I'm currently playing a game in which I am running a Gloom Stalker ranger with the dual fighting.
The Dread Ambusher feature gives me an additional attack with 1d8 damage. At this point I have my main attack, my off hand attack, my extra attack (gained at level 5), and the Dread Ambusher attack for the first interaction in combat.
The way my DM interprets this is that with my first attack the Dread Ambusher is included in this attack like doing additional damage when pulling the blade out sort of thing. This essentially makes the extra attack from Dread Ambusher useless if the creature I attack dies with my initial attack.
I have three attacks anyways but I'm curious if Dread Ambusher is a separate extra attack or if it is a part of the initial attack as my DM says. Of course if that's the way he plays it that's fine, but I'm looking at running my own campaign and want to make sure I am running this correctly for my party.
Best Answer
You get 1 additional attack, if you take the Attack action on the 1st round of combat; it does 1d8 extra damage (plus normal weapon damage) if it hits
The Gloom Stalker ranger's Dread Ambusher feature (Xanathar's Guide to Everything, p. 42) says, in part:
Taking it step by step:
It only applies on your turn on the first round of combat.
It only applies if you take the Attack action on that turn.
If you're able to make that additional attack on the Attack action, and you hit, you do 1d8 extra damage with that attack.
No special interaction with Two-Weapon Fighting
This feature has no interaction with Two-Weapon Fighting, or your bonus action. If you make an attack during your Attack action that qualifies for TWF (i.e. you make at least one - any one - of the attacks in your Attack action with a one-handed light weapon), then you can use your bonus action to attack with a one-handed light weapon in the other hand, as the TWF rule states. There's no special interaction between the two, other than that you have one more attack in your Attack action with which to qualify for TWF.
A 3rd-level ranger wielding two weapons that qualify for Two-Weapon Fighting can normally make 1 attack during their Attack action, and 1 bonus-action attack from TWF. Dread Ambusher lets them make 1 more during their Attack action on their first turn, for a total of 3 attacks; for the rest of the fight, they go back to 2 attacks per turn.
A 5th-level ranger wielding two weapons for TWF can now normally make 2 attacks per Attack action (thanks to Extra Attack), plus the 1 bonus-action attack. Dread Ambusher lets them make 4 attacks on the first turn (3 attacks during their Attack action, 1 attack as a bonus-action from TWF), and 3 attacks per turn for the rest of the fight.