There are two bugs that are making dual wielding hand crossbows do way more damage than they should.
1. Off-hand hand crossbow attacks are benefiting from extra damage from Dex ability modifier even without the two weapon fighting - fighting style.
2. Off-hand hand crossbow attacks are not suffering from the -5 attack penalty imposed by sharpshooter (with sharpshooter enabled offhand hand crossbow attacks just simply do +10 damage without the -5 attack).
Let's briefly discuss some design decisions by Larian: [A] removed the loading property for all crossbows essentially gives you part of the crossbow expert feat for free; and [B] treating the fast-hands feature from Thief as a permanent additional bonus action.
The above two bugs (1 & 2) combined with the design decisions (A & B) enable an oppressively over-performing damage build. Playing solo without at least one character having this build feels foolish. Playing multiplayer with a character with this build sidelines all other characters to be wet noodle spectators of the one-man army that is this build.
Add the caustic ring and gloves of archery and you might as well not have companions for encounters because their turns are just making the fights last longer.
To be clear I don't want any of the design decisions to be changed or re-evaluated. I only mentioned them because they are drastically compounding the effects of the two bugs listed above.
Last edited by LTC_Panders; 23/08/23 08:11 PM. Reason: grammar
