Ideas: Pirates & PCs against the Black Ships!

[Judging__Eagle]

Talk like a Pirate day has come and gone and it gave me the idea for an adventure.

The Why or Hook:
The hook is simple, the PCs already work for the guy who sends them on their missions and they get all they need as PCs and players.

The Where:

A Pirate Ship on the open seas, sailing between islands along the coast of a lush tropic continent.

The Who:

Black Ships. Massive fiend-constructs used by local fiends to capture local souls and slaves. These things are essentially usd by powerful fiend lords as planes-hopping pleasure craft, travelling the planes and sampling the local fare.

They're also loaded with treasure. Fiend-tresure from all over the place.


The How:

They're 7th lvl PCs, with the Wish economy and will be working with a crew of mercenaries (pirates) their boss knows.



Something I wrote in in my humble opinion regarding the mounted combat thread.

I so have to make a character who is ridden by their cohort.

A druid who stays in one form al the time and then is ridden into battle by their lower lvl 'beat-stick' cohort.

I think that the Black Ship captain in the adventure I'm writing will have a druid who stays wild-shaped as a parrot, then casts a pair of animal-growing spells or wildshapes into a larger flying animal. The druid is the actual NPC, the pirate on it's back that's using an auto-loading musket is the cohort.

I don't know if it should be the villan or the PCs transportation officer. Since they're working with pirates to attack this particular Black Ship; which is manned by pirates, but they're undead/fiends/monsters.

The ... what?

The ship the PCs is on will be crewed by anthropomorphic sea creatures; squid, octopus, albatross, tuna, shark, dolphin and... maybe a anthro blue whale (who's the cook, and he only knows how to make "Krill Soup").

Anyway, this is mostly to trawl for ideas and help me organize this idea out.

[JonSetanta]

Yugoloths with cheesy stereotypical Chinese accents.
Archons so British they Shit Queen Mum.
French Slaadi.
Spanish Eladrins.
Portuguese Baatezu.
and on and on...

These are style-recommendations, not associations between the cultures and D&D monsters. Also, I didn't state them in terms of alignment but rather for what the outsiders are (cartoonishly) known for.
In fact it would be a great setting if alignment was all fucked to hell, like everyone had a slight racial/cultural Chaotic Neutral lean.
Not like in Planescape/Sigil where the monsters tolerate each other because they are forced to, but that there's free trade and piracy so common that everyone is out for material gain.
There's no time for deities, holy or infernal warfare, or worrying whether someone has horns or wings.

[Judging__Eagle]

Eww.

Good ideas, but not exactly what I wanted. >_<

[Judging__Eagle]

Adding Posts from the "Why is Mounted Combat so Good?" thread:

1190601999[/unixtime]]Ya know, I have yet to sea a good pick of an antho-octopuss/squid. The ones I find look like Calamarians, Mindflayers or a dude with four tentacles instead of arms.

The anthro Octopuses will be literally an octopus with the ability to talk and be larger/stronger so that it can walk around on-deck.

It will 'walk' on half of its tentacles and use the other half to act like arms.

So, basically 4 tentacles to walk on, 4 to manipulate objects.



.....actually, these creatures will be more Awakened animals with stuff like Arms of the Naga or Gloves of Man than they will be actually "anthropomorphic". I really don't want them to look like men look animals; I want them to be animals that act like men.

Most of them will be increased in size to be medium or decreased to be no larger than large size*.

I guess think of these things acting the way intelligent beings with no arms do in Larry Niven's books. They buy prosthetic 'arms' to allow them to do cool stuff with their big brains.

Also, Awakened albatross sailors would probably make amazing lookouts. More like scouts though.

Really, it's not so much anthro-animals as it is the way animals act in Narnia (the idea is slowly becoming more and more solidified and defined as I'm writing it).

Because I want animals as crew, but I really don't want them to be anthro animals.

I think that I'll steal the word 'furry' and use to help them define each other thought. They'll call each other scalies (fish), armies (cephlapods), slickies (dolphins/whales), roughies (sharks/skates) or featheries (duh, birds).

*:The blue whale will change his size depending if he's going overboard to collect that day's dinner or if he's down in the kitchen cooking dinner**.

**: I'm gonna make it so that his pot is magic ('cause a GM can be arbitrary that way), so the crew doesn't mind what he cooks, ever; since it always tastes great. It also grants the effects of either Heroes Feast or something along those lines to everyone who eats food cooked in it. So, the PCs will either sit and eat and then realize there were secret benefits or watch the crew scarf down the pink shrimpy stew and then kick themselves.

[Judging__Eagle]

1190638389[/unixtime]]Be aware that a naming convention like that could get obnoxious really fast. I probably see more furry stuff than the majority of people here and it really grates. So... manufactured.

If you have to do that please don't call humans; skins, hyoomans etc. That shit is what causes milk to go bad.

No, I mean, the 'terms' are more slang than anything else.

So, human are humans.

But sailors are 'sea rats' and guys from a sea-faring nation are called 'limeys' b/c they pack concentrated lime-juice to combat scurvy.

The nomeclature is informal if anything, so a dolphin would never call a whale a slickie, b/c he knows better; but a shark would call him that.

I guess they are more racist terms than anything else. Mildly racist, but racist nonetheless.

Humans would be called featherless by an albatross, dry by a whale, smooth by a shark, bony by a squid and scaleless by a fish. Even though those terms are applicable to things other than humans.

So... humans have the most racist terms against them. They're still called humans when you want to be polite.

The animals can't tell between a dwarf, human or elf though. They all think that they're different types of humans.

I dunno.

1190639646[/unixtime]]Also include an anthropomorphic lobster doctor who wears sandals.

Ceilingcat... no. Just no.

Then again, a crustacean cleric would be hilarious.

"Oh, I don't know why I need to do a physical, you're as healthy as a crab."


I should probably have... "Giant Crabs" as the pirate ships marines. Lobsters, crabs, what else could I use for crustaceans?

Oh, a mantis shrimp illusionist. Since he can see things that no one else can, he can create illusions that fool anyone. That or instead of creating visual illusions, he creates remarkably real tactile illusions. So, people run and bounce into his invisible/ghostly walls of stone; until they start touching it slowly and can then walk through.

Actually, I'm glad you brought up the Zoidberg reference, I had forgotten about shellfish completely.


This is all for a single adventure, but it's getting my brain going.

[Judging__Eagle]

1190640983[/unixtime]]Another suggestion: Pistol Shrimp blaster.

I don't think I know that reference.

Is it a Men in Black reference about the gun that Will Smith's character got?

Or is it the Windy Shrimp from Futurama Ep. 2?

Actually, having a "choir" of windy shrimps as part of the crew would be an excellent idea. Since the ship could sail in any direction. I'll make them a magical beast with the (Ex): ability:

Continuous Breath (Ex): A creature with continuous breath can as a full-round action create an effect exactly like that of the Gust of Wind spell.

If a creature with this ability attempts to fill the sails of a boat, there must be at least one creature with this ability for every 10 square feet that the water craft takes up in it's footprint.

Since the 'ship' (really it's a small destroyer) is 200 feet by 50 feet (10,000) they need...1000 Windy Shrimps. Hmmm...

Then again, the ship will move at 50 mph (or whatever).

Which is certainly an interesting contrast in flavour.

The Black Ships move, b/c they're freaking demons (the ships themselves have eyes, can slowly glide on the water on their own and steer themselves); while the pirate ship moves b/c it has little cages set up along its masts and decks filled with crustaceans that blow wind continuously.

1190641450[/unixtime]]

1190639646[/unixtime]]Also include an anthropomorphic lobster doctor who wears sandals.

I prefer an anthropmorphic lobster with a tommy gun. (He's the official mascot for "Mobster Lobster" in Key West Florida.) The place had a whole menu for just the various martinis. "We treat you like family" was the motto.

I'll keep it in mind. Maybe as rival pirates only they're mobsters and use baseball bats, crowbars and auto-loading crossbows?

[Judging__Eagle]

1190662475[/unixtime]]No, a pistol shrimp is an actual animal. It fires a jet of air from its claw that moves as fast as a bullet.

Haha.

Well, uhm.... Shrimp Pistoleers!

They're litrerally dual gun wielders whose guns are also melee weapons.

I have to look them up now.

Okay...the guns also shoot scorching rays underwater....plasma rays...uhm.. we'll call it a force effect and be done with it.

[Judging__Eagle]

1190685560[/unixtime]]Even cooler about those shrimp (this just blew my mind):


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol_shr ... minescence

Yup, that's why I said they fire uhm.... yeah, I guess a Sonic attack works instead of fire or force.

How does this sound:

Snap the Claw (Ex): Pistol Shrimp may as an (an attack action or a standard action) make a ranged touch attack against any target within (30, 60, 90? or close medium range; HD determine 'caster level') that deals 1d6 per 2 HD, plus their constitution modifier (if positive) of Sonic damage. If fired underwater at an underwater target, the attack deals Force damage.


Crissa:

Most of those tactics only work if the target knows they face an uber-charger.

Most monsters won't know that they face such a thing.

Adding 2 to the EL of an encounter that has two creatures of the same CR is only a so-so way of calculating EL.

You still don't get CR 7 xp if you face a CR 5 creauture + CR 5 mount; you've faced an Encounter Level 7 fight, but you get XP as if you faced a CR 5, and then xp again as if you faced an other CR 5.

Draco: Most people are unimaginative piles of wasted semen. So they choose dogs, bears or other mammals as their yiff-...thing of choice.

It takes real work to make a non-mammal like a lizard, bird, lobster, octopus or [counturl=108]scorpion[/counturl] cute.

[counturl=109]This[/counturl] is all I have to say about shrimp sweetness.

Phone: You must obviously know that I'll be patterning the shrimp pistoleer NPC on Pepe after you posted that. I doubt anyone will get his character reference.