D&D 5E Intellect Devourer

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Eh, telegraph the threat and you have no worries in my view. It's when it's a "gotcha" that it's a problem. Leave clues to the impending doom and any threat is avoidable with proactive players. And if they fail to do so, at least you provided enough clues to make it a fair challenge.

And that is even as easy as putting the intellect devourer inside the body of an adventurer that came to wherever this place is prepared to face intellect devourers - so you kill the host body, not knowing the little brain monster is going to jump out afterward, face the intellect devourer, and if it brain-drains somebody that is fine because the host body was packing some number of scrolls of greater restoration.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Intellect Devourers are easily the worst designed monsters in 5e, with multiple save-or-die abilities that don't allow Raise Dead on a supposed CR 2. My advice: replace them with more appropriate monsters that aren't quite so ridiculous.

"Could actually hurt/kill PCs permanently" =/= poor design.

Obviously tables vary, but a lack of real threat and no consequences for character death or impairment in battle puts my players to sleep. We love intellect devourers because they're creepy and add real tension to an encounter.

YMMV.

 

[NeverLucky]

"Could actually hurt/kill PCs permanently" =/= poor design.

Obviously tables vary, but a lack of real threat and no consequences for character death or impairment in battle puts my players to sleep. We love intellect devourers because they're creepy and add real tension to an encounter.

YMMV.

I'm of the philosophy that character death should generally be the result of very poor decision making, or climactic fights against very tough enemies. Intellect Devourers are not supposed to be very tough enemies (hence CR 2), and they can kill you with very little decision-making on your part (they're small, easily hidden, it mostly comes down to the luck of the die). Save or dies, especially at low levels, don't really add to the strategy of the game, and it adds tension in the same way that, say, randomly killing PCs by striking them with lightning from the sky adds tension.

Note that I don't have a problem with Mind Flayers which can also kill PCs permanently. They're actually supposed to be powerful, iconic monsters, and their instant-death mechanic has a lot more strategic play to it than Intellect Devourers (you generally have a turn to break the grapple, and the ability needs to go through hit points to kill you). While there's still a lot of danger and tension with Mind Flayers, players are not quite as helpless there, and Mind Flayers have an appropriate CR for the danger level.

 

[jasper]

I have not problem with ID being quote "save or die". To do so you have fail a saving throw. Roll up to a 15 on 3d6. Then the next round it has to survive. Then take over your body. Save or die monsters are okay as long as they are rare.

 

[jaelis]

My daughter made and DM'ed her first dnd adventure for us. I kind of knew it would be hard, basically just a bunch of tough monsters to fight because she used monsters she likes. So I tried to make a tough character that would be hard to kill. Naturally I put an 8 in Intelligence, since that wasn't going to be important. Until the first monster was an Intellect Devourer.