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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 4952005" data-attributes="member: 463"><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" />  Weird, that's the exact opposite of my experience with 4e.  I find 4e is great for improvised encounters.  In this case I'd probably take either the 9th level Pirate or the 10th level Pirate Chief from MM2, maybe halve his hit points (I do that with most 4e monsters), and give him some Human Lackey* 7th level Minions for crew.  That takes maybe 30 seconds of page-flipping.   I might also add in a wizard, using the 4th level human mage stats in the MM, or possibly the 7th level Hexer in MM2 if I was feeling mean.  Or I could reskin the Hobgoblin Warcaster, who is very nasty for a supposedly 3rd level foe.*I could reskin the 2nd level Human Bandit, but I usually prefer minions.If I had longer I might create 5th level Pirates by de-levelling the 9th level MM2 pirate, that takes a few minutes though.  I'd probably keep the Chief at 10th level since he's already roughly equivalent to a 6th level Elite, but if I really wanted to I could de-level him to 6th then Elite-ify him.Edit:  Looking at the Pirate & Pirate Chief stats just now, the Chief looks hard to take down by a 5th level group, so I'd probably stick with using the Pirate as leader of a bunch of Human Lackeys and/or Human Bandits.  I'd reskin the bandits' maces as cutlasses.  I'd keep the Pirate at full hit points so he'd stick around.Edit 2:  I don't normally bother with XP budgets, but if I wanted a 1000 XP/level 5 'balanced' encounter then:Pirate (1) XP 400Lackeys (6) XP 75 x 6 = 450Mage (1) XP 175Total: 1025I'm thinking there that the Pirate is most likely a senior officer of the ship - a bosun, first mate, sub-chief sort of level; while the Lackeys are typical mook pirates, and the Mage probably mostly mends things and does weather magic, rune-casting and other noncombat things, hence his low combat level.  His thunderclap and lightning strike abilities may just be side-effects of his mastery of esoteric weather-magic rituals.An alternative would just be to use 3 Pirates (XP 1200).  I would only do this if they were the crew of a notorious-to-legendary pirate captain like Bluebeard or Barbarrossa, and I wanted to impress the PCs with how tough they were.  This would make it clear that the PCs couldn't just storm onto Bluebeard's ship and kill everyone, they'd need to be smart & careful.</blockquote>

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