While throwing a menacing Dragon into your 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons campaign or showing the threat of a marching army against your party is a fantastic way to keep your players interested, perhaps you can use a horrific Mind Flayer to spice up your story. Mind Flayers are the creepy yet cunning overlords from below that ta🌊ke over the minds of their victims to co⛦ntrol their thoughts and actions.

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One of the coolest creatures in Dungeons & Dragons, Mind Flayers can be used in various ways to cor🙈ner 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?

Dungeons & Dragons image showing several creatures including drow, kenku, goblin, and mindflayer arranged in a row.
Dungeons and Dragons: Campaign Case Creatures, via Wizards Of The Coast

Notorious antagonists that turn unwilling prey into mindless drones, Mind Flayers are alien-like creatures that are known to bend the will of others. Known to conquer creatures of lesser intelligence, there is countless evidence within Dungeons & Dragons lore that shows Mind Flayers taking over entire races to be used for their efforts.

On a technical level, Mind Flayers are considered “Lawful Evil” and possess 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

Qunbraxel, Leader Of The Grimlocks In Gibbet Crossing, Sits On A Throne.
Quanbraxel by Lily Abdullina

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 an innate sense of authority and will often pose and speak like royalty if needed; to them, everything else is below them, as they are the 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, which further proves the point that everything they do is to grow their hivꦉe mind and control everything.

Incorporating Mind Flayers Into A Story

Mind Flayer With Mind Crystal By Isabel Gibney
Mind Flayer With Mind Crystal By Isabel Gibney

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 se🦋veral w🌠ays 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 incluꦬde:

  • Reports of missing people keep appearing from the same town, with a Mind Flayer capturing them from a nearby mountain.
  • A politician makes a hasty decision, leaving a kingdom divided. Sages believe they are under Mind Flayer's control and need the party to prove it.
  • An evil ruler has recruited a Mind Flayer hive to build an army for him. Little does the ruler know that they are using them to build an army for the hive.

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

Dungeons & Dragons: In Improvised Weaponry by Alix Branwyn, an adventurer slams a mind flayer with treasure
Improvised Weaponry by Alix Branwyn 

Regarding role play as the Dungeon Master, keep your Mind Flayers intimidating and intriguing. Provide endless foreshadowing and build the tension around the possible threat before revealing🐎 the Mind Flayer.

Dungeon Masters can use p🅠lenty of plot exposition and storytelling about their surrounding environment to make their Mind Flayers more men🅠acing, such as:

  • Have nearby residents speak/act in a drone-like state as if the Mind Flayer has already got to them.
  • A traveler speaks in a deadpan voice to not worry about "evil matters" and the party should just go back where they came from.
  • Have the Mind Flayer appear in a Player Character's dream, with the monster telling them that they will siphon their thoughts if they linger longer.

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 dispܫatch them.

As for the Mind Flayer's speech, continues to be slow yet authoritative. In the practical sense, speak like you already know what your party is going to do/act, because technically as the D𓃲ung🌳eon Master you already have that information.

If the party attacks, be quick to use its “Mind Blast” and spellcasting abilities to show power because, 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 about toying with your party like a cat would with a mouse; continue to maintain pressu✅re and build up to lead to a satisfying outcome towards the end of your story.

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