Sage Advice (18 May 2015)

I can't believe they went that way with hand crossbows.

 

[Kobold Stew]

That it's unclear and poorly edited, basically.

You'll understand if I stick to my honest attempt to make sense of the rules, despite your feeling that it's "not kosher", when you have no alternative.

 

[Dark Kain]

Putting aside that I am not sure how you take disadvantage on a saving throw voluntarily, let's say the three dice rolls are: 16, 10, and 4, and they can come up in any order, the list being:

1) 16, 10, 4
2) 16, 4, 10
3) 10, 16, 4
4) 10, 4, 16
5) 4, 10, 16
6) 4, 16, 10

If you declare disadvantage in scenarios 1 and 2, you wasted your Feat. You'd have succeeded anyway.
If you roll normally, you decide to trigger Lucky on results 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Of those, you succeed with Lucky on results 3 and 6, and fail on 4 and 5.

So 1/3 of the time it's better to not voluntarily go in with disadvantage (because you waste the feat by doing that), 1/3 of the time it does not matter, and 1/3 of the time it helps you to go in with disadvantage.

Now if life is on the line, I can see risking wasting the feat. But I think it's safe to say this will not be a common practice. Life is usually not on the line like that, and often when it is you cannot voluntarily take disadvantage anyway. It's still safe to say as a generalization that you're not going to want to voluntarily take disadvantage with Lucky.

Bottom line, I don't see this being a problem. People will not be routinely volunteering for disadvantage with this feat.

Nope, it is not 1/3: you cannot do probability picking the results yourself.
You have to do the actual math

 

[Obryn]

One man's awesome is another man's cheese. I've seen some people say dual-wielding hand crossbows should be allowed because it follows the "rule of cool". I see it as the exact opposite. Running around and going "Pew Pew Pew" with dual-wielding hand crossbows (while outperforming alot of other martial attacks) seems cheesy and lame. And very UNcool. It absolutely fails to pass the "rule of cool" test for me.

But of course, to each their own, and if someone thinks dual xbows are cool, more power to them! I don't want to discourage anyone from playing the way they like. I just wanted to chime in and say that the rule of cool in a situation like this is quite subjective.

Now one hand crossbow going "pew pew pew" outperforms other martial attacks. All Sage Advice did was police the flavor.

You'll understand if I stick to my honest attempt to make sense of the rules, despite your feeling that it's "not kosher", when you have no alternative.

Is any of that relevant after this bizarre Sage Advice ruling?

And relax - I don't have a horse in this race.

 

[TerraDave]

This is starting to feel like the old rules forum we had way back when...

For the majority of Dragon's run, Skip Williams filled the role....

I don't think Crawford is, yet, up to the Williams standard in terms of the discussion.

In his intro to the series, Crawford said he would look at things from a range of angles (RAI, RAF) but seems to be doing more RAW hair-splitting. And it just doesn't seem as entertaining.

 

[El Mahdi]

I have never seen anyone say that....

I've never seen anyone advocate that you should get more attacks per round with two hand crossbows, than this ruling allows you to make with one hand crossbow and a free hand.

After looking back at previous threads, I can't find where anybody said that. I'm either mistaken, or simply can't find it now. I would lean towards my being mistaken. So, my bad.

It seems that the main contention was about requiring another hand to load. I said it was RAW. Shidaku and Praxis repeatedly said it was not.

Sage Advice says it is.

 

[Inchoroi]

One man's awesome is another man's cheese. I've seen some people say dual-wielding hand crossbows should be allowed because it follows the "rule of cool". I see it as the exact opposite. Running around and going "Pew Pew Pew" with dual-wielding hand crossbows (while outperforming alot of other martial attacks) seems cheesy and lame. And very UNcool. It absolutely fails to pass the "rule of cool" test for me.

But of course, to each their own, and if someone thinks dual xbows are cool, more power to them! I don't want to discourage anyone from playing the way they like. I just wanted to chime in and say that the rule of cool in a situation like this is quite subjective.

In this case, the largest reason for not adopting the Sage Advice clarification is that my current game already has a character predicated on that exact function; its awesome, and she's having loads of fun with it. In actual play, she doesn't really pull ahead of the martials, either, even though she has Sharpshooter. This might change, however, as she levels up, but I doubt it will change much at all. Granted, just my experiences with it so far.

For future games? I am unsure what I will do with that feat. The point of the feat, I think, according to Crawford, was to make the fighters and rangers able to use crossbows in general with their extra attacks, so I'll attempt to rewrite it with that in mind.

IIRC, the drow in the books usually dropped or sheathed the hand crossbow after the initial shot, yes?

 

[El Mahdi]

Now apply this logic to the Eldritch Knight's Warcaster features. And the ability of a Cleric to cast spells with somatic components.

This ruling is a lot more far-reaching than gun kata with dual crossbows.

Actually, on second look, I don't think so.

War Caster specifies "somatic components", where the second benefit of Crossbow Expert does not specify crossbows (of which sage advice says is the reason why it also applies to casters).

So, War Caster doesn't help you load a crossbow if you're holding a shield or weapon.

And War Caster has the prerequisite "The ability to cast at least one spell." which works for the Eldritch Knight, but not for non-magic users.

So, War Caster would allow an Eldritch Knight to perform somatic components while holding a shield or weapon, but won't help an Eldritch Knight (or any other character) wanting to load a crossbow while holding a shield or weapon.

 

[Obryn]

Now apply this logic to the Eldritch Knight's Warcaster features. And the ability of a Cleric to cast spells with somatic components.

This ruling is a lot more far-reaching than gun kata with dual crossbows.


That it's unclear and poorly edited, basically.

I'm going to go ahead and quote myself, because I'm thinking through the other implications of this "free hand" ruling. Obviously, this means that Eldritch Knights need to keep a hand free (and stick with one-handed weapons) if they intend to use their War Magic feature for any cantrips with somatic components. (Sorry, I called this Warcaster before.) But what else? I'm thinking potion use just suddenly got way more complicated, for one...

Does it have an impact to longbows and heavy crossbows? These require two hands to use, so there's no free hand available to load ammunition, even though we know a free hand is required to load ammunition.

 

[El Mahdi]

Now one hand crossbow going "pew pew pew" outperforms other martial attacks. All Sage Advice did was police the flavor.

Not really. First, it's on a par with two-weapon fighting and doesn't outperform it. Secondly, it's more than just flavor because If you go on the assumption that ignoring the loading quality means that you can do so with the same hand holding the crossbow, then you open up using shields and weapons freely while loading. That's a significant mechanical impact.

In most situations, as shidaku has pointed out, the number of attacks one can make has not changed. So in that respect, all that's changed is the visual.

But explicitly stating that a free-hand is required to load the weapon, that you're not handwaving the loading but just doing it so quickly and expertly that you can do it multiple times in a round, does have very real mechanical implications. Implications that can, and likely will, extend to other assumptions about the game's rules.

 

[ericphillips]

El Mahdi:

I am sorry for having emotions, as my reaction showed. My problem is that the "troll" word was used immediately, which is one of the worst things you can be accused of on the Internet. If he didn't use that word there would be no problem.