All Clerics shouldn’t be considered as a “support” tbh. Tempest, Light and War only focus on dealing damage and do it a lot better than anything else. All of them pretty much should only support the group with Viagra pill heals to get them up when they get Downed and maybe Bless, but that is to deal more damage. 
Tho aid is nice when rolling with 3 players.
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with only 3 players and the difficulty of the campaign, it’s hard to vary the party make up much, if there was a 4th permanent party member we could be a bit more diverse.
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Only a Druid/ Bard can replace a Cleric, and a Druid was already played.
Can’t wait to see The Batman rise again
Yeah I understand that and I wasn’t blaming you for your choice to play that character. It’s just an unfortunate side effect.
Maybe each of you takes (at least) a single level of Cleric/Druid/Bard - thematically in the world it can make sense - and functionally it provides 2 bonus action Healing Words that can be leveraged/timed to save a fallen party member? Since you can “game” it, it should prevent the stand up just before the monster goes - fall back down business. Just a thought and probably too late if characters have already been created. Best of luck, gentlemen.
But didn’t he say he was thinking of playing a Bard? Maybe he changed his mind 
I don’t know if this is the place to point this out, but here goes.
Something rubbed me the wrong way about JP’s x-bow machine-gun concept with a off-hand shield, and I remembered this article from the Sage Advice.
Basically it says that even though you ignore the loading property of a x-bow it still assumes you have a free hand to load the bolt.
I know the players need to min/max to survive the horrors Adam unleashes on them, but it just didn’t seem physically possible. And the chinese repeating x-bow they talked about still required two hands.
Ok, I’m done venting now 
thanks for reading.
Correct place for this would most likely be the discussion on the Patreon video you are referring to.
I feel like it wouldn’t be impossible to use the shield to rewire the hand x-bow if it had a hook attached to it. A bolt feeder of some kind could be used to drop the bolt in to its place. This would sill require refilling the feeder once per turn but it could be done as a free action.
I know it’s stretching the rules but i feel like rule of Cool vs RAW can be applied here to make it possible. JP essentially gains +2 AC but his character is gimped by the fact that he can’t use Heavy Armor. Not like the build is extremely powerful anyways. At their current level Ranger could dish out more damage constantly while spending next to no resources if the same build was applied to that class. (More damage due Colossus Slayer and Hunter’s Mark working really well with multiple hits. Level 11 Fighter gets more attacks per turn but Rangers gian Volley)
The next feat in line is Lucky. I feel like one should be able to use hand x-bow just fine with a shield when you can make a disadvantage in to an super advantage. When you really need to hit just close your eyes to gain disadvantage to be able to roll three dice and select the highest. Feats are silly that way.
One could house rule the crossbow expert feat similar to the warcaster in that it allows you to do something you’d need a free hand for.
Fair points
I’m just a stickler for the rules.
I’m not really worried about the balance of the thing either, since Adam is really good at adjusting for the characters strength and weaknesses.
I forget, why can’t he use heavy armor?
He doesn’t have the strength requirement for anything other than ring mail, which is less AC for him with his high Dex anyway.
the shield is a kibosh - he needs a free hand to reload
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Could he find an armor smith or something that could build him some custom shield that allowed him to reload at the same time? Find an RP loophole.
[spoiler]Isn’t that what his squire is for? Also, I thought he was using that Chinese machine-gun crossbow. Doesn’t that hold more than one bolt at a time? The design certainly suggests as much.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]It does, but it’s single action basically. You still have to work a lever system to load the next bolt. All pulling the trigger will do is fire the bolt that is already loaded.[/spoiler]
No. D&D doesn’t really support loopholes like that, it’s just not part of the design balance of the game.
If he can’t use a shield, is there any reason to use a hand crossbow over a longbow?
I believe a hand crossbow is a one-handed weapon while a long bow is a two-handed weapon.
The rules permit him to use a shield and hand crossbow, but not a shield and long bow.
The only thing the shield is stopping him from doing is reloading without using an action. IIRC.