My son asked me about this and while I'm sure the intent was not to support this, I can't find anything RAW wise that seem to say you can't do it. There was an older thread but I hate resurrecting such an old thread.
All of the feat chain for two weapon rend seems to be missing the key phrase "melee weapon". So if I'm dual wielding hand held crossbows, why can't I get the bonuses for double slice, and two weapon rend other than the obvious this was intended to be used for melee weapons not ranged weapons.
Benefit: If you hit an opponent with both your primary hand and your off-hand weapon, you deal an additional 1d10 points of damage plus 1-1/2 times your Strength modifier. You can only deal this additional damage once each round.
Benefit: Add your Strength bonus to damage rolls made with your off-hand weapon.
So why doesn't this work?
Dot, because I have this popcorn here and everything.
Dot, because I have this popcorn here and everything.
/em sits by the sidelines with a spare gas can.
Observers the silence, and determines that it must work just fine :)
Other than the obvious that it is for melee weapons...
You don't get damage bonuses on strength with a crossbow.
He's correct per RAW. Then again, you don't need Double Slice to rule that you get half Strength on offhand attacks, or full Strength on primary attacks, per RAW.
So, get him out of the munchkin pit and tell him that it refers to the usual melee attacks, and not ranged.
Double slice is really about the only place where you can make a RAW argument about that this is really *only* to be used with melee weapons as the normal part of the text states:
Normal: You normally add only half of your Strength modifier to damage rolls made with a weapon wielded in your off-hand.
which only for sense with melee attacks. But is seems so silly that they just left out the "melee" part in all descriptions of the various feats. Of course one could argue that it's suppose to be common sense, but really?
Pathfinder is a rule set telling you what you can do.
It doesn't tell you what you can't. Common sense should take care of 90% of that.
EG: Nowhere says you can't take move actions in the Dead description, so by RAW people could argue that you can.
I get that it's not going to say you dead people can't move but that's not really what we have here.
a) you have a range weapon that can be used one handed.
b) you have a feat chain for using two weapons. and
c) the feat chain doesn't explicitly call out melee weapons, just weapons
Note: just playing devils advocate here
But unless the writes didn't know about the existence of a one handed ranged weapons, it seems odd. I was reading somewhere that the rend additional damage was as much just a function of granting additional due to precision placement of the damage, unlike Rend which clearly is tearing apart someone using claws.
It has been argued that ranged weapons (with the exception of firearms) do not fall into one-handed or two-handed weapon categories (regardless of how many hands they require to use or load).
That's right, and because of this, per RAW, you can't TWF with any weapons in the Ranged category.
So move the goalposts: why doesn't this work with thrown weapons such as daggers?
They add strength bonus to damage and they are (usually) 1handed weapons so you can TWF with them.
*gets out the popcorn* :D
That's right, and because of this, per RAW, you can't TWF with any weapons in the Ranged category.
I'm not sure that is true. An Alchemist with Fast Bombs can TWF with Bombs because Fast Bombs functions just like a full-attack with a ranged weapon.
As written, yes, all of these apply because fast bombs "functions just like a full-attack with a ranged weapon."
If you can't TWF as part of a full-attack with a ranged weapon, then the rationale given in the FAQ would mean that you couldn't TWF with Bombs. Yet the FAQ says that you can.
The FAQ doesn't contradict my statement, since Bombs aren't in the Ranged category on the Weapons table.
Even if you argue that they somehow are Ranged weapons on the Weapons Table, all that FAQ proves is Specific trumps General. You could TWF with Bombs, but not any other weapon used at a range.
@ Gauss: Daggers aren't in the Ranged category, they just-so-happen to include a throwing function. So, they would be exempt.
A better argument would've been with Javelins, which are Ranged weapons that add Strength to damage normally and can be used one-handed, but since they can equally be used as a melee weapon (even with a -4 penalty), they'd be treated the same as Daggers in that respect.
@ Gauss: Daggers aren't in the Ranged category, they just-so-happen to include a throwing function. So, they would be exempt.
A better argument would've been with Javelins, which are Ranged weapons that add Strength to damage normally and can be used one-handed, but since they can equally be used as a melee weapon (even with a -4 penalty), they'd be treated the same as Daggers in that respect.
I think you might have misunderstood my point, I wasn't making any points about ranged weapons, I was removing that element from the OP's question my switching the question to thrown weapons.
Not really a moving of goal posts then, more like a narrowing of goal posts, which in this case doesn't help since the ball is still going into the goal.
So the basis of the argument is that you can't take two weapon fighting because it's a ranged weapon. Even though you can clearly can use two hand held crossbows, and all it does is reduce the penalties but because the subsequent feats make no distinction as to melee/ranged, you can't take the feat at all. Seems to me that the inclusion of "melee" to double slice/two weapon rend would fix it more consistently.