I don't pretend to fully understand all the intricacies of every stat and skill and interdependency in Wizardry 8, but I can give my own experiences with dual wield and see if that helps anyone here. [img]smile.gif[/img]
In my party, my dual wielder is my Felpurr Samurai. None of his stats are maxed. STR is approx. 75, Dex is approx. 75, and Speed is approx. 75 (I tried diversifying too early, instead of maxing one stat to get advanced skills). His Dual Wield is around 40/50 (can't remember at the moment), Sword is somewhere between 50/70 (again, can't recall).
He's been dual wielding reliably since level five, when those skill amounts were probably half that, so you don't have to have 50 skill in dual wield and 50 skill in the weapon skills you plan to use.
Also, you needn't wait until level 25 to get the stats up high enough to go reliably. Heck, let's even use the example earlier, where they want to get up to 50 in three skills (let's say Dual Wield, Sword, and Mace).
At level 1, you get plenty skill points to go around, typically what, 6 or 9 max to start? I don't remember, let's go 9.
So, at level 1, you've got 9 in each of those skills. That means you need 41 more in each. Over the time it takes to level up enough to spend a lot of points, you should naturally gain probably 20 points in each skill just from use (hey, I get 'em pretty often, and I DON'T have to make everyone else in my party just defend so my samurai can develop those skills
). So, realistically, I should only have to spend around 21 points to get each skill to 50. That's 7 more levels, placing my party at level 8 to get the samurai up to 50 in each skill.
But Jolem is building a Lord, not a Samurai. This is even better, since the Lord gets a 25% bonus to dual wielding. (heh heh... just reread that last sentence, and by itself it sounds kinda funny... *ahem* Okay, okay, moving on...) As such, the Lord only needs a skill of 40 in dual wield to get an effective skill of 50. As a result, your Lord character should be at a practical skill of 50 no later than level 8, more likely earlier.
Also, remember that you don't necessarily have to use a skill SUCCESSFULLY to make it improve. [img]smile.gif[/img] You can fizzle spells and miss attacks and still improve for trying! I love that!
So hey, all I'm trying to point out is that it shouldn't be ridiculously hard to get a character to reliably dual wield (especially a Lord character).
Farscry