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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 8608489" data-attributes="member: 53176"><h3>Elder Brain(VGtM)</h3>The Elder Brain is the sedentary mass of gray matter that leads a Mind Flayer Colony. A physical representation of a hive mind, they float around in a brine pool and use their massive telepathy range to influence an area of 5 miles around them. Which means an “encounter” with them can start well before you get to their lair. Should the PCs take a nap, or get stunned by a stray pack of Mind flayers, the Elder Brain can take that opportunity to worm its way into the PCs heads.  As such, the only way to ambush an Elder brain is to walk up with a Mind Blank, Nondetection, or similar magical effect. In actual combat, the Elder brain is largely a sitting duck. They can’t really move away from their brine pool. They desperately need minions to make up for the difference. Fortunately for them, a colony has no shortage of minions. Ulitharids*  make for good proxies to add some much needed mobility to the fight. Their ranks can be further bolstered by regular Mind Flayers (and maybe Mind Flayer Psions if you have access to VGtM). Mindwitnesses* can serve as an artillery. Cranium Rat Swarms* as a meatshield, and Oblexes* can sow confusion even among mind-shielded enemies with their impersonation abilities. This is of course, in addition to the legion of thralls they have under their command.*: Monster that appears elsewhere in this book.As for its own combat routine: The Elder Brain depends upon its Psychic Link power. A bonus action that allows it to intrude into the mind of any creature that has been incapacitated within a 5 mile radius. Fortunately for the Elder Brain, they have access to Mind Blast, and a bunch of minions who can also Mind Blast, which can stun enemies. Once a Link has been established, the Brain can use its legendary actions to cause damage and automatically break concentration. Though a PC can break the link with an action, that takes an action in a fight that already has a bunch of stuns flying around everywhere. As for non-Link things the Brain can do, they can cast a psionic spell, but due to concentration limitations, Plane Shift is the only one that's really useful. And even then it's just an escape tool. Dominate Monster would be a good idea, if they didn’t already have access to Wall of Force from a Lair action. Mind Blast is always a good pick whenever it's recharged. And finally, should there be no other options at all, they can use a Tentacle to attack. Mind you, this tentacle attack has a 30’ range and grapples the target, which allows the Brain to grapple things, then haul them up into the air where they will fall down should they escape. Should they not escape they will continue taking damage until they do. So it’s not a bad last resort by any means, it just seems underwhelming to be grabbed by a tentacle when you would think a massively psionic powered brain would be shooting you with mind bullets or using telekinesis of some kind to fling people around.Back to lair actions: These are solid. Wall of Force is one of the most effective battlefield divider spells in the game, blocking everything including ethereal travel. Psionic Anchor sets a target's movement speed to 0 and prevents teleportation, which is shocking for anyone who thought they could rely on superior mobility to cheese the fight. Psychic Inspiration is what they do when they are already concentrating on something and Psionic Anchor is on cooldown, but hey free advantage is free advantage. In the changeover, the Elder Brain lost a bit of their Sense Thoughts power that allowed them to trick targets, but gained the Modify Memory spell in return. Also their Legendary Tentacle attack requires two actions now.  Honestly, if you are planning on using this monster I would highly recommend looking in VGtM, if only for the stat templates and magic items that were left out of this book.</blockquote>

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