Encounter Idea: HARPY PIRATES!

[RazDelacroix]

Because I am a lazy, devious, and/or curious little critter; I would like to know something.

How would YOU, as a Dungeon Master, incorporate a shipload of harpy pirates into your game? A single combat encounter on the high seas? A small adventure where these pirates use an airship to raid villages and castles? A band of salty sirens set to sweeten our hearts with their antics?

Or would you do something more with them?


Just a quick idea, now let's hear/read your thoughts!


HARPY PIRATES, GO!

[Finback]

Coastal raiders - they live on small islands off the coast, and have begun plundering merchant ships sailing through the area. Anyone who falls foul of any siren song (depending on how you mix up your sirens and harpies - hell, make them simply two variants of a single species) runs the risk of being wrecked on the rocks (oh god, the alliteration).. and any who do fight off the charms are now being divebombed and strafed.

The harpies are getting a meal out of it, but will also take the occasional male for breeding purposes; any useless plunder they trade to a band of roving minotaur pirates for slaves/food (same thing, really).

Do the heroes take on the harpies, and set a trap for the minotaur raiders? Can they escort the merchant ship through untouched? Or is it death by snu-snu?

[CaptainSarathai]

Finback mostly covered it. But storytime:

Back in 4e my friends wanted a campaign where everyone rode dragons. I think everyone wants one eventually. Most DMs throw it out because it's "too OP" or they just don't want to do the work. I did the work.

It was set in Eberron, during 'The Last War,' which I themed very heavily as being like World War 1. Small modifications were made, notably, Dragons lost much of their free will (poor dragons). There were still elders who had this, but it had largely been "bred out" by the militant races (eventually a plotline in the campaign).
Anyway, the players started as elite infantry, who had small dragons like draconic attack dog druid pets. Then the dragons became large enough to ride, but not large enough to get airborne with a rider - so they became dragon cavalry. Finally they could ride their dragons into the skies as some of the very first dragon-knights. At this point, an already lethal campaign became vastly more deadly.

You see, in 4e, if you would get Shifted, Slid, Teleported, or Knocked Prone, you fell out of the saddle. So the players had to deal with that. They also needed a way to handle the freezing cold, and the lack of oxygen at altitude - things which WW1 pilots had to work out for themselves as well. Combat itself was crazy, and one player likened it to being "a fly on a boxing glove", since lots of area attacks meant for the dragons, would also nail the riders for much greater effect.
It was AWESOME, and remains one of my favorite campaigns to date, if only for the fact that I racked up TPKs more often than any other campaign I've ever run, probably combined (yes, the players loved it too, 4e was practically made for this sort of thing)

Anyway, an airship full of Harpy pirates would have been an amazing encounter or short adventure arc. I never actually put the players up against medium-sized flying targets, and I think that being swarmed with Harpies would have taken them from feeling like fighter-pilots on their dragons, to more like hopeless bomber-crews trying to fight off waves of more maneuverable attackers.