I'm making Samurai NPCs for a future campaign and I'm not sure to perfectly understand what are bonuses and penalties for a Samurai fighting with two weapons at the same time (that can be common for Dragon or Mantis samurais).
I noticed:
- The attack roll penalty, that depend of the size of the weapon for the off-hand.
- The armor TN bonus, equal to insight rank.
But nowhere in the rule book I saw if it was possible or not to make two attacks in one action (one with each weapon) in that situation. So is it possible or not ?
Best Answer
No.
The fact that you are wielding two weapons just increases your armor TN, but to get extra attacks, be it main or off-hand attacks, you need the Extra Attack maneuver or the rank 3 bushi school ability, which is a different ability for each school.
Its covered in their two-weapon abilities. Though, they should have explained it better on the page 141 topic regarding two-weapon fighting and multiple attacks.
Mirumoto Bushi
Meaning that their rank 3 ability is granted because of this two-weapon training, otherwise they wouldnt get an extra attack. Well, all bushi schools get it, but the lore explanation is because of their two-weapon training.
Rank 1: Way of the Dragon
So they take absolutely no penalties when dual-wielding, but nowhere says they can make two attacks in one action, meaning they can't do that without raising the attack roll 5 times, which is highly unlikely to happen at rank 1, as the amount of raises you can make are limited by your Void Ring. If they could, by rank 3 when they would be able to attack as a simple action, they would attack four times in a round.
However, take a look at the Spinning Blades Kata (pg 260 core), which the mirumoto bushi have access, it allows you to make the Extra Attack maneuver with only 3 raises instead of 5, but that attack must be with your secondary weapon and you cannot raise for increased damage.