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...
Sage advice (and I believe an errata) have stated this: “ What does that all mean for a hand crossbow? It means Crossbow Expert makes it possible to fire a hand crossbow more than once with a feature like Extra Attack, provided that you have enough ammunition and you have a hand free to load it for each shot.” That’s straight from the WotC DnD website. What I was referring to with BA attack being separated was answered by Zellin. You just have to toggle dual wield off to make the main attack separate from the off-hand attack. My intent was: move, main hand stab target 1, BA off-hand stab target 2, etc. I was struggling to make that work. Never dawned on me to try it Zellin’s way.
In regards to the modifiers being all jacked up, yeah totally agree with you there! The only deviation I’d like to see from 5E with this rule is getting an off-hand attack for every attack your character has available like in 3E, but that would unbalance the 5E mechanics. Then again….the daggum gnolls get three attacks at level 3-4.
