Quick Links
While throwing a menacing Dragon into yourDungeons & Dragonscampaign or showing the threat of a marching army against your party is a fantastic way to keep your players interested, perhaps you may use a horrific Mind Flayer to spice up your story. Mind Flayers are the creepy yet cunning overlords from below that take over the minds of their victims to control their thoughts and actions.
One of the coolest creatures in Dungeons & Dragons, Mind Flayers can be used in various ways to corner a party and make them think twice before trying to rescue their hostages. As the Dungeon Master, you get the privilege of role-playing an intriguing beast that can lead adventurers down twisting rabbit holes.
What Is A Mind Flayer?
Notorious antagonists that turn unwilling prey into mindless drones,Mind Flayersare alien-like creatures that areknown to bend the will of others. Known to conquer creatures of lesser intelligence, there is countless evidence within Dungeons & Dragons lore that showsMind Flayers taking over entire racesto be used for their efforts.
On a technical level, Mind Flayers are considered “Lawful Evil” andpossess a high level of spellcasting abilities and can make psychic attacks through their own being.One such action, “Extract Brain,”allows a Mind Flayer to instantly kill its target by eating its brain when it drops to 0 hit points.
There is also a Mind Flayer variant called a“Mind Flayer Arcanist,”which can cast even more powerful spells than its regular form.
Since they spend a lot of time seeing through the eyes of their victims and controlling their actions,Mind Flayers tend to have lairs and hives where they reside, often hidden deep underground or on the side of a mountain.It would be far too risky for a Mind Flayer to hide somewhere within a city or kingdom.
Defining A Mind Flayer’s Personality
Incredibly cunning and intelligent,Mind Flayers do what they can to hide their plans and actions.On the few occasions when Mind Flayers speak to someone not within their hive (often through Telepathy or Deep Speech if they aren’t a hive mind),they keep their sentences short and to the point, not giving too much of their intentions away to any strangers.
Mind Flayers have aninnate sense of authorityand will often pose and speak like royalty if needed; to them, everything else is below them, as they arethe supreme rulers of the universe. However, while they treat everything else as nothing compared to them,they all still collectively follow a “Master Mind” or “Leader” for their cause,whichfurther proves the point that everything they do is to grow their hive mind and control everything.
Incorporating Mind Flayers Into A Story
Mind Flayers are not “one-off” creatures you can casually drop in a story.They come with endless lore and power that can be used in several ways in a campaign.
Similar to other iconic beasts like Dragons or Beholders,Dungeon Masters can have entire plotlines around Mind Flayers,and that could even be enough for a full campaign. Such examples of using Mind Flayers in a campaign include:
Every scenario can be played as big or small as you wish. As the Dungeon Master,you can decide how much you want to test your party against a Mind Flayer.
Roleplaying Mind Flayers
Regarding role play as the Dungeon Master,keep your Mind Flayers intimidating and intriguing.Provide endless foreshadowing andbuild the tensionaround the possible threat before revealing the Mind Flayer.
Dungeon Masters can use plenty of plot exposition and storytelling about their surrounding environment to make their Mind Flayers more menacing, such as:
When the time comes that your party faces a Mind Flayer,describe their grotesque appearance yet sharp intelligence;get the point across that this is no ordinary creature, and they will be in for a challenge if they want to defeat the hive.Don’t talk too much as the Mind Flayer, but instead, say short phrases and questions, as if the Mind Flayer was “building a profile of the party” so it can judge how best to dispatch them.
As for the Mind Flayer’s speech, continues to beslow yet authoritative.In the practical sense,speak like you already know what your party is going to do/act, because technically as the Dungeon Master you already have that information.
If the party attacks,be quick to use its “Mind Blast” and spellcasting abilities to show powerbecause,even if your party is severely hurt by it, the more they are terrified of it upfront, the better the payoff when they finally defeat it later. Roleplaying Mind Flayers is abouttoying with your party like a cat would with a mouse; continue to maintain pressure and build up to lead to a satisfying outcome towards the end of your story.
