Sage Advice (18 May 2015)

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

 

[ericphillips]

Actullay, I am not trolling. I got confused cuz I am tired and havent read Dragon since the early 90s. Gary Gygax wrote "From The Sorcerer's Scroll." I got the columns confused. Sorry.

And you could have pointed out my mistake without being a dick.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Those who walk in guns blazing shouldn't be surprised by return fire.

 

[ericphillips]

Well, I apologized. Which is more than I expect to hear from you all.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It's generally a pretty friendly place, but, like I said...

 

[Baumi]

That Ruling makes the Hand-Crossbow advantage useless. Also the only advantage the Hand-Crossbow has to his bigger Cousins is that it is one-handed, which is moot if you need two hands to operate.

 

[MerricB]

That Ruling makes the Hand-Crossbow advantage useless. Also the only advantage the Hand-Crossbow has to his bigger Cousins is that it is one-handed, which is moot if you need two hands to operate.

Weirdly, it actually keeps the hand crossbow as pretty good... due to the other ruling that you can fire it an additional time each round using a bonus action!

Note that, unlike (regular) two-weapon fighting, you keep your Dexterity modifier on the damage roll for this additional shot.

The hand crossbow also works as a one-shot then discard and draw something new weapon. (A second, loaded crossbow?)

Of course, traditionally, the hand crossbow was a pretty useless weapon in AD&D. (They were introduced as a drow weapon in Hall of the Fire Giant King). Their redeeming feature was that their darts were often poisoned...

Cheers!

 

[Baumi]

Weirdly, it actually keeps the hand crossbow as pretty good... due to the other ruling that you can fire it an additional time each round using a bonus action!

Note that, unlike (regular) two-weapon fighting, you keep your Dexterity modifier on the damage roll for this additional shot.

Yeah, but the other Crossbows do more damage and have far better range. Like Dual-Weapon Combat, at first it is quite strong, but the more attacks you get the lower the advantage is...

 

[MerricB]

Yeah, but the other Crossbows do more damage and have far better range. Like Dual-Weapon Combat, at first it is quite strong, but the more attacks you get the lower the advantage is...

It doesn't actually bother me that the hand crossbow is weaker than other weapons. When it was first introduced, it had an inferior range to all other crossbows, did less damage (and that's saying something, because original damage for crossbows was really low!) and the only really good thing about it was that, in the hands of the drow, it shot sleep darts.

The main advantage it had was that the thief was proficient with it but not other crossbows... unfortunately, it's reign of terror never got off the ground due to thieves also being proficient with the short bow!

I think it's got a specialist use in 5E, but isn't an all-round weapon... which pretty much sums up the hand crossbow.

Cheers!

 

[Celtavian]

So an invisible assassin can ambush a paralyzed target and never benefit from more than two dice - but a blind, restrained, poisoned character firing at long range can take the best of three dice using Lucky?

I guess it really is better to be lucky than good.....

I guess they made that aphorism true.

 

[Celtavian]

So a Hand Crossbow is a one-handed weapon that takes two hands to operate.

No. It always takes one free hand to load whether the weapon is one or two handed. Always.

The hand crossbow is not like the crossbow or longbow. You don't need an extra hand to steady and aim it or to draw the bowstring.

I don't get why anyone wouldn't understand the simple physical rule that you must have a free hand to draw ammunition. It's not hard to understand. If you're holding a hand crossbow in the other hand, you don't have a free hand to draw ammunition.

Seriously, we all know how these things work. We know you can hold a bow with one hand while drawing an arrow to nock. We know you can hold a light crossbow and cock it back with a lever, load the arrow, and fire it. You need a free hand to do it. How hard is it to accept you need a free hand to cock back the hand crossbow and load it. But you don't need two hands to aim it or draw back a bowstring as you do with two-handed ranged weapons. Crawford is using a very naturalistic understanding of how the weapons work to incorporate verisimilitude into action. Not realism, but the illusion of realism.

As is usual with all Crawford's ruling, you get to do at your table what you and your players want. Crawford's number one rule is you and your group decide how you want it. All he does is write how the game designers would rule it or how it was intended to be ruled. There is no hard coded rules now. If you don't like it, change it. It won't affect combat much at all.