The melee weapon restriction only applies to the weapon you can call forth out of thin air. You can choose *any* already existing magic weapon to use as pact weapon on top of that. So you can find/buy a magic hand-crossbow and make that your pact weapon. It then also allows you to call that weapon forth, but you cannot change its form, like you can do with the out-of-thin-air created version.
Here is what the "rules answer" says to this:
Quote:
...You can also use Pact of the Blade to bond with a magic weapon, turning it into your pact weapon. This magic weapon doesn’t have to be a melee weapon, so you could use the feature on a +1 longbow, for instance. Once the bond is formed, the magic weapon appears whenever you call your pact weapon to you, and the intent is that you can’t change the magic weapon’s form when it appears.
...
The feature initially allows the conjuring forth of a melee weapon, yet we allow more versatility when it comes to magic weapons. We didn’t want a narrow focus in this feature to make a warlock unhappy when a variety of magic weapons appear in a campaign. Does this versatility extend outside the melee theme of the feature? It sure does, but we’re willing to occasionally bend a design concept if doing so is likely to increase a player’s happiness.
|
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feat...ers-april-2016