Fight Defensively

[Quath]

If you take the fight defensively action on your turn, then drop the weapon you were fighting with as a free action do you still gain the AC bonus from fighting defensively or do you need to continue to wield the weapon to gain the AC bonus?

[PrinceDogWaterIII]

Good question!

Fighting Defensively as a Standard Action: You can choose to fight defensively when attacking. If you do so, you take a –4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 to AC for the same round.

Looks like you can drop if you so choose and retain the dodge bonus to AC. I don't know why you would want to drop your weapon after fighting defensively.

[bbangerter]

It is certainly valid to take a defensive fighting stance when all you have is your fists to fight with. So the presence or absence of a manufactured weapon should have no impact one way or another.