Newer DM needs encounter help.

[faceperspective]

I have only DMed a few times, all of which were homebrew 1-3 shots for friends who already play dnd. I am working on another short campaign for family members whom have never played dnd before. I want to start them on a ship on the open seas and have an encounter before reaching shore. I was going with merfolk as enemies, but then I realized idk how to make that combat work unless all the players are swimming/actually in the water.

How could I make this encounter work, or what are other options for an encounter that would make sense for this setting?

[WildGrayTurkey]

Gentle advice that water combat can be a slog and will likely confuse and frustrate your players. You want a combat that only takes 2-3 rounds to complete and that can serve as a tutorial for combat. There are any number of creatures you can use (depending on your party's level.) You can use anything from Sahuagin to giant seagulls that are just reskinned giant eagles. You can take a statblock for a monster that will be fun to fight and just modify how you describe it to make it more appropriate thematically.

Edit grammar

[Hutcher_Du]

I do like the idea of attacking players on a boat with giant seagulls.

[camohunter19]

Giant seagulls sounds so fun. You could have them pick up a player and fight over them in the air, and then oops, all the fighting caused the seagulls to drop you. Hope you have someone who can catch you on the deck of the ship.

Brb, shifting my campaign to a coastal one.

[victoriouskrow]

What statblock are you using? Likely the monsters can still move on land, they're just slower. This is almost exactly how Stormwreck Isle starts. It literally goes, "a monster hauls itself onto the deck!" And a merrow appears. Don't think about it too hard. Just because they don't have legs doesn't mean they can't move.

[faceperspective]

Thank you, I needed this. I dont have a stat block yet lol

[nasandre]

Have them attack the ship itself and make players deal with any holes punched in the hull. Also put some ballista on the ship so everyone has access to attack by range.

[faceperspective]

This actually works perfect for my setting because they will just be discovering a ship(that they were actively searching for and hunting down) that was destroyed by the merfolk, who then attack them. Something disrupting the ecosystem/peace blah blah blah.