Hey! I am relatively new to being a DM and have a lot to learn. One thing I am trying to keep in mind always is to not say no to a player and to roll with their ideas.
We started off playing a free adventure called The Madness of the Rat King. During this, one of my players found The Staff of the Rat King, allowing them three charges to summon a swarm of rats. They are now intending to have these rats do their passive bidding, like “bringing back cool things” as they send them running through an Adventure’s Guild Outpost. Or tracking baddies in the woods.
How would you work through this with a player? Can they summon rats for an undefined amount of time until their death?
Well, it's a custom item that might be poorly balanced; I'd probably interpret it as letting you cast a specialized version of Conjure Animals, so requires concentration and duration 1 hour. Other than that, the summoned swarms have the same capabilities as a normal Swarm of Rats, which are actually pretty limited.
There might be an RP solution to this as well. If every NPC in town slams their doors when "that creepy guy with all the rats" shows up, or he ends up catching bubonic plague from his furry friends, he might dial it back himself.
Hey! I am relatively new to being a DM and have a lot to learn. One thing I am trying to keep in mind always is to not say no to a player and to roll with their ideas.
We started off playing a free adventure called The Madness of the Rat King. During this, one of my players found The Staff of the Rat King, allowing them three charges to summon a swarm of rats. They are now intending to have these rats do their passive bidding, like “bringing back cool things” as they send them running through an Adventure’s Guild Outpost. Or tracking baddies in the woods.
How would you work through this with a player? Can they summon rats for an undefined amount of time until their death?
I looked up the item. it says:
Staff of the Rat King
Staff, rare (requires attunement)
This wooden staff is carved to resemble a mass of rats tied together by their tails. You have advantage on Animal Handling checks with rats while you hold this staff.
The staff has 3 charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 or more charges, summoning a swarm of rats for each charge expended. The swarms are friendly to you and your companions. Roll initiative for the summoned creatures as a group, which has its own turns. They obey any verbal commands that you issue to them (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any commands to them, they defend themselves from hostile creatures, but otherwise take no actions.The staff regains 1d3 charges daily at dawn. If you expend the last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, a swarm of rats consumes and destroys the staff, then disperses.
Comparing to Conjure Animals. A Swarm of Rats is a CR 1/4 monster, so Conjure Animals (a 3rd-level spell) could make eight of them. Summoning three swarms of rats isn't super powerful past level the first few levels or so. Also compare to Find Familiar - a swarm of rats is likely to be more limited than a familiar. So I'm not seeing a particular balance issue with an item that lets a PC summon a swarm of rats once a day. (Or, well, 2 times a day safely, or 3 times a day if you're willing to risk the staff breaking.)
One limiting factor is that the summoned creatures are not under the player's direct control. They obey commands to the best of their ability (that part is not stated, but it's implied). However, since they're just rats, that ability is pretty limited. They could probably do something like "Attack that enemy" or "distract that enemy (help action)". They might even be able to obey "bring back That Specific Object (that you can either see or describe precisely)". They probably wouldn't be able to do anything that requires logic - so you can't say "Go into that room and steal any cool things!" (Because the rats have no idea what's valuable to a player. They might get back some moldy cheese.) and you probably can't tell them "go and scout out the room and tell me what's in there" (because the rats can't communicate, and even if they did they're not looking at the room with the same eye as a human is. E.g. they might ignore the large animated armor and notice the moldy cheese.)
Tracking baddies in the woods - depends how. Seems plausible that rats could follow a baddie for a short distance, come back, and lead you along that path. But it probably depends on the distance. A few hundred feet? Sure. A mile? Well, maybe they could follow the baddie (if he didn't cross any hazards that the rats can't, like a river) but no way could a swarm of rats successfully navigate a mile back to your position, and then retrace their steps to lead you along.
So yeah, as DM your task now is to judge how the rats respond to the verbal commands the player gives - figuring out whether the rats can actually successfully complete the command as intended, whether they try but are unable to, or whether they're just confused and can't do anything.
Ftl & Tim Curtin highlighted the best of both worlds. The ability to get some freebie swarms of rats first isn't overly powerful AND provides many opportunity for a character's roleplaying.
Allow the rats to do the passive bidding--within sensible limits. Simple things=great! and rewards the player's satisfaction for having rats in the first place. More complicated things? Probably a lot of humorous unintended consequences. Magic rats appearing in the middle of a town or tavern? Likely to cause a panic among the local civilians...
Overall, I applaud the approach to let the player have fun with this item especially in low risk situations (and, as a resource in combat). But when things could go differently than when the player might anticipate? Now it’s your turn to have a little fun... the fun should be balanced nevertheless.
Glad I stumbled across this thread. I bought the Rat King module on DM's Guild and the connected Fiery Grog Tavern module. I dropped the tavern into my campaign but the player's never took the bait on the plot hook to get into the Rat King module. But here's to hoping they come back and take the bait, and if so, I'll have a better idea to handle the staff.
The main issue is that the rats have vermin intelligence (1?), so whilst you can give them any verbal commands you like, they can only follow them as far as their intelligence will allow.
The main issue is that the rats have vermin intelligence (1?), so whilst you can give them any verbal commands you like, they can only follow them as far as their intelligence will allow.
Exactly this. You tell them to bring back cool things, a rat's idea of a cool thing is probably a half eaten frog corpse. Tell them to bring back coins, and I doubt a rat knows the difference between a coin and a spoon. Both are shiny and you can't eat them.
And just being a swarm doesn't mean they act in concert, picking up some big thing and crowd surfing it back. It would basically be what one of them could carry in its teeth. And the rats might try to track something, but their perception is +0. Even if you give them the advantage from smell, it's not going to be very effective. And I doubt they'd have the attention span to do it for long.
Technically, they do exist for an undefined amount of time, but there could be reasonable restrictions. Like if the summoner went to sleep, I'd say it would be reasonable for the swarm to disperse, since there's no longer something actively keeping it together. I might even expand that to say if the summoner was knocked unconscious in combat. If you really want to make it tough, you could treat it like a concentration spell. (I know the item description doesn't say that, but you're the DM, you can if you want.) If they are a caster, they can have their swarm or a spell they cast. And caster or no, they need to make saves to maintain control if they take damage. I mean it's got 3 charges/day. I'd want to find ways to make the players think about whether or not to use them.
It was hinted at before, but just to point it out more explicitly, just because they can be ordered to do anything doesn't mean they automatically succeed at everything.
Even if you want to grant that they actually do bring back cool stuff, or money, or specific items... I doubt they would just find it laying in the street, so that means potentially interacting with people who might not take kindly to rats taking their stuff.
I would say that rules have it so you have to command them round by round, you can't just send them out on a quest to get stuff for you. If you want to have fun with it then just have them attempt the orders but with their -4 int stat in mind. Basically like baby groot trying to steal stuff in that one scene.
Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions on how to handle this!
I really like the idea of leaning on the rat's intelligence numbers and allowed the freedom under the way Conjure Animals works! Going to go down that route and see how much fun that allows us. Thank you all!
Main problem with the item as written is that it doesn't have a duration limit on the swarms.
Ooh, that 's a good point. As written it doesn't say that the rats have a timelimit, so a rules-lawyer might claim that their PC can just accumulate new swarms until they've got hundreds of them.
That's dumb and seems like an oversight rather than intended behavior. I'd probably rule that the rat swarms go away at the same time that the staff recovers charges, so daily at dawn.
Hey! I am relatively new to being a DM and have a lot to learn. One thing I am trying to keep in mind always is to not say no to a player and to roll with their ideas.
We started off playing a free adventure called The Madness of the Rat King. During this, one of my players found The Staff of the Rat King, allowing them three charges to summon a swarm of rats. They are now intending to have these rats do their passive bidding, like “bringing back cool things” as they send them running through an Adventure’s Guild Outpost. Or tracking baddies in the woods.
How would you work through this with a player? Can they summon rats for an undefined amount of time until their death?
Well, it's a custom item that might be poorly balanced; I'd probably interpret it as letting you cast a specialized version of Conjure Animals, so requires concentration and duration 1 hour. Other than that, the summoned swarms have the same capabilities as a normal Swarm of Rats, which are actually pretty limited.
It would help to have the magic item listing, so we can read the whole thing through
There might be an RP solution to this as well. If every NPC in town slams their doors when "that creepy guy with all the rats" shows up, or he ends up catching bubonic plague from his furry friends, he might dial it back himself.
I looked up the item. it says:
Comparing to Conjure Animals. A Swarm of Rats is a CR 1/4 monster, so Conjure Animals (a 3rd-level spell) could make eight of them. Summoning three swarms of rats isn't super powerful past level the first few levels or so. Also compare to Find Familiar - a swarm of rats is likely to be more limited than a familiar. So I'm not seeing a particular balance issue with an item that lets a PC summon a swarm of rats once a day. (Or, well, 2 times a day safely, or 3 times a day if you're willing to risk the staff breaking.)
One limiting factor is that the summoned creatures are not under the player's direct control. They obey commands to the best of their ability (that part is not stated, but it's implied). However, since they're just rats, that ability is pretty limited. They could probably do something like "Attack that enemy" or "distract that enemy (help action)". They might even be able to obey "bring back That Specific Object (that you can either see or describe precisely)". They probably wouldn't be able to do anything that requires logic - so you can't say "Go into that room and steal any cool things!" (Because the rats have no idea what's valuable to a player. They might get back some moldy cheese.) and you probably can't tell them "go and scout out the room and tell me what's in there" (because the rats can't communicate, and even if they did they're not looking at the room with the same eye as a human is. E.g. they might ignore the large animated armor and notice the moldy cheese.)
Tracking baddies in the woods - depends how. Seems plausible that rats could follow a baddie for a short distance, come back, and lead you along that path. But it probably depends on the distance. A few hundred feet? Sure. A mile? Well, maybe they could follow the baddie (if he didn't cross any hazards that the rats can't, like a river) but no way could a swarm of rats successfully navigate a mile back to your position, and then retrace their steps to lead you along.
So yeah, as DM your task now is to judge how the rats respond to the verbal commands the player gives - figuring out whether the rats can actually successfully complete the command as intended, whether they try but are unable to, or whether they're just confused and can't do anything.
Ftl & Tim Curtin highlighted the best of both worlds. The ability to get some freebie swarms of rats first isn't overly powerful AND provides many opportunity for a character's roleplaying.
Allow the rats to do the passive bidding--within sensible limits. Simple things=great! and rewards the player's satisfaction for having rats in the first place. More complicated things? Probably a lot of humorous unintended consequences. Magic rats appearing in the middle of a town or tavern? Likely to cause a panic among the local civilians...
Overall, I applaud the approach to let the player have fun with this item especially in low risk situations (and, as a resource in combat). But when things could go differently than when the player might anticipate? Now it’s your turn to have a little fun... the fun should be balanced nevertheless.
Boldly go
Glad I stumbled across this thread. I bought the Rat King module on DM's Guild and the connected Fiery Grog Tavern module. I dropped the tavern into my campaign but the player's never took the bait on the plot hook to get into the Rat King module. But here's to hoping they come back and take the bait, and if so, I'll have a better idea to handle the staff.
Main problem with the item as written is that it doesn't have a duration limit on the swarms.
The main issue is that the rats have vermin intelligence (1?), so whilst you can give them any verbal commands you like, they can only follow them as far as their intelligence will allow.
Exactly this. You tell them to bring back cool things, a rat's idea of a cool thing is probably a half eaten frog corpse. Tell them to bring back coins, and I doubt a rat knows the difference between a coin and a spoon. Both are shiny and you can't eat them.
And just being a swarm doesn't mean they act in concert, picking up some big thing and crowd surfing it back. It would basically be what one of them could carry in its teeth. And the rats might try to track something, but their perception is +0. Even if you give them the advantage from smell, it's not going to be very effective. And I doubt they'd have the attention span to do it for long.
Technically, they do exist for an undefined amount of time, but there could be reasonable restrictions. Like if the summoner went to sleep, I'd say it would be reasonable for the swarm to disperse, since there's no longer something actively keeping it together. I might even expand that to say if the summoner was knocked unconscious in combat. If you really want to make it tough, you could treat it like a concentration spell. (I know the item description doesn't say that, but you're the DM, you can if you want.) If they are a caster, they can have their swarm or a spell they cast. And caster or no, they need to make saves to maintain control if they take damage. I mean it's got 3 charges/day. I'd want to find ways to make the players think about whether or not to use them.
It was hinted at before, but just to point it out more explicitly, just because they can be ordered to do anything doesn't mean they automatically succeed at everything.
Even if you want to grant that they actually do bring back cool stuff, or money, or specific items... I doubt they would just find it laying in the street, so that means potentially interacting with people who might not take kindly to rats taking their stuff.
I would say that rules have it so you have to command them round by round, you can't just send them out on a quest to get stuff for you.
If you want to have fun with it then just have them attempt the orders but with their -4 int stat in mind. Basically like baby groot trying to steal stuff in that one scene.
Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions on how to handle this!
I really like the idea of leaning on the rat's intelligence numbers and allowed the freedom under the way Conjure Animals works! Going to go down that route and see how much fun that allows us. Thank you all!
Oh, that would be so much fun in a game of D&D :-)
Ooh, that 's a good point. As written it doesn't say that the rats have a timelimit, so a rules-lawyer might claim that their PC can just accumulate new swarms until they've got hundreds of them.
That's dumb and seems like an oversight rather than intended behavior. I'd probably rule that the rat swarms go away at the same time that the staff recovers charges, so daily at dawn.