Overruled! Dual Wielded Crossbows
Everyone wants to leap through the air, their twin crossbows firing a rain of arrows that cut through the creatures around them. And then your DM reminds you that while your crossbows can each fire an arrow, after that happens your just waving around a pair of empty crossbows. “Your wrong",” you scream, pointing to the feat you took that allows you to “ignore the loading property of crossbows”. Nope, says the DM, doesn’t matter. “But why?” you ask? Well… let me explain.
First, to get some basic rules out of the way. For those of you looking toward two weapon fighting… don’t. Two weapon fighting specifically refers to attacking with a “melee weapon”. This DOES allow you to throw melee weapons, so dagger throwing with both hands will work (though drawing these weapons is a different story for a different article). But a crossbow is not a thrown weapon, so two weapon fighting is out.
Next up is the ever popular “Crossbow Expert” feat. This feat would seem to solve the issue, as it specifically includes this line:
You ignore the loading property of crossbows with which you are proficient.
When you use the Attack action and attack with a one-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding.
This would seem to be perfect, as the loading property declares:
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.
This gives you the ability to fire as many shots as you would like with your crossbow, plus the feat even gives you a chance to fire the crossbow in your off hand when it says you can “use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding.”
Problem solved! Right? Well… wrong. Because what everyone tends to overlook is the other property of crossbows… “Ammunition.”
Ammunition declares:
You can use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a ranged attack only if you have ammunition to fire from the weapon. Each time you attack with the weapon, you expend one piece of ammunition. Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack (you need a free hand to load a one-handed weapon). At the end of the battle, you can recover half your expended ammunition by taking a minute to search the battlefield.
The key rule here is that “you need a free hand to load a one-handed weapon.” So yes, you can have a loaded hand crossbow in each hand, and fire both using crossbow expert. But after that moment, your out of luck. Due to the ammunition property, you will have two unloaded hand crossbows, and no free hand to load them.
So does that mean your dream of double fisted crossbow action is dead and gone? Not quite. Here are some options you can consider:
Custom mundane crossbows. If your DM is willing to let you find a inventor who can build you a clip fed, autoloading crossbow, then your problem is solved. Simply by removing the ammunition property, your back in business. The clip will probably require you to reload after a certain number of shots, but perhaps you could acquire a “clip of holding” further down the road.
Magic Crossbows. A little bit of magic can surly pull back a string and summon a glowing magical arrow, don’t you think? Should your game world not offer a bit of fancy engineering, then magic can always get the job done. This option is similar to the last, but now entirely removes the need for ammunition. The new Dragonwing bows and crossbows from Fizban’s state that they create magical ammo, but still refer to “pulling back the string.” It would be up to your DM to determine if the magic effect on the weapon removes the ammunition property.
The Artillerist Artificer. The Artificer offers an infusion called repeating shot, that also removes the loading property. But, in addition to that, it also states that “ If you load no ammunition in the weapon, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when you make a ranged attack with it. The ammunition created by the weapon vanishes the instant after it hits or misses a target.” Some people argue this effect will not reload the weapon, but Jeremy Crawford has made a public statement that the design intent for the infusion was that it allowed one-handed use of the weapon. So if you consider Crawford’s statements as RAW, then you can ignore the ammunition property on the infused weapon. While this would only get you one reloading crossbow, the second one is much easier. The artillerist gets a eldritch cannon/force ballista that you can easily flavor to look just like a hand crossbow. Plus, if you make it tiny, you can hold it your offhand (or give it legs that allow it wrap around your wrist, leaving your hand free. Even better, the eldritch cannon fires itself through the use of a bonus action, so there are no rules issues with firing it with your off-hand. For me, this totally works, but obviously you’d want to consult with your DM, especially in relation to repeating shot and the use of the cannon’s legs to clamp it to your wrist.
Just let it work off flavor. So clearly, you want to fire both crossbows, and you don’t care about the whole ammunition property thing. Well, Crossbow Expert was actually designed to let you fire a hand crossbow with one hand, and then get your bonus action shot with that same crossbow. So the game designers were totally fine with you firing as many shots as your attack gives you (as the feat removes the loading property which prevents this), and then get a bonus shot with the very same crossbow (as detailed in Sage Advice). So if the number of shots you want to fire is already allowed, does it really matter how many crossbows your holding? If it doesn’t, and your DM agrees, then just stick to the amount of shots your allowed to fire with one hand crossbow, but say your holding and using two. This actually weakens the player, as it prevents them from doing anything other than shooting with both their hands, which means no activating magical items or performing any kind of object interaction.
So there you go. The real reason you can’t dual wield crossbows, along with four different ways to do it anyway. I hope one of them works for you at your table. But until then…
Happy roleplaying, and may the dice be ever in your favor.
