The Great Old One Subclass Guide and Builds

The Great Old One is a Warlock subclass in Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3). Check out our guide for how to unlock the Great Old One subclass, its features, as well as the best builds.

Warlock Subclasses Warlock Class Guide
The Archfey	The Fiend	The Great Old One

The Great Old One Subclass Overview

The Great Old One Basic Information

Subclass Overview
	The Great Old One Warlocks bound to eldritch beings in the Far Realms work towards inscrutable goals, gaining strange powers over entropy and the mind.
Parent Class	Warlock
How to Unlock	Available during Character Creation.
Spellcasting Ability	Charisma
Starting Subclass Features
・Grants the Mortal Reminder Passive ・All Warlock Class Features.

The Great Old One is a subclass that focuses on the Mind. Choosing the Great Old One grants the Warlock some passive features to inflict harm on the enemy's psych or resist ones used on you. The Great Old One's effects are mostly based on lucky rolls such as landing Critical Hits and dodging enemy attacks which makes the class heavily reliant on RNG.

How to Unlock the Great Old One Subclass

Available When Creating a Warlock

The Great Old One subclass will become available once you start creating a Warlock at the Character Creation screen. Unlike most classes, Warlocks are one of the few that get to pick out their subclass before they start the game.

The Great Old One Subclass Features

Mortal Reminder

Mortal Reminder is a Feature that you can immediately get at level 1 for the Warlock if you choose The Great Old One as your subclass. This is a passive feature that inflicts Frightened. Frighten prevents that unit to move. They also suffer from Disadvantage against Ability Checks and Attack Rolls. This means that on a Critical Hit, the enemy will be at a great disadvantage and is a great way to turn the tide of the battle in your favor.

The major disadvantage if Mortal Reminder is its just a luck based skill and cannot really be used strategically due to its luck factor. Without landing Critical Hits, Mortal Reminder becomes a non-existent feature. This can be made better by multiclassing and gaining new effects that increases your likelihood to land Critical Hits like the Champion's enhanced Critical Strikes.

Entropic Ward

Entropic Ward is a Reaction feature that allows the Warlock to inflict a disadvantage on the enemy's attack roll. This increases the Warlock's safety by being able to choose when to apply the disadvantage effect to avoid potentially lethal attacks. This can be used against skills or dodge a buffed enemy attack. This is also a great partner to the Pact of the Blade since it makes the Warlock a more melee oriented class.

Thought Shields

Thought Shield is a passive Feature that makes the Great Old One a great bane to enemies that rely on using Psychic Abilities to deal damage. These two features work at the same time which means not only do you halve the damage you take, you also inflict that same halved damage back to your enemy! Let's not forget that the Warlock also has high damaging spells and cantrips and when facing Psychic based enemies, the Warlock's victory is pretty much guaranteed.

TheGreat Old One Progression and Features Chart

Best The Great Old One Builds

Baldur's Gate 3 Related Guides

Warlock Class Guide

All Warlock Subclasses

All Warlock Subclasses
The Archfey	The Fiend	The Great Old One