Homebrew Ratling Species Details

Ratlings small creatures look like humanoid rats.

As a small quiet race, ratlings mostly try to stay hidden from the rest of the world. Created by mistake in experiments of Mad Mage, they were bound to participate in his later studies, until ratlings was freed due to some accident that destroyed Mage tower. ratlings was left to themselves to find their place in the world.

Cowardly nature.

Living in constant threat of death under the command of Mad Mage ratlings developed many habits to hide and run in first sight of danger. Now it helps them to observe the world and mostly stays hidden.

Short lifespan.

Life and death is a constant question to any ratling, they reach adulthood in 2 years and live up to 20 years. Rare wise grey rats can extend their lifetime by magical means, but even then they rarely live longer than 40 or 50 years.

Survival of the race.  

Concern about the future of their specie pushes many young ratlings to spend their early years outside of the closed society in hope to find answers to the survival of their race. 

Keen minds.

Due to their creation, and the fact that many of the first generations lived under the heavy magic field, ratlings quickly developed the high intellect and curiosity. Many of their kind continue to gravitate towards arts of magic, in hope to find a way to greatly increase numbers of their race, that at the moment stands on the border of extinction.

Ratlings Names.

Because of the complexity of their communications between each other, that include gestures, small noises, and smells, ratlings names do not translate into other languages, so young ratlings who leave their society in most cases take names from surrounding nations that they meet most frequently in their journey. 

Ratling Traits

Your Ratling character has the following racial traits.

Ability Score Increase

Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Intelligence score increases by 1.

Age

Ratlings reach adulthood at age 2 and live up to 20 years.

Alignment

Ratlings are typically neutral, as they trying to stand aside so they don't get caught in conflicts. 

Size

Ratlings are between 3 and 4 feet tall and weigh between 40 and 60 pounds. Your size is Small.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision

You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Small cowards.

You are proficient with Stealth, aditionaly you can  take Hide action as a bonus action on each of your turns.

Third arm

You can use your tail to handle small objects that weight not more than 10 pounds, and you can perform a somatic component of a spell with your tail. Additionally, you can wield a light, finesse weapon in your tail, Dexterity is your modifier for the attacks with this weapon. You don't add your ability modifier to the damage of the attacks with you're tail unless that modifier is negative.

Languages

Ratlings does not have separate language as a race, they exchange mostly through gestures, small noises, and smells. They have problems with speaking other languages but because their keen minds, can learn to understand others pretty fast. Any language that you learn in addition to Common (by the feat, background or other means) you can understand, read, and write, but can't speak.
You can speak, read, and write Common and can understand, read, and write, but can't speak one other language of your choice.