I just overflew the forum but I only have noticed this topic touched very vaguely or under different views. Besides the fact that shiva arms might look cool, i haven´t found any really useful applications. But if this stuff costs 15 points there has to be a very good reason for you to take it. I real life i wouldn´t want to walk into someone who has this quality because I would think he has 2 attacks and could be a awesome grappler, but in game terms it seems quite useless because you have to split your dice pool. So what uses are there instead of "can carry double as much items as other people"? For me this only sounds as if this was THE quality for the best waitor on earth, nothing more.

being able to fire akimbo at your enemy while flipping him the bird akimbo at the same time too . .
i had this thread on another board some time ago, and we basically came to the same conclusion as you did . .

Great....another useless thing thinking about wastes time^^

it adds flavour, it adds style . .
carrying the mcguffin in one hand, a sword in yet another hand, a heavy pistol in the third hand and lobbing renades with the 4th hand DOES have it's usefull sides . .
or climbing up ladders while still aiming your assault rifle, like in counter strike . .
there's the obvious uses that have no rules aspect . . you COULD make him the worlds best waiter, or one hell of a drummer . . or keyboarder . . ever tried aiming an assault rifle while steering a motorcycle?
well, now it works O.o
and if you get 4 cyber-arms, you can get one metrick buttload of gadgets in there o.O

I like the idea with the drummer....would be a reason for the "famous"-quality, eh?^^

Bah, the craziest drummer in Rock and Roll has only one arm! DEF LEPPARD!!!

OK, thought of another reason for Shiva Arms...

Massage Parlors!

No you are looking at it in a single dimension.

I created a character who has 4 Shiva Arms, who carries a Full Riot Shield on two arms, and on the opposite side two automatic over/under 10 gauge shotguns. Splitting the dice pools for the shotguns is no problem. Interesting thing is the choke settings and rate of fire and on the target(s).

WMS

What no shiva arms on the Naga.... for shame ;P.

Or how about shiva arms on your shaper... it's a bird it's a plane... oh crap it's an eagle packing heat.
An awakened dolphin w/ hands?

Now back to your regularly schedules silliness....

Hex the Hunter (NPC Troll) in my game has them and uses 2 arms to carry his flamethrower and the other 2 to use his swords. That means that he can actually parry hand to hand combat while still using the flame thrower during his turn.

You can use three bows at once. Or possibly three combat axes.

If you've got a good SMG dice pool, go ahead and split it four ways. Fire wide bursts, but only use a few dice on the initial attacks. Put most of your dice into the last ones, when your target is running out of defense dice. You can do the same trick with shotguns, like WMS said.

The world's scariest suppressive fire from a Troll using Multiple Miniguns!

Curiousity demands that I ask...

What happens if you use different weapons in each hand? IE: a club, a pistol, a sword, and an smg. How would the dice pools be split?

You use the smallest of the dice pools, then split. Remember that you don't have to split equally, though.

For the more over the top have 4 Shiva Arms, also a Gunslinger Adept, and have 6 fully modded/tricked out Machine Pistols, have a then fire all in various firing modes, the target will be out of dice very quickly, and be dead on its feet.

WMS