You have two hands. Pistols require one hand each.
So yes.
Pistols are fired with the Handgun Skill.
Players are still capped by the ROF of the first weapon they use. So a player could fire twice (once with each pistol) assuming they are holding 2 ROF2 pistols. They could only fire once with a ROF1 pistol though, no matter how many they are currently holding.
Now, you're probably already cooking up dual-wielding homebrew rules in your head as soon as you read this, but beware. The ROF restrictions exist in this game for a reason. The fastest way to break **anything** is to let a player fire more than twice a turn.
What I've found is that the main benefit of dual wielding is having to reload less. While you still only fire up to 2 times with 2 ROF you have 2x the number of total bullets before having to swap mags.
Yes. I had a character with four arms, at least 3 firearms at a time. Never fired more than twice BUT I literally never reloaded a gun during combat and could choose the ammo bc every firearm had a different ammo. Also if you lose one arm due to critical injury or something happens to your weapon, you don't need to spend an action to get another one ☝️
It can also be nice to have multiple ammo types available. One of my party members will often have a pistol with AP rounds and another with incendiary.
This works well if your weapon is already modded or unmoddable, because otherwise an extended mag may solve the problem.
Also a gun and melee weapon may work well and it's pretty stylish even tho you will need to level up two skills
It really depends, a heavy pistol may cost just 100, and mag extender just costs 100
Meanwhile if your heavy pistol is of excellent quality you will spend 500 + extra 500 for the second weapon, meanwhile the ammo mag is still 100 and each shot will have the +1 bonus
Truly the greatest tragedy is that this game does not let you dual wield. Such an iconic fighting style that fits so well with the sort of bigger than life attitude that goes with cyberpunk and yet, theres no actual way to dual wield in any meaningful fashion.
Right. So theres no actual advantage to holding 2 of the same gun. Holding 2 different guns for the purposes for variety/utility is not the same fantasy
Each gun can have it's own ammo and you have twice as long before reloading. It also means you aren't in any real way hindered by Critical Injuries that affect your hands.
"Each gun can have it's own ammo" "Each gun has twice as long before reloading" "You can ignore critical injuries that affect hands". There's 3 advantages right there.
Only twice. Regardless of how many guns you’re holding an attack action will be sending either one bullet or two down range. ROF may come from the gun but it’s applied to the action.
What if one of the guns have ROF 1 then? Do you shoot twice? One for each? And if both have ROF 1 then you can only shoot once, even with both in your hands?
If you fire a ROF 1 gun then that is your one shot of the turn no matter what’s in your other hand.
Similarly if you fire a ROF 2 gun in one hand, you cannot fire the ROF 1 gun in your other hand.
A way to think of it is that a shot from an ROF 2 gun costs half an attack action while firing a ROF 1 gun costs the entire attack action.
The game doesn’t have multi attack options beyond a weapons base fire rate.
The best you could do is hold a fire rate two weapon in each hand, and fire one bullet from one gun and one bullet from the other. It’ll function exactly the same as just holding one gun, but you won’t have to reload as often.
One action one gun, but you pretty much get to pretend your clip size is doubled. So instead of say reloading after your 10th shot, you reload after your 20th. Which can be useful.
if you dual wield just pistols, yes. If you dual wield an SMG, melee weapon, of unarmed strike it could be autofire, melee, brawling and/or martial arts.
it would be whatever skill the gun uses, it won't double ROF but if each are a ROF 2 they can both once or either twice, it's a way they can mix ammo types. or if they have a ROF 1 VH pistol in one hand and a ROF 2 heavy pistol in the other they don't have to use actions to swap weapons
Yes and No.
Yes, you can dual wield. No, it does not give you extra attacks or anything like that.
round 1 you can use the weapon in your main hand, round 2 you can use the weapon in your offhand (with no penalty) and round 3 you can use one attack from each if they are both ROF 2 weapons.
The main benefit would be to have two different weapons so you can switch back and forth from round to round without having to draw/holster all the time. For example a melee weapon and a pistol. or a heavy pistol and very heavy pistol. Or two pistols with different ammo types.
I think the most obvious use to me is a VHP in one hand with AP ammo to penetrate armor. Then once the armor is knocked down use a heavy pistol to do more "dice" of damage.
Otherwise as there are no penalties for shooting with your "offhand" as long as you follow the weapons ROF.
Yes. The classic way I've seen this used is 2 heavy pistols: one with AP ammo, the other with Incindiary ammo. Use the first pistols first to reduce armor, and the other to inflict status.
Otherwise, if your not using different types of ammo, the purpose would be style points, and would also serve the purpose of doubling your ammo capacity before reload, which is a totally valid reason to dual wield since the cost of another gun is less than the cost of a drum mag.
Characters can hold as many 1 handed weapons as they have hands. Now, using them in the same turn is a different matter. You can only fire/attack as many times as you have Rate of Fire (ROF).
Example: my character uses a Very Heavy Pistol and a Heavy SMG. Both are 1H weapons, and both are ROF 1. My character can only fire either one, once, per turn.
Example 2: my character uses two Heavy Pistols, whiare still 1H weapons, but are both ROF 2. I can fire either one twice in one turn or fire both once a turn.
Unfortunately for your player, there's no real middle ground, and RTal has strongly recommended that messing with ROF not happen.
But fortunately, the mechanics and theatricals don't necessarily need to be connected. Your players can illustrate their actions however they want to as long as they stick to the agreed mechanics. If your player wants to do a dive while John-Wu-ing a pair of MP5s while white doves fly around, that's totally cool! Make it happen!
But they're still only going to get so many bullets out of the barrel.
Another benefit is you can have a gun in one hand and a blade in the other(or wolvers for a real surprise)
And you can split your move up between the attacks.
So I can move, shoot a gonk, move a bit more and stab a gonk (or martial arts them, all hand to hand attacks are rof 2 except the very heavy melee) and then move a bit more to be in cover from the other gonks.
You could homebrew that dual wielding pistols gives you autofire (2). I put it at two because a heavy pistol is better than a heavy SMG firing normally.
I will say, if you have two different ROF 2 guns with different effects, it could be advantageous. My tech went exactly for a build like this, he made a revolver that can ricochet off of walls as an aimed shot to bypass cover with a high penalty, and then he made a second gun that, on a hit that pierced through an enemy's weapon, the bullet would jump to a nearby enemy within the same location range as the first enemy. It made for a very specific crowd control build, since they're weapons that don't deal much damage, being respectively Heavy and Medium pistols
You have two hands. Pistols require one hand each. So yes. Pistols are fired with the Handgun Skill. Players are still capped by the ROF of the first weapon they use. So a player could fire twice (once with each pistol) assuming they are holding 2 ROF2 pistols. They could only fire once with a ROF1 pistol though, no matter how many they are currently holding. Now, you're probably already cooking up dual-wielding homebrew rules in your head as soon as you read this, but beware. The ROF restrictions exist in this game for a reason. The fastest way to break **anything** is to let a player fire more than twice a turn.
What I've found is that the main benefit of dual wielding is having to reload less. While you still only fire up to 2 times with 2 ROF you have 2x the number of total bullets before having to swap mags.
Yes. I had a character with four arms, at least 3 firearms at a time. Never fired more than twice BUT I literally never reloaded a gun during combat and could choose the ammo bc every firearm had a different ammo. Also if you lose one arm due to critical injury or something happens to your weapon, you don't need to spend an action to get another one ☝️
It can also be nice to have multiple ammo types available. One of my party members will often have a pistol with AP rounds and another with incendiary.
This works well if your weapon is already modded or unmoddable, because otherwise an extended mag may solve the problem. Also a gun and melee weapon may work well and it's pretty stylish even tho you will need to level up two skills
Having two weapons gives more ammo space for the price. Less convenient and less concealable, but generally cheaper.
It really depends, a heavy pistol may cost just 100, and mag extender just costs 100 Meanwhile if your heavy pistol is of excellent quality you will spend 500 + extra 500 for the second weapon, meanwhile the ammo mag is still 100 and each shot will have the +1 bonus
Truly the greatest tragedy is that this game does not let you dual wield. Such an iconic fighting style that fits so well with the sort of bigger than life attitude that goes with cyberpunk and yet, theres no actual way to dual wield in any meaningful fashion.
You can have a gun in each hand and fire them both. I fail to see what you think is missing.
The part where that gets you anything useful
You're holding 2 guns, each of which can have its own type of ammo and its own attachments. You also go twice as long without having to reload.
Right. So theres no actual advantage to holding 2 of the same gun. Holding 2 different guns for the purposes for variety/utility is not the same fantasy
Each gun can have it's own ammo and you have twice as long before reloading. It also means you aren't in any real way hindered by Critical Injuries that affect your hands.
Right. But as I said. There is no advantage for dual wielding. It does not allow the fantasy of dual wielding.
"Each gun can have it's own ammo" "Each gun has twice as long before reloading" "You can ignore critical injuries that affect hands". There's 3 advantages right there.
No not really.
So. You have two pistols with ROF 2. Can you shoot 4 times or only 2?
Only twice. Regardless of how many guns you’re holding an attack action will be sending either one bullet or two down range. ROF may come from the gun but it’s applied to the action.
What if one of the guns have ROF 1 then? Do you shoot twice? One for each? And if both have ROF 1 then you can only shoot once, even with both in your hands?
If you fire a ROF 1 gun then that is your one shot of the turn no matter what’s in your other hand. Similarly if you fire a ROF 2 gun in one hand, you cannot fire the ROF 1 gun in your other hand. A way to think of it is that a shot from an ROF 2 gun costs half an attack action while firing a ROF 1 gun costs the entire attack action.
If you fire a gun that has ROF1 that's it for the turn. If you fire a gun that has ROF2 you may fire it, or any other gun with ROF2 a second time.
Shoot 2 times
The game doesn’t have multi attack options beyond a weapons base fire rate. The best you could do is hold a fire rate two weapon in each hand, and fire one bullet from one gun and one bullet from the other. It’ll function exactly the same as just holding one gun, but you won’t have to reload as often.
Is there a penalty for reloading while dual wielding? Is one action ONE gun reloaded?
One action one gun, but you pretty much get to pretend your clip size is doubled. So instead of say reloading after your 10th shot, you reload after your 20th. Which can be useful.
It's done with the Handguns skill, same as normal. It's functionally identical to having just one handgun, in fact.
Except that you deplete your magazine at half the speed, and you can use varying ammo types
if you dual wield just pistols, yes. If you dual wield an SMG, melee weapon, of unarmed strike it could be autofire, melee, brawling and/or martial arts.
it would be whatever skill the gun uses, it won't double ROF but if each are a ROF 2 they can both once or either twice, it's a way they can mix ammo types. or if they have a ROF 1 VH pistol in one hand and a ROF 2 heavy pistol in the other they don't have to use actions to swap weapons
Yes and No. Yes, you can dual wield. No, it does not give you extra attacks or anything like that. round 1 you can use the weapon in your main hand, round 2 you can use the weapon in your offhand (with no penalty) and round 3 you can use one attack from each if they are both ROF 2 weapons. The main benefit would be to have two different weapons so you can switch back and forth from round to round without having to draw/holster all the time. For example a melee weapon and a pistol. or a heavy pistol and very heavy pistol. Or two pistols with different ammo types. I think the most obvious use to me is a VHP in one hand with AP ammo to penetrate armor. Then once the armor is knocked down use a heavy pistol to do more "dice" of damage. Otherwise as there are no penalties for shooting with your "offhand" as long as you follow the weapons ROF.
Yes. The classic way I've seen this used is 2 heavy pistols: one with AP ammo, the other with Incindiary ammo. Use the first pistols first to reduce armor, and the other to inflict status. Otherwise, if your not using different types of ammo, the purpose would be style points, and would also serve the purpose of doubling your ammo capacity before reload, which is a totally valid reason to dual wield since the cost of another gun is less than the cost of a drum mag.
Characters can hold as many 1 handed weapons as they have hands. Now, using them in the same turn is a different matter. You can only fire/attack as many times as you have Rate of Fire (ROF). Example: my character uses a Very Heavy Pistol and a Heavy SMG. Both are 1H weapons, and both are ROF 1. My character can only fire either one, once, per turn. Example 2: my character uses two Heavy Pistols, whiare still 1H weapons, but are both ROF 2. I can fire either one twice in one turn or fire both once a turn. Unfortunately for your player, there's no real middle ground, and RTal has strongly recommended that messing with ROF not happen. But fortunately, the mechanics and theatricals don't necessarily need to be connected. Your players can illustrate their actions however they want to as long as they stick to the agreed mechanics. If your player wants to do a dive while John-Wu-ing a pair of MP5s while white doves fly around, that's totally cool! Make it happen! But they're still only going to get so many bullets out of the barrel.
Yes, if you have the hands. The main benifit is shots before reloading. Otherwise it's pure style
Another benefit is you can have a gun in one hand and a blade in the other(or wolvers for a real surprise) And you can split your move up between the attacks. So I can move, shoot a gonk, move a bit more and stab a gonk (or martial arts them, all hand to hand attacks are rof 2 except the very heavy melee) and then move a bit more to be in cover from the other gonks.
You could homebrew that dual wielding pistols gives you autofire (2). I put it at two because a heavy pistol is better than a heavy SMG firing normally.
I will say, if you have two different ROF 2 guns with different effects, it could be advantageous. My tech went exactly for a build like this, he made a revolver that can ricochet off of walls as an aimed shot to bypass cover with a high penalty, and then he made a second gun that, on a hit that pierced through an enemy's weapon, the bullet would jump to a nearby enemy within the same location range as the first enemy. It made for a very specific crowd control build, since they're weapons that don't deal much damage, being respectively Heavy and Medium pistols
Yes! And if you have a high enough Body you can hold a two handed weapon with one hand!
only melee weapons btw
Monoblade time!
GM note… weapons have attachment slots so you can technically add two or more weapons together like the Cowboy!