D&D 5E Does the new ammunition rule screw up dual hand crossbow?

[Hriston]

No, it's still possible with Gnomish auto-load crossbows.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Why on earth they decided it was a good idea to put a thumb in the eye of all you who love Hong Kong action flicks, and want to play a fantasy John Woo character, I will probably never know.

Because they wanted to clarify their intentions on how they originally thought it supposed to work... knowing full well that anyone who didn't like it could just ignore the errata and play it however they wanted to.

People dual-wielding hand crossbows with no manner or method to reload them were thumbing their eye at human anatomy and physics... so they really can't get too upset when the designers decided to "thumb their eye" right back. Especially when those players could just use the Rule of Cool and keep doing what they were doing anyway.

When it comes down to ALL of these rules in the game... WotC defaults to what appears to be the most common or most popular method amongst the playerbase. That's how they designed most things in the game. Which mean yes... occasionally the outliers like the dual-wielding crossbowists, will be shown to be outliers by having the loopholes they were climbing through occasionally sewn up to go along with how most of the playerbase is already playing the game. Thus it now comes down to those outliers to make the choice to just ignore the errata for their game. Which is completely fine if they choose to do so. Nobody else is going to care.

 

[Rune]

Yes.

The designers, in their finite wisdom, decided to tell you "you're playing the game wrong".

"Instead of using two cool hand crossbows, you can and should use only one hand crossbow instead."

"We've clarified our rules to allow you to shoot as many times with the single crossbow as you did with two, to make it pointless to use two. But, to ensure nobody plays our game wrong, we have also added errata specifically telling you you're breaking the rules if you use dual hand crossbows."

That's the take I'm getting out of that nasty discussion.

The designers, in their finite wisdom, decided to make a game whose rules are meant to help describe the fiction of the game, rather than to define it. Because it is physically impossible to load non-semi-automatic (that is, non-self-loading) hand crossbows with your hands full, the rules reflect that (and always were intended to, as far as I can tell).

Because the game allows for the players to define what is physically possible in their own campaigns (that is, not organized play campaigns, which necessarily share a set of assumptions about the physics of the setting), the rules are easily altered without affecting anything else. In other words, they are designed to be changed without breaking. Since the rules are designed not to break, the game is designed such that rules-breaking is not a thing.

No need to be bitter about it; do as intended and make the game your own.

 

[Coredump]

Yes.

Why on earth they decided it was a good idea to put a thumb in the eye of all you who love Hong Kong action flicks, and want to play a fantasy John Woo character, I will probably never know.

I didn't realize WotC had hired SWAT teams to break into your house to burn your books and steal your dice.

Or is it possible you can play it however you want, and you just wanted to complain because your aesthetics didn't match other people's aesthetics?

 

[Bacon Bits]

Why on earth they decided it was a good idea to put a thumb in the eye of all you who love Hong Kong action flicks, and want to play a fantasy John Woo character, I will probably never know.

The number of players I've seen looking at crossbows akimbo was pretty surprising. One or two people in few the groups I've played in have mentioned it. It's clearly not overpowered, because in the same article they clarified that the exact same feat allows you to make the same number of attacks while wielding a single hand crossbow!

Basically, the feat made a few people I know excited for it (either due to John Woo or Diablo 3, I'm not sure), and WotC decided to be the fun police.

Honestly, if it's not overpowered I wish they would just keep to the "rulings not rules" line. Combined with the absurdist RAW Lucky ruling, and I'm much less interested in Sage Advice as a resource.

 

[Jester David]

Yes.

The designers, in their finite wisdom, decided to tell you "you're playing the game wrong".

"Instead of using two cool hand crossbows, you can and should use only one hand crossbow instead."

"We've clarified our rules to allow you to shoot as many times with the single crossbow as you did with two, to make it pointless to use two. But, to ensure nobody plays our game wrong, we have also added errata specifically telling you you're breaking the rules if you use dual hand crossbows."

That's the take I'm getting out of that nasty discussion.

Why on earth they decided it was a good idea to put a thumb in the eye of all you who love Hong Kong action flicks, and want to play a fantasy John Woo character, I will probably never know.

No one ever reloads in John Woo films though. Everyone has "magic" guns with near infinite amounts of ammunition. Action movies run fast and loose with reloading at the best of times, but John Woo pushes it to the levels of absurdity.
While cool, that's definetly house rule territory.

The baseline game should try for some moderate amount of reality, and allow DMs to fine tune for the tone of their games. If a DM is fine with players dual wielding hand crossbows that always seem to be reloaded (while engaged in a chase on horseback down a crowded road) then that's cool. But the default assumption shouldn't be "the DM has to allow John Woo into their game" or requiring the DM to be the bad guy and have to explicitly ban John Woo-isms.

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

Nobody's saying that having two hand crossbows, with no hands free to reload them, mysteriously getting reloaded anyway, round after round, is over-powered.

No, that's not what we're saying at all.

We're just saying it's silly beyond any possibility of belief!

Carry on.


Hey! How about a Tiefling with a 3rd handbow in his tail? I mean, if you can reload two, a 3rd one should be no problem, am I right? That's totally awesome. And they should shoot flaming acidic frost bolts of thunder force!

 

[Mistwell]

A minotaur with a hand crossbow can still attack and use the bonus shot

 

[Sunseeker]

The baseline game should try for some moderate amount of reality, and allow DMs to fine tune for the tone of their games.

Which is what we had. A DM who didn't like wondering how you could reload with no free hands could add limitations. A DM who didn't mind that wouldn't need to.

We had a nice little level of "moderate amount of reality". Now we have exact replication of (highly skilled) reality. Which is unnecessary.

Frankly, Sage Advice has added little to the game, and I think they should simply stop.

 

[Sunseeker]

Hey! How about a Tiefling with a 3rd handbow in his tail? I mean, if you can reload two, a 3rd one should be no problem, am I right? That's totally awesome. And they should shoot flaming acidic frost bolts of thunder force!

Was the insulting badwrongfun edit-text really necessary?