So umm....help?

[Belzyk]

So I'm DM ing a small group me and 2 friends. And well it is a island world. They are level 3 and traveling to a port city. A small group of pirates attack.... they crit kill 2 of them. Intimidate.....pirates try to escape and BAM archer crit kills pirate captian.....they decide to pull the boat back in using the ship they were on grapples....and comendeer themselves a ship....rest of the pirate crew all fail their saves.... other boats captian offers them the first mate to get the ship to port.... wtf my level 3 group has a boat and I am now stunned. They did it so gracefully. ..Small tear down his cheek.. I taught them well..

[Calthropstu]

No return fire from pirates?

[P.F.]

...

Well done. What did they need help with?

[Belzyk]

No return fire from pirates?

To intimidated.

[Belzyk]

...

Well done. What did they need help with?

Umm I need help coping with what happened. Lmao

[Calthropstu]

Intimidation doesn't stop return fire, does it? I thought demoralizing gave negatives.

[Belzyk]

Intimidation doesn't stop return fire, does it? I thought demoralizing gave negatives.

Idk 2 of your 4 boarding party get insta killed. That's pretty damn intimidating. Morale shot to hell pirates decide to flee (story reasons that party dosent know yet) and they kill the captian with a crit shot to the head with a composite longbow+ crit strike rapid fire shot.... the archer is very lucky.... idk about you but that's the point where any sane guy would lay down his weapon. (Something important is hidden on the ship. They were smuggling something and when defeat was realized they tried to flee.)

[One Step Two]

Umm I need help coping with what happened. Lmao

So, the end result, regardless of means, they have control of a ship, and a crew to man it.

Do they know how to navigate? Do they have profession (sailor) at all? You can certainly have them boss the crew around for a little while, but when they reach port, there's nothing stopping the crew from leaving if they wish.
Alternatively, if they go to a port said pirate ship might be attacked on sight, cause it's a pirate ship.

Their successes can be surprising, but it just adds to the game! Reward them with interesting challenges or more options, if they want to be pirates, let them, with all the good and bad that goes with it. If you don't have anything on hand to run, be honest, and say so, ask for a little more time to prep for a seafaring campaign. If you have no interest in running one, be honest about that too, tell them that you're not prepared for it, but there's a ncie bounty for turning in the ship and crew as a reward for their efforts.

[Geddy2112]

So they have a boat-aka, a giant adventure hook.

Who is going to help them sail it? Unless these pirates declared the PC's their new personal saviors, I think they will need some crew. Who will they recruit? how? what setbacks will they face on the way?

What are they going to do with it? Unless they are going to sell it and go spend their gold in the tavern, they are either going somewhere or selling it to get something important. I would strongly suspect they wanna sail somewhere-but where? Wherever the other plot hooks(like the cargo in the ship) tell them to go. On the way, misadventures, setbacks, etc etc etc.

Maybe they do go do the quest thing of plot importance. Now they might have a name for themselves-a couple up and comings who hijacked a ship of the famous pirate so-and-so and went and did the thing. That name might be good, bad, both...adventure abound.

Be thankful your players made your job so easy for you.

edit-ninjaed/what 1step2 said

[Belzyk]

Thank you guys. They spared any pirates who swore alligence to them. They want to turn it into a trade ship once they are able To. I also have decided to let them keep the ship. It has something super important hidden on it. Not to mention eventually they would need their own ship they just got it way way way earlier then I thought. This world is built for them to explore.

[Segev]

Depending on the kind of game you want to run, the pirates could be a reasonably loyal crew (respecting power and the loot that the PCs bring in from their adventures). In this case, treat them like any band of hirelings: the PCs need to make sure to pay them and to keep them protected from mundane threats, but the major mechanical thing this does is give them a "home" to return to in any port city, and a means of navigating the waves to any exotic dungeons you want to put on islands or near the shore. The complications are whatever you want them to be, from sea encounters to "how do we get the boat over this shallow area or through these rocky shoals?" to having to simply landing the boat and doing a typical adventure-walk.

Or, you could have the crew by disloyal by default. These new people are scary, but not THEIR leaders. The game will be more about intrigue and politicking to maintain control of the boat, and possibly about earning the crew's trust and faith. Or replacing them with a crew they CAN trust. This kind of game is more intrigue-laden and will make "earning" the boat harder, but it will eventually lead to either a more politics-heavy game overall (as they use external politics to bolster their internal control of the crew, earning loyalties through favors to their families or helping them with their revenges...and as the game will have taken on that flavor and owning a boat makes you nearly gentry in your own right, so they may start approaching problems from that angle in cities and the like, too; particularly if they make the money to keep the (ex)pirates happy via merchanting or the like). It might also settle back down into the first kind after they are secure in their crew's loyalty.


But ultimately, the only thing this could screw up is a pre-planned plot. If that's the case, you'll need to tell us what you have planned so we can help you re-arrange it to accommodate their boat. I'm sure it can be done. If you don't have a pre-planned plot that can't deal with a boat, then just...run with it. Figure out how you want the boat to contribute to the game. Find out what THEY want to do with it (do they want to be sailors, or is this boat more a convenience item, or might they just want the wealth it represents?), and see if that gives you ideas for where to go with it.

Best of luck!

[Big Fau]

Idk 2 of your 4 boarding party get insta killed. That's pretty damn intimidating. Morale shot to hell pirates decide to flee (story reasons that party dosent know yet) and they kill the captian with a crit shot to the head with a composite longbow+ crit strike rapid fire shot.... the archer is very lucky.... idk about you but that's the point where any sane guy would lay down his weapon. (Something important is hidden on the ship. They were smuggling something and when defeat was realized they tried to flee.)

For the record, there are actual rules for this in Heroes of Battle or the Miniatures Handbook.