How To Make a Mind Flayer Formidable in Your D&D Campaign | DM Advice | TTRPG | DnD 5e | Ben Byrne

[@Daggoth65]

Best use of elder brain Dragon, Have the party befriend a Metallic Dragon, give the dragon a fun friendly personality and let them help out here and there from early in the campaign. Then some time later have the dragon go missing, be hired by the dragons Mate to find them because the mate has to guard their eggs/hatchlings etc. Party tracks them down inorder to fine their friend is no more, the elder brain controlling the dragon like a flesh puppet and speaking with their friends voice but now devoid of emotion. My players hated me for a long time and I wasn't allowed to use mindflayers anymore lol.

[@GhostfireGaming]

Evil! 🤣

[@Brainflayer]

That is genius and twisted, I love it.

[@nikolibarastov4487]

That is a Fantastic Way to use them! Also, when the players realize that is only the Beginning, they will probably shit their armor and robes.

[@tysondennis1016]

The ideas for when I get to DM includes psychological damage like that, as well as homebrewed monsters that would result in me getting put on a government watchlist.

[@tylerswanson2062]

Oh I'm using this.

[@Lcirex]

The mastermind of a 2 shot game that a friend ran was a mindflayer half formed tadpole that was in a mutant trolls brain that was perpetually regenerating from being eaten creating a psychic troll that used its powers to reflexively put out fires and deflect acid away from themselves.

[@Lcirex]

@jamesdeer3129 Did.... did you just reply to your own reply with an almost copy paste of your 1st reply? Or was there a post that got erased that I missed?

[@tysondennis1016]

That's badass.

[@thewelshdm]

"If you know where the creature goes to the toilet, it's not scary anymore" Adding that to the list of things a grizzled salty monster hunter says

[@GhostfireGaming]

Hahahaha, I'd never quite thought of it like that but maybe I'll make it a Jurgen quote in the next Monster Hunter article. 😆

[@DemoBytom]

That's a reason why there are no toilets in Castle Ravenloft. Strahd doesn't poop, so he's always scary.

[@TheAngmarbucket]

@@DemoBytom Probably the real benefit to being a vampire.

[@trinityprentice8221]

@@GhostfireGaming I would have made a rule in a campaign where the mind flayer since it has a Lovecraftian vibe is that a mortals brain registers it as a its squid head and squid like features as its physical form but looks completely different to another player because it is how that specific characters brain protect itself from going insane because its a completely unknown entity

[@trinityprentice8221]

@@GhostfireGaming I just came over to learn more about dnd after watching dungeon dudes for the first time after learning about grim hollow

[@theonionsouppy]

"they can think you to death" is probably the best and funniest description of mindflayers I've ever heard. thank you.

[@haydentempest3874]

I've decided the main enemy for my underwater exploration campaign is going to be reskinned mind flayers rising up from the midnight zone of the ocean. Thank you for all the great tips!

[@GhostfireGaming]

Ooh, spooky! You’re welcome. 😄

[@natangraves3870]

what in a hell this DUDE only has 14.3k subs this guy is a lore machine. keep the amazing job bro!

[@GhostfireGaming]

Thanks, will do! 😄

[@Daredhnu]

Clearly what an Elder Brain needs is a gigantic golem to use as a body for itself, sitting in a crystal container in the golems stomach, exposed so it can use its tremendous psychic might against the heroes.

[@N3kr0n15]

So, krang?

[@nickmillar999]

@@N3kr0n15literally

[@steel5315]

I don't think he knows what mindflayers are but my nephew told me that his first character is being hunted by octopus people so I'm just gonna use mindflayers for that. I like the idea that they're using some kind of device to hide as humans while they slowly hunt his character down. Waiting for the perfect time to pounce.

[@knotsbygordion]

I like the old lore that Illithids are actually end-of-time humanoids (sometimes humans) that used Psionics to throw themselves back in time to escape the destruction of their plane-spanning empire and to re-forge it. It made them something more than "A wizard did it" or "from outside/ The Far Realm."

[@thedeaderer8791]

I used a zoanthrope model for my intellect devourers.it worked perfectly

[@trevynlane8094]

An interesting alternative campaign premise I've heard of, involves the players slowly discovering that they are intellect devourers that are acting as the "hands" of an ilithead sect. And that every adventure they've had has been to solidify control of the region for their mind flayer masters.

[@kelpiekit4002]

Just because I like to, my mindflayer idea: A group of rangers approach the party needing their help to deal with a strange creature a number of days distant. A few days travel brings them to a ruined hunting lodge, torn apart, which the rangers state was their organisation and where the story began as the creature came when they were out and slaughtered everyone inside. It's not hard to find signs of the creature's movement and track it. As night comes while following they make camp and a ranger offers to take watch, though they are glad of the company if anyone else wants to. If they watch alone they are gone by morning leaving no tracks. If someone watches with them during the night the ranger at some point walks to the edge of camp, staring into the dark, before rising into the air and floating away. If the player successfully follows, the ranger turns back with a face that looks like it's melting and the player feel like their mind is trying tear itself apart. If they wake and bring the rest of their team the other rangers will be gone by the time they return. If they allow the mystery a ranger or two disappears each night as they close on the creature. However, at the limits of their perception, they see figures floating against the dark clouds of the sky keeping a constant watching distance. The creature they eventually find, if they don't run, is a yeti driven mad and mutated in strength somehow. With all the rangers gone, camping alone at night, and knowing the hovering figures are watching from the dark they hear thoughts in their head "Give up and give us yourselves. Or give us the first town you find. We are listening and watching for your choice". [The rangers were going through ceramorphosis and bringing the party after a mutated yeti thrall deep into the elder brain's domain to test the morals and threat of heroes of this world and to find victims]

[@loganswalk8621]

I say look at the Reaper’s indoctrination from Mass Effect it’s a great way of doing mind flayer thralls merely being in their and their items presence is enough to turn you to their side. Imagine the players find a mind flayer artifact and leave it with a archwizard for study but when they return they discover the wizard has gone insane worshiping the mind flayer and obsessing over the object.

[@jarroddt]

The lairs of my mind flayers look like the chambers from the game "scorn." Loved the aesthetic of that game so much and fits right into the lore I created for my mind flayers. It also fits right in with the idea that the Elder Brain's body is the lair itself!

[@keeganmars4500]

How am I just finding your content! I'm making my first campaign and you have some of the best videos

[@armartin0003]

Instead of a mind flayer dragon, I put an elder brain into a purple worm that had 4 Roper like tentacles that dealt psychic damage when grappling someone. I combined all 3 statblocks. The poison of the worm doesn't kill the victim, but leaves it paralyzed and stable until the poison is removed. On a failed Con save, the sting also inserts a tadpoles into the victim, like a slaadi. If the poison is removed and the victim has 1 hp or higher they awaken; however, the tadpole remains until it is removed as well. An elder brain worm that can grapple a player with a tentacle, pull them into a hole, seal off that hole with a wall of force, then stinging them with a paralytic venom while impregnating the victim with their young & dragging them to their lair while the tadpole gestates is an absolute nightmare encounter. My players were terrified of this aberation.

[@dreadmorg]

Gribbily... new favorite word! Love the idea (and the clip) of the insectoid servants, almost like nanobots taking care of the tadpole nest things; very Matrix/Aliens/Borg -esque flavour. Love it.

[@Mastikator]

One option you can use, if you want stronger thralls than cultists, is just any monster type humanoid like ogre, troll, minotaur. Specifically ones that are controlled by intellect devourers. Imagine going up against two ogres, only to kill one and then the next turn its head explodes and an intellect devourer pops out and tries to take over one of the party members.

[@SecularMentat]

I definitely love the idea of throwing on a Elder Brain Legendary Actions as lair actions, even aboard their nautilus ships (As it is more or less a lair). But I think to level them up they definitely need more legendary actions. And I really like the 'break concentration' notion. But there's gotta be more useful legendary actions we can borrow from elsewhere to really up their difficulty.

[@george11126]

Gave me chills when you described these creatures. Would you be so kind as to tell me what the organ music you used for that? Best regards and keep up the great content. :)

[@george11126]

Epic Chruch Organ by Rafael Krux Found it :)

[@idigamstudios7463]

So one thing I did with them is there are two things: a human faction that the mindflayers basically taught just enough to that they have a massive superiority complex to the rest of the world (and thus no problem giving prisoners of inferior people to their teachers.) The other being the fleshy constructs engineered in their labs. Both are equipped with weapons that can fire smaller less developed mindflayer tadpoles that when they hit exposed skin through the victim's nervous system into overload. From the PC perspective they just note they get hit with something cold and slimey and then they're overcome with pain that locks their muscles in imposes paralysis.

[@edwardg8912]

I once reskinned mindflayers as giant insects. Kept everything else about them the exact same, except made them not psychic. Worked really well because the party had no idea what was happening.

[@johntheherbalistg8756]

So, there's this thing about illithids. When you first encounter them, they're scary enough. Then, you read what's in the MM and you're like "oh, that's it, then." You go on assuming they aren't really all that scary, as long as you're a high enough level. If you look deeper into them, however, and learn what's really up, they become frightening all over again. Mind flayers, as the semihumanoid squid boi is only just the least interesting form that the illithid species takes.

[@Miner49er201]

I’ve made mind flayers in my current campaign antagonists of the BBEG that destroyed their home planet. They’re still not “good”, but they could be a potential ally. Enemy of my enemy and all that.

[@heatseekerx51]

Hey, you forgot about the NEOTHELID from Volo's Guide. But otherwise, supercool video. definitely gonna "borrow" some inspiration from you.

[@zephyrstrife4668]

You are correct that the Ulitharid is the stage right before Elder Brain, there's a bit of tension between the existing elder and the new elder-to-be, before the Ulitharid goes off to create it's own colony and set up a brine pool of its own.

[@vadaritis]

I ran Illithids in my last wild west themed game cause one of my players decided to play a Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. For overall story of the Mindflayers was that they owned the world a long time ago before several things went wrong including civil wars of philosphy that caused the empire to fall. Now the seperate colonies all want different things, the local colony wanted to reactivate some archeotech to stop time and propogate their species. Whereas the players met an Illithid agent from a different colony who treated everyone other than the Sorcerer as thrallls and the sorcerer as a student of psionics. This agent only did this to keep himself occupied and make allies while he was looking for his own piece of archeotech. Specifically to activate a hivemind bioweapon (think 'mind controlled tyranids from warhammer 40k') to wipe out the local colony to his colony could move in and take over. Unfortunately that campaign puttered out towards the end before we got to that point.

[@thewelshdm]

Running off the insectoid thralls theme, try Kikimores from Book of Beautiful Horrors. Throw in a hive queen that's been taken over by an elder brain if you really want to make it big.

[@sidecharacter7165]

A Tarrasque taken over by an Intellect Devourer. Surprisingly easy actually.

[@thewelshdm]

This take is in bad taste, putting the blame on DMs for the encounter design baked into the game. If a boss is only "formidable", in your own words, when they have minions, the boss isn't formidable, the encounter is. AD&D and 5e are wildly different systems in their construction and design, you cannot compare them so lightly.

[@royalknightsleipmon2345]

The last game I tried running opened with a few quests building up the threat of a new gnoll horde gradually assembling and building their numbers. When the horde finally assaulted the beginning town and the party helped their defenses hold the horde off and eventually managed to pick off the horde leader, the leader's corpse started twitching and it's skull cracked open like a hatching egg and an intellect devourer popped out. One intellect devourer in the right place can give a single Mind Flayer an army.

[@owen-cu6gr]

Greatest moment of my current campaign so far was introducing the mind flayer. The party was working their way through what they thought was a standard corrupt guild with mercenary thugs, easily taking them out, liberally using their spell slots and limited abilities, when suddenly, they got to the “manager’s” office, an intellect devourer exploded out of his head when they killed him, and a mind flayer came out from the back room. I have NEVER seen a party run from an encounter that quickly before.

[@jackkurze2618]

Thanks for all this advice mate! I am really helped for my upcoming campaign as first time GM :)

[@GhostfireGaming]

You're welcome! Good luck GM'ing your first campaign, that's exciting. 😄

[@thenoremac2685]

The setting I'm running right now is basically a pocket dimension that was created by a handful of gods to act as a gauntlet to churn out new deities for a divine war. A couple of deities sacrificed their lifeforce to seed the world, and mortals ascend to godhood inside that pocket dimension until they are slain and replaced by someone else, but those slain deities materialize outside the dimension to join the war effort. If I were to introduce mind flayers into that setting, I would make it so they had accidentally stumbled into the pocket dimension and became trapped. They're marooned and are trying to escape.

[@oscargarciahinde4247]

The BBEG in my current campaign is a mind flayer and you've given me a ton of great ideas! Most of my players are very new and total normies so I'm gonna make this guy extra disturbing and disgusting for max effect.

[@davidstone9624]

The Cr5 Otyugh are great restraining beefy creatures that work great as Illithid minions.

[@pedrolongoria5667]

Mindflayers are always formidable however the types of mindflayers can make the difference for example an alhoon a lich mindflayer can be extremely difficult to truly be rid of perhaps it has multiple ways of coming back maybe it creates a pool of corrupted tadpoles that after its body is destroyed it can take the body of any infected with this special tadpole.

[@trinityprentice8221]

I would have made a rule in a campaign where the mind flayer since it has a Lovecraftian vibe is that a mortals brain registers it as a its squid head and squid like features as its physical form but looks completely different to another player because it is how that specific characters brain protect itself from going insane because its a completely unknown entity

[@hault360]

I had an idea for making the lair more grotesque and disturbing. Since the walls of the lair are always described as a black hardened sludge like substance that is organic in nature alot of people think of it as some excretion that the mindflayers spit up and have their thralls smear on the walls. This is ok but I like to make it more disturbing. Instead I reasoned that the mindflayers have lots of humanoid flesh left over as all they eat are the brains, sure they can feed that meat to any pets or carnivorous thralls but I like to think that the majority of left over flesh is dumped into a big vat and mixed with other discusting alchemical ingredients to be rendered down into that black organinc sludge that coats the walls... mindflayer wallpaper is rendered down human flesh

[@tysondennis1016]

Squidward with a craving for brains.

[@wbbartlett]

Like everything D&D, it takes a pretty cool idea, the mind flayer/mini-Cthulhu concept', and adds and adds and adds until it becomes ridiculous. Dragons, Elder Brains, Gith space elves, Brain dogs etc etc. I just stick with the mind flayer & ignore all the nonsense surrounding it. Good vid though 👍

[@chrisragner3882]

What about the humanoid carcasses with cracked skulls and void of their now consumed brains? Zombie thralls! I know thralls are already part of the lore but I thought this would build verisimilitude. Thinking back Night of the Living Dead when the zombies were seeking to eat living brains 🧠! An unexpected result.

[@Killerwale-hk4wy]

Minds flayers are near to non-existant in my world, but they have a big impact on history. To quickly summarize my worldbuilding. All the planes are planets within just one solar system. In a universe that has thousands of them. Although most have less life and way less magic. So even if you travel all the planes, there is still a near endless universe beyond. Where mindflayers came from is unknown, some say that they are a parasite that feasts on other universes, others say that they have been here as long as the planet that I play on. But what everyone knows, is that they once ruled the entire universe. Nothing could stop them. Until a mythical story of a slave girl et cet... basically a jesus figure, rallied many species together and pretty much exterminated the entire race, leaving only ruins. Afterwards, everyone returned, and due to mind flayer brain fuckery, forgot everything of other universes and all that. The only mind flayers encountered are either in historical scenery, or in old remnants of an ancient civilisation. I like to make these remnants horrifying, in order to show what kinds of unimaginable power they once had. It's really fun.

[@grumbolaya]

I'm using this video to make a mind flayer who is utterly incompetent. He has enslaved and transformed an entire snirfmeblin colony, but they are all squidlings.

[@Castheknotted]

Im doing an asylum that the mind flayers are running and only eat the insane that no one will miss

[@maxgrozema1093]

Mindflayers that have contracted Jakob Creuzfeldt disease from eating infected brains and are desperately looking for healers/clerics to cure them, sending out their thralls to hunt for them.

[@IrisDImtv]

Elder brain dragon -> Jabberwocky

[@BigOrangeLizard]

Here I am, probably never going to play dnd, listening to a guide about mind flayers.

[@amehayami934]

Actually Goofy is a Cow it has been confirmed by Disney.

[@nikolibarastov4487]

They're already Formidable, if you run them correctly.

[@DaDunge]

I don't like turning their metaknowlesge against players i prefer playing into tropes rather than subverting them.

[@nfsfreakism]

Imagine a city run by an elder brain with mindflayers disguised as city guard and politicians. Especially if it can use spells like "modify memory" and utilizing propaganda to condition its populace

[@natezabinski5615]

Lukewarm take (And honestly longer than I'd like): I'm kind of sick of jumping through the hoops of reestablishing cosmic horror in my games whenever I see the aberration monster type. Sure, I can ensorcell my players with the fear of the unknown by reskinning monsters and changing statblocks, but I don't think it's the end of the world when said players know what they're fighting. Especially! Especially when they are under-leveled, like every TTRPG influencer tells me to do when running a horror game. /Knowing/ that an alien colony is coming to enslave you and eat your brains can be just as scary as not knowing what the aliens want or do, it's just a different genre.

[@TKFKU]

Back in my day the mind flayer was formidable enough as it was. Though I suppose wotc have nerfed it a bit now. They nerfed the rest of the game.

[@chrisgriffith9252]

If you know where a monster takes a dump it is still scary... A bear takes a crap wherever it wants like my driveway and that is scary😮😮😮

[@alexanderchippel]

You used the phrase "cultural osmosis" wrong.

[@joeallen7981]

The Mind-Flayer Dragon does not, will not, and cannot ever exist in my games. It's just a case of "Well we have no new ideas so lets just power up by combining existing creatures.... This is scary right?" No, no it's not it's stupid.

[@AlyssMa7rin]

There's nothing wrong with viewing it that way. However, I don't think it's stupid for a Dragon to become a Mindflayer, especially since they can transform into a Humanoid form, and they have as much/more intelligence than most Humanoid races. Mindflayers feast on Humanoid brains, on their hopes and dreams, their thoughts, ambitions, and aspirations. Dragons have this in spades, and more. Assuming the Dragon were caught off guard, then it's not out of the question to imagine a Tadpoled Dragon, provided it's not too old. BUT, I'd argue a dragon's ceremorphosis would transform them into a Nautiloid, not into an Elder-Brain (unless it was some kind of greater ancient dragon of legendary status that couldn't be properly broken by the Tadpole)

[@2g33ksgamingttv3]

​@AlyssMa7rin that's because an elder brain dragon isn't a dragon that went through ceremorphosis (though those existed in previous editions and are called brainstealer dragons). The elder brain dragon is a dragon that an already existing elder brain grafts itself onto as a mobile brain eating/ weapon platform

[@dumbghost3109]

mindflayers dont crack open your skull. their tentacles slice and pierce through with no resistance.