Hi, I'm a new player and I got invited by some friends to play, we all started at lv5, after doing a lot of research I decided to make a battle master with sharpshooter and xbow expert because I read they are easy to play + they do a lot of damage. We played 2 sessions and everything was fine, then today at the third session in the middle of combat one the players (experienced as dm but not the dm here) pointed that out that I should NOT be adding my DEX mod to the damage of my bonus action attack with Xbow expert (I did some research on this from the beginning through videos and forum discussions and saw that I should add it, nothing says I can't). His explanation at first was that I'm dual wielding hand crossbows and the bonus actions made me attack with my "weak hand" therefore I shouldn't add the bonus dmg, I procede to explain that from what I read, the xbow expert feature overwrites that and has nothing to do with the two-weapon fighting rule, they are different bonus actions. At this point it's hard for me to convince them, I even told them that I would be using ONE hand crossbow, but then they told me that the "loaded crossbow in your hand" (from xbow expert) has to be another crossbow and not the same one... their reasoning was that the crossbow has to be already loaded before the bonus action as I wouldn't be "fast enough" to load it that fast, which made no sense to me because the feat is called "xbow expert"..
It was a pretty akward at this point because I'm a new player (but I did my research on this specifically) and I'm trying to argue two people that have years of experience, even though I still think I'm right, at the end the DM decided that by logic and his interpretation I can't add the ability mod to the bonus attack, I just agreed and moved on.
Sorry for the long explanation but I wanna hear what you guys think, I know the DM has the final call, but I want to listen other opinions and recommendations on: the feat itself and how to handle these situations with other players and the DM.
You ignore the loading quality of crossbows with which you are proficient.
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.
First off, if you are ignoring the loading property of crossbows, you can make as many attacks with crossbows per turn as you can. Ammunition property only requires you to have one hand free to load.
Second, the bonus action from crossbow expert has nothing to do with dual-wielding or off-hand attacks. You just make another ranged attack with your bonus action, no strings attached, so you add your DEX and proficiency bonus to attack and your DEX to damage.
Yea - they are erroneously working off the Two-Weapon Fighting rule that has absolutely nothing to do with crossbows. First of all - Two-Weapon Fighting only applies to melee attacks not ranged - and secondly - as Voras has already said - Crossbow Expert allows you to get the Bonus Action attack while using just one Hand-Crossbow - and it makes no mention at all of not getting to add your modifier (and rules only do what they say they do - TWF explicitly says you don't add your modifier - so Crossbow Expert would also have to say that if it did that - but it doesn't).
Their complaint that you couldn't reload quick enough with the crossbow is normally valid - except for the fact that Crossbow Expert explicitly allows you to ignore the Loading property - which is usually the thing that stops you attacking multiple times in a turn. Ignoring it means you can attack with it as many times as you have attacks for - with just one Hand-Crossbow.
In fact - if you tried to use two Hand-Crossbows you would quickly find that to be (nearly) impossible - because while the Crossbow Expert feat allows you to ignore the Loading property - it does not allow you to ignore the Ammunition property which requires you to have a free hand in order to reload. Kind of difficult to do if you have both hands full of Hand-Crossbows.
So yea - they are very wrong per RAW. Now - if they are ruling that way because they have decided to rule that way as part of a homebrew rule - then that is obviously their prerogative as DM - but they should have forewarned you about that when you took the feat so you could make an informed decision when seeing if it was worth taking.
Hand crossbows per RAW still require 2 hands to wield and can't be dual wielded (because of the ammunition trait). It is intended for the bonus action attack to use the same hand crossbow that you used for your attack action.
All weapon attacks add damage modifiers, 2 weapon fighting is a specific exception. If the bonus action attack is granted by a different feature (even if it is a second weapon), it follows the normal rules. The 2 weapon fighting rules also only apply to melee weapons.
Crossbow Expert is kind of a weirdly worded Feat because, in essence, the bonus action attack works in one way: If you are wielding a hand crossbow in one hand and have your other hand free, after attacking you can fire your hand crossbow as a bonus action. The wording of it seems to imply that you would be using a different one-handed weapon to attack, then gain a bonus action attack from a hand crossbow held in your off-hand. But even though Hand Crossbows are one-handed weapons and you ignore the Loading property, the Ammunition property means you still need at least one free hand to load it, even if your character is capable of loading it lightning fast. Maybe your DM will be generous enough to allow you to treat your crossbow as loaded with one bolt at the start of combat, so you could get one round attacking with a Short Sword then tagging on a bonus action Hand Crossbow attack, but otherwise the only way to fully take advantage of the feat is to just use a single hand crossbow and no other weapon.
I'm sure there are edge cases where the very specific wording of Crossbow Expert makes a world of difference, but I personally would have preferred if the wording was more restrictive and laid out exactly how the feat works in very plain, unambiguous English.
I'm sure there are edge cases where the very specific wording of Crossbow Expert makes a world of difference, but I personally would have preferred if the wording was more restrictive and laid out exactly how the feat works in very plain, unambiguous English.
But it does lay it out in plain, unambiguous English. I don't know how to make any of the bullets plainer or more unambiguous than they already are.
As for edge cases, I basically know of two: anyone wielding a Returning Shot hand crossbow (which lets you ignore Ammunition) with the feat can pair the hand crossbow with a shield or other one-handed weapon, and anyone wielding a thrown weapon will generally have a free hand during the bonus action to shoot, so there are no issues with reloading. It's potentially possible to apply the first of these two cases in any situation where you can have someone else reload the hand crossbow for you. I'm playing a Ranger right now who fights this way - his primary thrown weapon is nets.
As for OP, other posters have covered it. If you're mono-wielding a hand crossbow with an empty hand, the whole point of the first and third bullet points of the feat are that you can shoot multiple times per turn and one of those times will be as a bonus action, with full modifier to damage.
Another case would be melee weapon in the main hand and a pre-loaded hand crossbow in the off-hand. If you attack with your main hand (e.g. with a scimitar), the feat allows you to fire the hand crossbow using a bonus action.
Works only once, because you cannot load the hand crossbow with both hands wielding a weapon.
Thank you all for your replies, now I can stay a bit more calm even though the DM has made the decision
What are some recommendations when dealing with stuff like this with a DM (and another player in this case) in the future? Because at the end his explanation was that I should focus more on the RP part and less on the rules, but my "fun" comes from dealing a lot of damage as well, that's why I created this character and did my research so.. And after that discussion I was a bit discouraged to play, It felt like a 1v3 me being a new player and knowing I was right
Thank you all for your replies, now I can stay a bit more calm even though the DM has made the decision
What are some recommendations when dealing with stuff like this with a DM (and another player in this case) in the future? Because at the end his explanation was that I should focus more on the RP part and less on the rules, but my "fun" comes from dealing a lot of damage as well, that's why I created this character and did my research so.. And after that discussion I was a bit discouraged to play, It felt like a 1v3 me being a new player and knowing I was right
It really doesn't help to argue with the DM mid-game. I only recommend making 1 attempt to correct the rule live (something like: "you only don't add damage modifiers to the 2 weapon fighting bonus action, it doesn't apply to every bonus action attack"). And if that fails wait until after the game to show DM the actual rule in the book.
If the DM still insists on using that ruling, consider asking if you can change your build choices to account for house rules you weren't told about beforehand.
Yea I have to agree with DJC, arguing with your DM isn't a good way to go.
If the DM still insists on using that ruling, consider asking if you can change your build choices to account for house rules you weren't told about beforehand.
And I'd second this too. If you can't use the same crossbow for the attacks nor add your modifier to the damage then your build loses quite a lot of its viability unfortunately. I'd probably suggest grabbing a Heavy Crossbow for the bigger dmg dice or picking a Longbow and switching the crossbow expert feat to something else you like.
Thank you all for your replies, now I can stay a bit more calm even though the DM has made the decision
What are some recommendations when dealing with stuff like this with a DM (and another player in this case) in the future? Because at the end his explanation was that I should focus more on the RP part and less on the rules, but my "fun" comes from dealing a lot of damage as well, that's why I created this character and did my research so.. And after that discussion I was a bit discouraged to play, It felt like a 1v3 me being a new player and knowing I was right
Your DM is by definition "right", but it's generally speaking bad DMing to spring a ruling on a PC that violates the RAW, since as you bring up, PCs have to make permanent choices when building themselves, and their only general way to do that is to assume the RAW is going to be obeyed. You should abide by any ruling your DM makes, with these caveats:
It's always ok to make sure your DM knows the RAW, so any ruling they make is an informed decision. It's in no-one's best interest for your DM to have to guess at what the RAW is. That doesn't mean you should necessarily slow down play by looking up a rule mid-combat, but whenever you have some time, finding the RAW and presenting it to your DM can be helpful for anyone.
Both you and your DM should generally do your best to find situations where something like this might come up, and bring it to the other before it does. Your DM doesn't want to have to make rulings on the fly without time to think, and you don't want them to, either. Likewise, both of you should have a vested interest in making choices about builds (for you, your character; for your DM, NPCs you meet) based on knowing the rules, even if you're playing with house rules.
Once you're in this situation, where your DM has functionally nerfed you via house rules in a fashion that you had no way to see coming, you should generally speaking be comfortable asking your DM for permission to rebuild yourself in line with the house rules you now know are in place. Likewise, your DM should generally agree to this. It's a significant red flag if a DM routinely house-nerfs you as a surprise and then expects you to just live with the nerf.
The melee version of your build is done with Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master. If your DM agrees to let you rebuild, ask first if they're planning on nerfing either of these feats as well, and if not, there you go. You'll still want ASIs eventually and I don't know your level, but a third feat commonly thrown into that mix is Sentinel.
This should be obvious, but changing from ranged to melee attacks usually has a direct impact on which maneuvers you take. It also impacts your fighting style - you presumably had Archery, but now you'll probably want Defense.
If you have access to black powder weapons, Gunner replaces the hand crossbow bonus attack with both increasing your damage die to 1d12 instead of 1d10 for a heavy crossbow, and gives you +1 Dex. Combined with a second half-feat (Elven Accuracy and Piercer are both synergistic choices you may qualify for), this can be a way to give up the bonus action attack without seriously nerfing your output.
If you want to lean into this seriously, you need elven accuracy, but a samurai with elven accuracy, gunner, and piercer will, late-game, outperform a hand crossbow battlemaster.
Hi, I'm a new player and I got invited by some friends to play, we all started at lv5, after doing a lot of research I decided to make a battle master with sharpshooter and xbow expert because I read they are easy to play + they do a lot of damage. We played 2 sessions and everything was fine, then today at the third session in the middle of combat one the players (experienced as dm but not the dm here) pointed that out that I should NOT be adding my DEX mod to the damage of my bonus action attack with Xbow expert (I did some research on this from the beginning through videos and forum discussions and saw that I should add it, nothing says I can't). His explanation at first was that I'm dual wielding hand crossbows and the bonus actions made me attack with my "weak hand" therefore I shouldn't add the bonus dmg, I procede to explain that from what I read, the xbow expert feature overwrites that and has nothing to do with the two-weapon fighting rule, they are different bonus actions. At this point it's hard for me to convince them, I even told them that I would be using ONE hand crossbow, but then they told me that the "loaded crossbow in your hand" (from xbow expert) has to be another crossbow and not the same one... their reasoning was that the crossbow has to be already loaded before the bonus action as I wouldn't be "fast enough" to load it that fast, which made no sense to me because the feat is called "xbow expert"..
It was a pretty akward at this point because I'm a new player (but I did my research on this specifically) and I'm trying to argue two people that have years of experience, even though I still think I'm right, at the end the DM decided that by logic and his interpretation I can't add the ability mod to the bonus attack, I just agreed and moved on.
Sorry for the long explanation but I wanna hear what you guys think, I know the DM has the final call, but I want to listen other opinions and recommendations on: the feat itself and how to handle these situations with other players and the DM.
They are rules wise wrong.
You are using a single hand crossbow.
Crossbow expert gives
First off, if you are ignoring the loading property of crossbows, you can make as many attacks with crossbows per turn as you can. Ammunition property only requires you to have one hand free to load.
Second, the bonus action from crossbow expert has nothing to do with dual-wielding or off-hand attacks. You just make another ranged attack with your bonus action, no strings attached, so you add your DEX and proficiency bonus to attack and your DEX to damage.
Yea - they are erroneously working off the Two-Weapon Fighting rule that has absolutely nothing to do with crossbows. First of all - Two-Weapon Fighting only applies to melee attacks not ranged - and secondly - as Voras has already said - Crossbow Expert allows you to get the Bonus Action attack while using just one Hand-Crossbow - and it makes no mention at all of not getting to add your modifier (and rules only do what they say they do - TWF explicitly says you don't add your modifier - so Crossbow Expert would also have to say that if it did that - but it doesn't).
Their complaint that you couldn't reload quick enough with the crossbow is normally valid - except for the fact that Crossbow Expert explicitly allows you to ignore the Loading property - which is usually the thing that stops you attacking multiple times in a turn. Ignoring it means you can attack with it as many times as you have attacks for - with just one Hand-Crossbow.
In fact - if you tried to use two Hand-Crossbows you would quickly find that to be (nearly) impossible - because while the Crossbow Expert feat allows you to ignore the Loading property - it does not allow you to ignore the Ammunition property which requires you to have a free hand in order to reload. Kind of difficult to do if you have both hands full of Hand-Crossbows.
So yea - they are very wrong per RAW.
Now - if they are ruling that way because they have decided to rule that way as part of a homebrew rule - then that is obviously their prerogative as DM - but they should have forewarned you about that when you took the feat so you could make an informed decision when seeing if it was worth taking.
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Hand crossbows per RAW still require 2 hands to wield and can't be dual wielded (because of the ammunition trait). It is intended for the bonus action attack to use the same hand crossbow that you used for your attack action.
All weapon attacks add damage modifiers, 2 weapon fighting is a specific exception. If the bonus action attack is granted by a different feature (even if it is a second weapon), it follows the normal rules. The 2 weapon fighting rules also only apply to melee weapons.
Crossbow Expert is kind of a weirdly worded Feat because, in essence, the bonus action attack works in one way: If you are wielding a hand crossbow in one hand and have your other hand free, after attacking you can fire your hand crossbow as a bonus action. The wording of it seems to imply that you would be using a different one-handed weapon to attack, then gain a bonus action attack from a hand crossbow held in your off-hand. But even though Hand Crossbows are one-handed weapons and you ignore the Loading property, the Ammunition property means you still need at least one free hand to load it, even if your character is capable of loading it lightning fast. Maybe your DM will be generous enough to allow you to treat your crossbow as loaded with one bolt at the start of combat, so you could get one round attacking with a Short Sword then tagging on a bonus action Hand Crossbow attack, but otherwise the only way to fully take advantage of the feat is to just use a single hand crossbow and no other weapon.
I'm sure there are edge cases where the very specific wording of Crossbow Expert makes a world of difference, but I personally would have preferred if the wording was more restrictive and laid out exactly how the feat works in very plain, unambiguous English.
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But it does lay it out in plain, unambiguous English. I don't know how to make any of the bullets plainer or more unambiguous than they already are.
As for edge cases, I basically know of two: anyone wielding a Returning Shot hand crossbow (which lets you ignore Ammunition) with the feat can pair the hand crossbow with a shield or other one-handed weapon, and anyone wielding a thrown weapon will generally have a free hand during the bonus action to shoot, so there are no issues with reloading. It's potentially possible to apply the first of these two cases in any situation where you can have someone else reload the hand crossbow for you. I'm playing a Ranger right now who fights this way - his primary thrown weapon is nets.
As for OP, other posters have covered it. If you're mono-wielding a hand crossbow with an empty hand, the whole point of the first and third bullet points of the feat are that you can shoot multiple times per turn and one of those times will be as a bonus action, with full modifier to damage.
Another case would be melee weapon in the main hand and a pre-loaded hand crossbow in the off-hand. If you attack with your main hand (e.g. with a scimitar), the feat allows you to fire the hand crossbow using a bonus action.
Works only once, because you cannot load the hand crossbow with both hands wielding a weapon.
Thank you all for your replies, now I can stay a bit more calm even though the DM has made the decision
What are some recommendations when dealing with stuff like this with a DM (and another player in this case) in the future? Because at the end his explanation was that I should focus more on the RP part and less on the rules, but my "fun" comes from dealing a lot of damage as well, that's why I created this character and did my research so.. And after that discussion I was a bit discouraged to play, It felt like a 1v3 me being a new player and knowing I was right
It really doesn't help to argue with the DM mid-game. I only recommend making 1 attempt to correct the rule live (something like: "you only don't add damage modifiers to the 2 weapon fighting bonus action, it doesn't apply to every bonus action attack"). And if that fails wait until after the game to show DM the actual rule in the book.
If the DM still insists on using that ruling, consider asking if you can change your build choices to account for house rules you weren't told about beforehand.
And I'd second this too. If you can't use the same crossbow for the attacks nor add your modifier to the damage then your build loses quite a lot of its viability unfortunately. I'd probably suggest grabbing a Heavy Crossbow for the bigger dmg dice or picking a Longbow and switching the crossbow expert feat to something else you like.
Your DM is by definition "right", but it's generally speaking bad DMing to spring a ruling on a PC that violates the RAW, since as you bring up, PCs have to make permanent choices when building themselves, and their only general way to do that is to assume the RAW is going to be obeyed. You should abide by any ruling your DM makes, with these caveats: