I would like four arms to grant some kind mechanical advantage in combat, yes. Why shouldn't it? It's not impossible to do, and of course it will cost a fair number credits, consume cybernetic upgrade slots, and possibly even cost some XP if something like that could be worked out.

There is a counter-argument that having four arms should inflict some kind of mechanical penalty. Why shouldn't it? It's not impossible that the arms would get in the way of one another.

You are correct, it absolutely could and SHOULD come with penalties of some kind. Hence why I want to discuss the concept and bounce ideas off you guys. (It should be noted, however, that this character is made from the spare parts of General Grievous, meaning his two arms can split into four as a maneuver, thus keeping the extra arms from getting in the way of most tasks when he isn't fighting.)

Earlier on someone suggested that adding an extra Difficulty die per additional additional arm would be a good fix, which I thought was a bit too much, hence why I suggested substituting Setback dice instead.

So far, no one has been able to provide a reason why such an approach would be unbalancing even when compared to Auto-fire, yet I'm still seeing a lot of instance that it's a bad idea anyway. (One person even told me my approach to GMing was garbage... granted that netted my friends and I a rather hearty laugh, but it was also totally uncalled for. The fact that I want to figure out how to make this work shouldn't offend anyone.)

Call me a munchkin, a powergamer, or anything else you want to call me; if it means I'll get a fun, reasonably balanced set of rules regarding the use of four arms in combat, I'll be happy.

For the record, despite the brief spat of nastiness, I've been finding this thread rather useful. THANK YOU, EVERYONE!!! It's not your game, so I really appreciate all the help.

Just an honest piece of advice, JH - you might want to rein the attitude in a bit. You seem like a nice guy, but the 'I'm such a great GM!' thing sounds a tad arrogant. Maybe you have GMed for famous people and have a long waiting list, but that's not a way to win friends and influence people. Maybe you don't realise how you're coming across.

You've talked about making major changes and people have let you know why they mostly don't think it's a great idea.

I don't feel personally it's a GM's job to 'say yes' or 'say no' all the time - it's their job to keep the game fun for everyone, which may sometimes mean reining in the crazier ideas. I obviously don't know your game but it sounds like someone is trying to build a munchkinised character here.

You're removing a lot of the 'checks and balances' in the system, granting multiple attacks and ignoring encumbrance rules. At the very least, you'll probably find yourself having to ramp up every encounter to make it even slightly challenging, because with 600XP plus all these overkill abilities, he'll be one-shotting rancors and all the adversaries in the EoE book will be pushovers.

And this assumes all your other players are okay with a fellow PC that can slaughter Darth Vader with ease.

But as you say - it's your game. Maybe a Superhero Star Wars game would be fun, something like Force Unleashed, I don't know. Just accept that changing the fundamentals of the mechanics is going to have consequences.

Just an honest piece of advice, JH - you might want to rein the attitude in a bit. You seem like a nice guy, but the 'I'm such a great GM!' thing sounds a tad arrogant. Maybe you have GMed for famous people and have a long waiting list, but that's not a way to win friends and influence people. Maybe you don't realise how you're coming across.

You've talked about making major changes and people have let you know why they mostly don't think it's a great idea.

I don't feel personally it's a GM's job to 'say yes' or 'say no' all the time - it's their job to keep the game fun for everyone, which may sometimes mean reining in the crazier ideas. I obviously don't know your game but it sounds like someone is trying to build a munchkinised character here.

You're removing a lot of the 'checks and balances' in the system, granting multiple attacks and ignoring encumbrance rules. At the very least, you'll probably find yourself having to ramp up every encounter to make it even slightly challenging, because with 600XP plus all these overkill abilities, he'll be one-shotting rancors and all the adversaries in the EoE book will be pushovers.

And this assumes all your other players are okay with a fellow PC that can slaughter Darth Vader with ease.

But as you say - it's your game. Maybe a Superhero Star Wars game would be fun, something like Force Unleashed, I don't know. Just accept that changing the fundamentals of the mechanics is going to have consequences.

Of course it will. But that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done. The "multiple attacks" I'm granting don't exceed what's already granted by Auto-fire, and since when am I ignoring Encumbrance? Again, there's already a player with a damage 18 Auto-fire weapon; how would this new player exceed that? So far no one has even attempted to touch that one.

Fair enough, JH. You know what's best for your game.

I inherited a play-by-email game that's now 17 years old, and I've run it for the last 12 years. What started as a grimdark low-fantasy game is now a crazy, over-the-top, anything-goes type Steampunk/Sci-fi/High-fantasy game. Several years ago, one of the PCs gave birth to a talking animal that grants unlimited wishes. Amazingly, it didn't completely destroy the game, and the players are still psyched for it.

So having a wild and crazy over-the-top game can certainly be fun. But I wouldn't personally want to do that with Star Wars, and certainly not in a game as low-key as Edge of the Empire.

And personally, I don't use lightsabers or auto-fire, which seem very broken to me. (Auto-fire is okay until you max out the mods and relevant skills, when it gets stupidly broken).

For us, EoE is a game of sneaking around, carrying easy-to-hide pistols and using our wits and fast-talk. Every so often, we break out the big guns and the max-out Move power, but mostly I try to keep the feeling of being on the 'Fringe'.

To each his or her own.

So let me get this right JHex... you're essentially saying that Autofire is broken so you're going to make another set of rules that are only slightly less broken because, SHUT UP!

Seriously this is what your argument boils down to.

Also unless I missed something the only real mechanical disadvantage you are suggesting for this is a couple extra Setback dice. In fact you seem to want to just add advantages , you mentioned a free Advantage for each extra arm, which would basically negate those two Setback dice since the odds of getting a Threat on a Setback die is only 1/3.

I'm not calling you a Munchkin, but the rules you're suggesting and your argument backing them up are. Regardless it's your game so go ahead and ignore all of us haters and have fun, just stop looking for justification from us. Say "Thanks for your opinions but..." and have at it. It's okay, you have my permission to mangle the rules as much as you want.

I'm being sarcastic but at the same time I'm not really, I'm not playing in your game so it really doesn't matter to me beyond the intellectual. I gave you an idea that seemed fair on it's own merits and it wasn't Munckinie enough for you, I can't do much else.

And personally, I don't use lightsabers or auto-fire, which seem very broken to me. (Auto-fire is okay until you max out the mods and relevant skills, when it gets stupidly broken).

I understand though keep in mind that Lightsabers are not really intended for the PCs to use yet, or at least not as they will be used when Force & Destiny come out. Right now it's essentially just a big can opener because there is no accompanying Skill or Talent Tree so we're left with jury rigging rules to cover it, all of which will be superseded in not so long anyway. It's a super powerful weapon but it's also somewhat balanced by the fact that it's open season on anyone whose caught with one. Good police, bad Empire, any Bounty Hunter, thug, criminal, or Empire leaning good Samaritan, and even just some kid on the street who wants to get the bounty to help raise his family out of poverty can, and very likely will take a shot at the person caring one.

The Riot Gun is an example of a weapon not found stated in the available equipment lists and will probably end up stated a little differently in a future supplement. These are weapons designed as part of an Adversary's stat block and and again are not really intended for the PCs to use yet, at least in their present form. So using them as an argument for anything is a bit premature. For those weapons I'm just going to wait until I see it in the available equipment list.

JonahHex, my gut reaction is that your solution does not surpass Autofire, and IMO a lot of the responses you've gotten have run into "theorycraft" territory. My biggest piece of advice would be to grab some sample dice pools (probably in the dice roller, for efficiency) and see what kind of results you get.

The two main things I think you should compare are adding 1 difficulty die per extra attack, as well as your setback substitution.

The combat monster in the game I'm in is a Hired Gun assassin Droid (who ignored the whole leadership side of the tree), with 5 Agility after Dedication. He's got a modded heavy blaster rifle, and he almost never uses Autofire. For one thing, he tends to rack up a lot of strain using extra maneuvers, and so he needs his advantage for recovering said strain (IMO he's a bit too strain conservative, and spends more Advantage on it than he needs to, but I digress). With all of the setback dice getting thrown around, and upgrades from Adversary (he's usually focusing on the tough guy in a fight), even the extra difficulty for Autofire can sometimes be too risky (admittedly his gun has also been damaged for half the campaign, which is another automatic setback die).

My guess would be that with all of those negative dice in the pool your 4-armed Droid is usually not going to generate enough Advantage to reliably hit with all 4 attacks. In order to make that a viable option, he'll need a very high Agility (4 or 5), and probably maxed out ranks in Ranged light (if you're using Heavy Blaster Pistols). That's a lot of XP spent to boost just one skill. When you add in the opportunity cost of spending so many credits on the arms, I think you're playing it conservatively enough. Along those lines, I find it funny that some of the responses have been along the lines of "you know he can do a lot with 600 XP, right?" Ummm, ok, every other member of the party also has 600 XP, so they're likely at a higher power level than most other players (my character is at 450 total, including starting XP, and we've been playing for months).

I also wanted to add that the aforementioned assassin Droid in my game has just last session stated that he probably wouldn't build a character like that again. Sure, he's a combat monster, but the rest of his skills are suffering pretty badly. He's usually rocking 1 green die for social and knowledge checks, and about the only other thing that he's halfway decent at are Agility-based skills (since I'm the primary pilot he's not even doing what is probably his second best option). In contrast, my Fringer is a great pilot and astrogator, and is the closest thing we have to a "face" with strong Deception, Streetwise, Negotiation, and Cool, and isn't too shabby in combat either (my recent acquisition of Dodge helps!). I don't absolutely destroy skill checks like he does with his huge ranged heavy dice pool, but the odds are usually stacked in my favor for most rolls, and I can do a huge range of activities. In a game that's not all that combat focused (we've gone 3 or 4 consecutive sessions without ground combat), the disadvantages of a "broken" combat monster are definitely highlighted. For the record, most of those sessions could have resulted in combat, but we've generally averted it through other means.

Your 4-armed Droid might face an additional challenge, in that many civilized areas might deem him too dangerous. My group has done bank heists, casino heists, been in the equivalent of the Mustafar stock market (trade in mined materials!), etc. Security tends to be tight in these types of places. Our assassin Droid has hidden compartments (a houseruled mod based on the Hidden Storage talent) that can fit a light blaster pistol, but in the higher-class areas he's been unable to bring even that if there are electronic weapon scanners. A 4-armed battle droid with built-in guns? Guess who's waiting in the ship. Even if the guns aren't built-in, ok now if combat breaks out you'll probably be making Brawl checks with a PC highly specialized in Ranged Light.

So no, I don't think your Droid will break the game, as there are both mechanical and RP disadvantages to the concept. Again, I'd run some test dice pools using his expected Agi and skill ranks. See how many advantages tend to get triggered when you add a purple for each additional attack. I like this option for its simplicity and consistency with the existing dual wielding rules, but I agree that it might be too harsh. At medium range you're looking at 5 purples, any upgrades from Adversary or DPs, and any setback dice from cover or dice results. Plus the fact that Ranged Light weapons will have a tougher time with high-soak enemies than a heavy blaster rifle with auto-fire. My guess is he'll be missing a lot more than most PCs, forget getting enough Advantage.

The Riot Gun is an example of a weapon not found stated in the available equipment lists and will probably end up stated a little differently in a future supplement. These are weapons designed as part of an Adversary's stat block and and again are not really intended for the PCs to use yet, at least in their present form. So using them as an argument for anything is a bit premature. For those weapons I'm just going to wait until I see it in the available equipment list.

Interestingly, my party fought a bunch of CSA agents with riot guns early on. We took them because we were unarmed, and even though most of us haven't used them since it was still trivially easy for them to get into PC hands.

Interestingly, my party fought a bunch of CSA agents with riot guns early on. We took them because we were unarmed, and even though most of us haven't used them since it was still trivially easy for them to get into PC hands.

Yea, I think it was an error on the designers part to include weapons that the PCs could get without having them fully stated in the equipment list. But it's likely that it was placed in the book like the Weighed Head Mod, that can't be attached to anything currently in EotE, and was, as S. Stewart said, for weapons available in future books.

@Alien270, I like your thoughts and approach. I'd point out though that developing a 600xp PC over time is a different animal then making one from scratch, you get to leapfrog over all the growing pains and go right to the uber-part. Plus from JHex's other argument:

My job is to say yes. "No" should be foreign word in any circumstance that doesn't ruin the fun of anyone at the table or spoil the mood of Star Wars.

I'm guessing any of the RP limitations you mentioned, which I totally agree with, wouldn't be something he'd bother with. I mean if you say yes to everything then how can you restrict your player's in anything without it seeming arbitrary?

Wow, how horribly NOT constructive that is. And what a terrible attitude to have about saying "no" to your players. That's just unimaginative and frankly a little sad. I wouldn't want to play in any of your games, and I've always been able to work up a waiting list of people wanting to get in on mine with minimal effort. It's lots of fun, and I take pride in it even as I allow players to create droids with four arms.

More to the point, Superior adds an Advantage result to the result of a skill check. As you only make an attack with ONE weapon even while attacking with two, having multiple Superior weapons would not add an additional Advantage result to the result. I don't know where you're getting that from, and if you would like to debate that minutia without being a **** about it I'd be more than happy to, but I feel I've more than outlined the reasons why I interpret the RAW already, as well as the reasons why I want to figure this out.

Core Rulebook page 32, fourth paragraph: "It should be noted that no character is ever a 'wrong' choice, regardless of the campaign. The GM should never discourage a player from a particular character choice and should integrate all the character concepts into the game at hand."

In this case, the character concept involves a droid that fights with four arms, and not just as window dressing. My answer is "yes", because "no" is just plain boring.

I'm sorry you don't feel people giving you balanced rules are constructive, and I'm happy your players can somehow manage to have fun despite your obvious inability to interpret RAW, understand the concept of action economy, letting players have equal opportunity, or otherwise be a decent GM.

Having 4 arms already means he doesn't need to drop his weapon to stim pack or active something while dual wielding so hey, free actions, he can't easily be disarmed, have his weapons sundered, be seriously hampered by a loss of limb critical or if he's using guns, have the despair's out of ammo effect matter. It is already a big advantage, it is not "window dressing". He effectively has Spare Clip, Quick Draw and a few other traits.

This is an abstract game where a combat round is a minute of time. Giving extra attacks for 4 arms is not only bad mechanically but it is counter to how the game is bulit. You should be playing Champions or Mutants and Masterminds, not EotE if you want to be making up rules to every character option. There are numerous ways to represent him being a better fighter including simply buying up ranks of melee, buying feral strength trait or increasing brawn and these do fit the system and don't break anything.

Core rulebook page 32 is a picture of Sasha. Regardless, I'll pretend you're not pulling stuff out of your butt. The quote is no doubt discussing character concepts and backgrounds and integrating them into the story, it in no way implies making up a bunch of broken rules for every character. So it is irrelevant to the discussion. The fact that you can't even understand this means it isn't worth having a discussion with you.

I'm sorry you don't feel people giving you balanced rules are constructive, and I'm happy your players can somehow manage to have fun despite your obvious inability to interpret RAW, understand the concept of action economy, letting players have equal opportunity, or otherwise be a decent GM.

Having 4 arms already means he doesn't need to drop his weapon to stim pack or active something while dual wielding so hey, free actions, he can't easily be disarmed, have his weapons sundered, be seriously hampered by a loss of limb critical or if he's using guns, have the despair's out of ammo effect matter. It is already a big advantage, it is not "window dressing". He effectively has Spare Clip, Quick Draw and a few other traits.

A few counter-points. JonahHex has asserted (and my gut reaction is that I agree) that 4-armed dual-wielding is a balanced rule. The increase in negative dice means that the full impact (4 actual attacks) will only occur on extremely lucky rolls, as the Advantage cost is very high. Moreover, you're going to be generating a lot less Advantage than the guy with Autofire because you're adding a negative die (purple or black, depending on which rule JonahHex goes with) for each attack. Autofire seems flat-out better, and that's a published (and therefore presumably balanced) rule.

In any case, claiming definitively whether or not this house rule is truly balanced (or, conversely, broken) is premature until it's either tested in play or with sample dice pool rolls.

Regarding your action economy reservations, on the other side of that coin drawing 4 weapons is going to be costly in terms of maneuvers. I'm away from books, but IIRC our group has been ruling that it's a maneuver to draw a single weapon. Even if I'm mistaken on that, you can establish as part of the houserule that if a normal character can draw 2 weapons with a single maneuver, a 4-armed Droid can still be capped at 2 per maneuver.

Regarding stim packs, he's still got to drop a weapon to draw a stim pack. And losing a limb is most definitely a big deal, as JonahHex has stated that the 2 extra arms are 10,000 credit cybernetics. Potentially having enough "spare" weapons on-hand to still function when disarmed or when out of ammo is, IMO, countered by the increased maneuver cost of actually drawing those extra weapons in the first place. And the encumbrance cost of carrying them.

@Alien270, I like your thoughts and approach. I'd point out though that developing a 600xp PC over time is a different animal then making one from scratch, you get to leapfrog over all the growing pains and go right to the uber-part. Plus from JHex's other argument:

My job is to say yes. "No" should be foreign word in any circumstance that doesn't ruin the fun of anyone at the table or spoil the mood of Star Wars.

I'm guessing any of the RP limitations you mentioned, which I totally agree with, wouldn't be something he'd bother with. I mean if you say yes to everything then how can you restrict your player's in anything without it seeming arbitrary?

I think I'm being misunderstood; I never said to say "yes" to everything, I said it's the GM's job to figure out HOW to yes. Sometimes it's possible, sometimes it isn't , and almost always there are going to be strings attached. For instance, if a Force Sensitive Exile player wants his character to have fire powers, I'm going to make said character go on a series of quests to seek out lost holocrons, knowledgeable shamans, and ancient historical records. While the Force doesn't ordinarily conjure fire, it most certainly has the potential to do so, and steps should be taken to make sure such powers feel unique and special. (The player would also need to understand that fire powers would be imperfectly house ruled, and subject to change to keep things balanced with the RAW.)

Btw what RP limitations are you talking about, and why would you assume my player wouldn't bother with them? He just finished his character, and has only 2 ranks in Ranged (Light) and Melee; he was more concerned with Athletics and Coordination so he could do cool, bug-like things. He's no munchkin, just a fan of robots from all forms of media. He also enjoys Star Wars, and wants to try his hand at exploring some Arthur C. Clark-style questions about droid sentience and even spirituality.

j

Wow, how horribly NOT constructive that is. And what a terrible attitude to have about saying "no" to your players. That's just unimaginative and frankly a little sad. I wouldn't want to play in any of your games, and I've always been able to work up a waiting list of people wanting to get in on mine with minimal effort. It's lots of fun, and I take pride in it even as I allow players to create droids with four arms.

More to the point, Superior adds an Advantage result to the result of a skill check. As you only make an attack with ONE weapon even while attacking with two, having multiple Superior weapons would not add an additional Advantage result to the result. I don't know where you're getting that from, and if you would like to debate that minutia without being a **** about it I'd be more than happy to, but I feel I've more than outlined the reasons why I interpret the RAW already, as well as the reasons why I want to figure this out.

Core Rulebook page 32, fourth paragraph: "It should be noted that no character is ever a 'wrong' choice, regardless of the campaign. The GM should never discourage a player from a particular character choice and should integrate all the character concepts into the game at hand."

In this case, the character concept involves a droid that fights with four arms, and not just as window dressing. My answer is "yes", because "no" is just plain boring.

I'm sorry you don't feel people giving you balanced rules are constructive, and I'm happy your players can somehow manage to have fun despite your obvious inability to interpret RAW, understand the concept of action economy, letting players have equal opportunity, or otherwise be a decent GM.

Having 4 arms already means he doesn't need to drop his weapon to stim pack or active something while dual wielding so hey, free actions, he can't easily be disarmed, have his weapons sundered, be seriously hampered by a loss of limb critical or if he's using guns, have the despair's out of ammo effect matter. It is already a big advantage, it is not "window dressing". He effectively has Spare Clip, Quick Draw and a few other traits.

This is an abstract game where a combat round is a minute of time. Giving extra attacks for 4 arms is not only bad mechanically but it is counter to how the game is bulit. You should be playing Champions or Mutants and Masterminds, not EotE if you want to be making up rules to every character option. There are numerous ways to represent him being a better fighter including simply buying up ranks of melee, buying feral strength trait or increasing brawn and these do fit the system and don't break anything.

Core rulebook page 32 is a picture of Sasha. Regardless, I'll pretend you're not pulling stuff out of your butt. The quote is no doubt discussing character concepts and backgrounds and integrating them into the story, it in no way implies making up a bunch of broken rules for every character. So it is irrelevant to the discussion. The fact that you can't even understand this means it isn't worth having a discussion with you.

Fun Fact: People who disagree with you may very well "understand" whatever it is you're talking about, and yet they'll still disagree. If you're a GM you'd do well to keep that in mind, because roleplaying is a cooperative experience, and cooperation requires a certain level of empathy.

Another Fun Fact: When you write a really long, multi-paragraph response to someone and then note that they aren't "worth having a discussion" with, you've just shown your cards. Clearly you hold this as a discussion worth having, otherwise you'd simply go about your business.

Yet Another Fun Fact: This a forum about a roleplaying game, which are designed to exercise one's creativity. I'm trying to create rules to make the game more fun for my player and myself. You're welcome to participate in this conversation, but I'm going to ignore anyone who tells me that I should abandon ANY creative endeavor. Creative endeavors -- and roleplaying games in general, for that matter -- don't have rules, just a series of guidelines to keep in mind or abandon as needed.

I'm sorry you don't feel people giving you balanced rules are constructive, and I'm happy your players can somehow manage to have fun despite your obvious inability to interpret RAW, understand the concept of action economy, letting players have equal opportunity, or otherwise be a decent GM.

Having 4 arms already means he doesn't need to drop his weapon to stim pack or active something while dual wielding so hey, free actions, he can't easily be disarmed, have his weapons sundered, be seriously hampered by a loss of limb critical or if he's using guns, have the despair's out of ammo effect matter. It is already a big advantage, it is not "window dressing". He effectively has Spare Clip, Quick Draw and a few other traits.

A few counter-points. JonahHex has asserted (and my gut reaction is that I agree) that 4-armed dual-wielding is a balanced rule. The increase in negative dice means that the full impact (4 actual attacks) will only occur on extremely lucky rolls, as the Advantage cost is very high. Moreover, you're going to be generating a lot less Advantage than the guy with Autofire because you're adding a negative die (purple or black, depending on which rule JonahHex goes with) for each attack. Autofire seems flat-out better, and that's a published (and therefore presumably balanced) rule.

In any case, claiming definitively whether or not this house rule is truly balanced (or, conversely, broken) is premature until it's either tested in play or with sample dice pool rolls.

Regarding your action economy reservations, on the other side of that coin drawing 4 weapons is going to be costly in terms of maneuvers. I'm away from books, but IIRC our group has been ruling that it's a maneuver to draw a single weapon. Even if I'm mistaken on that, you can establish as part of the houserule that if a normal character can draw 2 weapons with a single maneuver, a 4-armed Droid can still be capped at 2 per maneuver.

Regarding stim packs, he's still got to drop a weapon to draw a stim pack. And losing a limb is most definitely a big deal, as JonahHex has stated that the 2 extra arms are 10,000 credit cybernetics. Potentially having enough "spare" weapons on-hand to still function when disarmed or when out of ammo is, IMO, countered by the increased maneuver cost of actually drawing those extra weapons in the first place. And the encumbrance cost of carrying them.

I actually have made a ton of test rolls with the dice app; 100 with Auto-fire, 100 with four arms that add two additional Difficulty dice, and 100 with four arms that add two Setback dice, with all assumed to be melee/medium range attacks. I also assumed rank 4 in the relevant skill, and a rating of 5 in the relevant characteristic. I found that undefended enemies fell like corn stalks to a scythe even at medium range with Auto-fire or four arms with two Setback dice, whereas the extra difficulty dice dragged four-armed combat down quite a noticeable bit (double Failure, double Threat, and Failure/Threat results will do that).

Keep in mind, however, that NPCs who get into a fight with someone armed with a heavy blaster rifle or four vibro-swords/blaster pistols more than likely won't be defenseless. So I rolled a bunch different test rolls, this time assuming the following; an enemy with Adversary 1, Ranged/Melee Defense 1, a single aim maneuver on the part of the player. The results were totally different.

For one thing, I hardly ever rolled more than two hits with Auto-fire, let alone four or more. But more interestingly, I almost never hit a second time when using four arms with two setback dice. This leads me to believe what I have going so far is balanced enough to test the rules out in-game for real.

If anyone has anything constructive to add about stuff like the Accuracy and Superior qualities, or perhaps some other rule I might not be grasping, by all means let me know. If you want to bash me/this idea that's fine as well, just know that unless you come up with some Albert Einstein-level arguments I'll be quite unlikely to care.

(Also, you're spot on about the additional maneuvers it takes to draw all these weapons. In fact, one of the player's hands can "transform" as its own maneuver into a cutting laser (Ranged [Light]; Damage 5; Crit 2; Range [short]; Encum 2; Pierce 5), meaning that drawing three weapons plus the cutting laser would take three maneuvers total. My player actually loves this, as he was hoping for, as he puts it, "opportunities to pose and make threatening gestures" towards his enemies.)

(Also, you're spot on about the additional maneuvers it takes to draw all these weapons. In fact, one of the player's hands can "transform" as its own maneuver into a cutting laser (Ranged [Light]; Damage 5; Crit 2; Range [short]; Encum 2; Pierce 5), meaning that drawing three weapons plus the cutting laser would take three maneuvers total. My player actually loves this, as he was hoping for, as he puts it, "opportunities to pose and make threatening gestures" towards his enemies.)

Up until he purchases the Quick Draw Talent. Then it requires none.

(Also, you're spot on about the additional maneuvers it takes to draw all these weapons. In fact, one of the player's hands can "transform" as its own maneuver into a cutting laser (Ranged [Light]; Damage 5; Crit 2; Range [short]; Encum 2; Pierce 5), meaning that drawing three weapons plus the cutting laser would take three maneuvers total. My player actually loves this, as he was hoping for, as he puts it, "opportunities to pose and make threatening gestures" towards his enemies.)

Up until he purchases the Quick Draw Talent. Then it requires none.

Quick Draw can only be used once per round.

Hmm...I missed that point.

Even so, with four weapons it would take two rounds anyway. So, two free draws reduces the number required by half, and allows him to do so without taking strain.

With Quick Draw, KR-688 would still need two maneuvers and 2 strain to draw three weapons plus activate his cutting laser and attack in the same round. That or he could just spend a round drawing his weapons, and get a full round's worth of actions later on.

That said, his picking up Quick Draw isn't necessarily an inevitability. He's using X-30 Lancers for their range and lightweight frame, so he's unlikely to shorten the barrels or file down the sights. Plus the only two specializations he has interest in are Bodyguard and Thief, as he was created to be the protector and errand boy of a senile Jawa cat burglar. Neither of those trees have Quick Draw.

Hopefully, the new Hired Gun book will have something that catches his eye. I'm hoping for something like Gunslinger that might have some new two-weapon combat options, or just more pistol options in general.