All Mind Flayer Party -- Your Ideas, Please!

[Castellan]

My players have been asking me to revive an older campaign of mine in which mind flayers were beginning to play a growing role. With the return to this game, I'd like to help the players remember why they hated and feared mind flayers so much.

So, for the first game session, I'd like to hand each of them a high-level mind flayer and give them a goal of attacking the king who has been the PCs' ally. The characters themselves are in the 14 - 17 level range and I'd like to have comparably-leveled mind flayers.

So, I'm putting it to all of you: if you could organize a mind flayer adventuring party/strike team 4 or 5 strong, what classes, dirty tricks, magic items, etc. would you choose? What tactics might you want to employ as the member of an elite mind flayer strike force? Obviously, you might prefer to use thralls/slaves, but say that mind flayers aren't the wusses everybody thinks they are? What then?

I'm not looking for stat blocks -- just general composition and rat bastardy goodness (of course, it's the players who will get to be the rat bastards, while my NPCs fall before their merciless onslaught)!

Thanks!

 

[Voadam]

Do you use XPH? Standard MM psionics are spell-like?

The paradigm concepts Mind Flayer book I remember having stuff like a flayer specific dark paladin class.

Couple possible roles:

Mind blaster, focuses on mind blast attacks.

Mind ripper, focuses on following up after the blaster

Alchemist, flayers are known for having wierd surpernatural creations

Telepath master, expanded mind affecting powers

Astral scout, projects to see what's coming so the flayer group is always prepared for their fights.

 

[Castellan]

Do you use XPH? Standard MM psionics are spell-like?

The paradigm concepts Mind Flayer book I remember having stuff like a flayer specific dark paladin class.

Couple possible roles:

Mind blaster, focuses on mind blast attacks.

Mind ripper, focuses on following up after the blaster

Alchemist, flayers are known for having wierd surpernatural creations

Telepath master, expanded mind affecting powers

Astral scout, projects to see what's coming so the flayer group is always prepared for their fights.

Great! I love the Astral Scout idea, especially.

We do have the XPH and psionics will be figuring heavily into things as we move forward, so feel free to make use of anything there. I also have the Paradigm Concepts book, though I'm hoping to hold some (not all) of it back for myself. *evil grin*

 

[grimslade]

You need a Mind Flayer monk. A mind blasting, brain eating Bruce Lee with rings on its tentacles that allow weapon abilities like shocking, flaming burst. Stunning Tentacle ooh yeah.

 

[painandgreed]

Impersonater mindflayers. After eating a persons mind and otherwise learning their secrets with psionics, they use magic to impersonate that person. That impersonator then uses his place to help the rest of his group take the place of other people in power. They pose as other people, perhaps people the party already knows, so they can spring a suprise attack.

 

[Sandain]

Mindflayer psychic warrior. Wep focus and Spec and imp crit with his multi-attack tentacles.

He will run up and along walls and bury his tentacles into the party spellcasters.

 

[Castellan]

Awesome stuff! I'm starting to stat out some Mind Flayers and I think my players will really love being so bad for a game session. I'm getting chills at the thought of the king's guards falling under the assault of so many tentacled horrors. Plus, I figure there's no better way to get the players thinking about how really bad these things are than to actually be the ones who've taken those actions.

Any other ideas?

And thanks!