Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Dual Wield Hand Crossbow bug

My rogue is getting the dex bonus to damage with an offhand hand crossbow (obviously do not have 'Two Weapon Fighting'). Working correctly with melee weapons, that is offhand attacks not getting dex bonus with short sword.

Yes, that was the case in the previous patch as well (at least, and maybe even before that). I assume it will be fixed for full release, as I agree it’s surely a bug.

I agree it's a bug, there is a another more glaring bug really. Why can one dual wield hand crossbows? With no free hand, how could one load the thing? And the most important question, why would anyone use any other ranged weapon in the game, given they're are implemented in this way? Presently, they out-class all ranged weapons due to this. At times, I fear Larian is just not thinking things through.

Well, I don’t see any problem in principle with getting one shot off from each per turn, though it gets dodgier to my mind with multiple actions or bonus actions per turn. But even that doesn’t bother me all that much, though I know 5e is much stricter about reloading and I think has a feat related to it and firing a hand crossbow with the off hand?


Well, I suppose a ranged weapon with a higher single attack/damage might still be better for a character that has something more useful to do with their bonus action than attack, such as apply Hunter’s Mark or use Entangling Strike? I’ve not done the detailed sums, but I’m sure someone has.

Thinking of rangers, does the two weapon fighting style apply to off hand ranged weapons in 5e or is it melee only?

It would be the Crossbow Expert feat. With it you ignore the loading property of crossbows which breaks Extra Attack, disadvantage for firing within melee range, and get an extra attack with the same hand-crossbow once per turn. But, you'd still need a free hand to load the hand-crossbow.

As far as using other ranged weapons, I can't think of any reason to use them. Given the rampant dipping in fire and poison, applying weapon buffs to each attack, ultimately adding the Sharpshooter feat to each attack, and given you've two chances to get a critical hit, I see hand-crossbows as woefully superior. I mean, Hunter's mark should be once per turn, but other weapon buffs don't have that stipulation. Also, can't you do Ensnaring strike with a hand-crossbow? I never use that spell, it's not too good in my opinion.

The bonus off-hand damage comes from the Two-Weapon Fighting Style, it only apples to melee weapon attacks when Two-Weapon fighting.

Cheers for the info. I do agree applying poison and dipped effects to the off hand crossbow changes the calculus and you may well be right that that means you’re always better off with two hand crossbow attacks than one higher attack/damage attack with a more powerful ranged weapon. I certainly don’t have the maths at hand to prove you wrong!

I’m sure you can use Ensnaring Strike with a hand crossbow, but I was thinking that as it uses a bonus action as well as an action (as does Hail of Thorns, I think), you couldn’t get off an off-hand attack so would be better applying them with a more powerful single weapon.

Then there’s the, admittedly broken, stealth mechanics that mean that you can hide with a BA and get advantage on your next attack (but which would be relevant to rogues with cunning action even if this were fixed as I think it should be). I’m not sure how much better your single ranged weapon needs to be in order to mean you’re better off with a single attack with advantage compared to two without. Especially for rogues who can get sneak attack bonuses with - currently - a main hand attack with advantage (but some of whom may have two bonus actions).

I certainly accept that once all the maths are done, it may turn out that you’re always better off with two hand crossbows given the current wonky implementation. It just didn’t seem obviously the case to me.

I made this toon to exploit this as much as possible as a test, but with the bug giving offhand dex bonus damage it's worse/better than I thought it would be.

Get use to this feeling I hate to tell you.

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!

It's just assumed that you use the same hand-crossbow for both the attack using your action and the attack using your bonus action. The bonus action attack granted by Crossbow Expert is not an off-hand attack, all your normal ranged damage bonuses would be added too the attack.

Cheers! So given that, functionally the Larian implementation of being able to equip two hand crossbows and use one for an action and one for a bonus action (with normal damage bonuses) doesn’t seem any different from a 5e character with the Crossbow Expert feat, at least if the weapons held in each hand in BG3 are identical.

I might in that case be okay with it if we weren’t actually able to equip a hand crossbow in our off hand unless we had the feat (which I know isn’t implemented yet).

In PnP Hand Crossbows have the "ammunition" trait, which requires that you have a hand free to reload them. Thus, if they where pre-loaded you can dual wield once, then you would have to drop one in order to reload the other.

The same applies to slings. Unlike BG1, Sling and shield is not an option in 5e PnP.



Note that there are a couple of work-rounds in PnP. Artificers can make crossbows that ignore the "ammunition" trait; Thri-Kreen have four arms.

No, you shoot the same hand crossbow twice. The feat lets you ignore the "loading" trait but not the "ammunition" trait. You can reload really fast, but still need a free hand to do it.

No, it is a main hand attack as a bonus action, full dex bonus applies.