Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Great Old One Warlock

I know that the L1 ability of the GOOlock does not really translate given that the only character who gives evidence of speaking a foreign language is Lae'zel, but having played a GOOlock with Wyll also in the party, I really noticed him constantly getting his dark one's gift bonus from finishing off enemies and my getting...discordant whispers and Tasha's uncontrollable hideous laughter. Fine spells both, though I dislike 5E's "new saving throw every round" mechanic, but I'm not sure they make up the difference. I understand that the L10 ability (resistance to psychic damage) is likely to be outrageously good in this game (assuming the BBEG is an illithid or has illithid minions), but at low level it feels an awful lot like "I made my life more difficult for RP reasons". The telepathy ability at L1 is both irrelevant due to the decisions Larian made re: language and probably difficult to implement in any other way, but is there a plan to implement some L1 bonus to replace it? A bonus to rolls to resist your parasite or something?

btw, greatly enjoying the game and not understanding why other people are complaining about the NPCs - possibly because I'm RPing a sociopath we get along fairly well.

Yea I gotta agree, it feels rather unfair that the Fiend Warlock gets its Level 1 Subclass Ability but the Great Old One gets nothing. In a way it kind of sucks that the way the game is setup, we essentially already have telepathy thanks to the tadpole, but I would still like to see the GOOlock get something for their Level 1. Perhaps something as simple as allowing a GOOlock to have the benefits of the telepathy already in use in the game without having to resort to using the tadpole's power, maybe that could do the trick, at this point anything is better than nothing.

agree the GOO needs its brain ooze or something to replace it.

GOOlock absolutely needs a level 1 feature, yea.

Wow yeah hey, thanks for starting this conversation. Honestly not being familiar to dungeons and dragons, I thought once I had the NPC warlock in my party that I made a mistake or my character was bogged in comparison. The great old one has some love craft vibe which I am totally about but in this game felt completely useless to choose which made me very sad

I feel like with the Nature of the [Illithid][Wisdom] checks that come up a lot in dialouge... they could easily make "Awakened Mind" a feature of the GOOlock by justs giving them more access to that chat feature. Currently you get to use that dialogue feature once and then need to rest, they could say "GOOlock Awakened Mind feature allows them to use the Ilithid dialogue option without needing to rest". Its not much, you can always just swap character anyways and use each characters "once per long rest Dialogue hack" as it is now. However it is thematically appropriate and basically allows the player to dedicate themselves as the face of the party since they can always pick that option when it is available.

just an idea

+3

There was another GOO Warlock thread yesterday. Pasting in here what I said there:

"Telepathy could be treated as a conversational tag. If you have it, you'll some times get a dialogue option unique to telepathy."

To clarify, this would be a different tag than the Ilithid one, as that one is extra strong and only works on other people with a tadpole.

They could grant great old one warlocks, and if they give wizards a necromancy sub class, the bonemelt spell. That would certainly spice things up for us. I know that’s level eight and not exactly what we’re talking about here but I really want bone melt guys

Same thing... my first character was a GOO Warlock and playing for a few hours, I realized that my primary ability... didn't seem to ever come into play.
So I was thinking about it and there are things that they could do.
1) Since your telepathy allows you to communicate non-verbally, you'd be an ideal scout when the party is sneaking. You could warn people where the bad guys are and if it was safe to move, etc.
Gameplay effect: anyone within telepathy range (30' iirc) of the player gets advantage on stealth checks.
2) Similarly, you could say that through practice, you've managed to hone the skill of implanting suggestions into people's minds while talking to them.
Gameplay effect: GOOlock gets advantage on Persuasion and Deception checks.
3) Since you can communicate with minds, you could argue that this also allows you to detect a mind.
Gameplay effect: give GOOlock the ability to detect invisible

All of these fit thematically and would be useful. If Larian were to implement all of them, they'd probaby want to put once/short rest on them. (Works for 2 and 3, but not so much for 1.)

I think there are lots of ways that you could implement something that would have an actual gameplay effect/advantage while still being true to the intent of the class ability.

Oh, and (4) the easy way out is to just grant the player a choice of 1 or more of the following bonus cantrips as a "trick of the mind"/implant suggestion kind of thing:
Friends, Minor Illusion and/or Thaumaturgy
Not quite the same as telepathy, but it would fit and it would make GOO warlocks far less useless than they are right now.

Or possibly advantage to insight rolls because you can read their surface thoughts? Or cast detect thoughts once per long rest?