Dual Hand Crossbows

[wolfen]

So as the title suggest I am looking to use two hand crossbows. Now it specifically states that you cannot reload with one hand but since these are hand crossbows (and unless I am mistaken that is usually a crossbow that is strapped to the wrist with a hand based firing mechanism) than could you not use one hand to fire the other to reload and then switch?

Also there is a feat, Impact Critical Shot, that when you crit you compare your roll to confirm vs. the targets CMD to trip them as a free action. Now what about when you auto-confirm crits? Do you need to roll anyways or is this an Auto-Trip?

Lastly what are some good ways to increase ranged damage for a bow or x-bow. Currently I have Weapon Specialization, the Ranged power attack, Fighters weapon ability, enchanted weapon, and hammer the gap.

[Carbon D. Metric]

1) Reloading a hand crossbow STILL takes two hands to do, and requires a move action to do. Which means you have to spend a move action to reload each of them, essentially spending an entire turn to do so. Assuming you have two of them, you can draw a weapon as part of a move action if you have a BAB of +1 or higher, which means you can reload one with a move action at the same time as drawing the other one into your hand. Keep in mind this provokes AoO. Now you are left with a standard action which only lets you make a single attack in any case.
1a) A different scenario is that you have reduced the action down to a free action with Rapid Reload. However, since rapid reload is worded such that you can fire as many times as you could if you were using a bow, that means you wouldn't ever be able to really do so with 2 of these weapons because you can't wield two bows at once.

2) I dont know how you are auto-confirming but assuming you are then yes, every time you score a critical hit, what happens is you THEN make a trip attempt using your CMB against the target. If you succeed then they are tripped, if you fail they do not. Automatically confirming critical hits does not alleviate the need to roll a CMB against the target.

3) Point blank shot adds +1 damage in 30 ft range, Clustered shots will help you defeat some creatures DR, and the Vital Strike line of feats will also help you get more bang for your buck when you are only able to make one shot per turn.

[wolfen]

1. Crossbow Mastery. And as stated above it does not specifically state what type of "Hand Crossbow" it actually is be it the wrist mounted such as 3.5 or actually hand held.
2. Fighter lvl 20 (Yes high lvl but often have campaigns running from 1-20+)

[Carbon D. Metric]

Mechanically I don't think it matters how the grip is setup, that's all flavor for the player to have fun with and it wont affect the ease in drawing or firing the weapon.

Basically I'm pretty sure unless they are Repeating Hand Crossbows, I don't think there is any way to fire both off more than once each in a round since your hands are both tied up in the work of pulling the triggers, but this IS a great candidate for a FAQ.

[wolfen]

How would I go about turning this into a faq? I would love to play this style of character but since it seems no ranged weapon is capable of supporting my concept this was the closest I could get.

[Carbon D. Metric]

You just click the faq button to the right of the timestamp near reply.

What exactly kind of concept were you trying to shoot (Pardon the pun) for?

[Sean H]

It may seen a little odd, but if you take 2 levels of Alchemist and get the Vestigal Limb discovery you end up with 3 arms. That allows you to full-attack with both hand crossbows, using your third arm to reload.

[Pendagast]

weapon tether, use multiple hand crossbows, keep like 6 of them preloaded.

With quickdraw you should just be able to pull out shoot, drop, rinse and repeat for a couple rounds.

In 3.5 they had the spell ghostly reload. didn't I recently see a new spell for PF just like this?

[Carbon D. Metric]

Reloading Hands from ultimate combat will help you here.
Link

Pick up a wand of this, give it to your arcane spellcaster or ranger and the group, and ask nicely they use it on your weapon during the first round of combat. That or spend enough ranks in Use Magic Device.

EDIT to respond- Yes, thats true, but you can cast it on each crossbow giving you 4 shots a round without having to reload.

Or like I said, try out Repeating Hand Crossbows.

[Isil-zha]

2 problems with that:

1) one weapon
2) once per round

[Pendagast]

bogus, it;s not a bard spell. Why would a magus have THIS as a spell? There are many spells that make you go Hmmmm when asking why ARENT they a spell, now they give them THIS spell. Seems odd for a magus to study this one.

[Jesper Roland Sørensen]

he can take rapid reload(hand crossbow)to make reloading a free action, and then the 2 lvls from alchmist to get the third arm should make it quite easy to dual wield hand crossbows

[Booksy]

I had a similar character, I took high levels of Knowledge: Engineering, Craft: Boyer/Fletcher(crossbows fell under this in our campaign), and the Master Craftsman feat. After constructing a pair of Repeating Hand Crossbows, they were enchanted with self-arming (it pulled its own lever), and I enchanted the bolt clips with the equivalent of a permanent Abundant Ammunition.

Pewpew

[Davick]

Carbon D. Metric wrote:

1) Assuming you have two of them, you can draw a weapon as part of a move action if you have a BAB of +1 or higher, which means you can reload one with a move action at the same time

No. It doesn't work on move actions only on "a regular move" as in, you can draw a weapon while living towards your opponent. Not while reloading.