I am sure this has been clarified somewhere before, but I'm not finding it in the sea of Crossbow Expert discussions, which aren't relevant to the question.
Loading holds that "you can fire only one piece of Ammunition from it when you use an action, Bonus Action, or reaction to fire it." Clearly, no matter how many Extra Attack's your attack action may have, you only get to fire once with a crossbow, that's obvious and well settled. But the way I read this, if you have a feature that lets you make an attack with a Bonus Action, Loading would not prevent you from firing once using your Action, and once again using your Bonus (and once again with your Reaction as well, if you find a way to make that happen). It doesn't say "you can only fire one piece of Ammunition per round," it just says you can fire one piece of ammunition per Action-type.
I think both. If the character is able to use the crossbow, he can fire only one bolt per attack, whether its an action, reaction, bonus action, or all three. That's the way i understand it, anyway.
Edit:
No, that's wrong, I think.
"You ignore the loading property of crossbows with which you are proficient." PHB 165
It seems to me that if a character is able to make multiple ranged attacks, the Crossbow Expert feat allows him to ignore the Loading rule for the crossbow.
Crossbow Expert basically just removes the Loading property entirely, and thus would let you make multiple Extra Attacks with your main action as normal. That's not what was at issue in the question being asked.
I am sure this has been clarified somewhere before, but I'm not finding it in the sea of Crossbow Expert discussions, which aren't relevant to the question.
Loading holds that "you can fire only one piece of Ammunition from it when you use an action, Bonus Action, or reaction to fire it." Clearly, no matter how many Extra Attack's your attack action may have, you only get to fire once with a crossbow, that's obvious and well settled. But the way I read this, if you have a feature that lets you make an attack with a Bonus Action, Loading would not prevent you from firing once using your Action, and once again using your Bonus (and once again with your Reaction as well, if you find a way to make that happen). It doesn't say "you can only fire one piece of Ammunition per round," it just says you can fire one piece of ammunition per Action-type.
Right?
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Correct. You can fire once per action, once per bonus action, and once per reaction.
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That's the way I read it.
Recently returned to D&D after 20+ years.
Unapologetic.
Is that with or without Crossbow Expertise? As I understand the OP's question he is asking about action economy without Crossbow Expertise.
Perpetually annoyed that Eldritch Knights can't use Eldritch Blast, Eldritch Smite, and Eldritch Sight.
I think both. If the character is able to use the crossbow, he can fire only one bolt per attack, whether its an action, reaction, bonus action, or all three. That's the way i understand it, anyway.
Edit:
No, that's wrong, I think.
"You ignore the loading property of crossbows with which you are proficient." PHB 165
It seems to me that if a character is able to make multiple ranged attacks, the Crossbow Expert feat allows him to ignore the Loading rule for the crossbow.
Recently returned to D&D after 20+ years.
Unapologetic.
Crossbow Expert basically just removes the Loading property entirely, and thus would let you make multiple Extra Attacks with your main action as normal. That's not what was at issue in the question being asked.
Thanks for the help guys.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.