D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] two weapon fighting and Aoo "-2 attack penalty"?

[Particle_Man]

If a character is fighting with 2 weapons and someone else provokes an Attack of Opportunity from that character, does the character still have a penalty on that attack roll from fighting with 2 weapons? To make it simple, lets assume that the character has Two-Weapon Fighting and is using a light weapon in the off-hand and is making the Aoo with the primary hand.

 

[Dandu]

Power Attack [General]

Benefit

On your action, before making attack rolls for a round, you may choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same number to all melee damage rolls. This number may not exceed your base attack bonus. The penalty on attacks and bonus on damage apply until your next turn.

Two-Weapon Fighting [General]

Benefit Your penalties on attack rolls for fighting with two weapons are reduced. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by 6. See the Two-Weapon Fighting special attack.
Normal

If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon. When fighting in this way you suffer a -6 penalty with your regular attack or attacks with your primary hand and a -10 penalty to the attack with your off hand. If your off-hand weapon is light the penalties are reduced by 2 each. (An unarmed strike is always considered light.)

Two-Weapon Fighting

If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon. You suffer a -6 penalty with your regular attack or attacks with your primary hand and a -10 penalty to the attack with your off hand when you fight this way.

What do you think?

 

[aboyd]

My belief is that the AOO happens outside of your turn, and therefore is not part of the full attack action that gives you a -2 for off hand weapon use. Thus, you are making a standard action single attack with the main hand, and thus have no penalty.

 

[radmod]

Just to muddle things, I'm not sure I can totally agree with Dandu (though I lean heavily in that direction).
Under AoOs:

An experienced character gets additional regular melee attacks (by using the full attack action), but at a lower attack bonus. You make your attack of opportunity, however, at your normal attack bonus—even if you’ve already attacked in the round.

Now, obviously, what this means is that if you are +6/+1 then any AoO you get is at +6.
The TW fighter would get +4/-1 on the primary and +4 on the secondary. So the question would become does the TW fighter do an AoO at +6 or +4?
Consider a monk. A 3rd level monk is +0/+0 when doing flurry of blows (additional regular melee attacks using a full attack action), but according to the above RAW, the monk would make an AoO at its BAB of +3. (One could argue that flurry does not constitute as additional regular melee attack but as special melee attacks.)



To make matters worse, the FAQ specifically points out (and this is the way we've always played) that if a creature chooses to use a secondary natural weapon to make the AoO then it is at the the -5 penalty of the secondary weapon. Likewise, we've always played that if you choose to do the off hand weapon as your AoO you take all penalties associated for using it off hand.

Hah! To counter again! What if it is not your initiative in the round and you get an AoO? You haven't declared your action. Sure you've got two weapons in your hands but nothing says you're going to use both of them, or maybe you've only got one weapon drawn but you might draw another. What would be your AoO roll?

Perhaps someone has a more definitive answer.

 

[pawsplay]

Since the game doesn't define "wielding two weapons" as some kind of stance or status, I always interpreted "fighting in this way" as "when attacking with two weapons," since TWF is a special case of attacking. I am pretty sure my interpretation is the best one for almost all purposes. However, it is not beyond controversy. Dandu's answer is really the only safe one, by the RAW.

 

[Empirate]

Since the rules for fighting with two weapons are under the heading "Special Attacks", other examples of which are Sunder, Bull Rush, Trip, Aid Another etc., I'd say the modifications of TWF only apply to your own action. Nowhere does it explicitly say that the attack roll modifiers for fighting with two weapons las "for the rest of the round" or similar. I'm inclined to think you only modify attack rolls by -6/-10 (etc.) when you take the "two-weapon fighting" special attack.

By comparison, things like Power Attack, Flurry of Blows etc. are not "special attacks" in this sense. They also spell out explicitly that the attack roll penalty lasts for the round:

Flurry of Blows (Ex)
When unarmored, a monk may strike with a flurry of blows at the expense of accuracy. When doing so, she may make one extra attack in a round at her highest base attack bonus, but this attack takes a -2 penalty, as does each other attack made that round. The resulting modified base attack bonuses are shown in the Flurry of Blows Attack Bonus column on Table: The Monk. This penalty applies for 1 round, so it also affects attacks of opportunity the monk might make before her next action.

Power Attack (General)
[...]
On your action, before making attack rolls for a round, you may choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same number to all melee damage rolls. This number may not exceed your base attack bonus. The penalty on attacks and bonus on damage apply until your next turn.