Dirty Tricks, Movement, and AoO

[Captain Riley]

The text for dirty trick reads as follows, with the parts I'm concerned about bolded, and in this scenario lets assume I have Improved Dirty Trick:

Dirty Trick Text:

You can attempt to hinder a foe in melee as a standard action. This maneuver covers any sort of situational attack that imposes a penalty on a foe for a short period of time. Examples include kicking sand into an opponent’s face to blind him for 1 round, pulling down an enemy’s pants to halve his speed, or hitting a foe in a sensitive spot to make him sickened for a round. The GM is the arbiter of what can be accomplished with this maneuver, but it cannot be used to impose a permanent penalty, and the results can be undone if the target spends a move action. If you do not have the Improved Dirty Trick feat or a similar ability, attempting a dirty trick provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver.

If your attack is successful, the target takes a penalty. The penalty is limited to one of the following conditions:

blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened.

This condition lasts for 1 round. For every 5 by which your attack exceeds your opponent’s CMD, the penalty lasts 1 additional round. This penalty can usually be removed if the target spends a move action. If you possess the Greater Dirty Trick feat, the penalty lasts for 1d4 rounds, plus 1 round for every 5 by which your attack exceeds your opponent’s CMD. In addition, removing the condition requires the target to spend a standard action.

Here's what I'd like to know
1) When it says "1 round" does that mean till the start or till the end of my next turn? (probably easy to answer question)

2) When the enemy spends a movement action to shake off the effect while they are next to me, does that provoke an Attack of Opportunity?

The reason I feel this 2nd question to be true is two-fold
a) If this were not true dirty trick would have little benefit in a fight compared to other similar feats such as improved trip and improved disarm which use a standard action to very much tip the scales in your favor

b) Thematically it would make sense for an enemy to have to move out of the way before mending the effect. If I see my enemy trying to rub the sand out of his eyes that I just put there, then you had better believe I'm going to smack him while I have the chance.

In the end I'm sure this is to the GM's discretion but I was wondering for some input on this question.

[Weirdo]

Not sure on 1) but it definitely doesn't provoke AoO. Yes, this does unfortunately mean that Dirty Trick is much less useful than Trip.

[Quantum Steve]

1) The condition lasts until the start of your next turn. That's the general rule for any effect with a duration expressed in rounds (such as spells)

2) No, it doesn't provoke an AoO. However, Dirty Trick has several advantages over trip.

For one, you get versatility of conditions. A prone Cleric can still cast defensively, but a deafened one has a 20% failure chance. Not to mention blind is almost always better than prone.

2nd, Dirty Trick doesn't have the limitations of trip. You can't trip a flying creature, you can't trip a creature with no legs, you can't trip a creature more than one size larger than you, and multi-legged creatures get significant bonuses to being tripped.
Dirty Trick can be used on any creature, and there's no way to get special protection from a Dirty Trick.

[Sub_Zero]

to add to Quantum Steve:

3)once you get improved dirty trick they need to use a standard action to get rid of the penalty, which basically makes them waste a turn or try to fight through it.

[Captain Riley]

Thanks all :)

[LoneKnave]

You can also put multiple negative status effects on one guy with dirty tricks, while with trip they'll only ever get prone'd. You can't trip someone twice, but you sure as hell can silence/deafen/blind a guy.

[Weirdo]

Let me refine my point: Dirty Trick is inferior to Trip without high investment.

Sub_Zero wrote:

3)once you get improved dirty trick they need to use a standard action to get rid of the penalty, which basically makes them waste a turn or try to fight through it.

That's Greater Dirty Trick, so two feats necessary.

Before getting Greater Dirty Trick, paying a standard action to apply a condition that it takes a move action and no AoO to remove is pretty weak in terms of action economy, even if it is a good condition. Likely they'll suffer from the condition between your turn and theirs, and then remove it, maybe giving up a full-round action (but a caster, like that deafened cleric, will just remove the condition and then cast without caring too much). Or they wait one turn until the condition goes away on its own (where a prone character stays prone, with AC and attack penalties, until they stand up). And without Greater Dirty Trick or multiple characters using the maneuver on the same target, it doesn't matter if the conditions theoretically stack because the first one will be gone on your turn before you can apply the second.

Blinding a character when you've got a couple rogues lined up to Sneak Attack the target before their turn might be more effective, and once you get Greater Dirty Trick and/or Quick Dirty Trick you start hurting the enemy's action economy more than yours and actually stacking the conditions. But Dirty Trick definitely needs more investment than Trip to pay off. (The good news is that since things can't be immune to Dirty Trick, unlike Trip you'll never be in a situation in which you've put 3+ feats into a useless maneuver.)