What does the Trip Trait on Wolf Jaw actually do?

[Vlorax]

You enter the stance of a wolf, low to the ground with your hands held like fanged teeth. You can make wolf jaw unarmed attacks. These deal 1d8 piercing damage; are in the brawling group; and have the agile, backstabber, finesse, nonlethal, and unarmed traits.

If you’re flanking a target while in Wolf Stance, your wolf jaw unarmed attacks also gain the trip trait.

Trip
Source Core Rulebook pg. 283
You can use this weapon to Trip with the Athletics skill even if you don’t have a free hand. This uses the weapon’s reach (if different from your own) and adds the weapon’s item bonus to attack rolls as an item bonus to the Athletics check. If you critically fail a check to Trip using the weapon, you can drop the weapon to take the effects of a failure instead of a critical failure.

So from what I can tell it just lets you never crit fail a trip attempt if you're flanking in wolf stance since you can't really drop your hand/leg? Or would you just drop out of Wolf Stance as an equivalent to "dropping your weapon"?

And lets you apply any bonus from Handwraps to the check since you're "using the weapon(Wolf Jaw)" for the attempt?

is that correct?

[lordcirth]

It lets you apply your Handwrap bonus to Trip. That's all, as I understand it.

[Edge93]

It also lets you use your Dex mod in place of Str for Trip.

There's been a lot of debate on if that's true because people say Athletics checks for maneuvers aren't technically attack rolls, and Finesse calls out attack rolls, but I finally found and corralled together the relevant bits of text that indicate it is supposed to work that way (aside from, you know, devs saying it does).

CRB P446, under "Attack Rolls", "When you use a Strike action or any other attack action, you attempt a check called an attack roll."

P446, under "Multiple Attack Penalty", "The second time you use an attack action during your turn, you take...Every check that has the attack trait counts toward your multiple attack penalty, including Strikes, spell attack rolls, certain skill actions like Shove, and many others."

P629, Glossary, attack trait, "an ability with this trait involves an attack..."

P282, under Finesse trait, "You can use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls using this melee weapon..."

P283, under Trip trait, "You can use this weapon to Trip with the Athletics skill..."

Taken all together it's actually pretty clear that action with attack trait = attack and attack = attack roll so action with attack trait = attack roll, and Finesse lets you replace Str with Dex on attack rolls using the weapon "and Trip let's you use the weapon to Trip", so a Finesse weapon with Trip or another maneuver trait allows Dex in place of Str with that maneuver.

Deep breath hopefully that'll put an end to the debate on Finesse trait maneuvers finally if it gets spread to all the threads that are debating that. XP

[Edge93]

lordcirth wrote:

It lets you apply your Handwrap bonus to Trip. That's all, as I understand it.

*If the Handwraps bonus is higher than any existing item bonus to Athletics, as they don't stack.

[Andy Brown]

And presumably, because you don't need a free hand and Wolf Stance references 'unarmed attacks', you can attempt to trip with your feet even if you've got your hands full

[Edge93]

Andy Brown wrote:

And presumably, because you don't need a free hand and Wolf Stance references 'unarmed attacks', you can attempt to trip with your feet even if you've got your hands full

I'm not so sure about that, as the occupied-hand Trip benefit of the trait requires using the weapon in question (Wolf Jaw), and Wolf Jaw attacks are specifically hand-strikes.