ONE HAND CROSSBOW 5E FREE

ONE HAND CROSSBOW 5E FREE

The hand crossbow basically lets you make one attack and then, because you need a free hand to load it, essentially acts like a regular crossbow thereafter. Remember, you only need both hands to attack with and load a light or heavy crossbow any time you're not attacking with it, you can free up one hand for casting spells, grappling, using items, or even draw a melee weapon (although you'll need to free up your hand again if you want to use the crossbow). Now, that's not a terrible concept for a weapon, something you pull out at the start of a fight, shoot off for massive damage, then discard, sort of a 'once per battle' type of weapon, but that's not what the hand crossbow is. But since you need a free hand to reload, that means you can only get off one shot and then you may as well throw it away. The only real difference is that you need both hands to shoot the light crossbow, while the hand crossbow can be shot with one hand. So if we compare the hand crossbow to the light crossbow, we see that the light crossbow has a greater range and deals more damage. But this isn't entirely correct, as either JC or MM (can't remember) has clarified that any weapon with the ammunition property requires an empty hand to reload it. The entire point of the weapon seems to be that it is a one-handed crossbow.

In trying to come up with a way to buff the sling without making the hand crossbow entirely obsolete, I found myself wondering why the hand crossbow even exists. I was originally going to make a post about the sling after reading this article, but while they've done a good job of balancing the sling against the bow in their bit of homebrew, they ignored entirely the weapon the sling actually competes with: the hand crossbow. It certainly wins in style points, but mechanically I just find this weapon. I mean, aside from being hella rad, of course.

One hand crossbow 5e