Piracy. The scurvy dogs with one foot and a fake eyepatch. The hat with the skull and crossbones upon it, and the false gold teeth.
The legends of pirates are many, and the romantic notions give rise to novels today, so allow me to present my idea for a quest.
On gull rock, there should scriptable opportunity to be a pirate/privateer.
This captain would hire a team of adventurers to attack a ship.
What they face, would be entirely random. They could be battling the lowly kobold rafter, or the massive cargo vessel with two sloops on either side to protect it, making it a large map with a high risk of death.
Payment is determined on what the PCs bring back. On the ships there will be various trade items, bags of unrefined gold, iron ore, etc...building materials so to speak. Glass Baubles. PCs can choose to either keep these items, or give them to the captain who hired them, and get a nice tidy sum for it.
As well as on these scripted quests, you're given the option to execute the crew, or let them go free (The latter grants a high risk of bounty placements, but hey, up to the dm whether the sailors go and spill their guts.)
Obviously, they'd be unable to keep the ship. A surviving crew member scuttles it, etc...
Like the idea?
I like the idea, a whole lott. Pirates FTW.
Hah, battling the loner kobold..so mean..
Great idea though XD
Plus it's a non heroic quest for a change.
Having EFUSS sailing as a requirement would make this rock more,
I like the idea.
Have like, ropes you have to swing across to get from ship to ship, and if you fail you fall into shark infested waters... maybe have undead pirates down there? Dunno.
Totally down for this quest. It sounds badass!
This quest seems a bit short, maybe you can follow the ToM quest example and add variance and different areas to it? For example, you start the quest, and sail to the seas, looking for a ship to piratise.
In the first SQA area, it's your ship alone, sailing and risking being boarded by other creatures like the sea trolls, or jellies, or kobold pirates (more than one) who appear on your ship and you must defend, making it a mini-defence quest. There is a chance that you are attaked 1, 2 times or 0 times.
The second SQA area is the actual raid, you have the chance to stumble into another pirate ship, a trade vessel headed to the dominion and guarded by stigians/infantrymen, maybe a rare event in wich you actually have to fight a ruby as a boss, or just a random ship with a random crew. The enemies don't board your ship, you have to board theirs: maybe through the rope sistem described above, if you fail a tumble/acrobatics check, you fall into the water and have to fight sharks/undead/watertrolls whatever before reaching a rope to climb up to the enemy ship. Then, after clearing the ship, you enter the deck, and fight the remaining enemies and loot the tesoure.
The kind of enemies you'd be facing should be few but strong ones, with tons of HP. After all, you can't fit too many in a ship, it doesn't make sence, and if they are as weak as your average orc, the quest will last 4 mins.
An uncommon event in wich you stumbled on a ghost ship and had to defend yourself against zombie pirates and many ghosts that attack your ship (making the second part a defence quest as well) would be pretty awsome.
Then, the chance of finding into a misterious island surrounded by mist, fighting some monsters (mist ogres, goblins, whatever) and discovering the secrets of the island would be very cool as well. But this should be a rare event with suitable challenge and reward. Especially if several island models could be had.
That would make it as random as Tower of Mercy, wich is pretty awsome due to that, but would require about 5 areas....
Only if one of the possible options for the opposing ship is a Stygian Armada Warship.
I like Drakill's ideas, but it makes no sense for a rope to be hanged off the enemy ship reaching all the way to the sea bottom. If you fall in, you should probably die unless you're not wearing armor, or at the least, be removed from the quest until your team wins , in which case they could try to pull you up should you have managed to stay afloat.
While true, it would be rather lame to die due to a forcefull tumble check you failed.
I would imagine that everyone's enjoyment takes a precedent over reality.