Thanks for clicking, I'm looking for a "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" style bit of advice on using a Mind Flayer Arcanist as the villain of an upcoming one shot.
Large party of three lvl 7s & five lvl 6s. I'll be running this fast and loose with the players being "Domains Of Dread-whisked-away" by the mists and awakening in Bluetspur, at the base of Mt. Makab.
3 encounters: 4 Vampiric Mind Flayers to start, then a Brain in a Jar controlling 2 Grells and a trio of Intellect Devourers; all wrapping up with an Mind Flayer Arcanist and a pair of pet Nothics.
So.....what is the advice you are seeking? If you need the monsters do act like they know what they are doing.....just do that? Have the monsters act as efficiently as possible and don't make stupid tactical choices.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
Depends on how hard you want to play it. First off against 8 PCs, I’d suggest more enemies in pretty much all the fights. 8v3 is not going to be a very hard fight. Though, I’d also say that big of a group will be a challenge. For the players, it could easily be 20-30 minutes between their turns. It could get really boring. As for advice, a mind flayer is smart and possibly very old. It’s seen a lot and knows a lot. It’s going to target the healer first. Which is usually solid play for someone who knows what they’re doing. If you really want to play up the enemies being mean, assume the mind flayer have dealt with “heroes” before, and knows about whack-a-mole healing. So, have them hit PCs who are down. You can get away with doing it only once or twice, just to keep the players on their toes. Or, if it’s a 1-shot and you don’t have to worry about them living, feel free to just pile on.
So.....what is the advice you are seeking? If you need the monsters do act like they know what they are doing.....just do that? Have the monsters act as efficiently as possible and don't make stupid tactical choices.
They're asking what the non-stupid tactical choices are because they don't know.
First, let's look at some math. Eight players is a big party! Without knowing their classes, it's safe to say they each have between 30 to 75 hit points. A mind flayer arcanist makes 3 tentacle attacks in melee that each do about 27 hp damage. So each baddie can kill one player per round, on a good day. Their AoE Mind Blast can kill weak players in one action and seriously injure the rest. And their magic resistance will mean the party's spell casters won't be as effective as they had planned. Plus the mind flayer arcanists have really good perception and darkvision, so it'll be extra tough for a rogue to get a Sneak Attack on them. So the math looks good for the bad guys. But! Eight people is a lot of people! If they coordinate their attacks, they'll kill one arcanist per round. So it'll be a fair fight, and some members of the party will probably die, but if they work together they'll be okay. But that also assumes that they're starting the fight fully refreshed. They won't be.
So let's lay it out.
The Arrival: The party somehow gets whisked away to the spooky demiplane of Bluetspur. You can figure some reason to tie it into your larger plot, but here they are at the base of a mountain at night. They'll be discombobulated, they'll want to get their bearings. One of them will see several small creatures the size of small dogs running toward them from the very limit of their sight. this is a wandering group of 6 Intellect Devourers. It'll be an easy fight, but there is a chance that someone will fail their save against Devour Intellect in round one, and then fail their save against Steal Body in round two. So there's a small chance that one player is off the table within a minute of arrival. The odds are low, but it'll put the players on edge and they'll know what they're up against. After the fight, whoever rolls the highest Perception, tell them they see a faint trail of small dark purpley wispy lights leading up the mountainside toward a cave. The party will follow, because there's nothing else around, and maybe the cave offers safety. They'll need to make Athletics checks to climb the 100' to the cave, but this is just to make them feel slowed and frustrated. At worst maybe someone takes a few HP of skinned knee damage.
The Entrance: They get into the cave and the wispy lights vanish. The party is in utter darkness. They'll all scream, "I have Darkvision!" at once, but not until after the Vampiric Mind Flayers who are using Spider Climb to cling to the cave ceiling above them drop down to attack them. It'll be a shock, and the party will get all anxious and paranoid, but they'll kill the 4 Vampiric Mind Flayers without too much trouble. First round the VMFs will just focus on hitting and doing damage to get the party worried. Second round they'll use Disrupt Psyche, because players hate nothing more than being incapacitated. But the party should win that fight in about 3 rounds. The cave leads down a long dark rock tunnel to a large room with a large set of locked metal double-doors. Whether the rogue picks the lock or the barbarian break the doors down doesn't matter, because the Brain in a Jar has already sensed their presence. They may try to stealth, but from here on in, every bad guy knows the party is coming. After the door is a large room with the Brain in a Jar sitting on table or altar or something, maybe scatter a few humanoid corpses around the room with their skulls cracked open and their brains missing. The BiaJ will immediately use Charm Person on whomever looks tough, and will offer them safety and a return home if they turn against their party and protect the BiaJ. And then a pair of Grells flies down from some dark tunnels in the ceiling. So the party will be fighting 2 Grells and maybe their own barbarian, while the BiaJ keeps using Mind Blast, Command, and Hold Person to deny the party members their full actions. Grells aren't tough, but they can paralyze you, and with the BiaJ's shenanigans, the party will find this easy fight turning real hard real fast, because only half of them will be able to do anything at all each round. If the fight is too easy, then once one Grell is killed, another shows up. Eventually, the party will smash the Brain in a Jar pretty easily, because it has an AC of 11.
The Invitation: The other end of this big chamber has another set of big metal double doors. The party hears the lock click and one door opens. A well dressed Nothic, maybe wearing an old college professor's robe, walks in reading an old tome in its hands. It closes the book and addresses the party in a formal manner. (I know the book says they only speak Undercommon, but Nothics spend 1000 years in a library, they're gonna know other languages!) So it speaks in Undercommon, but each player hears the words in their own language as well. "The Masters of the House ask that you please depart quietly. They have much work to do, and the noise is rather unacceptable. Thank you." And it will turn to walk back into the room and the door will begin to close. Maybe the party gets to the door before it closes, maybe they make a quick ranged attack, maybe they have to pick another lock. but they will get into that next chamber.
The Big Fight: Beyond those doors is a massive chamber, at least 150 feet square. It's a combination of a library, a biochemistry lab, and a mad scientist playground. There are rows of library stacks of books, there are operating tables with dead humanoids with their brains or entire heads removed, there's a set of shelves with sets of jars with various organs and body parts floating in liquid, there are tables full of books, and creepy surgical tools, and vaguely scientific instruments, there are chains hanging across the ceiling, etc. Go crazy with the interior design. There is also a mezzanine walkway around the edges of the chamber, 15 feet up, to give the battle some 3-D effects. There's a Mind Flayer Arcanist in the center of the room calmly removing a brain from a humanoid subject, there's a Mind Flayer Arcanist on the mezzanine across the room reading a book, and there's a Mind Flayer Arcanist off to the side of the room doing some creepy chemistry experiment with beakers and a Bunsen burner and whatnot. And there are three well dressed Nothics assisting them with research and cleaning their instruments. The MFA's will immediately consider the party just a bunch of uncouth hooligans incapable of understanding or appreciating the important work being done here. So they may ask the party to just leave peacefully and let them continue their work.
The party won't do that. Obviously. So that's Initiative. Between the MFA's darkvision and the Nothic's truesight, no one's getting any stealth advantages here, despite the darkness. The Nothics will each use their Rotting Gaze as they also try gather and protect whatever books and instruments were in use. They will only resort to melee as a last resort, or if a MFA orders them to protect it. The Nothics are not a challenge. They're glorified librarians. the Mind Flayer Arcanists are a problem. They're spread out, so AoE spells won't help. Plus they have magic resistance. On Round 1, the MFA on the mezzanine drops a Fireball on the party, the one off to the side uses Lightning Bolt, and the one in the center uses its Mind Blast. So right off the bat the party just lost at least half of their hit points and 1 or 2 of them are stunned. On Round 2, the one on the mezzanine casts Sending to inform its superiors that the lab is under attack, then begins gathering books and papers. The one on the side uses Mind Blast and the one in the center is now in melee using 3 tentacle attacks per round. By the end of Round 3, one MFA will be dead, the other will be in melee, and the third will just be gathering books and papers and telepathically screaming at the party for interrupting such important work with your stupid senseless mindless violence you pathetic little worms this is why your species will never evolve and will never achieve anything of value because you're all just a bunch of ignorant brute savages! By Round 4 or 5, two MFA's will be dead and the last one will have an armful of books and papers as it uses Dimension Door to escape, but at the last moment before disappearing it'll hit the party with a truly devastating telepathic insult, possibly directed at their matrilineal infidelities.
The Resolution: So that's it. What's left of the party is standing in a mad scientist lair that would give Victor Frankenstein the willies. But there's tons of books, for potential lore, and there's tons of creepy stuff that some shadowfell black market would go nuts for, and there's some bags of gems and incenses and oils and such that the MFA's were using as spell components. Now you just have to figure how to get the party home. Maybe they secure the room, cast Alarm, and try to get a long rest here, but they wake up back in their world. Sure. That could work.
Thanks for clicking, I'm looking for a "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" style bit of advice on using a Mind Flayer Arcanist as the villain of an upcoming one shot.
Large party of three lvl 7s & five lvl 6s. I'll be running this fast and loose with the players being "Domains Of Dread-whisked-away" by the mists and awakening in Bluetspur, at the base of Mt. Makab.
3 encounters: 4 Vampiric Mind Flayers to start, then a Brain in a Jar controlling 2 Grells and a trio of Intellect Devourers; all wrapping up with an Mind Flayer Arcanist and a pair of pet Nothics.
So.....what is the advice you are seeking? If you need the monsters do act like they know what they are doing.....just do that? Have the monsters act as efficiently as possible and don't make stupid tactical choices.
Depends on how hard you want to play it. First off against 8 PCs, I’d suggest more enemies in pretty much all the fights. 8v3 is not going to be a very hard fight. Though, I’d also say that big of a group will be a challenge. For the players, it could easily be 20-30 minutes between their turns. It could get really boring.
As for advice, a mind flayer is smart and possibly very old. It’s seen a lot and knows a lot. It’s going to target the healer first. Which is usually solid play for someone who knows what they’re doing.
If you really want to play up the enemies being mean, assume the mind flayer have dealt with “heroes” before, and knows about whack-a-mole healing. So, have them hit PCs who are down. You can get away with doing it only once or twice, just to keep the players on their toes. Or, if it’s a 1-shot and you don’t have to worry about them living, feel free to just pile on.
They're asking what the non-stupid tactical choices are because they don't know.
pronouns: he/she/they
Sorry, when I wrote The Monsters Know What They're Doing I was referencing the book series and website of that name.
This is all great, thanks! I'll definitely have the kid gloves off and focusing on action economy.
First, let's look at some math. Eight players is a big party! Without knowing their classes, it's safe to say they each have between 30 to 75 hit points. A mind flayer arcanist makes 3 tentacle attacks in melee that each do about 27 hp damage. So each baddie can kill one player per round, on a good day. Their AoE Mind Blast can kill weak players in one action and seriously injure the rest. And their magic resistance will mean the party's spell casters won't be as effective as they had planned. Plus the mind flayer arcanists have really good perception and darkvision, so it'll be extra tough for a rogue to get a Sneak Attack on them. So the math looks good for the bad guys. But! Eight people is a lot of people! If they coordinate their attacks, they'll kill one arcanist per round. So it'll be a fair fight, and some members of the party will probably die, but if they work together they'll be okay. But that also assumes that they're starting the fight fully refreshed. They won't be.
So let's lay it out.
The Arrival: The party somehow gets whisked away to the spooky demiplane of Bluetspur. You can figure some reason to tie it into your larger plot, but here they are at the base of a mountain at night. They'll be discombobulated, they'll want to get their bearings. One of them will see several small creatures the size of small dogs running toward them from the very limit of their sight. this is a wandering group of 6 Intellect Devourers. It'll be an easy fight, but there is a chance that someone will fail their save against Devour Intellect in round one, and then fail their save against Steal Body in round two. So there's a small chance that one player is off the table within a minute of arrival. The odds are low, but it'll put the players on edge and they'll know what they're up against. After the fight, whoever rolls the highest Perception, tell them they see a faint trail of small dark purpley wispy lights leading up the mountainside toward a cave. The party will follow, because there's nothing else around, and maybe the cave offers safety. They'll need to make Athletics checks to climb the 100' to the cave, but this is just to make them feel slowed and frustrated. At worst maybe someone takes a few HP of skinned knee damage.
The Entrance: They get into the cave and the wispy lights vanish. The party is in utter darkness. They'll all scream, "I have Darkvision!" at once, but not until after the Vampiric Mind Flayers who are using Spider Climb to cling to the cave ceiling above them drop down to attack them. It'll be a shock, and the party will get all anxious and paranoid, but they'll kill the 4 Vampiric Mind Flayers without too much trouble. First round the VMFs will just focus on hitting and doing damage to get the party worried. Second round they'll use Disrupt Psyche, because players hate nothing more than being incapacitated. But the party should win that fight in about 3 rounds. The cave leads down a long dark rock tunnel to a large room with a large set of locked metal double-doors. Whether the rogue picks the lock or the barbarian break the doors down doesn't matter, because the Brain in a Jar has already sensed their presence. They may try to stealth, but from here on in, every bad guy knows the party is coming. After the door is a large room with the Brain in a Jar sitting on table or altar or something, maybe scatter a few humanoid corpses around the room with their skulls cracked open and their brains missing. The BiaJ will immediately use Charm Person on whomever looks tough, and will offer them safety and a return home if they turn against their party and protect the BiaJ. And then a pair of Grells flies down from some dark tunnels in the ceiling. So the party will be fighting 2 Grells and maybe their own barbarian, while the BiaJ keeps using Mind Blast, Command, and Hold Person to deny the party members their full actions. Grells aren't tough, but they can paralyze you, and with the BiaJ's shenanigans, the party will find this easy fight turning real hard real fast, because only half of them will be able to do anything at all each round. If the fight is too easy, then once one Grell is killed, another shows up. Eventually, the party will smash the Brain in a Jar pretty easily, because it has an AC of 11.
The Invitation: The other end of this big chamber has another set of big metal double doors. The party hears the lock click and one door opens. A well dressed Nothic, maybe wearing an old college professor's robe, walks in reading an old tome in its hands. It closes the book and addresses the party in a formal manner. (I know the book says they only speak Undercommon, but Nothics spend 1000 years in a library, they're gonna know other languages!) So it speaks in Undercommon, but each player hears the words in their own language as well. "The Masters of the House ask that you please depart quietly. They have much work to do, and the noise is rather unacceptable. Thank you." And it will turn to walk back into the room and the door will begin to close. Maybe the party gets to the door before it closes, maybe they make a quick ranged attack, maybe they have to pick another lock. but they will get into that next chamber.
The Big Fight: Beyond those doors is a massive chamber, at least 150 feet square. It's a combination of a library, a biochemistry lab, and a mad scientist playground. There are rows of library stacks of books, there are operating tables with dead humanoids with their brains or entire heads removed, there's a set of shelves with sets of jars with various organs and body parts floating in liquid, there are tables full of books, and creepy surgical tools, and vaguely scientific instruments, there are chains hanging across the ceiling, etc. Go crazy with the interior design. There is also a mezzanine walkway around the edges of the chamber, 15 feet up, to give the battle some 3-D effects. There's a Mind Flayer Arcanist in the center of the room calmly removing a brain from a humanoid subject, there's a Mind Flayer Arcanist on the mezzanine across the room reading a book, and there's a Mind Flayer Arcanist off to the side of the room doing some creepy chemistry experiment with beakers and a Bunsen burner and whatnot. And there are three well dressed Nothics assisting them with research and cleaning their instruments. The MFA's will immediately consider the party just a bunch of uncouth hooligans incapable of understanding or appreciating the important work being done here. So they may ask the party to just leave peacefully and let them continue their work.
The party won't do that. Obviously. So that's Initiative. Between the MFA's darkvision and the Nothic's truesight, no one's getting any stealth advantages here, despite the darkness. The Nothics will each use their Rotting Gaze as they also try gather and protect whatever books and instruments were in use. They will only resort to melee as a last resort, or if a MFA orders them to protect it. The Nothics are not a challenge. They're glorified librarians. the Mind Flayer Arcanists are a problem. They're spread out, so AoE spells won't help. Plus they have magic resistance. On Round 1, the MFA on the mezzanine drops a Fireball on the party, the one off to the side uses Lightning Bolt, and the one in the center uses its Mind Blast. So right off the bat the party just lost at least half of their hit points and 1 or 2 of them are stunned. On Round 2, the one on the mezzanine casts Sending to inform its superiors that the lab is under attack, then begins gathering books and papers. The one on the side uses Mind Blast and the one in the center is now in melee using 3 tentacle attacks per round. By the end of Round 3, one MFA will be dead, the other will be in melee, and the third will just be gathering books and papers and telepathically screaming at the party for interrupting such important work with your stupid senseless mindless violence you pathetic little worms this is why your species will never evolve and will never achieve anything of value because you're all just a bunch of ignorant brute savages! By Round 4 or 5, two MFA's will be dead and the last one will have an armful of books and papers as it uses Dimension Door to escape, but at the last moment before disappearing it'll hit the party with a truly devastating telepathic insult, possibly directed at their matrilineal infidelities.
The Resolution: So that's it. What's left of the party is standing in a mad scientist lair that would give Victor Frankenstein the willies. But there's tons of books, for potential lore, and there's tons of creepy stuff that some shadowfell black market would go nuts for, and there's some bags of gems and incenses and oils and such that the MFA's were using as spell components. Now you just have to figure how to get the party home. Maybe they secure the room, cast Alarm, and try to get a long rest here, but they wake up back in their world. Sure. That could work.
Sorry if I rambled a bit. Hope this helps.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
ANZIOFARO! This is AMAZING! Wow! So much more than I was hoping for! Thank you thank YOU!!!
Wow! You really delivered! Thank again!
Happy to help, bud. I been doin' this a long time.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.