Sage Advice (18 May 2015)

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

 

[Mephista]

I disagree. I think the magic initiate feat was mostly for those non-spell casting classes anyway. I can tell you that that feat is awesome for my shadow monk, who used it to get eldritch blast and hex. Ever seen hex used in conjunction with flurry of blows? Pretty darn nice.

I tend to play half-casters, so I never played around with that. I guess it does make sense for martial classes; I'd probably let it be a way to have the E.K. and A.T. get one more lvl 1 non-Evoc/Trans/Ill/Enc spell as well.

 

[jgsugden]

Doesn't Lucky deserve more attention? If you have disadvantage you can effectively turn it into advantage with Lucky? You get to choose which of the three dice to use... If you really need to hit and have Lucky, but no route to advantage - give yourself disadvantage to increase the chances you hit?

 

[Mephista]

How do you give yourself disadvantage?

 

[Sacrosanct]

How do you give yourself disadvantage?

by closing your eyes?

 

[Mephista]

Point

 

[Inchoroi]

How do you give yourself disadvantage?

by closing your eyes?

As silly as that is, it is also hilarious, and reminds me of Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards!: "It's a one-in-a-million shot...but it just might work!" "Sarge...would you suppose it's not actually, really a one-in-a-million shot? Couldn't it be, just, you know, one-in-a-hun'red thousands?"

 

[Zaran]

Doesn't Lucky deserve more attention? If you have disadvantage you can effectively turn it into advantage with Lucky? You get to choose which of the three dice to use... If you really need to hit and have Lucky, but no route to advantage - give yourself disadvantage to increase the chances you hit?

I think he didn't word it correctly. You get an extra die after you have rolled your disadvantage and have an undesired result. and you can pick the first undesired result or the result of the luck die.

 

[Leatherhead]

Well, that's one way to stop the duel wielding Sharpshooter hand crossbow combo, I guess. That just leaves GWM and the Sorlock as the two hot topic builds when it comes to power gaming.

It actually gives a buff to the crossbow/sharpshooter, now they only need one crossbow instead of two.

It does, however, ruin the drow rapier-and-handcrossbow battle style, which makes me sad.

It also does this, which is arguably even worse because nobody cared enough to complain about that.

So now, thanks to people having an aneurysm over "guns akimbo" and not being able to mentally picture someone manipulating two small objects in the same hand, we have buffed hand crossbow snipers, and ruined the iconic reason behind the feat in the first place.

 

[Zaran]

Well, that's one way to stop the duel wielding Sharpshooter hand crossbow combo, I guess. That just leaves GWM and the Sorlock as the two hot topic builds when it comes to power gaming. At least, that's my initial thought. It does, however, ruin the drow rapier-and-handcrossbow battle style, which makes me sad. Might still be possible with just the duel wielding feat; I'll have to look into it.

But it makes sense doesn't it? You can't load a crossbow with your hands full. You can however have it preloaded before a fight and fire it once with a weapon in your other hand.

 

[Jeff Albertson]

All as I interpreted them.