Grim Hollow Warlock Subclass Guide (D&D 2024)

Deep diving into the the coven, first vampire and parasite patrons.

Although most warlock patrons tend to have nefarious intentions, the patrons of Grim Hollow are a particularly devious and evil bunch. Usually, only the desperate form pacts with such entities (though these are not in short supply in the deadly lands of Etharis).

The 2024 version of the Grim Hollow Player’s Handbook has 3 warlock subclasses. They are:

The coven – Be granted the powers of an entire coven of hags, as well as becoming embroiled in their political infighting.
The first vampire patron – Gain vampiric powers from an ancient vampire lord.
The parasite patron – Make a pact with a world eating parasite and become host to one of its offspring.

In this article, I’ll dive into each subclass to provide advice as well as analyse how strong they are and which is the most powerful.

The coven

What are they?

Sometimes, warlocks will make a pact with a group of hags, known as a coven. They will jointly grant powers and make demands of their warlocks, sometimes acting against one another, for such is the political machinations of hags.

Beware of the manipulative and self-serving nature of hags. Their deals are never kind and are always loaded in their own favour.

Key abilities

Coven spells (lv3)

Coven warlocks get lots of information gathering spells. Later options like Divination and scrying are great, earlier options like locate object are much more situational.

There’s a couple of strong combat spells in there in polymorph and counterspell. Warlocks aren’t great with counterspell due to their minimal number of spell slots though, but polymorph can be a great option.

I’d perhaps argue that there’s too much information gathering here to be ideal. This is especially the case as warlocks always use their highest level spell slot, making many lower levels spells (some of which were never that great to start with) quickly redundant.

Hag’s eye (lv3)

Free castings of hex each long rest and one free casting of bestow curse after level 10. This really helps with your spell slot economy meaning you can use slots in powerful spells and use hex as your backup when slots have been expended or you don’t want to expend more powerful spell slots.

Conveniently, you can now use a ring as your spellcasting focus, leaving your hands free for other things.

Hag’s guile (lv6)

You know the minor illusion cantrip and can use reactions to impose disadvantage on creatures studying your illusions. If your illusion is worked out, you can cause psychic damage to the discoverer.

All of this makes you particularly good with illusions. But, be aware that while the warlock has a decent range of illusion spells, many of the best of these don’t require investigation, like hypnotic pattern or mirror image.

Really, we’re looking at minor illusion, major image, invisibility, mislead and hallucinatory terrain. Even then, many of these may simply not be investigated or are quite situational, so getting much out of this feature probably requires lots of illusions while sneaking around.

Hag’s visage (Lv10)

Each turn you can attempt to frighten someone with a bonus action while this is active (lasts for a minute). You can then target frightened creatures to paralyze them and paralyzed creatures to damage them.

These are some big benefits from your bonus action and means you can perform spell like actions to accomplish things that normally require concentration, a spell slot or an action (unless performing the paralyzing or damage part of this). You can even frighten and paralyze on the same turn.

Personally, I’d aim to get creatures frightened and paralyzed more than damaged. Nullifying your enemies will normally be best while focusing fire on other targets and you can work to nullify other enemies too.

Hag’s craft (Lv14)

Free potions and a gemstone that grants immunity to the poisoned condition and a free casting of blink are decent. I’d create the gemstone at the start of each day and the cauldron ahead of big battles for some handy potions.

What are they good at?

Illusions, frightening and paralyzing enemies and having a few more magical options than most warlocks, especially with free castings of hex.

How effective are they?

The pact of the coven is pretty good. They have a bit of a mix of spells, though they perhaps lean too heavily into information gathering. Free uses of hex should mean you always have decent spells available to enhance you in combat. Enhanced illusions gives you utility in stealth moments while hag’s visage means you have really effective things to do with your bonus action. Creating potions each day is really handy too.

For me, it’s a subclass with fairly broad capabilities that can work well in all sorts of situations.

Score: 4/5

The first vampire patron

What are they?

These warlocks have made a pact with not just any old vampire, but a particularly old and powerful one. They use their servants to enact their will during the day when they are hindered by their sunlight sensitivity.

Key abilities

Drain life (lv3)

When you use the attack or magic actions, you can use a bonus action to make an unarmed strike causing damage. If you expend a pact magic spell slot, you can then deal necrotic damage with a number of d8s equal to the spell slot +1. You then regain that number of hit points as well.

This has potential to be some serious healing. At level 5, that’s an average of 18 damage and hit points healed. By level 9, this has increased to 27. It’s a strong use of a spell slot, especially if you’re looking a little worse for wear, and it only requires a bonus action. It’s best on melee builds, so blade warlocks will be able to use this most often as they should be in range.

Nocturnal predator (lv3)

You gain darkvision. It’s useful, but mostly a ribbon feature.

First vampire spells (lv3)

There’s some interesting utility spells in here like fog cloud, seeming and gaseous form. Dominate person and bane can give your enemies problems.

Little death is really interesting, allowing your body to become vulnerable, but you become a ghost for a few hours. There’s some great utility here, but just make sure you guard your corpse.

Creature of the night (lv6)

Polymorph is a powerful spell and free castings to be a bat, rat or wolf are useful. There’s utility here as well as a hit points boost. Bats are likely your most useful option for scouting while a wolf transformation will get you some decent combat abilities and temporary hit points, though it’s capabilities in combat will be limited at higher levels.

Eldritch appetite (Lv10)

Regaining a pact magic spell slot is useful, but landing the killing blow with drain life could be tricky. Having said that, you could farm spell slots by attacking weakened creatures or minions. Sadly, you’ll only be able to do so once so the real motivation is using this against bloodied creatures in the hope you can finish them off.

Eternal night (Lv14)

You don’t age and have resistance to necrotic damage. You can also use a bonus action allowing you to regenerate each turn and deal more damage with drain life for a minute. You can only do this once per long rest so save it for challenging encounters when you’ll need the hit points and damage boost.

What are they good at?

Melee combat and scouting. First vampire warlocks have lots of utility when it comes to being a scout, especially through their spells. They also make great melee combatants.

How effective are they?

With extra melee damage and the ability to self heal, first vampire warlocks are pretty good in combat. Their spells make them really discreet too, able to sneak around as a small and even flying creature or become incorporeal and pass through solid objects.

All of this makes for a really solid, melee warlock.

Score: 4/5

The parasite patron

What are they?

These warlocks make a pact with a cosmic parasite that drains entire worlds and their people of life. Upon making a pact with such an entity, they become host to one of it’s larva who gradually takes a greater influence on their mind.

Key abilities

Spell siphon (Lv3)

You can use a reaction after a creature casts a spell to prevent them from casting anymore spells for 8hrs and potentially learn that spell. I think the rules as intended here are that the limit is based on the cumulative spells you can siphon, but I think the rules as written sound like you can stop spellcasting as often as you like, but have a limit on spells siphoned. I’m going to evaluate this based on the rules as intended as the rules as written are ridiculously good against full spellcasters and could very easily completely nullify them.

As it stands, it’s still very good against spellcasters. You can easily whittle down a spellcaster’s legendary resistance this way or basically make them largely useless for a combat. It’s a weirdly unbalancing option where it’s sometimes useless and sometimes amazing and offers no follow up saving throws. I think to balance it a bit better, I’d impose saving throws on subsequent turns so the spellcasting block can be ended.

Physical specimen (lv3)

Every long rest you can choose from a few different enhancements (more charisma means more enhancements). You get things like extra hit points, darkvision and improved athletics/agility.

Obviously the higher your charisma, the more enhancements you get. It’s hard to not take the extra hit points here. Not only is it pretty good, but also scales with your level (unlike the other enhancements). A climb speed can be quite useful, as can improved speed.

Symbiotic sentinel (lv6)

No being surprised, advantage on initiative rolls and advantage against charmed and frightened conditions. Most subclasses get 1 or 2 of these types of benefits with a feature, but parasite warlocks get all 4!

Going early in combat is a decent advantage and charmed and frightened are 2 of the most common conditions making this a pretty good resilience feature and more.

Spawn pawn (Lv10)

A free use of dominate person, harder to lose concentration and psychic damage if they pass means you at least do something on a success. Dominate person is quite potent, but only against mid tier humanoids. Tougher humanoids will likely pass their test or use legendary resistance.

Larval regeneration (lv14)

If you die, a parasite bursts from you and can attempt to burrow into another creature and take over its body, making that body yours (similar in effects to the reincarnated spell).

It’s an interesting way to survive, though any NPCs aware of your terrifying capability may squish your parasite before it has chance to burrow. Of course you might manage to be discrete in the midst of a chaotic combat, giving you a chance.

What are they good at?

They’re exceptional at dealing with spellcasters. There’s also some decent resilience, some extra mobility and a few utility options in the mix too.

How effective are they?

Parasite warlocks are excellent against spellcasters but only OK against everything else. This makes them a little hard to judge. There are many spellcasters out there, and they are a huge pain when you fight them. I also happen to think that their feature against spellcasters (spell siphon) is too powerful and would encourage adapting it a little.

Ultimately, I think they’re a 5 against spellcasters, a 3 more broadly so I’m going to give them a 4 overall.

Score: 4/5

Which Grim Hollow warlock subclass is best?

I’ve ended up giving all the grim hollow warlock subclasses the same score, but I do think one is better than the others.

The parasite patron is only situationally really good, but only fine the rest of the time. There’s also the coven, which relies too heavily on information gathering spells. But for me, the first vampire patron works best. They’re great in combat, have resilience and make an excellent scout.

The caveat here is that you do really need to be playing a melee build to get the most out of them, but for me, they’re the strongest option with a consistently useful number of tools in their arsenal.

What do you think of Grim Hollow’s warlock subclasses? Let me know in the comments below.