How to Use the Mask of Many Faces Invocation
Published on April 2, 2024
Now you see me, soon you won’t.
John Severin Brassell - Wizards of the Coast - Illusion of Choice
Table of Contents
Unveiling the Mysteries of Mask of Many Faces
Have you ever found yourself in a tight spot, needing to blend into a crowd or adopt a new persona in the blink of an eye? Look no further than the warlock’s illusory invocation, Mask of Many Faces. A staple in the arsenal of cunning warlocks, this invocation offers a plethora of possibilities for those seeking to deceive others.
What Does Mask of Many Faces Do?
Warlocks have a unique class feature called “Invocations” that they start receiving at 2nd level. These invocations imbue your warlock with eldritch abilities, like Mask of Many Faces:
Mask of Many Faces
You can cast disguise self at will, without expending a spell slot.
Disguise self is a solid, low-level infiltration spell. In short, it allows you to change your appearance, including clothing, armor, weapons, and other belongings on your person. You can alter your height within a foot range, appear thin, normal, or fat, and adjust your body shape within certain limits.
One of the most intriguing aspects of disguise self is its lack of concentration requirement, which allows you to use other spells in conjunction with your disguise. This can be useful if you want to communicate telepathically with your party or attempt to charm others.
Don’t be too quick to assume disguise self is entirely foolproof. While donning your new facade, be mindful that the casting disguise self still requires vocal and somatic components, potentially exposing your mystical machinations to astute onlookers.
The illusion also doesn’t hold up to physical inspection; objects pass through changed items, and physical contact may reveal discrepancies. A creature can use its action to inspect your disguise and make an Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC to discern the illusion.
Mask of Many Faces Vs the Changeling Race
For those deliberating between a warlock with Mask of Many Faces and the intrinsic shapeshifting prowess of the changeling race, the choice may not be as straightforward as it seems.
While the changeling boasts innate transformative abilities that don’t require a specific feat or class, it doesn’t allow you to change your attire or conceal the equipment you’re carrying.
That said, changelings stay in their form until they end the effect or die, which has a leg up on Mask of Many Faces, which only lasts an hour at a time, can be dispelled, and can be seen through by creatures that can see through illusions, like those with truesight.
Mask of Many Faces Plus the Actor Feat
Any character leaning into the Mask of Many Faces invocation will certainly want to consider the Actor feat. This feat gives you +1 to Charisma and allows you to mimic speech or sounds that you’ve studied for at least 1 minute.
This combo allows you to replicate the speech and sounds of another individual while you imitate their appearance, creating the perfect subterfuge. You also get advantage on Deception and Performance checks when you try to pass yourself off as someone you’re not, which will happen a lot if you’re using Mask of Many Faces frequently.
Building Around Mask of Many Faces
If you’re looking to build a Deception-based character with Mission Impossible levels of infiltration, Mask of Many Faces is one of the best enablers. Here are some considerations for your many-faced character:
- Eldritch Adept feat: While you can easily access Mask of Many Faces as a 2nd-level warlock, if your character build doesn’t need warlock levels, you can still pick up the invocation using the Eldritch Adept feat. You can even take this feat at 1st level if you choose the variant human race. Keep in mind that this will only work for spellcasting builds, as the ability to cast spells or use Pact Magic is a requirement for Eldritch Adept.
- Expertise: Whether you’re multiclassing to get Mask of Many Faces or using Eldritch Adept, bards and rogues are particularly well-suited to an infiltration build because their Expertise feature can double their proficiency bonus with chosen skills, like Deception or Performance.
- Reliable Talent and Silver Tongue: Certain rogue and bard abilities allow your skill checks to have higher baselines. 11th-level rogues get Reliable Talent, which allows them to treat any roll they’re proficient in that’s less than 9 as a 10. Likewise, College of Eloquence bards get Silver Tongue at 3rd level, which does the same for Persuasion and Deception checks.
- Swashbucklers: While Swashbuckler rogues can’t gain access to Eldritch Adept, they make a perfect multiclass with Mask of Many Faces warlocks because of their Panache and Rakish Audacity features that use the Charisma ability score.
- Friends Cantrip: A great low-level combo with Mask of Many Faces is with the Friends cantrip. This charming cantrip has a big downside in that the target knows you charmed them after the spell ends. But, if you combine it with Disguise Self from Mask of Many Faces, you might be able to trick the target into thinking that the charm attempt came from someone else.
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