Panther Style Number of Retaliatory Strikes Per AOO?

[wertyou2]

A player of mine wants to build a character using the Panther Style feat tree (links at the end of this post). His interpretation of the feat tree leads him to think that by the time he has all three feats he could, upon being opportunity attacked by a foe, make a number of unarmed strikes up to his Wisdom modifier in response. This could then be repeated among multiple foes up to a maximum number of attacks per round equal to his Wisdom modifier. While I do think the feat could be interpreted this way based on how the text is read, my interpretation is different. Rather than getting multiple attacks in response to an AOO, the response is always a single unarmed strike and this can be made in response to a number of separate AOOs equal to his Wisdom modifier.

I don't quite know in which direction to lean in this case, as while I do think it's more rational to go with my interpretation (which could very well just be a case of personal bias), I do think his interpretation holds water. At the moment I'm ruling that for every unarmed strike he makes beyond the first one in response to a single AOO, he takes a cumulative -1 penalty on all attacks for that retaliation. At the moment I'm fairly content to leave it at this until I deem it to be a problem for gameplay, but I'm curious to know what the general consensus on the feat tree's wording is.

Panther Style

Panther Claw

Panther Parry

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Panther Style wrote:

you can spend a swift action to make a retaliatory unarmed strike attack against that opponent.

Panther Parry wrote:

If your retaliatory unarmed strike deals damage to an opponent

Both singular. You get one retaliation per AoO, period, with a limit of Wis per turn. I.e. your interpretation is correct, his is wrong.

Panther Claw only modifies Panther Style to make the swift a free; it doesn't make the singular plural.

[Gallant Armor]

+1
One other thing to note is that even semi intelligent foes might realize that taking AOOs will result in themselves being attacked in return after the first time this happens in combat and decide not to take AOOs against someone using that style.

The Spring Attack chain is a more reliable way to hit while moving.