Warlock 101: The Great Old One

Tags Class Guides Class 101 Warlock 101

We’ve completed our second full rotation of the twelve classes in the Player’s Handbook, not to mention taken a deep dive into the first 5 levels of D&D’s thirteenth class, the inventive and arcane Artificer! This wave of the Class 101 series will appraise every subclass within the Player’s Handbook and break down each subclass’s strengths, weaknesses, thematic elements, and everything else a player would want to know before playing that subclass. Because of this, you will need to own the Player’s Handbook (or purchase the subclass a la carte on the Marketplace) in order to make full use of this series.

Check out the other guides in the Class 101 series, like the broad overview of the warlock class in Warlock 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Eldritch Might, Warlock 101: The Fiend, and Warlock 101: The Archfey. If you’re interested in playing other classes, check out the entire Class 101 series.

Story of the Great Old One

“I beg thee speak, O heart of the great, spiraling oblivion.”

A figure dressed enshrouded in robes knelt before an altar in the shape of an inverted, two-stepped ziggurat. His royal purple garment pooled around his feet, and in the darkness of his secluded shrine, it seemed almost as though he was wearing shadow itself.

“Speak to thy humble servant, O inevitable end,” he continued, slowly raising his hands in supplication. “I have received visions of dying stars, of distant lights winking out. I look for their vanishing in the night sky, yet my dreams remain but dreams. I beg of thee, O oblivion in chains, tell me in plain speech, how I may exact your will.”

The warlock knelt in silence, awaiting an answer. Seconds passed, and stretched out into minutes alone in the dark. His cracked lips parted, to beseech his master once more—but a chill swept through the room, as if all of the heat of the world had drained away, and he closed his mouth. He would have thought to smile, but he could not help but grimace in fear as his master’s presence filled the room. Cold and darkness. The death of heat. The end of life. The elder being that the warlock served was not truly a presence so much as the absence of it. The inevitable end of all.

Bleed.

The word echoed in the warlock’s mind, and he staggered, as if in a daze, to his feet. A thin knife flashed in his hand, and it quickly drew across the back of his left arm. He did not cry out.

The altar.

He walked, haltingly, arm dripping red, to the altar. Upon it stood an idol that had not been there before. A silver icon in the shape of a jagged spiral, held in place by a simple silver stand. The warlock spilled his blood upon the icon, and its crimson droplets spiraled inward to the spiral’s center. There was a change the instant the warlock’s blood spiraled away. His skin burned. He gasped as his vision was stretched across thousands of miles of space and time, seeing everything in between, yet so overwhelming was the cacophony of sensation that he could hardly perceive anything at all—except for the halting, infinitely deep voice of his chained god. So deep was the sound that he could barely hear it as sound; it was more like the subsonic rumbling of a church organ’s largest pipes.

Our connection… strengthened. Show them… their futility.  

“How may I, great one?” the warlock stammered, his face awash with icy sweat.

Deliver to this altar… their beacon of hope. Kill it. Kill the light of hope.

The warlock could still barely understand what his master wished of him, but it was enough. He could find this beacon of hope. Whatever it was. He opened his mouth and screwed shut his eyes. “I will do it, my master. Grant me the power to do it.”

And he was back. His sweat and blood mingled in the earthen floor beneath him, and warmth slowly returned to the room. The warlock felt new power welling within him, and nodded. There was no turning back now.  

Great Old One Features

Warlocks who make a pact with a Great Old One are masters of deception and corruption. Their patron grants them access to additional spells, as well as a number of innate magical abilities that awaken their minds to supernatural power. Warlocks gain four subclass features at 1st, 6th, 10th, and 14th level. You can read all of the Great Old One features in the Player’s Handbook. In summary, your subclass features allow you to:

  • Gain access to an expanded list of warlock spells
  • Telepathically communicate with nearby creatures
  • Instantaneously debuff foes, and possibly gain a bonus to your next attack
  • Steel your mind against telepathic intrusion
  • Transform humanoids into your alien thralls

Benefits of the Great Old One

The Great Old One is an alien entity that grants its adherents strange and unsettling powers. Using spells like Tasha’s hideous laughter and dominate person, your additional warlock spells help you debuff and eventually even mentally take control of your foes. Though your spells and spells and unique Eldritch Invocations are the cornerstones of your magical strength, you gain a number of subclass features that supplement the eerie power of your patron.

Most of your subclass features aren’t replicable by any other class or spell, making them interesting additions to your arsenal that your fellow party members can’t hope to duplicate. You are all but guaranteed always have a protected niche within your party—both in terms of power and flavor.

Drawbacks of the Great Old One

One of the greatest drawbacks of the Great Old One warlock patron is that it’s so straightforwardly evil. It can be hard to play a character with the Great Old One as their patron in parties with an upright, moral bent. It’s not impossible—not all alien intelligences have to be evil—but playing even a morally ambiguous Great Old One warlock is a challenge. Rather than using one of the classic Elder Evils of D&D—such as Dendar the Night Serpent, Tharizdun the Chained God, or Kyuss the Worm That Walks—consider creating your own alien power.

This power could be a deer with candles in its antlers who walks in the midnight forest, a voice that seems to speak in water dripping from stalagmites into a lightless Underdark lake, or the black light of a solar eclipse.

Beyond this roleplaying concern, it’s worth remembering that the Great Old One patron doesn’t grant its warlocks much raw offensive power. Your skills are focused in deception, domination, and fear. If you want to be a more straightforwardly destructive warlock, The Fiend patron may be more your speed.

Suggested Build

If you’re playing a warlock of the Great Old One from 1st level, you should choose a race that gives you a bonus to your Charisma score. Half-elves and dark elves both gain an innate bonus to Charisma, as do lightfoot halflings. Humans are an undeniably popular choice for warlocks, since stories of humanity being corrupted by the unknown are so pervasive throughout western fantasy and science fiction. Playing a dragonborn could also be an interesting racial choice for a warlock thanks to their innate bonus to Strength, especially if you decide to choose the Pact of the Blade later on (see “Pact Boon,” below).

Once you’ve placed Charisma as your highest ability score, consider what else is important to you. If you want to forge a Pact of the Blade at 3rd level and fight with martial weapon, Strength might be the second most important ability for you. On the other hand, prioritizing Dexterity would make you harder to strike in general—and a terror with a rapier, if you follow the Pact of the Blade. Constitution will also help you take more blows in combat, and hang onto your precious concentration spells more easily (more on them later). Wisdom and Intelligence aren’t useless for you, but they’re far from a secondary or even a tertiary ability.

As usual, your character’s background is up to you. Anyone can become a warlock, though forging a pact with an otherworldly entity typically requires some sort of sacrifice. Consider what you could have sacrificed in your backstory in exchange for power; typically, elder alien powers have a vast, often unknowable goal that they want you to advance for them. You may be but a cog in a vast, otherworldly master plan.

Selecting EQUIPMENT when creating your warlock is a good idea; a simple weapon of your choice, like a dagger or a quarterstaff, is useful. Your choice of arcane focus or spell component pouch is a wholly aesthetic consideration, and though a dungeoneer’s pack may be more useful than a scholar’s pack, many warlocks of the Great Old One are scholars who delved too greedily into texts of eldritch lore. A few more daggers, some leather armor, and another simple weapon of your choice helps round out your arsenal. You can wear light armor, so hunting for a set of studded leather later in your adventuring career might be useful.

Spells

Warlocks don’t have the Spellcasting trait like most other spellcasters. Instead, they have Pact Magic. You start at 1st level knowing two cantrips, two 1st-level spells, and only a single spell slot. But that spell slot is recovered whenever you take a short rest; you could hypothetically cast spells all day long, as long as you have a little catnap in-between castings. Also of note is that your spell slots are all of the highest level you can cast (see the “Slot Level” column on your class features table). This isn’t useful now, but having your spells automatically scale to their highest possible power level can be incredibly powerful.

Since you only have one spell slot for now, you need to make it count. You get a second slot at 2nd level, which is nice, but you don’t get your third spell slot until 11th level! Fortunately, you get the most powerful damaging cantrip in the game, eldritch blast, so you’re never useless, even when you’re out of spell slots.

You can learn any two 1st-level spells from the warlock spell list—which includes the 1st-level spells on your “Great Old One Expanded Spells” list. You’ll want to choose these spells carefully; since the number of spells you know is severely limited, you want to have a versatile spell list. As you go on adventures and learn what dangers your character tends to face, you can personalize your spell loadout. Try to choose one labeled DEFENSE and one spell labeled either SOCIAL or OFFENSE. Note that this list only includes some spells from the Player's Handbook, so if you want to choose more unusual spells, or have other sources like Xanathar's Guide to Everything, you'll have to do a little self-directed research. This list is just here to get you started if this is your first time playing an Great Old One patron warlock.

Especially at lower levels, a warlock will want to have spells that last for a long time. Since you have so few spell slots, maintaining concentration on spells with lasting effects is much more efficient than simply firing off a single explosive spell. If you want to deal damage, hex is one of the mightiest warlock spells in the game. However, if you want to lean into your SUPPORT or SOCIAL-focused role, spells like charm person can be incredibly powerful, especially since it can affect multiple people as it scales in power.

Pact Boon

At 3rd level, you get to request a boon from your patron. This further defines the nature of your pact: do you wish to invoke the bloodstained Pact of the Blade? The shadowy and arcane Pact of the Tome? Or the manipulative Pact of the Chain? These pacts grant you a small bit of additional power immediately, and access to certain Eldritch Invocations later on.

Most who follow the Great Old One prefer the magical Pact of the Tome, which allows them to delve deeper into the arcane mysterious of cosmos. However, the Pact of the Chain’s powers of domination are far from useless to a warlock such as you, and even the bloody-minded followers of the Pact of the Blade, can use it to advance the Great Old One’s subtle ends.

Eldritch Invocations

Once you reach 2nd level, you gain the ability to select two Eldritch Invocations. You can trade out an old invocation for a new one whenever you gain a level in this class, and you gain brand-new invocations every two or three levels (again, see the warlock class features table). Some invocations have prerequisites that you must meet in order to select them, so learning how to trade out old invocations for this fresh and exciting ones is an important skill to master. Here are some invocations that will probably be useful to you as a warlock of the Great Old One:

Ascendant Step. Just as much a flavor consideration as a combat one, sometimes it’s useful to get out of reach of melee foes. Even though you can only hover in place, being able to float at will is an eerie and occasionally useful power. (You can only take this invocation once you’re 9th level or higher.)

Beguiling Influence. If your campaign has a lot of intrigue—or even if just the current arc of your campaign is roleplay-heavy—then this invocation will turn your unsettling words into creeping poison within the minds of those who hear them.

Bewitching Whispers. The ability to all but puppeteer a creature for a minute (with no subsequent saves at the end of each of its turns) is exactly the sort of alien domination that the Great Old One wields. (You can only take this invocation once you’re 7th level or higher.)

Book of Ancient Secrets. What esoteric magic has your patron given you? If you’re a Pact of the Tome warlock, this invocation is essentially a free Ritual Caster feat—but better! You can gain any two 1st-level ritual spells from any spell list right at the beginning, and keep adding from there. Good options include comprehend languages, detect magic, identify, and speak with animals.

Devil’s Sight. If your campaign involves a great deal of stealth, or you or your allies like to use spells that create magical darkness, being able to see through magically conjured darkness is quite useful!

Fiendish Vigor. If you plan on getting into the thick of combat often, being able to gain 1d4 + 4 temporary hit points at will can be very useful at low levels.

Feats

Once you’ve improved your Charisma score to 18 or 20, you can increase your power with a few useful feats. The following feats are good picks for Great Old One warlocks, and will improve your reliability in your own desired area of expertise:

Actor. In your adventures, it may be useful to pretend to be someone you’re not. Since you already highly value Charisma, this feat synergizes well with the rest of your build.

Inspiring Leader. Your already-high Charisma makes you an excellent candidate to be the social face of your party—albeit an unsettling. Perhaps you are more of a cult leader than a heroic leader.

Linguist. This oddball feat has some useful flavor, especially if you want to conceal the secrets of an eldritch cult from prying eyes.

Ritual Caster. Unlike many other spellcasters, warlocks can’t cast spells as rituals. If you didn’t choose the Pact of the Tome at 3rd level (and thus the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation is off-limits to you), this feat is a good backup plan.

If you want more advice for building a warlock, check out Warlock 101. Have you ever played a warlock of the Great Old One? What advice would you give to players that want to play this subclass? Join us next week as we finish our third rotation through the Player's Handbook in Wizard 101: School of Conjuration!

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.

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