two weapon fighter

[Gwaedh]

A character wields a short sword in each hand. At the beginning of their turn they attack an adjacent enemy. They take the penalty for 2-weapon fighting..say -2 if they are wielding 2 light weapons and have the feat.

The enemy goes down on the first swing.

Have they used a full attack? Or does that count as a standard and they still have a move action if they would like to take advantage of it?

I know that they could 5 foot step and continue a full attack if they like.

i'm interested in knowing if swinging once and taking a penalty to hit because you are preparing to swing with you off hand if needed commits you to a full attack even if you don't use your attacks.

thanks.

[Chooky]

You get to decide after the first swing if you want to continue as a Full Attack or stick with Standard Action single attack and do something else.

EDIT: Rules for Full Attack here

EDIT: Read your question better. Even after taking the penalty for TWF on your first attack, you don't need to follow up with your other attacks. You can decide to stick with just one attack and use your Move Action for something else.

[Gwaedh]

agreed...seems pretty straight forward

Full Attack
"Deciding between an Attack or a Full Attack

After your first attack, you can decide to take a move action instead of making your remaining attacks, depending on how the first attack turns out and assuming you have not already taken a move action this round. If you've already taken a 5-foot step, you can't use your move action to move any distance, but you could still use a different kind of move action."

Now...lets say that our character is a magus (only one short sword)...

who is is using a spell combat...
"At 2nd level, whenever a magus casts a spell with a range of “touch” from the magus spell list, he can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as part of a melee attack. Instead of the free melee touch attack normally allowed to deliver the spell, a magus can make one free melee attack with his weapon (at his highest base attack bonus) as part of casting this spell"

and spell strike....
"At 1st level, a magus learns to cast spells and wield his weapons at the same time. This functions much like two-weapon fighting, but the off-hand weapon is a spell that is being cast."

Said magus casts a touch spell and swings his sword to deliver it (say he casts defensively and makes his concentration check). He takes a -2 to hit as he would for spell combat, b/c he might need to swing again to take the big bad down. But the fellow falls from one blow.

Does he have the option to take a move action? he could have just cast the touch spell an delivered via spell strike with his sword (standard action).

Did the fact that he took a -2 to hit in preparation for the need to follow up with second attack commit him to a full attack? Or is this simply a standard to cast a spell..spell strike (no action) to delivery the touch spell..with a (what turned out to be unnecessary) -2 in preparation for a full attack?

. he starts by casting a spell and delivering it through is s

[Chooky]

You've got Spell Combat and Spellstrike the wrong way, but...

Spell Combat allows you to cast a Standard Action spell and Full Attack all in one "Full Round Action". Since it is a "Full Round Action" in of itself, I believe that you cannot refund your Move Action. The refunding of your Move Action is if you do the Full Attack option, which is a type of "Full Round Action". Not 100% sure of this though, this is my personal opinion.

So yes he technically is committed to doing a Full Attack and also cast a spell, you've already paid for the Spell Combat(Full Round Action) up front and can't refund the Move Action.