I have a question. When you use a Long or Short bow, can you fire one arrow, and fire a second arrow as a bonus action? Near as I can figure bows can, Crossbows, which fire bolts instead can't do that because of the Loading property.
I have a question. When you use a Long or Short bow, can you fire one arrow, and fire a second arrow as a bonus action? Near as I can figure bows can, Crossbows, which fire bolts instead can't do that because of the Loading property.
Loading does not prevent this - Loading prevents multiple attacks within the same action. If you have an ability which lets you attack as a bonus action, any weapon you have can do it, including longbows, shortbows, and all three crossbows. That's unless the bonus action ability you have in mind has wording of its own preventing this, like how two-weapon fighting won't work with any of these, not even hand crossbows.
I have a question. When you use a Long or Short bow, can you fire one arrow, and fire a second arrow as a bonus action? Near as I can figure bows can, Crossbows, which fire bolts instead can't do that because of the Loading property.
Yes you normally should be able to attack as a bonus action with either weapons. What bonus action were you thinking exactly?
Only if some feature, feat, trait, etc. allows one to take a bonus action of attack, otherwise because both bow types have the two-handed and ammunition property having to pull an arrow from it's quiver would prevent the extra bonus action attack.
Only if some feature, feat, trait, etc. allows one to take a bonus action of attack, otherwise because both bow types have the two-handed and ammunition property having to pull an arrow from it's quiver would/does count as the bonus action of interacting with an object.
That's only a bonus action if you have the Rogue subclass Thief.
My Significant other plays a Hunter Ranger, I play a Battle Master. We've been trying to figure things out. My character has all the prerequisites to use a two longswords, one in each hand. I can make an attack, I can make another as a bonus attack, and I can make a third one if there's a trigger. I have the Riposte maneuver, so if someone swings a weapon at me and misses, I can get a shot at them, and if they try to leave my range without using the Disengage Action, I get to take a swing at them.
My Significant other plays a Hunter Ranger, I play a Battle Master. We've been trying to figure things out. My character has all the prerequisites to use a two longswords, one in each hand. I can make an attack, I can make another as a bonus attack, and I can make a third one if there's a trigger. I have the Riposte maneuver, so if someone swings a weapon at me and misses, I can get a shot at them, and if they try to leave my range without using the Disengage Action, I get to take a swing at them.
Can a Ranger fire three arrows?
Can someone with a Crossbow do so as well?
You must have the Dual Wielder feat if you're twf-bonus action attacking with longswords. That won't work with ranged weapons at all.
You can fire a hand crossbow with a bonus action using the Crossbow Expert feat.
There are a variety of ways for a Ranger to fire 3 arrows, and a Hunter can fire more than 3, but there's no bonus action involvement:
Horde Breaker will work with bows, but won't work with crossbows unless you take the Crossbow Expert feat.
Volley will work with bows, but won't work with crossbows unless you take the Crossbow Expert feat.
Generally speaking, most Ranger subclasses provide a way to get a 3rd attack (or more, like the Hunter) at level 11 that's situational in some way. Whether this will work with a given weapon is very subclass specific - for example, the Beast Master (Primal Companion) L11 extra attack has to come from the companion.
I was half awake when I posted that, and have since edited it. Short of Extra Attacks, or something that grants the bonus action of attack, it's one shot hopefully one kill.
As for any type of multi-shooting with crossbows, crossbow expert ignores the loading prop, so a Battle master with a heavy crossbow and the CB expert feat becomes a nice machine gunner.
My Significant other plays a Hunter Ranger, I play a Battle Master. We've been trying to figure things out. My character has all the prerequisites to use a two longswords, one in each hand. I can make an attack, I can make another as a bonus attack, and I can make a third one if there's a trigger. I have the Riposte maneuver, so if someone swings a weapon at me and misses, I can get a shot at them, and if they try to leave my range without using the Disengage Action, I get to take a swing at them.
Can a Ranger fire three arrows?
Can someone with a Crossbow do so as well?
Not sure what level you are. If you are level 5, then you have extra attack with action and 2WF bonus action, making 3 attacks without reaction. Not to mention action surge.
The ranger also has extra attack for 2 attacks with action (as long as they arent using crossbow). Hunter has its choice of features that give it an extra attack or damage die.
Fighters are more specialized for fighting, so you are going to get more attacks, but the ranger has more skills, exploration features, and spells.
Ok, maybe I have it down now. You can fire more than one arrow if you have a way of making your Attack Action do it more than once. Bonus actions are something you have to qualify for, so after you've used your Attack Action, firing another arrow doesn't qualify. A Reaction will work, I think. That may be the difference between arrows and bolts.
Ok, maybe I have it down now. You can fire more than one arrow if you have a way of making your Attack Action do it more than once. Bonus actions are something you have to qualify for, so after you've used your Attack Action, firing another arrow doesn't qualify. A Reaction will work, I think. That may be the difference between arrows and bolts.
Using your Reaction is difficult. There are certainly ways to fire another shot with your Reaction - and all of the ones I know of work on both bows and crossbows or neither. An example that works with neither is taking an Opportunity Attack, which is melee only. An example that works with both you actually have access to - if you use Commander's Strike, the Maneuver, on your Ranger friend, you'll spend one of your attacks from your Attack action and your Bonus Action so the Ranger can spend a Reaction to shoot. That shot can be with an arrow, a bolt, or anything else.
Ok, maybe I have it down now. You can fire more than one arrow if you have a way of making your Attack Action do it more than once. Bonus actions are something you have to qualify for, so after you've used your Attack Action, firing another arrow doesn't qualify. A Reaction will work, I think. That may be the difference between arrows and bolts.
Well a crossbow has the loading property which means you use one attack to reload it. But a Feat like crossbow expert allows you to ignore the loading property ( the feat means you learned to knock and reload any crossbow so quickly in the span of 6 seconds you can fire again immediately. )
Ok, maybe I have it down now. You can fire more than one arrow if you have a way of making your Attack Action do it more than once. Bonus actions are something you have to qualify for, so after you've used your Attack Action, firing another arrow doesn't qualify. A Reaction will work, I think. That may be the difference between arrows and bolts.
Unless noted otherwise you normally only attack once with an action, bonus action or reaction. You could attack more than once if a feature would let you, such as Extra Attack. If so, the only exception will be with loading weapons, since crossbows let you fire only once when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you could normally make.
Only if some feature, feat, trait, etc. allows one to take a bonus action of attack, otherwise because both bow types have the two-handed and ammunition property having to pull an arrow from it's quiver would/does count as the bonus action of interacting with an object.
That's only a bonus action if you have the Rogue subclass Thief.
Ugh...A Rogue's Cunning Action allows for 3 options. Nothing more, nothing less. Pulling a 2nd arrow is NOT one of them.
Thief Rogue:
Fast Hands
Starting at 3rd level, you can use the bonus action granted by your Cunning Action to make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check, use your thieves’ tools to disarm a trap or open a lock, or take the Use an Object action.
Use an Object would likely cover pulling an arrow so I believe you are mistaken here.
Only if some feature, feat, trait, etc. allows one to take a bonus action of attack, otherwise because both bow types have the two-handed and ammunition property having to pull an arrow from it's quiver would prevent the extra bonus action attack.
Drawing an ammunition does not take a bonus actionit's part of the attack's action used.
Ammunition: Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack.
1. There is no inherent difference between an arrow and a bolt, just arrows are for bows and bolts are for crossbows.
2. There are small differences between bows and crossbows, the big one being that if you have a feature that lets you attack more than once in an Action (like Extra Attack) then the crossbow's loading feature will only allow you to attack once. Crossbow Expert feat is required to allow more than one attack in an Action.
3. There's almost no way to use a ranged weapon with a Reaction, and very few with a Bonus Action. Opportunity attacks are melee weapon only.
4. Drawing an arrow, bolt or bullet to use in a range attack will never use up your free object interaction for a turn. You draw, load and fire the ammunition all as part of the same attack. So during an Attack Action you can fire as many bow arrows or sling bullets as your number of attacks allow. You don't need Fast Hands.
Just to be clear, what you need Fast Hands for is using a bonus action to just pull out a piece of ammo from your pocket and do nothing with it. You can normally use your free 1/turn Use Item interaction to do this as well.
Are you thinking of Extra Attack? With bows, you can make multiple attacks if you have the Extra Attack feature, but with crossbows you can't because of the loading property. Unless of course you have the Crossbow Expert feat.
In the simple weapons list, Shortbows and Light Crossbows have the exact same range. Under Martial weapons, the Longbow blows everything else away at short range and has by far the longest range. There are fairly few ways to fire a second arrow with a bonus attack, and with your reaction, there's where the range is most important. You out of melee range without using the Disengage Action, they get an attack of opportunity.
Take a Ranger with a Longbow, and let them get the Sniper feat. A variant human can have that at first level. They can say "When I see my target head for cover I shoot an arrow at them." Use the Ready Action. Wham. You're good to go out to 150 feet, and in the unlikely event that they get 600 feet before you get a chance to shoot them, you can still hit them with however many arrows the Attack Action gives you.
Pity we don't have a Bow expert Feat. It would make what is arguably the weakest class in the game somewhat better, and that wold be lovely for all the people who want to play a Ranger.
In the simple weapons list, Shortbows and Light Crossbows have the exact same range. Under Martial weapons, the Longbow blows everything else away at short range and has by far the longest range. There are fairly few ways to fire a second arrow with a bonus attack, and with your reaction, there's where the range is most important. You out of melee range without using the Disengage Action, they get an attack of opportunity.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here at all. Attacks of opportunity don’t have anything to do with ranged attacks or the ranges of ranged weapons. While I’m sure there could be an example somewhere, off the top of my head, I am aware of no means of making a ranged attack as a reaction except by readying an attack, and range is no more or a less a question there than in making a normal attack on your turn.
Take a Ranger with a Longbow, and let them get the Sniper feat. A variant human can have that at first level. They can say "When I see my target head for cover I shoot an arrow at them." Use the Ready Action. Wham. You're good to go out to 150 feet, and in the unlikely event that they get 600 feet before you get a chance to shoot them, you can still hit them with however many arrows the Attack Action gives you.
That feels like a waste of a readied action. The archer could just shoot them on their turn. And if they ready an action, they only get one attack with it, regardless of how many attacks they normally get. And I still don’t see why the range is significant. Very few fights play out over these ranges.
Pity we don't have a Bow expert Feat. It would make what is arguably the weakest class in the game somewhat better, and that wold be lovely for all the people who want to play a Ranger.
The perceived weakness of rangers stems from the fact that many of their non-combat features are only useful in one particular kind of game and worthless in any other. Combat effectiveness has never been a problem for rangers. Buffing their combat capabilities further would ignore the actual problem with them in favor of trying to fix an aspect of the class that was never broken.
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I have a question. When you use a Long or Short bow, can you fire one arrow, and fire a second arrow as a bonus action? Near as I can figure bows can, Crossbows, which fire bolts instead can't do that because of the Loading property.
<Insert clever signature here>
Loading does not prevent this - Loading prevents multiple attacks within the same action. If you have an ability which lets you attack as a bonus action, any weapon you have can do it, including longbows, shortbows, and all three crossbows. That's unless the bonus action ability you have in mind has wording of its own preventing this, like how two-weapon fighting won't work with any of these, not even hand crossbows.
Yes you normally should be able to attack as a bonus action with either weapons. What bonus action were you thinking exactly?
Only if some feature, feat, trait, etc. allows one to take a bonus action of attack, otherwise because both bow types have the two-handed and ammunition property having to pull an arrow from it's quiver would prevent the extra bonus action attack.
That's only a bonus action if you have the Rogue subclass Thief.
My Significant other plays a Hunter Ranger, I play a Battle Master. We've been trying to figure things out. My character has all the prerequisites to use a two longswords, one in each hand. I can make an attack, I can make another as a bonus attack, and I can make a third one if there's a trigger. I have the Riposte maneuver, so if someone swings a weapon at me and misses, I can get a shot at them, and if they try to leave my range without using the Disengage Action, I get to take a swing at them.
Can a Ranger fire three arrows?
Can someone with a Crossbow do so as well?
<Insert clever signature here>
You must have the Dual Wielder feat if you're twf-bonus action attacking with longswords. That won't work with ranged weapons at all.
You can fire a hand crossbow with a bonus action using the Crossbow Expert feat.
There are a variety of ways for a Ranger to fire 3 arrows, and a Hunter can fire more than 3, but there's no bonus action involvement:
I was half awake when I posted that, and have since edited it. Short of Extra Attacks, or something that grants the bonus action of attack, it's one shot hopefully one kill.
As for any type of multi-shooting with crossbows, crossbow expert ignores the loading prop, so a Battle master with a heavy crossbow and the CB expert feat becomes a nice machine gunner.
Not sure what level you are. If you are level 5, then you have extra attack with action and 2WF bonus action, making 3 attacks without reaction. Not to mention action surge.
The ranger also has extra attack for 2 attacks with action (as long as they arent using crossbow). Hunter has its choice of features that give it an extra attack or damage die.
Fighters are more specialized for fighting, so you are going to get more attacks, but the ranger has more skills, exploration features, and spells.
Ok, maybe I have it down now. You can fire more than one arrow if you have a way of making your Attack Action do it more than once. Bonus actions are something you have to qualify for, so after you've used your Attack Action, firing another arrow doesn't qualify. A Reaction will work, I think. That may be the difference between arrows and bolts.
<Insert clever signature here>
Using your Reaction is difficult. There are certainly ways to fire another shot with your Reaction - and all of the ones I know of work on both bows and crossbows or neither. An example that works with neither is taking an Opportunity Attack, which is melee only. An example that works with both you actually have access to - if you use Commander's Strike, the Maneuver, on your Ranger friend, you'll spend one of your attacks from your Attack action and your Bonus Action so the Ranger can spend a Reaction to shoot. That shot can be with an arrow, a bolt, or anything else.
Well a crossbow has the loading property which means you use one attack to reload it. But a Feat like crossbow expert allows you to ignore the loading property ( the feat means you learned to knock and reload any crossbow so quickly in the span of 6 seconds you can fire again immediately. )
Unless noted otherwise you normally only attack once with an action, bonus action or reaction. You could attack more than once if a feature would let you, such as Extra Attack. If so, the only exception will be with loading weapons, since crossbows let you fire only once when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you could normally make.
Thief Rogue:
Fast Hands
Starting at 3rd level, you can use the bonus action granted by your Cunning Action to make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check, use your thieves’ tools to disarm a trap or open a lock, or take the Use an Object action.
Use an Object would likely cover pulling an arrow so I believe you are mistaken here.
Drawing an ammunition does not take a bonus actionit's part of the attack's action used.
Ammunition: Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack.
There's a bit of confusion here.
1. There is no inherent difference between an arrow and a bolt, just arrows are for bows and bolts are for crossbows.
2. There are small differences between bows and crossbows, the big one being that if you have a feature that lets you attack more than once in an Action (like Extra Attack) then the crossbow's loading feature will only allow you to attack once. Crossbow Expert feat is required to allow more than one attack in an Action.
3. There's almost no way to use a ranged weapon with a Reaction, and very few with a Bonus Action. Opportunity attacks are melee weapon only.
4. Drawing an arrow, bolt or bullet to use in a range attack will never use up your free object interaction for a turn. You draw, load and fire the ammunition all as part of the same attack. So during an Attack Action you can fire as many bow arrows or sling bullets as your number of attacks allow. You don't need Fast Hands.
Just to be clear, what you need Fast Hands for is using a bonus action to just pull out a piece of ammo from your pocket and do nothing with it. You can normally use your free 1/turn Use Item interaction to do this as well.
Are you thinking of Extra Attack? With bows, you can make multiple attacks if you have the Extra Attack feature, but with crossbows you can't because of the loading property. Unless of course you have the Crossbow Expert feat.
I guess it boils down to range.
In the simple weapons list, Shortbows and Light Crossbows have the exact same range. Under Martial weapons, the Longbow blows everything else away at short range and has by far the longest range. There are fairly few ways to fire a second arrow with a bonus attack, and with your reaction, there's where the range is most important. You out of melee range without using the Disengage Action, they get an attack of opportunity.
Take a Ranger with a Longbow, and let them get the Sniper feat. A variant human can have that at first level. They can say "When I see my target head for cover I shoot an arrow at them." Use the Ready Action. Wham. You're good to go out to 150 feet, and in the unlikely event that they get 600 feet before you get a chance to shoot them, you can still hit them with however many arrows the Attack Action gives you.
Pity we don't have a Bow expert Feat. It would make what is arguably the weakest class in the game somewhat better, and that wold be lovely for all the people who want to play a Ranger.
<Insert clever signature here>
I don’t understand what you’re saying here at all. Attacks of opportunity don’t have anything to do with ranged attacks or the ranges of ranged weapons. While I’m sure there could be an example somewhere, off the top of my head, I am aware of no means of making a ranged attack as a reaction except by readying an attack, and range is no more or a less a question there than in making a normal attack on your turn.
That feels like a waste of a readied action. The archer could just shoot them on their turn. And if they ready an action, they only get one attack with it, regardless of how many attacks they normally get. And I still don’t see why the range is significant. Very few fights play out over these ranges.
The perceived weakness of rangers stems from the fact that many of their non-combat features are only useful in one particular kind of game and worthless in any other. Combat effectiveness has never been a problem for rangers. Buffing their combat capabilities further would ignore the actual problem with them in favor of trying to fix an aspect of the class that was never broken.