My ranger took crossbow expert and wants to dual wield light crossbows, awesome.
I want to make sure I have this right, to shoot a second time he MUST use his bonus action and can only do so if he uses his action to shoot the first time, not say, swing a sword, right?
And as opposed to to two handed fighting where the second attack gets no prof mods does crossbow expert allow prof mods to the bonus action attack?
Dual attack lets you have a prof mod on the bonus attack. So he won't get it from Xbow expert as far as I'm aware. Dual wielding light crossbows could be done with standard action and bonus action as you described. Excluding the prof mod on the bonus action. However... those weapons require 2 hands to re-load. How does he plan to do that? He has to give up using the 2nd one after the first turn then. Or spend an entire round to re-load both. Either way he'd lose out on damage overall.
Strictly speaking they can't wield two hand crossbows simultaneously; you need a hand free to reload. What they can do is fire one hand crossbow twice (once with your Attack action, once with the bonus action granted by the Crossbow Expert feat.) Since the end result is the same, it doesn't break anything to let them describe it as wielding two crossbows.
You always add your ability modifier to the damage of your weapon attacks unless another rule says otherwise, and Crossbow Expert doesn't say otherwise.
I had the same idea for a build. But doesnt the Crossbow feat ignore loading? So you CAN use two hand crossbows, you don't need a free hand (cause you ignore the loading) and attack once in Action and once in Bonus Action.
I had the same idea for a build. But doesnt the Crossbow feat ignore loading? So you CAN use two hand crossbows, you don't need a free hand (cause you ignore the loading) and attack once in Action and once in Bonus Action.
It’s not the loading property but the ammunition property that imposes the free hand requirement.
One way of bypassing the requirement of one hand to dual-wield hand crossbows is the ability that Artificers have, Artificer's Infusion.
Repeating Shot
Item: A simple or martial weapon with the ammunition property (requires attunement)
This magic weapon grants a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it when it’s used to make a ranged attack, and it ignores the loading property if it has it.
The weapon requires no ammunition; it magically produces one piece of ammunition each time you make a ranged attack with it, unless you manually load it. The ammunition produced by the weapon vanishes the instant after the it hits or misses a target.
The only problem being is attunement. They'll have to get a feat (like Tal'dorei's "Mystic Conflux") if they want to hold on to more attunement items, so it all depends on whether or not the shooty player thinks it's worth it or not.
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My ranger took crossbow expert and wants to dual wield light crossbows, awesome.
I want to make sure I have this right, to shoot a second time he MUST use his bonus action and can only do so if he uses his action to shoot the first time, not say, swing a sword, right?
And as opposed to to two handed fighting where the second attack gets no prof mods does crossbow expert allow prof mods to the bonus action attack?
Dual attack lets you have a prof mod on the bonus attack. So he won't get it from Xbow expert as far as I'm aware.
Dual wielding light crossbows could be done with standard action and bonus action as you described. Excluding the prof mod on the bonus action.
However... those weapons require 2 hands to re-load. How does he plan to do that? He has to give up using the 2nd one after the first turn then. Or spend an entire round to re-load both. Either way he'd lose out on damage overall.
Strictly speaking they can't wield two hand crossbows simultaneously; you need a hand free to reload. What they can do is fire one hand crossbow twice (once with your Attack action, once with the bonus action granted by the Crossbow Expert feat.) Since the end result is the same, it doesn't break anything to let them describe it as wielding two crossbows.
You always add your ability modifier to the damage of your weapon attacks unless another rule says otherwise, and Crossbow Expert doesn't say otherwise.
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Ok thanks
I had the same idea for a build. But doesnt the Crossbow feat ignore loading? So you CAN use two hand crossbows, you don't need a free hand (cause you ignore the loading) and attack once in Action and once in Bonus Action.
It’s not the loading property but the ammunition property that imposes the free hand requirement.
One way of bypassing the requirement of one hand to dual-wield hand crossbows is the ability that Artificers have, Artificer's Infusion.
Repeating Shot
Item: A simple or martial weapon with the ammunition property (requires attunement)
This magic weapon grants a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it when it’s used to make a ranged attack, and it ignores the loading property if it has it.
The weapon requires no ammunition; it magically produces one piece of ammunition each time you make a ranged attack with it, unless you manually load it. The ammunition produced by the weapon vanishes the instant after the it hits or misses a target.
The only problem being is attunement. They'll have to get a feat (like Tal'dorei's "Mystic Conflux") if they want to hold on to more attunement items, so it all depends on whether or not the shooty player thinks it's worth it or not.