Dual-wielding with additional attacks

Weeping Blades, Fighting Claws, Asrai Blade-staff just to mention some. All have the special rule "Additional Attack" or "Pair", which practically does the same rulewise. In the case of Weeping Blades and Fighting Claws, it's about a weapon combination consisting of two weapons, where in the Blade-staff case, it's a single weapon with this rule, much similar to wielding a Halberd or a Double-handed Weapon.

As we play it atm., there's no dual-wielding penalty with Weeping Blades and Fighting Claws, nor is there a penalty when using the Blade-staff, because it's a special rule as indicated by the RAW. However, does everyone else play it like that? And is there some sort of balance issue with this solution?

I'd love to hear some comments on this!

My group also play that paired weapons (Weeping Blades, Claws) do not suffer the -1 penalty on off hand attacks that we have house ruled. Pistols are also excepted.

However, we didn't have a Skaven player in our prior campaign, but we're gearing up for a new one with a Skaven warband included. So we haven't tested the balance of it yet, but I should see shortly.

We implemented this exception since you are forced to buy them in a pair and they are rather expensive. None of us are particularly beardy, so there wasn't a worry of a player abusing it. It's possible it will make claws and weeping blades too good compared to other choices but I just can't say yet.

The pistol exception has not been an issue and they were widely used in my last campaign, so that exception I can at least say has worked.

In my group we use the -1 to hit for off-hand attacks and this *does* affect paired weapons and the blade staff's off-hand attack. We did this for consistency and because the advantage for these weapons is that you get dual wielding for one weapon slot. This means, for example, you could take weeping blades and (with weapons training) a double-handed weapon. If you want to avoid the penalty for off-hand attacks then you can take the skill Dual Wielder.

For what it is worth, in our group Dual Wielder will allow you to divide your attacks as you wish with your available weapons instead of all base attacks with one weapon and one attack with the offhand weapon. This doesn't mean a lot when you have only one attack, but later on it can be handy to, say, allocate two attacks with the axe to the vampire and two attacks with the club to the ghoul instead of either 3 with the axe and one with the club or 3 with the club and one with the axe.

We had a big discussion about this in our gaming group and we may have rolled off on it because I don't know if we came to an unamimous agreement!

We make those weapons exempt from the penalty of dual wielding and here is the relevant excerpt from our house rules...

Quote :

Attacks from additional weapons equipped due to skills (e.g. Tail Fighting) or mutations (e.g. Extra Arm) are exempt from this rule. Weapons that come as a pair (e.g. Fighting Claws) are also exempt from this rule.