Thought Eaters, CR2 my ass

[Were-Sandwich]

THOUGHT EATER

Small Aberration (Psionic)
Hit Dice:
3d8 (13 hp)
Initiative:
+8
Speed:
40 ft. (8 squares)
Armor Class:
17 (+1 size, +4 Dex, +2 natural), touch 15, flatfooted 13
Base Attack/Grapple:
+2/–1
Attack:
+4 melee touch (eat thoughts)
Full Attack:
+4 melee touch (eat thoughts)
Space/Reach:
5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks:
Eat thoughts, psi-like abilities
Special Qualities:
Darkvision 60 ft., ethereal jaunt
Saves:
Fort +1, Ref +5, Will +4
Abilities:
Str 12, Dex 18, Con 11, Int 7, Wis 12, Cha 14
Skills:
Hide +10, Listen +5, Spot +5
Feats:
Alertness, Improved Initiative
Environment:
Ethereal Plane
Organization:
Solitary or group (1–3)
Challenge Rating:
2
Treasure:
None
Alignment:
Usually neutral
Advancement:
4–6 HD (Small)
Level Adjustment:
—

Thought eaters do not speak.
COMBAT

A thought eater can spend a maximum of 10 continuous rounds on the Material Plane before its wispy flesh finally dissipates and it falls dead. If badly wounded, it escapes to the Ethereal Plane rather than continuing the fight.
Eat Thoughts (Su): A thought eater can drain psionic power points with a successful melee touch attack. Each touch drains 6 power points from the opponent (or fewer, if the opponent has fewer than 6 points remaining). Against a nonpsionic creature or a psionic creature that currently has no power points, this touch attack instead deals 1 point of Intelligence damage, which provides nourishment equivalent to 6 power points.
A thought eater requires 12 power points per day to survive but will gorge itself on weak prey.
Psi-Like Abilities: At will—detect psionics, distract (DC 13), precognition, psionic daze (DC 13*); 3/day—thought shield.
Manifester level 3rd. The save DCs are Charisma-based.
*Includes augmentation for the thought eater’s manifester level.
Ethereal Jaunt (Su): A thought eater can shift from the Ethereal Plane to the Material Plane as part of any move action, and then shift back again as a free action. The ability is otherwise identical to the psionic ethereal jaunt power.

How does a 2nd level party go about defeating one of these? Run by anyone with even a modicrum of intelligence, they're practically impossible to hurt.

TS (on ethereal plane) moves next to squishiest party member (still on ethereal plane) then goes material (all one move action). Attacks (standard), then shifts ethereal again (free action). All in its own turn, so its never on the material during any one elses turn.

[Ranis]

Dimensional Anchor.

[Rigeld2]

Readied Actions.
Dimensional Anchor isnt anywhere near ECL 2.

[Were-Sandwich]

And level 2 parties can cast that how?

simued

Oh, yeah. Its still a pretty tough fight though. I might throw in a pack of tese things in a higher level campaign for a totally surreal and awesome fight scene.

[Borogove]

ready an action to attack it if it becomes material. Given it takes at least 8 or so hits for it to down pretty much anyone, you'll kill it long before it manages to do anything lesser restoration can't handle.

[Ranis]

Oh, level 2? My bad.

[NullAshton]

I agree with the readying an action thing.

Also... did you realize that a thought eater DOES NO DAMAGE. It just drains power points, then does intelligence damage, which is non-lethal.

[Vonriel]

If you can get your hands on something to let you see it while ethereal, magic missiles should work quite well, no?

[Rigeld2]

Also... did you realize that a thought eater DOES NO DAMAGE. It just drains power points, then does intelligence damage, which is non-lethal.

But being unconcious from Int drain is pretty bad, considering they can then CDG you at will, and it takes at least 1 day before you can wake up. Plenty of time for you to fail a fort save.

[ThunderEagle]

But they can't deal damage at all. never. ever. they live off power points. all you need to worry bout is other foes, who will be easier to protect against.

[Rigeld2]

If youre laying in a coma for 24 hours, its hard to protect against anything.

[Were-Sandwich]

Just thought, but they can go ethereal as a free action. Does that mean they can do it outside thier own turn?

[NullAshton]

Just thought, but they can go ethereal as a free action. Does that mean they can do it outside thier own turn?

No. Free actions have to be on your turn. There are a very few exceptions like speaking, but those exceptions are explicit.

[Were-Sandwich]

oh, ok. Otherwise the would have been nigh untouchable.

[Ranis]

That's immediate actions that you can do when it's not your turn.

[Roderick_BR]

Maybe it should be updated to use the shifting as a swift action instead of free action? I think the idea is that it takes almost not time (action) to move, not to be free to came and go at will.

[NullAshton]

Maybe it should be updated to use the shifting as a swift action instead of free action? I think the idea is that it takes almost not time (action) to move, not to be free to came and go at will.

Uh, why? There's no effective difference. It takes a move action for the thought eater to enter the material plane, it then attacks, and finnally they move back out of it as a free action. Unless they're going to move in and out of the material plane twice in a single round it doesn't matter, and why would it do that?

[Tellah]

"A thought eater requires 12 power points per day to survive but will gorge itself on weak prey."

If I were running the creature as the DM, I'd have it attack until it steals 12 power points and run away. The creature isn't designed to stand, fight, and render XP. The creature is designed to frustrate and weaken the PCs, then run off giggling into the night.

[Piccamo]

A thought eater requires 12 power points per day to survive but will gorge itself on weak prey.

If I were running it I would have it stay if the adventurers were in no way harming it. They would obviously be considered weak prey if they didn't do anything to it.

[CharPixie]

I think that only players wouldn't think of readied actions; characters have little to no concept of a turn, and will just hit it when it appears.

It's an interesting harrassment monster; something to use when the party is seperated, but as a straight up encounter I think it looses some of its novelty and motiviation.

[Gamebird]

Hm - low hits, low AC, does no damage and only drains 1 point of INT on a touch attack it only has +4 to hit with.

Sounds easy enough for a level 2 party to deal with.

Now what they wouldn't be able to deal with is how I'd run it, which might be what Were-Sandwich is talking about:

The party is wandering along through the dungeon. The TS tries to use its Hide modifier to shift in undetected. If it succeeds, then it makes an attack (surprise round) and shifts out before anyone can counter attack. If it fails to Hide as it shifts in, then everyone rolls initiative and can react, but with a +8 to init, it has a good chance of going early. In any case, if it survives to its turn, it attacks and shifts out.

If it was hit, it doesn't come back.

If it wasn't hit, then it doesn't come back right away. Rounds pass. Then minutes. Eventually the party goes on through the dungeon.

A half hour or an hour later, it repeats its attack. If they hit it, it doesn't come back. If not, rinse and repeat until it gets 2 INT points or 12 power points. The only way it will stick around to gorge against weak prey is if it gets a lone target that's easy to hit and has small or ineffectual weapons. Or if they're incapacitated, helpless or sleeping.

[Premier]

Looks to me like the problem is that whoever converted the creature from earlier editions wasn't thinking. Comparing this description to the one in the 2nd edition AD&D Monstrous Manual reveals a few changes that seem minor at first, but are in fact quite important:

- In 2nd ed., both the stat block and the description makes it clear that the creature is extremely stupid and is driven only by basic instincts. The SRD block gives it an INT of 7, which would make it considerably smarter - and consequentally more dangerous.
- In 2nd ed., it feeds differently: it drains psionic energy being expended, magical energy being expended, PSPs, memorized spells, and only then Intelligence point; always in this particular order. Thus, the presence of magicians in the group will delay the Intelligence-draining effect, giving the party enough time to cope with the situation.
- In 2nd ed., they only have a movement rating of 6 (same as dwarves, halflings and gnomes, half of humans, elves, half-elves), which meant that in a relatively non-enclosed quarters you could just simply run away from it. Here, its speed is higher then that of basic PC races, making escape impossible.
- In 2nd ed., their only psionic ability was to sense psionicists, and (because of their stupidity) immunity to telepathic attacks and control attempts.

Looking through these differences, it would appear to me that someone was just thing "Oh, let's make it a little bit cooler by upping this stat! Oh, let's make it a little bit cooler by upping that stat! etc." without giving a thought to what these little uppings of stats will actually mean.

[Jothki]

It seems like if one notices your party and decides to gorge, it's more or less a TPK. Jump to material, drain a point of INT, jump to etherial. Wait for everyone to calm back down, and then repeat until the entire party is unconscious. A few of them could probably completely lock down a small town. There needs to be some sort of limit on how much it can eat, otherwise dominating one would make you incredibly powerful.

Edit: Wow, they actually took away the complete immunity to domination that helped actually make these things balanced and replaced it with 3 shots of tiny-duration resistance?

[Gamebird]

It'd be really hard to TPK a party with one of these. A +10 Hide is tough, but it isn't impossible to beat. Your average 2nd level party will have someone with maxed out Spot (+7, say) and the other three or four party members get a roll. It can't shift in, attack and shift out unless it makes that Hide check, because shifting in and attacking are two actions - a full round. So it can't do it on the surprise round. If it doesn't get the Hide check, then it is prey to anyone who beats its initiative. Again, a +8 is great, but it doesn't stack up well against every PC rolling independent initiative d20s. Odds are good someone will beat it. If they do, then the monster is average difficulty to hit and pretty squishy with 13 hp.

[Theodoxus]

In a recent game, one of these could of wiped out the party... the majority of us were in a small woodsmans cabin, sleeping. There were two guards posted - outside - one, an elf fighter who was bored, and the other the rangers wolf companion.

Since they were outside, and the door was closed, a Thought Eater could of easily wandered by in the Ethereal, seen a decent meal - materialized, drained some (or all) of our Int, and we'd never wake up - presuming that it causes no HP damage, thus no pain. The guards probably wouldn't of known a thing...

I might just have to use that little trick sometime in a future game *cue the evil music*

Theo

[Gamebird]

I believe that attacks (that hit) against a person count as things that wake you up. So the creature would get the first attack free and easy, no problem, against a helpless target. Then it shifts away and the target wakes up, feeling stupid and seeing no threat.

Then it becomes a question of how much a character is aware of their own stats (or hit points, or any other crunchy mechanical aspect of the game). The game is obviously designed to be played where the character reacts to the metagame aspects (ie, you're willing to pay a lot more for a +2 item than a +1 item), so I'd think it would be very poor form for a DM to insist a character didn't realize one of his stats had been changed.

Once you realize your stat changed, then you'd start looking for why and (I suspect) post an additional guard inside the dwelling. Though at that point the Thought Stealer might decide his prey is no longer easy and move on. Leaving the PCs confused and never sure what happened or why.

[NullAshton]

In my campaign, we solve the +X problem by simply having different names for items. Apprentice quality items, archmage quality items, mage quality items...

[Diggorian]

Just last Friday, a new psionists PC was being introduced and had to find his way alone through some caves to our party. After a escaping a chasm with flammable poison gas, he's attacked by three Thought Eaters without a rest break.

A 7th level being alone is like average party level (APL) 4 for encounters; the three Eaters would be encounter level (EL) 5, I'd say 6 or 7 since they're main attack hurts his main Ability. APL 4 vs CR 7 is about how it played out too. He'd killed one but was without power points and Int 7 when I busted down a thin wall seperating us.

Sad thing is we Stone Shaped that barrier to cut off an avenue of potential attack. He was cornered against it for maybe 5-6 rounds alone while we fought a cave troll, his screams let us know he was there.

[Swordguy]

Any low-CR creature that is capable of at-will ethereal shifting is a massive pain in the ass for an equivalent CR party.

Throw alternating Ethereal Filtchers, Ethereal Marauders, and Thought Eaters at a level 2-3 party and see what happens. It's not pretty unless the PC do things exactly right.

[daggaz]

It has to make a touch attack to eat your thoughts. That alone should wake most adventurers up.