[TheIronGolem]

Originally Posted by tenro

Thanks for the info. Unless I am mistaken with Warder, it should not be considered two-weapon fighting. Basically Armament Shield Bash lets you use the sword for maneuvers (from Iron Tortoise) that require a shield bash, so it lets you use the sword for that requirement, and you do damage as if you were using a light shield when doing so. It doesn't allow (to my knowledge) a two-weapon attack using the real weapon and then the real weapon again as a pretend shield for a 2WF shield bash.

Text of Armament Shield ability:

When wielding a one-handed weapon in two hands or a two-handed weapon, the weapon is treated as a light shield for the purposes of performing a shield bash attack on an opponent. The warder smashes with the butt of a spear-haft, the pommel of a greatsword, or the broadside of her axe. All are essentially the same and are treated as light shields for the purposes of shield- bash attacks or martial maneuvers to be used with a weapon of this type (such as Iron Tortoise maneuvers that require a shield to function).

Emphasis mine. The use of Armament Shield is definitely not restricted to maneuvers; the text is clear that you can perform regular attacks with it as well. No exceptions to "treated as a light shield for the purposes of performing a shield bash" are given. This means that you can use it in your attack routine just like a "real" shield bash, which would include offhand attacks.

HL is assessing TWF penalties because you have both your greatsword and your Armament Shield marked as equipped, and it assumes that all "equipped" weapons are being used in any given attack routine. So if you're only attacking with the sword in a particular round, you'll want to unequip the ASB. If you're just bashing, use the ASB's bonus (don't unequip the sword though, that'll make the ASB disappear). Only if you're using both in the same turn should you equip both (meaning you'll have to eat those penalties). This applies whether you're using martial maneuvers or just regular vanilla attacks.

Now that I've explained this, I see that my implementation has a flaw in that you can't equip just the ASB, because it doesn't bootstrap unless you have a two-handed weapon equipped. So if you only want to bash, you'll need to equip the sword but leave the ASB unequipped so that it's bonus doesn't change. That's pretty counterintuitive.

So it might be a good idea to change it so that ASB only requires a 2-handed weapon to be present, instead of requiring it to actually be equipped as it does right now. I'll think on it.