It’s not difficult at all to make a great blade lock outside hexblade. Players often don’t want to make those choices though. Melee clerics and paladins specifically face the same issues and arguably have it even worse. Blade locks are quite capable even if you ignore pumping charisma, they just take the easy way out and go hexblade.
Now that we have the genie warlock, the damage output is about the same as hexblade. You are sacrificing the proficiency damage for extra attack, but you gain the ability to always use that proficiency bonus damage that is not a resource.
Melee Clerics and Paladins have the heavy armour option (I haven't seen too many people make a melee Cleric with medium armour) so they only have to worry about strength as their melee stat. Paladins prioritize strength anyway, as they don't have much in the way of spells that need high charisma, and they burn their slots on divine smite anyway. Melee Clerics also focus on strength, and balance out wisdom (or grab Shillelagh with a club/staff to use wisdom as their melee stat as well). A Paladin can do okay with 16 charisma, and a Cleric can do okay with 16 wisdom.
Even if a Warlock doesn't worry about pumping up its charisma it still needs dexterity (because you only have light armour/mage armour) and strength (if you want to use the complete range of weapons available to the Pact of the Blade). Sure, you can focus on dexterity, summoning a rapier or longbow (with Improved Pact Weapon), and that's a playable option, but you're losing a lot of the potential of the build. I recall Pact of the Blade being considered the weakest option for Warlocks prior to the release of Xanathar's.
That said, the Mountain Dwarf can start with 17/14/12/8/8/15 and has dwarf weapons training and proficiency in medium armour, so can do a fair non-Hexblade melee warlock. I tried a Celestial Warlock Mountain Dwarf for a few games.
Being considered weakest, and being unplayable are two entirely different things. Going rapier or longbow, you're not sacrificing a lot of the strength of the build at all. Is it inferior to hexblade? Yes, because hexblade is powercreep. Most of the features /should/ have been added to blade pact as features and invocations.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Pact of the blades problem is even with the right invocations the warlock with no pacts just needs one invocation/cantrip to pretty much match it, agonizing/eldritch blast. Now with hexblade, the right, feats, multiple invocations it can exceed that handily. But for the non hexblade its a lot of work just to match it. The game generally accepts a fairly wide range of ability so you can get by with it. But if your better option is just to plug away with eldritch blast it likely wont get much use unless you are really leaning into the theme. For a hexblade its easy PAMlock rules, and even not diving that deep its awesome, for a genie sharpshooter maybe, if you can find a magic hand crossbow sharpshooter/crossbow expert, a narrow use of spells in combat to get you advantage so you can hit on that -5. But we are talking multiple feats, invocations, for non hexblades not investing in charisma and a narrow play style just to get your pact of the blade rolling better than eldritch blast with agonizing blast.
I personally wish they had made pact of the blade a flexible eldritch blast, you take it get eldritch blast for free and it can take the form of any weapon. It does 1d10 uses charisma to hit and no stats for damage, if its form is a melee weapon it can be used in melee if its ranged, its ranged and uses the weapons its mimics ranges, the number of attacks mimics your eldritch blast. Agonizing blast adds charisma damage, have invocations to add weapon styles like light, heavy, etc with requirements like heavy needs to be on a 2 handed weapon etc.
That doesn't make blade bad, it makes hexblades lazy.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Part of it does. Yeah the hexblase is lazy I guess. But if 1 pact has to invest everything into it to get it to work and the other 2 invest minimally and get theirs to work there is an issue. The core problem is making a weapon doesn't really add much if any functionality on its own to the player, so you have to invest heavily to get its function(damage) to shine enough to matter. A pretty base warlock is solid already in damage, not top ranks but solid. On its own pact of the blade is actually worse than that. You invest more into it you can equal that, you go all in you can finally exceed it. Chain and tome add additional features to the warlock, you are warlock+ with 0 investment. Admittedly the + is small if they don't invest in it at all but even 1 invocation in for each of them and now its a power house addition. 1 invocation in and blade is still worse than a lock with agonizing blast.
yes, but pact of the blade offers a completely different playstyle than an EB spammer is. An EB spammer is a magic archer. A blade lock is, in most cases a melee character; although I admit to really wanting to do a blade archer lock eldritch smiting through the bow (which an EBer can't do). Comparing blade to EB is really an apples to oranges comparison. Sure, if you are looking to make an eldritch blast spammer, blade offers little to nothing.
If you're looking to do something other than spam EB, blade opens a lot of doors that chain and tome do not.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Bladelocks = Cool as hell. Wouldn't play one unless I was using finesse weapons or playing as a hexblade. It's nothing against it, I just don't want to have to work very hard for a semi-viable battlemage build when I could just play like half of the cleric domains, sword bard, or bladesinger.
Tomelocks = My personal favorite, and I think its the best for enhancing Warlock's utility. Why would you just load up on extra damage cantrips when EB is going to be more effective 99% of the time? Instead, consider spells for support/utility that Warlocks wouldn't normally get: Guidance, for example, is awesome, and works with find familiar, which can be gained through the Book of Ancient Secrets (Though this familiar is vastly inferior to the Chainlock). Getting access to Sending and a shareable Relentless Endurance feature via Gift of the protectors is just tops.
Chainlock= In all aspects that Tomelock fails (recon, mobility, extra hands, tomfoolery), the Chainlock excels. With the added Investment of the chain master, it also becomes incredibly viable in combat, which is what many people used to consider its main failing. Being able to use the enhanced familiar options with your normal spell DC is a major gamechanger. Also, Gift of the Ever Living Ones is just great. Other people already talked up chain lock so I'm not going to go on a rant about why I think it's awesome. Me choosing Tomelock over it is mostly down to personal taste; the idea of a dark magic user with a big book of creepy secrets seems quintessentially "Warlock" to me.
Talislock = The idea of a wearable blessing that does extra things is very cool, and the ability to offer it to friends to share the benefits is also very interesting and has some decent applications. The two invocations it gets are actually fairly good in my opinion, as well. I could see Talislock being a nice choice if you feel your subclass already offers some wonderful tools to work with. I wish they'd either buff the support/protection angle or add more invocations to build into that role more, because it offers a unique playstyle that I think Warlock could benefit from having access to.
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It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
Pact of the blades problem is even with the right invocations the warlock with no pacts just needs one invocation/cantrip to pretty much match it, agonizing/eldritch blast. Now with hexblade, the right, feats, multiple invocations it can exceed that handily. But for the non hexblade its a lot of work just to match it. The game generally accepts a fairly wide range of ability so you can get by with it. But if your better option is just to plug away with eldritch blast it likely wont get much use unless you are really leaning into the theme. For a hexblade its easy PAMlock rules, and even not diving that deep its awesome, for a genie sharpshooter maybe, if you can find a magic hand crossbow sharpshooter/crossbow expert, a narrow use of spells in combat to get you advantage so you can hit on that -5. But we are talking multiple feats, invocations, for non hexblades not investing in charisma and a narrow play style just to get your pact of the blade rolling better than eldritch blast with agonizing blast.
I personally wish they had made pact of the blade a flexible eldritch blast, you take it get eldritch blast for free and it can take the form of any weapon. It does 1d10 uses charisma to hit and no stats for damage, if its form is a melee weapon it can be used in melee if its ranged, its ranged and uses the weapons its mimics ranges, the number of attacks mimics your eldritch blast. Agonizing blast adds charisma damage, have invocations to add weapon styles like light, heavy, etc with requirements like heavy needs to be on a 2 handed weapon etc.
I want to touch on something here.
The whole "You can do what pack of the blade can do with just a couple things when using EB." can easily be flipped upon it's head and said about EB as well. EB without at least Agonizing Blast isn't something that is as special as it's made out to be. And even with it you still need to pile on certain other invocations to actually get the most of it. Just like Pact of the blade does with it's invocations. Pact of the Blade really only needs 2 or 3 of it's 4 possible pact specific invocations depending on what build your going for and EB is in a similar boat with it absolutely needing 1 invocation to make it completely viable and most advocate at least one if not 2 others out of it's like 5 invocations as well. Thirsting Blade and Life Drinker are the only two actual requirments for melee and improved pact weapon is needed if you are going for a ranged weapon build. though if you for some reason just had to have all 7 of your other invocation slots doing other things then you could choose to cut down pact of the blade to just using Thirsting Blade if you had to. But if that is the case then your going for a pretty unique build to begin with. Because the Reality is that Warlocks can usually spare 3 invocations towards something like their pact weapon while still having plenty of room for other kinds of invocations quite easily, particularly since not all of those 3 are available at level 1.
Pact of the Blade was considered weakest because EB was over hyped and over necessitated as something that Warlocks could just not work without despite that not actually being true. This was true even before things like Xanathar's came out. Xanathar's only actually made a couple changes to pact of the blade. That was opening up ranged options for the Martial side of this particular pact which it did not have before that and they added Smiting, which with the limited spell slots of the Warlock is mostly a gimmick trap though it is a trap that makes damage numbers look great for an attack or two so a lot of people fall into it when that's all they care about and never notice, which is fine if they like being in that spot.
Pact of the blade has also always had the bonus that it will synergize with things like feats and such. Something that EB cannot do for the most part. Basically all of EB's synergies are with invocations of the Warlock class which is part of what facilitated the mass false perception that EB was everything for a Warlock and the Warlock sucked if it was not using EB.
The reality is that If you went all in on a Pact of the Blade user and turned your caster primarily into a skirmisher. It's always been possible to do as much as all in on EB. But because EB was so important all they saw was EB as being the best without really understanding why or understanding that you basically had to add at minimum 1 invocation and possibly 2 or 3 invocations to it to make it fully viable to something like Pact of the Blade so you get this air that Pact of the Blade is bad despite the fact that it can take just as much resources to make it work on equal footing and there are less options for making it work that there was with Pact of the Blade.
These two styles of builds have always been on mostly equal footing. There have been a couple tweaks that make that more obvious such as Hexblade and Invocations from Xanathar's to allow Pact of the Blade to do martial ranged. But the truth is that those things were largely there to begin with. HexBlade just made them obvious to the masses for the first time and helped fight the perception so that now that something like Genie has come along it's much easier to see how it works for them.
I played a Pact of the Blade Feylock early on and through things like Phantasmal Force earlier on but more importantly Blink and Greater Invisibility as I got higher level, combined with Archfey specific powers like misty escape and later beguiling defense. I found that I was just as strong. EB was just my backup ranged option in the same vein that a Fighter might carry a longbow, or conversely a Ranger might carry a longsword when focused on archery and magic. The reality is that I got into some of those tier 2 and tier 3 levels. Some of the DM's tactics actually adapted to address tactics I was using to make things more of a challenge, such as more enemies having ways to see invisible. Sadly I can't say how it would have fared in tier 4 because that group broke apart just after we got to level 12 and we were trying to figure out what our campaign might transition to next but the little bit I got to use Life Drinker was just more fuel on the fire.
It is worth nothing that you don't need Improved Pact Weapon for ranged Bladelocks if you bond to a ranged magic weapon.
Pact of the Blade
You can use your action to create a pact weapon in your empty hand. You can choose the form that this melee weapon takes each time you create it (see the Weapons section for weapon options). You are proficient with it while you wield it. This weapon counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.
Your pact weapon disappears if it is more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more. It also disappears if you use this feature again, if you dismiss the weapon (no action required), or if you die.
You can transform one magic weapon into your pact weapon by performing a special ritual while you hold the weapon.You perform the ritual over the course of 1 hour, which can be done during a short rest. You can then dismiss the weapon, shunting it into an extradimensional space, and it appears whenever you create your pact weapon thereafter. You can’t affect an artifact or a sentient weapon in this way. The weapon ceases being your pact weapon if you die, if you perform the 1-hour ritual on a different weapon, or if you use a 1-hour ritual to break your bond to it. The weapon appears at your feet if it is in the extradimensional space when the bond breaks.
RAW, if you have access to a +1 bow or something then Improved Pact Weapon becomes unnecessary. So still, you really only need two invocations for a viable ranged bladelock after a certain point. Combine this with Sharpshooter and you have a recipe for a damn viable archer-spellcaster hybrid.
It is worth nothing that you don't need Improved Pact Weapon for ranged Bladelocks if you bond to a ranged magic weapon.
Pact of the Blade
You can use your action to create a pact weapon in your empty hand. You can choose the form that this melee weapon takes each time you create it (see the Weapons section for weapon options). You are proficient with it while you wield it. This weapon counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.
Your pact weapon disappears if it is more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more. It also disappears if you use this feature again, if you dismiss the weapon (no action required), or if you die.
You can transform one magic weapon into your pact weapon by performing a special ritual while you hold the weapon.You perform the ritual over the course of 1 hour, which can be done during a short rest. You can then dismiss the weapon, shunting it into an extradimensional space, and it appears whenever you create your pact weapon thereafter. You can’t affect an artifact or a sentient weapon in this way. The weapon ceases being your pact weapon if you die, if you perform the 1-hour ritual on a different weapon, or if you use a 1-hour ritual to break your bond to it. The weapon appears at your feet if it is in the extradimensional space when the bond breaks.
RAW, if you have access to a +1 bow or something then Improved Pact Weapon becomes unnecessary. So still, you really only need two invocations for a viable ranged bladelock after a certain point. Combine this with Sharpshooter and you have a recipe for a damn viable archer-spellcaster hybrid.
This is basically true for all kinds of bladelocks. But I was speaking without consideration for magic items. Even though magic weapons is probably one of the most common kinds of magic items there is.
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Now that we have the genie warlock, the damage output is about the same as hexblade. You are sacrificing the proficiency damage for extra attack, but you gain the ability to always use that proficiency bonus damage that is not a resource.
Melee Clerics and Paladins have the heavy armour option (I haven't seen too many people make a melee Cleric with medium armour) so they only have to worry about strength as their melee stat. Paladins prioritize strength anyway, as they don't have much in the way of spells that need high charisma, and they burn their slots on divine smite anyway. Melee Clerics also focus on strength, and balance out wisdom (or grab Shillelagh with a club/staff to use wisdom as their melee stat as well). A Paladin can do okay with 16 charisma, and a Cleric can do okay with 16 wisdom.
Even if a Warlock doesn't worry about pumping up its charisma it still needs dexterity (because you only have light armour/mage armour) and strength (if you want to use the complete range of weapons available to the Pact of the Blade). Sure, you can focus on dexterity, summoning a rapier or longbow (with Improved Pact Weapon), and that's a playable option, but you're losing a lot of the potential of the build. I recall Pact of the Blade being considered the weakest option for Warlocks prior to the release of Xanathar's.
That said, the Mountain Dwarf can start with 17/14/12/8/8/15 and has dwarf weapons training and proficiency in medium armour, so can do a fair non-Hexblade melee warlock. I tried a Celestial Warlock Mountain Dwarf for a few games.
Being considered weakest, and being unplayable are two entirely different things. Going rapier or longbow, you're not sacrificing a lot of the strength of the build at all. Is it inferior to hexblade? Yes, because hexblade is powercreep. Most of the features /should/ have been added to blade pact as features and invocations.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Pact of the blades problem is even with the right invocations the warlock with no pacts just needs one invocation/cantrip to pretty much match it, agonizing/eldritch blast. Now with hexblade, the right, feats, multiple invocations it can exceed that handily. But for the non hexblade its a lot of work just to match it. The game generally accepts a fairly wide range of ability so you can get by with it. But if your better option is just to plug away with eldritch blast it likely wont get much use unless you are really leaning into the theme. For a hexblade its easy PAMlock rules, and even not diving that deep its awesome, for a genie sharpshooter maybe, if you can find a magic hand crossbow sharpshooter/crossbow expert, a narrow use of spells in combat to get you advantage so you can hit on that -5. But we are talking multiple feats, invocations, for non hexblades not investing in charisma and a narrow play style just to get your pact of the blade rolling better than eldritch blast with agonizing blast.
I personally wish they had made pact of the blade a flexible eldritch blast, you take it get eldritch blast for free and it can take the form of any weapon. It does 1d10 uses charisma to hit and no stats for damage, if its form is a melee weapon it can be used in melee if its ranged, its ranged and uses the weapons its mimics ranges, the number of attacks mimics your eldritch blast. Agonizing blast adds charisma damage, have invocations to add weapon styles like light, heavy, etc with requirements like heavy needs to be on a 2 handed weapon etc.
That doesn't make blade bad, it makes hexblades lazy.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Part of it does. Yeah the hexblase is lazy I guess. But if 1 pact has to invest everything into it to get it to work and the other 2 invest minimally and get theirs to work there is an issue. The core problem is making a weapon doesn't really add much if any functionality on its own to the player, so you have to invest heavily to get its function(damage) to shine enough to matter. A pretty base warlock is solid already in damage, not top ranks but solid. On its own pact of the blade is actually worse than that. You invest more into it you can equal that, you go all in you can finally exceed it. Chain and tome add additional features to the warlock, you are warlock+ with 0 investment. Admittedly the + is small if they don't invest in it at all but even 1 invocation in for each of them and now its a power house addition. 1 invocation in and blade is still worse than a lock with agonizing blast.
yes, but pact of the blade offers a completely different playstyle than an EB spammer is. An EB spammer is a magic archer. A blade lock is, in most cases a melee character; although I admit to really wanting to do a blade archer lock eldritch smiting through the bow (which an EBer can't do). Comparing blade to EB is really an apples to oranges comparison. Sure, if you are looking to make an eldritch blast spammer, blade offers little to nothing.
If you're looking to do something other than spam EB, blade opens a lot of doors that chain and tome do not.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
My opinion?
Bladelocks = Cool as hell. Wouldn't play one unless I was using finesse weapons or playing as a hexblade. It's nothing against it, I just don't want to have to work very hard for a semi-viable battlemage build when I could just play like half of the cleric domains, sword bard, or bladesinger.
Tomelocks = My personal favorite, and I think its the best for enhancing Warlock's utility. Why would you just load up on extra damage cantrips when EB is going to be more effective 99% of the time? Instead, consider spells for support/utility that Warlocks wouldn't normally get: Guidance, for example, is awesome, and works with find familiar, which can be gained through the Book of Ancient Secrets (Though this familiar is vastly inferior to the Chainlock). Getting access to Sending and a shareable Relentless Endurance feature via Gift of the protectors is just tops.
Chainlock = In all aspects that Tomelock fails (recon, mobility, extra hands, tomfoolery), the Chainlock excels. With the added Investment of the chain master, it also becomes incredibly viable in combat, which is what many people used to consider its main failing. Being able to use the enhanced familiar options with your normal spell DC is a major gamechanger. Also, Gift of the Ever Living Ones is just great. Other people already talked up chain lock so I'm not going to go on a rant about why I think it's awesome. Me choosing Tomelock over it is mostly down to personal taste; the idea of a dark magic user with a big book of creepy secrets seems quintessentially "Warlock" to me.
Talislock = The idea of a wearable blessing that does extra things is very cool, and the ability to offer it to friends to share the benefits is also very interesting and has some decent applications. The two invocations it gets are actually fairly good in my opinion, as well. I could see Talislock being a nice choice if you feel your subclass already offers some wonderful tools to work with. I wish they'd either buff the support/protection angle or add more invocations to build into that role more, because it offers a unique playstyle that I think Warlock could benefit from having access to.
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
I want to touch on something here.
The whole "You can do what pack of the blade can do with just a couple things when using EB." can easily be flipped upon it's head and said about EB as well. EB without at least Agonizing Blast isn't something that is as special as it's made out to be. And even with it you still need to pile on certain other invocations to actually get the most of it. Just like Pact of the blade does with it's invocations. Pact of the Blade really only needs 2 or 3 of it's 4 possible pact specific invocations depending on what build your going for and EB is in a similar boat with it absolutely needing 1 invocation to make it completely viable and most advocate at least one if not 2 others out of it's like 5 invocations as well. Thirsting Blade and Life Drinker are the only two actual requirments for melee and improved pact weapon is needed if you are going for a ranged weapon build. though if you for some reason just had to have all 7 of your other invocation slots doing other things then you could choose to cut down pact of the blade to just using Thirsting Blade if you had to. But if that is the case then your going for a pretty unique build to begin with. Because the Reality is that Warlocks can usually spare 3 invocations towards something like their pact weapon while still having plenty of room for other kinds of invocations quite easily, particularly since not all of those 3 are available at level 1.
Pact of the Blade was considered weakest because EB was over hyped and over necessitated as something that Warlocks could just not work without despite that not actually being true. This was true even before things like Xanathar's came out. Xanathar's only actually made a couple changes to pact of the blade. That was opening up ranged options for the Martial side of this particular pact which it did not have before that and they added Smiting, which with the limited spell slots of the Warlock is mostly a gimmick trap though it is a trap that makes damage numbers look great for an attack or two so a lot of people fall into it when that's all they care about and never notice, which is fine if they like being in that spot.
Pact of the blade has also always had the bonus that it will synergize with things like feats and such. Something that EB cannot do for the most part. Basically all of EB's synergies are with invocations of the Warlock class which is part of what facilitated the mass false perception that EB was everything for a Warlock and the Warlock sucked if it was not using EB.
The reality is that If you went all in on a Pact of the Blade user and turned your caster primarily into a skirmisher. It's always been possible to do as much as all in on EB. But because EB was so important all they saw was EB as being the best without really understanding why or understanding that you basically had to add at minimum 1 invocation and possibly 2 or 3 invocations to it to make it fully viable to something like Pact of the Blade so you get this air that Pact of the Blade is bad despite the fact that it can take just as much resources to make it work on equal footing and there are less options for making it work that there was with Pact of the Blade.
These two styles of builds have always been on mostly equal footing. There have been a couple tweaks that make that more obvious such as Hexblade and Invocations from Xanathar's to allow Pact of the Blade to do martial ranged. But the truth is that those things were largely there to begin with. HexBlade just made them obvious to the masses for the first time and helped fight the perception so that now that something like Genie has come along it's much easier to see how it works for them.
I played a Pact of the Blade Feylock early on and through things like Phantasmal Force earlier on but more importantly Blink and Greater Invisibility as I got higher level, combined with Archfey specific powers like misty escape and later beguiling defense. I found that I was just as strong. EB was just my backup ranged option in the same vein that a Fighter might carry a longbow, or conversely a Ranger might carry a longsword when focused on archery and magic. The reality is that I got into some of those tier 2 and tier 3 levels. Some of the DM's tactics actually adapted to address tactics I was using to make things more of a challenge, such as more enemies having ways to see invisible. Sadly I can't say how it would have fared in tier 4 because that group broke apart just after we got to level 12 and we were trying to figure out what our campaign might transition to next but the little bit I got to use Life Drinker was just more fuel on the fire.
It is worth nothing that you don't need Improved Pact Weapon for ranged Bladelocks if you bond to a ranged magic weapon.
RAW, if you have access to a +1 bow or something then Improved Pact Weapon becomes unnecessary. So still, you really only need two invocations for a viable ranged bladelock after a certain point. Combine this with Sharpshooter and you have a recipe for a damn viable archer-spellcaster hybrid.
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
This is basically true for all kinds of bladelocks. But I was speaking without consideration for magic items. Even though magic weapons is probably one of the most common kinds of magic items there is.