Excalibre wrote:
> So there's no actual ability to do more attacks in a given period of
> time - it uses just as much energy as two normal attacks? If that's
> how it works, then it's pretty obvious why it's not of any benefit
> (your examples are a nice illustration.) If you have the Two-Weapon
> Combat skill trained highly enough, does it allay the energy issues?
> It was fun during that game I dual-wielded swords to see things like
> "You hit the (whatever) and seriously injure it. You hit the
> (whatever) and kill it" but if it doesn't actually let you get more
> hits in for each turn the monster gets then it's obviously not worth
> it.
The Manual Says:
----------------
AFAIK, If your two-weapon combat skill is zero, then you spend 800 energy
more on your attack than you would if you were to swing once with the
slower
weapon. This penalty is reduced by 4 energy points per skill point.
If I understand correctly, this results in a net reduction of raw
damage/time only if your faster weapon costs less than 400-800 energy
(depending on your TWC skill level).
That is, in most cases, attacking with two weapons wielded at once deals
more damage, per energy consumed, than attacking with them in sequence, at
the expense of a greater delay between turns.
As for the to-hit penalties (and bonuses!), you can find the exact formula
in the game manual in the 'Races and Cl*****' section, under the 'Rangers'
heading.
Advantages:
----------
One, arguably insufficient, advantage of using two weapons at the same
time
is that the monster has no chance to act between the two hits. This means
that if the monster's HP is such that one hit would only wound it, while
two
hits would kill it off, you would prefer to deal two strikes in one turn.
Tactically, I think this is similar to the Barbarian class power.
It is better than the Barbarian class power in that the energy cost of the
entire turn is much cheaper, and in that there is a double chance to hit.
It is worse by the fact that you need to spend a turn changing equipment
to
pull it off, so limiting its usefulness to situations where there's
sufficient space between you and the meleeing monster, or where you have
the
room and ability to step back a sufficient distance to switch to a
dual-weapon configuration. The other reason that it's not as nice is that
the damage is reduced by the enemy's PV for each blow separately, while a
mighty blow only counts PV once.
A practical example where I can see two-weaponing to be of quantifiable
use
is the gremlin cave, where the gremlins slowly get harder. By
dual-wielding,
you can kill more gremlins before they become tougher than a one-hit-kill.
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