What sort of traps would you imagine you would find in the lair of several dozen humanoid rat-creatures? Nasty bugs? Soiled spears? I need more ideas…
What sort of traps would you imagine you would find in the lair of several dozen humanoid rat-creatures?
What sort of traps would you imagine you would find in the lair of several dozen humanoid rat-creatures?
A hodge podge dwelling made up of anything the rats could find. I had pet rats in the past and anything within their reach will be chewed upon and added to their “lairs”.
Hell ya! But how does that apply to traps? Junk avalanche?
Junk avalanche sounds good! :). Rats in real life are pretty smart so I would assume humanoid rats would be even more so. You could also set up strange Rube Goldberg devices/traps made out of the junk the rats have collected over the years. Overly complicated devices to perform simple things such as a spike trap. Maybe have all kinds of things going on before the trap is actually sprung.
Uri Kurlianchik as the resident Rat RPG guy may have some interesting ideas as well.
Jim Schmitz not sure about bugs, rats eat EVERYTHING especially if it has protein! 😉
Crushing/smashing things that don’t completely flatten anything that can squirm and wriggle (like a ratfolk!) but anything without a collapsible skeleton is gonna be in for a world of hurt.
I’d definitely draw from the D&D staple of “Filth Fever” to hand out Con Debilities via filthy, filthy diseases.
Skaven lore and stories from the Warhammer universe could also be helpful.
Pit traps that drop adventurers into the feeding pits of whatever ravenous creatures they breed for food. The pits are lined with arrow slits of course. For ease of food gathering, ya know.
Food storage areas? Imagine hidden caches of rotten food that are not only fragile pit traps, but disease ridden filth pits!
How about a rat bano (bathroom)? A place where they are moving all their excretions to, like a vomitorium from Ancient Rome.
giant mouse trap like contraptions? Like Indian Jones and the temple of doom intro but a metal bar or some sort of glue trap (maybe slaughtered oozes smeared on the floor or released from the ceiling) or a cruelty free cage box (or at least until they eat you alive).
But my games have the tongue firmly inserted in cheek so YMMV.
How about a narrow hallway that players can barely get through that has holes in the walls… as you try to pass, human/rat claw-hands comes out scratching!
Powdered glass is a favorite of mine.
A trip-wire that causes stones to fall from the celing. A good old-fashioned ambush. Assassin Vine. Slippery stairs.
I think Skaven are partial to glass bombs filled with noxious green gas.
Oh, glue traps!
Nathan Black or pits filled with their lesser evolved relatives in swarms.
How intelligent are they?
Mathew Mailer rat kings are very interesting subjects!!
These are all awesome ideas. I am definitely going to use them. As for the rats, they are as smart as a dumb human… think orc or goblin, but with less stupid anger.
I think it might be neat to have the trap end up being the bait for some monster that the Rats either worship, or are afraid of and want to placate with food. So while the trap is a rat design, it’s meant to hold the heroes until something much more dangerous arrives.
What would they’re minions be? Bug swarms? Also what would they’re tech level look like?
Take revenge with giant mouse-traps designed for humans.
The rat-folk are actually a minion to another greater evil… they are hitting the tip of the iceberg! So I don’t want to muddle them up with a lot of other minions. But there will be a Rat-Ogre or two 🙂 Plus, their overlord will have a few of his folk around to “guide” the rats…
As for the traps, I am probably going to go with the “hoarder” theme, lots of re-purposed junk… I love the idea of the reverse mouse traps used on people kind of stuff, but I want these things to seem evil, not so silly, so I might have to pass on them for now. At least for the first encounter. Once they seem less scary, then maybe mix it up with some fun stuff 🙂
When you finally get to the “fun” stuff, and if you’re going with the hoarder theme, maybe they could encounter a rat person in the trap and find out the reason he was in there (maybe dead) is because he went back in for some neat trinket used in the trap that he decided he wanted back, but died trying to get it. That could be used to show the impulsive nature, as well as a lack of fear of traps, or perhaps a lack of intelligence about their own creations.