How To Pirate Ship

MANEUVER                      DC         SPEED USED
Sudden Slow                     15           varies
Sudden Acceleration         15           varies
45 Degree Turn                 15           2
90 Degree Turn                 20           3
180 Degree Turn               30           4
Harness Furious Wind       20           n/a

MANEUVERABILITY RATING
Dexterity Rating + Bonus/Penalty
19+ Perfect +10
14–18 Good +5
11–13 Average +0
7–10 Poor –5
1–6 Clumsy –10
During tactical movement, if you wish for your ship to move in anything other than a straight line, you (or another appropriate crew member, such as the Captain or Navigator), must make a Profession (sailor) check to shift course, applying the appropriate maneuverability rating modifier (from Table 5) to the roll.

Sudden Slow: With a successful check, you quickly reduce your ship’s Speed, reducing the number of squares it moves on this and subsequent turns. You may choose for your ship to move as low as 1/2 its Speed during the Naval Tactic. For every 5 points by which you beat the DC, you may choose to reduce your ship’s Speed by an additional 1 Speed for the round, to a minimum of Speed 1. This becomes your new Speed, unless another Naval Tactic or action subsequently changes your ship’s Speed. Failing the check means your ship’s Speed remains unchanged for the round.

Sudden Acceleration: With a successful check, you quickly increase your ship’s Speed. In order to make use of this Naval Tactic, you need to be sailing at less than your maximum Speed given your present heading under the current wind conditions. With a successful check, you immediately increase your speed to any value between your current Speed and your maximum. You can use this additional Speed in this round, and in subsequent rounds, you use this new value as your Speed. During this maneuver you may not turn in such a way that your tactical movement speed changes category; for example, you may not accelerate toward your maximum speed at the same time that you turn from a Base Speed heading to an Into the Wind heading.

45 Degree Turn: By making a successful check, you spend 2 Speed to change your sailing direction by 45 degrees. Failure requires you to spend 4 Speed to successfully navigate the turn. If you do not have enough Speed remaining, you start the Naval Tactic this round and finish it next round by spending the remaining amount of Speed necessary. If you have Speed remaining in the second round after (and only after) paying for completing last round’s Naval Tactic, you may use it normally.

90 Degree Turn: By making a successful check, you spend 3 Speed to change your ship’s direction by 90 degrees. Failure requires you to spend 6 Speed to successfully navigate the turn. If you do not have enough Speed remaining, you start the Naval Tactic this round and finish it next round by spending the remaining amount of Speed necessary. If you have Speed remaining in the second round after (and only after) paying for completing last round’s Naval Tactic, you may use it normally.

180 Degree Turn: By making a successful check, you spend 4 Speed to change your ship’s direction by 180 degrees. This turn is an extremely tight, sudden movement. Failure results in your ship turning 45 degrees and then capsizing.

NO PILOT: When the pilot does nothing, if there is no pilot, or if the ship has less than half its crew, the ship is uncontrolled. An uncontrolled ship does nothing except take the uncontrolled action until it stops or someone becomes its new pilot. An uncontrolled ship moves forward only and automatically decelerates by 30 feet. Even if a ship does nothing, it can still perform ramming maneuvers (see Ramming).

If a ship has no pilot, another creature can take control of the ship as long as the creature is adjacent to the ship’s control device and makes a sailing check as a free action. The ship’s pilot can always give over control to another adjacent creature as a free action. If a creature wants to take control of a ship from another forcefully, it must kill the pilot or otherwise remove the pilot from the control device. When a new creature becomes the pilot, the ship moves on the new pilot’s turn, but not on the new pilot’s first turn after taking control of the ship.

Threatened areas: Ships cannot threaten areas, but their non-crew occupants can. The captain still threatens the squares around her even at the steering wheel, though she may have limited options for attack. Creatures used as propulsion do not threaten areas, and are treated as part of the vehicle for purposes of vehicular combat maneuvers.

Cover: The ship grants it's occupants partial cover (+2 to AC and +1 on Reflex saving throws) against those outside the vehicle, and may grant partial cover against opponents within the vehicles as well. Vehicles with more protection or internal chambers can offer greater cover and can even block line of sight.

Jumping between ships: the normal jumping distance of a character, assuming the vehicle has a deck or handholds within the character's height from the ground. Acrobatics DC +5 for every 30 feet of the vehicle's current speed. If the jumping creature is on a moving vehicle, the Acrobatics skill check DC increases by the difference between the current speeds of the two vehicles. For every difference of 30 feet (round up), the DC increases by 5. There is no increase to the DC if the difference between speeds is less than 30 ft.

Jumping off a vehicle onto the ground is considered a fall, and treated as if the fall were an additional 10 feet farther for every 30 feet of the vehicle's movement for the purposes of determining damage. Acrobatics can be used to soften this fall, and magic abilities such as feather fall can be used to negate the effects of jumping off a vehicle.

Taking Control of a Vehicle: If a vehicle has no driver, any creature can take control of the vehicle as long as the creature is within the driving space of the vehicle and makes a driving check as a free action.

The vehicle's driver can always give over control to another adjacent creature that is within the driving space of the vehicle as a free action. When a new creature becomes the driver, the vehicle moves on the new driver's turn, but not on the new driver's first turn after taking control of the vehicle.

To take the wheel forcefully, the aggravator can attempt a grapple and take over the driving device as part of a pin. When a creature successfully pins a vehicle's driver, it can choose to end the grapple immediately. When it does, the creature moves the current driver 5 feet to any unoccupied space within the vehicle (this movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity) and becomes the vehicle's new driver.

This is a normal attack against an occupant creature. Occupants get partial cover (+2 to AC and +1 on Reflex saving throws) or greater if the attack is coming from outside of the vehicle. Occupants in a forecastle or sterncastle have cover (+4 to AC and +2 on Reflex saving throws), while those inside a port or hatch have improved cover (+8 to AC and +4 on Reflex saving throws). In general, once combat begins among the occupants of two ships (such as when boarding), ship-to-ship combat should be replaced with shipboard combat. Grappling the driver is one method for taking control of the vehicle.

Vehicles, and sometimes their methods of propulsion, are objects, and like any other object, when they take damage in excess of half their hit points, they gain the broken conditionWhen the ship gains the broken condition or is disabled, all driving checks are increased by 10. When a driving device (steering wheel/rudder) is destroyed, the vehicle can no longer be driven. Driving devices are typically objects with object immunities and resistances.

If a vehicle or its means of propulsion becomes broken, both the maximum speed and the acceleration of the vehicle are halved until repaired. If the vehicle is in motion, and is traveling faster than its new maximum speed, it automatically decelerates to its new maximum speed.

Attacking the Control Device: A ship’s control device is an object with its own statistics. When a control device is destroyed, the ship can no longer be piloted.

When a vehicle comes to a sudden stop—its movement is reduced to 0 in some way other than the driver using a drive action to slow the vehicle—both creatures and items on the vehicle are violently pushed toward the vehicle's forward facing a number of squares equal to 1/2 the vehicle's current speed before it came to the sudden stop. This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity. At the end of this movement, creatures and objects take 1d6 points of damage, and creatures must succeed at a DC 20 Reflex saving throw or be knocked prone. If the movement pushes creatures or objects into solid objects, that creature or object takes an additional 1d6 points of damage for each 5-foot square the push was reduced by the solid object.

For instance, if a vehicle with a movement of 60 feet makes a sudden stop due to hitting a brick wall, its driver is thrown 30 feet toward the brick wall. If the brick wall was only 5 feet away from the driver at the point of impact, the driver moves forward 5 feet, hits the wall, and takes 5d6 points of damage. She then takes the original 1d6 points of damage, after which she makes a Reflex saving throw to see if she falls prone for the sudden stop.

To grapple, the two ships must be within 30 feet of one another (in other words, adjacent squares on the battle mat). If both pilots want to grapple, grappling is automatically successful. The two crews throw out grappling lines and draw the ships together. If both ships are reduced to a speed of 0 as the result of a ramming maneuver, they are also considered grappled.

If only one pilot wants to grapple, she must make a combat maneuver check against the target ship’s CMD, using the base CMB of the ship plus the pilot’s sailing skill modifier (or Wisdom skill modifier if she is using that ability to control the ship) as the total CMB of the grappling maneuver. If the check is successful, the target ship is grappled. On the next round, the two ships are moved adjacent to one another, and the speed of both ships is reduced to 0. If a ship has less than its full crew complement, the pilot takes a –10 penalty on her combat maneuver check to make a grappling maneuver.

Breaking a Grapple: The pilot of a grappled ship can attempt to break the grapple by making a combat maneuver check against the opposing ship’s CMD, but at a –4 penalty. If the check is successful, the crew has cut the grappling lines and the freed ship may now move as normal.

Boarding: Once two ships are grappled, a crew can board the other ship. The pilot with the highest initiative can choose whether to board the opposing ship with her crew first or wait for the opposing crew to board her ship. Characters boarding an opposing ship are considered flat-footed for the first round of shipboard combat, due to the difficulty of climbing over the ships’ rails and finding footing on the enemy deck. Characters using a corvus to board another ship are not considered flat-footed.

A ship may attempt to shear off the oars of an opposing ship, if the target ship uses oars for muscle propulsion. To attempt a shearing maneuver, a ship must be adjacent to the target’s forward or rear square and move along the side of the target for a number of adjacent squares equal to the target ship’s number of squares. The ship’s pilot must make a shearing combat maneuver check against the target’s CMD, using the base CMB of the ship plus the pilot’s sailing skill modifier (or Wisdom skill modifier if she is using that ability to control the ship) as the total CMB of the shearing maneuver. If the check is successful, the ship shears the target’s oars. The target’s oars take damage that reduces their hit points to half their maximum hit point total and gain the broken condition, thus reducing the ship’s maximum speed by half and preventing its pilot from gaining the upper hand. If the target ship is in motion, and is traveling faster than its new maximum speed, it automatically decelerates to its new maximum speed. A ship that does not use oars for muscle propulsion is unaffected by a shearing maneuver.

If a ship has less than its full crew complement, but has at least half its crew, the pilot takes a –10 penalty on her combat maneuver check to make a shearing maneuver. A ship without at least half its crew complement cannot make a shearing maneuver.

Fire is an ever-present danger on every wooden ship, but while most ships are not in danger of going up in flames from a dropped torch or lantern, alchemical or magical fires can be much more dangerous. Note that many instantaneous fire spells do not automatically catch a ship on fire, but those that deal fire damage over multiple rounds have a better chance of causing a fire on board a ship (see Magic).

When a ship takes fire damage (such as from Alchemist’s fire, flaming arrows, certain spells, and other effects at the GM’s discretion), it must immediately make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage dealt) or catch fire. Unless an attack specifically targets a ship’s means of propulsion (such as sails), it is assumed that such attacks affect the structure of a ship itself.

Once a ship has caught fire, it automatically takes 2d6 points of fire damage per round (ignoring hardness) as the fire spreads. The ship’s crew can attempt to extinguish the flames as a full-round action for the entire crew, allowing the ship to make a Reflex save (DC 15 + the number of rounds the ship has been on fire). A successful saving throw means the fire has been put out. A failed saving throw results in the ship taking the normal 2d6 points of fire damage for the round.

A ship must take the “uncontrolled” action each round that its crew attempts to put out a fire, as they are not sailing the ship at this time.

Spells: Creatures can attack ships with spells. Ships are objects, so spells that can only target creatures have no effect on ships. However, because a ship is actively crewed and piloted, it can make saving throws against spell effects. Ships are immune to most spells that require a Will save. A ship without a crew is considered an unattended object and cannot make saving throws.

The effects of most spells on ships can be determined normally. However, certain spells have different effects in naval combat. The effects of these spells are detailed on the page Spell Effects in Naval Combat. GMs can use these examples as guidelines for determining how other spells not listed here affect ships. For the most part, these effects only apply during ship-to-ship combat, not during normal combat aboard a ship, though some affects (such as starting fires), could still apply, at the GM’s discretion.

Catching on Fire: Characters at risk of catching fire are allowed a DC 15 Reflex save to avoid this fate. If a character's clothes or hair catch fire, he takes 1d6 points of damage immediately. In each subsequent round, the burning character must make another Reflex saving throw. Failure means he takes another 1d6 points of damage that round. Success means that the fire has gone out—that is, once he succeeds on his saving throw, he's no longer on fire.

A character on fire may automatically extinguish the flames by jumping into enough water to douse himself. If no body of water is at hand, rolling on the ground or smothering the fire with cloaks or the like permits the character another save with a +4 bonus. Those whose clothes or equipment catch fire must make DC 15 Reflex saves for each item. Flammable items that fail take the same amount of damage as the character.

Smoke Effects A character who breathes heavy smoke must make a Fortitude save each round (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or spend that round choking and coughing. A character who chokes for 2 consecutive rounds takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. Smoke obscures vision, giving concealment (20% miss chance) to characters within it. 

Creatures that fall take 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet fallen, to a maximum of 20d6. Creatures that take lethal damage from a fall land in a prone position. If a character deliberately jumps instead of merely slipping or falling, the damage is the same but the first 1d6 is nonlethal damage. A DC 15 Acrobatics check allows the character to avoid any damage from the first 10 feet fallen and converts any damage from the second 10 feet to nonlethal damage. Thus, a character who slips from a ledge 30 feet up takes 3d6 damage. If the same character deliberately jumps, he takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage and 2d6 points of lethal damage. And if the character leaps down with a successful Acrobatics check, he takes only 1d6 points of nonlethal damage and 1d6 points of lethal damage from the plunge.

Soft, Yielding Surfaces Falls onto yielding surfaces (soft ground, mud) also convert the first 1d6 of damage to nonlethal damage. This reduction is cumulative with reduced damage due to deliberate jumps and the Acrobatics skill.

Spellcasting: A character cannot cast a spell while falling, unless the fall is greater than 500 feet or the spell is an immediate action, such as feather fall. Casting a spell while falling requires a concentration check with a DC equal to 20 + the spell's level. Casting teleport or a similar spell while falling does not end your momentum, it just changes your location, meaning that you still take falling damage, even if you arrive atop a solid surface.

Falling into Water: Falls into water are handled somewhat differently. If the water is at least 10 feet deep, the first 20 feet of falling do no damage. The next 20 feet do nonlethal damage (1d3 per 10-foot increment). Beyond that, falling damage is lethal damage (1d6 per additional 10-foot increment). Characters who deliberately dive into water take no damage on a successful DC 15 Swim check or DC 15 Acrobatics check, so long as the water is at least 10 feet deep for every 30 feet fallen. The DC of the check, however, increases by 5 for every 50 feet of the dive.

Falling Objects
Object Size Damage
Small 2d6
Medium 3d6
Large 4d6
Huge 6d6
Gargantuan 8d6
Colossal 10d6

Just as characters take damage when they fall more than 10 feet, so too do they take damage when they are hit by falling objects. Objects that fall upon characters deal damage based on their size and the distance they have fallen. Table: Damage from Falling Objects determines the amount of damage dealt by an object based on its size. Note that this assumes that the object is made of dense, heavy material, such as stone. Objects made of lighter materials might deal as little as half the listed damage, subject to GM discretion. For example, a Huge boulder that hits a character deals 6d6 points of damage, whereas a Huge wooden wagon might deal only 3d6 damage. In addition, if an object falls less than 30 feet, it deals half the listed damage. If an object falls more than 150 feet, it deals double the listed damage. Note that a falling object takes the same amount of damage as it deals.

Dropping an object on a creature requires a ranged touch attack. Such attacks generally have a range increment of 20 feet. If an object falls on a creature (instead of being thrown), that creature can make a DC 15 Reflex save to halve the damage if he is aware of the object. Falling objects that are part of a trap use the trap rules instead of these general guidelines.

Rigging Locations: When a Rigging Location reaches 0 hit points, it becomes destroyed and is ineffective. Remove that Rigging Location from all speed calculations. A ship without Rigging Locations floats adrift on the current unless it has another source of movement, such as oars or an engine. Further, a destroyed Rigging Location reduces your ship’s Dexterity score, and all that entails (AC, CMD, maneuverability rating, etc.)

Hull Locations: Damage to Hull Locations is potentially far more dangerous to a ship and her crew than damage to Rigging Locations. When a Hull Location reaches 0 hit points, it is destroyed — effectively unusable. All unattended objects in that Location have their hit points reduced by half, giving them the “broken” condition and all that entails. A destroyed Hull Location is incapable of performing its designated tasks — it doesn’t properly support cannons, a galley cannot prepare or serve food, and so on. A destroyed Hull Location reduces your ship’s Strength score, potentially causing it to sink faster. Do not recalculate your ship’s Dexterity score — a destroyed Hull Location does not make your ship more or less dexterous. Movement through a destroyed Hull Location counts as difficult terrain. 

If the destroyed Hull Location was a part of your ship’s “base” level, destroying it also causes a breach in your Below the Waterline Location. Immediately reduce the Below the Waterline Location’s to half its hit points. If the Below the Waterline Location already had less than half its hit points, reduce it to 75% of its hit points. If your Below the Waterline Location already had less than 75% of its hit points then when the “base level” Hull Location is destroyed, reduce your Below the Waterline Location to 0 hit points. See “Below the Waterline Location” for more details.

Below the Waterline Location: While damage to a Hull Location is bad enough, damage to the Below the Waterline section is lethal to a ship. When the Below the Waterline Location suffers enough damage to reduce its hit points by half, it begins to leak. It begins to take on water at the rate of 1,000 pounds (about 125 gallons) per minute — or 100 pounds (about 12.5 gallons) per round. This slow leak is generally manageable by a crew bailing water. When the Below the Waterline Location has suffered 75% of its hit points in damage, the rate of intake for sea water is 5,000 pounds per minute — about 625 gallons a minute. Worst of all, when the Below the Waterline Location is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points, the Below the Waterline Location is completely breached, and water rushes in at a rate of 5,000 pounds per round, rather than per minute. See below for more details on sinking ships.

Sinking Ships: The weight of the water adds to the weight of all objects and personnel aboard the ship to determine its maximum load. The absolute maximum load a ship can bear is five times its light load value. If a ship ever reaches this maximum value — something that happens very quickly with a breached hull — she sinks. “Sinking” isn’t a binary condition, however. That is, a ship is not “sunk” or “not sunk.” Sinking happens in stages. See Table 22: Sinking Stages for the effects of each stage. Note that these effects only manifest when any of the weight borne by a ship is water; a ship under a heavy load, for example, does not ride low and have speed reduced. Once that same ship begins to take on water, however, all the consequences for the weight it carries apply.

Magic (such as make whole) can repair a Hull Location of a sinking ship if that location's hit points are raised above 0, at which point the ship loses the sinking condition. Generally, nonmagical repairs take too long to save a ship from sinking once it begins to go down.

SINKING STAGES
STAGE % OF MAX.WEIGHT EFFECT ON SHIP
1 20% Ship rides low, speed reduced by 1
2 40% Ship rides very low; entire “base” Hull Location is below water, and half of second deck (if any) is at the waterline; speed reduced by 3 
3 60% Only the deck is above water; ship is unable to move
4 80% Only the upper half of the ship’s Rigging Locations are above water
5 100% The ship goes to the bottom

SKILL DC RESULT 

• Disable Device 25 Disable steering 
• Disable Device 25 Disable Rigging Location 
• Disguise Opponent’s Perception Disguise ship as different type of vessel Knowledge (engineering) 10 + no. of locations 
• Determine enemy ship equipment locations Knowledge (geography), Knowledge (nature), or Survival 20 Determine depth of reefs and underwater hazards 
• Profession (sailor) 20 Raise / lower sails in 1 turn Profession (sailor) 23 Free beached ship.

Disable Device: As a full round action that provokes an attack of opportunity, a successful DC 25 Disable Device check disables a ship’s steering, causing it to run straight or at 45o turn (player’s choice). As a full-round action that provokes an attack of opportunity, a successful DC 25 Disable Device check can disable one of the ship’s sails until it can be repaired. Treat a disabled sail as destroyed (0 hit points). Repairs for either condition can be made at sea by a Mate executing the Repair action; unlike standard repairs, a successfully executed repair action in this instance restores complete functionality rather than a temporary solution, and does not require further work later.

Disguise: A PC can attempt to disguise a ship as a different kind of vessel of roughly the same size (for example, a small frigate can be disguised as a merchant ship or a whaling vessel). The process of disguising a ship takes 10 crewmen one hour per Location. This check is opposed by the other ship’s Perception check. 

DISGUISE CHECK MODIFIERS DISGUISE MODIFIER 

• Minor details only +5 
• More or less rigging –2 per Rigging Location 
• Different size –2 per Hull Location 
• Different hull Type –4

PERCEPTION CHECK BONUSES TO SPOT SHIPS

NUMBER OF LOCATIONS BONUS

• 1–3 +1
• 4–5 +2
• 6–8 +3
• 9–10 +4
• 11–13 +5
• 14–15 +6
• 16–18 +7
• 19+ +8

WEATHER CONDITIONS AND PERCEPTION DC MODIFIERS  NAME MODIFIER

• Nighttime, ship is running “dark” +20
• Nighttime, ship has standard lighting +10
• Light fog or light rain +10
• Moderate fog or heavy rain +20
• Heavy fog +40
• Rough seas +5

For ease of play, you can apply the standard modifiers defined in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game for favorable conditions (–2), unfavorable conditions (+2), or terrible conditions (+5). Alternately, you can use the following table. Conditions in this table stack. For example, if the Mate on watch is trying to spot an enemy ship that’s running dark at night in a light rain, the DC is modified by +30.

Calculate How Far You Can See Into The Horizon: Square Root (height above surface/0.5736) = distance

For a 6’ tall person, their eyes are roughly 5.5 feet off the ground, giving a distance of 3 miles. If the same person were standing on the deck of a ship that was 15’ above the water’s surface (making his eyes 20.5 feet above the surface), the distance would be about 6 miles.If, instead, the same person were in a crow’s nest that was 50’ above the water’s surface, the distance to the horizon would be about 9.8 miles.

For those interested in the metric equivalent, the formula is: Square Root (height above surface / 6.752) = distance Where “height above surface” is in centimeters and “distance” is in kilometers

Knowledge (engineering): A successful Knowledge (engineering) check (DC equal to 10 + number of enemy ship Locations) allows the character to determine the Location of critical areas within an enemy ship (powder magazine, engine, weapons, etc.).

Knowledge (geography): A successful Knowledge (geography) check (DC 20) allows the character to estimate the depth of reefs and other underwater hazards. This check is modified by the Wind Force penalty as appropriate.

Knowledge (nature): A successful DC 20 Knowledge (nature) check allows the character to estimate the depth of reefs and other underwater hazards. This check is modified by the Wind Force penalty as appropriate.

Perception: The Mate on watch duty (or those assigned the task by the Mate) makes the Perception check to become aware of an enemy ship. At sea, the DC to spot another ship is 10 + 1 for every 500 feet distance (rather than the standard 10 feet). See the tables for size and weather condition modifiers.

Stealth: The Captain makes the ship’s Stealth check to avoid being spotted using his modifier. This check suffers a –16 penalty.

Survival: A successful DC 20 Survival check allows the character to estimate the depth of reefs and other underwater hazards. This check is modified by the Wind Force penalty as appropriate.