Dual wielding hand crossbows

[NotMisty]

Apparently there's hand crossbows in the underdark, am I able to wield both as a ranger? How exactly would that work?

[Hjarl]

In 5e you can dual wield them. BUT you cant reload any of them since that requires a free hand. Its not diablo 3 ;)

[SirRednut]

Escrito originalmente por Dargsy Wargon:

Escrito originalmente por Hjarl:

In 5e you can dual wield them. BUT you cant reload any of them since that requires a free hand. Its not diablo 3 ;)

Woah. So would you have to take a couple of turns to unequip reload, requip, unequip, reload, reequip? Seems SO not worth the effort.

Perhaps just use them to initiate, then either drop one or switch to different weapon slot

[sevenfoothamster]

Escrito originalmente por Dargsy Wargon:

Escrito originalmente por Hjarl:

In 5e you can dual wield them. BUT you cant reload any of them since that requires a free hand. Its not diablo 3 ;)

Woah. So would you have to take a couple of turns to unequip reload, requip, unequip, reload, reequip? Seems SO not worth the effort.

yeah that's why our ancestors weren't running around doing gun kata with hand crossbows.

People who specialize in them will often have several of them, like old timey pirates carrying a bunch of pistols.

[Hjarl]

Escrito originalmente por Dargsy Wargon:

Escrito originalmente por Sir_Red:

Perhaps just use them to initiate, then either drop one or switch to different weapon slot

Would be cool to play a kind of pirate character that just runs through a series of hand crossbows then switches to scimitar.

Very cool idea :)

[Rallek25]

Escrito originalmente por Dargsy Wargon:

Escrito originalmente por Hjarl:

In 5e you can dual wield them. BUT you cant reload any of them since that requires a free hand. Its not diablo 3 ;)

Woah. So would you have to take a couple of turns to unequip reload, requip, unequip, reload, reequip? Seems SO not worth the effort.

There's a feat in 5e called crossbow expert where:
- you ignore the loading property of crossbows
- Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls.
- When you use the Attack action and attack with a one handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding.
This is on pg. 165 of the PHB.

But dual wielding hand crossbows, with crossbow expert, and sharpshooter on a fighter is one of the most OP builds you can make in 5e.

[Hjarl]

Escrito originalmente por Rallek25:

Escrito originalmente por Dargsy Wargon:

Woah. So would you have to take a couple of turns to unequip reload, requip, unequip, reload, reequip? Seems SO not worth the effort.

There's a feat in 5e called crossbow expert where:
- you ignore the loading property of crossbows
- Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls.
- When you use the Attack action and attack with a one handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding.
This is on pg. 165 of the PHB.

But dual wielding hand crossbows, with crossbow expert, and sharpshooter on a fighter is one of the most OP builds you can make in 5e.

Only OP if you break the rules :)

The feat does not change the fact that you need a free hand to reload. Its even been Faq´ed by WotC.

"Do the first and third benefits of Crossbow Expert turn
a hand crossbow into a semiautomatic weapon?

The short answer is no.

The first benefit of the feat lets you ignore the loading
property (PH, 147) of the hand crossbow if you’re proficient with that weapon. The upshot is that you can fire it more
than once if you have a feature like Extra Attack. You’re still
limited, however, by the fact that the weapon has the ammunition property (PH, 146). The latter property requires
you to have a bolt to fire from the hand crossbow, and the
hand crossbow isn’t going to load itself (unless it’s magical
or a gnomish invention). You need to load each bolt into the
weapon, and doing so requires a hand.
To dig deeper into this point, take a look at the following
sentence in the definition of the ammunition property:
“Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other
container is part of the attack.” The sentence tells us two
important things. First, you’re assumed to be drawing—
that is, extracting with your hand—the ammunition from
a container. Second, the act of drawing the ammunition is
included in the attack and therefore doesn’t require its own
action and doesn’t use up your free interaction with an object on your turn.
What does that all mean for a hand crossbow? It means
Crossbow Expert makes it possible to fire a hand crossbow
more than once with a feature like Extra Attack, provided
that you have enough ammunition and you have a hand free
to load it for each shot."

[NotMisty]

Escrito originalmente por Hjarl:

Escrito originalmente por Rallek25:

There's a feat in 5e called crossbow expert where:
- you ignore the loading property of crossbows
- Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls.
- When you use the Attack action and attack with a one handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding.
This is on pg. 165 of the PHB.

But dual wielding hand crossbows, with crossbow expert, and sharpshooter on a fighter is one of the most OP builds you can make in 5e.

But that does change the fact that you need a free hand to reload. Its even been Faq´ed by WotC.

"with that weapon. The upshot is that you can fire it more
than once if you have a feature like Extra Attack. You’re still
limited, however, by the fact that the weapon has the ammunition property (PH, 146). The latter property requires
you to have a bolt to fire from the hand crossbow, and the
hand crossbow isn’t going to load itself (unless it’s magical
or a gnomish invention). You need to load each bolt into the
weapon, and doing so requires a hand.
To dig deeper into this point, take a look at the following
sentence in the definition of the ammunition property:
“Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other
container is part of the attack.” The sentence tells us two
important things. First, you’re assumed to be drawing—
that is, extracting with your hand—the ammunition from
a container. Second, the act of drawing the ammunition is
included in the attack and therefore doesn’t require its own
action and doesn’t use up your free interaction with an object on your turn.
What does that all mean for a hand crossbow? It means
Crossbow Expert makes it possible to fire a hand crossbow
more than once with a feature like Extra Attack, provided
that you have enough ammunition and you have a hand free
to load it for each shot."

Full disclosure. I cheated to give myself 2 hand crossbows. Dual wielding pose looks cool in the character sheet but it led to some.... Shenanigans.

Larian probably hasn't coded dual crossbows yet so it's a bit wonky rn haha. I hope they add in the feat tho

[PirateMouse]

The kind of important thing that everyone here seems to be missing is you don't actually have to dual-wield hand crossbows to get the bonus action attack. In 5e, if you have a hand crossbow in hand and the Crossbow Expert feat, you can fire the same crossbow once with your Attack action and then again with your Bonus action. Why? Because:

"When you use the Attack action and attack with a one handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding."

So:

1. Did you use the Attack action? Yes.
2. Did you use it attack with your hand crossbow? Yes.
3. Is a hand crossbow a one-handed weapon? Yes.
4. Are you holding a hand crossbow? Yes.
5. You can use your hand crossbow to make a bonus action attack (after reloading it with your free hand, which due to the same feat is not an action for you).

That means that while yes, you "can" dual-wield hand crossbows and get your bonus attack that way, you not only don't have to but also shouldn't because then, as others have noted, you don't have a free hand for reloading. Plus, you wind up saddled with extra unnecessary gear and also a need for an additional magic weapon as you get up in levels ... all for no good reason.

That's going by the feat as clearly written. That is ALSO the official ruling on it:

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1105278841612754950

[PirateMouse]

What I'm saying is, friends don't let friends do silly, nonsensical things like dual-wield hand crossbows. Go with a single hand crossbow!

As to how it works in BG3, though, I don't know.

[lyonesse2]

Escrito originalmente por KittyHat:

That's going by the feat as clearly written. That is ALSO the official ruling on it:

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1105278841612754950

Does that mean it's possible to use the hand crossbow as an offhand weapon every round when your main weapon is a one-handed melee weapon, e.g. rapier in your main hand and hand crossbow as offhand?
Or would wielding another weapon still prevent you from reloading the crossbow (since technically both hands would be "full")?

[Alealexi]

Escrito originalmente por Rallek25:

Escrito originalmente por Dargsy Wargon:

Woah. So would you have to take a couple of turns to unequip reload, requip, unequip, reload, reequip? Seems SO not worth the effort.

There's a feat in 5e called crossbow expert where:
- you ignore the loading property of crossbows
- Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls.
- When you use the Attack action and attack with a one handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding.
This is on pg. 165 of the PHB.

But dual wielding hand crossbows, with crossbow expert, and sharpshooter on a fighter is one of the most OP builds you can make in 5e.

You still can't reload bolts if you are dual wielding since you don't have a free hand.

It is better just to have one hand crossbow. Since they count as a one handed weapon you can use you bonus action to shoot and since you have a free hand you can load more bolts.

[Alealexi]

Escrito originalmente por lyonesse2:

Escrito originalmente por KittyHat:

That's going by the feat as clearly written. That is ALSO the official ruling on it:

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1105278841612754950

1. Does that mean it's possible to use the hand crossbow as an offhand weapon every round when your main weapon is a one-handed melee weapon, e.g. rapier in your main hand and hand crossbow as offhand?

2. Or would wielding another weapon still prevent you from reloading the crossbow (since technically both hands would be "full")?

1. Yes you can use it but...

2. You would not be able to use you hand crossbow again until you drop your melee weapon. You can't load a bolt if you don't have a free hand.

[Egro]

Well, automatic pistol is a thing in 5e soooo....

[Alealexi]

Escrito originalmente por Egro:

Well, automatic pistol is a thing in 5e soooo.... :wowshehe:

You would need to take the firearm expert feat for that.

[Mosey]

Right now you can dual wield hand crossbows, but the off-hand attack seems to take a full action so it's inferior to using one regular crossbow in every way. It's one attack a round, since you can't use your bonus action for an attack.

And as far as I can tell, anyone at all can dual wield them so being a ranger has no real tangible benefit over any other class, minus perhaps taking the archery feat that gives +2 to ranged to-hit and/or horde breaker.

Also dual wielding hand crossbows is glitchy, so personally I'd avoid it which isn't that hard since you're only going to find a handful of them and even then only in the Underdark.