Best Feats for Great Old One Warlock 5e
by Prince Phantom
It’s a really good thing this patron has such a good expanded spell list. Bangers on every level except third, which is fine since Warlocks have amazing 3rd level spells anyway. This is all compensation for the absolutely puny abilities you get. We get the worst and most limited telepathy in the game, easily beaten out by multiple races. We can impose disadvantage on one attack against us, and then maybe get advantage on our next attack, but it must be against that creature.
How about resistance to psychic damage? I hope your big bad is an elder brain. Finally, we get a semi-permanent Charm Person with so many strings attached that I feel like I’m getting this feature from an insurance salesman. So yeah, not a lot to work off of in terms of deciding what feats to select. Uh… I guess we could focus on protecting our concentration since a lot of those good expanded spells require it. Yeah I’m grasping at straws on this one guys, I know people love the concept of serving Cthulhu but 5e just doesn’t deliver on that fantasy.
Best Feats for Great Old One Warlock 5e
Moderately Armored (ASAP): Every Warlock subclass not named Hexblade should be taking this feat (assuming you aren’t multiclassing with a class that already grants these proficiencies). The increase in potential AC from 14 to 19 is staggering, and we have no problem holding a shield. Take this as early as you can, preferably at level 1. It makes surviving those deadly early levels much easier.
Telekinetic (Lv 4): Hey, at least this fits thematically. We obviously aren’t getting anything for our bonus action from our patron, so this will fit nicely into our turn order. We do get Black Tentacles eventually, which is a spell with an extremely good effect but a somewhat small area. This can help us get more creatures inside that area, and obviously is useful for all the other reasons that pushing our allies and enemies is useful.
War Caster (Lv 4): Honestly you need as many invocations as you can get to make this subclass do anything interesting, so you may actually value an invocation slot over a feat slot. If that’s the case, take War Caster instead of Eldritch Mind.
Alert (Lv 4): Flavor-wise, I love the idea of a near insane servant of an unknown horror having such a hair trigger that it’s basically impossible to get the jump on them. That’s wonderfully imaginative, and also a pretty good strategy. All those great spells we can grab from our patron all work better the sooner in combat we can cast them. Denying a creature their first turn with a control spell can often mean they do nothing impactful before they are dead on the floor.
Fey Touched (Lv 8): We might as well improve our spellcasting as much as possible, since that’s about all we are decent at. Free castings of Misty Step and Silvery Barbs will greatly improve our evasive capabilities and make it so that save or suck spell we really need to land hits much more reliably.
Resilient (Lv 8): Take this for Constitution so we are even better at maintaining our concentration checks, and also because Constitution is the most commonly targeted save by our enemies. We really can’t afford to skip this because we have basically nothing but our spellcasting to fall back on.
Inspiring Leader (Lv 12): I would love to hear what an inspiring speech from a crazed eldritch lunatic sounds like. I’m imagining mad ravings laced with mind altering cognitive signals that somehow rile everyone into a frenzy. Oh and the mechanics are great too. A huge pile of temporary hp is wonderful, just don’t take this if your party already has the temporary hp thing covered since you can’t stack it.
Lucky (Lv 12): While I’m pretty sure that being singled out for eternal servitude by Cthulhu is a very unlucky thing to have happen to you, we’re taking this anyway because we need all the help we can get. Save yourself from crits and reroll your saving throws.
Tough (Lv 16): If you find yourself going down a lot, take this at level 12 instead of Lucky. Otherwise, Tough is just a solid filler feat at higher levels that allows us to live through a Meteor Swarm.
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