Warlocks have got to be our favorite class. Since 3.5e we've absolutely loved playing them. Hell, even the character that was explicitly plural (before we realized we were plural ourselves) in a 4th edition game ended up going warlock. At the time of writing this, two of our headmates are playing a Hexblade Warlock; one plays the human that started with their now shared body, the other plays a sentient high tech sword that takes over from time to time.
So, here are some ways to use warlock to make a plural character!
Pact Magic: We'll get into how spells can be used to code your character as plural, as well as specific spells that stand out as plural coded already, or that can be reflavored easily. That will all be in its own section below. However Pact Magic is a unique form of spellcasting in 5e that we find especially works for plural characters. Why is your warlock able to refresh their spell slots with an hour of rest? Well it's because each headmate has their own spell slots. It just takes about an hour to switch, or it takes an hour to prepare their spells when they first start fronting.
Otherworldly Patron: Like with spells, we'll cover this in it's own section below. But suffice to say, this class feature can easily be plural coded. At the very least, your plural warlock could share their body with their patron; whether that be the patron itself, a member of the patron's class, category, or organization, or an emissary sent by the patron. We will discuss more specific mechanics that each subclass offers below.
Eldritch Invocation: A lot of these invocations can be used to represent specific headmates doing things (e.g. Beast Speech being used by animal headmates). But here are some specific ones we thought really stood out:
Eldritch Mind: A headmate concentrates on the spell, making it easier for the system to hold onto it.
Gaze of Two Minds: A headmate jumps into someone else's head and reports back to the rest of the system.
Mask of Many Faces: Yup. Probably a dream of most every plural system out there. Cast this whenever your character switches.
Master of Myriad Forms: Second verse, same as the first.
Minions of Chaos: Summoning spells/abilities can be flavored to be less of a summoning an extraplanar creature but rather allowing a headmate to physically manifest themselves.
Misty Visions: With magic, imposition can be a lot cooler!
Voice of the Chain Master: This one feels very plural adjacent. Perhaps one of your character's headmates' can inhabit the familiar.
Whispers of the Grave: This is basically doing mediumship.
Pact Boon: Pact of the Chain works well if you also have Voice of the Chain Master mentioned above. Pact of the Talisman might be used to represent a headmate that inhabits an object (also good for a POSIC character). Said headmate offers assistance, guidance, or moral support. Some of the invocations for the talisman might expand this out (such as having the headmate reach out and slap someone that hits their wearer).
Mystic Arcanum: Like with the spellcasting feature, different headmates can be the ones to cast different spells. Maybe one specific headmate is an archmage, so they're the only one who can access the higher level spells from Mystic Arcanum, and that's why they don't refresh during a short rest.
Eldritch Master: If you've been doing the "switching takes an hour and everyone has their own spell slots" way of handling spells on your plural warlock, then this feature can be a great breakthrough that shows improvement on those switches. Alternatively maybe it's a great meeting in your plural character's headspace where everyone lends their power to the front and that recharges the spells.
Subclasses (Otherworldly Patrons)
Spells: Many of spells here work well to have delivered by a headmate. Faerie Fire could be the work of a headmate lighting ghostly flames to everything. Sleep and calm emotions might be a headmate reaching out and using passive influence on someone outside of the warlock. Phantasmal force is straight up imposition taken to a magical level. Dominate beast and dominate person can be flavored as a headmate going off to front in another creature's body.
Fey Presence: For a brief moment one of the warlock's headmates shows their true innerworld form.
Beguiling Defenses: This is one of our favorite types of mechanics we code as plural. Instead of being outright immune to being charmed, we flavor it as charms only working on one headmate at a time. When the charm goes off, the warlock switches and a new headmate takes over, completely unfazed by the charm. Alternatively a non-fronting headmate acts like a symptom holder for the charm effect.
Dark Delirium: We like Hurl Through Hell out of the Fiend patron for this type of thing, but Dark Delirium can still be cool and plural as hell. Your warlock opens up their headspace. Their innerworld spills out around them and warps the landscape. The target's mind is drawn into this. There they can only see your warlock, and the inner reaches of your mindscape.
Spells: Less spells jump out as plural coded beyond the simple "my headmate does it" technique we've been playing with. However, if headmates are different souls for your warlock, Revivify might be a headmate diving into death after a creature to bring their soul back from the brink. Guardian of Faith is an obvious choice for headmate imposition.
Searing Vengeance: This could be one hell of a switch.
Spells: Again, mostly spells that we can imagine being delivered or created by headmates. Summon elemental and Bigby's hand are definitely cool ways to have headmates imposed by your warlock.
Tentacle of the Deeps: Like with Bigby's hand, this can be a really cool way for your warlock's non-human giant abyss monster headmate to "leak out" into the world. They are so unfathomable that one warlock body isn't enough to hold them, so they spill out into the world around them.
Guardian Coil: An extension of the above. They're definitely co-con if not co-fronting and they're slapping down attacks.
Grasping Tentacles: Third verse, same as the first. What we really like about this one is that now you can flavor it as the tentacled headmate maintaining the spell entirely themself since damage doesn't break concentration.
Fathomless Plunge: This one can be flavored as a brief jaunt through headspace. Many of your warlock's headspace locations might be connected magically to bodies of water, and with this ability they and their friends can dive through headspace and out of those outerworld locations.
Spells: Unfortunately most of these fall into our tried and true method of "a wizard did it a headmate cast it".
Dark One's Own Luck: An internal Aid Another action.
Hurl Through Hell: Absolutely one of our most favorite abilities on a plural warlock. Instead of sending them to the lower planes, your warlock sends them to a bad place in their headspace.
Spells: Phantasmal force is again a great way for a headmate to be imposed. Phantasmal killer can likewise be tweaked to do that. Alternatively, it could be through a headmate reaching out into the target's mind to yank something terrifying to the surface. Creation might be something your warlock uses to pull things from their headspace.
Genie's Vessel: If you haven't noticed, we absolutely love it when we can use mechanics to represent headspace on warlock characters. And this one is no exception. Well it does have an exception, kinda. Like with the talisman pact representing a headmate that inhabits an object, this will require your warlock's entire headspace to inhabit an object. Admittedly, the limitation of being able to visit headspace only once per long rest might interfere with a plural character's planned system mechanics though.
Sanctuary Vessel: Extending the above, it's really cool to bring other characters into a plural PC's headspace.
Spells: Oh my god the spells! We find psychic stuff to pair really well with plural characters. So the very psychic themed Great Old One patron hits a lot of the right buttons. Even though many of these fall under the "have a headmate cast it" technique, something about them just pops to us. Dissonant whispers comes from a headmate scaring the shit out of somebody. Tasha's Hideous Laughter is some wicked passive influence. Detect thoughts taking the form of a headmate spying on the target's mind. Clairvoyance taking on the form of imposition, but instead of everyone else seeing them like some of the other ideas here, they can see from their imposed location. Telekinesis doing the same but for throwing shit. Sending as system hoping telegrams. And we've already talked about phantasmal force, dominate beast, and dominate person.
Awakened Mind: Like with sending, you can have your warlock use this ability through headmates passing messages back and forth directly into other creature's heads.
Thought Shield: Your warlock's brain has a bouncer of sorts. Or maybe their headspace has really strong walls. Either way, we again love stuff like this on our plural PCs.
Create Thrall: Okay, you can treat this one like straight up possession. When using this ability your warlock sends a headmate into the creature to start fronting in that body.
Spells: Aside from phantasmal killer, none of these really pop out at us as especially plural coded. Again though, defaulting to "a headmate cast it" works, especially since a number of the smites are bonus actions.
Hexblade's Curse/Hex Warrior: This has got to be one of our favorite subclasses to get a plural character running, as they literally wield their patron in battle (even though they have little else mechanically that pops out as plural to us). Perhaps the patron is a headmate that was once a great warrior and co-front when cursing a target! Adding Charisma to attack and damage from Hex Warrior can be described with something like a possession state. If you pick up Pact of the Blade, your warlock can pull that headmate out of their headspace directly.
Spells: Phantasmal force and phantom steed work as imposition. Plus, the second one encourages you to give your warlock a non-humanoid headmate, which is cool and doesn't get done enough! Like with revivify mentioned in the Celestial, speak with dead might be something that a headmate can do by going to fetch the mind of the target. Or interestingly enough, perhaps the headmate possesses the body and gives it enough life force to spark up the brain's memories.
Form of Dread: This is some straight up Moon Knight shit right here.
Necrotic Husk: Like with Celestial's Searing Vengeance ability, this can be flavored as one hell of a switch.
Spirit Projection: While it would be cool as hell to be able to have a headmate take over your warlock's body while another goes out in spirit form, the mechanics don't allow this. However, this is still a cool way to get headmates interacting with the world outside of the body.
Spells: Not much here that hasn't been covered already. Legend lore however might be a very cool way to have a headmate drop important exomemories.
Defy Death: A much less flashier version of Searing Vengeance or Necrotic Husk, but still could be a cool way to describe a switch.
Undying Nature: This one is a bit more subtle in how we would code it as plural, but in a magical setting, your plural warlock's headmates might each have their own lifespan that ticks down only while they're fronting. Which in turn leads to a much slower rate of aging.
Spells are probably the easiest place to slip some plural coding into a character in 5th edition (or likely any rendition of D&D). As we've stated plenty of times by now, "a headmate cast it" is a perfectly acceptable way of handling a plural spellcaster. A ton of ranged spells work really well as minor magical impositions of headmates (e.g. every ranged attack spell is represented by a headmate imposing themself next to the enemy and giving them a good wack). So we won't be going over every single warlock spell here. Instead, we'll showcase a number of spells that we think really pop.
Mage Hand: Classic minor telekinesis (remember what we said about the Great Old One patron?). This spell allows a headmate to impose themself in the world and move stuff around.
Mind Sliver: System hopping but for mages. A headmate goes into the target's mind and breaks some shit.
Minor Illusion: A lot of illusion spells will be great for imposition. It only works to impose a headmate's voice. But, you can pull in stuff from your character's headspace and have them impose that for objects.
Armor of Agathys: A ghostly headmate surrounds your warlock's body in protective force and slaps anyone that would hurt their vessel.
Arms of Hadar: Imposing a mosh pit of headmates. Hell yes.
Comprehend Languages: Call up a headmate that knows a different language to sit in co-con and translate for the system.
Unseen Servant: An upgraded mage hand. Although it is listed as mindless, we can just say that the headmate imposed is just using the warlock's brain to do their thinking.
Borrowed Knowledge: Another spell for cool switching/co-fronting! This can really give some satisfaction to the phenomenon of different headmates having different skills in the real world without making it feel like each individual headmate has less skills than a given singlet of the same class and Intelligence score.
Crown of Madness: The first possession like spell on the list. Perhaps change up the visual flair to suit a specific headmate that does the possessing. But otherwise this spell can look like sending a headmate into the target to passively influence them into attacking specific creatures.
Mind Spike: An upgraded mind sliver. While your warlock maintains the spell, their headmate stows away in the target's mind, reporting back their location.
Suggestion: Passive influence, but for other creatures!
Hunger of Hadar: Another spell that can be a cool way to bring your warlock's headspace onto the battlefield.
Intellect Fortress: Like the Great Old One's Thought Shield, you can use this to describe a well fortified headspace.
Major Image: A bit more powerful than minor illusion, but this one will let your warlock impose their headmates' bodies. It takes focus to maintain the imposition (like it does for a lot of systems that do imposition in the real world), but since this is fantasy at least everyone else can see them.
Summons: This post will get way longer than it already is if we talk about every single summon spell. So to save on word length, summon spells can be a really cool way to manifest a headmate in D&D, as usually you as the player get to control their actions, so you won't run into any issues with the summon acting in ways that the headmate they represent wouldn't act.
Tongues: An upgraded comprehend languages. With this spell, the headmates that know the obscure languages are all co-fronting.
Banishment: For a bit of flavor and fun, with your DM's permission, you might be able to have the harmless demiplane be your warlock's headspace. If your DM is particularly cool with it, your warlock's non-fronting headmates might get to chat with the target too, creating a fun roleplaying scene.
Hallucinatory Terrain: Useful for imposing your warlock's headspace again.
Raulothim's Psychic Lance: An upgraded mind sliver. This time your warlock can send a headmate hunting for the creature instead of charging directly at them.
Shadow of Moil: Another take on armor of agathys.
Contact Other Plane: Any soulbonders who have internal telephone like connections can probably see how this spell is related to plurality.
Danse Macabre: As the name implies, it is a bit macabre, but your warlock sending out headmates to possess corpses for a rave does sound cool.
Dream: Deam based system hopping.
Create Undead: This one can work for sending headmates out to possess corpses. The limitation of losing control of the ghouls (as a player) after 24 hours without recasting the spell presents a real problem for that though. How to explain that limitation in the fiction will be up to you and your DM. Perhaps they will be cool with the ghouls simply collapsing and the headmates returning to the warlock's body. Perhaps you will be cool with the story made by headmates permanently leaving your warlock's system and being under the control of the DM.
Mass Suggestion: Like suggestion, but your warlock's entire system goes running around passive influencing a crowd.
Soul Cage: Your warlock temporarily gains a new headmate! Okay your warlock does so in a shitty way, but that can be reflavored.
Demiplane: Direct transportation into your warlock's headspace!
Dominate Monster: Another possession like spell for sending headmates to start fronting in other creature's bodies.
Imprisonment: Another spell that you can flavor as sending a creature into your warlock's headspace using the Hedged Prison version of the spell.
Psychic Scream: The final upgrade to mind sliver. Send your warlock's whole system to beat up nearly a dozen creatures.
Weird: The ultimate upgrade to phantasmal killer discussed above.
We hope you enjoyed this (much longer than planned) bit of plural joy. This is the class that inspired us to make this side blog. We aren't all that into traditional media, so we don't get to participate in headcannoning plural characters all that often. So instead we headcannon character options in TTRPGs!
Hopefully if you were inspired by our Playing Plural PCs in Literally Any TTRPG post, or you have just been thinking about playing a Plural PC, you'll find this some more inspiration or ideas on how to use the mechanics of 5e's Warlock to represent your character's system.
If this post did inspire anything, we would love to hear! If you have used warlock to play a plural character we would also love to hear! Or if have plural ideas for the warlock class that we didn't cover, let us know and we would be happy to share!!