There have been plenty of attempts by others at dealing with the ecology of the harpy, so I won't try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, I only offer a few isolated suggestions.
Appearance and variants: Harpies have a diverse array of appearances in historical art and popular culture. Perhaps GMs might want to reflect this in the game.
- Perhaps harpies have variable physical appearances, without altering their game statistics.
- Perhaps harpies are shape changers who can tweak their appearance without changing their statistics.
- Perhaps there are harpy variants with different statistics due to different physical features, like smaller size or scorpion tails or such. The supplements on harpies I listed in the prior post provide plenty of examples.
Reproduction: Fantasy games generally oscillate between harpies being all-female and raping male humanoids (again, like a lot of all-female monsters) or including both male and female members to reproduce normally (sometimes with males being uncommon and/or flightless). Here are a few examples and variations:
- The Slayer's Guide to Harpies posits that harpies are asexual. They are notoriously bloodthirsty because they require humanoid blood to nourish their eggs, like mosquitoes.
- Legendary Races: Harpy uses the all-female rapist version. It further posits that some harpies are born as sterile intersex individuals named "harpidite," who grow up to be oracles.
- Creature Collection Revised uses the two-gendered version. It further specifies that male harpies are flightless and never leave their aeries.
- Spanambula suggests calling male harpies "boreadors."
Links
- https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Harpy
- http://dailybestiary.tumblr.com/post/26351759221/harpy
- http://dailybestiary.blogspot.com/2012/07/harpy.html
- http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2017/12/harpies-through-ages.html
- https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Harpy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/3zjnbn/harpy/
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