Can other damage (from class abilities/feats) be added to net attacks?

Question

While reading the answer to Are attacks with nets always made with disadvantage?, it found a few feats that could help avoid the disadvantage (Crossbow expert and Sharpshooter).

My initial follow-up questions are:

1. why can't you use the sharpshooter feat to add 10 damage (at the cost of -5 to hit)? It's a ranged weapon (and assume that I am proficient with it)
2. If I am a rogue, can I add my sneak damage on a hit? The rules on sneak attack are finesse or ranged weapons - Net is a ranged weapon (assume no disadvantage on the attack due to feats)

Answer 1

1. why can't you use the sharpshooter feat to add 10 damage (at the cost of -5 to hit)? It's a ranged weapon (and assume that I am proficient with it)

The sharpshooter feat says:

Before you make an attack with a ranged weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a - 5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack’s damage.

Well, its a ranged weapon and you're proficient with it so you can do this. This just leaves us with the interpretation of adding +10 to an attack that does no damage - not 0 damage: - damage.

One way of interpreting it is that adding a number to a - makes as much sense as adding a number to a kumquat: you can't add a number and not a number so you can take the penalty if you want, you just gat no advantage.

Alternatively, you could say that - damage is 0 damage and of course you get the +10 damage. You're a sharpshooter after all and this could represent dropping the net around someone's neck or other vulnerable extremity and pulling and twisting it to cause damage.

RAW is sufficiently vague that either interpretation is valid and will depend on individual DMs.

2. If I am a rogue, can I add my sneak damage on a hit? The rules on sneak attack are finesse or ranged weapons - Net is a ranged weapon (assume no disadvantage on the attack due to feats)

Sneak attack says:

Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the attack roll. The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon.

This runs into the same issues: "extra damage" implies that there is some damage there already. Your DM can decide that this is the same as they decided above, or that its different.

Equally, they could decide that the god's can't stand a smart-ass and obliterate your character. :-)

Answer 2

@KorvinStarmast's answer is good, but addresses your question in very general terms. To address your specific questions:

1. why can't you use the sharpshooter feat to add 10 damage (at the cost of -5 to hit)? It's a ranged weapon (and assume that I am proficient with it)

Here's what Sharpshooter does:

Before you make an attack with a ranged weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage.

So why won't this work with nets? Because you add +10 to the attack's damage. However, an attack with a net doesn't deal damage in the first place, so there's nothing to add damage to. It's not a case of 0 + 10 = 10; a net lists "-" as its damage, not 0.

2. If I am a rogue, can I add my sneak damage on a hit? The rules on sneak attack are finesse or ranged weapons - Net is a ranged weapon (assume no disadvantage on the attack due to feats)

And here's what Sneak Attack does:

Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the attack roll.

That's 1d6 extra damage. For there to be extra damage, there has to be damage. Since there's no damage to begin with, you can't have extra damage.

If you prefer to hear it from the designers, both Crawford and Mearls said the same thing with the same reasoning.

Answer 3

Nets Don't Do Damage

The reason you can't add damage to the net from Sharpshooter (or other feat) is that a net doesn't do damage in the first place. This can be seen in the entry for net on the Weapons table on page 149 of the PHB.

Damage for a net is undefined. If there is no damage type, no damage die, and no damage value in the first place, damage isn't a category of the effects of a net in combat. It's effect in combat is "special" and is listed on PHB p. 148 as somehting that, on a hit, will restrain a creature. Restraining by itself, as a Condition (see Appendix A, PHB, Conditions, p. 292) also does not apply damage.

You can also address this as a matter of specific over general. The specific exception to weapons doing damage is the net, as spelled out in the Special Weapons paragraph.

Net. A Large or smaller creature hit by a net is restrained until it is freed. A net has no effect on creatures that are formless, or creatures that are Huge or larger. A creature can use its action to make a DC 10 Strength check, freeing itself or another creature within its reach on a success. Dealing 5 slashing damage to the net (AC 10) also frees the creature without harming it, ending the effect and destroying the net. When you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to attack with a net, you can make only one attack regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make.

Put in a more mechanistic way: as there is no damage entry per the weapons table, there is nothing to add +10 to. You can make an attack. The effect of a successful attack isn't damage, it is a condition: restrained.

Look at the weapons table from top to bottom. Every weapon has a damage die (range of value) associated with it, and a damage type.

The entry for net has no damage value and no damage type. It doesn't do damage.

Damage by a net is something like dividing by zero: undefined.

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Note: for those with older versions of the PHB, Unarmed strike was removed from the Weapons table in the PHB errata. Thanks to @Miniman