Yes, but it bothers me that I’m struggling to understand another person. I’m hoping that I can find a way to reframe the discussion such that understanding can be achieved. And not doing a very good job of it, it seems.
Why not just use the Dual Weapons rules from Infinity 2D20?
You can get a second Standard Action by:
- Spending an Infinity (Determination equivalent) point.
- Spending 2 Momentum, but the second action is +1 Difficulty.
- If you have two weapons equipped, you may attack with one weapon and then you may attack with the second by spending 1 Momentum to attack with the second weapon’s attack at +1D.
Given it takes a Minor Action to Draw a weapon (absent particular traits), this means it (usually) takes 2 Minor Actions to Draw 2 weapons.
You then need to account for the fact that a lot of tasks are harder if you need to do them without any hands (including relatively simple combat tasks like vaulting an obstacle).
This makes dual wielding weapons a good option for a straight Firefight with Pistols but otherwise you’re better off with a single proper gun (that you can hold in your master hand while you use your non-master hand to interact with things).
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I’ve handled something similar on an NPC with a Talent. Klingon NPC, favors a dual-wield melee style, with a long sword in one hand, dagger in the other. As a Threat spend, he can either use the second weapon defensively, giving him a re-roll on his combat task, or offensively to deal damage equal to half of that dealt by the smaller weapon. (Off the long sword, he’d do 6 CD damage, and the offensive dual-wield would add +2CD, allowing him a possible 8CD if he wins in melee combat.)
Similarly, you could make it a Momentum spend that uses one of the character’s talent slots to add bonus damage to a ranged attack.
Have you looked at the Conan Melee rules (so Parry / Reach / Dual Wielding)?
You could happily steal those to flesh out Melee if you wanted to.
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I like to ask what is the end goal of wielding two weapons? Is it doing more damage to one target, attacking two targets, suppression fire (ie. John Wooing), something else?
If its all of the above, each one needs a separate process, because the rules generally treat each one as a separate process.
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There’s already a talent that allows attacking two targets without penalty as a swift task: fire at will.
So, if you want to have some benefit to using two phasers take this talent and role play it as using two hand phasers.
If you don’t want to use up a talent slot, routinely make multiple attacks at the usual penalty and role play it as using two phasers… poorly.
Note that anyone who says their character has only one phaser can pay the same costs and do the same thing.
The point being, there is no in-game benefit to saying your character has a piece of equipment without paying a cost for it.
I imagine there’s no penalty as long as the character is firing both phasers John Woo style.
Many good answers here, I’ll keep this thread in mind.
I’ve got a Klingon PC using the new Klingon rules supplement that wants to dual-wield two D’kTagh but there are no rules for dual-wielding. Conan has them but they are dependent on parrying (which cheapens the cost of defending) which Star Trek does not use.
D’kTagh already have the Vicious quality so that’s out.
I was advised to just keep it as flavour and have the same stats as a single weapon but that just feels a bit bleh.
I toyed with the idea of allowing a free second attack with the second weapon if the first rolls an Effect. This gives the wielder 2 CD damage instead of 1 for roughly a 3rd of their attacks which doesn’t feel OP, really.
However, I quite like the Infinity rules someone mentioned above, that a second attack can be bought with Momentum at +1 Dif. That works too.
Keep in mind though that contrary to Infinity and Conan a second attack is not always beneficial. Melee attacks in STA are always opposed, and if you lose the role, the target attacks you. This means making two melee attacks may actually cause the target to attack you twice (if you roll badly enough). And if the difficulty of the second attack is increased, a counter will be even more likely. So I don’t think that makes sense.
If you want benefits for the second weapon, I’d keep it simple. Either increase the damage by 1 CD or add one bonus Momentum.
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Again, just picking up a piece of gear gives no advantage.
There are already rules for making multiple attacks and a talent that makes doing so worthwhile: fire at will.
If there was no cost or downside to wielding two weapons, if there is only an upside, why doesn’t every single Klingon carry two knives?
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In addition to what @Shran and @tanksoldier said:
One could introduce a homebrew rule (most likely a talent) that a secondary weapon makes the swift task combat momentum spend repeatable for one time, with the normal cost and maybe an escalation cost or something like that. This may or may not require the fire at will talent as prerequisite; though the benefits of this talent should only apply for the first time the combat momentum spend is done and not the second.
One could also simply give the attack the piercing quality, as there are more pointy ends in use that could harm the target. This should, however, normally go with either an escalation cost and/or a higher complication range for the attacks.
As @tanksoldier said (and rightly so!): There shouldn’t only be upsides to wielding two weapons.
She’s a Liberated Borg, so her Borg implants probably make her ambidextrous.
Which gives me a thought. One way to make your character ambidextrous would be to give him/her/it an implant that grants it as a Trait. See the Core Rulebook pages 197-198. To keep things fair, balance it with a potential downside (Ex. Geordi’s VISOR gave him constant headaches).
One logical downside could be a +1 difficulty increase for Medical Tasks performed on your character. That’s how the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook handles Borg implants (see pages 64-65). Liberated Borg characters can have up to three (3) implants, each granting a Trait, but each increases the difficulty of Medical Tasks by +1. That’s fair – in ST:VOY, Seven’s implants gave her superhuman abilities, but the Doctor had to perform constant maintenance on them and get really creative whenever one seriously malfunctioned. That could work for non-Borg implants too – like Picard’s artificial heart, which probably gave him great stamina, but was tough for Dr. Crusher to fix when it was damaged in ST:TNG “Tapestry”.
So give your character an implant that grants ambidexterity and accept a +1 Medicine Tasks difficulty. Your character could then wield two phasers in combat, but if hurt, would face a harder-than-normal road to recovery.
How would that work, technically? Two attacks? Increased hit chance? Increased damage dies? Piercing and/or Area effect?
The implant is a very nice idea, but I actually don’t see it to be widespread. Star Trek’s approach on implants and other technical enhancements of the human body was always… reluctant. Both Geordie’s Visor and Picard’s heart are replacements for lost body parts and primarily aim to restore lost functionality. I’m not sure whether someone with implants that purely enhance functions would actually be accepted in Starfleet in the first place, let alone someone who improved their combat skills.
Thus, the implant would have to be tied into the character’s background, imho. This is a nice idea and totally doable, but only for one character in the group, I think. 
That seems to me that Seven spent a point of Determination to create an Advantage (dual wield) or attack multiple times. It clearly was a special scene and not something that occurs on a regular basis.
It may have simply been for special effect/flavour. In game terms, one successful attack with one weapon each round - she just happened to alternate.
I certainly wouldn’t want to dissuade anyone from adding their own house rules, but personally don’t think this is something missing from a game that largely abstracts combat and tilts the odds massively in the players’ favour anyway.
I can see that it is an appropriate discussion where Klingons and the like are concerned, but consider: the batleth is effectively a double weapon (per the D&D 5e concept of a weapon that can attack with either end), and has no special rules to reflect this. Star Trek melee combat (on screen) tends to have a flurry of blocked blows, or a weapon lock and struggle, followed by a single impact that has significant effect. The nature of the weapon is largely irrelevant and the game seems to reflect that fairly well. Seven aside, ranged combat tends to be aimed shots fired one at a time, and you can’t really do that with two weapons at the same time.
Even in the classic Western gunslinger two gun tradition, shots are either alternated or the second gun is for when the bullets run out in the first!
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In the conan and Infinity RPG there are rules for Dual wielding. So I use them for my game.
Conan: When using the Swift Action (Swift Task in Star Trek) Momentum spend, if one of the character’s Standard Actions (Tasks in Star Trek) that round are different types of attack (Melee and Ranged, Melee and Threaten, etc.) or use different tools (two different weapons), the cost of the Momentum spend is reduced to 1.
Infinity: A character wielding two weapons can gain a slight advantage when trying to engage multiple targets, or attack more rapidly, but this requires considerable skill to capitalise on effectively. When a character wields two weapons, they may use the swift action momentum spend
(Swift Task) by paying only one Momentum, rather than two, so long as both Actions taken are attacks, and each attack is taken with a different weapon.
Don’t forget that the Swift Task (one additional Task), increase the Difficulty by one over what the
Task would normally require.
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