Ambidextrous rules
 

Hello fellow forum-dwellers...

Anyone here got any ideas, rules, tips or viewpoints on this ?

Off the top of my head, at 6:48 am and haven't taken my first sip of coffee yet, here's an idea.

To be totally ambidexterous, the character must have an AGL of 10. With an AGL of 9, he's mostly ambi and uses his weak hand with a -1 mod to die rolls. AGL of 8 is somewhat ambi, his penalty for weak hand use is -2. AGL of 7 and below are not ambi at all and any weak hand use has a penalty of -3.

Does ambidexterity really matter given the rules of either version don't bother with left or right handedness?
V2.0 allows a character to carry a weapon in either hand and fire either without penalty (although only one at a time).

I usualy declare a character to be left handed or right. When I GMed back in the day when I had a group, and some of the others I GMed with we would either declare handedness or just roll for it. We also did this for blood type, and uh...errrr. "size"

One GM had us roll for EVERYTHING, to include hair and eye color as well as the above.

Oh, yeah, as for ambidextrious,

I had the PCs roll, back in the 1d100 days, if they maxed their agility on creation they could roll. If they got a 1 or a 2 on the 1d100 then they got it, otherwise NO!

Just as an aside, there's an interesting new theory that ambidextrous people were twins early in development (early embryonic stages) that merged back into one person. Which would explain why they are so rare.

A long time ago when I was playing D&D, we would still give ambidextrous PCs and NPCs a "good hand" and a "better hand" -- which is the way it usually works out with actual ambidextrous people (we had one in out playing group). And the person still has to keep up with what both hands are doing -- the brain is really going at high revs when fighting with both hands (she was also an SCA member), and it can still get confusing. The fix we had was to simply halve the normal penalties for fighting with two hands.

That said, I don't have any idea of what the normal penalties for fighting with two hands in T2K terms. I'll let someone work with the info I gave above...

I think I was born ambidextrous but I think issues with eye dominance led led to an odd mix of habits

Write (left)
Shoot (Left)
Bat (Right)
Golf (both)
Serve Volleyball (both Right dominant)
Shoot Basket Ball (Right)
Pool (both left dominant)
Oil Paint (Right)
Draw (left but can do filler strokes with right)

This last one was fun when I used to take a bus or train to work as people thought I was drawing simultaneously with both hands :)

Oil Paint!?

What other weird hobbies do you engage in? Probably arrainging flowers or something the "FRENCH" do.

I wanted to differentiate from wall painting (which I also do righty). I did not oil paint much as I did it for an art class but everyone felt it was really odd that I drew lefty and painted righty. I think it has to do with the fact that my left hand fingers are stronger, my wrists are about equal and my right arm and shoulder are stronger.

This makes me think that even if born ambidextrous you really need to work on it to keep everything in balance. I tried with Juggling, Martial Arts, Stick fighting and weightlifting. Even with training, imbalances are still bound to happen so I expect people who are truly "equal" in both hands would be VERY rare.

Oh and I did once have a temp job for a weekend arranging flowers. I learned how to reflex roses (to make the petals look larger). It does make it look nicer so I still do that when I give flowers as gifts. :)

Someone once suggested in an old (1982-84 Dragon magazine to determine handedness by rolling 1s20 and 1d4. If the d20 was higher, he's a righty, If the d4 was higher, he's a lefty. If the rolls are equal, he's ambidextrous.

Halve skill if handedness matters? Or is that too severe?

In Harnmaster/Gunmaster during char gen you roll for eye and hair colour, complexion, height and build (which you then combine on a table for body weight), and probably a larger number of stats than most other games. You even had to roll to determine how many hours of sleep your character preferred per night (it could be trained down by a maximum of 20%). Left Handed and Ambidextrous were things you could roll on the Medical Table during char gen. The medical table could give you a few other good things too, such as Double Jointedness (arms, legs or both) and Throwback Strength , but mostly it would give you either nothing or bad things (epilepsy, disease scars, injury scars, asthma, allergies etc).

That's sort of one part of GURPS I like -- you can take disadvantage in return for extra stats or abilities, or extra abilities in return for lower stats or other disadvantages. Something like that could be interesting in T2K.

T2013 does allow for some of that.