Rat Catcher

In the largest and most convoluted cities of the Kingdom, the Rat Catcher profession is fairly widespread: in addition to what such a name suggests, this typical urban hunter deals with all sorts of pests, parasites, sewers and catacombs' beasts, carrion, and animated objects that don't want to stay where they belong, and even fairies and specters.

The city, its dungeons, its cellars, its canals, its sewers, its catacombs, and its towers are the favorite hunting ground of these multi-talented scouts.

What many think is a relatively quiet profession, compared to that of matadors, wilderness specialists, and monster hunters, is, in fact, nothing but another terrain of challenge, exploration, and combat, different from the more common ones but not at all safer than them. Try to patrol Tarantasia's sewers, Vortiga's canals, or Crimini's alleys… do that, and then we'll talk about it!

The Rat Catcher Table

Class Features
As a Rat Catcher, you gain the following class features.

Hit Points
Hit Dice: 1d10 per rat catcher level
Hit Points at 1st Level: 10 + your Constitution modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d10 (or 6) + your Constitution modifier per rat catcher level after 1st

Proficiencies
Armor: Light armor, medium armor, shields
Weapons: Simple weapons, martial weapons
Tools: Choose one from herbalism kit, navigator’s kit, poisoner’s kit, and a musical instrument
Saving Throws: Strength, Dexterity
Skills: Choose three from Animal Handling, Athletics, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Stealth, and Survival

Equipment
You begin the game with 150 silver which you can spend on your knave's starting weapons, armor, and adventuring gear. You can only purchase shoddy quality equipment.

Level 1

Beast Friend
If you spend 10 minutes befriending and feeding a Medium or smaller beast of CR 1/8 or less, you become its guardian. It follows you and is loyal to you, but it acts independently. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn. The beast won’t attack except as a reaction to being attacked, but it can take other actions as normal and makes death saving throws. You can only be a guardian to one beast at a time.

Calls of the Wild
Using verbal and nonverbal cues to communicate with beasts, you can gain basic information from them or make a simple request (like delivering a short message or small object).

Familiar Terrain
When making an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to a natural terrain, you gain a knack die if using a skill you’re proficient in. While traveling in a natural terrain, you gain the following benefits:

• Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
• Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling, you remain alert to danger. Your passive Perception increases by 2.
• If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
• When you Hunt and Gather, you find twice as much Supply as you normally would.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.

Studied Adversary
You have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even communicating with your enemies.

Choose a type of adversary: aberrations, beasts, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, giants, monstrosities, oozes, plants, or undead. Alternatively,
you can select two humanoid heritages (such as gnolls and orcs) as studied adversaries.

You have advantage on Survival checks to track your studied adversaries, as well as on ability checks to recall information about them. You also learn to communicate with basic words in a language of your choice that is spoken by your studied adversaries, if they speak one at all.

During a long rest, you can replace a current studied adversary with a new one.

Level 2

Accuracy Bonus
When you make a weapon attack, you can use your reaction to gain an attack bonus or damage bonus as shown on the Accuracy Bonus table.

Between long rests, you have a number of uses equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1).

Table: Accuracy Bonus

Accuracy Reserve
If you have not moved since the beginning of your last turn, you gain a +1 bonus to weapon attack rolls until the end of your turn. You lose this bonus if you move.

Monster Mimic
By imitating how a beast or studied adversary sounds, looks, and moves, you gain advantage on Deception and Intimidation checks made to convince a creature that it is seeing or hearing that beast or studied adversary.

Swift Feet
You can use your bonus action to move with greater agility. For 1 minute, your movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks. You can choose to end this effect early to either increase your Speed by 30 feet until the end of your turn or gain advantage on a weapon attack.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Throwing Stance
You wield your weapon with a practiced familiarity that makes it deadly even when a foe is beyond your reach, able to hurl it as accurately as a thrown dagger. 

Choose a weapon when you learn this feature. You use a bonus action to activate this stance. While you are wielding the chosen weapon it has the rebounding property and thrown property (range 30/60 feet). This stance remains active until you are knocked unconscious, stunned, activate a different stance, begin a short rest, or choose to end it on your turn.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Level 3

Danger Perception
You gain a prodigious perception of anything that is not as it should be all around you, which makes it easier for you to dodge threats and dangers. You have advantage on Dexterity saving throws against all effects which you can sense, such as traps and spells. To benefit from this effect you must not be afflicted by the blinded, deafened, or incapacitated conditions.

Doubleshot
You palm two blades or nock two arrows, launching both missiles at the same opponent.

You use your bonus action to use two missiles instead of one for the next ranged weapon attack you make. On a hit, you deal an additional weapon damage die.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Rat Catcher's Magic
Your deep connection to nature grants you the ability to cast spells.

Spell Slots
The Rat Catcher Spellcasting table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your spells of 1st-level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.

Spells Known
At 3rd level, you know incandescent mark.

At 5th level, you know flame blade.

Spellcasting Ability
Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your spells. You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Table: Rat Catcher Spellcasting

Torch Bearer
When you deal fire damage, you can add your Wisdom modifier to the fire damage dealt.

Urban Guide
You become great at moving around city environments and cramped dungeons. You consider urban areas, sewers, cellars, fortresses, and all sorts of city buildings as a familiar terrain.

Level 4

Ability Score Improvement
You can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Ear to the Ground
By spending 1 minute remaining stationary, using sound and vibrations alone, until you move or take an action you are able to deduce information up to 30 feet in every direction, as if using blindsight or tremorsense.

Kindred Spirit
You intuitively sense when another wilderness expert is nearby. Your passive Perception increases by 5 to detect hidden or invisible creatures within 30 feet of you, and you instantly detect whether any creature you can see is proficient with Stealth or Survival.

Level 5

Extra Attack
You can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Hunter's Target
You can use your bonus action to focus your attention on a specific enemy. Choose a creature you can see within 90 feet to mark as your quarry. For 1 hour, you are focused on this creature. You gain a +1 bonus to weapon attack rolls against the creature, and your weapon attacks against it deal an extra 1d6 damage. In addition,
you have advantage on Perception and Survival checks you make to find it. If the creature drops to 0 hit points before the hour ends, you can use a bonus action to mark a new quarry.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Preternatural Strikes
By executing your attacks with perfect precision your weapon can slip beneath even supernatural defenses.

Choose a weapon when you learn this feature. You use an action to take the Attack action and make a weapon attack, as well as any additional attacks granted by Extra Attack. Until the start of your next turn, your weapon attacks using that weapon ignore resistance to nonmagical weapon damage.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Level 6

Adversarial Focus
You gain an additional studied adversary, and you gain a +1 bonus on weapon attack rolls made against your studied adversaries.

Game Hunting
You have advantage on any check made to locate or catch local game animals in the wild and gain the following features:

• You have proficiency with nets, and being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn’t impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls with a net.
• You can use a 30-foot length of rope or strong vine as a lasso and try to grapple a creature within 20 feet of you. As long as a creature is grappled by your lasso, it is also restrained. The lasso has AC 13 and 7 hit points. It is vulnerable to slashing damage and resistant to bludgeoning damage. If the lasso drops to 0 hit points, it is destroyed.
• When you use the Attack action and attack with a dual-wielding weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a net or use a lasso you are holding.

See the Unseen
Once between long rests you can focus your attention on peripheral sights, sounds, and other signs of unseen passage. For the next hour, you can detect invisible creatures and objects, their location, movement, and actions, and even sense creatures and objects in the Ethereal Plane.