Goblin Rat

This filthy shapechanger is a distant relative of the eastern animal shapechangers, but it has only two shapes. As a beast it is a giant rat roughly a yard long, not counting a naked tail almost as long again, with a lean black or brown body, pointed ears, small eyes of black or red, and a fang-filled mouth. As a person it becomes a ratman: a short, wiry human with a wispy mustache, oily skin and eyes that never stop flicking about.

Goblin rats have no tongue of their own. They use the trade tongue plus whatever local languages are common, but only while in human form.

Running is nearly always a goblin rat's first choice, even when its lair is under threat, but hunger or a dead end makes it fight savagely. Hit points and abilities stay the same in both forms. Shifting takes a full round with no other action possible, and gear does not change with it, so a goblin rat that turns into a rat drops all its armor and weapons on the spot.

In rat form it cannot use equipment and fights with its teeth: each bite deals 1d8 damage, with a 5% risk of infecting the victim with disease, most often plague, cholera or a fever. In ratman form its bite does no damage, but it can wear armor and wield weapons, favoring two-handed swords, naginata and spears and dressing in ring mail and studded leather (AC 6). Any group of 10 or more is ruled by a king with 5 HD and AC 4, whose rat bite deals 1d8+2 and who usually swings a two-handed sword as a man.

Cats and catlike creatures terrify goblin rats. Facing one, a goblin rat must save vs. paralyzation or flee in panic for a full turn; on a success it can ignore the feline. Because of this mutual hatred and the rat's dread, felines get +1 on all attacks against goblin rats. Even a realistic painting of a cat can protect a home, provided it is skilled work made specifically to ward off these creatures.

Goblin rats lurk at the edges of human communities, squatting in empty huts, forsaken temples and buildings whose owners they have chased away. A pack is one extended family: 1-10 adult males, the same number of equally dangerous females, and young equal to all the adults together. The biggest male names himself king and rules absolutely. A male who challenges him must fight to the death, both combatants in rat form, and the survivor takes the throne.

At night the pack slips into villages, making off with animals and food, and now and then ambushes a solitary traveler. They gather a considerable hoard of coins, gems and other glittering things, usually buried in deep holes behind the lair.

They eat whatever scraps they can find. Poor hunters, they would rather take livestock like sheep, pigs and horses, and they also like fruit and grain. Their meat is not fit to eat. Folk regard them as emblems of cowardice and treachery, and their diseases make them unwelcome to almost everyone, though oni sometimes keep them as servants. Some people brew a baldness remedy from whiskers boiled in water.