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Mind Flayers


GCMorris

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I believe he's referring to the ability to rip out someone's brain and instantly kill them.

 

The Migdalar in Monster, Minions and Marauders (5e) and the Hero System Bestiary (6e) are basically mind flayers, but they don't have the brain eating ability.  The problem is that Hero System doesn't handle absolutes like instant death or total immunity well.

 

Maybe a Ranged Killing Attack large enough for average damage to kill an average person, No Range, Only If All Four Tentacles Have Grabbed Location 3-5 (Head), Extra Time-Full Phase, Only Against Targets With An Organic Brain.

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Probably like a 2d6 HKA no strength (Mouth beak) only when grabbed. You handle the Brain eating by using the rules already there. Have the MF do a grab on a target, Perhaps an strength roll to maneuver the critter into head striking distance. The MF does a Headshot vs location head. If there's defense there then reduce the attack by the defense by the head covering. Otherwise the attack is a 2x body location and the attack does average of 7 body on a hit which makes for 14 body at one time. Which is imparing of not Disabling (see the rules for Impairing and Disabling wounds).

 

I would recommend doing this to a redshirt NPC of the party, and keeping PC's out of it. single kill attacks do a lot to ruin a non Murder Hobo Campaign IMHO

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Armitage made some great points. There are some writeups of Mind-flayer-oid critters in the HERO system literature. Part of the issue here is simply with knowing exactly what you want. 

Mind-Flayers have a variety of abilities and characteristics. Most of which are simple to capture (flight, Telepathy, Mind Link, Blast, Mental Blast, Extra Limbs, Striking appearance, etc). In terms of the Mind-sucking abilities, though, we kind of need to know which ones you are talking about. Mind Control is a great and straight forward way to effect temporary behavior changes. Major / Sever Transform are great ways to effect permanent changes like "Slavishly loyal". EGO drains are a great way to make people halt all actions (assuming you do a full ego drain) but can be expensive.

 

If you just simply want to kill off a target with a "eats the brain of target" attack, then a Range-Killing-Attack of sufficient power would work. As I recall, DnD gives saves and such but such attacks are more "all or nothing" style attacks. HERO doesn't do that well. One way to avoid some of the hassle of building a really big RKA, is to use the Call-shot rules. If I recall correctly, if you can deal 1/3 or 1/2 of the target's total body to an individual limb, that limb is destroyed. Thus, if you target 20body MR. MUSCLE who has 5 rPD with a 3.5D6 of RKA (55pt base), you will on average kill the target in one shot. Thus the special effect of "kill target by sucking out brain" goes off. The down side to this (other than it can also be used against you!) is that the head is a small target and comes with a variety of DcV bonuses to avoid such maneuvers.

Another work around that can be independent of the above or used with it, is to tack on a kind of "all or nothing" / "cumulative" style lim. If the attack doesn't completely work at first, define the results as a wash but wherein the damage still must be tracked for X time (a few segments, a turn, maybe a minute?). If nothing occurs before the time limit, ignore all damage. Even if something does occur to the target (struck by a completely different RKA), the body lost as a result of that attack has no relation to the body done. BUT if the Mind-Flayer strikes again inside the time limit, the Mind-Flayer may add the new round of damage to the previous damage to determine if he achieve sufficient damage to kill the target. I am not the biggest fan of this idea, I don't really see the point. But it is a possible option. 

Soar. 

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Reading Tasha's post, I think I may have made a rules mistake in mine. Perhaps the rule I was thinking about for destroying a limb was simply disabling it. I would have to double check to make sure but I am far too lazy at this exact moment. When in doubt, trust Tasha. ^^

 

Soar. 

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The ability to eat brains was one of those AD&D PC killer abilities I always hated, like the "save or die" poisons and the various monsters with similar powers.  Gygax was enamored with murdering characters off, apparently he though that would be fun to people or just was sadistic.  I'd personally just treat it like eating anything, its a non-combat ability they have to off NPCs and bystanders, not something they can do in combat to a PC.

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As far as I know, Illithid brain-eating attacks were never save-or-die. On a successful attack, the Illithid establish a brain-eating grapple, and proceeds to do HP damage/round until the target is down to 0, at which point either the brain is eaten, irrelevant as that is for most PCs, or we're out of Russian dressing, and have to send the waiter back for more dipping sauce. Or it's time to roll up a new character. Whichever. 

 

Although the "daze/dominate" side effect that accompanies a successful brain-eating attack makes it dificult for PCs to extricate themselves, mind-flayers have the disadvantage that they are dependent on natural weapons to make this attack, and should be no threat to PCs properly arrayed with polearms in the second rank to keep the tentacled monsters at bay. (Gary is rolling his eyes as he looks down on us from Elysium.)

 

In Hero, a Continuous Drain (must follow successful grapple) should cover it. Or you can add to the mythos of the CU by using the Migdalar. Might I recommend heavy emphasis on their smooth skin and stacked bodies, their enticing venuousity, their gamin sexuality, the thick lips of their pouting mouths, on their lower abdomen just where your eyes are helplessly drawn down to look just exactly there?

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Well, I looked. Christopher is right. If you got hit with one of those tentacles in AD&D it would reach your brain in 1-4 rounds, no save.

 

I guess you had to kill it or escape, though in those dark days there were not many written ways to escape a grapple.

 

In third edition the mind flayer gas to have grabbed you with all four tentacles. In the next round, if it makes a successful grapple check, it extracts your brain....

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Having your brains eaten would be pretty fatal as would drinking a bottle of arsenic. Don't like reality?

It is not a matter of the description, it is how you build it GC.

 

Drinking a bottle of arsenic is fatal, how do you model that so that it is what happens in game. You also have to consider whether a single roll killing your character is delivering maximum game fun.

 

With an old D&D character even a pretty high level character could be rolled in fifteen to twenty minutes. Losing that amount of time is no big deal. Modern games often require significantly longer periods of time with significantly deeper investment by the player. Losing that on a single dice roll can be.....galling. Real or not. :-)

 

Doc

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Well in 2e all four tentacles have to hit in order to partake of the grey matter milkshake so it's not an easy maneuver to pull off. The prospect of dying gave you a closer bond with your beloved character I always found. D&D was my first rpg when I started back in 197(cough)9.

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It's also important to remember that a mind flayer has the ability to incapacitate a group of opponents for up to 12 minutes (2e) or 1.2 minutes (3e) with a mind blast*.  Grappling someone's head with four tentacles is a lot easier when they're staring into space drooling.

 

 

 

*The 1e Psionic Attack vs. Non-Psionic Target rules are too complex to easily summarize.

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Amazingly, we have not had any builds on how a brain sucking ability might be accomplished in an interesting way in HERO.  That should be possible regardless of the way D&D handled it.

 

I think we can all imagine how this might look in comic books or movies.  We can all agree it would be a scary thing to witness and a worry to face any opponent with that ability.  How would you build it such that it would work for you and the game??

 

 

Doc

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Gygax was enamored with murdering characters off, apparently he though that would be fun to people or just was sadistic.

 

Given that clerics had Raise Dead and Resurrection spells, I would say that the D&D systems only killed off low level characters.  The higher level you were, the more opportunities you had to reverse dying.

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Amazingly, we have not had any builds on how a brain sucking ability might be accomplished in an interesting way in HERO.  That should be possible regardless of the way D&D handled it.

 

I think we can all imagine how this might look in comic books or movies.  We can all agree it would be a scary thing to witness and a worry to face any opponent with that ability.  How would you build it such that it would work for you and the game??

 

 

Doc

 

 

KISS.

 

For Heroic games 3D6 HKA with appropriate limitations.  Special Effect = brain sucked out.  

 

For supers games increase HKA to suitable number of dice.

 

There are enough limitations that the real cost can be driven down substantially.  

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The trouble with KISS sometimes is that it sacrifices colour, drama and dynamic tension.  :-)  it also falls into the frowned on category of instant kill....

 

I don't disagree. 

But I took the conversation to be a request on how to do it.  Not if it was a good idea  ;)

 

But I don't think if I wrote it up as a HKA with appropriate limitations it would impact the color drama or tension.  That all is on my shoulders as a GM and I don't make a habit of flopping out my builds during a game.  I describe the special effects with the die rolls as guides to that description.  

 

I just donlt think a 20 page write up is better than a single two line write up if they achieve the same thing.   

 

Now I wouldn't have a one shot kill in my hero games either.  Too much effort to design a PC.  Now D&D or Tunnels & Trolls?  Let the dead PC's pile up like cord-wood..... :)

 

But I won't dream of telling GCMorris what to have in his.  

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