| 4 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Benefit: Make one attack roll. If the attack hits, the target takes damage from both bolts. Critical hits, sneak attack damage, and other precision-based damage only apply to the first bolt.
Benefit: When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon’s damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision-based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total.
A medium Double Crossbow's base damage is 1d8 per bolt. Let's assume Vital Strike is used with a medium +1 Double Crossbow on a target with DR 5/-.
How much damage is dealt?
The rules are silent.
I think that if a dev rules on it they would say one bolt*, but I would allow for both bolts to be affected.
*It seems that the crossbow only intends for one bolt to have anything special added to it.
That's a tough one. I don't expect consensus, but unless I heard a really good argument otherwise, my ruling would be 4d8 - 8.
Vital Strike doesn't say anything about being precision-based damage, which is the only kind that the double crossbow restricts to the first bolt. Also, it's a single attack roll, and Vital Strike says to roll the weapon's damage dice for the attack twice, which (to me) means both 1d8 twice (so 4d8 total). However, it's two separate bolts; so I think that the DR should apply to each one separately, just as the enhancement bonus does (and +1 - 5 + 1 - 5 = -8).
DR would apply to each bolt, IMHO. I somehow missed that part of the question, and assumed you were asking if each bolt would be affected by vital strike only.
I'm going to anticipate the obvious follow-up question: What about a critical hit? I would say 5d8 - 7, since the enhancement bonuses from a magical weapon are multiplied on a critical hit, but the extra weapon damage dice from Vital Strike are not; and with a double crossbow, critical hits only apply to the first bolt.
ETA: I looked up Clustered Shots just for giggles, and it looks to me like it can't be used with Vital Strike under the RAW, since the two feats specify different actions. Also, the flavor of Clustered Shots doesn't fit a double crossbow. Not that you asked; I was just curious.
The vital strike damage is not multiplied, but only added on. The weapon's normal damage is multiplied.
Thanks for the answers. Pretty much what I expected, but I had to ask as it seemed pretty powerful.