Bringing out the Big Bows: Heavy Crossbow Optimization?

[Melphizard]

Hey folks!

Recently was going through Fizban's again and noticed that Dragonwing bows can be Heavy Crossbows. For reference, Dragonwing bows do the following:

The limb tips of this magic bow are shaped like a dragon’s wings, and the weapon is infused with the essence of a chromatic, gem, or metallic dragon’s breath. When you hit with an attack roll using this magic bow, the target takes an extra 1d6 damage of the same type as the breath infused in the bow—acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder.

If you load no ammunition in the weapon, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when you pull back the string. The ammunition created by the bow vanishes the instant after it hits or misses a target.

Heavy Crossbows have always been a desire to be because I want to fight dragons and giants whilst carrying a mini-ballista. I'm well aware of the current state of D&D 5e favoring ever-proud longbow (oathbow) snipers and machine gun handcrossbow duelists who fan the hammer and shoot like 11 tiny bolts in 6 seconds; but, I really want to see what could be done with the Heavy Bolter now that a new magical version of it exists.

Tl;dr with whatever levels and non-legendary magical items could you make out of a Dragonwing Heavycrossbow user? One of the key aspects I like from it is that it provides its own ammo, possibly negating the reload property.

[Gale]

I once had an idea for an Battlesmith Artificer who wielded a heavy crossbow. The Repeating Shot Infusion would have allowed me to ignore the Loading property without needing to take Crossbow Expert; and since the Steel Companion requires a bonus action to command every turn it meant that even if I had taken Crossbow Expert I still wouldn't be able to leverage it to make bonus action attacks with a hand crossbow. It seemed like there was finally a scenario where the full-sized crossbow was superior. But then I realized that if I had chosen a hand crossbow instead then I could also wield a shield. A couple of extra points of damage per hit really isn't worth the considerable decrease to your AC and the opportunity cost of being unable to wield any magic shields. Thus, I was defeated and the hand crossbow proved itself once again as the best ranged weapon.

But I digress. I think the best builds for a heavy crossbow are the ones where your bonus action is too frequently tied up doing something else, hence it's not viable for you to take Crossbow Expert. Battle Smith as I mentioned is a decent one, even if a hand crossbow is still unfortunately the best choice. Beastmaster Ranger is similarly good for the same reason.

Honestly, even though Crossbow Expert is often lauded as one of the best feats for an archer, the cost of taking it instead of another feat doesn't seem to be brought up enough. Elven Accuracy for example can be great, and pairs well with Nature's Veil from Ranger. Notably, that ability requires a bonus action to activate so it's discordant with Crossbow Expert. So really, I think you can substitute a Dragonwing Heavy Crossbow into any build that normally suggests a hand crossbow, and just exchange Crossbow Expert for something else. It'll still be pretty effective regardless.

[da newt]

It's not really what you are asking for but I thought it's near enough to on topic that I'd share.

When I built/played a gloomstalker/AT/BM w/ SS and XBE I was fully expecting to use a hand crossbow for the BA attack, but I ended up dropping it for a heavy Xbow because it allowed me to use my BA for other things (CA or spells or whatever) which made my play more interesting, more varied, and often more beneficial. I really preferred not having to choose between shooting one more time or doing something else. It may have been a little less optimized for pure DPR, but I enjoyed it much more.

[J-H]

If you take Sharpshooter, you can shoot out to 400' without disadvantage, at a slightly higher damage dice than a longbow. Maybe there's something that can be done with crit-fishing and those abilities that let you roll an extra damage dice like half-orc Savage Attacks.

That's about all I've got.

[Witty Username]

As I understand it, rogue makes the best use of crossbows due to making attacks but only 1 a turn. I would start there. Sneak attack with a heavy crossbow also conveys a heavy bolt very well.

[Frogreaver]

Hey folks!

Recently was going through Fizban's again and noticed that Dragonwing bows can be Heavy Crossbows. For reference, Dragonwing bows do the following:

The limb tips of this magic bow are shaped like a dragon’s wings, and the weapon is infused with the essence of a chromatic, gem, or metallic dragon’s breath. When you hit with an attack roll using this magic bow, the target takes an extra 1d6 damage of the same type as the breath infused in the bow—acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder.

If you load no ammunition in the weapon, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when you pull back the string. The ammunition created by the bow vanishes the instant after it hits or misses a target.

Heavy Crossbows have always been a desire to be because I want to fight dragons and giants whilst carrying a mini-ballista. I'm well aware of the current state of D&D 5e favoring ever-proud longbow (oathbow) snipers and machine gun handcrossbow duelists who fan the hammer and shoot like 11 tiny bolts in 6 seconds; but, I really want to see what could be done with the Heavy Bolter now that a new magical version of it exists.

Tl;dr with whatever levels and non-legendary magical items could you make out of a Dragonwing Heavycrossbow user? One of the key aspects I like from it is that it provides its own ammo, possibly negating the reload property.

The +1d6 damage and loading property bypass can essentially replace a hand crossbow with crossbow expertise and do similar damage on most builds. There's just not alot in the way of bonus actions to really make it shine.


As I understand it, rogue makes the best use of crossbows due to making attacks but only 1 a turn. I would start there. Sneak attack with a heavy crossbow also conveys a heavy bolt very well.

Good call. An arcane trickster rogue casting haste on himself or any otherwise hasted rogue will do well with that weapon.

Ultimately this saves your bonus action for cunning action or steady aim.

That's probably the best use I can think of.

[Keravath]

Hey folks!

Recently was going through Fizban's again and noticed that Dragonwing bows can be Heavy Crossbows. For reference, Dragonwing bows do the following:

The limb tips of this magic bow are shaped like a dragon’s wings, and the weapon is infused with the essence of a chromatic, gem, or metallic dragon’s breath. When you hit with an attack roll using this magic bow, the target takes an extra 1d6 damage of the same type as the breath infused in the bow—acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder.

If you load no ammunition in the weapon, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when you pull back the string. The ammunition created by the bow vanishes the instant after it hits or misses a target.

Heavy Crossbows have always been a desire to be because I want to fight dragons and giants whilst carrying a mini-ballista. I'm well aware of the current state of D&D 5e favoring ever-proud longbow (oathbow) snipers and machine gun handcrossbow duelists who fan the hammer and shoot like 11 tiny bolts in 6 seconds; but, I really want to see what could be done with the Heavy Bolter now that a new magical version of it exists.

Tl;dr with whatever levels and non-legendary magical items could you make out of a Dragonwing Heavycrossbow user? One of the key aspects I like from it is that it provides its own ammo, possibly negating the reload property.

It's not clear to me that the Dragonwing bows would bypass the loading property.

Heavy crossbow has the following properties: Heavy, two-handed, loading and ammunition.

"Ammunition. You can use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a ranged attack only if you have ammunition to fire from the weapon."

"Loading. Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of ammunition from it when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make."

In this case the bow produces its own ammunition but only does so when you pull back the string. This would get rid of the ammunition property. However, if the hard part of loading is pulling back the string (like many heavy crossbows which might require you to crank it or use a tool or handle to pull it back) then having the ammunition automatically appear may not bypass the loading property. RAW, since the text for the bow says nothing about ignoring the loading property, then it doesn't get rid of it.

If you compare this to the Artificer repeating shot infusion

"This magic weapon grants a + 1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it when it's used to make a ranged attack, and it ignores the loading property if it has it. If you load no ammunition in the weapon, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when you make a ranged attack with it."

In this case, it specifically states that the loading property is ignored in addition to having it automatically create the ammunition.

P.S. The Dragon Wing Bow is also available as a hand crossbow - perhaps greatly improving the hand held multishot approach even more than the heavy crossbow?

[Witty Username]

The loading property would be a DM question, by RAW it looks like it would still have loading. I will give advice under that assumption.

As for a personal rulings, I think I am leaning still has loading, given the prime concern with a crossbow is the act of drawing back the bowstring not putting in the bolt. But eh, still thinking.

[Sherlockpwns]

I think the math on this is relatively easy. The short version of which is you give up a bonus attack of 1d6+stat in exchange for a feat or asi and an extra 2 damage on average (per attack if you can attack multiple times; but for now let’s avoid that debate).

For the sake of sanity I’m not going to include sharpshooter either. Yes, SS is good and it benefits greatly by having more attacks. I think that’s a different build than we have here.

As the first post says the obvious choice here is battlesmith. Assuming your metal buddy can reach the target the damage loss from not using hand crossbow and crossbow expert is about a wash, essentially giving you that feat to do something else with. At the very least you’re looking at +1 to hit, dmg, and 1 dc to all your spells. That’s a pretty damn good deal.

I think the other way to go, which is hinted at, is simply to be a rogue and not give one iota about having only one attack. Here the most obvious choice is being an elf with elf accuracy and making use of aimed shot. One shot, one kill. You’ll practically never miss and those sneak dice with a hefty d10 will crit super hard. Sometimes you’ll have to use your bonus for other rogue things, but I suspect people on this forum by and large put more emphasis on damage over accuracy. Build an accuracy character and you will see the true path ;).

In fact you’ll basically have to dip a level of fighter to get proficiency, so you may as well tack on that +2 to hit. (This may be overkill).

That all said there isn’t anything too crazy going on here. You’ll rarely miss and hit like a truck with moderate frequency.

Even if your DM allows the ability to multi attack with the dragon bow, a 3 level dip into rogue for steady aim isn’t unreasonable if you are not taking a class with a good bonus action and want to be elfy.

[Mastikator]

I once had an idea for an Battlesmith Artificer who wielded a heavy crossbow. The Repeating Shot Infusion would have allowed me to ignore the Loading property without needing to take Crossbow Expert; and since the Steel Companion requires a bonus action to command every turn it meant that even if I had taken Crossbow Expert I still wouldn't be able to leverage it to make bonus action attacks with a hand crossbow. It seemed like there was finally a scenario where the full-sized crossbow was superior. But then I realized that if I had chosen a hand crossbow instead then I could also wield a shield. A couple of extra points of damage per hit really isn't worth the considerable decrease to your AC and the opportunity cost of being unable to wield any magic shields. Thus, I was defeated and the hand crossbow proved itself once again as the best ranged weapon.

But I digress. I think the best builds for a heavy crossbow are the ones where your bonus action is too frequently tied up doing something else, hence it's not viable for you to take Crossbow Expert. Battle Smith as I mentioned is a decent one, even if a hand crossbow is still unfortunately the best choice. Beastmaster Ranger is similarly good for the same reason.

Honestly, even though Crossbow Expert is often lauded as one of the best feats for an archer, the cost of taking it instead of another feat doesn't seem to be brought up enough. Elven Accuracy for example can be great, and pairs well with Nature's Veil from Ranger. Notably, that ability requires a bonus action to activate so it's discordant with Crossbow Expert. So really, I think you can substitute a Dragonwing Heavy Crossbow into any build that normally suggests a hand crossbow, and just exchange Crossbow Expert for something else. It'll still be pretty effective regardless.

One tiny issue I've found with repeating hand crossbow + shield is that you can't cast spells unless either you have war caster or the spell has a material component or no somatic component. With a heavy crossbow you could arguably hold it with one hand and only use both hands when you actually fire it thus allowing a free hand to cast spells.

Another issue I found with hand crossbow + shield is that unless you have bracers of archery or sharpshooter or something to enhance your damage you're better off with a returning javelin + shield, it would have the same damage, throw/range distance profile and additionally you can use it as a melee weapon, so no penalty for being in melee.

[CTurbo]

I had a silly idea for a heavy crossbow user. Fighter is probably the best chassis to use this with.

Feats: Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, GWM, Tavern Brawler

By level 8, you can shoot bolts from it as intended or whack an enemy over the head with it for 1d4+Str+10 lol

[Amnestic]

One tiny issue I've found with repeating hand crossbow + shield is that you can't cast spells unless either you have war caster or the spell has a material component or no somatic component.

Artificers can use their infused items as the focus for their spells, and all artificer spells use material components, so that shouldn't ever be a problem.

[tokek]

As others have noted it looks like it would still have the Loading property but no longer have the Ammunition property.

So if you have Crossbow Expert you can now remove both restrictions and rapid fire to your heart's content. Seems pretty good to me but if you are also taking Sharpshooter you have a pretty heavy investment into feats so it really should be good.

[Pildion]

Fighter is going to give you the best bang for your buck, Archery + XBE>SS>MaxDex. You still have Loading so you need XBE, Battle Master is kinda the go to. I don't think Samurai would be bad with using your BA for Fighting Spirit to give yourself advantage on weapon attack rolls until the end of the current turn.

[da newt]

You'll need to grab heavy Xbow proff anyway (rogue/artificer don't have it) so a 1 lvl dip into fighter and pick up archery FS is probably a good call if you go with one of those classes.

[Amechra]

Here's an absolutely stupid idea. It might be funny for a one-shot or something:

Instead of going for a traditional martial class, play a Bladelock with the Undead Patron — Grave Touched lets you staple an extra damage die onto a single attack each round if you have Form of Dread active, and you can pick up a heavy crossbow as your pact weapon with the Improved Pact Weapon invocation. This means that, 1/round, you'll be firing your sweet crossbow for 2d10+dex necrotic damage, as opposed to the dinky 2d4+dex necrotic damage you'd get out of a hand crossbow.

You'd need another little push (like a really solid use for your bonus actions) to beat the hand crossbow at its game, though.

[JLandan]

Here's an absolutely stupid idea. It might be funny for a one-shot or something:

Instead of going for a traditional martial class, play a Bladelock with the Undead Patron — Grave Touched lets you staple an extra damage die onto a single attack each round if you have Form of Dread active, and you can pick up a heavy crossbow as your pact weapon with the Improved Pact Weapon invocation. This means that, 1/round, you'll be firing your sweet crossbow for 2d10+dex necrotic damage, as opposed to the dinky 2d4+dex necrotic damage you'd get out of a hand crossbow.

You'd need another little push (like a really solid use for your bonus actions) to beat the hand crossbow at its game, though.

You forgot the +1 damage from the Improved Pact Weapon.

[Rashagar]

Here's an absolutely stupid idea. It might be funny for a one-shot or something:

Instead of going for a traditional martial class, play a Bladelock with the Undead Patron — Grave Touched lets you staple an extra damage die onto a single attack each round if you have Form of Dread active, and you can pick up a heavy crossbow as your pact weapon with the Improved Pact Weapon invocation. This means that, 1/round, you'll be firing your sweet crossbow for 2d10+dex necrotic damage, as opposed to the dinky 2d4+dex necrotic damage you'd get out of a hand crossbow.

You'd need another little push (like a really solid use for your bonus actions) to beat the hand crossbow at its game, though.

Well, regardless of the OP, at least I have a new character to add to my to-try list.

[Amechra]

You forgot the +1 damage from the Improved Pact Weapon.

Ah, yeah — I usually mentally fold bonuses from +X weapons into whatever stat you use for the attack, but I probably should've remembered to bring that up.

EDIT: I did a bit of thinking, and I think that a Goblin Undead Warlock is probably the best combination, since Nimble Escape lets you pull the "hide and shoot" trick that Rogues do.

[Jak]

How about:

Elf
Champion Fighter 4
(Proficiency w/heavy crossbow, Archery Fighting Style, action surge, CRIT on 19s and 20s, then take Elvin Accuracy)

Rogue X
(Steady aim, which grants you triple advantage now, and gives you a pretty stinkin' good chance of critting, as well as being a good use for your bonus action, and enables sneak attack)

This guy could go Nova pretty well.

I'm not sure in what order you would take the levels, but if I wanted to make a sniper type character, I'd start with this.
If you wanted, you could trade it elvin accuracy for sharpshooter at fighter 4, and get the other later. This build still gets you an 18 in Dex by level 4 if you take EA though.

If you didn't care about critting, drop the last 2 or 3 fighter levels depending on whether or not you're wanting action surge.


Not an expert on the leveling part, so, suggestions?

[Sparky McDibben]

Afb right now, so feel free to check my numbers, but here's an idea. I would go elven bard, probably Valor (martial weapon proficiency and Extra Attack). Use your Magical Secrets to grab Swift Quiver at level 10, like seven levels before rangers get it. Start dropping 4 attacks per round with a level 5 spell slot. Drop Elven Accuracy and Crossbow Expert to taste.

Downside is that this falls behind baseline fighter damage until level 10, and it requires a level 5 spell slot. However, outside of that, you're still getting two shots per turn, and a free bonus action to do stuff like use aura of vitality and bardic inspiration.

[Corran]

When you hit with an attack roll using this magic bow, the target takes an extra 1d6 damage of the same type as the breath infused in the bow—acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder.

...

Tl;dr with whatever levels and non-legendary magical items could you make out of a Dragonwing Heavycrossbow user? One of the key aspects I like from it is that it provides its own ammo, possibly negating the reload property.
You apply extra damage per attack, so you need someone with many attakcs. Fighter is the obvious choice with all the extra attacks and with action surge. Autoloaded ammunition means, as you say, that you dont really need crossbow expert for ignoring the loading property, so crossbow expert is not mandatory. Of course it's a very nice damage boost (at the cost of reducing your range), but this damage boost matters less the more attacks you have (hence the more attacks for which you'll reduce the base damage, by going from a heavy to a hand crossbow, in order to gain one extra attack). So again, another reason the fighter is good. Of course, with a bonus action now freed, it's good if you throw on top something that utilizes it and which can increase your accuracy, since you'll want SS and the bonus damage from the dragonwing does not help with the -5/+10 aspect of the feat. So a samurai seems to fit the bill almost perfectly. Not to mention that if this weapon is considered magical, then it does away with the samurai's bigggest dpr related weakness, ie the lack of easy access to magic damage that penetrates resistances.

The autoloaded ammunition can be also useful for when arrows are hard to come by, make or preserve. But also when you want to smuggle a ranged weapon plus ammunition, especially if you already have a way to smuggle the weapon itself but not the ammo (eg EKs and bladelocks).

[RogueJK]

As I understand it, rogue makes the best use of crossbows due to making attacks but only 1 a turn.

Normally yes, because you can normally only fire a crossbow once per turn, which is what makes it handy for Rogues who can similarly only Sneak Attack once per turn.

However, if you have a way to ignore the Loading property of crossbows, that's not the case. You can achieve that through stuff like the Crossbow Expert feat or the Artificer's Repeating Shot infusion.

Or, you could ask your DM to apply that to the Dragonwing Crossbow, since while it doesn't specifically state that you can ignore the Loading property of a Dragonwing Crossbow, that's sort of implied through its ability to magically create and load its own ammo just like the Repeating Shot infusion.

Either way, since you don't have to deal with the Loading property either because your DM is generous or because you took the Crossbow Expert feat, it'd be better in this case to go for a build with multiple attacks. You'd likely want to use the combination of Elven Accuracy and Sharpshooter with some means to reliably achieve Advantage to offset the Sharpshooter attack penalty. So that's most easily done with some flavor of Fighter like a Samurai or Battlemaster, who also gets Archery fighting style to help offset Sharpshooter's attack penalty, plus gets extra ASIs that are handy since this build requires 3 feats but will also want to max out DEX, and can't start as a VHuman/CLineage since it needs to be an Elf or Half Elf to access Elven Accuracy.


For example, potential damage comparison at Level 5, assuming 18 DEX:

Rogue 5 with Sneak Attack and Sharpshooter = 1d10+4+10+1d6+3d6 = 33.5 average damage, all or nothing since it's 1 attack that either hits or misses.

Fighter 5 with Sharpshooter and Extra Attack = 2d10+8+20+2d6 = 46 average damage, and you have a chance for partial damage if 1 of the 2 attacks hits but the other misses.

Plus the Fighter can Action Surge to double that output in a turn and/or stack on Battlemaster Maneuvers for added maneuver dice damage.


Then at Level 11, assuming 20 DEX, the damage gap gets even wider:

Rogue 11: 1d10+5+10+1d6+6d6 = 45 average damage, all or nothing

Fighter 11: 3d10+15+30+3d6 = 72 average damage, with chance for partial damage, plus Action Surge and/or Maneuvers for more.


Yes, the Rogue will just barely outdamage the (non-Action-Surging) Fighter on rounds when they score a Critical Hit, due to the handful of Sneak Attack dice being doubled. However, the Fighter will have more chances to get a critical since they're attacking 2-3 times per turn instead of just 1.

Rogue 5 Crit = 2d10+4+10+2d6+6d6 = 60 average
Fighter 5 with 1 Crit = 3d10+8+20+3d6 = 59 average

Rogue 11 Crit = 2d10+5+10+2d6+12d6 = 82 average
Fighter 11 with 1 Crit = 4d10+15+30+4d6 = 81 average


Therefore, Fighter comes out on top overall here, as far as Dragonwing Heavy Crossbow damage optimization goes.


So I'd go for something like a DMG Eldarin or Spring Eladrin Samurai Fighter with:
STR 10
DEX 15+2
CON 14
INT 10
WIS 13+1
CHA 10
Archery fighting style
Acrobatics and Insight from Fighter, Stealth and Survival from Background, Perception from Elf, Persuasion from Samurai
Crossbow Expert at 4
Elven Accuracy (+1 DEX) at 6
Sharpshooter at 8
+2 DEX at 12
Lucky at 14
Then whatever else interests you at 16 and 19. (Good choices could be stuff like Skill Expert: Stealth/Perception/Persuasion, Magic Initiate Wizard for Mage Armor and a couple utility cantrips, Gift of the Chromatic Dragon for added elemental damage and resistance, +2 CON, +2 WIS, Fey Touched for additional Misty Step and a spell like Bless or Gift of Alacrity, or maybe even both Martial Adept and Fighting Initiate: Superior Technique to grab 3x Maneuvers and some maneuver dice.)

You'll be putting out a respectable amount of damage each turn just from your usual attack routine. Then on turns when you want to nova, you activate both Fighting Spirit for Advantage and Action Surge for a second Attack Action. This gives you 4/6/8 attacks that turn (depending on your Fighter level), all at Triple Advantage from Elven Accuracy, and all getting +10 damage from Sharpshooter. That's 144 points of damage on average in one round at Level 11, assuming no crits. But when you're rolling 18d20 on attack rolls in one turn, the chances of you getting at least 1 crit are pretty good...

You can nova like this once per short rest, which makes for a great combat opener.

And it's not just damage output. You also have great saves thanks to things like Indomitable, Elegant Courtier's WIS save proficiency, and Lucky. You have a short rest recharging teleport for positioning, exploration, or getting out of grapples or other nasty effects. Your high DEX and moderate WIS with Stealth, Survival, and Perception proficiency make you a decent scout. And with Persuasion and Insight proficiency, 14 WIS, and Elegant Courtier, you can also act as a backup Face.