Two weapons

So you want to carry two swords, do you? It's not as easy as you might think, but it is rewarding. First off, you must pick your dominant hand: is your character right or left-handed? Whichever one you pick, the other hand is considered the off hand.

Since it's so difficult to do anything complicated with your off hand, any Attacks or Parries with a weapon in that hand take a −4 penalty. To eliminate this penalty, you can take the Ambidexterity Trump.

Even though you may be able to carry a weapon in each hand, you must still have the Action Points necessary to attack with each weapon individually. For instance, if you have a longsword in your right hand (which takes 4 AP) and a dagger in your left (which takes 2 AP), you need 6 AP to be able to attack with both. If you select the Dual Weapons Trump, the amount of AP necessary to attack with both drops to the higher of the AP scores. In the case of the longsword–dagger scenario, a character with Dual Weapons would only need 4 AP to attack once with both weapons. The character basically gets the first off–hand attack for free.

There are other concerns regarding two weapons. First, the character has to buy both weapons, which may present a challenge for the slightly impoverished. Second, for the most part, you can't use a two-handed weapon in one hand, so no characters who Dual Wield executioner axes. Finally, if your character is using two different weapons, you have to consider how to distribute ranks into the Weapon Skill of both.