Oh, editing in Blender is so much more convenient.
Essentially, I import the character FBX (with CC lights and materials using this tool
https://github.com/soupday/cc3_blender_tools ), then scale the beard out on X and Y axis to ensure it does not penetrate the face (Conform tool will deal with this in CC), then use sculpting grab tools, paying attention to move as large pieces as possible to avoid nasty stretching (hair strands look bad if stretched horizontally). Also, I remove those strange buggy faces inside the beard.
When done, I hide everything except the beard, export FBX and import back into CC as an accessory. It loses all the materials, but I can save them out from the existing beard and then load them back into my customized beard.
Finally, all that's left is to assign the morph weights using the new presets and testing with mouth shapes.
Works pretty good, although I miss a tool to export the beard alone and then import it back into the same object to avoid that material save/load step.
The Reallusion beard has some really large cards (maybe for performance reasons), which makes it less forgiving to sculpting. I might want to try the Blender Hair addon (not free) - I saw Kelleytoons has some good tutorials on that, and also the author of the addon has recently updated his video for CC3 hair.