Rule clarification - Crane Style

[ThunderMage]

I'm hoping for a clarification about crane style and weapons. Here is what the prd says about crane style:

Crane Style (Combat, Style)
Your unarmed fighting techniques blend poise with graceful defense.
Prerequisites: Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike, base attack bonus +2 or monk level 1st.
Benefit: You take only a –2 penalty on attack rolls for fighting defensively. While using this style and fighting defensively or using the total defense action, you gain an additional +1 dodge bonus to your Armor Class.

My question is: can you use crane style without a free hand. Specifically, I'm thinking about a monk with a two handed weapon such as a quarterstaff.

The blurb about it suggests that this applies to unarmed only. The benefit section for Crane Wing and Crane Riposte both explicitly state that a character has to have a free hand to use that ability but that is not stated here. I'm wondering whether this is intended to be used with weapons too, or more clarification is needed.

[Andrew Riebe]

Well, the flavor text says 'Your unarmed fighting techniques blend...". Then right after that, a prerequisite is a Improved Unarmed Strike.

I would read this is yes, you need to be able to perform an unarmed attack to use this. If you could use this with a weapon, then I don't believe that Improved Unarmed Strike would be a perquisite.

[Jiggy]

This is a rules question, as PFS does not have any special rules about how Crane Style works.

As for your question, no, you don't need a free hand to use the Crane Style feat, as long as you don't intend to deflect anything with Crane Wing.

First, feats do not require you to use the things in their prerequisites unless they say so. Claiming that the prereq of Improved Unarmed Strike requires you to be able to make an unarmed strike in order to use Crane Style is like claiming that you have to use Power Attack every time you use Cleave; i.e., it's nonsense.

Second, even if it *did* require you to be capable of making unarmed strikes, that doesn't mean you need a free hand. Unarmed strikes can include kicks (and other things).

Third, if it required you to be able to make an unarmed strike to function, then it wouldn't say that it has an effect while you're using Total Defense. Total Defense prevents you from making any attacks, so that theory would make Crane Style shut itself down when you tried to use it as intended. That's ridiculous.

Fourth, if it were reasonable to infer from the prereqs that it requires a free hand, then we wouldn't have Crane Wing wasting word count by spelling it out explicitly.

TLDR: Feats do what they say they do.

[pauljathome]

Don't forget that unarmed strike includes kicks, elbow strikes, etc.

It doesn't say that you need a free hand so you don't.