SOURCE: Player’s Handbook 

Rating the Benefits of Crossbow Expert

Benefit #1 – 

Ignore the loading property of any crossbows your character has proficiency with

The loading trait only allows one attack per round from a weapon that has it (which is generally only crossbows and guns, in the campaigns they’re available in.)

From level 5, essentially every martial character gains the Extra Attack feature, which allows them to make two attacks as part of their attack action. If they can’t ignore the loading property, this cuts their effective DPS in half. 

In short, Crossbow Expert becomes essential to use crossbows past tier 2 in D&D 5e.  

Benefit #2 – 

Making ranged attacks within 5 feet of a hostile creature no longer incurs disadvantage

Normally, making any kind of ranged attack while standing within 5 feet of something that wants you dead makes it harder to hit. Which makes sense. 

The Crossbow Expert feat ignores that. Now, a character can freely target whoever they want, firing bolts at targets on the other side of the encounter while trying to dodge the aggressive goblin stabbing at their kidneys.  

Benefit #3 – 

After attacking with a one-handed weapon held in one hand, a character can use their bonus action to fire a hand crossbow held in the other

This works like two-weapon fighting, except vastly superior. It requires no fighting style investment, allows attacks at range, and can freely be fired up close (because of the second feature of this feat.)

Mechanics and Requirements

Understanding How It Functions

The Crossbow Expert feat offers 3 major benefits, which do very different things but interlock in interesting ways to create several powerful combinations. 

Ignoring the Loading Property

A weapon with the loading property can only ever make one attack when a character using it takes the attack action. 

This means, that from level 5, where most martial characters gain the Extra Attack feature which adds a second attack, crossbows fall behind when weighed up against every other weapon in the game. 

Ignoring the Loading quality is essential for any character relying on attacking to deal effective round-on-round damage. If you plan on using crossbows, this trait is non-negotiable. 

Interestingly, the rules for firearms in 5e also tend to feature the Loading quality, and the rest of the benefits of the feat also lean incredibly well towards gun use. 

No close-ranged disadvantage

A character making ranged attacks while within 5ft of a hostile target has disadvantage on all of their attack rolls. It doesn’t matter whether the character is attacking the creature that’s threatening them or another target, all rolls are made with two dice, taking the worst result. 

This is a major detriment, and can utterly nerf a character’s damage output. 

However, Crossbow Expert utterly ignores this. A character with this feat can freely attack while within 5 feet of any amount of enemies. Suddenly, every ranged weapon they wield, crossbow or not, is just as effective at any range, even when utterly surrounded and pinned into melee combat. 

Two crossbows are better than one

The last feature of the Crossbow Expert feat is a little more specific than the rest. But if you plan on using two-hand crossbows, it makes this feat the core of the build. 

Essentially, it gives the character two-weapon fighting, except with ranged weapons. 

Whenever the character takes the attack action, they can make another attack as a bonus action, with their offhand crossbow. 

This is huge. There are very few ways in D&D 5e for a ranged character to make this many attacks in one turn. The damage of ranged builds is gated behind this concept, to the point that many builds struggle to meaningfully spend their bonus action every turn. 

More importantly, this adds a huge amount of scaling into pistol crossbow builds. Anything that adds bonus damage to attacks, which for ranged weapons includes feats, spells, and class features, is that much more impactful when you make 50% more attacks than the next guy. 

Key Stats

While the Crossbow Expert feat doesn’t offer any stats as part of its benefits list, the crossbow class of weapons exclusively uses Dexterity for its attack and damage rolls. 

A character using this feat will want to push their Dexterity as high as possible, as quickly as possible. 

Ideal Characters for Crossbow Expert

Top Classes

Rogue – Great Weapon Master significantly boosts their damage output by capitalizing on their Rage-induced strength advantage, making those risky, high-damage hits more likely. Additionally, the bonus melee attack after a crit or kill just fuels the Barbarian’s battle momentum, adding more devastating blows to their repertoire.

Fighter – Great Weapon Master significantly boosts their damage output by capitalizing on their Rage-induced strength advantage, making those risky, high-damage hits more likely. Additionally, the bonus melee attack after a crit or kill just fuels the Barbarian’s battle momentum, adding more devastating blows to their repertoire.

Ranger – Rangers are incredible with Crossbow Expert. In-class access to the Archery fighting style, the Hunter’s Mark spell to stack damage. Proficiency in every weapon that works alongside this feat… 

Paladin – Almost strictly for the sword and crossbow builds, and highly stat reliant, but powerful. Become a witch hunter, smiting your enemies with your weapon and firing holy bolts of energy at those who flee. 

While the core class damage ability, Smite, only works on melee weapon attacks, several important spells like Divine Favor, Branding Smite and Banishing Smite can also trigger on ranged attacks. 

Race or Subrace Choices

Dragonborn – Ranged characters tend to lack AOE damage. Taking Dragonborn, and substituting one attack for a burst of elemental damage, really helps with that. 

Eladrin – Gain a bonus action teleport multiple times per day, scaling in uses and with an attached secondary effect, which can include frightening the creature you just escaped from, before you riddle them with bolts. 

Tabaxi – Great stats, great skills, built-in melee weapons, a climb speed, and the ability to put on a ridiculous burst of speed to get out of, or into, unfortunate situations. 

Combos, Tactics, and Synergies

Complementary Feats

Sharpshooter – A whole stack of buffs for ranged attackers, most importantly taking -5 to your hit roll for a monstrous +10 damage boost. 

Elven Accuracy – Whenever attacking with advantage, reroll one of the dice. This is a hugely powerful way to ensure as many attacks as possible land. 

Spells that Synergize

Hex/Hunter’s Mark – Another d6 damage on every bolt fired doubles the dice you’re throwing at key monsters, once or twice per day. 

Divine Favor – Another damage buff. This one applied to the character, adding 1d4 radiant damage to every attack. 

Strategies for Maximizing Crossbow Expert Effectiveness

Limitations of Hand Crossbows

The Hand Crossbow is a slightly odd weapon that takes a touch of work to get around its inadequacies. Firstly, here’s the profile:

Hand crossbow – 1d6, ammunition, light, loading, range 30/120

Martial ranged weapon. 75gp

A few things stand out here. Firstly, the damage is good, but not exceptional. 1d6 is equivalent to the shortbow, but this is one-handed instead of needing both hands to wield. 

Secondly, the loading property makes these weapons a poor choice for anyone without the Crossbow Expert feat.

Third, the 30 foot ranged band is surprisingly limited. That’s only six squares, and it’s common for encounters to push out past that. For Rogues especially, who can’t sneak attack with disadvantage, it’s something to bear in mind. 

The last issue is cost. Hand Crossbows cost 75gp. Each. That’s a frankly crazy amount of money for a low-level character to drop into weapons. Expect to negotiate with your GM about starting weaponry and expectations as you level.   

As a bonus, a smart GM will play off of the RP benefits of a character with this build. While it’s not strictly a mechanical thing, someone walking around armed like this is going to draw attention. It’s going to be far harder for parties to sneak around and go low profile, and many criminals and other less savory elements of society might want something so valuable and lethal for their own…

The Three Proficiencies

There are three major builds that the Crossbow Expert lends itself to, all of them wildly different. Here’s how they break down:

Roll out the big guns

The first, and simplest, build the Crossbow Expert feat can build towards is packing a heavy crossbow and trying to stack as much damage as possible, acting as a traditional archer.

Rangers, Fighters, Bards, and even Warlocks with Improved Pact Weapon can make great use of this. The heavy crossbow has the largest damage dice amongst every ranged weapon in 5e. The crossbow expert feat allows it to make multiple attacks in a turn, plus be used within 5ft safely, so the damage never stops. 

Stack further damage with the Sharpshooter feat, Archery fighting style, and spells like Hunter’s Mark and Hex. 

Swashbuckling

Crossbow Expert’s bonus attack triggers “whenever you attack with a one-handed weapon.” 

One-handed melee weapons absolutely qualify for this, allowing a character to have a sword in one hand and a pistol bow in the other. 

This is amazing for skirmishing damage dealers who want to skirt the edges of the encounter, selectively dealing their damage to the most vulnerable targets. Like Rogues. A Rogue using this combat style can stab when necessary, or decide to hang back and plink tiny, toothpick-sized bolts that inexplicably hit harder than a greatsword.

Remember, as well, that Crossbow Expert allows a ranged attack to be made in melee with zero downsides. Your bow is equally as good up close as it is afar. 

Dual crossbows

The last build, and the one that Crossbow Expert is most notorious for, is twin hand crossbows. 

A character wielding twin crossbow pistols can make two shots per turn at level 1, scaling up to three attacks per turn, every turn, from as early as level 5. 

That’s already decent, but it’s the bonuses that make this powerful:

• Archery fighting style is a permanent +2 to hit for every attack the character makes. Hit bonuses are hard to come by, and a bonus to hit is incredibly important here, because…
• Sharpshooter adds a monstrous +10 boost to damage on every single attack, for the price of -5 to hit
• The Hex and Hunter’s Mark spells add 1d6 damage to every attack that lands against a certain enemy, at the cost of 1 turn’s bonus action

All of this combined turns a simple 1d6 + 5 (av. dmg. 8.5) weapon into a 1d6 + 1d6 + 5 + 10 (av. dmg. 22) hand cannon.  

Further level scaling can make this absolutely crazy. For example, a Fighter gains even more attacks as they level, up to a maximum of 4 per action. They can take the Action Surge action to attack twice per round once per short rest, and can stack Battlemaster maneuvers on top of each bolt to turn misses into hits, apply conditions, and stack up even more damage. 

Final Thoughts on Crossbow Expert

Crossbow Expert is a great feat. While it’s not as plug-and-play as something like Polearm Master, building into what this feat offers can create some spectacularly powerful, and incredibly fun, builds. 

If you’re planning on making a crossbow-wielding character, you need this feat. Especially if you’re going with twin pistol bows. It’s that essential. Take it. Don’t look back. Pincushion everything that opposes you.