The rules for HTH beg all sorts of questions, as can be seen in recent (and much older) threads on the topic. Here's another based on a situation I had a year or so ago in which I ruled against a Fencer (much to the displeasure of the player) that spins off mention of Fencers in
this post in the thread about adjudicating initiation of HTH.
How does HTH affect a Fencer's abilities? The description of Fencer makes specific mention of HTH in only one place: under the section dealing with how the talent confers +1 damage to all fencing weapons and where it exempts
only the main-gauche when used in HTH situations. Are we then to assume that in HTH a
normal dagger gets the +1 damage bonus, that attacks against a Fencer with a knife in hand are made at -1DX, and that the fencer may make a
shrewd thrust for extra damage ? Or do we take what I see as the common-sense approach that nothing about Fencer applies in HTH situations, which implies that the single mention of an HTH limitation on Fencer is simply a misleading passage?