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Just curious. It seems there's no real need to go above 3 cause the more you roll, the more often you get and grant bonuses only starting up from the second result.

Totally scenario-specific.

If I'm honest, I find the ability to Parry far more useful than stacking attacks.

You can't go wrong with a sword (for Parry) and a Pistol for an additional weapon attack.

Not everyone has access to swords though. For example, orks. Well, technically, a flash git can have a sword but that doesn't count. Yeah, i forgot about parries. It might be a good idea to have more attacks vs armies that can parry, i guess.

Additional attacks don't increase your average roll by a lot after the 2nd one. The average number that you get (substracting one for every 1 you roll, and adding 1 for every 6 after the second) is:
#attacks average roll
1 3.166667
2 4.166667
3 4.537037
4 4.726852
5 4.832819
6 4.89519
7 4.933199

The highest average number would be 5 (with an infinite number of attack), because on average you'll have the same number of 1s and 6s, which gives a -1 because 6s only give +1 after the 2nd. If you have to reroll one of your 6s because of the opponent's parry, you'll have an average of 4, which isn't that good.

Obviously Inquisition will always want more attacks against Xenos.

fresus wrote:
Additional attacks don't increase your average roll by a lot after the 2nd one. The average number that you get (substracting one for every 1 you roll, and adding 2 for every 6 after the second) is:

Additional 6's add 1, not 2.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

fresus wrote:
Additional attacks don't increase your average roll by a lot after the 2nd one. The average number that you get (substracting one for every 1 you roll, and adding 2 for every 6 after the second) is:

Additional 6's add 1, not 2.

You're right, I edited my post. I did count it as 1 when calculating the average values though.

There is more than just attacks to consider. More attacks also helps you get the highest roll. I only played a test game so far, but to me it seemed 4 attacks are ideal. I rarely rolled a 1 (or a 6 for that matter) but I generally got the highest roll, helping to win combat.
Any more than that and I got a 1 almost every other combat. I also got a 6 about as often, but a 6 and a 1 is worse than rolling a 5 and no 1. Relatively speaking, a 6 and a 1 is the same as rolling a 5 but not fumbling.
But with a 6 you can't parry anymore and with a 5 you can still parry their 6 and they don't get a bonus for your fumble and they might now roll into a fumble.
There's no guarantee that you will roll a 6 and a 1 but it seemed to happen quite often with 5 attacks.

Ensuring you can parry though is much better then an extra attack roll, so I'd say either 3 attacks with parry or 4 attacks without would be the sweet spot. 4 with parry would be even better, but not by much.

There was a massive discussion on Yaktribe about this subject..

And it was generally agreed the best number of attacks is 3, due to the increased risk of 1's playing against you the more dice you roll

There's also a combat skill that allows to get +2 score if you sacrifice 1 attack, in which case 4 is better. Also, some enemies can take away your weapons and you'll lose 1 attack for double weapons.

So, 4 is probably a safe bet. If you can get this high.

Good point, the same is also true for carrying a basic/special/heavy and still getting 3 attacks, although that would probably require an advance. A csm gunner with Mark of Khorne for example could have 4 attacks if they roll the advance that gives an extra attack and they're using two weapons. They could take a special and still have 3 attacks then.