FREQUENCY: Rare <(only
subterranean)>
FREQUENCY:
Rare ([Dungeon Level VII])
NO. APPEARING: 1-4
ARMOR CLASS: 5
MOVE: 12"
HIT DICE: 8 + 4
% IN LAIR: 50% (2 Mind Flayers:
subterranean, TPL45:9th, REF4.80)
TREASURE TYPE: [B], [S],
[T], [X]
NO. OF ATTACKS: 4 ~ 12
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 2 each
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Mind blast,
psionics, tentacle hit slays in 1-4 rounds
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 90%
INTELLIGENCE: Genius
ALIGNMENT Lawful evil <(greatly
evil, malicious: MP.72)>
SIZE: M
PSlONlC ABILITY: 241-340
Attack/Defense
Modes: A/F,
G,
H
(SA43.17)
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: VII |
1800 + 12
Mind flayers are found only in subterranean places, as they detest sunlight.
They are greatly evil and consider the bulk of humanity (and its kin) as cattle to feed upon.
TALK: These monsters speak
only their own arcane language and several other weird tongues --
purportedly those of terrible
races of things which dwell in regions of the subterranean world far deeper
than mankind has ever ventured. <perhaps, make table of Deep Underdark
languages>
The mind flayer's physical
attack is by striking a victim with its four
tentacles. If a tentacle
hits it will reach the opponent's brain in 1-4 melee
rounds and draw it forth,
immediately killing the creature. The mind flayer
then devours the brain.
Mind Blast: Its more
feared attack mode, however, is the mind
blast of psionic power.
All within a 6" directional cone of 1/2" diameter at
the point of emanation and
2" diameter at extreme range are affected
(psionic attack on non-psionic).
Q: The mind flayer?s
main attack is a
mind blast. What is this
exactly?
How often can it be used?
A: This is identical
to the psionic attack
mode psionic
blast. It is usable once per
melee round -- as long as
the user has
sufficient psionic strength.
(131.63)
ADQ: What is a mind
flayer's mind
blast? Is it the same as
attack A (psionic
blast) in the PH
and
DMG? If so, does
it
use up psionic strength
points, or is it an
innate ability?
ADA: A mind flayer's
psionic attack
mode is A (psionic blast),
not B (as given in
MM), and each use
costs the
standard 20 points of attack
strength. Note
that the maximum range is
60' and that the
victims may avoid the effect
with a special
save.
(See the AD&D Game
DMG.78).
(Polyhedron #26)
Mind flayers have the following
psionic abilities:
[levitation],
domination,
ESP,
body
equilibrium,
[astral
projection],
probability
travel.
They perform at 7th level
mastery.
Morale: If an encounter
is going against a mind flayer it will immediately flee,
seeking to save itself regardless
of its fellows or its treasure.
Lair: It is also rumored that these monsters have a city somewhere deep beneath the earth.
Description: The mind
flayer's skin glistens with slime. Its skin color is a
nauseous mauve, its tentacles
being purplish black. A mind flayer's eyes
are dead white, no pupil
being evident. The three long fingers of each
hand are reddish, but the
hands are mauve.
Mind Flayers (DSG):
The mind flayers, or illithid, are as alien and evil a race as exists
in the Underdark, with the
possible exception of the aboleth. In
fact, the aboleth are the
only other race toward whom the illithid
are not actively hostile.
Ancient legends suggest that a sinister
connection exists between
these two evil races.
The mind flayers do not actively
pursue the expansion of their
realms or the subjugation
of other races. Any human, humanoid,
or demi-human who is unlucky
enough to fall into the tentacles of
the illithids soon loses
his brain to satisfy their fiendish hunger.
His body is left to the plentiful
subterranean scavengers.
The mind flayers, as a race,
do have a goal, and their leaders
devote much effort toward
finding a way to achieve it. Because
they loathe the light of
day and hate being limited to the confining
chambers of the Underdark,
the mind flayers quest to destroy
that which bars them from
the surface world: they seek to douse
the fires of the sun itself!
Exactly how this is to be
accomplished has not been determined.
Since even limited exposure
to sunlight is very debilitating
to mind flayers, it is difficult
for them to study the object of
their loathing. Nonetheless,
their genius-level Intelligence and
significant psionic powers
give them hope of someday arriving at
a way to achieve their goal.
The mind flayers are a formidable
military force. If a battle or
encounter goes against them,
however, they use their probability
travel psionic ability to
escape. They are far too practical to fight
against difficult odds.
Mind flayer society is rigidly
organized, with status assigned
according to psionic ability.
Slaves are employed for most physical
tasks and are used as food.
These slaves are of all human and
humanoid races.
The illithid experiment with
the development of life forms. Their
communities are usually surrounded
by many unidentifiable
creatures that often resemble
crosses between humans and various
loathsome monsters. Though
slow, stupid, and horrible to
behold, these hybrids are
often endowed with savagery, poison,
or other special features
that make them formidable opponents.
They bear no love for their
creators.
Mind flayers trade very little
with other races, since they need
few material possessions.
Other races have been known to buy
immunity from mind flayer
raids by providing a steady supply of
slaves. Occasionally the
mind flayers and the aboleth enter into
temporary truces or pacts
of cooperation to achieve some mutual
goal-the subjugation of a
weak community, for example.
For more information on illithids,
see the Monster Manual.
Gnarley Bones wrote:
Gary, I have heard (probably
incorrectly) that you did not (and do not) play with psionics in your game?
If so, how do you handle
mind flayers in your game? I'm interested in doing away with psionics altogether
and would like to replace their psionic powers with comparable spells (charm,
suggestion, power word stun, etc).
Right you are. there were
no psionic or psychic powers in my campaign. A mind flayer did its blast
and/or used spell-like powers to affect others, just as you are doing in
your campaign.
Psychogenic Ability in the Lejendary Adventure game system worrks very much that way, and it is easy to use, can move into genres other than fantasy as well 8)
Cheers,
Gary
Those critters were generally
done before psionics were included in the OAD&D rules.
Thery were adjusted and
augmented to make them particularly dangerous to the psionicaly able PC.
Mental types of attack are
possible without having PCs be able to use and respond to them.
A few magic items can cover
a multitude of omissions, be they virtues or sins...
cheers,
Gary
Actually, I had to reach
a good deal to come up with the mind flayer, that being inspired by the
paperback cover of Brian Lumly's The Burrowers Beneath, and its
characteristics based on inferences in HPL's writing.
Quote:
Originally posted by
Anabstercorian
A few quick questions:
Originally posted by Anabstercorian
1) Where did the Mind Flayer
come from?
1) I was reading Brian Lumley's
THE BURROWERS BENEATH, and the cover made me think" Now what sort of nasty
bastard is that?
So, without a qualm I made
up the Illithid, the dreaded mind flayer, so as to keep the players on
their toes--or have their PCs turn their's upwards 
Mind Flayer--the depiction
inspired by the cover of the paperback noved by Brian Lumley, the Burrowers
Beneath, but all the detals made up by me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gray
Mouser
Hey Gary, here's my real
question for the day 
I was wondering if the unique
monsters that showed up in some of your monsters were ever sprung on your
hapless players outside of their original settings.
I am thinking primarily
of the Drow, Kuo-Toa, Svirfneblin, and even the beasties from Barrier Peaks.
Did these monsters ever
make it outside their original confines making their way to Castle Greyhawk
or other such places your players explored?
Gray Mouser
'Mouser, it would be perfect
if your actual anme were Harry Fischer <stick out tongue>
Anyway, while I was never
loath to proliferate critters in my campaign, none that you mention were
ever much outside the realm in which they were introduced.
Of course.
the vast labyrinth of the
underdark means that drow and the rest might pop up in any subterranean
place.
I really liked mind flayers
as the disguised evil manipulators of mankind, so they appeared in several
places in my campaign.
Cheerio,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Raloc
...
A couple of short questions.
Someone asked if you came
up with mind flayers, I'd just like to second that as they are probably
my favorite creature. I am using them in my current campaign in much the
way you mentioned.
The mind flayer I made up
out of whole cloth using my imagination, but inspired by the cover of Brian
Lumley's novel in paperback edition, The Burrowers Beneath
<edit>
Quote:
Originally Posted by TerraDave
Esteemed Col.
I have a question which I think you may have addressed, but am not sure.
Recently, the issue of "Mind Flayers from Outer Space" arose in a corespondance. Was it your intent that these where aliens of that sort. Has it been alluded to in Expedition to the Barier Peaks (my copy is in storage) or elsewhere?
And I always face high psychic
start up costs on any writting project. The amount of time I can spend
in the office and not write (at least on that big project) is amazing:
though not so amazing when EnWorld is factored in
No sir!
The Illithids were not meant to be extra-terrestrial in origination, rather marine and subterranean.
The best way to get a writing project started is to sit down and set to work without ado <paranoid> Oops! I just blew the writers' best excuse for goofng off... :\
Heh,
Gary
<edit>
Quote:
Originally Posted by jokamachi
Gary,
It's been fun to read all of your comments of late; of course dwarven women have beards! How anyone could think otherwise is beyond me!
Anyway, and more to the point, I'm curious to know how you developed the mind flayer. Did you have any source of inspiration or was it designed from scratch?
Sincerely,
jokamachi
Happy to answer...
When I was contemplating
the denizens for the vasty subterraneal realms I determined to create some
interesting races to populate the underdark. As with the drow, the Illithids
came mostly from my imagination after a spark of inspiration. For the drow
it was the dictionary mention as dark elves. For the mind flayers it was
the cover of Brian Lumley's paperback book, The Burrowers Beneath.
the thirs race was the Kuo-toans, but they provved to be less popular...
Simple as that
Cheers,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tav_Behemoth
Col., if the mists of wonder-crowded
memory allow, could you confirm or deny some speculation about the origins
of the mind flayer?
In an interview with Planewalker.com, Charles Stross said that his idea for the the githyanki & githzerai, that they had been bred as slave races by the mind flayers, was inspired by Larry Niven's World of Ptaavs. He suggested that whoever created the mind flayers (which I assume to have been your eminent self) might have been was inspired by Niven as well.
The similarities between Niven's Thrint, or Slavers, and mind flayers are that both are powerful telepaths & mind-controllers with tentacled faces (see Wayne Barlowe's interpretation). Knowing the depth of your reading in SF & fantasy, I imagine you might have read Niven World of Ptaavs back in '66 or so -- especially since I've been told that, back in the day, there was so little of "the good stuff" being published that fans could & did read everything they could get their hands on. And I've seen some evidence that Niven was in the minds of early D&D folks in the form of a cool old Erol Otus booklet of creatures and magic items that featured a Slaver disintegration rifle.
Any link between this great D&D monster and the great Known Space universe would, of course, only increase my admiration for your syncretic genius.
Well...
No need to speculate, for I can set forth the process in a few words. Larry Niven's writing had nothing to do with the creation of the Illithid race for the AD&D game.
I happened to be thinking
of devising a new terrible race if creatures inimical to humans, and my
eye fell upon a paperback book authored by Brian Lumley, The Burrowers
Beneath. The cover illustration was of a bipedal monster with a head resembling
a squid or an octopus. Voila!
That was a perfect model for an underground-dwelling race of fiendish predators on humankins, and thus the mind flayer was born.
I made up all the details of the race, of course, they being a form of AD&D monster.
BTW, the drow were inspired by no more than a dictionaly listing for the name as "dark elves," and i made up the kuo-toa out of whole cloth so as to have another underground race on distinctly non-human sort.
Cheers,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by StupidSmurf
I get a kick out of finding
out behind the scenes stuff like this. Thanks, Gary!
Incidentally, for the longest
time, whenever I saw an illustration of a mind flayer, the phrase "Cthulhu
fthgan" would run through my head
Welcome
As a matter of fact I have been a fan of HPL and those who developed his mythos for some decades now, so you were on target <cool>
Cheers,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey
And with mind flayers, did
you consider their tentacles and mind blast enough (while simply not using
their psionic abilities and psionic attack/defense modes)?
Thanks! 
Yup. The mind blast is a
pretty potent attack form, especially when there are multiple attackers
uning it.
Cheers,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey
Gary, how did you envision
mind flayers?
1. Were they native to Oerth, or
2. Did they come from another planet on the Prime Material Plane, or
3. Did they come from another plane?
Those monstrous creatures
were never native to any human planet 
I my mind they came from
another plane, managed to find their way to the Oerth...although they could
be spacefaring aliens whose ship crashed on the planet marooning them,
the occupants being sufficiently
numerous to have a viable breeding population.
Cheers,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Philotomy
Jurament
I love that concept for
mind flayers. (Actually, I like that concept, in general; it seems like
an honored element of the swords-n-sorcery tradition, to me.)
How my player group disliked
the Illithids when I introduced them into my campaign Most DMs liked them
a lot, though... 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tylerthehobo
Can you elaborate on the
Lovecraftian influence on mindflayers? I mean, there is a connection to
Cthulhu as hinted at in the original DMG, right? (or are all of us Lovecraft
fanatics just reading too much into things?)
As one that enjoys the whole
plethora of Lovecraftian yarns, those written by HPL and those created
by his cadre of followers, I freely admit that the cover of Brian Lumely's
paperback novel, The Burrowers Beneath, inspired me to create the
D&D mind-flayer.
I hoped then that it would
have been a monstrous creature that Lovecraft himself would have approved
of 
Cheerio,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tewligan
Perhaps their ship crashed
in...THE BARRIER PEAKS! Bum bum BUM!!!
I believe that such a starship
would need to be larger than the vessel that ended up in the Barrier Peaks.
I viable breeding population
would need at least 500 or so individuals methinks.
Cheerio,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghul
What if the mind flayer
males were as depicted in AD&D, but the females were some huge Cthulhoid
eldritch horror capable of laying hundreds of eggs! That would be fun!
:-)
Regards,
--Jeff T.
That idea is Alien to me...
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tarek
IIRC, the intro to Expedition
does say that this is only one module of the spacecraft in question...
who knows where others might have landed?
Perhaps one crash landed, with robots and crew more or less intact, in the mysterious realms bordering the Black Ice, and another, larger segment with stasis pods containing "unclassified organisms" disappeared into the dark depths of the Hepmonaland jungle...
Plausible, assuming that
the Illithids were the makers and crew of the starship.
Of course they could have
been collecting other lofe forms in their voyage through the galaxy...looking
for more nutrious brains perhaps... 
Cheers,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tewligan
Hello again, Gary. I had
a question as to how/if you used mind flayers or other psionic beasties
in your game. I seem to recall that you yourself weren't a fan of the psionics
rules, so I'm assuming (possibly wrongly) that you didn't use them in your
own games. If you ever used mind flayers in your campaign, how did you
run them? Did you use the psionics rules for them and only them? Ignore
psionics entirely? Make some other quick-n-dirty rulings to represent their
superbrains? I may use mind flayers myself if I ever get the chance to
run a 1e game again, and I don't want to mess around with the psionics
rules if I can avoid it!
Ah yes, Illithids were indeed
found in my campaign.
They delivered a mind blast
to one target subject, it causing damage without inclusion of psionic element,
A stunned victim would then
be struck by the brain-devouring tentacles.
Cheers,
Gary
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tewligan
Ah, nice and tidy (well,
rules-wise, anyway...)! Thanks for the quick reply, good sir!
Thanks. That enabled avoidance
of the clunky, grafted on psionics mechanics I was talked into adding to
the AD&D game.
