Shearing

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 modif ier (or Wisdom skill modif ier 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.