I’ve been trying to educate myself about 5e rules for attacking with a hand crossbow with a bonus action, but am still finding it unclear.
As far as I can tell, as per 5e RAW we shouldn’t be able to attack with a hand crossbow on our bonus action at all unless we have the Crossbow Expert feat. But if we have that feat, it just says we can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow we are holding (and can ignore the Loading property).
What I’ve not managed to work out from my reading is:
- Does the hand crossbow we make a bonus action attack with need to be a different one than we may have made an attack with as an action? That is, could we hold a single hand crossbow and with the Crossbow Expert feat use it to make an attack both as an action and bonus action? (Especially as the feat also allows us to ignore the Loading property.) Or do the usual bonus action attack rules about using a different weapon in your other hand apply?
- Does the bonus action attack with a hand crossbow have the same limitation as a melee bonus action attack, in that it doesn’t add stat (Dex) bonuses to the damage roll? Or is it just the same as a an attack using an action? I could find no definitive ruling on this point.
Any advice gratefully received, and would help me work out what I really think of BG3’s handling of hand crossbows!
