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AslanCross
2008-04-13, 12:15 AM
Before anything else, The Black and the Purple players, stay out.

Okay, I've been wanting to include the Thoon Mind Flayers in my campaign, but with an added touch: They actually use psionics. I wanted to do this to make them seem as different and as alien as possible. (Though of course I still have the magic/psi transparency in effect.)

I did this by using psionic mind flayers for the regulars, but instead of manifesting as telepaths, they manifest as shapers. (Due to the meddling with Quintessence and Thoon's influence on them.) They seem less bent on domination and harvest it from people instead, performing cruel experiments with them.

Now my problem is the Thoon Elder Brain. For those not familiar with the Thoon cult, the Thoon Elder Brain was still immature when it crossed over to the Far Realm with its followers. As such it isn't anywhere as uber as the regular Elder Brain (Only CR 15 as opposed to CR 25, I think.) However, I wanted to give it more options than its followers---if the regular Mind Flayers manifest as 9th level Shapers, shouldn't the Elder Brain be a higher-level shaper?

Here's my problem: Converting the original Elder Brain to psionics is easy. It casts as a 20th level sorcerer, so Lords of Madness just says make it manifest as a 20th level psion instead and remove its (Sp) abilities.

The Thoon Elder Brain, however, has a bunch of At will (Sp)s, but no casting. It only has two other mind-affecting abilities (Which are (Su)): a close-range mass confusion and a WIS damage blast. Its (Sp)s are 15th-caster level abilities, so would just removing the (Sp)s and replacing them with a 15th-level psion's manifestation work and still be fair? As much as possible I don't want to change the CR as much as possible, but shifting it up shouldn't be such a problem.

Thanks for your help.

Chronos
2008-04-13, 01:36 AM
Simplest solution:Just change all the labels on the (Sp) abilities to (Ps). If you want to make it a bit more complicated, switch them to the closest equivalent powers, instead of basing them directly on the spells.

AslanCross
2008-04-13, 01:59 AM
Hmm, the latter sounds like a good option. However,
my reason for considering manifester levels in the first place is that the Elder Brain would end up with less powers than the illithids under it, which manifest at least as 9th-level shapers. The Elder Brain does have at-will (Sp)s, but most of them are utility and defense.

Chronos
2008-04-13, 11:33 AM
In that case, Let it keep its at-wills (whatever you call them), and give it the same level of Psion, or one higher. That way, it's still unambiguously better than the others, but the power level isn't getting out of control, and it'd still prefer to use its at-wills where applicable.

Oh, and don't forget that psi-like abilities are automatically augmented as far as they'll go. That might make some of them significantly more useful.

FlyMolo
2008-04-13, 12:11 PM
In that case, Let it keep its at-wills (whatever you call them), and give it the same level of Psion, or one higher. That way, it's still unambiguously better than the others, but the power level isn't getting out of control, and it'd still prefer to use its at-wills where applicable.

Oh, and don't forget that psi-like abilities are automatically augmented as far as they'll go. That might make some of them significantly more useful.

I like this, but Trouble: Some of them have no upper limit. Mind Thrust, for instance, is limited only by manifester level... D'oh.:smallredface: I get it now. Psion +1, or +2 so it gets higher level powers than the rest, plus it's at-wills sounds just about right.

AslanCross
2008-04-13, 09:21 PM
Thanks, this sounds like a good fix. :D