I've been pondering your point here, and it seems to me a more general wording can be proposed. How about
"
When you use the Attack action to make a melee attack against a creature, being within 5 feet of that creature doesn’t impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls for the rest of the turn."
This is a more complex change. It would allow the following
- melee attack + hand crossbow bonus attack
- melee attack + drop weapon + ready weapon + bow or crossbow attack
- melee attack + Quickened ranged spell attack
- two or more creatures can re-impose disadvantage by mobbing the feat-user
What do you think?
I get that you are trying to nerf ranged attacks, but I don't think that making this feat so extremely specific is the way to do it. The intent of the designers was clearly to extend these benefits to all characters, not just a very select few.
Does this feat actually make range overpowered? Let's break it down.
3) "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."
This only applies to melee and hand crossbow users. It is two-weapon-fighting with a hand crossbow. Hand crossbows have the lowest damage of all crossbows. However, this does allow you to add your damage modifier to the bonus action attack.
2) "Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn’t impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls."
This rule is necessary to make point 3) work. Otherwise, your bonus action attack would always have disadvantage.
This is also the part of the feat about which the designers said,
"When designing a feat with a narrow use, we consider adding at least one element that can benefit a character more broadly—a bit of mastery that your character brings from one situation to another. The second benefit of Crossbow Expert is such an element, as is the first benefit of Great Weapon Master." (Feats, Sage Advice, Jeremy Crawford, 05/18/2015)
The fact that this ability is also added to the "Close Quarters Shooter" Fighting Style further points to the designers' intent to allow ranged attackers to remove this disadvantage by taking a feat or class feature to do it.
1) "You ignore the loading quality of crossbows with which you are proficient."
This ability also is necessary to make 3) work. Otherwise 3) would generally take complicated use of action economy to pull off. It might be worth considering making this available to bows as well: "You ignore the loading quality of range weapons with which you are proficient. This benefit does not apply to firearms."
So is this feat overpowered? On the surface, no, it really isn't. The only problems caused are when you combine it with other buffed abilities like Sharpshooter, but you are already working to nerf that as it is.
From the standpoint of realism, a point-blank crossbow shot will be quite deadly, far more so than a melee attack. But in 5e, even with the disadvantage removed melee weapons surpass ranged weapons in maximum damage output. Adding in the Archery fighting style skews things somewhat due to hit percentage, but we should not assume that every ranged attacker has Archery, nor Sharpshooter. The designers address this directly:
"Mechanically, feats are also meant to be all-in-one options. We avoid chains of feats, just as we avoid making assumptions about your proficiencies or character class (unless this is unavoidable). A feat is a package that covers all the bases, allowing it to benefit any character." (Unearthed Arcana: Feats, pg. 1)
If anything Crossbow Expert should be expanded to help more character concepts rather than constrained to near uselessness.
If you *really* want to take ranged fighting down a notch, you could make the rule,
"When attacking with a ranged weapon with which you are proficient, you only add half your proficiency bonus to the attack roll rather than your full proficiency bonus."
Then change the Archery fighting style to
"You add your full proficiency bonus when attacking with a ranged weapon with which you are proficient."
