I'm not sure what fighting style I should pick to fit how I want to fight

[Kaimal]

How I want to fight is to use a sword and hand crossbow. I can see myself alternating between dual wielding and using the crossbow in one hand with a sword but Xbow and sword is what my main focus.

I'm wondering how to make a character that fits that. Obviously a fighter or valour bard maybe. A blood hunter is one I thought of too but I need to talk to my DM bout that one.

So if I was to make a fighter/bard What fighting style do you think I should use? Or is my concept not really supported by RAW?

[tieren]

You can't reload the crossbow without a free hand, so you'll only get one shot at the beginning of combat.

[GlenSmash!]

When in doubt, choose Defense.

[Man_Over_Game]

Here's the thing about the Hand Crossbow. It has the Light feature, but the Two Weapon Fighting rules explicitly say the words "Melee" AND "Light". The Light feature is only relevant with the Two Weapon Fighting rules (isnt' really mentioned anywhere else), and it being on the hand crossbow is literally useless. Since it requires a free hand to reload, even with the Crossbow Expert feat, the fact that it's not two handed is ALSO useless.

You effectively have a crossbow with worse range/damage than alternatives, that can technically be held with one hand but can't be reloaded without being wielded with two hands.

Not only that, but as a fighter, the Ammunition property doesn't help you, since it means you can only attack once per action/bonus action/reaction with the crossbow. You might get 4 attacks later on, but you can only use one of them with the crossbow without the Crossbow Expert feat.

You could talk to your DM about a solution, either tacking on a bayonet onto your hand crossbow (so you can use it as a "dagger"), or about how he wants the Light feature to work on it, or just use it as a skirmishing weapon that you shoot once with and then put it away as you fight with a sword.

My recommendation, to work with the rules, are either:

Use a crossbow as a round-1 skirmishing weapon, and replace the hand crossbow with a heavy duty one for range/damage.
Use a Longbow for prolonged ranged combat and only engage in melee once they've approached you. Also works as a Kensei Monk.
Focus on ranged combat, rolling into Arcane Archer, Battlemaster or Champion and utilize the sword as a last resort (investing into Crossbow Expert).

[Beelzebubba]

How I want to fight is to use a sword and hand crossbow. I can see myself alternating between dual wielding and using the crossbow in one hand with a sword but Xbow and sword is what my main focus.

I'm wondering how to make a character that fits that. Obviously a fighter or valour bard maybe. A blood hunter is one I thought of too but I need to talk to my DM bout that one.

So if I was to make a fighter/bard What fighting style do you think I should use? Or is my concept not really supported by RAW?

You can do it a lot of ways, but yeah, you'll have to sheath the swords to shoot the crossbow due to the Reloading property, and that means if your DM is a stickler for action economy you'll have to take some feats for it to all come online by 4th level (VHuman) or 8th level (others) or even later (if you rolled badly and need ASI's).

For it all to work:
Fighting style: Pick Archery or Dual Wielder depending on which one you expect to be better at.
Feat: Crossbow Expert to get rid of 'reload' property and get 2 (or 3) attacks per round - from 5th level on
Feat: Dual Wielder to stow or draw more than two objects per round - that means generally walking around with one sword in your hand, and then either (melee) drawing the other sword and attacking, or (ranged) stowing the sword, drawing the crossbow, and shooting.

Either way, switching from dual wielding to hand crossbow in the middle of combat will generally make you lose a round of attacks unless you literally drop one of the weapons. (2 free item interactions means sheathing your swords. Dropping one or both is free.)

[BRC]

I got away with this build years ago, due to an understanding GM hand-waving that I had some sort of reloading mechanism on my belt that I could use to reload my crossbow one-handed, but we can't assume that's the case.

Mechanically, I learned a few things.

1) Armored or Archery are the fighting styles that fit you best. The extra attack from Crossbow Expert isn't "Two Weapon Fighting" so it gets your dex to damage regardless.
2) As a dex based character, you're going to end up on Archer duty a good deal, simply because of how useful Ranged damage is, especially since Crossbow Expert means you're not afraid of getting pulled into melee suddenly.
3) Yes, technically your best damage will come from taking an attack action with your D8 rapier, and then getting the attack in with your hand crossbow, plus it looks super cool, but you're not actually losing much damage if you just attack with your D6 hand crossbow.
4) The Dual Wielder feet has a useful bonus you don't get, namely it lets you draw both weapons with one object interaction. Sword and Crossbow takes two rounds to get going, but as I mentioned above, you don't really lose that much DPR by attacking with your crossbow.

[stoutstien]

A player wants to go rapier and hand xbow? If they spend a feat on xbow expert I'd hand wave the reloading in a second.
I'd say defence is a safe pick for anyone and archery can cancel some of the long range penalty that will acure with the low range of the hand xbow.
Choose based on rest of party make-up