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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 8145764" data-attributes="member: 6777737">Mind flayers are always deadly at essentially all levels in essentially every edition of the game, and this encounter was pretty heavily in favor of the mind flayer. Yeah, "that's when a mind flayer would attack," but that doesn't make it less true. There are three D&D monsters that you should never underestimate because the game often lowballs them: dragons, beholders, and mind flayers.Uh, what?How did the cleric cast a 3rd level spell and a 2nd level spell in the same turn? That's not allowed even if a spell is cast as bonus action casting time. See PHB Chapter 10 under Casting Time, the Bonus Action entry reads, "A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn. You can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action."And why exactly does Dispel Magic not work on Mind Blast? The ability reads, "The mind flayer magically emits psychic energy in a 60-foot cone." Sounds like a magical effect to me.So, you focused down the Paladin. That's fine, but that's exactly what you did. That's why you killed a PC. In 3 rounds you did 4d8+4 + 2d10+4 + 20d10 (147) damage to them when they have 53 hp max (below average unless they had a Con of 13 or less). Instant death is not why this character died.Beyond that, your players clearly have no concept of what Mind Flayers actually do or what they're good at. You started the encounter with the Mind Flayer able to mind blast the whole party, your PCs failed multiple consecutive DC 15 saves even with a 7th level Paladin clearly nearby (since the party must have been within 30 feet of the mind flayer since the stunned paladin was immediately in melee range), then you rolled a natural 20 on one of the highest damage attacks in the entire game, and the party in general doesn't seem to understand how to use their own class abilities as they spend rounds 3, 4, and 5 doing things that sabotage themselves (shortbow with no ally, repeatedly using spells that the creature resists, etc.).This is not a remotely average encounter. Your party rolled about as bad as they possibly could, you rolled about as well as I could imagine, and when your players got frustrated by the encounter they gave up.However, given how things are roughly described, what was the goal of this encounter? Did the characters know they would be facing a mind flayer? Do the players have any knowledge of what mind flayers can do? Did you make it clear to the wizard just how obviously ineffective hypnotic pattern was from the first casting? Did you remind the rogue that the shortbow would prevent him from using sneak attack? Did you, the DM, tell the players when they were making decisions that their characters would obviously know were poor decisions, or did you let them walk into bad choices because they lack system mastery? In the middle of an encounter that was sliding quickly towards TPK?</blockquote>

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