Mods/ attachments on dual wielded weapons

By Farstar, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

With the recent publishing of Fly Casual one of my players decided to play a gunslinging smuggler. He immediately named his guns and started placing mods on them and the questions arose about what mods affect combat and when.

For instance, If both guns are exactly the same and have bantha's-eye laser sights on them (laser gives one free advantage on a hit) It was clear to me that since the first weapon is the only one to hit on a success and the second one hits with enough advantages, that you only get the free advantage from the second gun if you spent enough adv. to have the second gun hit.
so he rolls 1 success, 1 advantage, + 1 free adv. from laser. Pays 2 adv to have second gun hit and this nets him another free adv. because of the laser sight.

This seemed to make the most sense to me, I can see this working in most cases (the second gun doesn't hit so the mods don't affect anything) however I can foresee a certain player wanting to use a mod to affect his die pool without using the weapon in the hit

Example left gun has the multi-optic sight and the right gun has the laser sight, he aims twice, then fires.

Does he get the benefits of both sighting methods if he doesn't pay the adv. to hit with both weapons?

the sight on the left gun removes 2 setback dice on the check due to smoke or darkness, and the laser on the right gives the advantage on the hit, however once he successfully hits he doesn't have the advantages to spend to trigger the second gun even though it has already affected the dice pool. the rules specify he must pick which weapon is the primary weapon but the game makes no such specifications that he is aiming with only one gun's methods (yes I know that 2 scopes makes no sense as it would be really difficult to see with both, but a laser and one sight is feasible) he also argues that it is one maneuver to aim with each one.

This now has gone a bit too far and the player thinks because he might be able to aim with the left "gun" and not have to spend advantages on it to trigger it that he could make an "aiming pistol" and make it a bunch of different weapon attachments (mostly sights) and use it in his offhand with the intention of never firing it, only aiming with it to give his right gun more umph. His thought process will be if he looks thru the scope on the left "gun" and lines his laser thats on the right gun up with the crosshairs of the left scope he will connect. Giving him the variety of scope options on the left gun and the damage effects on his right (or main) gun. He calls them Fury and Finesse and honestly it is pretty clever but it is a bit min-maxy for my taste what do you guys think?

I haven't actually come across this issue (yet) in the game I am running, but I know how my party works and they'll get here eventually.

The answer to your dilemma is in the AoR and F&D rulebooks. While EotE says you need to use the highest base difficulty, AoR (and F&D) refines this to the just plain highest difficulty. So in the case of things like Lasersight on Pistol A, and Multioptics on Pistol B*, the player would not benefit from the multioptics since the difficulty for Pistol A is the higher of the two.

So an "aiming pistol" won't work because by it's very nature it will typically have the easier difficulty.

*Assuming a scenario where the multioptics would do something.

AH right you are! page 224 Age of rebellion. I guess I forgot about the higher difficulty of the two weapons.

Thanks Ghost for the speedy reply.

I haven't actually come across this issue (yet) in the game I am running, but I know how my party works and they'll get here eventually.

This issue is actually addressed in a response from Sam Stewart in the thread “FFG Developer Answered Questions” at https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/108101-ffg-developer-answered-questions/page-4#entry1278433

Ah, so official answer is the "aiming blaster" still wouldn't work because it's bonuses can't be applied...

This might be a good time share a document I made that goes through the steps of Two Weapon Combat.

We had a long discussion about this a few months back, and I wrote this to try and clarify how it worked in my mind, specifically when it comes to how Cumbersome and Unwieldy qualities are applied.

I'm not positive is this is completely correct or not, so if anyone sees something that doesn't look quite right, let me know and I'll change the document.

The RAW is that the Second weapon's effects and affects essentially do not exist until it is activated by spending Advantages generated by the Attack Roll.