Warlock Patrons: Great Old One

Guide by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

For the Lovecraftian horror fans out there, this one’s for you. Great Old One warlocks are dedicated to cosmic horror and the acknowledgement of just how small we are in the cosmically epic universe around us full of incomprehensible scope and insanity.

If you’re taking this subclass, it's probably for two features: Awakened Mind and Create Thrall. The majority of the rest of the features and spells offered range from mediocre to almost unusable. Still, Awakened Mind is a really fun feature to play with, and Create Thrall does something few other features in the game come close to doing.

1st-3rd Level: Awakened Mind and 1st and 2nd Level Expanded Spells

Awakened Mind is a 30 ft. telepathy that breaks down language barriers. This will commonly just open you up as the party’s group chat, making you feel like the hub of all communication during social or stealth encounters. This kind of telepathy can be bested in the upper tiers with spells like Telepathic Bond, but that costs your wizard a 5th level spell slot; this is a 1st level feature that does a close enough effect paired with a free Comprehend Languages that it’ll just feel good to have.
Dissonant Whispers is fine early with warlock spell slots; it offers you a bardic take on Guiding Bolt, a 3d6 save that always does some damage that also enables a neat control tool in forcing movement. Past 3rd level, you’re likely going to find better things to do with your spell slots, but it scaling at least gives you some reason to keep it around for when you need that forced disengage effect attached to damage.
Hideous Laughter majorly suffers from Pact Magic spell slots. It is a save or die with no up-casting bonuses. Past 3rd level you get access to effects that can simply out perform this in nearly all cases. Sure, Hideous Laughter hits anything Int 5 or higher, but when you compare the condition to Hold Person or Crown of Madness you’re left just feeling a bit… lacking. It can be fine in the first few levels, but even then because it requires you to concentrate on it, it shuts off any Hex builds you’d consider going with as well, which is a bummer.
Detect Thoughts is the standout 2nd level spell you get access to, as when you get it, its a new deeply flavorful tool to add to your eldritch monstrosity repertoire of features. Delving into creatures' minds and stealing information fits perfectly with the otherworldly cosmic influences probing the minds of mortals. Its issue, though, is like Hideous Laughter, there is no reason to up-cast it, making it very difficult to justify keeping around. It can come up from time to time at any tier, as it has a unique effect you can want at any level, but it never will feel great to get a 2nd level spell effect for a 4th or 5th level spell slot. Awesome tool for 3rd and 4th level warlocks; maybe something you take off your sheet around 7th level.
Phantasmal Force, while thematically fitting as well, doesn’t have the same endless utility. It can be useful from time to time, and getting a free d6 bonus damage against a creature every round is fine, but it being an all or nothing save or die for an effect that will create an illusion for just one creature that can be bested by an Investigation check leaves it as something that is perfectly fine to spend 2nd level spell slots on. Pact Magic doesn’t give you that flexibility past 4th level.

4th-7th Level: Entropic Ward and 3rd and 4th Level Expanded Spells

Entropic Ward is such a sad little feature. It is a boon primarily to melee Great Old One warlocks who want to be mitigating incoming attacks and getting advantage on attack rolls, and getting that once per short rest is fine, but not great for a 6th level feature. Entropic Ward’s cardinal sin, to me, is being entirely void of interesting flavor or unique elements. Its a mediocre, generic combat reaction, and while sure, there being few reactions does make this more notable, doesn’t save it from being a boring and unremarkable feature you can’t really do a lot with.
Clairvoyance as an expanded spell is probably outclassed by a familiar you’ve got from Book of Ancient Secrets or Pact of the Chain. Like most of the other expanded spells that end up feeling mediocre to bad in the mid to upper tiers, Clairvoyance has no up cast, and its sensory effect can be gotten for much cheaper, and without needing your concentration. A mile distance is fairly large, and there may be a few tables where the distance really matters and you want to be the all seeing disciple of the eye beast or something, but beyond those niches Clairvoyance certainly doesn’t earn its place on warlock character sheets.
Sending is in almost the exact same camp as Clairvoyance; you can get familiars to do what its doing well enough that you won’t want to regularly be spending spell slots on it. Consider also that the Far Scribe invocation gives you unlimited uses of Sending to specific creatures; if this is something you’re interested in doing, Far Scribe is a way better way to do it.
Dominate Beast is yet another underwhelming expanded spell, simply because beasts are not particularly common enemies past 7th level. The majority are low CR and fit specifically mundane environments. If you’re going to Chult and want to dominate some dinosaurs maybe this finds its home on your sheet. Otherwise, you’ll find a handful of encounters at most for the remainder of the game where this is even castable.
Black Tentacles, while not able to scale to 5th level, is the first expanded spell you get access to since, like, Dissonant Whispers, that might earn a spot on your sheet. A 20 ft. square of restraining and bludgeoning tentacles can be a great lockdown tool for warlocks looking for that option. It's not revolutionary, but restraining three or four creatures while also beating them up round after round will add up in both its utility and damage fast enough that in the mid tiers this spell can have a big impact on a fight. Still not particularly exciting or impressive, but a reasonable spell to consider for combat.

8th-10th Level: Thought Shield and 5th Level Expanded Spells

Thought Shield is the opposite of Entropic Ward. Where Entropic Ward is just a generally good entirely flavorless void of a feature, Thought Shield is a hyper specific flavorfully rich feature that has next to no actual applications. Conceptually, a creature probing into your mind to psychically harm you getting overwhelmed by the cosmic presence you’re accustomed to to the point of being damaged themselves is absolutely what the Great Old Ones are all about. Mechanically, you’ll be lucky to get this to matter once a campaign. Psychic damage is the most niche damage type to see from monsters, only come out from the likes of Mind Flayers and other odd aberrations. This is almost a textless feature.
Dominate Person, though, is a massive boon to the Great Old One character concept. You get a powerful tool to gain control of common villains and minions, often with robust tools and attacks to take advantage of. Dominate Person is a beast of a 5th level spell, and ties in nicely to the mind controlling psychic overlord fantasy developing with it and Create Thrall coming up.
Telekinesis has a 10 minute duration, making it something that can last one to two encounters and assist in out of combat exploration. On top of that, its effects are great; it gives you a powerful repeatable lockdown effect on a creature huge or smaller and a way to move up to 1,000 pounds around as you please. Want this to be a damaging option, too? Dropping large rocks on creatures seems like a pretty easy place to start. Telekinesis does eat a lot of actions to use, but can deliver on the psychic fantasy and rewards creative players pushing it past the initial text and weaponizing their environments to their fullest.

14th Level: Create Thrall

Create Thrall is the reason I most consider the Great Old One patron when building my warlocks. It lets you take an incapacitated person (normally done by simply knocking them non-lethally to 0 hit points) and puts them permanently charmed by you. Want a mind servant to follow you around like Dracula’s Renfield? Create Thrall gives you that. It being any humanoid, offering no saves to prevent it, means you can get access to outrageously powerful allies as well that become charmed by you permanently (or until a Remove Curse hits it). It isn’t quite as simple as getting a servant, as you do need to do some convincing and jump through some hoops to get them to be a devoted and loyal follower, but Create Thrall sets you up to be the evil mind controlling overlord you want to be.

All Together

The Great Old One is probably one of the weakest Otherworldly Patrons, but does offer some tools warlocks can consider. I’d recommend it most to players either starting in the upper tiers or planning on multi-classing out of warlock pretty quickly. Awakened Mind, Dominate Person, Telekinesis, and Create Thrall are the standout spells and features to me, all of which work great on backline control warlocks. The other defensive features are fairly bland, but can allow for melee warlocks to dip their toes into with some amount of safety offered at 6th level.

Because there are nearly no other ways to get this kind of fantasy in 5e, if eldritch horror is your jam, this will deliver on what you’re looking for just enough to keep you engaged with it as the game goes on. If you’re looking for raw power of your warlock’s combat or utility features, there are a lot of better patrons than this.

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Warlock 5e