So I'm currently running a mixed campaign of all three core books and one player has chosen to be a Xexto (from the stay on target book) and upon learning the dual wielding rules (ie that you choose your main hand and offhand, and if you attack with both use the lower of the two skills/stats (if using 2 different weapons) and increase difficulty by +1 then spend 2 adv to hit with the offhand if successful) was curious if it was possible to quad-wield.
Now my first reaction is to say no since hitting with 4 weapons would be extra-ordinarily powerful, however I considered modding the rules above to simply be +1 difficulty "per extra hand" attacking and then needing to spend 2 adv "per extra hand" you wanted to hit. While it would still be powerful your chances of hitting with +3 difficulty and then still generating 2-6 advantage would seem to kind of sort itself out and more often he'd just stumble over his own hands by increasing the difficulty so much and just fail.
Thoughts?
Mostly looking on how others might deal or even if they have dealt with this.

Similarly I've had a player dual wield in the past and only know has it come up if you get secondary characteristics like defensive, reflect, etc from weapons in your off-hands or do you only get the benefits of the weapon in your main hand as that would have a big impact on the value of dual wielding.

(Source.)

My answer would be a flat "No." For the reasons listed above, plus an interest in keeping the game fair. That's part of the GM's job description, in my opinion.

As to off-hand uses of characteristics, I see no harm in letting a player use Reflect if they're holding their lightsaber in their non-dominant hand. The system makes no move to differentiate between them, so I don't see the need to limit the player's ability to pull off something awesome. That might seem to conflict with what I just said, given that four weapons at a time would be awesome, but see also my comment about fairness.

I guess if I wanted to balance awesome and fair, I would allow the Xexto to carry four blaster pistols or two blaster rifles at a time, using all of his hands. However, he can still only fire as many as would normally be permitted to a two-armed creature. So, he could only fire a maximum of two blaster pistols or one blaster rifle at once. He can have the others in-hand just in case one runs out of ammo or otherwise malfunctions.

(Source.)

My answer would be a flat "No." For the reasons listed above, plus an interest in keeping the game fair. That's part of the GM's job description, in my opinion.

As to off-hand uses of characteristics, I see no harm in letting a player use Reflect if they're holding their lightsaber in their non-dominant hand. The system makes no move to differentiate between them, so I don't see the need to limit the player's ability to pull off something awesome. That might seem to conflict with what I just said, given that four weapons at a time would be awesome, but see also my comment about fairness.

I guess if I wanted to balance awesome and fair, I would allow the Xexto to carry four blaster pistols or two blaster rifles at a time, using all of his hands. However, he can still only fire as many as would normally be permitted to a two-armed creature. So, he could only fire a maximum of two blaster pistols or one blaster rifle at once. He can have the others in-hand just in case one runs out of ammo or otherwise malfunctions.

Fair enough, the only reason I'm considering allowing it is with +3 difficulty he'd get those occasional awesome "I hit a lot of guys" moments but usually I think it'd just result in no hits and lots of threat. I'm going to talk to my other players to see if they would think it's fair or not as well as I don't want anyone feeling like one players getting special treatment.

As for the specialities thing I struck it out shortly after I posted because I came up with just a simple no solution as I don't want players wielding two superior weapons and generating the automatic result for hitting with the offhand or just stacking absurd amounts of defense that way. I figured if you're going to parry you'd only parry with say one weapon and thus the qualities wouldn't stack and similarly you'd only get the qualities of the weapon you're hitting with. Ie dual wielding with double superior would mean your first hit would have the +1 advantage and if you hit with the second it would have +1 advantage from it's own superior but not the main hands as it's the one hitting.

I like your +3 difficulty idea, in addition you could also require 1 prepare maneuver each time he wants to do his quad-wield attack to balance against his species ability. This is to represent the additional concentration required to achieve effective use of the 4 weapons (or 2 if he is using rifles). Or you could say he doesn't gain the benefits of his species ability when he is quad-wielding.

where is the rule for duel wielding?

(Source.)

I guess if I wanted to balance awesome and fair, I would allow the Xexto to carry four blaster pistols or two blaster rifles at a time, using all of his hands. However, he can still only fire as many as would normally be permitted to a two-armed creature. So, he could only fire a maximum of two blaster pistols or one blaster rifle at once. He can have the others in-hand just in case one runs out of ammo or otherwise malfunctions.

This.

where is the rule for duel wielding?

I believe it is page 210-211 in EotE core. Not sure in AoR.

Now my first reaction is to say no since hitting with 4 weapons would be extra-ordinarily powerful, however I considered modding the rules above to simply be +1 difficulty "per extra hand" attacking and then needing to spend 2 adv "per extra hand" you wanted to hit. While it would still be powerful your chances of hitting with +3 difficulty and then still generating 2-6 advantage would seem to kind of sort itself out and more often he'd just stumble over his own hands by increasing the difficulty so much and just fail.

This came up before (a loooong while ago, and I won't search for it ). I believe the eventual consensus was that treating it like auto-fire (with a max number of hits = to number of hands) was difficult enough. If the PC is using the same weapons/skills, etc, then the rules for auto-fire and two-weapon combat are identical, except auto-fire grants extra hits per two advantages. In most cases, adding the extra difficulty is going to prevent getting more advantages, so they aren't going to be regularly hitting with multiple attacks anyway.

Also, make sure to charge appropriate maneuvers to arm the extra weapons. It will take a couple rounds of immobility, even with Quick Draw, to draw all those weapons.

If you're worried about it being overpowered, rather than adding even more difficulty, which is a major suppression on a positive outcome, there are several ways you can make it harder, but also that much more rewarding if the PC pulls it off:

- upgrade the difficulty for each extra hand, so a medium range shot or a melee attack would be against RRP with four hands.

- require additional Advantages for each extra hit, so first is 2A, next is 3A, last is 4A.

- add automatic Threat for each hand above 2, similar to the Quick Trigger mod. This will suppress the advantage count and can be narrated through strain.

- take a page from the Guns Blazing talent for Gunslinger, and require the PC to spend 1 Strain for each hand over the second, for each round they make an attack. Basically if they want to use all four, they have to spend 2 Strain per round.

The biggest problem with adding 3 difficulty to fire 4 weapons is that the character will eventually get good at it despite the extra difficulty. And you will be in the same situations as those with Autofire or Double Lightsabers. I have a character who can get 5 Yellow dice because of True Aim and 4 purple wouldn't mean much to him.

The building blocks for this kind of house rule are already there. No need to overcomplicate things or rationalize why an alien species can't do something that isn't actually a that overpowered. I think the additional difficulty increases, and the Advantage cost required, are sufficient for balance reasons.

If you are concerned about balance, consider that autofire blows two (or four) weapon fighting out of the water on multiple levels. A simple difficulty increase per weapon is enough.

(Source.)

I guess if I wanted to balance awesome and fair, I would allow the Xexto to carry four blaster pistols or two blaster rifles at a time, using all of his hands. However, he can still only fire as many as would normally be permitted to a two-armed creature. So, he could only fire a maximum of two blaster pistols or one blaster rifle at once. He can have the others in-hand just in case one runs out of ammo or otherwise malfunctions.

This.

I read a summary of an interesting study one time about how cultural differences affected a persons environmental awareness, what they consciously perceived and effects on snap decision making. When shown images with a dominant element and peripheral elements for less than a second, those raised in western cultures typically had better recall/decision-making regarding the dominant image and eastern cultures tended to be better with the peripheral elements.

Between cultural impact having a very real effect on perception/reaction/decision-making and the biological hard-wiring that would inevitable come with evolving multiple limb groups, I very much doubt/disagree with the reasoning in the above comic. I also find it highly doubtful that any creature would develop multiple limb groups without evolving the mental process to effectively use visual data from stereoscopic vision with said limb groups.

As for the specialities thing I struck it out shortly after I posted because I came up with just a simple no solution as I don't want players wielding two superior weapons and generating the automatic result for hitting with the offhand or just stacking absurd amounts of defense that way. I figured if you're going to parry you'd only parry with say one weapon and thus the qualities wouldn't stack and similarly you'd only get the qualities of the weapon you're hitting with. Ie dual wielding with double superior would mean your first hit would have the +1 advantage and if you hit with the second it would have +1 advantage from it's own superior but not the main hands as it's the one hitting.

I think wielding two superior weapons is well within the rules and not out of balance. The free advantage from the second weapon is not activated unless you generate the two advantage (including the one from the primary weapon) to activate the second hit.

As far as automatically discarding the qualities of a weapon in the secondary hand, you've completely nerfed the defensive qualities of items like the riot shield (Defensive 2, Deflection 2). I suggest not stacking defensive and deflection between the two weapons. So a character with two vibroswords has Defensive 1, not 2. That should keep things balanced. (Note: I cannot find a RAW reference or developer answer to support this, but it seems to be a popular ruling in other threads.)

For those interested. Here's a chart of the probability distribution of the possible results from 1 Ability, 5 Proficiency vs 5 Difficulty. This is based on someone with 5 Ranks in a skill, Characteristic of 6 shooting 4 weapons at Medium range with +3 Difficulty added. The negative numbers on the chart represent a net Failure or net Threat result while the positive results are for net Success or net Advantage. The range for the axes is the actual possible results, so there isn't going to be more than 12 Successes or 12 Advantages from that dice pool. Obviously adding Boost or Setback will shift this chart around as they'll expand the possible results. Given those dice, there are 65,229,815,808 possible combinations of results possible.

As for the specialities thing I struck it out shortly after I posted because I came up with just a simple no solution as I don't want players wielding two superior weapons and generating the automatic result for hitting with the offhand or just stacking absurd amounts of defense that way. I figured if you're going to parry you'd only parry with say one weapon and thus the qualities wouldn't stack and similarly you'd only get the qualities of the weapon you're hitting with. Ie dual wielding with double superior would mean your first hit would have the +1 advantage and if you hit with the second it would have +1 advantage from it's own superior but not the main hands as it's the one hitting.

I think wielding two superior weapons is well within the rules and not out of balance. The free advantage from the second weapon is not activated unless you generate the two advantage (including the one from the primary weapon) to activate the second hit.

As far as automatically discarding the qualities of a weapon in the secondary hand, you've completely nerfed the defensive qualities of items like the riot shield (Defensive 2, Deflection 2). I suggest not stacking defensive and deflection between the two weapons. So a character with two vibroswords has Defensive 1, not 2. That should keep things balanced. (Note: I cannot find a RAW reference or developer answer to support this, but it seems to be a popular ruling in other threads.)

You misunderstand what I was doing, I'm not "nerfing" anything beause I'm not disregarding the qualities of the offhand item, rather I'm not stacking them. I meant when hitting the weapon hitting would only apply IT'S qualities. Ie if my first roll was 1 success and 3 advantage then my main hand would generate 1 advantage for 4 advantage. I could then spend 2 to hit with the second weapon and have 2 remaining to spend on the hit with the first weapon.

Then when I hit with the second hand I'd have 4 to spend again, ie 3 +1 for the second hands superior. This in opposition of the other scenario where I go 1 success 3 advantage +2 advantage or 2 superior weapons.

As for not stacking that's exactly what I said when I said: "or just stacking absurd amounts of defense that way." Ie you'd take the higher defense whether that be the offhand or the mainhand of two items.

As for the specialities thing I struck it out shortly after I posted because I came up with just a simple no solution as I don't want players wielding two superior weapons and generating the automatic result for hitting with the offhand or just stacking absurd amounts of defense that way. I figured if you're going to parry you'd only parry with say one weapon and thus the qualities wouldn't stack and similarly you'd only get the qualities of the weapon you're hitting with. Ie dual wielding with double superior would mean your first hit would have the +1 advantage and if you hit with the second it would have +1 advantage from it's own superior but not the main hands as it's the one hitting.

I think wielding two superior weapons is well within the rules and not out of balance. The free advantage from the second weapon is not activated unless you generate the two advantage (including the one from the primary weapon) to activate the second hit.

As far as automatically discarding the qualities of a weapon in the secondary hand, you've completely nerfed the defensive qualities of items like the riot shield (Defensive 2, Deflection 2). I suggest not stacking defensive and deflection between the two weapons. So a character with two vibroswords has Defensive 1, not 2. That should keep things balanced. (Note: I cannot find a RAW reference or developer answer to support this, but it seems to be a popular ruling in other threads.)

You misunderstand what I was doing, I'm not "nerfing" anything beause I'm not disregarding the qualities of the offhand item, rather I'm not stacking them. I meant when hitting the weapon hitting would only apply IT'S qualities. Ie if my first roll was 1 success and 3 advantage then my main hand would generate 1 advantage for 4 advantage. I could then spend 2 to hit with the second weapon and have 2 remaining to spend on the hit with the first weapon.

Then when I hit with the second hand I'd have 4 to spend again, ie 3 +1 for the second hands superior. This in opposition of the other scenario where I go 1 success 3 advantage +2 advantage or 2 superior weapons.

As for not stacking that's exactly what I said when I said: "or just stacking absurd amounts of defense that way." Ie you'd take the higher defense whether that be the offhand or the mainhand of two items.

I understand now. I was a little confused by the sentence "thus the qualities wouldn't stack and similarly you'd only get the qualities of the weapon you're hitting with." I thought you were applying that to the defensive qualities.

As for the specialities thing I struck it out shortly after I posted because I came up with just a simple no solution as I don't want players wielding two superior weapons and generating the automatic result for hitting with the offhand or just stacking absurd amounts of defense that way. I figured if you're going to parry you'd only parry with say one weapon and thus the qualities wouldn't stack and similarly you'd only get the qualities of the weapon you're hitting with. Ie dual wielding with double superior would mean your first hit would have the +1 advantage and if you hit with the second it would have +1 advantage from it's own superior but not the main hands as it's the one hitting.

I think wielding two superior weapons is well within the rules and not out of balance. The free advantage from the second weapon is not activated unless you generate the two advantage (including the one from the primary weapon) to activate the second hit.

As far as automatically discarding the qualities of a weapon in the secondary hand, you've completely nerfed the defensive qualities of items like the riot shield (Defensive 2, Deflection 2). I suggest not stacking defensive and deflection between the two weapons. So a character with two vibroswords has Defensive 1, not 2. That should keep things balanced. (Note: I cannot find a RAW reference or developer answer to support this, but it seems to be a popular ruling in other threads.)

You misunderstand what I was doing, I'm not "nerfing" anything beause I'm not disregarding the qualities of the offhand item, rather I'm not stacking them. I meant when hitting the weapon hitting would only apply IT'S qualities. Ie if my first roll was 1 success and 3 advantage then my main hand would generate 1 advantage for 4 advantage. I could then spend 2 to hit with the second weapon and have 2 remaining to spend on the hit with the first weapon.

Then when I hit with the second hand I'd have 4 to spend again, ie 3 +1 for the second hands superior. This in opposition of the other scenario where I go 1 success 3 advantage +2 advantage or 2 superior weapons.

As for not stacking that's exactly what I said when I said: "or just stacking absurd amounts of defense that way." Ie you'd take the higher defense whether that be the offhand or the mainhand of two items.

I understand now. I was a little confused by the sentence "thus the qualities wouldn't stack and similarly you'd only get the qualities of the weapon you're hitting with." I thought you were applying that to the defensive qualities.

No worries, but you're never hitting with a defensive weapon so it's not really relevant either as the only time you benefit from defensive is when you're being attacked rather than when you're attacking.

If he/she were my player I'd probably allow it for a couple reasons. First off they paid for the ability to have "Additional Limbs". Second off the picture shows the extra limbs are the same dimensions as what we would call the first or upper pair. I can see no reason why they wouldn't have full use of the limbs to be used in concert in the same way we use two arms. They could type with all four hands (assuming a special keyboard), knit a sweater, eat a meal or fly a ship using them just like we would only more complex. Knit, knit, purl, knit takes on a whole new meaning with an extra pair of limbs.

So combat with four arms. I'd say the adaptations mentions make sense. However I'd say two weapons would be the norm for them and the 3rd and 4th would be the equivalent of dual wielding. So I'd say two weapons at the same target is a normal roll with only one Advantage being used to get the second hit. After that apply the modifiers for dual wielding only once, the third and fourth weapon being like us using two weapons.

Sounds too good to be true? Well let me get to the difficulties. First off I'd be a real A-hole about encumbrance. Unless they buy up Brawn a whole lot they aren't carrying anything heavier than 4 Blast Pistols or 2 Blast Carbines. I'd also come up with a house rule on Cumbersome limiting them to light weapons so they don't get too nasty.

Well, gotta bolt. More later.

Got an opportunity to play X-Wing so I had to drop pretty fast. When the Ball and Chain allows us to game we can't pass it up...

Ok, House Rule on Cumbersome with dual,tri or quad wielding.

I'd say make the encumbrance of the heaviest weapons into it's Cumbersome number when wielding more than one weapon at a time. So a typical Wookiee can still hold a couple Blaster Rifles and fire them without a problem which makes sense and a well build Trandosahan could fire a couple of Heavy Blaster Rifles with ease. However your typical Xexto can handle Blaster Pistols and an exceptional specimen might do Heavy Blaster Pistols but dropping 50 exp to be able to handle Blaster Carbines seems a bit crazy.

I'm not that much of a math guy to run the numbers out but Four Heavy Blaster Pistols would be Eight Encumbrance and 2,800 credits for in essence a Autofire weapon with a Damage of 7... Kinda sucky. Why not play a Wookiee with a Heavy Repeating Blaster?

I'd also make sure nothing ever fit the character and they'd pay 25% extra for everything item of clothing and armor they bought.

but I'm a ****...

I'd use +1 difficulty per additional weapon, and step up a die if more than 2 hands are needed.

I'd also allow dual wielding two 2-handers... at only +1 difficulty, but it's red...