Grappling and Boarding

When the crew of one ship wishes to board an enemy ship and attack its crew, they must first grapple the other ship. To grapple, the two ships must be within 30 feet of one another (in other words, they must be in 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.