So reading the rules in chapter 9 states to use the two-weapon fighting style it's Melee weapons.
in the fighter description it does not make mention to Melee but does say using the two-weapon stlye rules so still Melee focused?
the feat Crossbow Expert lets you use the bonus action after an attack to attack with the hand crossbow (it also removes the loading rule).
This is makes me think that a human fighter with two-weapon style fighting and the crossbow expert feat with 2 hand crossbows could attack with both each turn and also get the bonus dex damage to both attacks. Please someone spell it out as to why this might be wrong or right.
i am not trying to min/max this I am just trying to creat a chow yun fat/john woo guy and am not sure it's actually possible with the rules.
also that makes me wonder why they bothered to put the "light" rule on the hand crossbow also?
thanks!
-silentdante
You can't use Two-Weapon Fighting with a ranged weapon because both must be light melee weapons. (Crossbow Expert has nothing to do with TWF)
BR74 Two-Weapon Fighting: When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative. If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.
silentdante wrote:
Plaguescarred wrote:
We don't know. Probably because they originally intended it to work with TWF via feat.
I think of it this way: two weapon fighting is a melee thing. The hand crossbow has the light property so it can be held in one hand and a melee weapon can be held in the other. Thus a fighter could make a ranged attack in their turn and then make a reaction attack with the melee weapon. If you are holding a regular bow, or crossbow, you could only make a ranged attack.
if you have the crossbow expert feat, you can make both a melee attack and a ranged attack if you have a hand crossbow and a melee weapon.
nothing I have seen in the ruled suggests that a person having two hand crossbows (one in each hand) can shoot them both, though logic dictates this should be possible. As a dm I'd allow this, but I would nit allow the two weapon fighting style to apply, so no ability bonus on the offhand attack. If the fighter had archery style, however, I would allow that bonus to apply to both attacks. In any case, it takes two hand to load a crossbow, so these attacks are basically one shot wonders, because you would use up actions reloadng.
Jbickley00 wrote:
oh and thanks for the replies... i guess no john woo/chow yun fat character can be made 
.... yet
silentdante wrote:
Both the attack from Two Weapon Fighting and the attack from Crossbow Expert are a Bonus action. And you can only take one Bonus action during your turn (PHB p189), so the two don't stack.
Note that the Crossbow Expert feat doesn't mention the "don't add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack" like Two Weapon Fighting, neither does it say the that the one handed weapon has to be a melee one, so without a clarification/errata I would say that you would get to use two hand crossbows and add Dex to to both attacks damage.
When you get to level five fighter, you can combine the feat with Extra Attack, as they both say "when you use an Attack action", for two shots with your main hand and one with the off-hand. Eventually you would get four attacks with your main hand but only ever one with your off-hand, the same as with Two-Weapon Fighting. In which case, if you have the Crossbow Expert feat, you are better off with the archery fighting style for +2 attack.
On the flip side, a Fighter with Two-Weapon Fighting style would also get 2-5 melee attacks, however they would also be able to take an extra feat.
mellored wrote:
orht wrote:
silentdante wrote:
What orht said.
Crossbow expert is not TWF. It does not have the penalties or bonuses of TWF.
It's it's own special bonus attack.
And taking archery style is a good deal for it.
silentdante wrote:
tallric_kruush wrote:
Pauper wrote:
As far as the pole arm and two weapon fighting style and polearm master feat with a human at level 1 it works great. A d10 + d4 + double mods is pretty good, and when great weapon feat and style get stacked on later it will be really nice.
mellored wrote:
silentdante wrote:
Jbickley00 wrote:
mellored wrote:
Pauper wrote:
Does it actually say anywhere you need two hands to load a crossbow? I'd like to think you do.
[quote="silentdante"]
Well nuts, I thought I knew what I was doing until I read this post. This question is more for my edification than the OP, sorry. So, if you have 2 hand crossbows can you shoot them both in the same round? And then say draw daggers for the next round? And does it take "AN ACTION" to reload any crossbow? Or is that considered part of the ATTACK action? As in, you shoot a light crossbow one round...and in the next round you can load and shoot a ligth crossbow?
no clue what your talking about with the drow, i have clearly stated i am moddeling a character based on movies like "the killer" and "hard boiled"
as far as loading rules, bows do not have the "loading" tag in weapon description, which means you can fire them 4 times a turn if you have the attacks. the "ammunition" rules states that the drawing of ammunition and fireing the shot is all part of the same action.
now the hand crossbow normally has the "loading" tag in its description which says "you can only fire 1 peice of ammunition regardless of the number of attacks you have."
Crossbow Expert feat (taken at lvl 1 as a human varient) gets rid of the "loading" tag on any crossbow, so now the rule for "ammunition" takes effect which is that loading and firing the shot is all the same attack action.
so my assumption is, a character wih Crossbow Expert is that they are so good with crossbows of any kind, they can load and fire them in each action multiple times a turn if applicable. the last point of Crossbow Expert allows you when taking the attack action with a one-handed weapon (hand crossbow) you can also attack with an off-hand hand crossbow as a bonus action. the way bonus action reads (page189) is that it's like taking another action which has been established loading and firing a weapon with ammunition tag is done (unless it has loading tag) and that anything that takes away an action also takes awy a bonus action.
so what i think is that just like an elf fighter with a longbow firing 4 times with a bow in a round, the Crossbow Expert also fires 4 times in a round and then one extra time using up the bonus action for that turn. no restriction on loading. the problem now is really if it's not considered two-weapon fighting at all, would the character get the dex bonus to damage since it's acting like a regular ranged attack albeit on a bonus action. meaning is the feat a seperate speciality to two-weapon fighting (two-weapon being melee focused). and the archery style just states a ranged attack so that bonus would apply.
if i was running a game, i wold say it's fine, but i dont think it's clearly stated in the book how it works exactly. other then the step by step thought process i have above.
as a player who just wants to play an archype for fun, i would be happy with no dex bonus to damage on the bonus action attack, but i still think the character is so good with crossbows he/she can reload and fire as part of the same action.
K.J.BAILEY wrote:
jaelis wrote:
Plaguescarred wrote:
I'm not talking about real-world reloading (i have no doubts it does), i'm talking the D&D game Load property, which doesn't say it requires a # of hands. It'd be up to DM. In 4E the Load property does say so in comparison;
PHB217 Load: Ranged weapons that loose projectiles, including bows, crossbows, and slings, take some time to load. When a weapon shows “load free” on the Ranged Weapons table, that means you draw and load ammunition as a free action, effectively part of the action used to attack with the weapon. Any weapon that has the load property requires two hands to load, even if you can use only one hand to attack with it. (The sling, for example, is a one-handed weapon, but you need a free hand to load it.) The crossbow is “load minor,” which means it requires a minor action to load a bolt into the weapon. If a power allows you to hit multiple targets, the additional load time is accounted for in the power.
Quite frankly, using verrisimilitude to discuss a rules issue is pointless, since everyone's idea of what common sense is will differ greatly. Rules do what they say they do. As pointed out, the 4E rules specifically called out using two hands to load a crossbow, and the 4E version of the hand-crossbow feats specifically spelled out how they circumvented those rules.
The 5E rules apparently leave it unspecified how many hands are required to load a hand-crossbow.
Cuz, honestly, if we're really going to go down the rabbit hole and start discussing "verrisimilitude" in a game like D&D, how hard would it be for you as an "Expert" to take two fingers off your grip and use them to **** the other hand-crossbow, or pull a bolt out of your quiver and load it? You couldn't jam the butt of the hand-crossbow against your swordbelt to brace it while you **** it with the same hand you were holding it with? Can I pay a few gp extra to have custom-made hand-crossbows with a small hook on the butt that I can use to **** the other hand-crossbow without having to let go of one of them?
The crossbow Expert feat removes the load property from all crossbows, and allows for attacking with two hand-crossbows in the same turn. Full stop. You get your full number of attacks with your main-hand hand-crossbow and then one extra one with the other hand-crossbow.
This has nothing to do with the rules for two-weapon fighting, which is only regarding melee weapons.
I agree. Offhand rules for no stat bonus to damage are based on melee-melee.
The bonus attack from crossbow expert is the same as any other feat, like with polearms that let you attack with the butt end, and class abilities, like the binus action attacks granted by barbarian and ranger.
There is a limit in the game of ONE bonus attack... and staring at buildimg a character, almost every one you make probably tries to find access to a bonus action attack.
None of them mention stat or no stat. Some use the butts of polearms, a crossbow, an elbow...
They all get stat bonus to damage. Amd above all, mechanically they all seem quite fair and accessable. Its just a variety of options where you only get one.
So the only argument here is realism. And theres fireballs. So lets assume the hero is cool and taking a fast handed, super dextrous reload with the feat.
Theridion1 wrote:
ok so a point buy human fighter with the varient rule to take Crossbow Expert would be very cool. straight dex based warrior so you could carry a finnese weapon too if needed, take archery fighting style and i would probly go champion archtype. if modeling after The Killer go for the criminal background/hired killer, and probly chaotic good i would guess? Champion Archtype would make most sense, though Battlemaster "know your enemy" makes sense for the hired killer aspect of the character... hmmm
what level would the movie character be? anyways, thanks everyone for workshopping through how to make the character work, appreciate it!
silentdante wrote:
kimura121 wrote:
DaBeerds wrote:
silentdante wrote:
Danny_Montanny wrote:
So I was thinking about this a little bit. Specifically the line that says, "you can use a bonus action to attack with a loaded hand crossbow you are holding." Why is this in here if earlier the loading quality was taken away? Is it so you can't do this with a single hand crossbow? You use your Attack action to fire the hand crossbow, now you can't fire again because it's no longer loaded? Could you use your free interaction to load it, then use the bonus action to fire? The same thing applies with 2 hand crossbows. The Attack action is fine, but would you still have to use your interaction to load the off-hand before you can use your bonus action to fire? Normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal if it's the case. Unless you didn't have them out and loaded at the start of combat...
Round 1: Draw (interaction) and fire (Attack), but can't use a bonus action to fire again cause it's not loaded.
Round 2: Fire (Attack), load ammo (interaction), and fire (bonus).
Now let's look at 2 hand crossbows...
Round 1: Draw one crossbow (interaction) and fire (Attack), but can't use a bonus action to fire again cause it's not loaded.
Round 2: Draw the other (interaction) and fire either one (Attack). Still no bonus attack as neither are loaded.
Round 3: Fire one (Attack), load ammo in the other (interaction ), then fire it (bonus).
Unless crossbows can just hang there loaded that is. Wouldn't the bolt fall out? I dunno, it's kind of a mess to requre using a loaded weapon that no longer has the loading quality.
Keep in mind I am integrating this with the action rules, which allow free interaction with one object. So having one crossbow, hand or otherwise, the crossbow expert feat means it can be fired for multiple actions in a turn. This is unrealistic, but it's the rule.
with two crossbows hovewer, things change. The rules allow free interaction with one object...interaction with a second object takes an action (for game purposes it seems pretty obvious that ammo is considered the same object as the weapon). So I can walk and draw a sword, but walking and drawing two swords many not be technically possible under RAW. Thus in my interpretation, reloading the second crossbow counts as interaction with a second object, and this requires an action.
Actually, once you remove the "Loading" property from the crossbow, they fall completely under the rules of "Ammunition", meaning "drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or container is part of the attack." And there exists no rules for nocking an arrow...
Danny_Montanny wrote:
what we need is the repeating hand crossbow to solve all issues, haha
and yes while common sense or reality sense makes me think that you couldn't relead 2 hand crossbows in one turn, the game rules allow it per a special feat you have to take.
the problem is that there arent any other 1 handed ranged weapons to think about in comparison. i think at d6 damage it's not game breaking to allow a chracter to use them as if they were short swords in respect to just attacking rules.
What about using the same hand crossbow to take the bonus action attack? You attacked with a one handed weapon (the hand crossbow), it's loaded (per the feat), and you're holding it. So you don't even need to spend the extra 75 gp to get a second, right?
Danny_Montanny wrote: