The Deckfighter

Savvy pirates excel at catching ship crews unaware, boarding vessels before their targets can begin to mount a proper defense. A deckfighter specializes in repelling sneaky boarders, using whatever is at hand to drive away sea raiders with brutal effectiveness. A deckfighter’s ingenuity also helps her survive capture or being marooned, but she is at her best when protecting her ship and crew.

Skills: A deckfighter has Knowledge (nature) and Knowledge (engineering) as class skills. This replaces Knowledge (dungeoneering) and Knowledge (local).

Weapon Proficiency: A deckfighter is proficient with all simple weapons, plus the boarding axe, boarding pike, cutlass, grappling hook, handaxe, harpoon, net, shortsword, and trident. This changes the brawler’s weapon proficiencies.

Improvised Weapon Master: At 1st level, a deckfighter protects her vessel with anything at hand. She receives Catch Off-Guard as a bonus feat.

At 4th level, as a swift action, she may choose to change an improvised weapon’s damage type to her choice of bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing for 1 round.

At 8th level, she receives Improvised Weapon Mastery as a bonus feat.

At 16th level, the deckfighter treats an improvised weapon’s as one size larger for damage purposes, to a maximum of 2d6.

At 20th level, she treats an improvised weapon’s as one size larger for damage purposes, to a maximum of 2d8, and her improvised weapons’ critical threat range improves to 18–20.

This ability replaces the brawler’s unarmed strike ability.

Defender’s Flurry (Ex)

At 2nd level, the deckfighter can perform a defender’s flurry. This ability works like brawler’s flurry except that a deckfighter can use defender’s flurry only with any combination of one-handed improvised melee weapons or one-handed light melee weapons with which she is proficient. She can also use a cutlass in one hand along with the other allowable weapons. A deckfighter can substitute any attack during a flurry with a dirty trick or disarm maneuver.

This ability changes brawler’s flurry.

Watchstander’s Vigilance: At 2nd level, the deckfighter gains a +2 circumstance bonus to Perception checks to notice another ship’s attempt to pursue or board. She also gains a +2 circumstance bonus to initiative when an enemy crew boards the deckfighter’s ship. This ability replaces the bonus combat feat gained at 2nd level.

Into the Drink (Ex)

At 4th level, a deckfighter gains a +2 circumstance bonus on bull rush combat maneuvers when aboard a ship. If she does not have the Improved Bull Rush feat, her bull rush attempts still provoke attacks of opportunity.

If a foe is adjacent to the edge of a ship, the deckfighter does not consider a ship’s rail or any solid object up to four feet high as a wall or obstacle when determining whether she can perform a bull rush against that foe.

Deckfighters often use this ability to push boarders into the sea.

Her bonus to bull rush maneuvers increases to +4 at 10th level and +6 at 16th level. This ability replaces knockout.

Improvised Strike (Ex)

At 5th level, the deckfighter’s familiarity with improvised weapons allows her to use them against supernatural defenses.

This ability works like, and otherwise replaces, brawler’s strike, except it applies to improvised weapons rather than unarmed strikes.

Lucky Tankard (Ex)

At 5th level, the deckfighter chooses a favorite improvised weapon. This must be a single, specific item she owns. This item can be temporarily enhanced with alchemical items or spell effects like weapon blanch or magic weapon as if it were an actual weapon. It can’t be permanently made into a magic weapon.

While this only works for the deckfighter who owns the item (it acts like an ordinary object for anyone else), the effect’s duration continues normally even if the deckfighter drops or stows the item. However, if she uses her improvised weapon master ability to change her item’s damage type to qualify for a spell like keen edge, the effect is dismissed as soon as she stops spending swift actions to change the damage type.

If she loses her lucky item permanently, she can choose a new one 24 hours later.

This ability replaces close weapon Mastery.

Deck the Swabs (Ex)

At 16th level, the deckfighter gains the brawler’s awesome blow ability, except it applies only when she is wielding an improvised weapon or boarding pike.

Her bonus from her into the drink ability also applies to her awesome blow combat maneuvers. At 20th level, she can use awesome blow against a creature of any size, but she may not attempt to confirm critical hits. This ability modifies awesome blow and improved awesome blow.