Dual Firearms

Dual Firearms

Two barrels. Two shots. Then reload.

What it does

Pillars of Eternity marks every firearm as a two-handed weapon, so a second pistol is out of the question. This mod makes pistols and blunderbusses one-handed and — more importantly — makes the game fire them properly.

Simply making a gun one-handed is not enough. The game's own combat code was never tested with two firearms, and it does the wrong thing in two places:

• []The wrong gun reloads. When a character carries two firearms, AI. Player. ReloadWeapon picks the one with more rounds left, which is the gun that is already loaded. The empty one stays empty until the fight is over.[/]

  []The off hand never gets its turn. The game alternates hands inside a single attack state. Anything that interrupts that state — an ability, a retarget — resets it, and the next shot always comes from the main hand again. With two pistols you end up firing one gun and reloading it while the other sits there fully loaded.[/]

  Dual Firearms fixes both, so a pair of guns behaves the way you would expect:

  main hand fires  →  off hand fires  →  both barrels reload  →  volley again

  Features

  • []Pistols and blunderbusses in either hand — equip two, or pair one with a melee weapon or a shield.[/]

    []Correct hand alternation — every loaded barrel is fired before anything reloads.[/]

    []Both barrels reload together — once you are empty, the mod reloads both guns back to back instead of reload-shoot-reload-shoot. Same rate of fire either way (reloads cannot overlap), but you get the two-shot volley that is the whole point of carrying a second gun.[/]

    []The vanilla reload bug is fixed — the gun that actually needs reloading is the one that reloads.[/]

    []No save-game changes — everything lives in the mod's own settings file.[/]

    About the animation

    The game has no off-hand firing animation for guns. The clips simply do not exist: trying to play one cancels the shot outright. So both shots use the ordinary main-hand firing animation, and by default the muzzle flash is moved to the main hand as well, so the second shot reads as one more shot rather than a gun going off in the wrong place. If you prefer the flash to come from the off-hand pistol itself, there is a setting for it.

    Why no arquebuses

    Arquebuses stay two-handed on purpose. They are long guns, and firing two of them from the hip looks absurd. Pistols and blunderbusses are the weapons this mod is for.

    Optional: firearm balance

    Off by default. A port of the balance pass from Firearm Changes by Aberoux, for anyone who wants it. It changes nothing unless you tick the box:

    • []Pistols — accuracy 0, range 10 m, reload 4 s.[/]

      []Blunderbusses — accuracy −5, 7 pellets per shot, stronger interrupt.[/]

      []Arquebuses — accuracy +3, range 13 m, reload 6 s, stronger interrupt, DR bypass raised from 6 to 8.[/]

      []All firearms — the −0. 25 crit damage modifier is removed.[/]

    This is a separate concern from dual wielding, which is why it is a checkbox rather than part of the mod's behaviour. Leave it off and your firearms keep their vanilla numbers.

    Options

    (Ctrl+F10 → Dual Firearms)
    • []Allow firearms in the off hand (restart required)[/]

      []Off-hand shot looks like a main-hand shot[/]

      []Balance changes (Aberoux) — restart required[/]

      []Write shot and reload trace to Log.txt[/]

      Notes

      • []The pause between the two shots is normal attack recovery, not a reload. Two pistols count as dual wielding, so the recovery bonus for paired weapons applies and that pause is shorter than with a single gun.[/]

        []Two firearms do not raise your sustained damage — reloads happen one after another and cannot overlap. What you gain is the opening volley of two shots.[/]

        []If you use Driving Flight or anything else that grants a ricochet, the extra bounce works exactly as it does with a single gun.[/]

        Requirements

        • []Pillars of Eternity 3. 9.x (Steam / GOG)[/]

          []Unity Mod Manager 0. 23 or newer[/]

          Installation

          []Install Unity Mod Manager for Pillars of Eternity.[/]

          []In UMM: Mods → Install Mod → select DualFirearms.zip.[/]

          []Start the game.[/]