing to a settlement's welfare - their innate desire to tinker and experiment makes them natural alchemists, researchers, and physicians, and their compulsion to hoard and count makes them excellent planners, logisticians, and engineers. Aside from their intellectual capabilities, ratfolk have a natural empathy with rodents that lends itself well to training them, or to a peaceful form of pest control, and an empathy with the marketplace that makes them reliable, if eccentric, merchants. Finally, some ratfolk choose to put their small, unassuming forms to good use by becoming scouts and skirmishers, or thieves and assassins if they find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Such things are always a last resort, however - ratfolk always aim to haggle and negotiate their way through a situation before they begin relying on theft or violence.

## Religion

Ratfolk prefer to follow gods that lend themselves well to communal worship, such as Ketar Mozog, Vicenta Salcedo, and the Apparitions of Alessandra Juntoso and Pahala Kadam. They rarely worship Basang Ba, finding the natural disasters that she represents to usually be faraway dangers compared to the explosive failed experiments that Masik may help avoid or the deep-delving roots of trees that Agathon may supply with saps and resins that can be used to create medicine. Those ratfolk who seek to expand their hoard without end tend to worship Zhihao Jin, and those who wish to use their hoarded goods to produce something useful follow Jolein Composed of Desire, with very few ratfolk attempting to placate both - doing so is considered attempting to have one's cake and eat it to among ratfolk. When ratfolk burrows and group homes become too crowded to operate, those who set out to create a new burrow somewhere else pray steadfastly for Petya Naumov's guidance, but otherwise pay little heed to the goddess of travel. Almost no ratfolk revere Fa'qamuu Twice-Heavenbound or Nothing Left of Quibatus due to a combination of social pressures and simple impracticality.

## Relations

Ratfolk are more insular than not, but find that their conflict-resolution approach makes them many friends among other races. Aasimar, tieflings, and aphorites born among them are welcomed with an ease unseen among other races, although ganzi quickly bristle at the lack of privacy and set out on their own. This holds true even for divine outsiders meeting them as strangers, with ganzi finding ratfolk uncomfortably similar.

Ifrits are often barred from ratfolk homes for similar reasons to the ganzi - such individuality inevitably disrupts daily life, and thus ifrits come away bemoaning their victimhood. Traveling fetchlings have a similar opinion, but set it aside to get high prices for their gathered knick-knacks and alchemical supplies.

Changelings are met with a full bag of supplies and prompt exile, which, if raised among ratfolk, often saddles them with an inalienable loneliness that is far deeper than they can express.

Dhampir are terrified of ratfolk, who see them as no different from true vampires and will immediately mobilize their entire family to purge the perceived undead from the area.

Drelmans disapprove of ratfolk's hoards and alchemical experiments, which they consider a waste of precious resources.

Dwarves, gnomes, kobolds, and ratfolk are all fierce competitors, each seeking to outdo the other in engineering, alchemy, and similar productive pursuits.

Drow, vanara, and suli mostly find that ratfolk pass under their attention, though drow will usually take the rare opportunity that they notice a ratfolk in order to exchange information.

Duergar, ghorans, parmans, and undine all get along with ratfolk with practiced ease, and oreads and halflings are looked down upon but can be serviceable neighbors.

Ratfolk are feared by grippli and lizardfolk due to their burrows often intruding into their territory, and ratfolk in turn fear hobgoblins for the same reason.

Elves romanticize ratfolk and will gladly praise them at length, which suits ratfolk just fine.

Kitsune and orcs find that their friendships with ratfolk are short-lived, which the orcs dismiss as fear of their strength and the kitsune mourn as family pressure - in both cases, it's more likely that ratfolk find individual kitsune and orcs to be less interesting than they had expected.

The nagaji consider ratfolk to be dangerously obsessed with intellectual studies when they could devote themselves to better things, but ratfolk never take well to such statements.

Wererat skinwalkers find that ratfolk accept them as one of their own, but all other skinwalkers avoid ratfolk, where a single discovery of their true nature could rapidly turn into a lynch mob.

Sylphs and vishkanya love ratfolk - sylphs consider their family interactions, hoards, and experiments endlessly exciting and worth learning about, while vishkanya take singular pleasure in provoking the ire of an entire ratfolk family, returning to the settlement while disguised, then doing it again, ad nauseam.

Tengu pity ratfolk, whose communal culture results in relatively few examples of single ratfolk achieving fame and glory - as a result, tengu avoid interacting with ratfolk settlements but always take the opportunity to speak with isolated or traveling ratfolk on the off chance that their story is the next to become legendary.

Goblins, with their assortment of worthless and usually at least slightly greasy objects, are best friends with ratfolk, often becoming godparents when they accidentally stumble into the middle of burrows during rites of passage.