Do the Bladed Brush feat and the Slashing Grace feat work together in Pathfinder?

Question

Its been a long time since I've asked a question on here so thank you for any help I receive.

I have recently found myself building a pure DEX Slayer in Pathfinder and stumbled across the feats Bladed Brush and Slashing Grace It seemed that even though they were poorly worded feats, they could be used in conjunction and could make for a really cool character. I have someone debating this argument against me on another site even though while jumping around on reddit and other sites, others seem to think the same as me.

Bladed Brush
Note: This is associated with a specific deity.

You know how to balance a polearm perfectly, striking with artful, yet deadly precision.

Prerequisite(s): Weapon Focus (glaive), must be a worshiper of the associated deity.

Benefit(s): You can use the Weapon Finesse feat to apply your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier to attack rolls with a glaive sized for you, even though it isn't a light weapon. When wielding a glaive, you can treat it as a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon and as if you were not making attacks with your off-hand for all feats and class abilities that require such a weapon (such as a duelist's or swashbuckler's precise strike).

As a move action, you can shorten your grip on the glaive, treating it as though it lacked the reach weapon property. You can adjust your grip to grant the weapon the reach property as a move action.

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Slashing Grace
You can stab your enemies with your sword or another slashing weapon.

Prerequisite(s): Dex 13, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus with chosen weapon.

Benefit: Choose one kind of light or one-handed slashing weapon (such as the longsword). When wielding your chosen weapon one-handed, you can treat it as a one-handed piercing melee weapon for all feats and class abilities that require such a weapon (such as a swashbuckler's or a duelist's precise strike) and you can add your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier to that weapon’s damage. The weapon must be one appropriate for your size.

You do not gain this benefit while fighting with two weapons or using flurry of blows, or any time another hand is otherwise occupied.

Answer 1

Typically, Bladed Brush and Slashing Grace can't work together

The benefit of feat Bladed Brush, in part, says, "When wielding a glaive, you can treat it as a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon… for all feats and class abilities that require such a weapon" (emphasis mine). The benefit of the feat Slashing Grace, in part, says, "Choose one kind of light or one-handed slashing weapon…." A creature that possesses the feat Bladed Brush only counts a glaive as a one-handed slashing weapon while the creature wields a glaive; the glaive itself remains a glaive, which is not a one-handed slashing weapon. No matter how an individual creature treats its glaive when that particular creature wields its glaive, the glaive is still an unsuitable weapon choice for the feat Slashing Grace.

Were Bladed Brush not to require actual wielding, and, instead, its benefit started with You can treat a glaive as a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon…, it and the feat Slashing Grace would work fine together. Were the feat Slashing Grace not to mandate picking a specific kind of weapon, it and the feat Bladed Brush would work fine together. However, the feats both don't give an inch and remain incompatible.

While this GM can see that a few issues arise were either feat subject to a house rule changing it to make the two feats compatible—their interaction with the magus's extraordinary ability spell combat springs to mind—, I imagine that because of the significant feat investment other styles of play would remain popular. I'd ask the player who pitched the house rule to show me his PC's plan first before I'd consider making such a house rule, though.

Making them work together anyway

To be extra clear, the feat Slashing Grace says, "Choose one kind of light or one-handed slashing weapon" (emphasis mine). However, while this GM views a weapon's kind as the weapon in the abstract—possessing only its printed statistics—, there's actually no formal definition of a kind of weapon. With that in mind, a GM that rules that the feat Bladed Brush changes what kind of weapon a glaive is while the creature wields a glaive gives creatures some options for gaining the feat Slashing Grace (glaive) if the creature's first taken the feat Bladed Brush.

For example, a human fighter that's already a worshiper of Shelyn (the Golarion deity of love and beauty) and that possesses the feats Weapon Finesse and Weapon Focus (glaive) takes at level 1 the feat Bladed Brush. Then, at the end of the session wherein that human fighter gained enough experience points to advance to level 2, if that human fighter is wielding her glaive, she can take the feat Slashing Grace (glaive) as the feat Bladed Brush says that the glaive counts—while the feat's possessor wields a glaive—"for for all feats… that require" a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon.

That is, while it's normally impossible to use the feat Bladed Brush to meet the prerequisite of the feat Slashing Grace (glaive), Character Advancement says, "A character advances in level as soon as he earns enough experience points to do so—typically, this occurs at the end of a game session, when your GM hands out that session’s experience point awards." To do this then the character and the player must be aware that advancement is about to occur and the character must be at that session's end in a position to wield her glaive.

This is neither impossible nor particularly shady, but it will typically be unexpected, certainly the kind of thing that should be discussed with the GM beforehand rather than suddenly sprung on the GM.

Likewise, a GM may allow a character like the aforementioned human fighter—if she's not in a position to wield her glaive upon advancing a level or if the GM nixes the character advancement scheme—to use the rules for Retraining to exchange another feat for Slashing Grace (glaive), although the GM may require the character to wield the glaive continuously for five days.

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Note: In addition to your Paizo messageboard threads from 2017, 2017, and 2017, there're other threads about this interaction like these from 2016, 2017, and 2017.

Answer 2

RAW: It is unclear ; Practically: yes

When you take the Slashing Grace feat you have to choose a "kind of light or one-handed slashing weapon", but Bladed Brush Combat only makes you able to use the glaive as a one-handed slashing weapon, it doesn't create a new "kind of one-handed slashing weapon". However it states that:

When wielding a glaive, you can treat it as a one-handed [...] slashing melee weapon [...] for all feats [...] that require such a weapon

So basically you could use your glaive for Piercing Grapple Combat for which there is no need to choose the weapon category to which it applies.

Does that mean you can choose "glaive" as the weapon category for Slashing Grace ? Not really if you stick to the rules-as-written. To work the formulation of Bladed Brush Combat should involve something like "you can choose glaives as a weapon category when a feat requires you to choose a one-handed or light piercing or slashing weapon".

Is this sentence intentionally missing? Probably not. Anyway there is no real problem with allowing the combination and as a DM I would accept that you choose "glaive" for your Slashing Grace if you already have Bladed Brush Combat. It just feels fair, not overpowered, and coherent in thematics.

Answer 3

Bladed Brush and Slashing Grace function together.

While the feats themselves do not directly tie together, we can display previously established concepts and rulings by the development team of Pathfinder to demonstrate that the temporarily-met prerequisite allow this combination to occur by RAI and RAW.

Here are some examples.

A monk who can flurry can treat its BAB from monk levels as full and gain the full strength of Power Attack, allowing the character to benefit from this concept. This is in spite of it usually only flurrying for seconds per day:

How does a monk's improved BAB when flurrying interact with feats like Power Attack and Combat Expertise, which have different effects depending on your BAB?

The monk uses his improved flurrying BAB to determine the effect of those feats.

Another example would be that a brawler in the midst of using his brawler's flurry is considered to possess different abilities while using his class ability, and could take feats that need those requirements met:

A brawler can use the feats granted by brawler's flurry to qualify for other feats, but can only use those other feats when using brawler's flurry (as that's the only time she actually meets those prerequisites).

To further add to the idea of selecting feats in temporary situations, but needing prerequisites active to use them, here is SKR describing putting on an item to meet a feat prerequisite:

Are you wearing the item? Do you therefore have the prerequisite? Then you can select the feat. But if the prereq goes away, you can't use the feat.

The 'toggling' of a feat back on is even supported in the core rules:

A character can't use a feat if he loses a prerequisite, but he does not lose the feat itself. If, at a later time, he regains the lost prerequisite, he immediately regains full use of the feat that prerequisite enables.

Another example is how you cannot meet the prerequisites for Weapon Focus while you are not proficient with a weapon, yet a shifter can take Weapon Focus (Claws).

There is even a catch-all rule thrown around by the devs that you can always lock in a prerequisite as viable if you can keep the bonus going for 24 hours, which you can do by just holding your glaive.

While holding the glaive, you treat the weapon as a one-handed slashing weapon for the purpose of feats. You train with the glaive using Bladed Brush to develop the skills of Slashing Grace. When you aren't holding a glaive with Bladed Brush active, you lose the ability to use Slashing Grace.

Learning Slashing Grace in this way effectively makes Bladed Brush a prerequisite feat, so if you ever lose access to Bladed Brush for any reason, you would lose Slashing Grace.

tl;dr Yes they do, but you lose Slashing Grace if you lose Bladed Brush.

Answer 4

Bladed Brush specifically DOES works with Slashing Grace, based on this quote from Bladed Brush (emphasis added):

treat it as a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon and as if you were not making attacks with your off-hand for all feats and class abilities

Because of this, you are treating Glaives as a one-handed weapon for all intents and purposes. Importantly, you must have Bladed Brush before you get Slashing Grace, as Glaives are not a valid choice for Slashing Grace until after you have Bladed Brush.

There are numerous ways (1 Fencing Grace Feat) (2 SwB Precise Strike Deed) that Paizo has phrased it, and this is one of the more clunky, but all of the Q&A's seem to agree that Feats and abilities that work toward a 'one-handed' DEX build are intended to work together.