A Kiel-Saan in inactive-symbio state (and maybe there's other options...), retains the dual wield skill but drops from PH14 to PH12. Were they to find themselves in melee would they be able to utilize the dual wield skill to combine the effects of their DA CCW and their Heavy Pistol?
No, Dual Wield can only combine two "CC Weapons", which is a defined category of weapons, and can not be combined with Pistols or other weapons that are useable in CC. http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Dual_Wield http://infinitythewiki.com/en/CC_Weapon
Not quite. I refer you to the CC attack section: By declaring a CC Attack, troopers automatically draw their CC Weapons. If they have more than one CC Weapon in their profile, they can choose which ones to use. When declaring a CC Attack players can only use those weapons with the CC Trait. http://infinitythewiki.com/en/CC_Attack ALL the CC Weapons listed have the CC trait. Pistols, like Heavy Pistols, have the CC trait. The term, 'CC weapons', as presented in context of CC attack, refers to weapons with CC trait.
Like in my reference, a CC Weapon is defined as a "full sized melee weapon" and each part of the rules give exhaustive list of CC Weapons added by the rules as they are added. I do not think that CC Attack skill gives sufficient permission to regard knives or pistols as CC Weapons as it only refers to that soldiers draw CC Weapons. All I think it does is cast doubt on whether troopers with CC Weapons are allowed to declare CC Attacks using their pistols. Simply put a case of where the rules are needlessly verbose.
There is also the fact that Dual Wield only allows you to combine the "effects of the Special Ammunitions of two different CC Weapons." DAM is not part of that anyway.
I think it's because in the case of Pistols, they aren't actually CC weapons but Ranged weapons but in CC, they can be regarded as CC weapons from the rules perspective. Whereas CC weapons on the CC weapon list can ONLY be regarded as CC weapons (with the exception of thrown CCW). If that's the case, there's nothing holding you back from using them with Dual-Wield. @ijw Do you have any input on the matter? I'm open to both interpretations, I just want to know how to play it.
I'd say the name need to have CC weapon or CCW to be considered one, pistols CC trait say they can be used in CC, not that they are a CC weapon. A trench hammer wound't be a CC weapon, but a vorpal CCW would. However if you use vorpal as a thrown weapon you are not using CC attack so no double wield. But yep, it's not formally defined so, let's wait for @ijw
As per the discussion a few months ago for Spec-Ops, a CC Weapon is a specific class of item (http://infinitythewiki.com/en/CC_Weapon), rather than being anything you can use in CC.
