First time GM seeks assistance

[TheClaimer]

Hey everyone! Long time lurker here making my first post. This has always been my first place going to for help with builds and homebrew material and such.

Anywho, I've been a long time D&D player, trying my first foray into DMing a full campaign. I was hoping to get some pointers and opinions on how to go about a certain situation with PC's in a way that doesn't feel too forced.

So my current plot campaign essentially has the party being betrayed by a trusted NPC and sold into slavery to a rogue mindflayer, with the main story arc for the chapter being them freeing themselves and other slaves and overthrowing the mindflayer and killing it. I have a good handle on the NPC's and antagonists motivations and all that jazz, but what I keep coming back to is the mechanics of the PC's being slaves.

How does the mindflayer keep control? The mindflayer went through the trouble of obtaining pc's for their fighting ability, as it's holdings are being raided by Githyanki, so presenting the PC's with martial forces that they can't overcome wouldn't make sense necessarily cause then why doesn't the mindflayer just send said superior forces to kill the githyanki? I've been leaning towards a more magical means of control via arcane rune tattoos they're tricked into voluntarily accepting, providing essentially an irresistible geas effect, but I feel like taking that too far might be too limiting to them and I don't want to straight up pigeon hole them into specific choices.

I was wondering if anyone had experience with similar situations and what advice you might have for essentially making the PC's slaves for narrative purposes without them feeling like I'm bullying them into just doing the story the way I want.

Thank you in advance for your replies and advice, as well as for the many great guides and comments I've benefited from from lurking in the past.

[Man_Over_Game]

Hi, noobie!

I will say that, right off of the bat, you want to be careful with using Mindflayers at level 1. They are absurdly high level monsters, and making them easy to trick or kill at low levels sets a pretty high expectation for a bunch of level 1 characters. Either now they're capable of epic feats and you have to come up with stupidly crazier and crazier monsters to sate their desire for epicness, or they're going to try to take on Mindflayers who fight back and get their butts whooped because you were going easy on them early on.

My suggestion is to have some sort of external source that's impacting the Mindflayer's ability to control the players, which is why they aren't being used all that much. Maybe the Mindflayer is surrounded by the Gith, or maybe there's an insurgent hiding amongst the slaves that's hindering the Squidface's ability to mind control the players.

This opens up two solutions:

1: The players learn of this, and still must pretend to be under the Mindflayer's control in order to stay alive. Once the Mindflayer finds out what's going on, he'll definitely kill them all in seconds.

2: The effect the mind control has on the players is heavily reduced. 1d4 damage when defying the Mindflayer is enough to deter a level 1 player, but definitely not enough to kill them. The Mindflayer may be confused that the players are able to resist, and may be fooled into thinking that he just happened to find really strong specimens.

I would avoid having the players solve this problem by their own strengths, because, in reality, nothing a level 1 player is going to do is going to matter against something as powerful as a Mindflayer. At least, not without ample amount of help.

However, the idea of some adventurers being Mindflayer prisoners, then Githyanki POWs, then traded to Githzerai would be a hell of a ride that I think would be really cool for a campaign idea. The Githyanki would be much less willing to kill the players if they knew that they were helping the Gith take down the Mindflayer from the inside. They aren't known for being hospitable, but their hatred of Squidfaces takes precedence over all other traditions.

[TheClaimer]

Thank you for your reply and hello!

To clarify, the PC's will be approximately lvl 5 or 6 when captured, and I'll probably have them up at least once more before actually facing off with the big. I like your idea of having the mindflayers ability to outright control the PC's hindered, but having them needing to maintain a facade so as not to draw attention to themselves until ready to face off. Thank you.

[Man_Over_Game]

Thank you for your reply and hello!

To clarify, the PC's will be approximately lvl 5 or 6 when captured, and I'll probably have them up at least once more before actually facing off with the big. I like your idea of having the mindflayers ability to outright control the PC's hindered, but having them needing to maintain a facade so as not to draw attention to themselves until ready to face off. Thank you.

Oh, my bad. At that level, the odds are quite a bit better!

To add on that, the Githyanki have had a millennia practicing their hunting of Mindflayers, and they're quite ruthless and resourceful. I wouldn't even doubt that they have some kind of tool that lets them disrupt the mind control effects of the Flayers. Maybe some kind of Illithid spawn that they have bent into doing their bidding, that weakens the mind control effects of everything for miles? Or maybe they've convinced an Aboleth to help them, somehow. There's a lot of options to justify it. Maybe the players don't remember how they got there, because the Githyanki planted them there and used Modify Memory and some psychic resistance effect to fool the Mindflayer into thinking he got half a dozen good slaves, when he actually got himself half-a-dozen assassins.

[Unoriginal]

How about: the Mind Flayer free them, and then ask them to help fight the githyanki against a reward for them, on top of freeing the rest of the slaves?

Illithids aren't dumb, and it must know it doesn't have the time to bend them to its will as well as it knows that it needs their help to survive. So, it does the next best thing: hire adventurers the old fashioned way.

Plus it'd be unexpected for the PCs.

[TheClaimer]

I think your suggestion of the Githyanki is going to be a perfect avenue of releasing them from slavery, since they're the whole reason they are being enslaved in the first place. This is what I have so far.

Essentially this lone Alhoon was exiled because it's been dabbling in the arcane, big illithid no no, as an avenue to increase it's own power and status. It's been rather successful so far, but the githyanki have taken notice at this point and have started raiding and it doesn't currently have slaves skilled enough to face the githyanki.

The mind flayer has been working with a contact in players world to obtain slaves to try to stay under the radar, and that same contact gets tapped to obtain some more seasoned fighters. She lures the party with adventure and riches then betrays them into slavery to the mind flayer, and hopefully after the illithid chapter is over becomes the antagonist for chapter 2.

While fighting githyanki at the command of the illithid githyanki manage to partially free the party after realizing they're going to lose, and then begin coordinating with to take the big bad down. Various actions help to take what would normally been a nearly impossible fight, a party of 6 lvl7 PC's vs CR10 Alhoon + Thralls, into something difficult but winnable.

[Unoriginal]

Githyanki would have no interest in freeing the characters, though.

They're raiders and slavers themselves.


Having the Illithid release the PCs so that they can fight for it would be more plausible.

[Man_Over_Game]

Githyanki would have no interest in freeing the characters, though.

They're raiders and slavers themselves.


Having the Illithid release the PCs so that they can fight for it would be more plausible.

I think what OP is describing is that the Illithid is controlling the players, the Githyanki release the Illithid's hold on the players to fight their slaver, and then hasn't mentioned anything about what happens after. My thought was maybe have the Githzerai trade their Githyanki prisoners back to the Githyanki in exchange for the players. Maybe the Githzerai got some divine premonition, or maybe they just wanted to get rid of their Githyanki prisoners (I sure wouldn't want to keep them).

The players would basically go from mind slaves, to prisoners, to indentured servants to pay the Githzerai back for their freedom.

[TheClaimer]

Githyanki would have no interest in freeing the characters, though.

They're raiders and slavers themselves.


Having the Illithid release the PCs so that they can fight for it would be more plausible.

I must confess I'm not as familiar with Githyanki as I probably should make myself for this campaign. Would the Githzerai be more appropriate? Would they still be prone to raiding and attacking Illithids?

[Man_Over_Game]

I must confess I'm not as familiar with Githyanki as I probably should make myself for this campaign. Would the Githzerai be more appropriate? Would they still be prone to raiding and attacking Illithids?

The Gith were enslaved by the Mindflayers and eventually broke free. They broke into two factions: One to hunt their prior slavers, and one to stop the violence.

Githyanki are ruthless beyond anything else. Their goal is to kill every last Squidface across every universe, and will use any resource available to them to do so. If you are not Githyanki, then you are either an obstacle or a resource, no exceptions.

The Githzerai learned that violence creates more violence, and choose to stop. They generally are pacifists and spread kindness and knowledge. They are often monks or sages. They might fight Illithids if they must, but they generally avoid combat and live as refugees and nomads.


Players generally work with Githzerai, and they kill Githyanki.

[TheClaimer]

Would it then be more lore friendly to have the players defeat the githyanki raiders to find they had githzeria prisoners, who when freed help return the favor to the players?

[Unoriginal]

The Gith were enslaved by the Mindflayers and eventually broke free. They broke into two factions: One to hunt their prior slavers, and one to stop the violence.

Githyanki are ruthless beyond anything else. Their goal is to kill every last Squidface across every universe, and will use any resource available to them to do so. If you are not Githyanki, then you are either an obstacle or a resource, no exceptions.

The Githzerai learned that violence creates more violence, and choose to stop. They generally are pacifists and spread kindness and knowledge. They are often monks or sages. They might fight Illithids if they must, but they generally avoid combat and live as refugees and nomads.


Players generally work with Githzerai, and they kill Githyanki.

That's not accurate, though. Githzerai also hunt Mind Flayers whenever they can.

It's the only thing that Githzerai and Githyanki agree on.

Also Githzerai aren't pacifists or particularly kind. Nor are they often nomads or refugees: most of the time they live in strict and disciplined fortresses.

The schism between the -zerai and the -yanki was because the first rejected the teaching of Gith, seeing it as another form of slavery, while the second followed the teachings and such became a bunch of decadent Astral pirates under the control of a Lich Queen.

[strangebloke]

Alright, here'd be my take:

The Mindflayer saddles each of them with a magic item that will eventually kill them unless he says the command word, which changes every night. The item can be removed by magic, of course, but this would trigger all the other items going off and would kill the rest of the party.

So he blackmails them into doing his bidding. But he doesn't have a means of tracking them directly. A fellow slave lets this truth slip to the party, that because the mindflayer is in such danger, he can't actually check up on what his slaves are doing.

So the party gets sent against some of the Mindflayer's weaker enemies. Some random cloakers and the like. Giant spiders. Satisfied that his conditioning is working, he sends them against the Gith the next day.

Now, the party has a few options

Make a deal with the Gith to coordinate a slave revolt with a Gith attack.
Kill the Gith, and when the Mindflayer is pleased, get access to some more freedoms that will allow them to explore the Mindflayer's hive more fully. This leads them to a great beast imprisoned in the bottom of the hive. If they free the beast, the Mindflayer and his minions will be too distracted to notice a few slaves sneaking out.
Find the mindflayer's records and translate the alien text to find out ahead of time what the Mindlfayer's command word for the next day will be.


They can possibly combine these. Make a deal with the Gith and get the benefits of killing the gith, by faking their deaths.

[Rukelnikov]

I must confess I'm not as familiar with Githyanki as I probably should make myself for this campaign. Would the Githzerai be more appropriate? Would they still be prone to raiding and attacking Illithids?

You should read up on them if you plan to have them as important groups in your campaign.

Be sure to look up "The proclaiment of two skies". And if you have time, read the entire Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon. (must be around 8 pages in total, maybe less)


That's not accurate, though. Githzerai also hunt Mind Flayers whenever they can.

It's the only thing that Githzerai and Githyanki agree on.

Also Githzerai aren't pacifists or particularly kind. Nor are they often nomads or refugees: most of the time they live in strict and disciplined fortresses.

The schism between the -zerai and the -yanki was because the first rejected the teaching of Gith, seeing it as another form of slavery, while the second followed the teachings and such became a bunch of decadent Astral pirates under the control of a Lich Queen.

This.

Githzerais have a mostly martial society, with less than 15% noncombatants, and form Illithid hunting parties called Rrakkma, which don't return to Limbo until they have hunted at least as many illithids as members in the Rrakkma.