Help! Defense vs Mindflayers

[Nail]

How do you plan on *finding* the said mind-flayers?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I would think that further messing with the BBEG's plans might well provoke an attack by the exact same dudes who spanked them last go round.

 

[Zentish]

You guys are great! So many good ideas.

I figure we'll either scry them out and take the fight to them or snuff some of their other minions and they'll come to us - that's the way they found us the first time.

"Meddlesome food" was what I think the boss monster called me telepathically.

 

[Nail]

You guys are great! So many good ideas.

I figure we'll either scry them out and take the fight to them or snuff some of their other minions and they'll come to us - that's the way they found us the first time.

..I hope there's more to it than that.

That is: How *exactly* did they find you? Scrying?

If so, you could/should buy a scroll of False Vision (Sor/Wiz 5). Use it to create an illusion to your advantage. Be sure the DM knows the Mind Flayers don't get a saving throw, nor does Spell/power resistance apply.

To be honest, I'm a bit worried: I'm not convinced your DM thought about how the Mind Flayers knew you were there. Did you have to make Will saves (as Scrying requires a Will save from the target!)?


Lastly: did you get your equipment back? If not how much wealth do you have? I'm guessing your power has been dramatically reduced by your equipment loss.

 

[Nail]

And the 7HD plant is ... the treant.

Problem solved.

Playing with the polymorph spell still gives me the heebie-jeebies. It's a complicated spell. After reading Ibu Rex's post, my first thought was: "but you don't get the extrordinary abilities confered by the new forms type!" I was wrong.

Here's the important bits what you get if you polymorph into a plant type:

Plant Type

• Immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects). (Natural ability.)
  
• Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, polymorph, and stunning. (Another natural ability.)
  
• Not subject to critical hits. (Another natural ability.)
  
• Plants breathe and eat, but do not sleep. (A natural ability.)

The only problem with the "polymorph into plant" plan is the spell's duration. It's 1 minute per level.

Other than that, it's brilliant. Immune to the mind blast effect, and immune to the "eat brains" attack. Wonderful!

 

[Iku Rex]

Playing with the polymorph spell still gives me the heebie-jeebies. It's a complicated spell. After reading Ibu Rex's post, my first thought was: "but you don't get the extrordinary abilities confered by the new forms type!" I was wrong.

Ah, but you're not wrong. Apparently, in 3.5 plant traits are natural abilities, not extraordinary.

 

[10th man down]

If your DM is a bit sadistic he probably gave the mindflayers ability focus(mindblast) and Expanded Knowledge(Astral Construct). With these Feats and Animal Affinity their mindblast DCs should be 21 and they've got three friends. Also the various Wall of X Spells are pointless as they've got psionic levitate and psionic dimension door.

Hope that your DM hasn't thought of this and that AMF scrolls are in stock at your local magic shop.

Moreover, they too can polymorph via metamorphosis.

10th

 

[Zentish]

We've been sniffing around some sort of frozen head trade that seems to have (un-known until now) the squid faces behind it in some way. We've run across several NPC baddies with "tattoos with metallic tracings in them" which we have been told by a trusted source are related to the mind flayers ability to maintain contact with their Thralls.

At the point about 2 minutes after we snuffed our second or third tattoo'd baddie, a Boss Monster named Thirdun (sp) telapathically contacted my Wizard, explained how much he'd enjoy stroking my lobes and making me into a thrall, blathered on about how we were "bothersome food" that wouldn't be troubling them much more, then simply said "Allow me to introduce my three sons." At which point 3 squid-faces appeared.

My character had never encountered them before, so I had to base my actions on a fairly decent Knowledge (Dungeoneering) roll. I tried to separate them with a wall of ice, the dimension door'd through it and started doing DC17 mind blasts on everyone. I made my save but others began to be stunned into next week fairly quickly. We got some damage on them but they had some sort of force armor on and the AC to hit was 27. My wizard actually hit twice on natural 20's with her crossbow before fleeing into a rope trick.

After the rope trick expire she cleaned up the mess, rented a cart and loaded her friends empty shells in with some help from the locals - she does have petite-flower arms and strength of only 8. The squid-faces left everyone's equipment intact and the local townsfolk were too frightened to disturb the battlefield.

So while we've retained our gear and traded the loot from the battlefield, tales of dread, and engendered a hefty amount of fear with the local leaders to get resurrected, we're still down a level. Now we're a ftr3/rog3; drd7;ftr7;clr7;wiz8.

While cleaning up Nyneve called it a "scorched earth" scene. In the previous encounter we left 20 mook guards, 2 sidekicks and a named NPC dead, charred, hacked, and frozen in the street. After the mind-flayers finished cleaning our clock and feasting on my friends, they proceeded to the less "fresh" grey matter found lying about the area, slurping all the corpses clean of their tasty bits.

 

[Falling Icicle]

The question then becomes, "In base 3.5, is there any sure-fire protection from Mind Blast?

I believe Freedom of Movement protects against stunning. I would also recommend anything that helps raise saving throws. Another good idea is to travel somewhat spread out, if possible, so that your entire group can't be hit with a single Mind Blast.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

With a good Will save, Mind Flayers are easy prey, the only thing to worry about is to first dimensional anchor them, so they cannot planeshift away.

Yeah, that Will Save is definitely important, or forget about the mindflayers planeshifting away, and start worrying about them planeshifting you to the Negative Energy Plane.

How low is a mindflayer's strength? If it's significantly low, the wizard might take a few out of the fight with Ray of Enfeeblement, empowered if possible.