IS the party ready to meet a mind flayer

[Quartz]

Why should the players know they're facing a mind flayer? Mind flayers try and act through minions, so attack the players with minons. If the minions are doing well, then the mind flayer moves in for the kill. So when the PCs defeat the minions, drop a few clues so they can prepare.

 

[moritheil]

Why should the players know they're facing a mind flayer?

Careful (read: paranoid) use of divinations.

That said, parties are almost never ready for mind flayers.

 

[Crust]

Unless the PCs have good ranged attacks, the flayer might win out.

Levitate (possibly hidden)/mind blast. Repeat. If PCs separate and try to hunt the flayer, it might use charm monster on a single PC and at the very least charm him/her into not attacking.

Once the paladins close in for melee, it's over. Would an intelligent mind flayer put itself in that situation? I'm not sure.

It might plane shift away to save its neck should it come to that.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I second the illithid-burger conclusion. There are some +9 or higher Will save bonuses in this party, I imagine; a DC 17 mind blast is not guaranteed to stun more than one or two PCs. The rest can either charge the illithid or pepper it with arrows; not too hard to inflict 44 hp damage to an AC 15 foe with those tactics.

If the illithid starts combat levitating: Well, all bets are off. At that point, the best thing for the party to do is to just have the archer ready for a spell-like ability usage by the illithid.