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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6729736" data-attributes="member: 58197">Your post is all over the place, but I'll summarize the state of the hand crossbow fighter as I understand it:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When using a crossbow, you can't reload without a free hand. Thus, wielding two crossbows at once (of any size) is not very effective. By the wording of Crossbow Expert, in order to get the bonus action attack, you have to have the hand crossbow in hand at the time you take the Attack action, which means you can't reload the main-hand crossbow while attacking, and thus can't benefit from Extra Attack.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">However, the Crossbow Expert feat allows you to get a bonus attack with the same hand crossbow you used to make your regular attack (nothing in there says the hand crossbow has to be in your off hand).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Thus, the hand crossbow fighter uses one hand crossbow, reloading at absurd speed.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In theory, the drawback of pulling this trick is that you can only do it with a hand crossbow, which has a lower damage die than most fighter weapons. (A dual wielding melee fighter will take the Dual Wielder feat and use rapiers or longswords.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">However, Sharpshooter overwhelms the difference in damage dice. At that point, all that matters is getting as many attacks per turn as possible.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Mastery are generally agreed to be overpowered.</li> </ul>Don't expect WotC to nerf Sharpshooter any time soon; they've made it clear that they intend to be very sparing with functional errata, and they're not all that interested in trying to police the game for powergaming exploits. DMs have the power to address exploits with our own players, and we are expected to use it.So if you have an issue here, you will probably need to make some house rules to address it. My recommendation would be to reduce Sharpshooter's damage bonus to +5. (While you're at it, you might trim Great Weapon Mastery's damage bonus to +7 or +8. GWM is less broken than Sharpshooter since it can't use the Archery fighting style to offset the attack penalty.) That brings the crossbow fighter back into balance. Whether you want to also change Crossbow Expert, to require you to make the bonus attack with your off hand, is up to you.</blockquote>

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