Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Allow to equip hand crossbow with a melee weapon

We should be able to equip a hand crossbow in the left hand along with a melee weapon. It's silly that we can't. As far as I am concerned, it's basic D&D 5 rules and it shouldn't be rocket science to implement.

A follow up question would be: why is there a slot for melee weapon and another for range? Couldn't they be interchangeable? We should be able to equip one handed weapon + shield on one slot and the other a two handed weapon if we don't want our character to wield any ranged for example. This limitation doesn't make much sense in my opinion.

I might be wrong, but I think the character keeps the shield bonus even when they're using their range weapon. So if you have a shield and sword equipped for melee and a longbow equipped for range, and let's say you change between the two to go over to a longbow, I'm pretty sure you keep the +2 shield bonus to your AC. I'm not sure that you *should*, but I think that you do, at least in the game right now.

If you had a secondary build with a great sword instead of a longbow, I think you'd end up getting a shield bonus while fighting with a two handed great sword.

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Regarding being able to equip a long sword and a hand crossbow, I completely agree. It's something the character should be able to do, and I'd also like to see it as a possibility in the game.

Well, this is silly if they keep their shield bonus when they wield their range weapon. I will check later. If they do, there is clearly something wrong here. It means every range weapon build should have the biggest shield ever equipped on the other slot to optimize AC even though they literally never use it. Broken af LOL

I had Laezel equipped with a great sword for melee and a hand crossbow in each hand for ranged. After she attacked with her great sword, she was able to make a bonus off hand ranged attack with a hand crossbow. Doesn’t seem right. (Well, yeah, I still used it.)

It sort of makes sense, since they should have their shield on their back when using ranged weapons, but I'm guessing it's just an oversight.
If they kept that effect, it should only affect defense against attacks from behind, and there should probably be something like slightly reduced Movement Speed.

Well then, one can carry shield on the back while using 2H weapon as well as ranged weapon... so

Doesn't exchanging weapons in 5th happen during the action phase? That means that you couldn't attack then switch weapons to do an off-hand attack, as the attack completes the action. I don't think it makes sense to be able to use a melee set action and then just switch to ranged to use the hand crossbow bonus action attack, unless the melee is a one handed weapon and the hand crossbow is being dual wielded in the off-hand.

There's no "action phase" in 5e. You can perform a free action (interact with - e.g., draw - an object) at any point in your turn, even between your main action and your bonus action. You can also split up movement however you want, even moving between the main action and bonus action (or between multiple attacks if you have Extra Attack).

The limitation here is how two-weapon fighting is worded: "When you take the Attack Action and Attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a Bonus Action to Attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand." So yes you'd already need to be wielding the hand crossbow.

In addition, RAW you can't use a bonus action to fire a hand crossbow unless you take the Crossbow Expert feat, which has the same "that you're [already] holding" requirement. Two weapon fighting only applies of melee weapons.

In BG3, exchanging a weapon from your inventory to equipped during a fight seems to take an Action (or Bonus Action, I don’t remember which). However, switching from your equipped melee weapon(s) to your equipped ranged weapon(s) does not take an Action or a Bonus Action. From a gameplay perspective, I like being able to switch my attack from round to round between equipped melee and equipped ranged to be able to change my attack target each round without using an Action or Bonus Action. However, I do not like the game mechanic of being able to switch these freely within the same round after I have already made one attack. I shouldn’t be able to shoot a ranged weapon with my Action and then Bonus Attack with my off hand melee (maybe except for Rogue). I also shouldn’t be able to make a two handed melee attack with my Action and then switch to my off hand Hand Croossbow for my Bonus Action.