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It seems to me that Crossbow Mastery has made Repeating Crossbows obsolete. Crossbow Mastery gives me the same # of shots per round as if i was firing a bow. At 15th level, I get 3 attacks/shots. I’ve seen whole debate threads concerning weather rapid reload “functions” on Repeating Crossbows or not. My question is, do i still get an extra shot from Rapid Fire (i.e. 4 per round), or is my “extra” shot somehow superseded by the line “as many shots per round as if you were firing a bow”?
Crossbow Mastery allows you to reload any type of crossbow as a free action.
Rapid Shot grants you one additional attack with any ranged weapon, provided you have a weapon to use.
The line “as many shots per round as if you were firing a bow” is meant as a clarification of what the feat does, not as a limitation.
So, yes. You do get another shot from Rapid Shot (i.e. 4 per round).
So, did Crossbow Mastery make Repeating Heavy Crossbows obsolete?
Yup.
It now is mechanically identical to a normal Heavy Crossbow, while still requiring you to take the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat.
The one difference is that you cannot load a heavy crossbow with one hand. So if you want to TWF with heavy crossbows, you can only do one attack with each.
If you use repeating crossbows, you get more attacks through the (implied) ability to reload with one hand (not explicitly stated, but it is explicitly stated you cannot with regular and it's assumed you can pull the lever with one hand)
That's the only real difference, though I would probably rule that you cannot reload a crossbow in a tight space (ie crawling through ventilation system) so that's another potential advantage.
TBH, both of those are pretty irrelevant, and what y'all have said still stands.
@thelivingmonkey
Note: The repeating crossbow (whether heavy or light) holds 5 crossbow bolts. You can fire a repeating crossbow with one hand or fire a repeating crossbow in each hand in the same manner as you would a normal crossbow of the same size. However, you must fire the weapon with two hands in order to use the reloading lever, and you must use two hands to load a new case of bolts.
They actually went out of their way just to make this weapon not be able to be reloaded with one hand.
I think it worked earlier, though.The repeater crossbow is basically only good if you want to make more than one attack per round with a Heavy crossbow at low levels, but even then you'd be out of arrows in less than 3 rounds.
Edit:
or maybe a Repeater crossbow, quickdraw knife thrower?
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It's still four feats to get to Crossbow Mastery. For people using a crossbow as an avocation rather than a career path, the one you can reload between combats might still be nice (assuming you can finagle the proficiency somehow).
Our Alchemist in our Skull and Shackles game was a Gnome Grenadier who used the Master Tinker Trait to get proficiency in the repeating crossbows he personally made, and he kept a few of them in an extradimensional space in case he needed to reload (pulling a new crossbow out of the sack is a move action, not a full-round action).
Wow I'm stupid. I looked up the passage in the core rulebook just to see if there was any difference and somehow DIDN'T read the second paragraph about repeating crossbows. wtf is wrong with me lol.
Sorry for the misinformation, hopefully next time I'll know how to read MORE than 10 words at a time.
I still stand by my homerule that you couldn't reload a regular crossbow in a really tight space but could pull a lever. Of course that doesn't help at all unless you have a likeminded GM and crawl through chimneys a lot....
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The abundant ammunition spell from Ultimate Combat made repeating crossbows worthwhile (cast it on the bolt case) - the only problem being if you get to the stage where you need to fire more than five bolts a round (as the case only holds five bolts and the spell only refreshes the contents at the start of each round). Plus, if you define repeating crossbows as being 'pump action' in design they look really cool! :)