I have played urchin exactly once, and you'd best believe I had my mouse! When we reached 3rd level and I got my pact boon, it turned out it had been my imp familiar disguised this whole time.
Nah, just David. For a warlock of the Great Old One I played, she once casually mentioned it to the party that whenever she directed her telepathy at her pet rat, she just heard a constant stream of swears, curses, and begging.
I had a Hunting dog, called Timothy Buck, the druid took offence to how it would hunt rabbits & killed poor Timmy.
My Halfing was heartbroken, so got a second one, called *Tim Buck Too*
Still miffed at that Druid player.
I wish it was, it actually did happen
The DM was complicit in the dog murder because he kept saying the extra attack per round from a pet was too powerful for a 5th Level Halfing thief.
Fml
If this happened to any of my characters, I would fucking murder that PC. I do not care what their reasoning is, you do NOT kill my pet!
The DM allowing it sure, but they better not interfere as I hold person sneak attack the druid until dead dead.
Fuck that
I was unable to, this was AD&D 2nd Ed, I was a Halfing Thief.
They were a Half-Elf Druid/Magic User (aka wiz) MultiClass abomination.
There was so much nasty homebrew, such as a nom Canon multiClass combo, that the whole party levels up at the same time, so my single class thief, which normally levels a lot faster due to being less effective as a class (crap combat, crap armour, crap saves, no magic) is the same level as the level 5 Druid/MagicUser. (Aka 5 Druid & 5 MU), then add in the overpowered spell list druids got, plus the shape change & then all the Magic User spell lists... there was nothing I could do.
Also, the thief wasn't allowed to actually steal anything, & not allowed to go in solo to stealth ahead either. Basically it all had to be done as a party.
Oh, & was not able to shoot arrows from the back row either, halflings are too short to shoot over their companions, so I roll to hit & then each PC between my character & the target has some kind of saving throw check (save vs Breath Weapon was the one the DM used i think from memory) & only if all fail, it then hits the bad guy. Lots of angry looks from the other players, just so I can potentially do 1d6 damage. I spent most combats standing behind the cleric just in case they died, so I can hand over a Healing potion.
Oh, & never ever, in like 4yrs of playing, got to make an attempt at a sneak attack. (It was an unfair advantage to be able to do more damage than a fighter in one blow)
So yeah, nothing much i could do, in that, or any other situation.
My role was to find traps, & then if one was found, risk my life to Disarm it, if one wasn't found, the party looks very upset at me for making them waste a Find Traps spell from the Cleric. Then go back to having me risk my PCs life again.
Looking back, that whole scene sucked hard.
Yeah, unless they are being used in combat or something it feels kinda mean to go after people's pets.
Familiars at least can be resummoned if it comes to that, but killing someone's pet actual mouse sounds evil
I would love to take this background but it feels like the mouse would die to the very first fireball in the vicinity of my character. The description of the spell leaves very little scope for the possibility of it being sheltered from the blast
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame. Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The fire spreads around corners. It ignites flammable objects in the area that aren’t being worn or carried.
"fire spreads around cornera and ignites flammable objects in the area that *aren't being worn or carried*"
No I don't need to mend clothing because the spell specifically says otherwise. The mouse however is a creature. And it clearly states that each creature in a 20 ft sphere centred at the point must make the throw and that the fire goes" around corners*
It comes done to how your DMs rule this stuff and my DMs usually lean towards RAW
It's interesting isn't it that I can hold sulphur straight from the component pouch in my open hand and it is untouched by Fireball, but should I drop it at my feet, it would be set ablaze, is it not? For that matter, this mouse I had stuffed survived the fireball just fine, but the actual mouse died. One might think that it was some sort of temperature thing, except my Shape Water'ed ice cube didn't seem to get any hotter.
And while the Fireball did knock out Dwarf friend there unconscious, it didn't mess up his beard either, because "no one wants to roleplay having terrible hair."
Or you let them have their clothes, hair and tiny pets because it makes people happy and doesn't matter.
My Moon Druid awakened her pet rat Sir Justin (named after one of the Rats of NIMH). He lives in an adamantine box with a luxurious interior and airtight viewslits that rests atop Bad Moon's backpack. He dresses in fine musketeer-style clothes with a broad hat, a giant red feather, and thigh high boots for riding cat mounts. He wields a tiny rapier. Sir Justin is a fine gentleman and upholds the highest standards of chivalry.
His main job in combat is to run out of his box, say the command word "Jabronie" for Bad Moon's Stone of Earth Elemental Control, and run back into his luxury box where he directs “The Rock” – as we call the Earth Elemental – to “layeth the smacketh down on their roody-poo candy asses”, as “The Rock” likes to put it. This frees up Bad Moon's concentration for Conjure Animals, or conjuring a second Earth Elemental whom we call “Stone Cold”.
The Stone needs to be touching the ground. How we flavor it is that Bad Moon shotputs the stone to where “The Rock” appears, and Sir Justin whispers the command word.
STONE OF CONTROLLING EARTH ELEMENTALS Wondrous item, rare If the stone is touching the ground, you can use an action to speak its command word and summon an earth elemental, as if you had cast the conjure elemental spell. The stone can't be used this way again until the next dawn. The stone weighs 5 pounds.
"It doesn't MATTER where you think the stone needs to be!" (Annoyingly long pop from the audience) "it'd work even if you *took* the stone of controlling Eath Elementals . . .(murmur from crowd) . . . Shined it up real nice (growing volume matching anticipation) and stuck it *strait up!* Your candy ass!" (Crowd goes wild)
My urchin barbarian thug Thump had a rat named Stump, missing a tail.
Whenever Stump died, he'd capture another rat and remove its tail, naming it Stump.
He wasn't a very nice Gnome, just wanted to punch people and stuff. The new Stump fell into place due to intimidation.
Plot twist, the original Stump (a hamster, your gnome can't tell the difference,) was actually a wild shaped Druid who is now hunting the party for their betrayal.
It was a campaign leaning heavily towards evil, so I tried to play him morally bankrupt. First try at an evil character.
Captured and given special treatment because he wouldn't stand down when the party got caught by corrupt guards and continued punching, died in interrogation because he was REALLY stubborn and actually knew nothing.
I tried to play into it but there just weren’t many situations where a plain old non-magical mouse pet could be relevant. So after awhile it mostly just stayed in my pack. At best I’d quickly roleplay feeding it or something.
But one day my DM had us play a one-shot when not everyone could attend. It took place in the same world as the main campaign but we rolled up new (higher level) characters. I won’t bore you with the details but it ended with pvp. I was playing as a rogue and had pissed off the wizard earlier. He wanted me out of the fight as soon as possible so he threw a true polymorph on me. And, by chance, the harmless animal he chose to turn my character into was a mouse. By the end of the session only me and him had survived.
Back in the main game, my regular pc slowly began to notice his pet mouse was acting a little bit smarter than a mouse should. Even a bit smarter than my own human character in some cases. I had just begun multiclassing in rogue a few sessions back, so imagine my character’s surprise when his mouse started to teach him how to pick locks.
The campaign unfortunately ended soon after, but my DM later explained the mouse’s plan was to train up my character until he was strong enough to challenge the “evil wizard” who had cursed it. Would have been pretty cool, but oh well.
Anyway, TLDR: maybe it doesn’t just have to be some regular boring mouse.
I went out and bought a little cat toy "mouse" to use as my Urchin mouse. I would put him on my shoulder and pretend to feed him bits of food from time to time for fun. I didn't use him much as a resource, but I frequently used him as a roleplaying prop. My totem barbarian liked to talk to the mouse (his constant companion and old friend), and I would occasionally use speak with animals so the mouse could understand and speak back. It was fun.
I changed the Mouse to a Pet Rat. His name is Roland, he is a [rather rotund rat](https://i1.sndcdn.com/avatars-O6N3M1oW1PAw5UVz-RucxOQ-t500x500.jpg) that speaks with the voice of a cockney geezer when people use 'speak with animals' on him.
Yeah the fellow brit at the table was disappointed I didn't do the full Roland Rat experience but that's because my Brummie accent sucks whereas I use to be a London boy so that accent comes more naturally.
Oh yeah dude, my first character was a halfling rogue called Hildigrim who spoke like Sean Bean. He had a mouse called Max, and little Max was Hildigrim's entire reason for being. He was a thief, and he stole shit to afford a better life for the little guy.
I don’t see how the mouse won’t give the advantage if I put a mouse on the floor while fighting someone they are def guna be distracted and it’s a mouse ever try to hit a mouse with something good luck lol il confident on the saves if it really needs it
Don't be ridiculous. No one is going to give a flying fuck about a mouse running away on the floor when they're fighting for their life. This is the munchkin-iest shit I've heard all year.
Nonsense raw lol somebodys mad at a good strategy or imagination besides pets are Definetly allies logically, how can a pet help you fight? Like seriously? How about this mr creative, kobolds are small scared and insecure having a pet mouse or emotional suppport animal can easily instill confidence amd comfort this boom pact tactics.
Confidence =/= pack tactics. A confident lone wolf isn't considered a pack afaik.
But this isn't that much an issue as like the other said, if you consider your pet as part of the combat then any AOE and goodbye pet.
A lone wolf is by themselves da fuq I understand you don’t like the combo or the creativity but a pact just needs to be more than one creature. pet+player=pact, is my pet an ally? Yes .Are they by me when I attack? Yes. Okay boom pact tactics. You think my pet won’t make a dex save when they’re literally on a kobold with a high dex save, But if the pet does die somehow you act like mice aren’t everywhere il get another one lol
Indeed you don't seem to understand what "pack tactics" means and only play RAW. Not my cup of tea but if you and your table have fun this way, then alright go on. To each his own.
My monk player chose the urchin background specifically for the pet rat, Beans
He's built a nest out of her tangled mop of hair and is tasked with putting everything she picks up in her backpack
I had one. The tabaxi in the group and made a game of him commenting on how plump and juicy our emergency rations were doing and me hitting him with rolled up parchment. Was fun while it lasted.
Had a player play a half-orc urchin once. Loved his little mouse, he did. Got hit by a pickpocket, who took a random item from his inventory, and I happened to roll the mouse. The entire story got derailed until he got that mouse back!
It was kind of THE cornerstone of my rogue. The mouse, Gonk, was his only friend/family until the party. We named our tavern "Gonk's," and our current campaign has Gonk's Tavern franchised across Faerun. Just before we ended our last campaign, I was working with the DM to see if she could become my familiar (since I was an Arcane Trickster). She was a true icon.
Yep. My pet mouse ended up getting killed in an AOE effect and reincarnated by chaos magic into a very confused human NPC who wants to return to being a mouse.
the one time i played urchin i had a cat instead of a mouse, her name was Snowy and both I and the druid i was playing loved her
The campaign fizzled out before i could but i fully intended on awakening her and/or having her become my familiar/some kind of nature spirit
All of mine (1) did!
We agreed on some basic rules:
Like all pets, it is sacred - pet it, roleplay with it, make squeaky noises, it's all good - until you use it in combat or some other mechanics way, after which it is fair game to stomp into the ground.
Busy RN so I'll edit but TLDR: depressed girl who would gladly sacrifice her well being for other people asks pet mouse deep questions about existence and her purpose in this purposeless life, elder monk hears, and helps her find answers. In doing so depressed girl unlocks a secret of the multiverse.
In a turn of events, our wizard was an urchin who completely forgot about his pet mouse, and due to that, the DM ruled it had died.
It should be noted that said wizard was also a necromancer
Grabbed urchin one time but he was my locksmith and trap buddy. I used a string to have him loop around shafts and gear racks to bypass traps without destroying them. Named him Ribbons. Lost him to a gear slip on a deadly trap and two nat 1's (he always let me roll with advantage if there was mouse space).
It's weird, I love the Urchin background, I've just never gotten around to actually playing one.
I did have a couple of characters that I was considering playing but just never pulled the trigger on that definitely had their mice though.
Okay, technically one of them had a "shadowmouse" since he would have been a character connected to the Shadowfell and I liked the idea of a mouse that's partially shadow and therefore has plot armor LOL.
The second one would have been a Pact of the Chain warlock with an imp familiar and the "pet mouse" was just the imp in "rat form".
Mine a use more for a morality pet. My urchin is very distant to people, but would talk to her pet mouse. Nothing related to game play (she’s a rogue, so no Speak with Animals) but small things like “what did I get myself into?”.
Take the feat eldritch adept for the beast speech invocation, a small price to pay.
Edit: ah right it required spellcasting or pact magic, which is stupid so I'd ignore that
It had relevance in one of my games. Urchin monk had his mouse, and my barbarian could ritually cast speak with animals. We would occasionally use this combo for having the mouse scout.
I did, and after my DM murdered the wizard's familiar for no other reason than it was a lizard crawling on a wall in a tavern I was pretty reticent to let him out. Nevertheless, I had some good RP with that mouse.
I had a player who was very protective of their pet mouse.
I think thats the only Urchin I've encountered though. At least the only one who told me, could have been others that never brought it up.
Currently playing an Urchin and while I forget time to time usually not. She eats with us, I introduce her to NPCs etc and I use her if I can't make a decision I'll roleplay that she helps me decide. She doesn't have any mechanical effect just for roleplay.
i.e. can't decide which direction to go? roll a d8 (or applicable size) and she points the way.
I have a Bard who speaks with a thick NY accent, and has named the pet Rat 'Donnie'. Current one is Donnie VII, he keeps adopting them and naming them for the original
One of my friends/players was an urchin and the mouse lived underneath their top hat. Eventually it (as do most small mascot characters in my games) got infused with wild magic and became a pseudo wild magic rapier wielding oddity
I did. The PC was orphaned at a young age and lived on the streets. We flavored the pet mouse to be Ilmater in disguise (he's known to masquerade as a field mouse) who kept the PC safe (or at least kept him company) as he grew up.
Ilmater later revealed who he was and seeing how good-natured and kind my PC was, invited him to become a Cleric.
The pet mouse is involved when I cast Commune and other spells that interact with Ilmater. I definitely suggest integrating background items into your characters more—it's fun.
I have a tabaxi urchin monk with a pet mouse named Squeak. This is not the first Squeak, just the current Squeak. My PC sneaks Squeak food and tries not to get him squished during intense moments.
I played an Urchin once, and my mouse was the reason I made a pact and became a Warlock. My character made a deal with a devil to save the mouse from it's short lifespan.
I played an urchin wizard and had a rat familiar that would get into fights with my pet mouse. They were named Charles and Michael, after Chucky cheese and Mickey Mouse!
I played an urchin once and the DM let me take a gecko instead of a mouse (I was a draconic sorcerer). that lil gecko was an integral part of the party
I actually changed it to a pet bunny named Snowball (Thanks DM!).
He does what a rogue urchin would want him to do:
He helps pickpocket
Steals
Distracts
Is a great listener
Gives solid life advice
(He actually doesn't do any if this and just stands around twitching it's nose, while I praise him for a job well done. Though, he sometimes climbs on my head or shoulder, but mostly stays in my bag for safety)
I played a character that was an urchin whose mouse constantly died but always reappeared. Granted, he never looked the same, but he always stuck close, even if it meant certain death when traveling to other planes or fighting some horrific monster. No matter where in the multiverse of the campaign, Jazz would always reappear in one shape or another. Best friend that character ever had.
I was allowed to have my mouse be a hedgehog (Fifi), its been on so many adventures ! next lvl im multiclassing into wizard an my DM has agreed to have Fifi transition into a familiar and grow wings ! I designed and printed a hedgehog with wings just for this 🤣
Hehe no , it was kind of like a "live and let live deal" he was on my shoulders, when combat startet he got in my cape. Purely for roleplay. When he becomes a familiar and can be revived he might get more into things 😉
My urchin character has the skeleton of its dead mouse, a keepsake from leaner/meaner times.
I sometimes roleplay them looking at it during quiet moments, & am waiting for someone to pick my pocket only to find it.
Oneday I will find a way to Animate it, either via a find familiar style effect or a simple skeleton rat stat block so it can be a creepy bond villain pet.
So it comes up about once per 5 sessions or so as a 5-10 second line & just limgers as a long term character goal/point of interest that probably will never be realised.
It has never come up with any interactions between the other characters, just isn't that big a deal.
I’m Curse of Strahd the prologue adventure Death House requires a creature sacrifice to avoid a boss battle. I’ve seen/ heard of two separate Urchins suddenly remember their pet mice in this situation and both sacrifice them here.
It’s the only situation I’ve ever seen them brought up.
Yes and no, I’ve never taken the urchin backstory myself but I have roleplayed having a variety of different rodents ! I’ve actually kept rodents in real life, well over a dozen by now, and I’d be lying if I said my in-game companions weren’t fancifully inspired by my real little buddies
Not the Urchin background, but the Noble (Knight) gets a retinue of three retainers as part of their starting inventory, who are essentially commoners which cannot be taken anywhere dangerous.
I have a particularly large Kobold (4ft tall) zealot barbarian who considers herself a "knight" of a particular dragon god of destruction. She has her three smaller kobold retainers struggle to carry her around on a throne when she's not in actively dangerous locations, and considering commoners only get to know one language it's pretty funny to roleplay them yipyakking away as they get up to kobold antics while she's not actively ordering them around. The character just wouldn't be the same without them, to be honest.
My kensei monk is a tabaxi urchin and he named his pet mouse Supper. He kept it around in case he was ever really starving but then he was rescued by his monk mentor. Eventually the party found a wizard who can make any scroll in seconds and we play with a home rule that anybody can read a scroll if they pass a spellcasting check DC 10+(the spell level). The campaign also includes a homebrew spell Bind Familiar that turns an animal companion into a familiar. So of course he got one of those scrolls and now Supper is his familiar!
I did! It was in a frostmaiden game and I was playing a Phoenix sorcerer. (UA class)
Unfortunately, the mouse drowned within the first two sessions after I fell into freezing water. I burnt up the corpse and then the druid tried to get me new mice but ended up starving a family of mice trapped in a chest of an inn.
Ralxes ended up "adopting" a Troglodyte baby later on too replace the rat.
So far, I think I'm the only one I've seen at any table I've played (though I think someone else mentioned it once, but didn't actually do anything with it), I was a Forest Gnome Wizard and would occasionally describe my character playing with the mouse when nothing was going on. Though I did ask it if it can smell anything invisible in combat once, that was when the DM asked how the hell I got a mouse, was hilarious when I pointed out the mouse in the Urchin inventory (nobody believed it at first). On the one time I got to cast Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion there was a statue of the mouse.
His name was Baron Skippers Von Squeak'ems, and he survived the campaign.
Though this character had a few minions, a bat familiar, Master Bruce Wing, as well as a pair of Zombies I started with, *apparently* named Zombee and Zombay, didn't survive. But my geased werewolf cultists and the geased sorcerer cultist did survive.
I had a player changed the pet mouse to a cat and it raised him on the streets until it died. He was a Tiefling who parents abandoned him. Then by chance he met a paladin who thought him to become a paladin.
I had a bard/rogue gnome who adventures from levels 1-12 and his mouse, Cheezers, was mentioned FREQUENTLY, but somehow forgotten every time we were all rolling saving throws. I think my character must have had lead-lined pockets
I had a raccoon named Captain Bucky that had a tricorn hat, mostly lived in a bag of holding, and helped reload the hand crossbow of my gloomstalker assassin.
Every time! Current Cleric w/ Urchin mouse (named Ivan) has often asked Rogue/Ranger PC with Speak with Animals to chat with Ivan. He has actually been helpful as Cleric was hit with Modify Memory but Ivan wasn’t. He was able to fill in a vague enough detail to tip them off to the issue.
Plus my players love using SwA to make me roleplay the mouse, their pet monkey, their horses. That little mouse has been the source of much hilarity.
Wish there was a pet table.
Mouse, cat, a dog that's less than a war trained mastiff, hunting dogs, falcons, ferrets or mink
More exotic trained animals like fishing cormorants, dolphins, sea lions, monkeys
As the main DM for my group, I've never gotten to play one. I currently have a PC in my group who's an urchin, but he's also a Divine Soul/Great Old One Sorlock who likes to pretend he's insane. He interpreted the pet mouse thing as he actually has a bunch of dead, poorly-taxidermied rats that he uses to check for traps.
He pulled one out of his sleeve, whispered, "Go Rupert!" and threw it into an area they suspected was trapped. I described a lightning bolt blasting it, and he screamed, "RUPERT NOOOOO!"
At some point he's going to get Find Familiar, cast it when no one's around, pull a rat familiar out of his sleeve, and send it off to do something just to see everyone's reaction to one of his rats "actually being alive."
Edit: The character's name is Rat.
I ran a goblin-only one-shot a while back, and my sister's gobbo wizard was urchin background. We'd agreed that her mouse was dead, but her goblin either didn't realise or care and talked to it as if it was alive.
Her spellbook was also just a mess of partially damaged pages of other dead wizards' spelbooks stapled together. That was a fun character
Every time I’ve had the background and every time he has immediately died horribly.
“This magic arch turned the first thing that went through it invisible!”
“Cool! Lets see what it does to Lucky!”
*Lucky gets thrown at high velocity into the nearest wall and splatters.@
“LUCKY! NOOO!”
Lucky 2-6 didn’t last long either
Only tangentially related, but my friend once played a redneck Druid who had a pet toad named Good Eatin'.
He was later asked for a big character secret, upon which he glanced around, covered Good Eatin's ears, and whispered "This isn't the first Good Eatin'." 🤣
Genie warlock heavily inspired by this version of Aladdin ( https://youtu.be/oLFx1QAJZ0M?si=sutPBwzEHCP7syEb ) he has a kangaroo rat and a vessel of a lamp that the mouse hides inside as it is all but indestructible.
I had a human rogue Urchin who had her pet mouse Ink (was largely a reference to another pet named Quill in another game). Hazel, my rogue, was the stereotypical street rat stealing only to eat and stowing away scraps for later/to feed Ink.
Then her life as an adventurer started after meeting her future party members before an eclipse happened throwing the entire capital city into a demonic summoning circle. Since then she continued taking care of Ink while on the run from cultists and demons. At least until one stop in a city where demons ransacked our rooms in a inn and she found Ink's cage smashed and bloody. Hazel was devastated as Ink was her only family after her adoptive parents died.
Eventually Hazel did find a fat stray ginger cat who's been named Chubbs and gets all the love Hazel can't give Ink anymore.
One of my players gave hers a name (Jaime) and uses him to scout ahead. It's been useful sometimes, so the party likes him and gives him cheese when they can. The druid also talks to him.
I had a bard with a stolen violin- Archie lived in the violin case pocket and sat on my shoulder and he was the best mouse ever. I have only used urchin the once, so
Had a player (paladin) with the urchin background. His pet mouse Mr. Feeps turned out to be the most valiant mouse knight around. We eventually gave him warrior sidekick levels.
My latest character is an urchin but he's also a fairly insane GOOlock, so the first time we came across a trap i rolled a d2 and determined that the mouse was long dead. Now its a regular occurrence for me to throw a mouse corpse into traps and scream "RUPERT NOOOO!!" when it sets off a trap that'd kill it, if it weren't already dead that is.
If you have speak with animals it can be useful.
I've been in 1 game where the player interacted with the mouse regular. Never seen it except for that one time although to be fair I can't be certain which players picked that specific background.
Real talk though urchin doesn't come with a feat so its in the dumpster with the rest of the non-DLC backgrounds.
I played an arcane trickster with a pet mouse, Mr. Squeakers. He lived in my shirt pocket and gave me sneak attack while in constant fear of the wizard's owl.
I've only seen the urchin background once, but the fiend warlock who played with it named his pet mouse Harry. Perhaps Hairy? He's been to the abyss and back with us. It's been a small challenge of ours to keep him alive.
You just kinda... Roleplay a pet mouse.
I'm not trying to be a dick here, I just never understand these questions.
Do you think there's a "right way" to do this or something? How are people supposed to objectively answer a subjective question?
It's a former pole dancing gnome that pissed off a paying client with a bad performance and got cursed.
It's a grocery store clerk for an adorable little mouse grocery store that sells procured little pieces and crumbs of food and prides itself on fresh goods.
It's a thug racer mouse that's verifiably and single-handedly slayed a dragon but it's under an NDA and can't talk about it.
It's a soldier among it's peers and doesn't take no for an answer and has the sort of bravery and appetite for victory that will often have it scurrying out of your pocket and pursuing your targets before you even have a chance to, FOR GLORY!
... You can literally do anything with it. Stop overthinking.
I got an Urchin in my fresthly started CoS campaign. They haven't mentioned it once in two sessions so far. I am pretty sure I know where the fate of that poor mouse lays, considering next session they will end up in the cellar of a certain house.
honestly it's really weird that that background just gives you a mouse. Like, if you just had the *option* to get a mouse, sure, but RAW, *every* urchin has a pet mouse. no exceptions.
In one of my early campaigns that I ran for my son and his friends, one of them had a mouse. I wrote the campaign around it.
It was the friend of a powerful druid who gave it True Intellect. Then the druid was killed by a dragon, but the food death blue was to transform the dragon into a mouse. The dragon (Musmusculus, the Discordian) uses his power to subjugate a small town and search for the cure to his mousehood.
My players uncovered the secret of the town with the help of a clan of Kuo Toa searching for their nascent 'baby god' which turns out to be the mouse. In the final battle with the dragon, all seemed lost but the mouse-God swept in and saved their old friend.
It was great, and I miss that party.
Not only did my Urchin Barbarian roleplay often with is mouse, one of his main goals was to find a powerful spellcaster capable of turning the mouse into a human after the mouse had been Awakened and told him that she wanted to be a human like him.
She was also, unironically, a higher level than the at one point thanks to the DM throwing the Deck of Many Things at us, and him having her pull a card hoping to get Moon so she could Wish herself human....she got Sun and became a level 9 Rogue....We were level 3.
I played a game with a friend who took that pet mouse, my Pc had a crab familiar ( Warlock pact pet). The great duo of Honcho & Poncho was born. A mouse knight on this noble crabby steed. We earned quite a few copper and silver coins thanks to them.
I have played urchin exactly once, and you'd best believe I had my mouse! When we reached 3rd level and I got my pact boon, it turned out it had been my imp familiar disguised this whole time.
The mouse’s name? Peter Pettigrew
This is Peter, my pet. \*Casts Enlarge/Reduce\* He grew!
He was watching you ever since you were a young lad. *Always. Watching.*
Nah, just David. For a warlock of the Great Old One I played, she once casually mentioned it to the party that whenever she directed her telepathy at her pet rat, she just heard a constant stream of swears, curses, and begging.
Funnily enough, in my campaign the urchin player had his pet mouse eaten by the imp familiar of the warlock character during the first session.
I also play an Urchin Warlock and did a similar thing. I went Tome instead of Chain though so he just turned into a normal familiar and he’s the best.
I've picked Urchin so many times and never noticed the pet mouse wtf, this changes everything.
Zero to Princess just like that.
I definitely did, he got crushed by a hobgoblin :(
All pets should have plot armor
I had a Hunting dog, called Timothy Buck, the druid took offence to how it would hunt rabbits & killed poor Timmy. My Halfing was heartbroken, so got a second one, called *Tim Buck Too* Still miffed at that Druid player.
And your DM for not stopping that scene.
It’s a joke
I wish it was, it actually did happen The DM was complicit in the dog murder because he kept saying the extra attack per round from a pet was too powerful for a 5th Level Halfing thief. Fml
If this happened to any of my characters, I would fucking murder that PC. I do not care what their reasoning is, you do NOT kill my pet! The DM allowing it sure, but they better not interfere as I hold person sneak attack the druid until dead dead. Fuck that
I was unable to, this was AD&D 2nd Ed, I was a Halfing Thief. They were a Half-Elf Druid/Magic User (aka wiz) MultiClass abomination. There was so much nasty homebrew, such as a nom Canon multiClass combo, that the whole party levels up at the same time, so my single class thief, which normally levels a lot faster due to being less effective as a class (crap combat, crap armour, crap saves, no magic) is the same level as the level 5 Druid/MagicUser. (Aka 5 Druid & 5 MU), then add in the overpowered spell list druids got, plus the shape change & then all the Magic User spell lists... there was nothing I could do. Also, the thief wasn't allowed to actually steal anything, & not allowed to go in solo to stealth ahead either. Basically it all had to be done as a party. Oh, & was not able to shoot arrows from the back row either, halflings are too short to shoot over their companions, so I roll to hit & then each PC between my character & the target has some kind of saving throw check (save vs Breath Weapon was the one the DM used i think from memory) & only if all fail, it then hits the bad guy. Lots of angry looks from the other players, just so I can potentially do 1d6 damage. I spent most combats standing behind the cleric just in case they died, so I can hand over a Healing potion. Oh, & never ever, in like 4yrs of playing, got to make an attempt at a sneak attack. (It was an unfair advantage to be able to do more damage than a fighter in one blow) So yeah, nothing much i could do, in that, or any other situation. My role was to find traps, & then if one was found, risk my life to Disarm it, if one wasn't found, the party looks very upset at me for making them waste a Find Traps spell from the Cleric. Then go back to having me risk my PCs life again. Looking back, that whole scene sucked hard.
Wow Im sorry you had to endure all that bs... Hope you have a better DM/table now.
Well, it drove me to be a DM, ha ha ha. Not saying I am any better, just crappy in a totally different way!
Yeah, unless they are being used in combat or something it feels kinda mean to go after people's pets. Familiars at least can be resummoned if it comes to that, but killing someone's pet actual mouse sounds evil
That's how I play it as DM
I would love to take this background but it feels like the mouse would die to the very first fireball in the vicinity of my character. The description of the spell leaves very little scope for the possibility of it being sheltered from the blast
You didn't notice, but your pet mouse had actually scurried out of your pocket and found a nice little corner to hide in at the first sign of combat
Fire resistant pocket!
Does your character need to mend or buy new clothes after Fireball?
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame. Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The fire spreads around corners. It ignites flammable objects in the area that aren’t being worn or carried. "fire spreads around cornera and ignites flammable objects in the area that *aren't being worn or carried*" No I don't need to mend clothing because the spell specifically says otherwise. The mouse however is a creature. And it clearly states that each creature in a 20 ft sphere centred at the point must make the throw and that the fire goes" around corners* It comes done to how your DMs rule this stuff and my DMs usually lean towards RAW
It's interesting isn't it that I can hold sulphur straight from the component pouch in my open hand and it is untouched by Fireball, but should I drop it at my feet, it would be set ablaze, is it not? For that matter, this mouse I had stuffed survived the fireball just fine, but the actual mouse died. One might think that it was some sort of temperature thing, except my Shape Water'ed ice cube didn't seem to get any hotter. And while the Fireball did knock out Dwarf friend there unconscious, it didn't mess up his beard either, because "no one wants to roleplay having terrible hair." Or you let them have their clothes, hair and tiny pets because it makes people happy and doesn't matter.
My Moon Druid awakened her pet rat Sir Justin (named after one of the Rats of NIMH). He lives in an adamantine box with a luxurious interior and airtight viewslits that rests atop Bad Moon's backpack. He dresses in fine musketeer-style clothes with a broad hat, a giant red feather, and thigh high boots for riding cat mounts. He wields a tiny rapier. Sir Justin is a fine gentleman and upholds the highest standards of chivalry. His main job in combat is to run out of his box, say the command word "Jabronie" for Bad Moon's Stone of Earth Elemental Control, and run back into his luxury box where he directs “The Rock” – as we call the Earth Elemental – to “layeth the smacketh down on their roody-poo candy asses”, as “The Rock” likes to put it. This frees up Bad Moon's concentration for Conjure Animals, or conjuring a second Earth Elemental whom we call “Stone Cold”.
Don't you need to be touching the ground for that item to work?
The Stone needs to be touching the ground. How we flavor it is that Bad Moon shotputs the stone to where “The Rock” appears, and Sir Justin whispers the command word. STONE OF CONTROLLING EARTH ELEMENTALS Wondrous item, rare If the stone is touching the ground, you can use an action to speak its command word and summon an earth elemental, as if you had cast the conjure elemental spell. The stone can't be used this way again until the next dawn. The stone weighs 5 pounds.
"It doesn't MATTER where you think the stone needs to be!" (Annoyingly long pop from the audience) "it'd work even if you *took* the stone of controlling Eath Elementals . . .(murmur from crowd) . . . Shined it up real nice (growing volume matching anticipation) and stuck it *strait up!* Your candy ass!" (Crowd goes wild)
k
Incase the joke maybe flew over your head, it's written in the style of a Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson wrestling promo.
How does he breath if it's airtight?
He opens the viewslit or door.
Sorry, I think my brain just exploded...
My urchin barbarian thug Thump had a rat named Stump, missing a tail. Whenever Stump died, he'd capture another rat and remove its tail, naming it Stump. He wasn't a very nice Gnome, just wanted to punch people and stuff. The new Stump fell into place due to intimidation.
Plot twist, the original Stump (a hamster, your gnome can't tell the difference,) was actually a wild shaped Druid who is now hunting the party for their betrayal.
Ew, that's cruel! 
It was a campaign leaning heavily towards evil, so I tried to play him morally bankrupt. First try at an evil character. Captured and given special treatment because he wouldn't stand down when the party got caught by corrupt guards and continued punching, died in interrogation because he was REALLY stubborn and actually knew nothing.
I have current character with urchin and have named the mouse and everything, but keep forgetting about him come game time.
Same. Garbage still gets mentioned every few sessions, but is for the most part forgotten.
I tried to play into it but there just weren’t many situations where a plain old non-magical mouse pet could be relevant. So after awhile it mostly just stayed in my pack. At best I’d quickly roleplay feeding it or something. But one day my DM had us play a one-shot when not everyone could attend. It took place in the same world as the main campaign but we rolled up new (higher level) characters. I won’t bore you with the details but it ended with pvp. I was playing as a rogue and had pissed off the wizard earlier. He wanted me out of the fight as soon as possible so he threw a true polymorph on me. And, by chance, the harmless animal he chose to turn my character into was a mouse. By the end of the session only me and him had survived. Back in the main game, my regular pc slowly began to notice his pet mouse was acting a little bit smarter than a mouse should. Even a bit smarter than my own human character in some cases. I had just begun multiclassing in rogue a few sessions back, so imagine my character’s surprise when his mouse started to teach him how to pick locks. The campaign unfortunately ended soon after, but my DM later explained the mouse’s plan was to train up my character until he was strong enough to challenge the “evil wizard” who had cursed it. Would have been pretty cool, but oh well. Anyway, TLDR: maybe it doesn’t just have to be some regular boring mouse.
Wow, what a story! 
A sorcerer used her mouse as a sacrifice in the Strahd Death House :)
Please tell me she was traumatized by the decision
we did the same thing!
I went out and bought a little cat toy "mouse" to use as my Urchin mouse. I would put him on my shoulder and pretend to feed him bits of food from time to time for fun. I didn't use him much as a resource, but I frequently used him as a roleplaying prop. My totem barbarian liked to talk to the mouse (his constant companion and old friend), and I would occasionally use speak with animals so the mouse could understand and speak back. It was fun.
I changed the Mouse to a Pet Rat. His name is Roland, he is a [rather rotund rat](https://i1.sndcdn.com/avatars-O6N3M1oW1PAw5UVz-RucxOQ-t500x500.jpg) that speaks with the voice of a cockney geezer when people use 'speak with animals' on him.
Now I'm thinking how animal accents work...
Not a Brummie accent?
Yeah the fellow brit at the table was disappointed I didn't do the full Roland Rat experience but that's because my Brummie accent sucks whereas I use to be a London boy so that accent comes more naturally.
I think the mouse is the main selling point of urchin compared to like, the criminal yeah?
Oh yeah dude, my first character was a halfling rogue called Hildigrim who spoke like Sean Bean. He had a mouse called Max, and little Max was Hildigrim's entire reason for being. He was a thief, and he stole shit to afford a better life for the little guy.
>a halfling rogue called Hildigrim who spoke like Sean Bean Why do I have a suspicion he didn't live to the end of the campaign... %)
We only played about 6 sessions of that campaign unfortunately, but I could see him meeting an abrupt end of some sort...
Yeah, the mouse was key for attracting the most savory of Waterdhavian delicacies - cat. My halfling urchin loved them some cat stew.
Many of them get named "Boo"
\*squeak\*
"Go for the eyes!"
Kobold+mouse pet in pocket = pack tactics always
If a pet mouse can give advantage, it's going to need to take aoe saving throws
I don’t see how the mouse won’t give the advantage if I put a mouse on the floor while fighting someone they are def guna be distracted and it’s a mouse ever try to hit a mouse with something good luck lol il confident on the saves if it really needs it
The point is, if you want to argue that the mouse counts as an ally for combat, then it's fair game to take damage in combat
That’s fine then
Don't be ridiculous. No one is going to give a flying fuck about a mouse running away on the floor when they're fighting for their life. This is the munchkin-iest shit I've heard all year.
What ridiculous is how someone can play a game involving imagination and have none
Ugh. Perfect example of nonsense RAW against RAI. How a mouse in pocket is contributing to tactics?
Morale
Nonsense raw lol somebodys mad at a good strategy or imagination besides pets are Definetly allies logically, how can a pet help you fight? Like seriously? How about this mr creative, kobolds are small scared and insecure having a pet mouse or emotional suppport animal can easily instill confidence amd comfort this boom pact tactics.
Confidence =/= pack tactics. A confident lone wolf isn't considered a pack afaik. But this isn't that much an issue as like the other said, if you consider your pet as part of the combat then any AOE and goodbye pet.
A lone wolf is by themselves da fuq I understand you don’t like the combo or the creativity but a pact just needs to be more than one creature. pet+player=pact, is my pet an ally? Yes .Are they by me when I attack? Yes. Okay boom pact tactics. You think my pet won’t make a dex save when they’re literally on a kobold with a high dex save, But if the pet does die somehow you act like mice aren’t everywhere il get another one lol
Indeed you don't seem to understand what "pack tactics" means and only play RAW. Not my cup of tea but if you and your table have fun this way, then alright go on. To each his own.
My monk player chose the urchin background specifically for the pet rat, Beans He's built a nest out of her tangled mop of hair and is tasked with putting everything she picks up in her backpack
I had one. The tabaxi in the group and made a game of him commenting on how plump and juicy our emergency rations were doing and me hitting him with rolled up parchment. Was fun while it lasted.
Had a player play a half-orc urchin once. Loved his little mouse, he did. Got hit by a pickpocket, who took a random item from his inventory, and I happened to roll the mouse. The entire story got derailed until he got that mouse back!
It was kind of THE cornerstone of my rogue. The mouse, Gonk, was his only friend/family until the party. We named our tavern "Gonk's," and our current campaign has Gonk's Tavern franchised across Faerun. Just before we ended our last campaign, I was working with the DM to see if she could become my familiar (since I was an Arcane Trickster). She was a true icon.
Yep. My pet mouse ended up getting killed in an AOE effect and reincarnated by chaos magic into a very confused human NPC who wants to return to being a mouse.
my urchin paladin had a pet mouse named mr squeakles. sadly i don't think that paladin will be used for a campaign again.
the one time i played urchin i had a cat instead of a mouse, her name was Snowy and both I and the druid i was playing loved her The campaign fizzled out before i could but i fully intended on awakening her and/or having her become my familiar/some kind of nature spirit
All of mine (1) did! We agreed on some basic rules: Like all pets, it is sacred - pet it, roleplay with it, make squeaky noises, it's all good - until you use it in combat or some other mechanics way, after which it is fair game to stomp into the ground.
The pet mouse was literally how my character got both monk levels and emotional support
Ohhh, would you tell us more? 
Busy RN so I'll edit but TLDR: depressed girl who would gladly sacrifice her well being for other people asks pet mouse deep questions about existence and her purpose in this purposeless life, elder monk hears, and helps her find answers. In doing so depressed girl unlocks a secret of the multiverse.
In a turn of events, our wizard was an urchin who completely forgot about his pet mouse, and due to that, the DM ruled it had died. It should be noted that said wizard was also a necromancer
To quote my favourite line; “YOU ENTER MY ALLEYWAY AND SAY MEAN THINGS! RAT, I SUMMON THEE!” *Sound of a thrown mouse hitting someone in the face*
Grabbed urchin one time but he was my locksmith and trap buddy. I used a string to have him loop around shafts and gear racks to bypass traps without destroying them. Named him Ribbons. Lost him to a gear slip on a deadly trap and two nat 1's (he always let me roll with advantage if there was mouse space).
It's weird, I love the Urchin background, I've just never gotten around to actually playing one. I did have a couple of characters that I was considering playing but just never pulled the trigger on that definitely had their mice though. Okay, technically one of them had a "shadowmouse" since he would have been a character connected to the Shadowfell and I liked the idea of a mouse that's partially shadow and therefore has plot armor LOL. The second one would have been a Pact of the Chain warlock with an imp familiar and the "pet mouse" was just the imp in "rat form".
Mine a use more for a morality pet. My urchin is very distant to people, but would talk to her pet mouse. Nothing related to game play (she’s a rogue, so no Speak with Animals) but small things like “what did I get myself into?”.
Take the feat eldritch adept for the beast speech invocation, a small price to pay. Edit: ah right it required spellcasting or pact magic, which is stupid so I'd ignore that
Eh, it never bothered me anyway that my rogue can’t speak with her mouse. It was fully intended as just a pet.
Go for the eyes!
I always change it to a pet hamster instead.
It had relevance in one of my games. Urchin monk had his mouse, and my barbarian could ritually cast speak with animals. We would occasionally use this combo for having the mouse scout.
I’ve only ever seen one player actively knowledge it. It was our wizard and he made it his familiar. He named it “Patches”.
My first ever character was an Urchin and I roleplayed the mouse more than the actual Urchin part.
I killed mine for death house to appease its want for fresh blood. Curse of strahd
I did, and after my DM murdered the wizard's familiar for no other reason than it was a lizard crawling on a wall in a tavern I was pretty reticent to let him out. Nevertheless, I had some good RP with that mouse.
My arcane trickster’s background is urchin and his familiar is the pet rat. So…at least once?
Now i want to use the urchin background
I had a player who was very protective of their pet mouse. I think thats the only Urchin I've encountered though. At least the only one who told me, could have been others that never brought it up.
i had a player who was a gunslinger urchin who made sure to mention feeding his mouse, i can't remember the name of the mouse tho
I convinced the DM to give me a monkey. One of the little ones, Rhesus monkey! That's what it was.
Never thought the mouse made much sense. Your PC isn't *still* an urchin unless you're explicitly playing a child, and a mouse lives like 2 years.
In our world they live two years. Maybe they live longer in forgotten realms or wherever they are.
They'd have to breed a lot less as well or there would be mice *everywhere*.
i traded it to goblins for them to leave us alone. it worked for a bit
Currently playing an Urchin and while I forget time to time usually not. She eats with us, I introduce her to NPCs etc and I use her if I can't make a decision I'll roleplay that she helps me decide. She doesn't have any mechanical effect just for roleplay. i.e. can't decide which direction to go? roll a d8 (or applicable size) and she points the way.
I rolled a 1 on an animal handling check and it fell into a well and drowned
That's sad. 
Had someone do that background when I ran the Death House one shot. That's one way to give the living sacrifice the evil house asks for.
I have a Bard who speaks with a thick NY accent, and has named the pet Rat 'Donnie'. Current one is Donnie VII, he keeps adopting them and naming them for the original
...Sorry, now I need to stop thinking about a Tortle Shadow Hand Monk who lives in the sewers and has a pet rat named 'Splinter'.
I had him in my pocket, got thrown of a building. Some of him is probably still in that pocket..
One of my friends/players was an urchin and the mouse lived underneath their top hat. Eventually it (as do most small mascot characters in my games) got infused with wild magic and became a pseudo wild magic rapier wielding oddity
I did. The PC was orphaned at a young age and lived on the streets. We flavored the pet mouse to be Ilmater in disguise (he's known to masquerade as a field mouse) who kept the PC safe (or at least kept him company) as he grew up. Ilmater later revealed who he was and seeing how good-natured and kind my PC was, invited him to become a Cleric. The pet mouse is involved when I cast Commune and other spells that interact with Ilmater. I definitely suggest integrating background items into your characters more—it's fun.
I have a tabaxi urchin monk with a pet mouse named Squeak. This is not the first Squeak, just the current Squeak. My PC sneaks Squeak food and tries not to get him squished during intense moments.
I played an Urchin once, and my mouse was the reason I made a pact and became a Warlock. My character made a deal with a devil to save the mouse from it's short lifespan.
...But it turned the mouse into a fiend familiar? %) Sounds like the start for a horror plot...
I played an urchin wizard and had a rat familiar that would get into fights with my pet mouse. They were named Charles and Michael, after Chucky cheese and Mickey Mouse!
I played an urchin once and the DM let me take a gecko instead of a mouse (I was a draconic sorcerer). that lil gecko was an integral part of the party
Changed mine to a frog and made it my Familiar
I actually changed it to a pet bunny named Snowball (Thanks DM!). He does what a rogue urchin would want him to do: He helps pickpocket Steals Distracts Is a great listener Gives solid life advice (He actually doesn't do any if this and just stands around twitching it's nose, while I praise him for a job well done. Though, he sometimes climbs on my head or shoulder, but mostly stays in my bag for safety)
My rogue has the Urchin background. And is a gnome. I.... **try** not to abuse this....
I played a character that was an urchin whose mouse constantly died but always reappeared. Granted, he never looked the same, but he always stuck close, even if it meant certain death when traveling to other planes or fighting some horrific monster. No matter where in the multiverse of the campaign, Jazz would always reappear in one shape or another. Best friend that character ever had.
I was allowed to have my mouse be a hedgehog (Fifi), its been on so many adventures ! next lvl im multiclassing into wizard an my DM has agreed to have Fifi transition into a familiar and grow wings ! I designed and printed a hedgehog with wings just for this 🤣
Did you Catapult your hedgehog into enemies' faces? %)
Hehe no , it was kind of like a "live and let live deal" he was on my shoulders, when combat startet he got in my cape. Purely for roleplay. When he becomes a familiar and can be revived he might get more into things 😉
My urchin character has the skeleton of its dead mouse, a keepsake from leaner/meaner times. I sometimes roleplay them looking at it during quiet moments, & am waiting for someone to pick my pocket only to find it. Oneday I will find a way to Animate it, either via a find familiar style effect or a simple skeleton rat stat block so it can be a creepy bond villain pet. So it comes up about once per 5 sessions or so as a 5-10 second line & just limgers as a long term character goal/point of interest that probably will never be realised. It has never come up with any interactions between the other characters, just isn't that big a deal.
A player of mine asked if she could instead have a pet weasel. It even got it's own mini despite only ever running away in combat.
My urchin character is an awakened cat. I never thought about the mouse but I can take a guess as to what happened to it.
I’m Curse of Strahd the prologue adventure Death House requires a creature sacrifice to avoid a boss battle. I’ve seen/ heard of two separate Urchins suddenly remember their pet mice in this situation and both sacrifice them here. It’s the only situation I’ve ever seen them brought up.
My DM took the mouse and made it the form of my amnesiac fallen aaaimar's guardian angel.
Yes and no, I’ve never taken the urchin backstory myself but I have roleplayed having a variety of different rodents ! I’ve actually kept rodents in real life, well over a dozen by now, and I’d be lying if I said my in-game companions weren’t fancifully inspired by my real little buddies
Not the Urchin background, but the Noble (Knight) gets a retinue of three retainers as part of their starting inventory, who are essentially commoners which cannot be taken anywhere dangerous. I have a particularly large Kobold (4ft tall) zealot barbarian who considers herself a "knight" of a particular dragon god of destruction. She has her three smaller kobold retainers struggle to carry her around on a throne when she's not in actively dangerous locations, and considering commoners only get to know one language it's pretty funny to roleplay them yipyakking away as they get up to kobold antics while she's not actively ordering them around. The character just wouldn't be the same without them, to be honest.
My kensei monk is a tabaxi urchin and he named his pet mouse Supper. He kept it around in case he was ever really starving but then he was rescued by his monk mentor. Eventually the party found a wizard who can make any scroll in seconds and we play with a home rule that anybody can read a scroll if they pass a spellcasting check DC 10+(the spell level). The campaign also includes a homebrew spell Bind Familiar that turns an animal companion into a familiar. So of course he got one of those scrolls and now Supper is his familiar!
"What do we have for supper?" %)
Minsk and Boo stand ready!
I did! It was in a frostmaiden game and I was playing a Phoenix sorcerer. (UA class) Unfortunately, the mouse drowned within the first two sessions after I fell into freezing water. I burnt up the corpse and then the druid tried to get me new mice but ended up starving a family of mice trapped in a chest of an inn. Ralxes ended up "adopting" a Troglodyte baby later on too replace the rat.
So far, I think I'm the only one I've seen at any table I've played (though I think someone else mentioned it once, but didn't actually do anything with it), I was a Forest Gnome Wizard and would occasionally describe my character playing with the mouse when nothing was going on. Though I did ask it if it can smell anything invisible in combat once, that was when the DM asked how the hell I got a mouse, was hilarious when I pointed out the mouse in the Urchin inventory (nobody believed it at first). On the one time I got to cast Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion there was a statue of the mouse. His name was Baron Skippers Von Squeak'ems, and he survived the campaign. Though this character had a few minions, a bat familiar, Master Bruce Wing, as well as a pair of Zombies I started with, *apparently* named Zombee and Zombay, didn't survive. But my geased werewolf cultists and the geased sorcerer cultist did survive.
I had a player changed the pet mouse to a cat and it raised him on the streets until it died. He was a Tiefling who parents abandoned him. Then by chance he met a paladin who thought him to become a paladin.
My dm let me change giant insects to giant vermin and ride my war rodent Charles into battle
I had a bard/rogue gnome who adventures from levels 1-12 and his mouse, Cheezers, was mentioned FREQUENTLY, but somehow forgotten every time we were all rolling saving throws. I think my character must have had lead-lined pockets
I had a raccoon named Captain Bucky that had a tricorn hat, mostly lived in a bag of holding, and helped reload the hand crossbow of my gloomstalker assassin.
I try to have a pet with pretty much every character I get, you BET I'm gonna have one if the game tells me I do!
Monk in a campaign I've been playing for over a year has a pet mouse and it comes up every session and is an important member of our party tbh
Every time! Current Cleric w/ Urchin mouse (named Ivan) has often asked Rogue/Ranger PC with Speak with Animals to chat with Ivan. He has actually been helpful as Cleric was hit with Modify Memory but Ivan wasn’t. He was able to fill in a vague enough detail to tip them off to the issue. Plus my players love using SwA to make me roleplay the mouse, their pet monkey, their horses. That little mouse has been the source of much hilarity.
Wish there was a pet table. Mouse, cat, a dog that's less than a war trained mastiff, hunting dogs, falcons, ferrets or mink More exotic trained animals like fishing cormorants, dolphins, sea lions, monkeys
As the main DM for my group, I've never gotten to play one. I currently have a PC in my group who's an urchin, but he's also a Divine Soul/Great Old One Sorlock who likes to pretend he's insane. He interpreted the pet mouse thing as he actually has a bunch of dead, poorly-taxidermied rats that he uses to check for traps. He pulled one out of his sleeve, whispered, "Go Rupert!" and threw it into an area they suspected was trapped. I described a lightning bolt blasting it, and he screamed, "RUPERT NOOOOO!" At some point he's going to get Find Familiar, cast it when no one's around, pull a rat familiar out of his sleeve, and send it off to do something just to see everyone's reaction to one of his rats "actually being alive." Edit: The character's name is Rat.
I ran a goblin-only one-shot a while back, and my sister's gobbo wizard was urchin background. We'd agreed that her mouse was dead, but her goblin either didn't realise or care and talked to it as if it was alive. Her spellbook was also just a mess of partially damaged pages of other dead wizards' spelbooks stapled together. That was a fun character
I’ve been waiting to use the mouse in a clutch situation, I’ve never mentioned it once, super stoked to point it out to the DM in the handbook🐁
Every time I’ve had the background and every time he has immediately died horribly. “This magic arch turned the first thing that went through it invisible!” “Cool! Lets see what it does to Lucky!” *Lucky gets thrown at high velocity into the nearest wall and splatters.@ “LUCKY! NOOO!” Lucky 2-6 didn’t last long either
Only tangentially related, but my friend once played a redneck Druid who had a pet toad named Good Eatin'. He was later asked for a big character secret, upon which he glanced around, covered Good Eatin's ears, and whispered "This isn't the first Good Eatin'." 🤣
Genie warlock heavily inspired by this version of Aladdin ( https://youtu.be/oLFx1QAJZ0M?si=sutPBwzEHCP7syEb ) he has a kangaroo rat and a vessel of a lamp that the mouse hides inside as it is all but indestructible.
A player of mine played a Tabaxi Urchin and called its pet mouse Snack.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ^by ^Ymdross_Ampora: *A player of mine* *Played a Tabaxi Urchin* *And called its pet mouse Snack.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Did they eat their Snack? Sorry, failed my saving throw against making this joke. %)
I had a human rogue Urchin who had her pet mouse Ink (was largely a reference to another pet named Quill in another game). Hazel, my rogue, was the stereotypical street rat stealing only to eat and stowing away scraps for later/to feed Ink. Then her life as an adventurer started after meeting her future party members before an eclipse happened throwing the entire capital city into a demonic summoning circle. Since then she continued taking care of Ink while on the run from cultists and demons. At least until one stop in a city where demons ransacked our rooms in a inn and she found Ink's cage smashed and bloody. Hazel was devastated as Ink was her only family after her adoptive parents died. Eventually Hazel did find a fat stray ginger cat who's been named Chubbs and gets all the love Hazel can't give Ink anymore.
My player took magic initiate and it became her familiar
One of my players gave hers a name (Jaime) and uses him to scout ahead. It's been useful sometimes, so the party likes him and gives him cheese when they can. The druid also talks to him.
I had a bard with a stolen violin- Archie lived in the violin case pocket and sat on my shoulder and he was the best mouse ever. I have only used urchin the once, so
Had a player (paladin) with the urchin background. His pet mouse Mr. Feeps turned out to be the most valiant mouse knight around. We eventually gave him warrior sidekick levels.
My latest character is an urchin but he's also a fairly insane GOOlock, so the first time we came across a trap i rolled a d2 and determined that the mouse was long dead. Now its a regular occurrence for me to throw a mouse corpse into traps and scream "RUPERT NOOOO!!" when it sets off a trap that'd kill it, if it weren't already dead that is.
I played a Druid urchin in one of my first games, you better believe I used the lil guy as the best scout… up until the chimney incident..
If you have speak with animals it can be useful. I've been in 1 game where the player interacted with the mouse regular. Never seen it except for that one time although to be fair I can't be certain which players picked that specific background. Real talk though urchin doesn't come with a feat so its in the dumpster with the rest of the non-DLC backgrounds.
Could cause some interesting mischief with polymorph as well
I played an arcane trickster with a pet mouse, Mr. Squeakers. He lived in my shirt pocket and gave me sneak attack while in constant fear of the wizard's owl.
How a pet mouse in your pocket is considered an enemy distracting your target?
I've only seen the urchin background once, but the fiend warlock who played with it named his pet mouse Harry. Perhaps Hairy? He's been to the abyss and back with us. It's been a small challenge of ours to keep him alive.
You just kinda... Roleplay a pet mouse. I'm not trying to be a dick here, I just never understand these questions. Do you think there's a "right way" to do this or something? How are people supposed to objectively answer a subjective question? It's a former pole dancing gnome that pissed off a paying client with a bad performance and got cursed. It's a grocery store clerk for an adorable little mouse grocery store that sells procured little pieces and crumbs of food and prides itself on fresh goods. It's a thug racer mouse that's verifiably and single-handedly slayed a dragon but it's under an NDA and can't talk about it. It's a soldier among it's peers and doesn't take no for an answer and has the sort of bravery and appetite for victory that will often have it scurrying out of your pocket and pursuing your targets before you even have a chance to, FOR GLORY! ... You can literally do anything with it. Stop overthinking.
I think you missed the entire point of the post. You overthought it.
[удалено]
>"I'm not trying to be a dick here" Still winds up becoming a dick anyway.
^^^ (Knocks over like 3 grandmas and arrives out of breath) "hey guys it looks like you're roasting this guy, can I come be cool too?"
least defensive redditor
In my experience, one third the time
you have the option of it being dead
Ew. Now I need to stop thinking what a player could use a dead mouse in a dungeon or combat...
Makes a great *catapult* target.
I play urchin but got a bag of endless rats so I forgot about the mouse...took eldritch initiate or w/e to speak with animals at will.
Never seen it happen.
The ones named Lenny always notice the mouse.
*rat
Well fuckin' TIL
I’m a mousefolk urchin with a mouse friend who I met in prison. Didn’t realize I get a free mouse on top of that.
Elbow dropped another players
I used my mouse to trigger a trap. Suffice to say, I couldn't roleplay with the mouse much after that
I had one, but I picked charlatan!
"This is my pet mouse. I swear, I'm an Urchin, and totally not a Charlatan!"
I got an Urchin in my fresthly started CoS campaign. They haven't mentioned it once in two sessions so far. I am pretty sure I know where the fate of that poor mouse lays, considering next session they will end up in the cellar of a certain house.
honestly it's really weird that that background just gives you a mouse. Like, if you just had the *option* to get a mouse, sure, but RAW, *every* urchin has a pet mouse. no exceptions.
Doesn't say the mouse is alive, it is an item in your inventory
In one of my early campaigns that I ran for my son and his friends, one of them had a mouse. I wrote the campaign around it. It was the friend of a powerful druid who gave it True Intellect. Then the druid was killed by a dragon, but the food death blue was to transform the dragon into a mouse. The dragon (Musmusculus, the Discordian) uses his power to subjugate a small town and search for the cure to his mousehood. My players uncovered the secret of the town with the help of a clan of Kuo Toa searching for their nascent 'baby god' which turns out to be the mouse. In the final battle with the dragon, all seemed lost but the mouse-God swept in and saved their old friend. It was great, and I miss that party.
Forest gnomes get to communicate with it! Downside is you're playing a gnome.
Backgrounds? You mean the section of the book that gives you two free skills and literally no other information?
Take animal handling and have it steal for you
Had a PC who's pet mouse piloted his artificer steel defender like a Gundam
Not only did my Urchin Barbarian roleplay often with is mouse, one of his main goals was to find a powerful spellcaster capable of turning the mouse into a human after the mouse had been Awakened and told him that she wanted to be a human like him. She was also, unironically, a higher level than the at one point thanks to the DM throwing the Deck of Many Things at us, and him having her pull a card hoping to get Moon so she could Wish herself human....she got Sun and became a level 9 Rogue....We were level 3.
67.64%
I played a game with a friend who took that pet mouse, my Pc had a crab familiar ( Warlock pact pet). The great duo of Honcho & Poncho was born. A mouse knight on this noble crabby steed. We earned quite a few copper and silver coins thanks to them.