She had warned them all, she advised the captain to take a wider berth when sailing near the Trayling Bluffs. Her words of warning were brushed off as superstition or misguided caution. She could only watch as one by one, each of the sailors casually walked to the edge of the ship and stared towards to the perches on the face of the cliffs. Up towards the soft lilting song that danced between the waves.
At a distance one could mistake them for angels, their wings spread wide, their voices soft and alluring. This was how the Harpy hunted, these sailors would die if she could not save them. Praying her waxen earplugs would hold, she raced to the helm and grabbed the wheel. Spinning the wheel sharply, She tried to steer the ship away from the rocky shores at the base of the cliffs. Slowly she began to feel the urge to step towards the ships railing, Tears began to stream down her face.
She had never heard such a beautiful song.
Overview
Can you hear them singing, that haunting and alluring tune. Well if you do, make a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed and incapacitated, womp womp.
Let’s talk about the Harpy, a low CR creature that can sow chaos to mostly non-player characters. Unfortunately the Harpy isn’t nearly as strong as the ancient Epics would lead you to believe, but this allows them to act more as story telling devices and/or as a part of world building rather than just a bag of Hit Points and claws. Now let’s take a closer look.
First thing we should take a note of is, the Harpy is the result of a divine curse. As per the fluff an elf woman was wandering in the woods when she heard a bird song and was brought to tears; and long story short she stumbled upon an elf god and fell in love with him. He ran then she gave chase but lost him, driven to despair she called out to the gods for aid. Another elf god heard her cries and, while appearing as a bird, taught the elf woman a song to seduce and the elf god that disappeared. Another long story short, the song didn’t work, and the elf woman blamed the gods and cursing their names. The gods didn’t take this kindly and cursed her instead, misshaping her into the first Harpy, twisted her love into a hunger for flesh and let her keep her seducing song to draw in victims. Now what did we learn here…honestly? Probably that the elf gods are much like the Greek gods, being vain and wrathful, but what do we take from this that we can use in our games, well this all revolves around elves, maybe the Harpy(ies) will target elves more with their attacks. Origin myths don’t tend to provide much for DMs to practically use, but can be little bits of fun information for History checks.
Next, Harpies are cowards. They prefer to use their songs to pull their victims into bogs, quicksand, over cliffs or pit traps. They have little to no interest in a fair fight and will prefer to put their victims in peril then clean up after the fight is all but gone. That is absolutely how you should implement you harpies, villagers have stories of themselves or friends wandering off the beaten path before regaining their senses and fleeing or stories of areas where the “whispering winds” drag people off cliffs. When their victims are in dire straits the a Harpy will play with them, prolonging the torturous attacks over a period of days and delighting in the “music” their victims scream before they expire. Additionally being cowards, the Harpy tends to not stay in a fight if they begin to get too hurt, opting to fly away and either let their prey go or attempt to charm them again at a later time.
Finally, in their nests the Harpy likes to keep trinkets1 from their victims, preferring to take shiny baubles or other valuable objects. They often fight amongst each other for the shiniest or best looking trinkets, hoarding them viciously from each other in their lairs. This could be a good place to let your players find common and uncommon magic items, a la Bilbo and Sting in the troll cave.
Stats
Now, lets take a look what our musical beastie can do.
With a low armor class and a very high Hit Points we have a potential level 1 boss monster that won’t be a difficult target for your players, but with the rest of the abilities can make it very, very dangerous.
Next we have high mobility, 40 feet of flight will let you get our little Harpy into any advantageous position she needs.
Next we have a Multiattack of a Claw and a Club. The Harpy gets two attacks at +3 to hit, this will hit about 50%2 of attacks3, and while 6 damage can drop a level 1 player to 0 Hit Points, the action economy leans more towards the players in this instance. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t take caution when making an encounter for a Level 1 party, but we can mitigate the threat by playing to the characters strengths rather than their weaknesses, make the big attack against the party’s tank.
Finally the ability that is as old as story telling itself, the
siren’s songLuring Song. I feel this ability lends more towards environmental story telling and roleplaying rather than actual mechanical effects, hear me out. The ridiculous range of the ability, being 300 feet, means the party can stumble into the effect without even beginning to realize they are in danger, hell they could even be caught up in the Harpy(s) luring in a group of villagers and the party just happens to be at the right(wrong?) place at the right(wrong?) time. The point is, think of the Odyssey or Theogony, they are more akin to a force of nature, strong winds that blow people off course.
Continuing with the actual ability itself, we have a ludicrous range and a very low save DC. 11 is not a hard number to hit, its a coin flip whether or not the character saves against the song, and if they do then they are immune from the effects for 24 hours. That immunity coupled with the low DC means, unless the dice are against your players, your players will break free relatively quickly, especially so since the character can repeat the save at the end of each of their turns.
I want to now take a look at the stat block as a whole. The Harpy can seem like it will pose a threat to player characters, but honestly this is only a real threat to your bog standard commoner.4 Unfortunately with how the math works, the DC is set just too low for it to be semi-effective past first level, with players getting more magic to help them with saves and any potential magic items; The final caveat of making additional saves makes the charm a very short term effect. All of this means we can’t treat a Harpy like an early boss, even if we are using it as a boss for an area on the map. Which is unfortunate, because the Harpy appears as if it was originally intended to be a boss, or boss like creature, and really should have been designed for a roll as a CR 1 boss; and we should treat the Harpy more like a strong wild animal.
Combat Example
Well speaking of combat and the Harpy, let’s discuss a combat scenario for the Harpy. This combat example will include 1 Harpy against 4 first level characters.
It is late into the night, four soon to be companions share a small room aboard a ship bound for the busy port town of Dartburs’ Landing. A particularly violent shake rouses them from their beds, they hear several splashes and vile cackling. They rush onto the deck to see a Harpy feasting on the flesh of a sailor.
Now remember, the Harpy is a coward, if she takes one big hit or two decent hit she will flee. On the first turn of combat, if the Harpy is still fighting, she will being to sing her song and fly up to a higher part of the ship in an attempt to make the adventurers walk off the ship and fall into the cold dark waters.
Honestly that is it. When the adventurers break free from the charm and start attacking the Harpy she will flee. If the adventurers choose to follow the Harpy then we can build up a small encounter for the Harpy in it’s “lair” which will allow you to bestow your party with minorly magic items.
Final Thoughts
I would recommend a rework of the Harpy, if I am being entirely honest; I will probably revisit this idea and create a homebrew monster for yall5. Mostly because it really should be a boss for level 1 adventurers to face in session 1 or 2 before the full campaign kicks off, or even to act as a more fearsome adversary as the party levels up, using the range of their song to pull the adventurers into dangerous situations for their boss.
A box for my Trinkets!
+/-5% for error
This is based on some rough math, putting the average armor class around 13.5 with the presumption of a +1 from dex
Even then, they have 50/50 odds of passing against the charm
Just like the Kuo-Toa Monitor Rework which you should totally read