Whenever your players venture too close to the sea, we know you’ll be tempted to throw some pirates at them. Whole campaigns are sometimes built around the trope-filled world of pirate adventure: swashbuckling heroes, storm-tossed waves, mysterious maps, haunted ghost ships, mist-shrouded lagoons, and sunken treasure.
To help you fill out the details of your adventure, here’s a free pirate generator for 5e Dungeons & Dragons and for the Low Fantasy Gaming system to make the creation of customizable pirates easy and fun!
Customize Your Band of Pirates
Pirates generally don’t wear heavy armor and carry an array of lighter weapons that are often easily concealed. Many pirates tend toward rogue abilities, though they can often hold their own in a stand-up fight. Here are some ways you can bring pirate encounters to life:
- Backstory: The Maker’s Forge Foe Generator will create a backstory for your pirates that you can tweak as needed to fit into the PC’s current situation. What are these pirates doing in these waters? What battles have they fought recently? What treasures do they have hidden away or buried on a nearby island? What prey are they pursuing across the turbulent seas? What do they want? And more importantly, how does what the pirates want conflict with what the PCs want?
- A name and vivid description: your pirates should each have their own names that can be discovered during parley, trade, negotiation, threats, or capture. Every knight should be unique when you describe him or her to the player. Vivid description is the lifeblood of the roleplaying game. What sets this pirate apart from his fellows? Separate from the goal of the whole band, what does this pirate want? And what is he prepared to do to get it?
- Weapons and hit points: pirates wear little armor and possess light weapons, though they often have other trinkets about their person and tend to have more treasure than other foes. What strategy and tactics will this pirate use in battle? How tough is this pirate? What special tricks does he have up his sleeve?
- Pirate Captain: pirate bands typically serve under a ship captain of dubious trustworthiness. Does he live by a certain code or is this captain cutthroat and ruthless? What does this captain want? How does he treat those under his command?
- Veterans, slaves, and sea witches: pirates vary widely in their skills and experience, and among most crews are a few salty dogs with more than a few scars and a few more tricks up their sleeve. Other crews have large complements of sullen galley slaves that row the ship or serve in other menial capacities. And occasionally, sea witches travel with pirate crews, ready to curse and call up storms on behalf of those with whom they sail.
- Loot: should the PCs win the day, what treasure or maps to treasure might the pirates have hidden away?
Foe Generator for 5e D&D and Low Fantasy Gaming
So what are you waiting for? Go use the Maker’s Forge Pirate Generator to get a jump-start on a band of pirates. It does all the grunt work for you: stats, names, short descriptions, weapons, and HP for each pirate, even the loot they’re carrying should your PCs defeat them. All that’s left for you to do is to bring the pirates’ goals into sharp conflict with the PCs and let the sparks fly!