Orc Great Old One Patron Warlock Build Guide
Unleash mind-bending cosmic horrors while using your Orcish resilience to survive the physical backlash of the Far Realm.
Free — no signup needed for the free tier.
Why Great Old One Patron?
Choosing an Orc for your Great Old One Warlock creates a surprisingly durable psychic controller. While your alien patron grants you telepathic abilities like Awakened Mind to manipulate and communicate with foes from afar, your Orc heritage ensures you can survive when those foes try to strike back.
As a controller, you need to position yourself perfectly to lock down the battlefield. The Orc's Adrenaline Rush trait lets you dash as a bonus action while gaining temporary hit points, allowing you to reposition safely without wasting your main action. If an enemy does manage to bypass your psychic defenses and reduce you to 0 hit points, Relentless Endurance keeps you standing at 1 hit point, ensuring you do not lose concentration on your crucial crowd-control spells.
Combined with a high Charisma (CHA) score of 15 to power your spell effects, this build turns a typically fragile spellcaster into a relentless, mind-warping juggernaut who can dictate the flow of any battle.
Great Old One Patron Features
Awakened Mind
Level 3You can communicate telepathically with any creature you can see within 30 feet. You don't need to share a language for the creature to understand your telepathic messages, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language.
Great Old One Spells
Level 3You gain additional spells that count as warlock spells for you: Dissonant Whispers, Tasha's Hideous Laughter (level 1); Detect Thoughts, Phantasmal Force (level 3); Clairvoyance, Hunger of Hadar (level 5); Dominate Beast, Evard's Black Tentacles (level 7); Dominate Person, Telekinesis (level 9).
Psychic Spells
Level 3You learn additional psionic spells that count as warlock spells for you. These spells allow you to invade and manipulate the minds of your enemies.
Clairvoyant Combatant
Level 6When you deal damage to a creature, you gain advantage on attack rolls against that creature until the end of your current turn, as you peer briefly into its immediate future. Additionally, that creature can't make opportunity attacks against you for the rest of that turn.
Eldritch Hex
Level 10When you place a curse on a creature (such as with the Hex spell or a warlock feature that curses), you can use a bonus action to give that creature disadvantage on saving throws against one ability of your choice until the curse ends.
Thought Shield
Level 10Your 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 psychic damage.
Create Thrall
Level 14You can use your action to touch an incapacitated humanoid. That creature is then charmed by you until a Remove Curse spell is cast on it, the charmed condition is removed from it, or you use this feature again. You can communicate telepathically with the charmed creature as long as the two of you are on the same plane of existence.
Recommended Ability Scores
Orc Traits That Benefit Great Old One Patron Warlock
Adrenaline Rush
Bonus action Dash with temp HP gives the Warlock both mobility and survivability.
Relentless Endurance
Dropping to 1 HP instead of 0 once per rest is a powerful survival tool for frontline Warlocks.
Darkvision
Orc Darkvision helps Warlocks scout ahead and fight in darkness without needing a torch.
Combat Effectiveness
| Level | HP | Melee DPR | Spell DPR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 5 | 33 | 3.9 | 9 |
| Level 11 | 69 | 3.58 | 12.38 |
| Level 17 | 105 | 3.58 | 16.5 |
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Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths
- ♦ Great Old One Patron grants Awakened Mind at level 3
- ♦ Darkvision for dungeon exploration
- ♦ Versatile spellcasting options
Weaknesses
- ♦ Low Wisdom — vulnerable to common saving throws
- ♦ May require careful feat selection to optimize
Pro Tips
Use Adrenaline Rush to quickly retreat to safety after using Awakened Mind to silently sow discord among enemy ranks.
When you use Clairvoyant Combatant to read an enemy, use your bonus speed to stay just out of their reach.
Rely on Relentless Endurance to keep your concentration active on major control spells even if you take an otherwise-fatal hit.
Target high-threat enemies with your Eldritch Hex to compromise their saving throws, making them easy prey for your control spells.
Other Warlock Subclasses for Orc
Other Races for Great Old One Patron Warlock
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Great Old One Patron a good subclass for Orc Warlock?
What makes Great Old One Patron different from other Warlock subclasses?
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