Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General (Warlock) Great old one needs help

As it currently stands there is practically no reason to choose the great old one over the fiend (other than role play I guess?). The tadpole mind reading and control abilities are superior versions of what the subclass offers with "awakened mind". The fiend offers more survivability and a superior spell list. Meanwhile the great old one gets a slew of random abilities centered around gathering information, reading thoughts and sending telepathic messages (and a tiny bit of crowd control). I like the sound of dissonant whispers and Tasha's hideous laughter but the resist rate is pretty terrible on both (I haven't tried phantasmal force, if its even implemented).

All the abilities sound really cool in theory, but can they actually have utility in a game like baldurs gate 3? Can sending actually be implemented to be useful in a game like this? What about clairvoyance? In a D&D session maybe spells like this have a place but I have trouble seeing them be useful in baldurs gate 3 save for niche specific situations the developers put in. Even wizards do detect thoughts better by having additional spell slots....


(Later features like entropic ward and mind shield do sound amazing though!)



I personally believe at the very least awakened mind should be reworked to provide some sort of tangible benefit. Maybe an extra spell slot or learning 2 spells per level instead of the standard one. or gaining the ability to cast detect thoughts once per day for free? Larian reworked ranger so I'm hoping this subclass may get looked at as well.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the great old one. I really want for this subclass to be implemented well because I find it more thematically interesting than "fiend for fey".

Lots of people, myself included, have suggest to replaced awakened mind with detect thoughts.

Seems like the easiest and while right now detect thoughts isn't fully supported (annoying to use in dialogue, not many characters it can be used on) that's coming at some point.

Thought Shield -
Starting at 10th level, your thoughts can't be read by telepathy or other means unless you allow it. You also have resistance to psychic damage, and whenever a creature deals psychic damage to you, that creature takes the same amount of damage that you do.

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This includes everything from mind flayers to gods btw
I'm VERY curious to see how this is implemented...

What qbout changing awakened mind too something different but still thematic?

Awakend Mind: Your brain has been twisted by unknowable forces, you cannot be frightened or forced asleep

It's not enough. Whatever it is they implement has to compete with the Fiends Dark Ones Blessing.
If it doesn't, then it's still not enough to get people to play a Great Old One instead of the Fiend.

At the same time, I'm sure they have something in mind. Warlock is way far from complete. We're still missing the Arch Fey patron, still missing Tome and Blade pacts, and still a bunch of invocations, even low level ones we should already have.

There's still a long way to go.

I think this would be a better implementation. Detect Thoughts as also suggested is a much too potent tool in roleplaying/social situations and with potential other uses to have as an at-will ability.


Dark One's Blessing is decent (when Larian comes around to fixing it), but not that great. It is contingent upon the Warlock making the killing blow which at higher levels will be less likely. Nor does it scale well, so the usefulness will diminish as you level. Awakened Mind could ie. be made to provide immunity to sleep, advantage vs mind-affecting influences like fear and charm. This would be a first level power that would compare favourably to ie. the Paladin's level 10 power Aura of Courage that gives a 10 foot immunity to fear. Unlike Dark One's Blessing, this would be MORE rather than LESS useful as you level up.

EDIT: HEXBLADE subclass Larian. Pretty please with sugar on top! Warlocks has only 2 subclasses in PHB and the Hexblade opens up a new play style.

I thought Fiend, GOO, and Archfey were all PHB.

That said, I love me some Hexblade, so yes please.

I think alot of this is depends on what actually ends up getting implemented in the game, as to whether its effective or not. Sure, in the tabletop game, being able to run around reading everyone's thoughts at will would be pretty silly. In BG3? Who knows? Right now I think it would be pretty worthless, outside of whatever few niche situations are supported by it, that isnt already handled by the illithid tadpole.

Being immune to things like fear/charm/sleep also sounds pretty good, but now we're kind of outside the scope of "Awakened Mind" I feel. However, we are working with a game system that doesnt exactly seem built for such a feature, and in fact already has something in the game that is kind of a better Awakened Mind(The afformentioned,tadpole), so lets roll with it.
The only thing I would say in that regard, is that alot of the more common races you would use for Warlock(Half Elves, Drow etc etc) are already sleep/charm immune. And I havent seen to many enemies that inflict fear. I have seen it, but its rare, at least right now.

Dark Ones Blessing on the other hand, I just feel is useful all the time, no matter what. Its true, its not the best scaling thing at higher levels, but then higher levels arent where it really pays off is it? And even at say Level 10, you are probably still talking about an extra 14 or 15 hitpoints. I mean, hey, Il take it. Its very easy to just save a monster thats been reduced to a couple of hit points for the Warlock to kill to get it, especially with the amount of enemies weve seen so far in many encounters, which is pretty numerous.

Free hit points is pretty enticing, especially at early levels when you need it the most. I just hope they put in something as enticing for the Great Old One, something that makes me say, yea, I would give up free hit points for this. Sleep/Charm immunity aint it(at least for me) because I can just pick a race that gives me that.

Im not sure what that something will be. An at will Detect Thoughts could be good, maybe even as good as Dark Ones Blessing, but it all depends on how much use I would get out of it in the game. Right now, it doesnt seem like much, but that could change as the game matures. At any rate I do hope something good gets implemented for awakened mind, because thematically, I just like the idea of the Great Old One better than the Fiend.

The implementation would require extensive work to be done right and would likely be quite useful given the extensive amount of social situations. For instance, in the "Hunt the Devil" side quest where you potentially can kill an important character without full knowledge, the motivations of each party could be sussed out.

As for the illithid tadpole, it is hinted strongly that using the power comes with a cost down the line - like the Bhaalspawn power corrupted in the original game, the new power is likely to corrupt you as well. Otherwise it would be just a bad implementation that diminishes the value of normal social skills. So there are plenty of reasons why the tadpole shouldn't be so readily made part of the equation.


Dark One's Blessing is mostly only useful when the Warlock actually would otherwise be reduced to zero hp or lower. As a means of healing, it's usefulness is relatively significantly weakened by the very generous amount of healing that exists in the game at present.

As temporary hit points, ut should not stack with any other source of such, like Warlocks second signature spell Armor of Agathys (powerful spell that opens up for some specific builds to maximize the retaliatory damaging effect by means of damage resistance). Dark One's Blessing, which is already only conditionally useful for reasons given above, is with Armor of Agathys, potentially a negative asset that removes the aforementioned spell.


I got that impression pretty loud and clear lol. The Fiend can be roleplayed to mean something other than selling your soul to evil/the devil though. The fiend could be roleplayed as a fallen angel on a path of redemption. Or you could have made the pact with a devil to save your loved ones. Anyway, another reason as to why I want the HEXBLADE subclass implemented; the subclass is already tied into Baldur's Gate by proxy of Blackrazor which was a powerful sword in BG2 and offers another roleplaying option.

Detect Thoughts at will. Call it a day.

I support this. GOOlocks are so sad right now, just gimped Fiendlocks, but they could--and should--be awesome.