It's all fun and games until somebody loses a brain...

[Eurus]

I'm going to be running an RL campaign soon based partially on Lords of Madness, with a dash of Elder Evils for good measure. For those of you who haven't read the former, it suggests that the illithids are destined to take over the multiverse eventually, which slowly ends up choked out and dying off under their rule. To escape entropy, they manage to shift waaay back in time, setting up shop in the material plane again and killing time until their descendents can conquer the world again, effectively making them an ontological paradox.

So with a few friends prodding me to DM, I decided to give it a shot with a campaign in the swing of the illithid uprising. It'll start off relatively tame, with things like wars breaking out and churches crumbling as the illithids manipulate various leadership figures, and escalate as they start unleashing some sort of cthonic Elder Evil to suppress divine influence and keep them safe from intervention while they sweep across the planes. The PCs will probably be mostly focused on either carving out a little niche of safety and weathering the storm, getting rid of the Elder Evil so that the rest of the universe has a chance, or amassing allies to fight the illithid conquest on the battlefield, possibly all three. Later stages may involve time travel. :smallamused:

Now, the thing is, my players are... hmm. How to describe it. Difficult? The campaign is level 5 gestalt to begin with, and one of them realized that they could juuust manage to fit in a half-dragon were-lion with no class levels and call it a day. Convinced one of the others to follow suit as his brother. Well. Far be it from me to tyrannize players into fitting my preconceptions, but it does complicate things a bit when my cosmic horrors are going to be dealing with the Super Dragon Force Leo Rangers. :smalltongue:

So I come to the Playground for advice on a few things.

1) An appropriate Elder Evil. Ideally something that the illithids can control/destroy when no longer useful, or at least think they can. Atropus and Pandorym, for example, are probably a little too much. I'm not opposed to homebrew.

2) Advice on making mind flayers scary. I am fully aware of the fact that this is not going to really be a horror campaign, at least not with this kind of party. In all likelihood, they're going to leave as much carnage in their wake as their enemies do. But mind flayers should be the main antagonists here, and I want them to be appropriately unnerving. They work behind the scenes and through slaves/thralls whenever possible, so the rare occasion when one actually steps out to get his tentacles dirty should be a real "oh sh-" moment. If I can't make them afraid of the Lovecraftian tentacle monsters temporally predestined to conquer the universe, I at least want to make them afraid of dying.

3) Advice for mind flayer plots. If you were an elder brain commanding a cabal of psychic plane-hopping horrors, how would you go about undermining the world enough to enable your hostile takeover? I have a few ideas in mind to start, but contributions are always appreciated.

[Lord Loss]

Mind Flayers are always fun.

The mind flayer campaign I ran was very similar. I didn't get the whole way through (a player trying to break the DM's arm kinda does that to the group)
but the mind flayers were acquiring minions I called the Anadivine - Ur-Priests (BoVD), Quell (LM), and those spider-like humanoids from MoF - Also, Captain Gnash, from EoE, was a primary antagonist. Later in the campaign, the Mind Flayers were to learn of his crusade to release an Elder Evil (Either The Leviathan or a homebrewed Shotohugg, from LoM, I hadn't yet decided).

Also, mind flayers have people everywhere. Like everywhre. Good King Doran? Mind-Slave. That girl you saved from the orcs at level one? Mind slave! The barman at your local tavern? Yeah, him too! Nothing'll creep the players out more when they figure out that everyone and anyone could be a mind flayer's servant, mind-controlled, illusory or otherwise.

Gore can lead to horror if pulled off effectively. Also, getting the players to loathe and abhor the villains will help. An interesting sequence would be to have the PCs assist to a friend getting their brain sucked out, unable to help...

[Silva Stormrage]

Mind Flayers are always fun.

The mind flayer campaign I ran was very similar. I didn't get the whole way through (a player trying to break the DM's arm kinda does that to the group)
but the mind flayers were acquiring minions I called the Anadivine - Ur-Priests (BoVD), Quell (LM), and those spider-like humanoids from MoF - Also, Captain Gnash, from EoE, was a primary antagonist.

Three Things: First WHAT? Sorry for derailing the thread a bit but why did another player try to break the dm's arm?

Second: I would also go with the creepy everyone is a mindslave approach. Thrallherd works perfectly for it and gets the added benefit of them coming back everyday.

Third: Void mind template is perfect for fodder troops in the middle of the battle. Completely obedient thralls are much better than dominated ones.

[Keld Denar]

Genetically engineered supersoldiers!

Mindflayers are slapping the Spellwarped and/or Pseudonatural (CArc) templates on anything they can get their hands on. Or better yet, subcontracting it out to a particularly mercenary clan of dwergar or other ebil subterranian race.

Alternatively, add more Godflayer (http://rustyandco.com/comic/level-5-16/) references!

EDIT: And as long as I'm plugging the comic, allow me to plug the official Rusty and Co mascot, Rusty the Rust Monster (http://www.patchtogether.com/designs/rusty-the-rust-monster-4659.html). Rusty needs your votes to become a REAL monster, so register and vote dang it, because I want to buy one! Or else!

[Big Fau]

1) An appropriate Elder Evil. Ideally something that the illithids can control/destroy when no longer useful, or at least think they can. Atropus and Pandorym, for example, are probably a little too much. I'm not opposed to homebrew.

Probably Father Llymic, since he shares one of the Mind Flayer's common goals. Be sure to modify his feats though, since all of the Elder Evils are victims of WotC MM Syndrome. He likely doesn't need Great Cleave or Improved Sunder (especially if you don't plan to give him Combat Brute). You may want to give him more ways to cast his SLAs while making a Full Attack or charge.


2) Advice on making mind flayers scary. I am fully aware of the fact that this is not going to really be a horror campaign, at least not with this kind of party. In all likelihood, they're going to leave as much carnage in their wake as their enemies do. But mind flayers should be the main antagonists here, and I want them to be appropriately unnerving. They work behind the scenes and through slaves/thralls whenever possible, so the rare occasion when one actually steps out to get his tentacles dirty should be a real "oh sh-" moment. If I can't make them afraid of the Lovecraftian tentacle monsters temporally predestined to conquer the universe, I at least want to make them afraid of dying.

MM5 has the Mind Flayers of Thoon idea, which works fairly well.


3) Advice for mind flayer plots. If you were an elder brain commanding a cabal of psychic plane-hopping horrors, how would you go about undermining the world enough to enable your hostile takeover? I have a few ideas in mind to start, but contributions are always appreciated.

See Lords of Madness, specifically the section where they are trying to put out the sun.

[Eurus]

-snip-

Hmm, nice ideas. I'll try to play up the paranoia aspect with the whole "Illithid spies everywhere" thing, definitely.


-snip-

Voidmind is a good thought, I forgot about that one. Thrallherd too.


-snip-

Hah, I like the Godflayer. And the super-soldiers... an awesome idea, actually. My players want to play lycanthropic half-dragons? Maybe the flayers get the idea to spread lycanthropy through the shocktroops themselves. :smallamused:


-snip-

Father Llymic could be a good one, thanks. I forgot about the sun-extinguishing bit. That sparks some interesting ideas.

[Morghen]

The best thing you can do to make your players afraid of mind flayers is to play them intelligently.

I've posted this before. (http://suntzusaid.com/)

If I have a super-high intelligence and the ability to teleport, anything that doesn't incapacitate or kill me in a single segment isn't going to kill me at all.

They're not going to fight to the death.
They're not going to fight at all if the odds are stacked against them.
When they do fight, they're going to fight exactly when and where they want to.
That spot is going to be designed to wreck whatever the PCs do.
Strong beaters? Pit traps. Walls of Force. Trip wires.
Strong casters? Silence 15' Radius. Magic Resistance. Feeblemind.
Whatever it is the players do well, the illithids they face will have prepared a counter for it.

As long as the mind flayers are played like the super-intelligent badasses they're supposed to be, your players will hate to see them. Think Tucker's Kobolds with 6th-level spells.

Mind Flayer World Domination Plan (One Continent At A Time)

Dominate the hell out of one very-defensible country (in the mountains, on an island, etc.). That's my fallback if heroic types start wrecking my plan. All things being equal, I'm picking one that was already a dictatorship/autocracy to begin with. The commoners will be used to following commands "or else" and outsiders will be used to the country acting like jerks.
Breed/Make an army of super-soldiers. Don't let anybody outside my haven see 'em. For now, they're just keeping my haven on lock-down.
Any wizards that aren't associated with any particular country and are super-strong need to get assassinated right now. Frame one of the other powerful wizards.
Identify the two countries with the strongest magical strength. Ideally, sour relations between them to pit them against each other. If that's not feasible for some reason, pit them each against some other country with a strong military.
OTOH, if there's just one super-duper BESTCOUNTRYEVAR, I find the countries that had feuds from long ago and build those back up. Then I find a way to wreck a bunch of super-country with a natural disaster (famine is probably easiest) and turn those old rivals loose.
Once the (one or two) strongest countries are brought low, start picking off countries in a way to geographically isolate the ones you haven't dominated yet. For example, if you've got countries A, B, C, D along a coastline, I take over B and D and then move on to the plains.
Continue taking over countries until my puppets are in the leadership positions of every country on the continent.
Move to next continent.
IMPORTANT: As soon as Step 2 is completed and continuing through the end, my agents are scouring the continent for artifacts and other powerful magic items to hoard and keep out of the hands of do-gooders. That dungeon the heroes were going after because it was rumored to be the final resting place of the Golden Hand of Planet-Smiting? Yup. Cleaned out. Or maybe they leave all the monetary loot but the magical stuff is gone.


A note: I don't know how long mind flayers live, but either way, these guys are going to take the long view. They're not going to rush things. They're not going to go after something before they're ready. They're not going to engage in anything that looks remotely like a fair fight. Why would they? They can just dominate some other weaker country first and add it to their side. If that's not enough, they dominate another.

[Pokonic]

As a homebrew idea for a Elder evil, how about one I cam up with called the Skleec. Effectivly a parisidic bilght on the cosmos, there/its only goal is to grow. Unfortunatly, growing involves infecting creatures ( treat as having the Pesudonatural template), slowly taking over the natural cycle by infectng the very ground with its taint, and slowly bleed over to the prime. Its almost imposiable to wipe it out of a spot when it invades the very landscape, and animals and humans alike will mutate even when it is long gone. To put it into perspecive, this (http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101110222009/mspaintadventures/images/1/11/Horrorterror.jpg)
is what a mountain looks like after it is almost half-way into bleeding over into creation. No known world has ever survived a infestation unscathed.

[Lord Loss]

Three Things: First WHAT? Sorry for derailing the thread a bit but why did another player try to break the dm's arm?


I am the DM in question. A player grabbed my arm and threatened to break it when I left a D&D book at home that detailed the damage of another character's ability and refused to let said player's killing shadows ability deal 20d6 damage. Whereupon another player grabs my arm and threatens to break it if I don't let the other player have said 20d6 damage.

[rayne_dragon]

One of the most horrifying things about Mindflayers, in my opinion, has been how they reproduce. Having the characters witness this first hand is something I've always thought would be a surefire way to make them scary.

Mindflayers away from the protection of their cities would also probably be smart enough to have some formidable body guards. Intellect devourers and the various animals of the Mind Flayer's future make great pets/guard dog-type things. Brain golems are also potentially appropriate and as an added touch describing them as being riddled with small circular holes might be a bit creepy.

[Eurus]

-snip-.

Makes sense. I figure at this point, the flayers have a lot of the more subtle and long-term components of their plan already well underway -- the campaign will be picking up as things start getting serious.

Also worth noting is that this is going to be (at higher levels, probably less so at lower ones) a cosmic campaign. Continents? They're taking planes. The Prime Material Plane is an important one, to be sure, probably somewhere in the top five, but not the be all-end all. If they're pushed hard enough, I may have them attempt to simply glass the planet as a damage-control measure.


-snip-

Not bad, I might use elements of that.


-snip-

Ah, good point. Ceremorphosis or whatever it's called is pretty terrifying. And yeah, bodyguards to be sure.