Enemy alright

not not enemy friend

Hmmm... time to make another empire.

The way these guys are used in Dragon of Icespire Peak is slightly problematic for the DM who does not notice the damage immunities when initially reading through the module. I missed that on my first skim of the Mountain's Toe quest weeks before my party even saw it on the job board. At the end of our last session, they arrived at the mine and have fortunately only been talking with the Whiskered Gang so far. Only 2 of them have a magic weapon.😬

(Barbarian has no magic weapon, but still has all 3 uses of Lightning Bolt from gaining "Charm of the Storm;" Ranger has limited spells [none of them damage-dealing], no magic weapons; Druid shouldn't have trouble; Fighter has a +1 shortsword; I homebrewed the gauntlets from the Anchorite of Talos as an item for our Monk, so I'd consider that a magic weapon.)

I may end up switching to damage resistance rather than immunity for this encounter if it ends in combat...

Agreed. I noticed the immunity but my daughter plus sidekick have no magical weapons and are at L3. Arcane trickers spells alone aren't going to take out 3 wererats. Gonna have to tweak this one - but it's going to be hard for a neutral or lawful good to not get into a fight if the gang won't leave.

Here's what I ended up doing:

The gang escorted the party to see the remaining miners. I had the miners, low on morale and supplies, melting down their salary (in silver) to coat their pickaxes, and they gave one to anyone without a magic/silvered weapon. I basically just took a mace and re-skinned it (I figured 1d6 bludgeoning damage made sense for that kind of tool).

They then snuck around another way using a passage that the rats conveniently didn't know about with Dwarf miners in tow, picking off a couple at a time.

I'm only concerned in hindsight that I had the NPCs hold their hand too much in strategizing.

My daughter can do green-flame blade which is -1 to hit over her standard attack but does fire damage plus splash damage. Her sidekick is useless though in this situation. 

So I think I'm going to have that mouthy NPC mention some tall tale about lycanthropes elsewhere. I'm also going to make him untrustworthy so when demands to fight the wererats she'll take it with a pinch of salt. Then when they get there do not decrease the wererats at the scene but make them more intimidating and brash about their immunity. Hopefully she will take the sidequest instead and I'll count that as a cue to level up to level 4. Then come back via the east entrance and if she decides to fight when the gang refuse to move on there will be none of the west entrance guards and she'll have an army of dwarven commoners to even out the numbers. They can also silver the sidekick's weapon too.

If she does get bit then I'll give that lady at Umbridge Hill the remove curse spell, and recommend that as a follow up quest.

Making these changes is a good learning experience for me, but I would have liked to see more of that guidance in the book.

Luckily, you don't have to kill the wererats to complete the quest. Also, you can use spells to kill them.

When using Multiattack, can the wererat fire the Hand Crossbow two times? Or because of the Loading property, can the Wererat only fire once, like a PC?

Quote from The_All_Knowing_Fraeric >>

When using Multiattack, can the wererat fire the Hand Crossbow two times? Or because of the Loading property, can the Wererat only fire once, like a PC?

If it only has one, it can only fire once.  However, hand crossbows are one-handed weapons, so nothing stops a someome from wielding two hand crossbows.

I need this as a race, either to make a Rogue Wererat Urchin for a great thief. Or making Ratigan from Great Mouse Detective as a BBEG on a campaign.

Quote from DracoRogue1218 >>

I need this as a race, either to make a Rogue Wererat Urchin for a great thief. Or making Ratigan from Great Mouse Detective as a BBEG on a campaign.

Try the Shifter race (check Unearthed Arcana if you don’t have the Eberon book), the agile subtype should work well enough for a PC.

You can use this homebrew feat if a player gets bitten: https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/281556-lycanthropy-wererat

How can I make my Rogue Wildstride Shifter a Wererat? How do I put that on my character sheet?

My players don’t want to just kill everyone they meet, which Icespire Hold seems to encourage when it comes to orcs or these wererats. They prefer finding creative, non-deadly solutions, which I encourage when awarding XP.

For this, I created the Wolfsbite of Lycanthrope Curing, a magic item that can cure cursed (not born) lyanthropes. And gave these wererats a “Lost Boys” backstory: A bunch of disaffected youths who got lured and cursed by the group’s leader and want out. Either the PCs directly overhear, or the dwarves have overheard and tell the PCs, about the backstory and that the leader keeps this lycanthrope-curing item on her person. So the players came up with the plan for the rogue to steal it, then hide away long enough to attune to it, then get to work punch-curing these dudes. It requires punching because the Wolfsbite is a silver knuckleduster.

For all the DOiP talk here, I'd like to point out something in the lore of the creature. This is nowhere in the original module so it's easy to miss but when reading the entire entry on Monster Manual etc you can find these tidbits:

"Although a wererat can deliver a nasty bite in its rat form, it favors that form for stealthy infiltration and escape rather than combat."

"A wererat clan operates much like a thieves' guild, with wererats transmitting their curse only to creatures they want to induct into the clan."

Going from this, the whereat gang wouldn't use their Bites on PCs. They would absolutely turn Don-Jon though, and that part is stated in the module as well.

For the immunity thing, I currently have no idea how to subtly tell my players to silver their weapons. I'll try to think of something. Someone suggested having the dwarves melt down their salaries and silver their pickaxes. They could lend these silvered pickaxes to the PCs if need be. To make this easier, I suggest players being able to notice the other entrances first.

I think these would make great Tiny NPCs, if "its true form" were a Tiny Rat, but with the stats of a Wererat.

Under Actions, change each instance of "Humanoid" to read Giant Rat, & change the Bite to read (Rat or Giant Rat only). Sure, they're unrealistically strong & dexterous in tiny Rat form, & the Hybrid Form is pointless for anything but "bit by a human" flavor, but regular Wererats are magical shapeshifters that change size & retain their stats; a Giant Rat with thumbs doesn't seem much additional stretch, to me.

By limiting their tool use to Giant Rat form, you get a society of creatures incentivized to use their Giant Rat or Hybrid Form as much as possible, reverting to their true, tiny Rat form only when hiding or reduced to 0 HP. They can spy on the PCs as a tiny rat, or confront them as a halfling-sized rat with a rapier! Change to Hybrid Form to reach that high shelf or to don a cloak for sneaking around if the humans are acting xenophobic. 

Their bite could still cause the usual Wererat-ism, among humanoids. Of course, when they bite ordinary Rats...

2 words *deep voice* " I'm Ratman"

I see a lot of people here giving different ideas for solutions to beat the Wererats in DoIP, so I thought I'd give my 10 cp. I put silvered weapons inside some of the jellies in the Dwarven Excavation, since most oozes can't digest metal. My players actually ended up arranging a truce with the Whiskered Gang with minimal bloodshed, but I think it definitely would have helped if the need arose!

I saw on YouTube that these creatures would be a problem, so for Icespire, I put sliver and +1 weapons in Gnomengarde's treasure hoard.