Greater Whip Mastery and the Dueling (PFSG) Weapon Ability

[CJRodgers]

My GM and I are trying to figure out the most accurate ruling for this interaction, and have yet to come to a complete agreement. As it stands we're both on the fence, though I am on one side and he is on the other. Here's the breakdown of the issue:

1) The Dueling weapon ability is as follows:

PS Field Guide wrote:

A dueling weapon bears magical enhancements that makes it particularly effective at performing certain combat maneuvers. When a dueling weapon is used to perform a combat maneuver that utilizes the weapon only (see below), it grants a luck bonus equal to twice its enhancement bonus on the CMB check made to carry out the maneuver. The dueling weapon also grants this same luck bonus to the wielder’s CMD score against these types of combat maneuvers. These combat maneuvers include disarm and trip maneuvers, but not bull rush, grapple, or overrun maneuvers. If you’re using the additional combat maneuvers in the Advanced Player’s Guide, this also includes any dirty trick maneuvers that utilize the weapon, as well as reposition combat maneuvers, but not drag or steal combat maneuvers. Note that this luck bonus stacks with the weapon’s enhancement bonus, which in and of itself adds to CMB checks normally.

The section which describes which maneuvers apply to this ability seems to be there for clarification purposes rather than defining limitations. You can trip, disarm, reposition, or perform some dirty tricks with a weapon, whereas your weapon doesn't typically come into play during bull rush, grapple, overrun, drag, or steal maneuvers.

This post by Sean K Reynolds elaborates on using weapons to perform maneuvers, including giving an example of applying weapon bonuses to maneuvers that normally do not gain them.

Then we get to Greater Whip Mastery, with the following text:

Ultimate Combat wrote:

Benefit: You are so quick with your whip that you never drop it due to a failed disarm or trip combat maneuver attempt. Further, you gain the ability to grapple using your whip. To do so, use the normal grapple rules with the following changes.

With this, you are able to perform grapple maneuvers using the whip. To me, this fulfills the condition of 'a combat maneuver using the weapon only', and should gain the luck bonus. My GM disagrees, because Dueling specifies which maneuvers can and cannot gain this bonus. My GM's verdict is a soft no at the moment, pending review. Any thoughts?

[JiaYou]

I'd flip the way of looking at this somewhat. "Utilizes the weapon only" shouldn't focus on the type of maneuver itself, but whether it's the weapon *actually* doing the maneuver. For instance, you can absolutely trip someone with a leg sweep, but it's now not a weapon (although I'd now expect someone to pipe up with +1 Dueling handwraps/footwraps to counter this). At whip range, you physically cannot be using anything other than the weapon to accomplish the task. Contrast that with Bull Rush, Overrun, and (normally) Grapple, where it's generally impossible to do the maneuver without using your body. Since Greater Whip Mastery gives a specific way to grapple that overrides a general grapple rule/guideline, I'd definitely argue that you are interpreting the combination of these rules correctly.

If he still is hesitant, bring up that Hydraulic Push/Torrent suddenly makes water able to perform bull rushes, despite nothing in the general descriptions of water mentioning this ability :D

[CJRodgers]

JiaYou wrote:

If he still is hesitant, bring up that Hydraulic Push/Torrent suddenly makes water able to perform bull rushes, despite nothing in the general descriptions of water mentioning this ability :D

I get what you're getting at there but that's kind of an apples to oranges thing. It's a magical bull rush with the flavor of it being water doing the pushing, rather than bestowing water with a new ability, y'know?

[blahpers]

Hard to say what they meant. The text is written for weapons in general, and the same question comes up if you're using any sort of trip weaon since trip weapons can be used to drag. Explicitly listing the maneuvers allowed and disallowed in the dueling description is a bit strange since (a) it uses up word count and (b) it's already defined elsewhere. I don't know if they intended the dueling list to be definitive or simply the default.

If it were me? I'd allow it. It seems like the list is just a clarification of the meaning of "maneuvers made with the weapon only", so rules allowing additional maneuvers to be made with the weapon should also extend the list.