
Irongega |

my main question is, what is the penalty to reload two hand crossbows. I know rapid reload makes them a free action but I imagine with two there is a penalty.
also I'm looking for the best class to make this with.
I was thinking either sniper rouge or crossbowman fighter, or maybe a ranger crossbow/archer combat training.
I'm looking into taking the two weapon fighting feats, rapid reload, multi shot etc etc, I'm trying to make as many attacks per round as possible.
I need a good BAB I know that much, but I think the sniper rogue's increase ranged would be great.
any thoughts

![]() |

Essentially... you can't.
The problem is in how you reload (it takes two hands)
Crossbow, Hand: You can draw a hand crossbow back by hand. Loading a hand crossbow is a move action that provokes attacks of opportunity.
You can shoot, but not load, a hand crossbow with one hand at no penalty. You can shoot a hand crossbow with each hand, but you take a penalty on attack rolls as if attacking with two light weapons.
Even repeating crossbows require two hands to use the reloading lever. If you have two loaded hand crossbows you CAN use TWF, then drop one crossbow and continue your iterative attacks with the other crossbow.
In various threads you will find shennanigans involving weapon cords (which are now a move action to use and therefore won't help), additional appendages from some classes or races, and arguments about the definition of the word "free" but if you track down developer and designer posts, you'll find that their intention is that you not be able to wield more than one bow or crossbow.
Flagged for movement to advice forum.

Jason Wu |

You might invest in a couple of levels of Alchemist to get an additional limb for reloading.
Or find some way to get the Reloading Hands spell cast every combat.
Or carry many hand crossbows and keep drawing, firing, and dropping them.
Or, con the Paizo folks into letting you write for PFS and create a scenario with a custom six shot hand crossbow*. :)
-j
*- There was an older Living campaign that featured such a crossbow. It wasn't particularly powerful but I miss it anyway.

XMorsX |
A Tiefling with a Prehensile tail could do it if that is what you want. It is a free action to switch the crossbow from your hand to the tail and get it back, so you can always have a free hand when you need to reload.
It is a very feat starved build though and need / want the standard archery and crossbow feats firstly, so TWFing with corssbows does nto come online until the mid - high lvls.

Alistus |

Tiefling has the stats and the tail to pull this off. I'd say fighter would be better, just build a Tiefling Fighter with the prehensile tail trait and you're golden. Use your tail to hold your second crossbow while you load the other, switching your weapon from hand to tail is a free action, just like switching hands.

![]() |
If not PFS ask your gm if you can hold one in your mouth while you load (they do that in many movies etc)
otherwise yea, you need to get new limbs or many crossbows. which kind of sucks really
I want to see ONE movie or video where someone manages to actually load a hand crossbow that way while holding TWO of them.
You CAN fire two hand crossbows as an opening round, drop one and continue to shoot with the remainder for the rest of the combat. There simply is no way to maintain sustain dual fire unless you're playing Dr. Octopus, or Diablo 3.
The final failure of this idea is the major not getting what a hand crossbow is for. It's not for dealing damage. It's to be the carrier for either sneak attacks and/or poison, to be used as part of a toolkit, not a main build in and of itself. That's why the rogue is the only class that gets proficiency in it without spending a feat.

XMorsX |
Would the witch Prehensile hair hex work for reloading crossbows?
Probably not, but you could switch one crossbow from your hand to your hair and back as a free action, so that you can always have one hand free for reloading. So in the end it work. One lvl dip in White-Haired Witch will do the trick.

XMorsX |
Zwordsman wrote:If not PFS ask your gm if you can hold one in your mouth while you load (they do that in many movies etc)
otherwise yea, you need to get new limbs or many crossbows. which kind of sucks really
or Diablo 3.
Who wouldn't want to emulate such a character though?
As a side note, some lvls of Synthesist could also make this concept work.

![]() |
LazarX wrote:Zwordsman wrote:If not PFS ask your gm if you can hold one in your mouth while you load (they do that in many movies etc)
otherwise yea, you need to get new limbs or many crossbows. which kind of sucks really
or Diablo 3.
Who wouldn't want to emulate such a character though?
As a side note, some lvls of Synthesist could also make this concept work.
In other words, the Dr. Octopus approach. At that point, why go with the crappy option of a hand crossbow if you're taking all that trouble?

![]() |

If this isn't for PFS, most GMs should let you reload both crossbows one-handed if they have the endless ammunition enchantment. You just need to cock it and the bolt appears, which you can do with the handle of your other crossbow. You need to be able to afford two +3 weapons to pull it off though, so it's not got low level.
Also, going back to the OP, crossbowman fighter is not good for TWFing with hand crossbows. All the Crossbowman perks only apply on readied shots which mean no full attacks, which mean you can't use your two crossbows. Crossbowman works best with a big heavy crossbow using vital strike.

Zwordsman |
I don't have any names, but there are a ton of vamp movies where people do that with mini crossbows.putting one in their mouth while they loud then switching. They're small hand cross bows small sized and not too heavy for an adult.
Mind you they tend to be current time not the past.
It's a movie, they do what they like really. It's fantasy also like pathfinder. PFS rules by raw, home games are run by GM. So its up to them how fantasy they want their fantasy.
I've seen a jingi (chinese vampirelike creatures) based movie with someone doing it that way while moving. I've also seen anime and a Korean vampire movie where they reloaded by having all the bolts along their arms in this little metal contratption that caught crossbow cord and clicked in.
If you've watched many non big name hollywood vamp movies that aren't post apoc styled (i.e. theres an organization activly fighting agianst vamps) i'm more surprised it hasn't happened yet. Assuming I remember I'll ink next one I come across here. Though I don't have a vampire movie night for a while it's ghost/demon's next.
Majority of people are well aware it's not made for just loading damage on, by seeing the damage die. That doesn't mean it isn't cool enough in their head to try and use it. Which I think is what the guy wanted. Cool first, and then trying to make it effective.
and just to be safe as often writing sounds ruder than one means. None of that is intended as snarky
Hum it sounds like the hair should work fine for the loading. inso far as I know about the situation. A race with a usable tail may also work.
In PFS it'll be a fair bit more complicated and you'll have to look up some pfs specifi stuff. There is a forum for that if your looking for PFS. If home game, it's good to ask your gm about it all.

Gauthok |

Funny, I was just looking at the same thing. I had a char in an old Eberron 3.5 game that used custom made ones with a mechanism to allow him to reload them.
I think I'd try to go the same route here if not PFS. I think any reasonable GM would say "ok" as long as you still took rapid reload or an exotic weapon proficiency to use it.
I wouldn't look at crossbowman fighter though. It's the opposite of what you want. Look at two weapon fighter archetype, that's more in line.
This is an incredibly feat intensive build, too. I was looking at it and holy cow. You definitely need to be mostly if not pure fighter to have enough.

![]() |
But why take levels of another class when all you have to do is change your race? Especially when that race gives you the stats you need for the build.
Because a GM would be perfectly within their rights, and the rules as written, to limit the number of times per round you can juggle a crossbow to your tail and reload the other crossbow.
And it doesn't quite fit the theme the OP was asking about if what your actually doing is holding a crossbow with your tail, shooting one crossbow a bunch, then switching to your other hand and shooting that one a bunch.

XMorsX |
XMorsX wrote:In other words, the Dr. Octopus approach. At that point, why go with the crappy option of a hand crossbow if you're taking all that trouble?LazarX wrote:Zwordsman wrote:If not PFS ask your gm if you can hold one in your mouth while you load (they do that in many movies etc)
otherwise yea, you need to get new limbs or many crossbows. which kind of sucks really
or Diablo 3.
Who wouldn't want to emulate such a character though?
As a side note, some lvls of Synthesist could also make this concept work.
I agree. Firearms are similar in function but much more powerful.
But this does not lead anywhere. Crossbows suck in PF more than they should (they should get the Str bonus to damage rolls in some ways IMO), but this is what the OP wants.

Ellis Mirari |

LazarX wrote:XMorsX wrote:In other words, the Dr. Octopus approach. At that point, why go with the crappy option of a hand crossbow if you're taking all that trouble?LazarX wrote:Zwordsman wrote:If not PFS ask your gm if you can hold one in your mouth while you load (they do that in many movies etc)
otherwise yea, you need to get new limbs or many crossbows. which kind of sucks really
or Diablo 3.
Who wouldn't want to emulate such a character though?
As a side note, some lvls of Synthesist could also make this concept work.
I agree. Firearms are similar in function but much more powerful.
But this does not lead anywhere. Crossbows suck in PF more than they should (they should get the Str bonus to damage rolls in some ways IMO), but this is what the OP wants.
Short of magic, how could Str EVER be added to the damage of a crossbow?
On another note: normal crossbows are supposed to be bad because they're simple weapons: anyone can point it and shoot it, even the wizard. Wizards aren't supposed to get good weapons for free.

![]() |

XMorsX wrote:LazarX wrote:XMorsX wrote:In other words, the Dr. Octopus approach. At that point, why go with the crappy option of a hand crossbow if you're taking all that trouble?LazarX wrote:Zwordsman wrote:If not PFS ask your gm if you can hold one in your mouth while you load (they do that in many movies etc)
otherwise yea, you need to get new limbs or many crossbows. which kind of sucks really
or Diablo 3.
Who wouldn't want to emulate such a character though?
As a side note, some lvls of Synthesist could also make this concept work.
I agree. Firearms are similar in function but much more powerful.
But this does not lead anywhere. Crossbows suck in PF more than they should (they should get the Str bonus to damage rolls in some ways IMO), but this is what the OP wants.
Short of magic, how could Str EVER be added to the damage of a crossbow?
On another note: normal crossbows are supposed to be bad because they're simple weapons: anyone can point it and shoot it, even the wizard. Wizards aren't supposed to get good weapons for free.
In the real world, crossbows have draw weights, just like bows. The draw weight is how much force it takes to draw the bowstring into firing position. In a crossbow, this is called cocking the bow.
The greater the draw weight of the crossbow, the stronger you need to be in order to cock it. If it is too much for you to cock unassisted, you can use a lever called a prod or a winch system to draw it back, but this increases the time it takes to reload the crossbow.
Greater draw weight means greater projectile velocity, which means greater penetration on a hit.
If pathfinder was trying to accurately portray crossbows, then every crossbow would have a STR rating, giving that much bonus damage on every hit. If your str is under that rating, your reload time is increased by one round for every point by which you do not meet that str.
The reason why real world crossbows were so deadly were because that had draw weights far greater than equivalent bows and they lined up hundreds of people to shoot them all at once, and had hundreds more whose only jobs were to reload crossbows for the shooters.
But this is just one of many areas where pathfinder sacrifices reality for the sake of game balance. I still love the game despite that, but crossbows behave totally differently in real live than the gutted way they do in game because they are "simple" weapons.

Zwordsman |
Crossbows have a lot more draw issues. so rather than a str modifier bonus they should probably get innate +damage, and have a str requirement or usage (or perhap increased reload speeed issues like it alreayd has to represent a lever draw).
Innate damage bonus or the better world of aiming would be neat.