Tiny Swashbuckler with 5 ft reach using Blue Scarf Swordmaster's Flair

[HSalgo]

Hey, everyone! I ran into a strange situation in my first PFS scenario in which I used the Blue Scarf Swordmaster's Flair on a Halfling Swashbuckler.

During the scenario, I was unwillingly made Tiny via Reduce Person, which means that I had 0 ft reach and had to be in the same square as an enemy to attack it, based on both Reduce Person and typical size templates. However, the Blue Scarf Swordmaster's Flair allows someone to "increase her melee reach with light or one-handed piercing weapons by 5 feet for 1 minute." Does that mean that I could then use a light or one-handed piercing weapon with 5 ft reach to attack an adjacent my square despite being Tiny?

Doing so seems to be a bit cheesy, but it seems to be allowable using the rules as written. If so, it seems like a Wand of Reduce Person might be something worth buying, especially since being Tiny makes the Risky Striker Halfling racial feat apply to damage when fighting Medium sized creatures (who are now two sizes larger).

Also a shoutout to ZanThrax who is trying to sort out the details of Risky Striker here.

Thanks!

[Bob Bob Bob]

You could do the same thing with Lunge. It makes no distinction for size on either of them, so both would let a tiny character hit adjacent.

[BigNorseWolf]

eyup. Tell the bad guy thanks for the powerup! And show your appreciation to his kneecaps.

[Bigdaddyjug]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

eyup. Tell the bad guy thanks for the powerup! And show your appreciation to his ankles.

FTFY.

[HSalgo]

I feel obligated to add a caveat that I found while exploring this option. Apparently, armor and shield bonuses for tiny and smaller creatures are halved.

Though my GM has been generous in saying that only the base armor and shield bonuses are halved, but not their magical enchantments, this still means that, while becoming tiny,

• you suffer -2 to your armor bonus (if mithral shirt (+4 to armor) or studded leather (+3 to armor)) and
  
• you suffer -1 to your shield bonus (if buckler (+1 to shield) or light shield (+1 to shield)).

This pretty much undoes the +1 size bonus and +1 Dex bonus to AC that you get for being tiny.

Anyway, I figured I'd bring this up! Thanks again for your input so far.

[RumpinRufus]

Well it says "armor bonus" is divided by 2, but it doesn't say that shield bonus is as well. Either way, I did not know about that rule!

[Tarantula]

I agree that only the armor bonus is divided by 2 for tiny and smaller. Also another thing I did not know either.

[HSalgo]

My GM and I agreed that because shields were mentioned in the text above, that the halving applies to shield bonuses as well. I think the "armor" and "armor bonus" references in the table + footnote's case means armor in the global sense (i.e. armor and shields). I could see the argument for it not being RAW though.

Anyway, it makes becoming reduced annoyingly less viable. Even if the shield bonus isn't halved, losing 2 to your armor bonus negates any size and dex AC bonus you might gain from being tiny, it seems.

If forum disputes interest you, the 4 discussions I saw on this tiny armor penalty topic included:

1) the armor bonus is always halved for Tiny and smaller armors,
2) the armor bonus is always halved for Tiny and smaller armors, but the enhancement bonus can be houseruled an exception,
3) the armor bonus being halved for Tiny armor is dumb (a quote taken from James Jacobs himself), and
4) the armor bonus is always halved for Tiny and smaller armors, but not with Mage Armor.