Can you play Noxious Bomb and Pistol on the same combat check?

[Ripe]

Last night in a game a player tried to play both Noxious Bomb and Pistol one after the other which lead to minor discussion about whether it can be played or not.

The rules state that you can only play 1 card of each type during each step, so going by that I assume you can since one is an Item and the other is a Weapon and unlike Buckler Gun, Noxiuos Bomb does not say that playing it count as playing a Weapon.

If it can be played, how many dice would be rolled on a check? The additional 3d6 is a given [2 from Noxious bomb, 1 from Pistol] but would we add Dexterity/Ranged die once or twice?

On a related question, what would happen if someone wanted to play Noxious Bomb and Cutlass [or any other Melee weapon] or Noxiuos Bomb and Force Missile [or any other Attack spell]? Would the player doing that get to choose between Dexterity/Ranged and Strength/Melee die [or Arcane/Divine if he used spell] or would he be able to add both dies to the check?

[Hawkmoon269]

The rules also state you can only play one card to determine the skill for the check. Noxious Bomb and Pistol both determine the skill for the check, so you can only play one of them.

[Ripe]

Thanks for answer... we had to reread the rulebook a few times last night and we completely missed that part on each reread.

[Michael Klaus]

Well Hawkmoon the rules state that only precisely for cards that replace other skills. The paragraph on combat checks omits this.
The rulebook implies that you handle replacing cards like Mattock different from combat check cards, but is also mixing both into each other.
Is combat a skill or not?