How do people feel about hand crossbows (specifically dual-wielded) in fantasy games?
Even though I thought the demon hunter in D3 was pretty cool i find the idea of using it on the table a little goofy for most games. To me it can kind of seem over the top like on the level of the matrix or like some weeaboo shit, and how would a character reload a crossbow in each hand so quickly without dropping one?
I am currently playing DND 5E in which a character can use dual hand crossbows and fire them for all of their attacks in one turn after acquiring the proper feat. if you use dual wielding feat when your a fighter or ranger then you can fire a hand crossbow in each hand for a total of 2d6+6 (saying my dex mod is +3). Likewise, a longbow deals 1d8+3.
I dont want to be the guy that brings tries to have my character use a collapsible katana, but i dont want to take the cut in damage just to save face and personal preference. What do you all think about Handbows? Anybody familiar with 5E know away around it?
>>44557339
>how would a character reload a crossbow in each hand so quickly without dropping one
You can't.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/sageadvice_feats
Although it'd be a fun use of Unseen Servant to justify it, and it exposes a niche for some sort of clockwork gnome handcrossbows or some such.
>>44557339
>I am currently playing DND 5E in which a character can use dual hand crossbows and fire them for all of their attacks in one turn after acquiring the proper feat.
You only need one hand crossbow to do that. The feat doesn't say you can't use the hand crossbow you used in your attack action to also make the bonus action attack. And it doesn't say anywhere that you can load a hand crossbow without using your other hand or not, so being able to reload while dual wielding hand crossbows is a grey area, but firing one just as fast as you could with two is not.
>>44557339
>>44557518
Oh, right, I can just copy+paste.
Relevant text:
>[the Ammunition property] requires you to have a bolt to fire from the hand crossbow, and the hand crossbow isn’t going to load itself (unless it’s magical or a gnomish invention). You need to load each bolt into the weapon, and doing so requires a hand.
>>44557518
>>44557520
>>44557544
Wow that actually clears things up quite a bit. I do like your idea about unseen servant helping you load though that is interesting.
>>44557339
>>44557518
I wonder if it would be possible to rig up a crossbow to reload like arnie does it in t2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9SpHLyZuP0
Then just make a 'magazine' for it, and require it to be reloaded every once and a while.
I mean, cho-ko-nu's were a thing and crossbows were replaced by conventional firearms until we thought up the concept of shit like revolvers or conventional magazines.
>>44559450
I mean fundamentally crossbows were considered to be a very 'simple' weapon. Not a *HUGE* amount of thought was given to the design of them (at least by fairly modern standards).
If you decided to engineer one with bow cams, whatever shenanigans and some other nifty stuff, you could make it so that the very very first part of actually cocking the crossbow would be the 'most' labor intensive bit and after that it basically took care of itself.
You could also cook up some 'magazine' type things for it too and get to a point where you have Terminator 2 levels of spin-cocking your crossbows. Or just apply magic liberally.
>>44559518
i think the Chinese had repeating crosbows
>>44560660
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow
very hard to look up
>>44557339
I think they are quite goofy replacement pistols, not cool at all. A proper crossbow has way more style.
>>44560660
The Koreans and Japanese had them too. The Japanese apparently used them in field-artillery sizes, but they fell out of use when the military needs shifted from pushing other ethnicities out of the islands by military means towards policing a now unified nation by subcontracted armed thugs and the knowledge on their construction and use was completely lost. Some hand-held versions of the korean variant built to japanese tastes from the 18th century exist though. Stone at least has images of those.
