How to make a ratfolk race interesting without just ripping off the skaven?

>who cares if you're ripping off skaven?

Skaven aren't interesting. They're just chaos goblins.

Rat folk are the bastard children of a homosexual affair between the human creator god and the beast folk creator god and reflect as such.
>no female rat folk, only males. They lay eggs in litters of 70-100 at a time. Each rat man goes into heat once in their lifetime for 10 days and consider it the most important thing to happen to them (the literal climax of their life lol)
>they can’t stand sunight, it irritates their skin and eyes, so they live underground and frequently come into conflict with dwarves and other underground races.
>the race is small sized and lithe, so they would work best as rogues and assassins, but they are culturally part human so you’ll see more fighters and barbarians than anything and they have a strong warrior and honor culture.
>killing a pregnant rat man is the most heinous crime imaginable to them and they have gotten into decades long wars over the death of a single one.

I personally would go back to the old trope of them being small characters in a big world. Like in the Rescuers or American Tale. Have them have their own societies alongside the big normal people.

Here, in case that this thread was made in good faith. Here's what I did in my setting.

>The Ber
>On average stand between 5'5 to 6'2, variation depends on diet
>varied mixture of phenotypes, all are still distinguishable as one race
>scattered refugees from a distant and mysterious industrial wasteland
>formerly a genetically modified and bred caste of maintenance workers and laborers for city-spanning factories
>prone to developing and maintaining industry and infrastructure, incredibly useful for bustling nations and cities
>strict caste system and closely knit clan families, insular but not unkind to outsiders
>two notable castes are divided between home workers, those who do everything from raising new generations, caring for their homes and land and clan, and seekers who vagabond across the world and bring sights seen, stories told and new ideas back to the clan. Seekers are rare but more likely to be seen than other Ber. Selection process is complex and layered, mixing tradition with phenotype and pheromone lotteries.
>accustomed to medieval and feudal life but have some grasp of greater technologies and what could be
>instinctively fearful and submissive towards other sapients of vastly greater intellect. The average Ber is not dull but any individual who displays a 2 to 1 intelligence over them is treated with dread and loathing respect. Enclaves of Ber wind up working at the behest of cunning overlords and masterminds, but are just as easily swayed out of their control if met with forces of equal wit that oppose their masters
>inherent connection and kinly link to rats and other rodents, can communicate and work with them to clean streets of litter and maintain a broad information network
>incredibly nationalistic, supporting their host nation means supporting their own clan and will do the best they can to uphold a nation that tolerates them and allows them to thrive in their own corner
>attractive

The Ratfolk in my setting are a mixture of Selonians from Star Wars and the Golgari Swarm from Ravnica. They have a sub-race who have migrated to the post-apocalyptic magitek Cybertron-moon and are now becoming fixated on cybernetic augmentation.

I did an RPG like 25 years ago that dealt with a secretive race of intelligent bipedal mice who lived under the feet of our modern world, with mechs, fighting robots that were designed by a human who had discovered them and decided they were vermin.

I was making a lot of that sort of thing back then. It was a follow-on from making a game about cybernetically-enhanced Cane Toads that were a rip off of the Cybermen, and slugs that were plugged into mobile battle machines to fight them alongside surgically-altered frogs.

I wish I was half that creative now 😛

Try using some traits real rats have.

[...]

its not where you take it from but where you take it to

Roughly 4" tall rat folk almost exclusively native to New York.
If it weren't for the fur and other inhuman features, they'd be mistaken for actual human New Yorkers

I find myself reusing a simple concept: rattavolk fill roles in society that other races don't or won't. Because of this they're widely liked and accepted almost everywhere, but they're wired for codependency, so they only rarely become adventurers.

It...works. They fit within virtually every setting and because their culture doesn't really create adventurers, they do it in a way that allows them to be background flavor without worrying about the main stage. A handful of memorable NPCs, and if anyone has contacts, one's always a rattavolk.

How about Ratfolk pirates?

you don't

Honestly? Pretty much just like humans but rats.

They are social, smart, adaptive, have hands, show empathy, and a lot of positive traits.

One of the neater studies done with rats was when they taught them how to open doors with a button. Every time there was a choice where a rat could see another rat behind one door and a piece of chocolate behind another, they always let the other rat out first then shared the chocolate with them.

In tests where another rat was in danger or pain, the other rats did their best to save them, cleaned the saved rat, and gave the saved rat the reward treat the rescuers received instead of eating it themselves.

Frickers are pretty crazy high in terms of empathy. Of course these are DOMESTICATED rats, wild rats are straight up cannibalistic, tribal orc mother frickers.

Make them urban nature spirits like dreads are forest nature spirits.

Eliminate all the furies, skavengays, mousegays, and ratgays off the planet and then just write good lore and mechanics for them. EZ PZ.

>mfw jannies try to ban you for telling the truth, but no ban is issued
Sneeding.

Make them so buff they cannot touch their toes.

Step one: Don't make them talk like skaven.
Step two: 90% less backstabbing. Infinitely more sociability.
Step three: For God's sake, clean up their warrens.
Step Four: Don't have them constantly plan the world's downfall.

Make them as a race. Just, like. Come up with something, make them happen to look like rats. Boom, ez pz.

I made a short and kinda frumpy ratfolk race for a homebrew.

They appeared to be death worshipers, but actually they worshiped life, both in this world and the next. They had taken it to the extent that they decided to build their own afterlife, after they found out that the afterlife the gods had come up with was painfully dreadful. To do that they had an island where they would process their soon to be dead, kept in stasis via magic.
Souls would be extracted to a temporary container, flesh boiled off and processed with magic into a mortar of sorts, and bones were used as masonary material cordwood style. Bodies were used to build a giant, always expanding, afterlife city/castle. Once a body was fully integrated the vessel holding the soul was broken open in a ritual, and the city would claim the soul. Afterlife was actually very similar to life, which kept things interesting during eternity. More than just whatever some god allowed in their realm could happen.

WoW gnomes+nimh designs

Ok. Let's imagine a world where there were rats who had intelligent.

Sizes from knee to chest lenght
Long flappy ears
Smaller and rounder teeth
Good smelling instinct
Would prefer living in 3-5 family cottages or stone apartments
Lot of them would prefer hunting insects, fishing, chopping wood or making birch sap
Collectivism thinking and would rather worship smaller deities rather than big one
Would rather work with elves because same value
Other humanoids either seem too strong or means slavery

So based on these I would say that an average adventurer Gratt would use spears, lances, tridents, longbows or other reaching weapons since they can 'sense' the threat easily. Maybe they would carry small simple traps.

Gratt race would value family over friends. Meaning that every Gratt would consider themselves as part of the family and only exiled or slaved ones are considered outsiders.

I think Gratts would be influenced by elves high status and the shared interested, but elves themselves would see them as intelligent pets who can communicate with them. Gratts wouldn't have any lisps, squiky noises, but instead would use simple terms for complex words. They would like to act like snobby elves, but the elves don't want to interract with them. Even to general and higher ups they are seen as first ones to respond or cannon fodder. Some elves would even ask female Gratts to be their hired service. Performing or serving food to the parties.

But an average adventurer Gratt you would see a 'player' using would be a Gratt who spears or tridents and has medium to heavy armor. Being the person who would defender their party as if it was their new family.

in my game i basically ripped of skaven but took out the edgey bits and just said a mad wizard made em. casting some enlightenment spell on normal rats he trapped. players killed wizard and burned the awakened barrow. some rats escaped, with fragments of the spell. tried to cast it more to awaken more rats, but it never worked right. kept getting abominations. so that burned rat survivor cut a deal with a demon of some sort to let him cast the spell and continue his species, but at a cost.

havent figured the price out yet, players will soon discover the new dungeon. likely enter, encounter friendly rats who seek to overthrow the warlock and end the demon taint. warlock seeks to unleash hell upon the city that killed his wizard/father/creator and the players.

i think the demon will be some rot/decay.disease demon. the opposite of how rats usually enjoy being. might be kinda poetic.