Dueling Parry with Two-Hand Trait Weapon

[Krazed]

Dueling Parry
Requirements You are wielding only a single one-handed melee weapon and have your other hand or hands free.
You can parry attacks against you with your weapon. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to AC until the start of your next turn as long as you continue to meet the requirements.

Release is a free action, which would allow me to remove a hand from the weapon. At which point it is technically a one-handed melee weapon.

So can I swing twice with the weapon as a two-handed weapon, then release and activate Dueling Parry with it as a one-handed weapon?

I would also assume that any Attack of Opportunity taken using this method would be using the single-handed weapon die.

What about on the next turn? Is it an action to 'regrip' the weapon or can I simply use it as a two-handed weapon again?

[Garbage-Tier Waifu]

Weirdly enough, I don't think it's even an action to regrip the weapon, even though releasing it is an action. I suppose that is mostly because Release has to cover a lot more ground than just weapon grips.

I would have thought the Two-Hand trait would actually clarify that, but I suppose not. My best guess is an Interact action, but it seems absurd that it's an action to reassert your grip on a sword but a free action to loosen it.

Otherwise, yes, any attacks of opportunity and the like would be treating the weapon as using the one-handed dice and not the two-handed dice while you have it in one hand. You can only use Dueling Parry while you meet those prerequisites, so you cannot reassert your grip onto your weapon while you're benefiting from Dueling Parry without losing the benefits.

[thenobledrake]

Krazed wrote:

So can I swing twice with the weapon as a two-handed weapon, then release and activate Dueling Parry with it as a one-handed weapon?

Yes.

Krazed wrote:

I would also assume that any Attack of Opportunity taken using this method would be using the single-handed weapon die.

That is correct.

Krazed wrote:

What about on the next turn? Is it an action to 'regrip' the weapon or can I simply use it as a two-handed weapon again?

It is an action to regrip. See the table at the top of page 273 for reference.

[thenobledrake]

Garbage-Tier Waifu wrote:

My best guess is an Interact action, but it seems absurd that it's an action to reassert your grip on a sword but a free action to loosen it.

It's a game balance thing.

Dropping an item is usually a mixed bag - the benefit is you have your hand ready to do something else with, and the downside is that someone else could pick your item up or it may have other consequences for being dropped (i.e. you move, then have to move back over to pick it up later, or you drop something and it falls off a cliff or the like and now you can't get it back) - so it's a fair option for it to be a free action while actually putting the item away is an action but doesn't have other drawbacks.

But putting your grip back on, if it weren't an action, would have no drawbacks - everyone would always be able to have their preferred number of hands on their weapon, effectively getting the best of both sides without any cost to it.

[Garbage-Tier Waifu]

Except here where it explicitly shuts off your features/actions prematurely.

[thenobledrake]

...what shuts off your who when?

[Garbage-Tier Waifu]

Dueling Parry, the feature being discussed here, only works so long as you maintain a free hand. The moment you break that requirement, it shuts off and will remain off until you use the action again.

[thenobledrake]

Garbage-Tier Waifu wrote:

Dueling Parry, the feature being discussed here, only works so long as you maintain a free hand. The moment you break that requirement, it shuts off and will remain off until you use the action again.

Right, but the other side of that is the two-hand feature increasing your damage.

So you choose which one to have on and the other one is off - and that's a balanced and fair choice.

If you didn't have to spend any actions to put your hand back on your weapon, you would effectively be able to completely ignore that these features specify what your hands need to be doing.

[Abyssalwyrm]

If weapon is two-handed, that means you actually have to use two-hand constantly, to make it efficient.
In this particular case not just to make strikes - but to parry as well (which you can't do anyway, due to parry mechanics).
Sure you can hold it with one hand, but at this point it would be considered just as an object, not a weapon.

[Garbage-Tier Waifu]

thenobledrake wrote:

Garbage-Tier Waifu wrote:

Dueling Parry, the feature being discussed here, only works so long as you maintain a free hand. The moment you break that requirement, it shuts off and will remain off until you use the action again.

Right, but the other side of that is the two-hand feature increasing your damage.

So you choose which one to have on and the other one is off - and that's a balanced and fair choice.

If you didn't have to spend any actions to put your hand back on your weapon, you would effectively be able to completely ignore that these features specify what your hands need to be doing.

I feel like you think I'm suggesting you can flip-flop between having the dueling parry bonus or the two-hand bonus on the fly, but that's not actually how the feat works and not what I'm suggesting. The only thing that an actionless two-handedness change would do is switch off dueling parry early until the next time you use an action to re-establish it. Since it lasts until the start of your next turn, it's basically no different to drawing another weapon, a shield or some other action that breaks the prerequisite for benefiting from the feat, and those also have actual actions called out in the Interact action or similar. (oh and being disarmed which can happen between turns, but that's a little different and not something you choose to do)

Gripping it back in two hands doesn't seem like ignoring the features prerequisites at all, just that you can't go back on your choice once you make it.

I think you're likely right in that the Interact action is how you benefit from the trait, but that does mean you quite literally need two actions to both draw a one-handed two-hand weapon and then use it in two hands, while an actual two-handed weapon only uses one action to draw it. This is the bit that makes it somewhat absurd. The versatility of the weapon is meant to be a benefit at the expense of considerably higher damage (using an actual two-handed weapon). While Dueling Parry is a feat that is meant to reward the choice further with additional options. But this suggests it's actually an even greater detriment to use the trait the weapon possesses, action economy wise, compared to just committing to one (either to always using a two-handed weapon or always using a one-handed weapon in one hand) or the other, and never giving a two-hand weapon used for it's trait a thought.

This is probably going beyond rules discussion at this point but it definitely makes me raise an eyebrow.

[thenobledrake]

Garbage-Tier Waifu wrote:

...but that does mean you quite literally need two actions to both draw a one-handed two-hand weapon and then use it in two hands, while an actual two-handed weapon only uses one action to draw it.

That does not line up with the rules in the book, actually.

Table 6-2: Changing Equipment on page 273 of the core book says, "Draw, stow, or pick up an item[superscript 1]" takes "1 or 2" hands and is an "Interact" action. The superscript note says "If you retrieve a two-handed item with only one hand, you still need to change your grip before you can wield or use it."

That means the default is that you decide 1 or 2 hands when drawing the item, and only have to use an additional action if you've elected for some reason to draw a weapon that requires two hands to use/wield with only one hand - but there's nothing that stops you from drawing a weapon that can be 1 or 2 handed in 2 hands to start with.

[Garbage-Tier Waifu]

Oh thank god. Alright, crisis averted.