If someone takes the Crossbow Expert feat, can they:

A) Fire at the target in close combat?

B) Fire at another target away from them?

C) If they have a single fire crossbow, do they still need to use a bonus action or action to reload/arm?

D) If they have a hand crossbow that fires multiple shots and they have two actions, they could fire twice?

I am working on an NPC that has a hand crossbow that has a capacity of 5 bolts, and wanted to make sure I had this right.

A and B, yes

• Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn’t impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls.

C, no (as long as they're proficient)

• You ignore the loading property of crossbows with which you are proficient.

D, not really covered by the feat, but it's your NPC, they can do whatever they want.

Thanks DCH, Most of my NPCs reflect player abilities (i.e. could be played by a player if someone drops in) and I was curious about this feat!

so, if you want to keep a taste of could a pc do this, then I would say that d would be a yes as well. Typically npcs don't get the same action economy that PC's do. They usually just move and do a thing, which is why some things have a multiattack option. Just write them as taking to shots with their hand crossbow when they attack (for a PC, that would be one for the attack action, and one as a bonus action from the feat.)

A) You can always do this, this feat just removes the disadvantage penalty

B) You can attempt to shoot anyone you can see

C) 'reload' is more attributed to firearms in dnd (and is not the same as loading). The 'Loading' property means that you need to make the weapon ready before firing again (this takes no action/bonus action, just means you can't rapid fire a crossbow in the same way you could a bow.) The feat grants you some particular skills or similar, allowing you to do this as fast as an bowman.

Unless the 5-shot hand crossbow has a self-resetting mechanism, it still needs to be 'loaded' for each shot (effectively making the magazine useless). If it is self-resetting, then it would lose the 'loading' trait and gain the 'reload 5' trait. (difference between a semi-auto firearm and a bolt-action firearm (sort of))

D)

• "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."

If using a hand crossbow and the character has multiattack (e.g. a fighter at lvl 5) they can attack twice as an action and once more as bonus action (total 3 times). Since the hand crossbow is one handed. (also works with a sword and hand crossbow, but there leads to the issue of no free hand to reload the crossbow between shots)

There are two main weapon properties that affect crossbows: Ammunition & Loading.

Ammunition applies to all relevant ranged weapons that use ammo. This is the property that establishes the general rule on how adding the ammo to a weapon works. You need a free hand to move ammo from wherever your character stores it to the weapon itself. This is included as a part of the action in which you are using the weapon (i.e., you can attack with a bow or sling at your normal rate).

Loading is the property that restricts you to one attack with that weapon per action/bonus action/reaction. Conceptually, all this property really does is acknowledge that weapons with these properties are difficult to load quickly. A skilled archer can draw and knock an arrow very rapidly (2-3 seconds), and could make full use out of Extra Attack. However, the same skilled archer would still be restricted to one attack with a crossbow because that's just mechanically going to take longer to load due to complexity. Being able to load a crossbow every 6 seconds (one round in combat) is frankly pretty generous already. If you've ever operated a real crossbow (not a low resistance ren-fair crossbow or a modern hunting crossbow), then you know that those suckers are a pain in the ass to operate quickly and smoothly. You basically have to plant the crossbow facing down to the ground, stick your foot through the stirrup to keep it in place, and use both hands to draw the string back and lock it in place. It's literally a three appendage task. Even an arbalest, which included a mechanized ratchet crank to draw the string, still takes a lot longer than a bow to load. It's just less of a pain to do it. /sidetrack

The Crossbow Expert feat lets you ignore the loading property (specific rule), thus you can operate any crossbow (that you're proficient with) in the exact same manner that you could with a short/longbow. 

Since you're concerned with Hand Crossbows, everything above applies to that specific weapon, and a little bit more... If all your NPC is wielding is the single Hand Crossbow, and has the Crossbow Expert feat, there is no need to deal with a modified weapon that uses a clip. You can reload that thing for free after you attack all day every day. As an additional bonus, after you use your normal attack action, you can attack again as a bonus action with the same weapon. I know that most people bring up this feat because they want their character to dual-wield HCs (doesn't sound like this is what you're after, so that's good!), but that does not work because the Ammunition property still requires that you have a free hand to do the physical act of loading the bolt between shots. However, HCs are already light weapons, and Crossbow Expert is giving you the ability to operate it at full rate. The feat does not require that the extra bonus action attack be made with a different weapon (intentional)!

The ammunition property of the hand crossbow does mean that RAW you can't have a short sword in one hand, a hand crossbow in the other and fire a shot off every turn.