The Mind Flayer

[crimhthanthegreat]

Have any of you ever used this monster? And if so how did you use it and how did it work out in your campaign? The Mind Flayer is presented in The Strategic Review Vol. 1 No.1. We did not want any form of psi powers in our game so we played the the Mind Flayer's Mind Blast as a spell from the very beginning. How did the rest of you handle it? We thought this was a great monster but we just chose to not use it as psionics since we did not want to go that direction.

As the Helm of Telepathy is mentioned in the Monster Description, we also played that as a spell, as we did any other psi power item or monster that we wanted to keep.

[Finarvyn]

Argh. I had planned a "Mind Flayer without Psionics" thread and you beat me to it.

Here's what they did in the Strategic Review:
Number Appearing 1-4
Armor Class 5
Move 12
Hit Dice 8+3
% in Lair 50%
Treasure F
Magical Resistance 90%

This is a super-intelligent, man-shaped creature with four tentacles by its mouth which it uses to strike its prey. If a tentacle hits it will then penetrate to the brain, draw it forth, and the monster will devour it. It will take one to four turns for the tentacle to reach the brain, at which time the victim is dead. A Mind Flayer will I flee if an encounter is going against it. Their major weapon, however, is the Mind Blast, a wave PSI force with a 6. directional range and a radius of 5.. All within the radius must save as indicated or will suffer the result shown:

Apologies for the way the table formatted.
Column #1 is "Intelligence of Opponent Mind Blast"
Column #2 is "Saving Throw at Range" for range 1-2
Column #3 is "Saving Throw at Range" for range 3-4
Column #4 is "Saving Throw at Range" for range 5-6
Column #5 is "Effect of Mind Blast"

3-4 19 19 17 Death
5-7 17 16 15 Coma, 3 days
8-10 15 14 13 Sleep, 1 hour
11-12 13 12 11 Stun, 3 turns
13-14 11 10 9 Confuse, 5 turns
15-16 9 8 7 Enrage, 7 turns
17 7 6 5 Feeblemind
18 5 4 3 Insanity, permanent

Magic users add +1 to their saving throws, and clerics add +2. A Helm of Telepathy adds a +4 to saving throws, and when such saves are made the attacking Mind Flayer is stunned for 3 turns.

[crimhthanthegreat]

I posted this originally in other topics, since I thought you wanted all the The Strategic Review there, but then I went back and saw the "that doesn't fit other categories" part.

[Deleted]

I love Mind Flayers and all the psionic monsters. I just got access to their description and stat line a few months ago.