It's All in the Mind Flayer

24/4/2024

I recently had fun dusting off and refining my No Fear Psionics rules for Dragonslayer RPG. Now it's time to add the psionic monsters to the Dragonslayer roster - and that means an opportunity to reconsider these (largely underused) critters and their contribution to D&D over the years.

Psionic Bestiary for Dragonslayer

Most of these monsters are familiar from the revered 1st edition Monster Manual (1977), although Githyanki and Githzerai turned up in the later Fiend Folio (1891). However, many of these monsters pre-date AD&D. They first appeared in 1976's Eldritch Wizardry supplement along with the first rules for psionics. In fact, Mind Flayers go back even further, to the first issue of Strategic Review in 1975. So, whatever you might think of psionics (and most people seem to think very poorly of psionics), these are 'core monsters' who perhaps deserve a little more love. Perhaps.

Whoops!!!! I'd love to see a D&D monster manual from 1891, but we all know the Fiend Folio was from 1981. Thanks, Internet, for catching this one!

The 'Psi Pests'

This is a suite of monsters who function more as traps than as combat encounters. Think of them as 'psi pests' - the grit in the ointment of psionicism, inconveniences you have to take account of once you've become psi-aware.

The adorable brain moles, for example. I'm not sure whether these are a distinct species of dungeon-dwelling mole, or just ordinary moles who were psionically aware the whole time. Either way, they mind their own business until someone nearby uses psionic powers, then they start 'burrowing' into your mind, which sounds horrific (and is surprisingly high powered at 121-point strength).

In AD&D, these beasties drain your psionic defence points at quite a rate. You can't psionic them back: you have to dig them up and splat them (they've only got 1hp) or run away. Much merriment as the psionicist writhes, screaming 'Get them out of my MIND!' while the rest of the party grabs shovels to dig out these rodents and play whack-a-mole. Much less merriment if the victim is someone using psionic-style magic, in which case there's a solid chance of permanent insanity.

It's a bit hard to imagine placing these creatures in a dungeon or wandering monster table: if you're not using your powers, they do literally nothing; if you are, then non-psionicists might end up losing a PC to them, while actually psionicists probably only face losing a lot of points that they can restore by resting.

Cerebral parasites are mere annoyances. They attach themselves to you if you're using psionics or psi-magic while they are nearby and they drain your psionic power. Cure disease gets rid of them once you know they're there, so keep a cleric or paladin handy.

I could imagine a cruel DM placing these things on a magic item or an infested monster, so the PCs acquire them during looting. Players will quickly realise what's going on as their psionic strength drains away - so if you don't like psionics but a PC has got them, infesting them with parasites is a great way of making sure they can't use their powers .

The psi-variant grey oozes and yellow molds are entertaining twists on familiar monsters. Their psionic powers are pretty much one-shot-and-done, but I like the idea of a mold dominating a hapless psionicist and using them to attract more victims.

Finally, the duck-billed thought eater. These things are very difficult to deal with. They are attracted to psionic powers or psi-related magic and once they start 'feeding' psionicists lose points, spellcasters lose spells, hapless users of psi-related magic items (like a Helm of Telepathy or Medallion of ESP) actually lose permanent intelligence. There's no effective response, unless you can turn ethereal or know the high level mind bar spell - and they can pursue you (albeit slowly) if you try to flee. I could imagine a vindictive DM placing these as guardians of treasure troves or watchdogs for mind flayer lairs.

In my No-Fear Psionics system, these critters usually turn up only if a psionicist triggers the 'alarm' penalty, making them a day-to-day risk of over-using psionic powers. They are all slightly more menacing than they were in AD&D, because the Psionic Stress Die is rather more volatile than losing old-fashioned psionic strength points.

I've allowed Tower of Iron Will to count as an partial defence against thought eaters, just so that experienced psionicists can do something against these things - otherwise, ditch your armour and run away.

Mid-Level Mind Menaces

I'm putting su-monsters in this category. Su-monsters originate in Eldritch Wizardy, but seem to be based on an obscure South American cryptid. They each have a random one-shot psionic attack, then revert to melee - but the problem is that they have 5 attacks each and you can encounter up to 12 of them. If you add in the very good chance that a psionic blast will have confused a party member, you'll see they can be quite a handful. Confusion in the middle of a messy melee is no fun, as anyone who's fought an umber hulk will tell you.

I've simplified su-monsters, going back to their Eldritch Wizardry stats but reducing the number appearing to 1d6 rather than 1d12 and simplifying the effects of psionic blast to a simple Wands save to avoid confusion.

The point is, if the psionicist accidentally summons these things with a mental shriek, her non-psionic comrades will be less than impressed!

Githians were a memorable contribution to AD&D from the UK. Githyanki turned up in White Dwarf 12 (1979), in the regular 'Fiend Factory' column, created by Charles Stross (yes, the writer of The Laundry Files) and took their name from a race mentioned (but not described) in a George R. R. Martin story (Dying of the Light, 1977). The 1981 Fiend Folio expanded on the Githyanki, added the rival Githzerai, and used memorable art by the late Russ Nicholson. I've lumped them together as 'Githians' rather than treating them as two separate monster entries.

Githyanki are a great example of a monster that has secured canonical status through its cool aesthetic and backstory rather than anything noteworthy about its statblock.

Stross's original Githyanki were really just high level human fighters and magic-users (with a few anti-paladin bosses), hanging out on the Astral Plane, wielding OP magic swords, and riding red dragons, plus pretty fulsome psionic powers The Githzerai were boring by contrast - but then, pretty much anything is boring by contrast with that.

I've toned down the swords (I mean, why would you make them intelligent as well?) and devised a simpler table for randomly generating a Gith band and their equipment. Essentially, this is a slimmed down version of the two groups suitable to be 'psionic wandering monsters.' I've made the Githzerai into monks and illusionists, to distinguish them somewhat from the Githyanki, and given both groups a resistance to mind flayers' anti-magic (otherwise, why on oerth would they specialise in being spellcasters?). Naming the silvery material they forge into swords and armour as orichalcum is a nod to medieval alchemy.

To mind flayers, then. It's hard to understate the impact this monster has had on D&D as a brand. They were created whole-cloth by Gary Gygax in 1975, predating any rules for psionics, but inspired by the tentacular cover of Brian Lumley's Lovecraftian horror-SF novel The Burrowers Beneath (1974).

They were fully statted in Eldritch Wizardry and reinterpreted in the Monster Manual as full-on psionicists. Since then, they've proved perennially popular as Big Bad Evil Guys in all sorts of campaigns, combining as they do Cthulhoid weirdness with Ming the Merciless-themed super-villainy.

Mind Flayers have three striking features. Their psionic blast affects everyone, psionic or otherwise, in a big cone-shaped area of effect. Nasty. I've simplified the effects but, yup, it's confusion again if you fail your save.

Next, it's those tentacles, which slurp your brain 1d4 rounds after a successful hit, no save.

Finally, they've got 90% magic resistance. In EW that seems to be a flat 90% chance spells will fail, but the Monster Manual clarifies that this assumes a 11th level caster: add 5% for each level lower. This makes mind flayers, for all intents and purposes, 100% resistant to PC spells, so getting rid of a 8+4 HD monster in 1-4 rounds without using spells ... well, good luck.

I've toned mind flayers down a bit. In my 'No-Fear Psionics' rules, Tower of Iron Will is pretty good against psionic blasts, forcing the MF to roll to hit AC 0 against everyone protected by it - and then saving throws for the non-psionicists too. I allow you to whack the tentacle that's reaching for your brain, forcing it to withdraw. I've made their anti-magic a flat 1-5 on a d6 immunity - and I think PC spellcasters should be able to take a Feat like 'Astral Magic' that overpowers magic resistance, reducing its effectiveness to 1 in 6.

Last of all, intellect devourers, the vicious brains-on-legs. Anything that gets 4 attacks/round is a problem, even if the damage is only d4 - but the problem with IDs isn't what they do to you, it's your inability to do anything to them. The original IDs were immune to almost everything: a single point of damage from +3 weapons, minimum damage from lightning bolts, 25% chance a death spell will work - sheesh! In my re-write, +3 weapons and all spells do minimum damage, which gives you some chance of chipping away at them if you don't have a psionicist in the party.

These monsters raise questions in my mind about what the original designers intended for psionics. Psionic combat gets very unbalanced when someone is outnumbered, which is probably why all of these monsters only turn up in groups of 1-4. Heaven help you if you end up in a Githyanki lair, because no individual can resist multiple competent psionicists coordinating their attacks.

Mind flayers and intellect devourers seem to be designed to force you to engage with them psionically. MFs are practically immune to magic and the tentacles deter anyone from entering melee combat with them. IDs are pretty much immune to anything you can throw at them besides psionics. In other words, if you don't use psionics in your campaign, you can't reasonably deploy these iconic monsters, at least not RAW.

Top Tier Telepaths

When Eldritch Wizardry first introduced demons, a number of them were revealed to be powerful psionicists.

It doesn't really hang together for me. Demons and devils seem to be the embodiment of clerical magic or sorcery, not SF-themed psionics. Psionics fit well with the alien mind flayers and their githian rebels. Why do infernal beings have psionics?

Some case could be made. Lyndon Hardy's Master of the Five Magics (1980) concludes with a fantastic psionic duel between the hero Alodar and the demon lord. TV's Supernatural features demons who fling people about telekinetically, in a way that feels very psionic. The idea of demons tempting and influencing people on a psychic level fits better with innate psionics than casting spells.

I dunno, it still feels 'off.' Perhaps Gary Gygax just made demons and devils into psionicists to prevent psionic PCs from being able to overpower his favourite bad guys - we know Gary could be petty in this way, because that's why Yeenoghu exists.

If the embodiments of evil are psionicists, then the avatars of good need to be psionic too. In EW, couatl, shedu, and ki-rin get psionic powers and titans are entirely immune to psionic attack. Then the Monster Manual goes and gives titans psionic attack modes too, which is dumb. Titans can wander into the infernal realms and psionically clobber demon lords are arch-devils and there's nothing the bad guys can do to them in return. Silly. Also silly is the lazy way couatl are assigned "9 to 16 clerical abilities with commensurate attack and defence modes" - the Monster Manual restricts it to 6 powers but retains the baffling reference to "commensurate" modes, whatever that means.

Since Greg Gillespie didn't see fit to import shedu or ki-rin into Dragonslayer, I'm not going to bother either. I doubt anyone misses them. I've assigned some psionic stats to couatl and I recommend making titans fully immune to psionics, but without any psionic attack powers, as per original Eldritch Wizardry.

Begun, the Mind Wars Have ...!?!

If you have a psionic PC in your campaign and you use my No-Fear Psionics rules, you might decide to use the 'alarm' penalty for psionic misuse. This means that, once Psionic Stress builds too high, the psionicist discharges it in a psychic shriek that attracts psionic wandering monsters. This gets you over the problem of stocking dungeons with brain moles or thought eaters - they might turn up anyway if the psionic PC is careless or unlucky.

This procedure implies something going on in the deep campaign background: a sort of psychic cold war: the Mind War.

Obviously, the Mind War is being fought between the mind flayers and the githians, but secret societies and monastic orders will also be training their members and venturing into the psychic battlefield. At the highest level, maybe infernal and divine beings are the generals - or maybe the real warlords are beholders (ahem, eye tyrants) or duergar or dark elves, maybe nagas or sphinxes or even psionic dragons.

PC psionicists start off encountering psychic predators and scavengers, but as they rise in power they start meeting the scouts and shock troops of the Mind Wars. You can try telling those Githians that you're just treasure-seeking adventurers, because they will reply that you only think that's wjhat you are, that your motives and memories are not your own - then they psionic blast you.

High level PCs might decide to get involved in the Mind Wars. They will probably die before they figure out what's going on. It's not just the monsters being teleported into your fortress or your loved ones being dominated into killing you - it's the realisation that you can't trust your memories, that you may in fact be dreaming, that you cannot even be sure you are who you think you are.

Damn - now I want to run a high level psionics campaign.

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