Alternate mind flayers

[Infinite Monkey@Work]

I just had an idea that I might use for my uber-bad guys:

What if mind flayers were just floating heads. If they eat your brains, they sometimes then tear off you whole head and psychicly reanimate your body and use it to move around and do stuff that is easier with hands.

They might be slightly more powerful while without a body too, seeing as they won't be using up psionic powers in animating the body. They would still have the trademark emaciated look, seeing as they aren't going to bother feeding a dead body that they are just using for convenience's sake, so the body quickly becomes very thin.

So, thoughts? ideas? suggestions? what sort of extra powers would mind flayers need as standard to pull this off (I don't have my books on me atm)

creepy things this could lead to? e.g. character is killed in a battle with flayers, and next time you fight them one of them is still using your comrades body, or really pissing off a conclave of flayers, so they all go and invade your home village just so they can wear you families bodies when they hunt you down.

 

[Graf]

This is an idea with some good potential. I like it. Its a good way to change mindflayers without changing what's good about them. (I wouldn't use MFs in my game but its Scarred Lands)

Give them a beholder's levitation power. Adjust for their size (probably +3 ac +3 to hit). I would drop their strength & con by 8 each. Give them mage hand at will (or the animate objects power from the psionics hanbook).

You do need to explain what they do with their bodily functions (if they have no stomach what do they do with the brains)? maybe they have a larger body stored on the etherial plane? Like a person sticking their head into a river (the river is the material plane and the air is the body).

The grotesque parasite in the Scarred Lands CCII takes over bodies too. In general just drop the mental stats and make them -4 to do things. Maybe the illithid master has to spend a partial action controlling their host body each round of combat or it stops moving?

 

[Infinite Monkey@Work]

Their bodily functions are very efficient, requiring only a very small digestive system which is stored in the bit that attaches to the body and becomes the neck.

Hows that?

 

[Moe Ronalds]

This is an idea with some good potential. I like it. Its a good

snippity snippity snip!

Maybe the illithid master has to spend a partial action controlling their host body each round of combat or it stops moving?

Or you could just make it permenantly hasted when it's just a head since there's less of it to get in the way of whatever it's doing.

 

[cerberus2112]

Isn't that what Intellect Devourers do?

Intellect Devourers are invulnerable brains that eat a person's brain, crawl inside and replace it. Oh, and Pennagalons are undead whose heads rip off their bodies at night (along with intestines) and fly around sucking blood. There is enough gruesome head replacing going on without changing the mind flayer so drastically.

 

[Aeolius]

Re: Isn't that what Intellect Devourers do?

Intellect Devourers are invulnerable brains that eat a person's brain, crawl inside and replace it. Oh, and Pennagalons are undead whose heads rip off their bodies at night (along with intestines) and fly around sucking blood.

and lets not forget the vargouille...always reminded me of the movie "Reanimator"