>Ok, as I noted, supremely silly to me. Because while dual-wield
>certainly should be POSSIBLE, in my opinion at least, it should
>require a whole rigmarole.

Being a player character is a whole rigmarole. Unless they added one in the fourth or fifth editions, there is no "ordinary mook" character class in D&D; all adventurers, even first-level scrubs, are far better than the Common Folk at whatever they're doing. To that end, there are plenty of historical precedents involving melee weapons. They all require specialized training, but then, so does picking locks.

With guns, not so much, but for different reasons; with any ranged weapon, the typical human visual field only has one small field of foveal vision, and so can allow for only one point of aim. This is why fictional characters who can effectively dual-wield with simultaneous fire (as opposed to ambidexterous alternating fire) generally have some kind of shtick going on where they don't need to aim or even be able to see what they're shooting at (e.g., the gun kata in Equilibrium).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.