Encounters at sea

[AwfulLawful]

My gaming group is about to spend some time on a ship, and I'd like to place an encounter to spice up the journey. But I don't know which... I'm hoping that some of You have a lot of great ideas to share? It doesn't need to be a combat encounter, any type of encounter would be great. (But combat is always fun )

The party is level 4 and includes:
A dwarven cleric
A dwarven wizard
A dwarven fighter
A human paladin
A human swordsage

Thanks in advance

[squishycube]

There was a similar thread a while back which I dug up for you.
Here it is.

[Jimbob]

Pirates, you can not go wrong with pirates. Ship to ship fighting, lots of treasure. If they lose they have to find away of getting out before they are made to walk then plank. If they win they get a ship and a crew of there very own and can travel any where, so letting you set up adventures on islands and other lands. Pirates all the way you land lubbers!!!

[CrazedGoblin]

how about as they are sailing over the sea they get boarded from beneath by water dwellers and they have to fight them off?

[Fawsto]

Gor for the Stormwrack book. There are quite good ideas there.

Imagine, an epic strugle with a Kraken During a Mighty storm! Ok, I have seen Pirates of The Caribbean too much... However! This is still a great scenario!

[Damionte]

I don't know. I kinda agree a bit with "The Ninja". Rather than Pirates assault them with Ninja's of the Carribean.

[TheLogman]

Water Based Druids are possible, 4 of them at that level can cast fog cloud, or warp wood, potentially damaging the ship. Plus, you can give them water-based animal companions, those are fun.

A group of Kou-Toa, two or three, or a Level 3 Kou-Toa Druid can be hard in a fight, and do the same things those Druids could.

Water elementals are fun, and can lead into a storyline where Druids and Clerics are summoning Water Elementals to disrupt the inter-seas trading network.

Finally, black dragons are a watery kind of dragon, and a young one would do well with your party.

Oh, and for Non-Combat encounters, a puzzle would be interesting, Draw a map and color it in, drip some coffee on it, and kinda make it look like an old piece of paper. Then, Either put it on some cardboard, or leave it as is, and cut it up into puzzle pieces using a box knife (Be careful with those things), or a jigsaw, and you have a new destination, and puzzle that's fun for the whole party.

If you have the PC's on a boat with a large crew, play a game of Mafia with the townspeople being the NPC's, (If you don't know how to play, Wikipedia has directions) where the party wants to rat out the evil person, while trying to avoid being killed themselves, and holds some extra sway with good enough Diplomacy check.

One more fun idea: the ship is haunted, and the PC's must use their super sleuthing and high search checks to find the body/murderer of the ghost and set things right.

[AwfulLawful]

Thanks everyone

In the middle of a stormy night, the players will be attacked by Sahuagin PIRATES, including a couple of druids to take advantage of the bad weather and do some damage to the ship.

And then I'll throw in some puzzle work