Sage Advice (18 May 2015)

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

 

[Psikerlord#]

Well, I'm glad reloading crossbows requires a free hand, seems realistic to me. Kinda useful article, I guess. Not very exciting though. I prefer UA!

 

[TwoSix]

I've always found it ironic how attacking the ethos of an argument or person mostly ends up eroding one's own ethos instead. The use of logical fallacies only serves, to those that recognize them, as a spotlight to just how weak an argument is in the first place.

View attachment 68433

 

[kerleth]

Well someone else may have said this about crossbows but...

Round 1) Attack with my main hand weapon
Bonus action attack with a crossbow
Use one free object interaction to sheathe main weapon
As I now have a free hand, load crossbow
Round 2) Use one free object interaction to draw main weapon
Attack with main weapon
Attack with crossbow
Round 3) Attack with main weapon
Sheathe weapon as "free action"
Load crossbow
Fire crossbow as bonus action
Round 4) Load crossbow
Draw Weapon
Attack with main weapon
Fire Crossbow
Round 5+ Alternate between rounds 3 and 4

Also, I'm shocked that he didn't touch on one handed quarterstaff bonus attack action.

 

[Mistwell]

Well someone else may have said this about crossbows but...

Round 1) Attack with my main hand weapon
Bonus action attack with a crossbow
Use one free object interaction to sheathe main weapon
As I now have a free hand, load crossbow
Round 2) Use one free object interaction to draw main weapon
Attack with main weapon
Attack with crossbow
Round 3) Attack with main weapon
Sheathe weapon as "free action"
Load crossbow
Fire crossbow as bonus action
Round 4) Load crossbow
Draw Weapon
Attack with main weapon
Fire Crossbow
Round 5+ Alternate between rounds 3 and 4

This feels like one of those, "spot where the mistake is" puzzles. And I admit to having failed to spot it, yet.

 

[El Mahdi]

Well someone else may have said this about crossbows but...

Round 1) Attack with my main hand weapon
Bonus action attack with a crossbow
Use one free object interaction to sheathe main weapon
As I now have a free hand, load crossbow
Round 2) Use one free object interaction to draw main weapon
Attack with main weapon
Attack with crossbow
Round 3) Attack with main weapon
Sheathe weapon as "free action"
Load crossbow
Fire crossbow as bonus action
Round 4) Load crossbow
Draw Weapon
Attack with main weapon
Fire Crossbow
Round 5+ Alternate between rounds 3 and 4.

As DM, if you were to sheathe your melee weapon while engaged in melee combat (in a situation that would require you to take the Disengage Action to avoid an Opportunity Attack), my ruling would be that you trigger an Opportunity Attack.

As a certain Dark Lord of the Sith once said: You are unwise to lower your defenses.


In your example above, if you are moving from target to target to make your melee attacks, you haven't accounted for taking Disengage Actions (or the movement).


The Crossbow Expert Feat eliminates disadvantage for making a ranged attack within 5 feet of a hostile creature.

It does not eliminate the need for Disengaging, or make you immune to Opportunity Attacks.

I think that the Rules as Intended mean that when in melee combat, you have to actively maintain your melee engagement or use the Disengage Action to leave your threatened square. As long as you are in that threatened square your opponent is attacking. You can't just sheathe your weapon while somebody is in your face attacking you with a melee weapon; at least if you don't want to give them a free shot at you that is.

 

[the Jester]

I was upset by what I thought was a slight to Gary Gygax. I had a knee jerk reaction...

>snip<

You called me a troll. As you knew I made a mistake you decided to use that word, one of the most derisive words on the Internet. You are very quick with pulling your gun.

But your knee-jerk reaction made you come across as a troll. He didn't just "pull his gun" because he saw you walking down the street, he did it because you were starting to throw manure into the thread.

Are you an admin? Because you have a haughty response with you "I would have preferred." Try saying "It would have been better..." because last I checked, no one owns the Interwebtubes.

Actually, people do own the Interwebtubes. All that information flows over physical lines, is stored in physical servers. And Moruss owns Enworld; you are absolutely not entitled to be here. You are here at his sufferance. You have no right to be here, nothing entitles you to post on ENWorld. It is contingent upon your good behavior. You are like a guest in his house at a big party. Merric has been at that party for a really long time and has repeatedly shown that he's a good guy and contributes- he brings some beer and helps clean up the mess- so responding to his trying to give you a constructive suggestion the way you did is... not helpful.

If your response to "Hey dude, chill" is "R U an admin??", you're not only going to shut down most of the conversations you might have, but you'll end up with a reputation as... wait for it... a troll. And eventually, instead of engaging with you, people will just report your posts as trolling, and that doesn't help the conversation at all. None of it.

Also, you and the other guy are continuing to discuss this mistake and are inadvertently thread jacking . I would suggest that maybe you should make a new post called "Shackle Dragger's Rules of Netiquette" and PM'ed me or noted that the thread should be continued there.

Or, you know, you could take the suggestion as it was intended- as a helpful hint as to the social contract here in Moruss' house, at Moruss' party- and just chill out. Approach things in a less confrontational way. Or else don't be surprised when you get this kind of response.

But this kind of sarcastic reply isn't going to win you any points when the other guys are trying to be reasonable.

 

[Dausuul]

The Lucky thing is one place where I'll be ignoring Sage Advice. That ruling falls under the heading of "Crawford brain fart" as far as I'm concerned--seriously, I have no idea what he was thinking. You can improve your chance to hit by closing your eyes? Riiiight.

(Edited after reviewing how Lucky works) I'm sticking with my previous ruling: You make the original roll with disadvantage, per normal. Discard the better die and keep the worse. Then you decide whether to use a luck roll. If you use a luck roll, you have your choice of using the new roll from Lucky, or the result of your roll-with-disadvantage. You don't get to go back, find the discarded result from the first roll, and fish it out of the trash. It's gone.

Everything else looks good though. Glad to see that we can quit talking about the dual hand crossbow/Sharpshooter build.

 

[the Jester]

The Lucky thing is one place where I'll be ignoring Sage Advice. That ruling falls under the heading of "Crawford brain fart" as far as I'm concerned--seriously, I have no idea what he was thinking. You can improve your chance to hit by closing your eyes? Riiiight.

I do like what somebody in this thread suggested, though: Roll all three dice, choose two, and take the lowest result. It's simpler than using a separate luck die, and it accomplishes the same goal of ensuring that disadvantage is strictly disadvantageous even when using Lucky.

Agreed about Crawford's brain fart here.

What I've been doing, and will continue to do, when a luck point and disadvantage interact, is this: First, roll 2d20 and take the lower one. Then, roll your 1d20 for being lucky and take the one you choose.

 

[Iosue]

This feels like one of those, "spot where the mistake is" puzzles. And I admit to having failed to spot it, yet.

Rounds 1 and 4 don't work because drawing ammunition must be part of the crossbow attack. I'd probably let it slide, though.

 

[Iosue]

The Lucky thing is one place where I'll be ignoring Sage Advice. That ruling falls under the heading of "Crawford brain fart" as far as I'm concerned--seriously, I have no idea what he was thinking. You can improve your chance to hit by closing your eyes? Riiiight.

Your game, your call, of course, but I really don't get the blowback on this. It's not like this is mechanical loophole being exploited beyond all association with in-character action. This is literally the character relying on their extreme good luck. Using the Force, as it were. A character closing their eyes and trusting to their remarkable luck, a luck particularly characteristic of that character, makes perfect sense to me. As noted above, it's not for nothing that we say, "Better to be lucky than good."