fun with harpies

[Munin]

As resourceful as my players are, I'd be really surprised if they got handled by the harpies. It's really just a 'soften 'em up' type of encounter. But who knows? They might just get their tails handed to them.

Nice encounter with the lighthouse. Those are the kind of encounters I like to run.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

In an on-again, off-again campaign I play in, I play a 7th-level bard. Soon as I chose bard, the DM apparently decided he had to throw us against some harpies.

We wound up against several harpies, one of which had to have fighter levels or something, because it was firing a bow that hit hard. In any case, one of the harpies sang in the first round, and most of the PCs made the save, though a few PCs and most of the horses did not.

Bard's first round, starts singing and gets something crazy like a 28 on the perform check, completely negating the song with a countersong. Which was great, until all the harpies zeroed in on the bard to kill him! I was in single-digit hp before the encounter was over.

Funny thing was, every round I kept saying things like "I need to cast Alter Self to get some more armor class..." And I kept getting shouted down. "No! Keep singing!"

 

[AaronLoeb]

Just had a harpy encounter this weekend!

The players were in a temple atop a mountain with several ledges straight off the siden (a temple to the sky god, so the openings were to let in birds, sunrise and sunset).

The harpies charmed them, then flew off the ledge, enchanting the players to come toward them. It was great! Two made their saves, and jumped onto the third to stop him from going over. It was very dramatic. The end was dramatic too... The wizard's owl familiar was right behind the harpies. On the round they flew off the ledge, he commanded his owl to fly straight up into the air. The other players looked at him, like, "what is that about?" Next round, as the players on the ledge are wrestling with each other, a fireball goes flying to where the owl had just been and engulfs the two harpies, both of which horribly fail their saves and are consumed in fire.

Good fun, but a couple different rolls and it would have been a TPK. But isn't that true of some of the best combats?

 

[Munin]

We wound up against several harpies, one of which had to have fighter levels or something, because it was firing a bow that hit hard.

There is a harpy in the MM that has 7 levels of fighter. My players will be seeing that one.

Thanks for all the stories. I'll post again after the session and let you know how it turned out.

 

[GrayIguana]

I use harpies and centaurs as the evil offspring of a chaos god, so they often unite. The first time the party encountered a harpy, it had sorceror levels and was leading a group of 6 centaurs on a raid. It was a very close battle as the few characters who were not charmed defended themselves against greatclub wielding centaurs. If I remember right two fighter types held back the centaurs while an archer finally pegged the harpy.

 

[thundershot]

*looks at title of thread*

HARPIES... HARPIES... not what I thought when I first saw it..



Chris

 

[Turanil]

In the last campaign I DM-ed, at one point the PCs were travelling to a tree they knew of as the "Tree of Death" and had checked it out magically to find a huge tree with large holes in it and bones scattered around.

When they reached the area, they got jumped by three harpies, each with a few class levels (a sorcerer, a fighter & a ranger). With the combo of spells, harpy song, archery and a nice reach weapon, the three harpies gave the PCs a very 'entertaining' time, leaving two in the negatives and a couple more temporarily blinded before a pair of the harpies were killed and the last fled.

A good idea for my next campaign. Permit that I steal it! (Though for the fluffy stuff, they will be humans witches who were warped by Chaos for dabbling with sorcery too much).

 

[just__al]

Looking at this thread I'm wondering if I'm preparing a TPK for my party as a random nightime encounter.

My group is a

cleric 3 / fighter 1
mage 4 with the fire domain from UA
Spirit Shaman 4
Swashbuckler 2 / figher 2
rogue 4
Bard 3

The encounter was designed to be tough, it's two harpies one with a level of sorceror.

I'm thinking this could be ugly. The fighter / swashbuckler has a will save of -1 so I'm pretty well sure that he's going to fall victim and everybody else has a good chance of failing (highest save +5 I think).

The group just leveled up except for the bard so they are flush with action points so maybe they'll have a good shot of not all falling victim to the harpies.

Should they all fall victim, I'm going to have the harpies knock the group out and get the cleric to pledge they'll defeat the nearby green dragon before they'll let the group loose. The wizard is obviously her sister so the harpies will have her hidden away to really put the pressure on them.

The cleric is a priestess of St Cutberth and LN so she'll probably agree to defeat the dragon and then come back for some payback. She could have owls wisdom cast (on the bard) as they approach so it would be a more even fight.

any thoughts??

 

[Piratecat]

I think remove disease is the best way to remove a bad infestation of harpies.

I love the idea of fighting on a ziggurat! Make sure someone throws a weasel at someone, just like in Beastmaster.

 

[shilsen]

A good idea for my next campaign. Permit that I steal it! (Though for the fluffy stuff, they will be humans witches who were warped by Chaos for dabbling with sorcery too much).

Sure. Always glad to help. I'd post the stat blocks, but if you're using witches instead, they presumably won't be of any help.