Hey Chukkensorc, thanks for the comment. Yeah, I agree with you regarding the hand crossbow and that is probably how I would run it in my table, but I couldn't find anywhere in the rulebook that you need a free hand to load. Loading property only says "Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of ammunition from it when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make." and the feat only says you can ignore the loading quality.
About using the offhand first vs having to use the basic attack first, the vanilla rule states only that you can use your bonus action to use your offhand attack if you use your action to attack with the other one-handed light melee weapon in your main hand, but it does not set the order in stone. It would make sense that you would have to use your bonus attack only after your attack action to ensure you are taking the attack action. I would agree if someone wanted to use the offhand attack first with the commitment they'd have to use their attack action afterwards. So based on the rules you'd only be able to use the offhand attack if using your action as an attack action with your main hand melee attack. But honestly, I do prefer the way the game is programmed currently for CRPGs: being able to cast a spell and then shank a mf is the best.
Nevertheless, my main point is that the dual-wielding rule as it is should definitively be changed sooner rather than later. And the biggest problems IMO are the modifiers being all over the place...
