I simply don't understand how Two-Weapon Fighting, Two-Weapon Wielder, and Ambidextrous are supposed to work in conjunction. Two-Weapon fighting looks like the writer went to take a pee in the middle and forgot where he/she left off, seems both redundant and contradictory of itself, and in a few places just plain incorrect. Then, it keeps referring to Two-Weapon Wielder, which tries to help, but again, seems to contradict T-W Fighting. Sudden;y, Ambidextrous is the savior (almost, by negating all penalties to the secondary hand (?),after which all penalties apply as normal?

Someone, please, start from the beginning and explain this mess. Use example. Draw diagrams. I've been looking at this for over four hours and it's a complete clusterfeth to me.

Thanks.

As far as I understand, it should go something like this:

WITHOUT the two-weapon wielder -talent you can only attack once per turn, with the weapon in either hand. If you don't have ambidexterity, you suffer a -20 penalty to attacks with the secondary hand.

WITH the two-weapon wielder -talent, you can perform TWO separate attacks, which can be standard, swift or lightning attacks. Without ambidexterity your penalties are -20 for the primary hand, and -40 to the secondary hand. WITH ambidexterity they are -10 to both. Add any other penalties as required by the attack you are performing.

What this all means in practice, is that you get TWO chances to attack for one half-action. I didn't find any clarification on how this works with aiming, but I guess the aim bonus is only counted for the first attack.

The above examples cover two-weapon fighting in melee, but apart from the two-weapon fighting -talent specialization, melee and ranged combat work the same.

There are a bunch of threads in the forums covering different situations, and I think the errata has some stuff for two-weapon wielder as well.

M

Two-Weapon Fighting basically 'unlocks' the two-weapon action, which allows you to perform two seperate attacks; one from each hand* in a single attack action. There's penalties of course, but those get quickly dropped with a few talents.

Aiming is always just for the first attack you do, so it shouldn't count for your other hand.

*We also tend to allow MIU Weapon interfaces as "another" hand, helpful for twin basics, as their utility really got screwed by the ruling that "no matter what other actions he may be taking at the time" does not include an attack action. Its not as if there's any accurate weapons worth installing on there; +2d10 just brings them up to par with the other stuff you would be firing, some of which is automatic anyways.