A Player's Guide to Feats - Crossbow Expert
I’ve thought crossbows are cool ever since I saw Star Wars at the ripe old age of eight. I hadn’t started playing D&D and had never seen a crossbow before. Chewbacca’s laser crossbow facsimile was the most badass thing I had ever seen.
Now, real crossbows don’t shoot lasers, nor do the ones in D&D…or at least the crossbows my characters have found. I smell a homebrew magic weapon on the horizon. But I digress. Crossbows are criminally underused in D&D. The biggest obstacle to using a crossbow is spending precious time in combat loading it. Good thing we have the Crossbow Expert feat to bypass the loading of a bolt to shoot at your enemy.
What is the Crossbow Expert Feat?
One of the ‘original’ feats, the Crossbow Expert feat is described as the following:
Thanks to extensive practice with the crossbow, you gain the following benefits:
You ignore the loading property of crossbows with which you are proficient.
Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn’t impose a disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls.
When you use the Attack action and attack with a one-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding.
Player’s Handbook
Dissecting the Feat
Currently, the Crossbow Expert feat does not grant you an ability point. How that will change with the introduction of One D&D is to be seen. I envision a point in Dexterity being included. Of course, something would have to be removed. I’m not sure what that would be since, as we’ll see, all three parts of the feat have value.
So let’s talk about the loading property. Per the PHB, the loading property restricts a player to a single attack per round, no matter the number of attacks they can typically make. In essense, this takes the crossbow out of the plausible weapon conversation of fighters, rangers, and rogues. Crossbow expert eliminates this restriction, allowing you to fire off multiple attacks per round with your crossbow. The Crossbow Expert feat is a must-have if you have an Extra Attack feature associated with your class.
Ignoring the 5-foot disadvantage penalty may not seem like a big deal, but you’d be wrong in thinking so. Why, you ask? The Crossbow Expert’s final, arguably most influential, feature allows you to use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow when you attack with a one-handed weapon. Now you can swing your sword and fire your loaded hand crossbow at the same bad guy with no penalty. Based on the wording, it also means you can use the hand crossbow twice, once as an attack action and again as a bonus action attack. Folks, we have now entered the rarified air of an OP feat.
One quick thing that needs to be pointed out. Ignoring the loading requirements does not mean you can ignore the ammunition property of the crossbow. You must ensure you have a free hand to pull out the ammo for the crossbow.
The Crossbow Expert Feat Useability by Class
Artificer: Some flavor options are available here (and Artillerist with hand crossbows sounds fun), and the battle smith has the Extra Attack feature at the 5th level. It can be useful depending on your style of play.
Barbarian: No matter how hard you try, a ranged weapon barbarian isn’t a thing. Not worth taking.
Bard: A bard may not have proficiency in crossbows, but they do in hand crossbows, opening up the two attacks with the same hand crossbow option. College of Swords and Valor grants an Extra Attack at the 6th level, so you can break out the big guns…I mean crossbows if you belong to either of those associations of bards. There are better feats for a bard, but you can make it work if you want,
Cleric: There are only four domains where your cleric with have proficiency in martial weapons (Death, Tempest, Twilight, and War), rendering it useless for all the other domains. Even if you pray to a god in one of these orders, there are too many other feats more suited to the class than this one.
Druid: Not proficient in crossbows. Not worth taking.
Fighter: If you’ve decided to play a Dex fighter, this is one of the first feats you should consider. Take the Archery fighting style. You’ll have to forgo your next opportunity to take the ASI, as combining the feat with the Sharpshooter feat will make your character a deadly ranged weapon hero. That’s ok, though, since the class has more opportunities for ASI than any other class.
Monk: Not proficient in crossbows and bonus action overload. Not worth taking.
Paladin: To smite the evildoers, the paladin must make a melee attack, so this feat makes no sense for the class. Not worth taking.
Ranger: See fighter above. Remember that you don’t have the same number of chances to increase your stats.
Rogue: I like this as an early feat for the rogue. Since they are proficient in hand crossbows, you have two opportunities per round to land a sneak attack. Even better, you’re not like every other rogue out there, running up and trying to stab the monster with a rapier. Let those poor fools figure out how not to get hit when standing next to the bad guy. You can be up to 80 feet away, far removed from the dangers of swords, claws, or razor-sharp teeth.
Sorcerer: The feat applies the ranged spell attacks, so casting an eldritch blast on the troll within 5 feet of you doesn’t incur a disadvantage. Great! Still not worth taking.
Warlock: See Sorcerer
Wizard: See Warlock
Conclusion
Crossbow Expert is the first genuinely overpowered feat we’ve examined. Stop thinking swords and embrace the archery fighting style, your crossbow, and the Crossbow Expert feat. You’re crossbow may not fire laser beams, but you can dream.
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