how to ACTUALLY use Mindflayers in D&D

[Music] hello gamers i'm antonio damico this is pointy hat and welcome to dnd with a twist the show where i throw a dart at one of my dnd books to pick a class a race a monster a spell a weird little guy anything but dragons and then i give whatever the dart landed on and you twist that you can use when playing the game it's like a caterpillar blossoming to a beautiful butterfly except instead of a butterfly it's just weird now so when i think of mind players i think of i thought i'd have some cosmic horror turns out i'm a cosmic my players are the monster for people that are weirdly into lovecraft and those with creative ideas regarding tentacles along with beholders and rose mind players are one of the most iconic villains in d d they are aberrations which as you know is the monster type reserved for the most gruesome weird unnatural freaky disgusting creatures in the game hey hey cut it down we've gone over the stop it so let's get some terminology out of the way here mind players are also called illithids the name was first uttered among mists of time primogenial back when the world was new a nearly forgotten era for now none live who remember it this time was called the 70s basically as far as i can find mindflear was indeed the original term but when d d transitioned from hack and slash into a thing with actual lore and monster ecology and stuff the term illithid was introduced to describe the race nowadays most people use mindflayer as like the common term with joe and joanne that live on the farm five miles away from water deep would call anilithid illithid is reserved for scholars nerds and that weird bald man that haunts me by doing the dreamworks face on d d books stop this madness what do you want from me what do you want please my players are squid guys they are humanoid but with an octopus for a face a purple squid thing i'm like really struggling here not to just describe them as cthulhu looking eyes their skin is tiefling colored with illustrations of green and pink mind flayers in older editions although 5v has seemingly gone for just purple they are apparently covered in slime which must mean they must have the most developed and most advanced system of dry cleaning in the universe since they insist on wearing loose flowing robes they have four tentacles around their gross little lamprey mouse that are actually really strong and can be used in combat and their hands are just like creepypasta monster hands honestly aside from the very obvious cthulhu inspiration mind players sort of suffer from their own version of the seinfeld is unfunny effect as their baseline design has been used and reused so many times that it now feels old had and uninspired but back when they were created there were not as many unknowable alien spooky octopus people in popular fiction as they are now f in chat for them i guess a mind flayer's signature ability and what basically dictated everything from their combat abilities to their culture is their use of psionics psionics are not magic this is a distinction that dnd nerds will get very mad about so pay attention psionics are basically mind magic as a matter of fact that's what normal people call it conventional magic draws its power from the weave of magic whereas psionics use a person's own mind as the source of its power psionic powers have some advantages over normal magic such as requiring no components being extremely quick to cast and not being susceptible to changes in magic a wild magic zone would not affect psionics for example psionics usually target the mind of a creature or allow a creature to expand what their mind is capable of doing moving objects with your mind seeing into the thoughts of another controlling someone else basically everything that jean grey can do is considered psionics in the world of d d most of the time psionic powers are described as something that you either have or you don't all races produce people with psionic talent but it's pretty rare less than one in ten thousand humans are born with psionic powers and so can be said about most other races most but not all all mind players have psionic powers and very very powerful ones this grants them telepathy cool attacks with their mind blast and their diet you see my players eat brains once again guys this was the 70s this was cool and novel at the time don't bully them they eat brains apparently because it's good for them and they are in the thralls of the very pervasive diet culture that plagues mind flavor society but also because they get a little boost to their psionic abilities there's a lot of text about what brains my players like and don't like and it all reads very baby's first animal fanfic so you can go read that on your own time what you gotta remember is that mindfully think that brains are tasty and enjoy the benefits of their very powerful psionic abilities when they get to eat one because of their natural talent for psionics arcane magic is seen as an abomination and inferior to psionics in mindful society which might be related to them getting their asses beat with magic a while ago and still being salty about it but as i said their psionic abilities influence much more than just their diet let's get into the big part of this one culture mind players similarly to druze are one of the very few dnd monsters with a big emphasis on their way of life their society their culture my players are very very much an amalgamation of scary alien tropes they are meant to work in ways that seem completely incomprehensible and well alien to normal people mindfully settlements or mind flayer colonies because everything that these guys name has to sound as sciency and spooky as possible is structured around an elder brain an elder brain is the amalgamation of dead might flare brains and they function exactly like overbearing helicopter parents elder brains exert an insane control over every mind player around it for five miles to the point of actually overriding each mind player's consciousness and basically making them act as a hive mind the elder brain dictates what the colony does and each mind player is there to serve the goals of the elder brain the elder brain is also like the most powerful version of those old school cable girls as it allows each mind player to communicate with one another instantly through their psionic network so if your party decides to infiltrate the colony and you get caught by one of these guys now all of them know you're here they are also the collective conscious of the entire colony and they store all of the colony's knowledge and share it among all mind players after it like a weird squishy little library but a very interesting tidbit is that mind flares are not a true height mine even if they have like a big mind like a big brain mind that dictates what they do you see as i said before the total control that the elder brain exerts over mind flayers has a range five miles outside of that range mind flayers are not under the constant eye of the elder brain and when they're not under it mind flayers are actually very much their own people individual mind players have thoughts feelings and opinions of their own they have a very clear view of what the needs of the group are and how important those needs are but they also have very different ideas as to how best pursue those goals and they are very competitive about it this becomes an issue when they leave on what they call inquisitions little field trips that mind players take outside of the elder brains control inquisitions are risky for the colony because the mind players that go on them gain back their individuality which can lead to renegade mind players oh i see we went with the heavy metal edgy naming convention for that one renegade mind flares is the name that mind fliers give to any mind flier that somehow escapes the elder brains control and decides to do something the elder brain doesn't want it to do many of them actually create their own colonies although i'm not like crystal clear on how that works since you're supposed to be born an explicit like different better type of mind flair that will one day grow up to be an elder brain so what happens with the ones that are renegades and create their own colonies if they're not like the the ones that are born different are not renegades they're just they're born like that anyway although others decide to learn arcane magic or settle down and start a nice bed and breakfast in vermont possibilities for them are endless and i support them my players go on their little field trips in groups for strength in numbers but also to keep each other in check to ensure that none of them get any weird ideas about striking out on their own and stop being constantly controlled by their weird little mommy brain they also bring thralls with them as muscle and speaking of thralls thralls are this channel's favorite word interns what a mindful year doesn't feel like eating a specific brain because diet culture got to them or whatever they might decide to make a prisoner one of their thralls mindfully withdrawals basically lose all of their personality and individuality under the constant psionic pressure from the mind flare and live to be their servants when the writer is edgy and boring mind flayers are just your basic boring dnd intern having people that mistreat them and are evil and yadda yadda but a much cooler and more insidious interpretation is that mind players actually form connections with their thralls they see them as inferior but inferior like we see our pets not inferior like we see i don't know roaches they are sad when they die miss them when they're not with them and care for them so if these guys goal is not just be evil and they actually care for their thralls what are they after let's take a look at the actual origin to find out so honestly there's a whole lot of lore and history to illithids and it's extremely convoluted and it spans like five editions and a half but here goes the abridged version of it we don't really know the origins of the illithid we know they are old like extremely old they appear in text where races we know today didn't even exist yet there are theories saying that they actually come from the future but send themselves back in time which would make sense it's not even able we'll get to them we'll remember everything do not remember the origins of mind players but we do not have a definitive answer what we do know is that ages ago they ruled the world and like all the worlds they were the rulers of everything including the other planes yes mind flayers are not only alien themed they are actually aliens and they travel through space using these cool ships that look like a nautilus they're called nautoloids they're so sick anyway the mindful empire ruled over everything in the inner planes but everything changed when the gith attacked the members of the race that they most commonly used as frauds developed a resistance against their psionic abilities and started training their own psionic powers when they were ready their leader a guy called gif decided to strike against the mind flayers and they succeeded in a series of coordinated attacks they brought countless elder brains down and in less than a year they had almost completely destroyed the illiterate empire these guys would go on to be called the gif and after they were done they decided to hunt down the remaining mind flayers gift could get their own videos someday but real talk here i am someone that cares a lot about aesthetics and visual presentation and the gift looks so ugly and unappealing to me that i just have not looked into them past the most basic stuff so if that video is ever happening it's far away in the future but anyway the illiterate empire was destroyed and its survivors are being hunted down by very mad former interns mind players have now gone into hiding hoping to rise again one day but why why why why is it just your boring baseline they want power sort of motivation actually no my players do not see themselves as evil at all illiterate culture sees their goal as noble they believe that they were put on this plane to bring order and tame chaos they believe that without them other races live aimless lives of chaos and suffering and it's their duty to bring them into the illiterate fold and give them purpose saving them from themselves they see themselves as the universe's caretakers and their goal is basically to expand for the betterment of the cosmos which they believe can be achieved by everyone either being a thrall or a mind player now that's a cool villain motivation right there but hold on how are they going about that well it's time to talk about the gross stuff children so when a mind flare and a hapless rando love each other very much the mind player takes out a weird little gross worm that lives in the brain pool of evil and puts the worm inside the guy and that's how babies are made good talk okay let's actually get into it mind fliers do not reproduce sexually much to some people's dismay you weirdos no their way to make more mind flares is significantly more sexy my players lay eggs okay hold on please imagine one of these skinny beampo looking-ass squid weirdos doing that hold that thought for a second in your mind like is he squatting while he does that wizards release the art illustrating that fascinating process of laying eggs i beg you what actually comes out of those eggs are not little baby elephants but tadpoles these tadpoles are then dropped into the brine pool where the elder brain lives and they are fed brains and each other for 10 years 10 whole years of just swimming and eating each other neat after 10 years the buffett's tadpoles are then taken out of the brine pool and the ceremony of seromorphosis can begin the way this works is extremely inspired by the reproduction of xenomorphs of alien the best horror movie of all time fight with the wall fight with your mom fight in the comments i don't care it is an illiterate tadpole is implanted into a host a process that baldur's gate has helpfully illustrated for us in stunning 3d graphics and warning here if you're not wild on eye stuff happening with worms maybe skip to here on the screen but do not fret i have made it much more tolerable to watch by putting it through a 2010 diy youtube filter hit it [Music] after that lovely process wait between five to ten business days or like an entire game depending on how the tadpole feels that day and presto new mind player mind players are however extremely picky about who they put their little gross worms into apparently hyde is a big thing and they'll only choose hosts that are around the size of an adult human to create other mind flayers as most of the time choosing anything other than this leads to the death of both the host and the tadpole however mind players can get creative which usually means putting their tadpoles in hoes that they should absolutely not go into and that's how we get the weird stuff creatures that underwent xeromorphosis but did not produce a normal mindful ear are called xeromorphs let's do a quick run-through of some of them gnomes and remorphs are what happens when a mind player with a weakness for short kings chooses a gnome as their host these little guys retain the size of the host so they look like cute little chibi mind fliers look at it and berserk looking ass interestingly they also retain much of their personality and even their alignment if you use it which means that gnome zero morphs can be of any alignment in a cannon which is kinda neat they are known for keeping their numish love of tinkering and being particularly peaceful trying to use normal ceramorphosis on a gnome invariably fails so in order to create gnome xeromorphs the process has to be changed when this new updated process fails the result is a gnome squidling yep squidling [Music] they have weak little bodies that basically can't move on their own so they rely on levitating with their psionic powers while they steer by pushing their little tentacles they are described as basically being as smart as a toddler or a house cat they are powered by their hunger for tasty tasty brains but not by much else and they're not evil or good they're just like an animal these could make for fun pets or like a really dark and sad ending to a noble gnome wizard forced to end up as this unthinking thing that is barely above the level of cognition of a baby mind witnesses are what happens when a beholder goes through ceremonies they kind of look like a beholder big round orb with one eye and little tentacle eyes but they also sprout four tentacles around their mouth they are apparently used as radio towers as they are able to communicate telepathically with many people at once which makes them useful when out of range of the elder brains control tower beholders just like mind players believe themselves to be the best life force in existence side note here go watch my video on beholders or so help me god so my players made sure that when beholders go through the tackle mumbo jumbo ritual they become extremely subservient as a result of this if a mind witness is separated from their mind flayers it would immediately seek out other creatures to serve so all in all pretty helpful little guy give it to your party or something and now for the obligatory dragon one we have brain stealer dragons oh i i see we're back to the naming convention from before this happens when mind players decide to around with a dragon and then found out they tend to be better at lying and scheming than your average dragon but their biggest feature is their breath weapon being replaced by a huge psionic blast that confuses and stuns their enemies they're also really bad at flying honestly kind of underwhelming they should revisit this concept i feel like there's more to do here but i don't care about dragons enough to do it and finally if the nanny is slacking and the colony lets a tadpole grow past its due date and the author it happens neothelids are usually found when a colony of mindflayers die the tadpoles are left unsupervised and eventually only the strongest tadpole remains it keeps growing until it becomes one of these mind flares actually despite neothelits because neofleds are basically kryptonite to them as well as a sort of representation of their biggest fears they are less a living being with thoughts of its own and more like a monstrous beast driven only by instinct which means they have very low intelligence which means they are completely invisible to elder brains and impossible to control through psionics these things will hunt any creature with the brain indiscriminately including mind players so creating them is taboo and they are seen as a horrible abominations and they are a bunch more and not just cyromorphs these guys did fun experiments of all kinds we have best dog pinky and the brain it's my turn on the xbox the thing 1982 anime mistake a bug's life stranger thinks demogorgon remix and many many more and that's pretty much it those are mind flayers we've talked about their psionic abilities their culture their history their origins their weird tadpole base reproduction method and that's nice and all but what if we gave mind players a new twist so you want to fight a mind player my players are 500 iq cthulhu inspired aliens that have a creative solution to reproduction so let's take a quick look at man players as they stand in the game today run the scans okay interesting hmm yes our test determined that mind players are pretty good mind players are some of the most iconic monsters of dnd i mean they're on tv now i don't see dragons hanging out in stranger things just saying my players are a great way to bring some sci-fi horror into your high fantasy game if that's what you're into so how do we give a twist to that well simple really in the game there are several processes that are not detailed as in we don't know exactly how someone becomes a lich for example we don't have rules as to what happens if a warlock disobeys our patron or their patron disowns them now controversial opinion here but this is good it's good for two reasons the first is that having an official answer to these questions will deprive them of their mystique if you gotta make this check to beat that dc to do x thing it loses part of the magic it's now a game mechanic that players know it's not an unknowable mysterious thing but more importantly the second reason why this is good is because it's now in the hands of the dm to decide what happens and having no official ruling means that nobody can dispute their ruling maybe in your world a lich happens when you unlock your sixth mystical toe by understanding all episodes of rick and morty and insulting a mcdonald's employee in your quest for discontinued sauce great that is now cannon in your world and is as good an answer as any you get to decide the process see your morphosis the act of turning into a mind player is one of these left to dm's discretion things the specifics of ceremonial forces are not outlined anywhere is it a save how long exactly does it take for it to take hold how gradual is the transformation can you stop it who knows or rather you the dm note you get to decide but what if you would want that to happen in your game but you would like some guidance well last time i checked i was not an official source for dnd so whatever i write is not canon so what if we made some rules as to what happens during the process of ceremonies what if i took some time and you as a player got some incredible psionic powers from it but every time you use them you were one step closer to losing your humanity or like profanity or kianity tiflianity you get it and yes comment section i know that it takes about a week to turn into a mind flayer i've said so in this very video but we have a very clear precedent in official sources of this process taking longer and people gaining access to psionic powers as it goes on so i'm doing it imagine a system where you are implanted with a tadpole that for some reason maybe it's a juvenile maybe it's defective maybe it's something else does not transform you out right you start developing small psionic abilities and every time you use them they become stronger but as your psionic abilities become stronger so does the illithic tadpole inside of you every time you use one of your illiterate abilities there's more and more of a chance for you to finally turn into the monster that implanted you with its young but every time you use them you also unlock new cool abilities that you didn't have before if you're in a tight spot it might feel very very tempting to finally use that insane psionic ability you got but if you do there's an ever growing chance of completing the transformation and becoming a mind player yourself and hey it doesn't even have to be a player imagine your players accompanying this young man with a talent for psionics his power keeps growing but you the dm know that it's because he was implanted with an illithic tadpole every time he uses his abilities he is one step closer to turning into what he fears most it's an octopus shape ticking time bomb it's a gamble it's drama it's access to psionics at a steep cost it's in the description below for free that's right rules to run a tadpole infestation in your players brains are written in the description below and they sure are a hundred percent free you get not only rules on how to run it but also the cool psionic abilities you get as your psionic power grows reminder here that mind flayers are copyrighted material so if you're wondering why some words are not present on that doc you know think about it you're smart you'll get it so go out there bend the will of this fantasy game by turning into a sci-fi horror show and turn your friends into weird octopus aliens and that's it we did it the video's done honestly when i first thought about doing mindful years i was convinced i would do a new ceromorph creature but there were already so many that i just didn't know where to start that's when the idea of doing something both for players and dms crossed my mind so if you're a player with some weird ideas as to where you would like your character to go show this to your dm if you're a dm that has some weird ideas of your own as to where the story might lead i hope you find these useful if you can tell i love corruption mechanics and i love that feeling of fear where you're pushed to use great abilities that put you in very real danger and i hope you do too alright as always thank you to every single one of you that subscribes to my little dog and pony show and special thank you to those that like the videos and comment and double specialty to those that share it around with your friends the channel is very young i know i see this every video but it still is that we haven't grown old yet we're still i don't even think we're in our teens we're in our five month baby means we are getting dangerously close to that 100k subscriber feywild video that i talked about last time so you know go slowly i am not yet done with the video please don't get there too quickly but but yes end of the video thank you thank you everybody eat seafood it's good for you great source of protein at all better for the environment that other animal protein sources most of the time argue in the comments about that okay love you bye bye now bye [Music]

Channel: Pointy Hat

Views: 731,901

Keywords: DnD, D&D, DnD with a twist, 5e, TTRPG, How to, Illustration, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D with a twist, d&d battle music, pointy hat, animation, rant, hat, homebrew, trailer, D&D trailer, monsters of the multiverse, monsters of the multiverse dnd, OneD&D, one d&d, onednd, one dnd, mindflayer, mindflayers, illithid, illithids, stranger things, mindflayer stranger things, psionics, psionic rules, tadpole, mystic

Id: pz3qrRvPEhI

Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2022