As far as I unterstood, when you change weapons during a fight, you immediately cede advantage to your opponent.
That is, I think, before you resolve the action that involves the change of weapon. Could you confirm that?
Now, I’ll post the actual play of the fight which gave me problems; I’d like you to correct if I made mistakes, and comment overall:
There are an orc with a spear and a dwarf with a sword, fighting. The dwarf has the advantage.
In a volley, the dwarf scripted “push” against the orc’s “block”.
So, the dwarf changes his weapon to “hand” and therefore suffers the +4Ob penalty against spear in pushing.
Now, this sounded a bit unreasonable to me: I mean, I have the advantage with a shorter weapon (sword), and I’m coming near.
How do you get advantage with your spear in the process?
Bonus: Is there a scripting which avoids this problem?
Your understanding, as far as I know, is correct. There are a few things you can do about it:
Vie for position with your hands or a knife. That way, you don’t cede advantage by changing weapon length.
Only push against someone fighting with a knife or similar short weapon: even if you do cede advantage, you won’t be penalized.
The idea is that with a successful Push action, you gain advantage in the process if you do well enough (success +1 Margin of Success). Think of it like the Beat action in this regard.
The Dwarf drops his guard and moves to shove his Orc opponent. The Orc laughs and gives the Dwarf a face full of pole. Spears are tough weapons to position against in a fight.
In a recent game, a fiery bushi won advantage with his sword, but immediately stepped in with a Push. The creature he was fighting only had claws, but it meant that he had ceded the advantage to those claws. Fortunately for him, he exceeded his obstacle and shoved the creature out a window. He leapt after it, retaking the advantage for his sword (because he exceeded his obstacle for the Push).
It works well when you imagine that every character in a fight is doing his or her utmost to keep the advantage and win the day. As soon as you give an opening, your opponent rushes to fill it.