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Ratlings are a playable race.

Manual Info[]

Ratlings are one of the numerous yet rarely noticed races. These lean and wiry humanoid rats thrive in larger settlements and enjoy interacting with other races. Whether they are the result of an ancient lich trying to create a servitor race, chaos-spawned descendents of plain rats from the dawn of time or just one more example of the abundance of life forms in Ancardia still is a matter of dispute among sages. No matter what, they are accepted as skilled traders, quick warriors and crafty thieves - acceptance in the latter case meaning careful observation and quick reaction from other races.

Ratlings grow to about 5 and a half feet in size and weigh 90 to 120 pounds. They usually sport brown hair although black, gray and a rare albino white are not unheard of. Their eyes are either black, brown, yellow or red in color, black being dominant.

Gameplay Effects[]

Skills[]

Ratlings train in Appraising, Detect item status, Stealth, Survival and Swimming.

Swimming is a quite useful skill to have, especially if the PC is (otherwise) unfortunate enough to need to cross a river in the CoC early in the game. Detect item status and Appraising are quite interesting skills that were previously only available to few classes. Detect item status especially is quite useful, though it is hard to advance in for most classes.

Attributes[]

Ratlings tend towards very high Dexterity, Toughness and Perception scores. Their other stats appear to be about average, except for very low scores in Appearance and, surprisingly, Charisma.

Starting Equipment[]

Ratlings tend to be quite lightly armored, with ratlings of many melee classes starting with leather armor and only upgrading to studded leather armor if they are Paladins or Barbarians. They tend to use light weapons, particularly small swords. Notably, even ratling Healers start out with a short sword.

Lifespan[]

Though ratlings enter adulthood at a younger age than humans do, they actually have slightly longer lifespans. Thus, while they are still quite vulnerable to aging attacks especially from ghost lords or ghost kings, they are not at as much risk as trolls or orcs.

Power Point and Hit Point Regeneration Rate[]

A potion of insight reveals ratlings' regeneration rates to be roughly one HP per 35 turns, and one PP per 55 turns. They thus recover HP quite quickly, whilst having a slightly slower than average PP regeneration rate.

Relations with Other Races[]

As the manual and the ingame presence of ratling traders suggest, ratlings are sociable creatures that love to trade with other races. Both ratling adventurers and ratling shopkeepers seem to do good deals with most races; ratling adventurers seem to be hated by mist elves and drakelings, though, and like all Ancardian races ratling shopkeepers are extremely prejudiced against mist elves.

Alignment[]

Ratlings start off Neutral, though class and star sign can affect this.

Eating habits

Like most other races, ratlings refuse to eat doppelgangers unless starving and they vomit after eating rat(ling)s or spiders. Unlike most other races, they can digest the less appealing snacks that ratling traders sell — fat worms, rat tails and cooked roaches; they do not get much satiation from these, though.

Other gameplay effects

  • The preferred sacrifice of ratling deities is artifacts; ratlings get a bonus multiplier on the huge amount of piety they would receive for sacrificing artifacts, making these sacrifices especially valuable. This applies to sis, though sacrificing these does not increase piety by much anyway.

Suggested Classes[]

With respectable starting stats and a few useful racial skills, ratlings are quite well suited to any class. Their (starting) stat distribution makes them quite good as Archers or Thieves. They make decent fighters, especially as Monks or Beastfighters since at least they seem to gain levels more quickly than the stronger races. While their abilities to learn and cast magic are generally not spectacular, their typically high Toughness and potential toughness can give them greater survivability than the more magically adept races.

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