| Enduin |
It seems to me that the point is being missed here.
Here are my 2 cents:
From the PRD: "Trip: You can use a trip weapon to make trip attacks. If you are tripped during your own trip attempt, you can drop the weapon to avoid being tripped."
Okay, as an experienced GM, I think the wording is obvious, you can attempt a trip COMBAT MANUVER with any weapon or without a weapon, but you can only make a "TRIP ATTACK" with a trip weapon. That is, a trip weapon is a weapon that maintains full functionality when applied as a tripping implement (i.e. a scythe). The down-side to doing this is that you have to hit their AC or you get no trip attempt, ergo, it is less useful against highly armored opponents whereas, if you only attempt a trip, you just do the manuver check which is statistically much easier than having to beat both their AC and CMB. So the give and take is that if you really want to trip you forego the attack and just do the manuver, but if you like your odds, you can do a "trip attack" instead and potentially do damage too. Essentially trip weapons work like a wolf's trip ability.