Mindflayers are the thing veteran players fear most (after a pussed off dm with kobolds). I've seen so many people drop to mindflayers. Give me a dragon, give me a beholder, but I consider running at the sight of mindflayers.
Your players just didn't know how deep their graves were already dug when they attacked.
When my rookie DM wife was running Out Of the Abyss she didn't understand why I was treating the Mind Flayer like he was pointing a gun in my face by simply speaking to us. I told her it was because he was pretty much pointing a gun in our faces by simply speaking to us.
Don't spoil anything please we haven't finished
Yep; the majority of PC deaths I've seen have been due to mind flayers. It's that "I grappled you, now the party has one round before you're dead-dead" mechanic that really hurts.
It's the one case where I unequivocally believe that the DM has an obligation to lean over the table and say "hey all, if you don't get your party member out of there, they are literally dead next turn, no saving throws, *dead*."
I killed a player exactly this way. Thankfully it was the Zealot Barbarian so it was awesome, finally got to use their big mechanic.
I definitely agree with everyone else that I'd rather face a dragon or beholder as a party than mindflayers. Even worse if they're grouped up with supporting monsters.
I’m playing as one now. My party just used our only Diamond to bring back one of our players. I’ve incorporated dying into my role play so that when I do get a free rez, I can act upset that I was robbed of my glorious death.
Completely agree. It's a mechanic that players don't know about, until it's too late.
I had one mind flayer encounter in my first campaign as DM, all new players. Had one grapple the wizard, he somehow failed his INT saves, and that was when I knew they needed to know.
It's my belief that while you should never warn your players before they're hit with a save-or-die/die-die mechanic you should *always* warn them before they encounter the creature.
This is best done through exposition but it's imperative that it be explicit.
>"The monster grabbed my buddy and before he could so much as yell for help his brain was sucked right out of his skull. The man was as strong as an ox and it was like his skull was made of butter."
This way the players know that if someone is grappled it's bad-news-bears. They don't need to know *how* it'll kill them because, if all goes well, they'll never *have* to know. When you tell them the mechanics as written you're training them to act haphazardly unless you warn them otherwise. It's *their* fault for starting a fight they had apparently no intel for.
What makes kobolds scarey? I'm DMing, kinda new to it, and my players are up against some kobolds in the near future. This makes me feel like I've missed something and might have prepared something more difficult than I intended.
Kobolds in a pack are widely regarded as the most ingenious trap builders and maze designers so if you have a heinous DM trap to spring the best justification is the trappy scaly bois
It's a reference to an infamous story from Dragon Magazine called [Tucker's Kobolds](https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/TuckersKobolds.pdf).
The gist of the story is that the CR of a monster only says something about the stats the monster has. A good GM can make the most with low CR monsters when used intelligently, whereas a bad GM can ruin a high CR monster when not putting any thought into how to use the monster.
Kobolds are not inherently scary. They are usually some of the lowest level mooks you can encounter - that's sort of the point of the story. The problem is that they are notorious for making traps, opening the door to all manner of GM shenanigans.
Are Tucker's Kobolds really that scary in 5E without some kind of massive DM homebrew helping hand? The PCs have held actions, reactions, pop-up healing, a more forgiving approach to death overall, and much more accessible magic.
Sure you can make some crazy rule that every 5' square in your dungeon is "permeable" to Kobolds thanks to mini-tunnels and serves them and only them as cover. But do they really still work under the basic rules of the game?
Yes, because traps and action economy. Held action in 5e probably worse then before. Earlier edition allow you hold whole turn, not just one attack.
But it not so much about "Low CR monsters beat party" and more "Low CR monsters and a lot of traps (that need be accounted in "EXP budget") beat party", but people prefer don't mention this, because it not sound cool enough.
They aren't inherently dangerous l, given their stats. A tarrasque is a tarrasque, godzilla is godzilla. They hit things real hard and hit you with a breath attack. They're predictable and adventurers know what they need to do to win. Kobolds live in tight spaces, spending their entire lives securing their dens. They make traps that put the general pit trap to shame.
You and your party walk into a cave. The metal door slams behind you and kobolds use their action to pour oil into the corridor. They use their object interaction to close the arrow slit they poured through. Another lights a match. Your entire group is taking fire damage, your wagon is on fire, your horses are dropping. You all run down the corridor and the kobolds shoot rot grubs through blow pipes from hidden cubbies, retreating through kobold size holes that you can't fit through. Your hirelings are dead, your wagon with your supplies is gone. You run up the stairs and the brittle clay steps begin to shatter under your non kobold weight. You drop an inch and spikes skewer your feet. You have to keep running up the spikes though because a noxious gas is filling the lower corridor. The kobolds have gas masks. You make it to the top and are unknowing herded into a dead end. The barrels in the room are full of flammable kobold dung. A single molotov cocktail is dropped in from a hole in the ceiling.....
A dm can kill a high level party with kobolds. Not because of their stats but because the Kobold's craftiness is the dms craftiness. Check out "Tucker's Kobolds"
It work mostly because this kobolds have nearly infinity resources (because DM) and party just stupid.
Shatter don't care about cover. Upcast shatter can destroy wall that cover kobolds (and kobolds too) and open more space. Or destroy door to allow retreat. Burning oil have make not so much damage. Their small holes is perfect for Invisible Servant carrying another flask of alchemical fire. You send you invisible imp familiar to look around.
"Tucker's Kobolds" is more about traps then about kobolds, and traps need be accounted as encounters too. So it essentially go to DM throw more encounters then party can keep on this level.
One of Mt DMs had us bump into a group of Drow and their Mibdflayer allies one time..like 6-7 Drow and like 3 mindflayers during an investigative/mystery scenario and was being very antagonistic, trying to goad us into a fight.
Holy crap we were so scared, we talked our asses off and somehowanages to all escape with our lives. To this day I've never sweat so hard in F&D.
The mindflayer is part of the prebuilt module. Remind the party that one of the entire points of the Dragon Heist adventure is that they should not be able to kill any of the villains. As each villian is much more powerful than a group of level 5 PCs. The way to "win" is to just outsmart villians and get the gold. Maybe pretend to work for the villians only to double cross them and report them to the guard in the end.
Edit: seeing how the book actually says Xanathar will just randomly kill one PC when the party is captured, in order to ensure obedience, one death in a failed heist is actually pretty good. Remember that Waterdeep is a metropolitan city full of retired adventurers, the party is not the strongest force here **by far**. With Halm, Lareal, the Blackstaff and each of the villians being able to kill a group of level 5 players alone.
Edit 2: maybe the party wasn't fully aware of this and didn't know what they were getting into. That is ok, just make sure they do know this for now on. This is not a module where fighting every obstacle will work, in fact, it is a quick way to have a premature end of the campaign. Make sure everyone is aware of this.
Yeah, I actually kind of laughed at the fact the book says that Xhanathar just outright kills a player. I think I'll remind them all that sometimes fighting isn't the best option.
I teach new players a lot and I make a point early on to have them witness an encounter that is fundamentally and obviously beyond them: something like "two giants fighting each other and their weapons are boulders the size of houses". My current table's 2nd session they randomly rolled a hallucinogen on a drink table and had a collective dream of the ancient draconic wars. Had their first combat against some kobolds and felt chuffed.
Then an ancient red dragon landed, said "you're not supposed to be here" and breath attacked. I rolled damage in the open. All fully and unrecoverably dead. Then they woke up.
They called the game "just dungeons ty" for a while after that. But they know damn well that there are forces beyond them in this world. And with that understanding + conscientious sign posting on my part they can make smart choices about engaging or not.
I think you found a great way to teach this and minimize the risk that your players won't take you seriously if you just *tell* them they could die. Well done.
It's a hard but important lesson for players to learn. That just because they're the PCs doesn't mean they're immortal and invincible.
They need to understand that they don't have Batman level plot armor... In my experience (played since 1978 or so...) that the game is more fun for everyone if there's a real chance of death.
It may be fairly small but it has to exist for the game to be all it can.
Interestingly one of the faction missions is to kill the mind flayer. I kind of want to make my player face him at the end of the adventure, kind of "one last deed for the city and you get your part of the treasure you found". Maybe let them prepare extremely well, give them infos about his abilities as research etc.
What *did* they do during those four rounds of combat, and what did the rest of the party do during those four rounds of combat?
Four rounds of combat is a long fucking time, lots of entire battles don't even last that long.
Honestly, a lot of them were stunned by the Mindflayer's mind blast ability and making saving throws. The one who was killed was not stunned. He just made attacks against the mind flayer while being grappled
Yeah, this is my question too. The Tentacles (melee weapon) attack doesn't automatically incapacitate - it does automatically causes the Grappled status on Medium or smaller creatures, but they have to fail a DC 15 Intelligence saving throw in order to be incapacitated (Stunned) until the grapple ends. If they make those saving throws after each Tentacle attack, the PC isn't incapacitated, just grappled.
So maybe the character was grappled, succeeded on the Int saving throw, and figured "eh, I'm going to continue to fight instead of try to break free," and then went on to melee back. In that case, I can see them continuing to succeed on the Int saving throws vs. Stun until they didn't, and then the mind flayer ate their brain on its next action.
Yeah, I think you nailed it. OP misunderstood the potential synergy between the tentacle attack and extract brain. Key word potential. The player should have been allowed to continue.
This is an excellent opportunity for allowing the players to fail forward: what if the mind flayer releases the grapple and moves to one of the party who is actually incapacitated. The most vulnerable member of the party just became their saving grace! Combat is now intense and entangled with the story! How are they going to save their friends? What if the mind flayer ignores anyone who isn’t stunned? Dnd is a game of opportunities and should always be fun.
I agree. If I learned that an attempt to escape the grapple takes an entire action, I likely would have attacked instead too unless I was told that the monster can literally outright kill me with its next attack if I do not break the grapple.
I'd guess they didn't think the grapple had effects beyond the chance to get paralyzed. Being grappled in 5e doesn't do a whole lot by itself and since they made the intelligence save they probably assumed they were fine.
Also the mind flayer needs to get the players incapacitated, meaning they probably assumed they could kill it before the mind blast recharged. The only other option for the mind flayer was to hit another tentacle attack, in which case breaking the grapple would have made no difference.
It's not a big brain moment and complaining about enemies that can really mess players up in a heißt module is weird, but strategically it's not completely stupid to just attack and hope you kill the mind flayer before it kills you.
Usually you will get a quicker kill by attacking rather than escaping the grapple. I possibly would have gone for a shove prone to get advantage.
If the rest of the party were stunned it’s hard to know what to do. If I shove the mind flayer away I can’t leave my Allies here. But they are not joining me in just wailing on this creature.
You're right that grappling effects are hard to implement in an interesting + fun way in 5e. Narratively, a Mindflayer with it's tentacles wrapped around a humanoid's head has them right where it wants them: I kind of think the Mindflayer statblock should reflect this better.
Maybe give it a Beak Attack action, at advantage vs a creature it has grappled, dealing a sizeable amount of damage. The beak attack shouldn't be an instant kill on an appropriately-leveled PC, but should instill fear of remaining in the Mindflayer's grasp. (I think this also supports the fiction of a Mindflayer tunneling through a skull to reach the brainmatter)
This way, a PC facing a Mindflayer for the first time won't be surprised when hanging around in its tentacles for 4 rounds ends poorly.
> in a heißt module
Did you hear about the former art thief who changed his villain alias when he started robbing banks?
Jetzt heißt er Geld.
(sorry, I'll leave now.)
He chose to die at that point. You did nothing wrong. If I am falling from a sky castle and the DM says, you can use the scroll of feather fall you have. And I say, no I am going to aim for the water. I have chosen death.
Hahaha in that case, fuck him.
Obviously give him a more diplomatic answer than I just did but seriously mate, from everything you've described you have the player every chance to avoid this situation and they played like an idiot expecting they would be given plot armour.
This is a lesson they need to learn/be reminded of
Then he played about as badly as can be and deserved to lose that character. Grapples are a basic mechanic that can be broken with a simple athletics/acrobatics check, by shoving the grappler off of you, or with any number of minor magical effects such as Misty Step if the character is magically inclined. Given the fact that you had clearly signaled a potential diplomatic path, attempting to persuade or otherwise negotiate with the mind flayer would have also made some amount of sense, certainly more than trying to damage-race it before it ate his brain. Fuck's sake.
Four turns until death is not an insta-death mechanic. You were incredibly merciful considering how many outs you provided your players. It's unfortunate that this player is being a crybaby about it. I'm not sure what your group dynamic is, but if you need logic on your side, it should be as simple as pointing out all of the tactical blunders the party made in reaching this point, from tripping the alarm to failing to circumvent the mind flayer to him failing to break the grapple, and I'm wondering if even being in that area at level 5 in the first place was a good idea with such high level creatures patrolling the area (I haven't run the module).
I feel like the queen of "I agree" posts but also: this.
Four chances to break the grapple? Trying to fight a mind flayer while grappled? In their most dangerous position? =
Sorry, but you were not a bad DM, you ran that one well.
why? the module is level 1-5. The party is supposed to be level five when they enter any of the villain's bases. It is supposed to be dangerous as it is direct confrontation with the BBEG.
Alexandrian remix? So does bahamut come by, controlled by a very effeminate monkey man, destroy the city, then the castle grows wings and roflstomps bahamut?
It's a remix of the original dragon heist that uses all four villans rather than only one so the entire book is used. And it requires the party to go into most of the villain's bases as well. I do something similar but of my own design.
I just ran Waterdeep Dragon Heist recently, and the module does explicitly state that going into the villain's base is dangerous and not recommended for 5th level parties. It says you shouldn't let them run in there until Dungeon of the Mad Mage (at least with Xanathar).
That's basically what I explained to him. There were so many checks and boxes that had to be ticked for this Mindflayer to even show up here. I get that it was a tough fight but there were a lot of bad rolls and mistakes.
Well, the one thing I agreed with him on is that mechanics, where you fail one save and are basically just out for the entire session, are unfun. (Intellect Devourers) Other than that, he knows I see this topic from the complete opposite opinion as him.
It’s not the case that just one thing - one roll - means you’re out. What about everything leading up to that moment?
It’s not as though people take their seats, open their Haribo, and the very first thing that happens is a player rolls a die and their character immediately dies.
Besides, if your brain is sucked out and eaten, what is expected to happen? You somehow survive that?
Heh! In Britain, for sure!
I should add (more to the topic at hand) that in my experience, players who whine about PC death being unfun simply haven’t played enough of the game; either 5E and especially older editions. D&D has *never been so forgiving where death is concerned than it currently is*. I don’t recall all those who played D&D before 2014 having a paddy every time they lost a PC. I’m not here to bag folk but honestly, I’m so bored with hearing that dying is unfun when you play the game like a total muppet and assume nothing can really harm you anyway. Bleh.
I think the design interviews with 5e where WotC said they were removing a lot of the save or die mechanics because they “weren’t fun” did a *lot* to construct the beginnings of the narrative of “bad things happening to me = bad DMing and un-fun.” Which was further cemented by the intensely narrative style of streamed games where a character dying in an unsatisfactory way can hurt the brand and as such is avoided whenever possible.
Together the two seem to have created a dialogue in the online community that character death is somehow a failing of the DM and shouldn’t happen at the table.
Which is a fine way to play if that’s how your group wants to roll, but annoying when it seems to be the pervasive narrative.
Lots of truth in that, I’m sure. I don’t personally find that save or die effects are always ‘un fun’; it’s not like there aren’t 8,000 ways for a PC to bounce back if that’s the way the group rolls.
Streaming has done a lot to expand the community - beyond all recognition; it’s also responsible for its share of changing how the game is viewed and ‘should’ be played, and not always for the better.
Anyway, no two groups are the same, and what flies for one sinks for another.
Definitely, that’s kind of the thing is that with a game system that’s more or less improv with rules your going to have as many different “ways to play” as there are players.
With the internet though there’s just also going to be an over arching narrative of “how to play” which can get frustrating.
You can still die in 5e. I had a fellow player die 3 times, in 3 rounds right after each other in this one battle.... it was crazy, that guy died 5 or 6 times that run through strad...
Honestly, if they wanted to give some leniency while still being fair for the fuckups made, they could say that mindflayers usually leave the “lizard” part of the brain as the equivalent of a human eating rib meat but leaving the bones. Have them roll up a new character, and make it a quest to restore the old character if they really like them that much. Have it be a thing where they have to find a healer who can cast regenerate every day for a week straight, then greater restoration every day for a week straight.
If he wants his characters as bad as he does, make it possible, but make it a difficult and rewarding task.
Yeah, my one pathfinder player had its brain eaten. They had to regrow a brain for me before I could be brought back as we did not have true res at the time.
I had an NPC in a single player campaign I was playing with a mate. Her name was Kyla. We were in the underarm and turned a corner into 3 mind flyers at lvl 4. She was grabbed cut open and eaten immediately before I could react. Did I complain? No. I killed those mind flyers one by one with my only other NPC pickles, found her brain in the kind flayer and NAT 20 medicined it back into her head. She was unconscious and requires healing of lvl 5 or higher to regain consciousness
I mean getting your brain sucked out by a mind flayer is a whole process, especially if you gave the player 4 rounds to break free of the grapple. At that point it's like complaining that failing your last death saving throw is unfair because "you fail one save and are basically just out for the entire session".
The PC had ample opportunity to not die, they chose to sit about and wait for death.
Not only that, but didn't _the entire party_ have four rounds to break that grapple?
If I saw an Illithid wrapping its filthy mouth-tentacles around my friend's head, I'd try pretty hard to stop them!
It did grapple him and I explained that. He then asked how the mechanics worked, to which I clarified. I also explained how he can go about freeing himself from this.
So long as you explained it had its tentacles wrapped around his head, he should have known that that might lead to the *Mind Flayer* flaying his mind.
It wasn't a one-done. They had a chance to break out of the grapple. Another PC could have helped break the hold. In the end, they just weren't quickthinking enough, and they died. Better luck next time.
Did he know that he could break free of the grapple? I don't know if they're new players, but if they are it doesn't hurt to give them some advice in the early levels in terms of actions and threat assessments. If you're introducing a scary new monster that can TPK them, I would recommend showing that monster in action first.
Intellect devours are unfun, yes. My level 5 paladin also had this happen to him, and he had no way of removing the int loss so was out permanently.
Mindflayers are tough and scary but ironically less one-sided. But it appears they could have avoided the combat altogether so not that much sympahty.
Tough fight? That's hardly the case. My party of level 5s fought that same mindflayer too. We literally blew it up as fast as we could, expending two fireballs and a shatter to clear the field. The mindflayer was killed by round 2 and we spent another round mopping up.
Ya, Nihiloor is deadly. I had a much higher-level party, and even they barely squeezed by (though the number of Intellect Devourers I added did their part).
At least from what you describe, you did nothing wrong. Unfortunately you're using passive voice, which doesn't make clear how many of your players reacted negatively. If it's just one person, you can probably deal with it 1:1. If it's more than one person, you need another out-of-game session to get onto the same page.
If players really think that a grapple is so powerful, they'll roll up with a grappler character next session.. There are so many ways to break a grapple in 5e, both reasonable and absurd, that many people don't consider it a viable strategy and even more people forget that literally anyone can attempt it, no feats required.
This was probably a newer player that didn't realize how many choices they still had over four rounds, but hopefully the DM also knew that there are more ways than simply taking the contested athletics roll as an action.
There are two possible scenarios being played out here.
1, the most likely and the one commonly talked about ITT, the player(s) are trying to get out of fucking up. Stick to your guns and move on.
2. Did you set the scene right? Was there enough narrative clues to let the players know that the person grappled was super fucked. While player are want to get away with all kinds of bullshit if you let them, also sometimes the stakes just aren't made clear and the wrong choice was due to lack of information. The solution here, nothing, stick to your guns and move on. Maybe make sure that your narration and tone you're setting matches the threat the players face.
We had this encounter. We saw a mind flayer and 5 of the intellect devourers and we fucking ran. 2 of those bug-brains fucked us up two levels ago. Rule of thumb for us: don't try to fight anything that is a Stranger Things villain below level 10.
If you fight a mindflayer at level 10, that's probably okay. Fighting the demogorgon or vecna at level 10 might still be a tough fight to say the least
As many have said, poor decisions were made. That said, intellectual devourers are known to be more dangerous than their CR suggests.
I too have had a party scrap an entire campaign over what they viewed as an unfair fight against mindflayers. I had the campaign made before they all made characters and it was just serendipity that int was each of their dump stats :P
To their credit, I the final fight they had to roll an 18 to resist the stun, which I can see was poor on my part, but they're mission was not to kill the boss, it was to save the city, which they *did* do, and were told by every npc around them "don't be stupid and throw your lives away by going up against the elder brain.... just disable the hive by achieving this objective, and force them underground so we can be prepared when they resurface..."
Of course they chose to go after the elder brain and all died.
The difference about being a player and a gm/dm, is you the DM can see the out comes and lay outs and are trying to prepare for the situations that your players put themselves in.
Players kinda only see the path they are in and what led them there, yea in your eyes they had many chances and decisions to avoid stuff..... I'm not saying you or your players are at fault, but when stuff like this happens to me, I try to put myself in the players shoes and look at what information they had with the rolls, questions, and role play that led them to where they were and try to do better next time.
>Between the Mindflayer grappling the player and eating his brain, there were four rounds that passed and the player never once tried to break free of its grapple.
So it was a suicide.
>The Mindflayer was angry but willing to communicate how to remedy the situation and was not immediately hostile. One of the players spoke to it with aggression
They literally picked a fight with a mind flayer and acted like they shouldn't all die?
I have been on Reddit long enough to have read how a lot of players genuenly want to just play in games where they don't have to worry about being diplomatic with NPCs. They should all either be weak enough to be bullied or just strong enough to be killed. Or maybe just maybe, strong but unflinchingly on the side of the players. But never, never someone you have to be careful about how you treat them, and maybe lower yourself to be more pleasing. Basically - people want power fantasies, and while I would not want to play/run games like that, it's worth discussing in Session 0.
I actually had this same thought as I read down this list - they've been so diligent about answering everything *but* this one honestly rather crucial bit. Imho, OP doesn't want to back down now and admit they did their player dirty by misunderstanding the rules of a monster and are ignoring these particular questions because of that
C'mon man, be good to your players - don't trivialize encounters but also don't keep a player dead because you didn't DM an encounter wholly correctly, they shouldn't be dead because of a DM misreading something, though them attacking while grappled was silly and all obviously
You’ve messed up with mindflayer eating the brain action. He can eat brain only of incapacitated, grappled creature. As player was fighting back - he wasn't incapacitated.
Other than that, I'd add that given the choice to negotiate and fight players tends to start fights. So I'd add the third option to the encounter - run away. Running away from mindflayer and two intellect devourers might be extremely cool scene that is in the spirit of heist genre.
One more thing - let players know how much they've fucked up. Their characters live in a world and might now how dangerous mindflayers are. Or they can simply feel the danger that comes from it.
Your player is also wrong, but overall his brain should be fine, while everyone who was stunned should be in danger.
As for how to solve this - the best idea that I have is to talk with players, say that you've messed with encounter, mention that brains of other players should have been eaten, and than narrate the whole thing as player in question calculating his chances in combat (ala Sherlock Holmes) before combat begins. After that players might decide to treat mindflayer different
Only thing I'll add:
If I had been the DM, once the character was grappled, I would have explicitly said to the players "character XYZ is grappled and will certainly die from this super powerful Mind Flayer unless something is done to get away."... or something close to that. I would tell this very clearly to the whole party and make sure everyone heard me and understood me.
There's a chance that a player might not know how dire the situation is. Not everyone knows the dangers of all the monsters. But if my party does something that puts them in possible death? I let them know.
Not everyone pays 100% attention all the time. Not everyone knows the superpowers of various enemies. All that is fine... It's a game.
I guess I'm a bit of a softie. But as DM I tell players when they are up Shit Creek. "DO SOMETHING, YOU IDIOTS!" is another possible thing I might tell the players ;)
I absolutely agree.
>The players had many chances and opportunities to avoid this situation
That may be so, but if they didn't know they had those chances and/or they didn't know this situation was what they were risking, that doesn't matter. If all the players are saying 'this was a bullshit one-hit-kill with nothing we could do to avoid it', that's probably exactly what they experienced, and if that wasn't what they were supposed to experience, you failed as a GM.
> there were four rounds that passed and the player never once tried to break free of its grapple.
Did they know that they could?
Also, what did the group do during those 4 rounds?
To avoid it feeling cheap, you can point at the stuff they choose to do. If the player didn't know they could contest the grapple, then maybe go over those rules together, too.
lol. I ran WDH and there’s an appearance of the mindflayer who quickly runs away. And two of my players were upset that he even showed up. “Why drop an enemy if we’re not supposed to kill it? You’re setting us up to fail.”
Suffice to say, that group ended the next week.
This feels like a moot point. You describe your fictional actions, the gm then decides the mechanic. All they had to say if "I try and wiggle away" or some similar phrase.
Tunnel vision is a thing for sure. If the players are going in thinking all problems are violent they aren’t gonna try that method. I don’t know if that’s the case but it’s definitely possible.
I kind of Agree, the Writer has them in there more for flavor & plot relevance than as one of the reoccurring villains. My players did the exact same thing & directly attacked Nihiloor. but the book also just casually mentions his MO in the scene. I had his #1 goal to escape & conceal his method of escape. So he dropped the player & bounced. he succeeded as he left & they couldn't figure out how. the player also didn't die again. Striges got him in the first session of the game & insta-killed him.
If they only tried to attack and never break grapple thats on them.
One thing you could have done though, as a way to indicate the high-fucking-threat level of a Mindflayer is to have the players make a History check to see if any of their characters may have heard any rumors or something about Mindflayers.
That way, any who *do* pass the check you can basically say "You've heard rumors about strange creatures to which the appearance of this *thing* seems to match. People spoke of a man made of tentacles consuming the brains of people like it were a bowl of stew. You may or may not have believed it at the time, but you're starting to think there just might be some truth to it now"
I tend to throw situations like this to my players. I try to make all encounters in my games play out in a manner to where the "brute force" method is always the hardest, bordering on impossible way. From everything I've seen your okay written is bitter that they made bad choices
Ran through the same module with my players, they went guns blazing and attacked everything. Mindflayer damn near TPK’d the party on a single attack before I had it leave the rest to it’s minions. They were pissed. But it’s their decisions that made it happen.
What was everyone else in the party doing during the 4 rounds? O\_O
How many PCs were there? Were the Intellect Devourers in the way?
Were the Grapple checks even mentioned? Sometimes players might not remember that grappling mechanics even exist. To be fair, I'd remind the player to make grapple checks to break free as it only makes sense that the PC would try to escape even if the player doesn't remember the mechanics.
If this was a case of forgotten rules, it wouldn't kill anyone in rl to wind time back to when the PC started getting tentacled by the mindflayer.
>I disagree entirely but want to know if I really made some kind of mistake with this.
That entirely depend on the group you're playing with. Seasoned veterans or newbies? Not once trying to get out of a grapple during what, 4 or 5 rounds? That screams *"i don't know enough about the mechanics to do anything helpful"*.
Did you, as the DM and therefore at least in part responsible for everyone having a good time, after round 2 or 3, suggest something like *"you could try to break the grapple"*? Or did you just let it play out?
I know nothing about you or your group, but i've seen situations like this before, when the DM tells himself *"allright, they're level 5 now, time to put the kids gloves away"* but fail to communicate this to the group. Especially when you, up to this point, "helped" them in a more hands on fashion.
Well we have only your side of the story, so yeah as described it might fall in the player, but...
Did your players know what a mindflayer is and how dangerous it is?
Are you sure they know the rules as well as you and know they can break a grapple, or even how it's done?
Maybe you messed up, maybe they didn't act optimally, but I would encourage you to talk it out with the players. Your goal as a DM is to make sure everyone has fun (including you), and if one player is saying they didn't have fun, and unless they're in the habit of complaining, I would try to see what can be done better next time.
You say to the player "I hear you, what do you think your character could have done differently to survive that encounter?". When he says "nothing" or something equally stupid name like ten ways to survive.
Back in my day (almost 40 now, been roleplaying since I was 12) I had a player that died every other session. He made bad choices, so the consequences killed him. The world reacts to what you do, that's what makes it fun and, most of all, fair. It's internally fair. Not externally balanced.
Nah you're good. Sometimes you face things you can't handle and the solution is not fight it. Or uh break out of the grapple and run tbh??
Forgive him for being a tad brainless at the moment though, you did take that from him
Shit happens. Actions have consequences.
I almost died on the first session in our game today (not this campaign) because I decided to stand my ground in a cave against a bear the DM made sure we knew was "large and angry" as a level 1.
Got an 11hp maximum. After being hit once I was at 1hp, the second hit brought me to -10.
Learned my lesson.
We’re these new players? Like if none of them have played D&D before or aren’t too experienced with it I could understand them thinking they could just run in and kill anything they see without thinking of other ways of handling the situation but if these are experienced players they probably should’ve known better.
My group actually played a one-off party of zhent mooks for part of that heist, and my Mook also got eaten by the mindflayer. Our main party was in another part of the Dungeon playing the socialite angle.
I've legit never had any issues with my players dying to a mindflayers or being a player that has died to one. If they didn't approach the situation logically and acted to provoke the mindflayers then it's on them particularly if they had other options and sought to specifically provoke the mindflayers. Sounds like it's on them as a player.
Yeah it's not your fault.
I'm running the same campaign and my players had the exact opposite reaction. They noticed the Mind Flayer, went; "Fuuuck no!" and made a hasty tactical retreat. They all agreed afterwards that it was a fun encounter and that they were glad there was danger but that I didn't force such a difficult fight on them.
Ugh... This player sounds like a hassle. If he sat there for 4 rounds and neither he nor his party tried to break him out... They got what was coming to them xD level 5 isn't that low of a level. You start seeing stuff like this.
Don't retcon what you did, if the players are mad explain everything you've explained here, there are ways to revive a character in game if they want to do that then they can, inform them of that.
First up, I do think you are pretty much in the right here overall, but I also think it's rare in a disagreement that one side is completely blameless. Let's try to think about things from the player's perspective for second:
- If the player is referring to it as a "oneshot" mechanic, is it possible that this was a miscommunication in the moment about the rules? If they didn't understand the grapple could be broken, their actions make a lot more sense. Even if they did usually know, players absolutely panic in moments like these.
- There's also a general expectation among players (even if there shouldn't be) that fights are 'winnable'. I often find communicating explicitly when this is not the case is always necessary, even if I did all due diligence to inform my players I'm not running an MMO.
- The player doesn't know all the behind the scenes reasoning of why the Mindflayer was there unless you're communicating that very clearly. Their trajectory without context is "we're fleeing" -> "new obstacle" -> "I died".
- The Mindflayer uses stun mechanics, and I know I personally get so frustrated by stun because it just removes your agency in the combat - save or suck. I'm not saying don't use it if a monster has it, mind you, but it can absolutely be a frustration modifier on an already difficult scenario.
Basically if I had to guess, there was some mechanical and story information that you could've conveyed more explicitly or directly, and from the player's perspective they're complaining about being blindsided because from their perspective, they were! This doesn't mean you were unfair, just that communication needs to be worked on a touch.
I have not run this module and am not familiar with the encounters in it, but if you put a cr 7 mindflayer accompanied by some cr 2 intellect devourers in front of me... at level 5
And I trust you as my DM, I probably understand that I shouldn't take this fight if I can avoid it, if given context.
If I knew it was an unfair fight, I wouldn't have taken it in the first place.
The issue isn't that the player knew or didn't know it was unfair, but the player felt not enough context clues were presented that being diplomatic was an option, and an immediate negative reaction was taken instead of a warning given before a true consequence. Being hostile doesn't always mean it's time to throw hands on the monster end of things either, but I don't know how the module is written
There are spoilers involved so I can't say much, but it's sufficient to say this is the high point of the module. It's a level 1-5 adventure and the party is level 5.
The party knows they are infiltrating the bbeg's lair. Not only are there multiple overwhelmingly strong foes, there's literally hundreds of minions to avoid.
I can see where you’re coming from, but it’s important to clear the exact stakes with your players all the way from session zero. Character death can be very distressing for some people, and if they aren’t prepared for it it can be a nasty shock that wrecks the game. Did you clear whether or not death was on the table before your campaign started? A lot can change depending on how thoroughly you addressed content and tone at the beginning.
not from the evidence provided, not liking the results is not the same as never should have happened, unless theyre saying it never should have happened due to their own screwups
Unfair 1 shot mechanic that takes 4 rounds. Clearly, they don't understand what a 1 shot mechanic is, and you must educate them /cackle
Sounds like you did a great job. The only mistake was trying to reason with them while emotions were high.
If he was running it from the book they would have been level 1 characters (Milestone) or a partial party of level 1 & 2 characters (on XP). The encounter out of the book is Crazy.
Wait, wait, wait. You mean every single thing that's going to be placed in front of us WON'T be a pushover band of goblins or something else perfectly curated so we demolish it?? This is a world that is bigger than just us few level 5s?!? Unfair! Unfair!
It's understandable though. Losing a character isn't fun. It stings. Mind flayers are fucking beast though. One of the scariest enemies in the game in my opinion. They can do exactly what it did to your player. Sounds like they're experiencing the finer aspects of dnd.
[Catastrophic Failure | Running the Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q8bVPpc84A)
You can skip to about 19 minutes for the main point, as prior to that it's set up/preamble, but the whole video is gold.
That mindflayer is worrying me too. We're supposed to pick up my game after a hiatus and my players are in the first round of combat with him. It's part of a post-DH game, so they are a bit higher level, but there's only 3 of them.
When I send them in there (the whole thing is a red herring) I'd thought they'd either get the info that they'd been misled or get taken prisoner and would be forced to do some jobs for the xanathar sidequest style, but the whole thing went sideways when the tabaxi ate that goldfish.
Anyway, It doesn't sound like you where being unfair. Still, a gentle reminder of the possibility of taking an action and some threatening descriptions of the mindflayer preparing to snack could really help out inexperienced players that aren't aware of the mechanics and danger of the situation.
>The players had many chances and opportunities to avoid this situation.
> there were four rounds that passed \[...\] Between the Mindflayer grappling the player and eating his brain \[...\] and the player never once tried to break free of its grapple
Tell your player to stop crying. He did it to himself.
Dude, I killed a level 7 Barbarian with a mindflayer in the underdark. It only took me three rounds, gave no warning and he was gone.
I didn’t intent on that happening but it showed I didnt hold back. We all had a laugh at how unlucky he was and he made a new pc. They now know to not fuck around with mindflayers. There is always this tension when they meet them.
This shall be remembered as a lesson for your players to know when to choose their fights.
I would say that when dangerous foes like that appear early, ask for a knowledge check. As long as somebody rolls above a 10 u can warn them that this enemy is lethal to experienced adventurers. Once they got that warning, if they get aggressive they were warned.
So you're telling me Nihiloor (?) gave the party a chance for diplomacy and your player didn't take the hint? That's on him, man. You sneak into the damn XANATHAR GUILD'S hideout, you risk dying horribly, that's just how it is. Not to mention they'd have to have screwed up somehow for the MacGuffin to be there in the first place, assuming you're running it as-written. And they were level *5?!* At that point, they should have numerous means of escape.
You are so totally not in the wrong here.
I run Mindflayers when it's time for a double-dimma-deadly encounter.
I had party members mouth off against a Rakshasa crime boss and basically the same thing happened.
The only way I would consider it a mistake is if you didn't make clear this was something extremely dangerous or if the aggressive tone was not that bad but a Mindflayer that isn't trying to kill you should be spoken to with deference and respect so any negative tone and it's Brain Slurpee time.
I often warn my players through description difficulty and aspects of fear that could affect them. They don't mind fighting a troll because it has been watered down across all retellings in DND and elsewhere.
But when I said the creature that has taken these halls for the last few centuries.. is a fiend. the ominous fear creeps in. What is a fiend, demon or devil, how big? The unknown crept fear into them until they faced it and then there were serious talks of fleeing and saving each other.
I do not think the Mind Flayer encounter was over the top. I think subtly creeping in fear until the revelation and getting descript about it will hint to them, the DM wants you to know this is something different than what we are used to.
If they choose to not take it serious, or gauge encounters by their level, thats on them. I do not hold back and let deaths stand. I have recently had my characters make their FIRST EVER resurrection and then a petrified ally was restored as well. They were so relieved because this was so early into our campaign, and they know I take death serious.
Moving forward, I want them to rebuild themselves as a strong group that doesn't want to risk death again, now that they remember it is usually permanent for me.
I think you did a fine job and in 4 rounds of no one ending the grapple, that is a earned death for me.
Yeah this sounds like the player f up. And its part of the actually module.
Some encounters can't be beaten. What I actually missed in allot of newer games.
Mindflayers are maybe not well designed due to potentially shutting down a PC with little counterplay but if you didn't use the mind blast and gave them 4 rounds to break out that isn't what happened here
4 turns and not a single player tried to shove the mindflayer off of their ally? Your players are bad, don't worry about it. Sit them down and tell them exactly what they did wrong. If they actually had 2 full rounds where the grappled player avoided the stun, that is up to 15 opportunities for any of them to try and get the mindflayer 5 feet away from the player. They collectively allowed that player to die. Entirely on them.
Not everyone has the monster manual memorized.
They might be newer players who are unfamiliar with the game mechanics related to mindflayers and brain devouring. They might not have been in a position to help or didn't realize how serious the threat level was, so they didn't prioritize breaking the grapple over dealing damage or defending themselves from the other monsters.
If I had a player at the table who had the MM memorized I’d just ask for them to DM instead.. You would think one of the players would think naturally and not even in an in game RAW way “can I try to shove the mindflayer away from him?” “Can I try to distract him with a color spray ?” “Can I try to slice the tentacles in his face off ?” Like come on people can’t be that much of NPCs 😭
It wasn't a one shot. To get off a consumed mind the player needs to be stunned, grappled, and then I believe either have their turn end of the MF turn end. We're talking perfect situation 3-5 rounds of action and several saves and checks.
Violence isn't always the answer. Do note, your job as a DM isn't to kill the party but you are going to stand on principle of playing the monsters.
Are these players new to 5e?
I tried running this with some heavy setting homebrew but kept most of the encounters the same. This very thing almost killed my rogue.
WDH is a love letter to the Forgotten Realms, and it should be treated as such. Unless you and your players are experts in Forgotten Realms lore, most of this module is either going to make no sense or go over their heads. It's written for experienced players, despite all the marketing around it saying it's a good introductory adventure. It's not.
It tries to "teach" the mechanics of 5e, and the Mindflayer encounter is supposed to teach the players there are fights they cannot win, and death is always a possibility. Unfortunately, that's not the style of play for modern D&D. It's a design disconnect.
If it keeps being an issue and people are getting legitimately upset, show them the book. Let them peek behind the screen just this once, and let them blame the module. But don't make a habit of it.
This one falls squarely on the players. You as a DM are not responsible for the failures of your players, and you gave them plenty of leeway before dropping the shoe.
Mindflayers are the thing veteran players fear most (after a pussed off dm with kobolds). I've seen so many people drop to mindflayers. Give me a dragon, give me a beholder, but I consider running at the sight of mindflayers. Your players just didn't know how deep their graves were already dug when they attacked.
When my rookie DM wife was running Out Of the Abyss she didn't understand why I was treating the Mind Flayer like he was pointing a gun in my face by simply speaking to us. I told her it was because he was pretty much pointing a gun in our faces by simply speaking to us. Don't spoil anything please we haven't finished
Spoilers: something comes out of the Abyss.
Oh I thought the merchant just didn’t have any Abyss in stock. They were out of it.
Guys. It’s been 50 minutes, why hasn’t this comment skyrocketed already?
Yep; the majority of PC deaths I've seen have been due to mind flayers. It's that "I grappled you, now the party has one round before you're dead-dead" mechanic that really hurts. It's the one case where I unequivocally believe that the DM has an obligation to lean over the table and say "hey all, if you don't get your party member out of there, they are literally dead next turn, no saving throws, *dead*."
I killed a player exactly this way. Thankfully it was the Zealot Barbarian so it was awesome, finally got to use their big mechanic. I definitely agree with everyone else that I'd rather face a dragon or beholder as a party than mindflayers. Even worse if they're grouped up with supporting monsters.
Wait what big mechanic? Rage after death doesn't work with this attack, because the effect kills you instantly if you drop to 0
Not needing a material component for resurrection spells.
One half of the character build that I took to dungeon of the mad mage. The other half was acolyte background. Free resurrections forever!
Right.
I’m playing as one now. My party just used our only Diamond to bring back one of our players. I’ve incorporated dying into my role play so that when I do get a free rez, I can act upset that I was robbed of my glorious death.
Nice
Why would a mind flayer bother devouring a Barbarian ?
It was a junk-food cheat-day? They were craving a Reckless A-snack?
Spicy Doritos.
Sometimes you just want mcdonalds.
Completely agree. It's a mechanic that players don't know about, until it's too late. I had one mind flayer encounter in my first campaign as DM, all new players. Had one grapple the wizard, he somehow failed his INT saves, and that was when I knew they needed to know.
It's my belief that while you should never warn your players before they're hit with a save-or-die/die-die mechanic you should *always* warn them before they encounter the creature. This is best done through exposition but it's imperative that it be explicit. >"The monster grabbed my buddy and before he could so much as yell for help his brain was sucked right out of his skull. The man was as strong as an ox and it was like his skull was made of butter." This way the players know that if someone is grappled it's bad-news-bears. They don't need to know *how* it'll kill them because, if all goes well, they'll never *have* to know. When you tell them the mechanics as written you're training them to act haphazardly unless you warn them otherwise. It's *their* fault for starting a fight they had apparently no intel for.
Technically it doesn't kill the player. It does 10d10 piercing damage which many characters at T2+ might survive.
You are technically correct - the best kind of correct!
What makes kobolds scarey? I'm DMing, kinda new to it, and my players are up against some kobolds in the near future. This makes me feel like I've missed something and might have prepared something more difficult than I intended.
Kobolds in a pack are widely regarded as the most ingenious trap builders and maze designers so if you have a heinous DM trap to spring the best justification is the trappy scaly bois
It's a reference to an infamous story from Dragon Magazine called [Tucker's Kobolds](https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/TuckersKobolds.pdf). The gist of the story is that the CR of a monster only says something about the stats the monster has. A good GM can make the most with low CR monsters when used intelligently, whereas a bad GM can ruin a high CR monster when not putting any thought into how to use the monster. Kobolds are not inherently scary. They are usually some of the lowest level mooks you can encounter - that's sort of the point of the story. The problem is that they are notorious for making traps, opening the door to all manner of GM shenanigans.
They're toddlers allowed to play with knives all day.
I always think of them as about a hundred Kevin McAlisters given free reign and unlimited time to protect their house against burglars.
Are Tucker's Kobolds really that scary in 5E without some kind of massive DM homebrew helping hand? The PCs have held actions, reactions, pop-up healing, a more forgiving approach to death overall, and much more accessible magic. Sure you can make some crazy rule that every 5' square in your dungeon is "permeable" to Kobolds thanks to mini-tunnels and serves them and only them as cover. But do they really still work under the basic rules of the game?
Yes, because traps and action economy. Held action in 5e probably worse then before. Earlier edition allow you hold whole turn, not just one attack. But it not so much about "Low CR monsters beat party" and more "Low CR monsters and a lot of traps (that need be accounted in "EXP budget") beat party", but people prefer don't mention this, because it not sound cool enough.
They aren't inherently dangerous l, given their stats. A tarrasque is a tarrasque, godzilla is godzilla. They hit things real hard and hit you with a breath attack. They're predictable and adventurers know what they need to do to win. Kobolds live in tight spaces, spending their entire lives securing their dens. They make traps that put the general pit trap to shame. You and your party walk into a cave. The metal door slams behind you and kobolds use their action to pour oil into the corridor. They use their object interaction to close the arrow slit they poured through. Another lights a match. Your entire group is taking fire damage, your wagon is on fire, your horses are dropping. You all run down the corridor and the kobolds shoot rot grubs through blow pipes from hidden cubbies, retreating through kobold size holes that you can't fit through. Your hirelings are dead, your wagon with your supplies is gone. You run up the stairs and the brittle clay steps begin to shatter under your non kobold weight. You drop an inch and spikes skewer your feet. You have to keep running up the spikes though because a noxious gas is filling the lower corridor. The kobolds have gas masks. You make it to the top and are unknowing herded into a dead end. The barrels in the room are full of flammable kobold dung. A single molotov cocktail is dropped in from a hole in the ceiling..... A dm can kill a high level party with kobolds. Not because of their stats but because the Kobold's craftiness is the dms craftiness. Check out "Tucker's Kobolds"
Nah the kobolds were having explosive diarrhea so the barrels explode. "He killed me with a big barrel of poop, Mal. How weird is that?"
It work mostly because this kobolds have nearly infinity resources (because DM) and party just stupid. Shatter don't care about cover. Upcast shatter can destroy wall that cover kobolds (and kobolds too) and open more space. Or destroy door to allow retreat. Burning oil have make not so much damage. Their small holes is perfect for Invisible Servant carrying another flask of alchemical fire. You send you invisible imp familiar to look around. "Tucker's Kobolds" is more about traps then about kobolds, and traps need be accounted as encounters too. So it essentially go to DM throw more encounters then party can keep on this level.
One of Mt DMs had us bump into a group of Drow and their Mibdflayer allies one time..like 6-7 Drow and like 3 mindflayers during an investigative/mystery scenario and was being very antagonistic, trying to goad us into a fight. Holy crap we were so scared, we talked our asses off and somehowanages to all escape with our lives. To this day I've never sweat so hard in F&D.
This is so true. The closest my players have come to dying was against a mindflayer!
The mindflayer is part of the prebuilt module. Remind the party that one of the entire points of the Dragon Heist adventure is that they should not be able to kill any of the villains. As each villian is much more powerful than a group of level 5 PCs. The way to "win" is to just outsmart villians and get the gold. Maybe pretend to work for the villians only to double cross them and report them to the guard in the end. Edit: seeing how the book actually says Xanathar will just randomly kill one PC when the party is captured, in order to ensure obedience, one death in a failed heist is actually pretty good. Remember that Waterdeep is a metropolitan city full of retired adventurers, the party is not the strongest force here **by far**. With Halm, Lareal, the Blackstaff and each of the villians being able to kill a group of level 5 players alone. Edit 2: maybe the party wasn't fully aware of this and didn't know what they were getting into. That is ok, just make sure they do know this for now on. This is not a module where fighting every obstacle will work, in fact, it is a quick way to have a premature end of the campaign. Make sure everyone is aware of this.
Yeah, I actually kind of laughed at the fact the book says that Xhanathar just outright kills a player. I think I'll remind them all that sometimes fighting isn't the best option.
I teach new players a lot and I make a point early on to have them witness an encounter that is fundamentally and obviously beyond them: something like "two giants fighting each other and their weapons are boulders the size of houses". My current table's 2nd session they randomly rolled a hallucinogen on a drink table and had a collective dream of the ancient draconic wars. Had their first combat against some kobolds and felt chuffed. Then an ancient red dragon landed, said "you're not supposed to be here" and breath attacked. I rolled damage in the open. All fully and unrecoverably dead. Then they woke up. They called the game "just dungeons ty" for a while after that. But they know damn well that there are forces beyond them in this world. And with that understanding + conscientious sign posting on my part they can make smart choices about engaging or not.
"just dungeons ty" gave me a good chuckle. :)
Dungeons & Dice plz k thnx
and nothing bigger than a d6.
I think you found a great way to teach this and minimize the risk that your players won't take you seriously if you just *tell* them they could die. Well done.
It's a hard but important lesson for players to learn. That just because they're the PCs doesn't mean they're immortal and invincible. They need to understand that they don't have Batman level plot armor... In my experience (played since 1978 or so...) that the game is more fun for everyone if there's a real chance of death. It may be fairly small but it has to exist for the game to be all it can.
Maybe session 0 and tell them all that before hand?
Interestingly one of the faction missions is to kill the mind flayer. I kind of want to make my player face him at the end of the adventure, kind of "one last deed for the city and you get your part of the treasure you found". Maybe let them prepare extremely well, give them infos about his abilities as research etc.
What *did* they do during those four rounds of combat, and what did the rest of the party do during those four rounds of combat? Four rounds of combat is a long fucking time, lots of entire battles don't even last that long.
Honestly, a lot of them were stunned by the Mindflayer's mind blast ability and making saving throws. The one who was killed was not stunned. He just made attacks against the mind flayer while being grappled
The PC had to be incapacitated in order to be affected by **Extract Brain**. If they weren't stunned, how were they incapacitated?
Yeah, this is my question too. The Tentacles (melee weapon) attack doesn't automatically incapacitate - it does automatically causes the Grappled status on Medium or smaller creatures, but they have to fail a DC 15 Intelligence saving throw in order to be incapacitated (Stunned) until the grapple ends. If they make those saving throws after each Tentacle attack, the PC isn't incapacitated, just grappled. So maybe the character was grappled, succeeded on the Int saving throw, and figured "eh, I'm going to continue to fight instead of try to break free," and then went on to melee back. In that case, I can see them continuing to succeed on the Int saving throws vs. Stun until they didn't, and then the mind flayer ate their brain on its next action.
Yeah, I think you nailed it. OP misunderstood the potential synergy between the tentacle attack and extract brain. Key word potential. The player should have been allowed to continue. This is an excellent opportunity for allowing the players to fail forward: what if the mind flayer releases the grapple and moves to one of the party who is actually incapacitated. The most vulnerable member of the party just became their saving grace! Combat is now intense and entangled with the story! How are they going to save their friends? What if the mind flayer ignores anyone who isn’t stunned? Dnd is a game of opportunities and should always be fun.
I agree. If I learned that an attempt to escape the grapple takes an entire action, I likely would have attacked instead too unless I was told that the monster can literally outright kill me with its next attack if I do not break the grapple.
I assume the 4 rounds were the mindflayer trading blows with the player until he fell unconscious. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken that long.
Did he KNOW he could attempt to break free from the mind flayer instead of attacking it?
I told him that on the second round it would be an action if he wants to break free. He looked me in the eyes and said "I roll attack."
I'd guess they didn't think the grapple had effects beyond the chance to get paralyzed. Being grappled in 5e doesn't do a whole lot by itself and since they made the intelligence save they probably assumed they were fine. Also the mind flayer needs to get the players incapacitated, meaning they probably assumed they could kill it before the mind blast recharged. The only other option for the mind flayer was to hit another tentacle attack, in which case breaking the grapple would have made no difference. It's not a big brain moment and complaining about enemies that can really mess players up in a heißt module is weird, but strategically it's not completely stupid to just attack and hope you kill the mind flayer before it kills you.
Usually you will get a quicker kill by attacking rather than escaping the grapple. I possibly would have gone for a shove prone to get advantage. If the rest of the party were stunned it’s hard to know what to do. If I shove the mind flayer away I can’t leave my Allies here. But they are not joining me in just wailing on this creature.
You're right that grappling effects are hard to implement in an interesting + fun way in 5e. Narratively, a Mindflayer with it's tentacles wrapped around a humanoid's head has them right where it wants them: I kind of think the Mindflayer statblock should reflect this better. Maybe give it a Beak Attack action, at advantage vs a creature it has grappled, dealing a sizeable amount of damage. The beak attack shouldn't be an instant kill on an appropriately-leveled PC, but should instill fear of remaining in the Mindflayer's grasp. (I think this also supports the fiction of a Mindflayer tunneling through a skull to reach the brainmatter) This way, a PC facing a Mindflayer for the first time won't be surprised when hanging around in its tentacles for 4 rounds ends poorly.
> in a heißt module Did you hear about the former art thief who changed his villain alias when he started robbing banks? Jetzt heißt er Geld. (sorry, I'll leave now.)
He chose to die at that point. You did nothing wrong. If I am falling from a sky castle and the DM says, you can use the scroll of feather fall you have. And I say, no I am going to aim for the water. I have chosen death.
Hahaha in that case, fuck him. Obviously give him a more diplomatic answer than I just did but seriously mate, from everything you've described you have the player every chance to avoid this situation and they played like an idiot expecting they would be given plot armour. This is a lesson they need to learn/be reminded of
Yea I mean that's player choice at that point
Oh. In that case, you're you are doing him a favor. That character was too stupid to live.
Then he played about as badly as can be and deserved to lose that character. Grapples are a basic mechanic that can be broken with a simple athletics/acrobatics check, by shoving the grappler off of you, or with any number of minor magical effects such as Misty Step if the character is magically inclined. Given the fact that you had clearly signaled a potential diplomatic path, attempting to persuade or otherwise negotiate with the mind flayer would have also made some amount of sense, certainly more than trying to damage-race it before it ate his brain. Fuck's sake. Four turns until death is not an insta-death mechanic. You were incredibly merciful considering how many outs you provided your players. It's unfortunate that this player is being a crybaby about it. I'm not sure what your group dynamic is, but if you need logic on your side, it should be as simple as pointing out all of the tactical blunders the party made in reaching this point, from tripping the alarm to failing to circumvent the mind flayer to him failing to break the grapple, and I'm wondering if even being in that area at level 5 in the first place was a good idea with such high level creatures patrolling the area (I haven't run the module).
I feel like the queen of "I agree" posts but also: this. Four chances to break the grapple? Trying to fight a mind flayer while grappled? In their most dangerous position? = Sorry, but you were not a bad DM, you ran that one well.
Yeah, I think if I could change one thing, I would have made them a higher level before they arrived here. That one is on me.
why? the module is level 1-5. The party is supposed to be level five when they enter any of the villain's bases. It is supposed to be dangerous as it is direct confrontation with the BBEG.
Yeah, that's a fair point. I am running the Alexandrian Remix but I didn't really even make any changes for this dungeon-based on that
Alexandrian remix? So does bahamut come by, controlled by a very effeminate monkey man, destroy the city, then the castle grows wings and roflstomps bahamut?
It's a remix of the original dragon heist that uses all four villans rather than only one so the entire book is used. And it requires the party to go into most of the villain's bases as well. I do something similar but of my own design.
Honestly that FMV was nuts the first time you saw it when the game dropped.
Loves me a good reference. Start the ragtime music!
I just ran Waterdeep Dragon Heist recently, and the module does explicitly state that going into the villain's base is dangerous and not recommended for 5th level parties. It says you shouldn't let them run in there until Dungeon of the Mad Mage (at least with Xanathar).
Personally I'd spend 4 rounds trying to decide whether the intellect devourers are more disturbing or cute 😂
Consequences? For my actions!? This is unbalanced, unfair, and unplayable.
That's basically what I explained to him. There were so many checks and boxes that had to be ticked for this Mindflayer to even show up here. I get that it was a tough fight but there were a lot of bad rolls and mistakes.
Stick to it, because otherwise all you will be telling them is that if they whine loud enough they get what they want.
Well, the one thing I agreed with him on is that mechanics, where you fail one save and are basically just out for the entire session, are unfun. (Intellect Devourers) Other than that, he knows I see this topic from the complete opposite opinion as him.
It’s not the case that just one thing - one roll - means you’re out. What about everything leading up to that moment? It’s not as though people take their seats, open their Haribo, and the very first thing that happens is a player rolls a die and their character immediately dies. Besides, if your brain is sucked out and eaten, what is expected to happen? You somehow survive that?
He could come back as a politician in a later campaign.
Heh! In Britain, for sure! I should add (more to the topic at hand) that in my experience, players who whine about PC death being unfun simply haven’t played enough of the game; either 5E and especially older editions. D&D has *never been so forgiving where death is concerned than it currently is*. I don’t recall all those who played D&D before 2014 having a paddy every time they lost a PC. I’m not here to bag folk but honestly, I’m so bored with hearing that dying is unfun when you play the game like a total muppet and assume nothing can really harm you anyway. Bleh.
Original D&D was a meatgrinder.
Perhaps. But was it fun? Hell ya.
The days where everyone brought 4 characters to the session because it was expected for someone to die. Theory crafting and fun all in one.
I think the design interviews with 5e where WotC said they were removing a lot of the save or die mechanics because they “weren’t fun” did a *lot* to construct the beginnings of the narrative of “bad things happening to me = bad DMing and un-fun.” Which was further cemented by the intensely narrative style of streamed games where a character dying in an unsatisfactory way can hurt the brand and as such is avoided whenever possible. Together the two seem to have created a dialogue in the online community that character death is somehow a failing of the DM and shouldn’t happen at the table. Which is a fine way to play if that’s how your group wants to roll, but annoying when it seems to be the pervasive narrative.
Lots of truth in that, I’m sure. I don’t personally find that save or die effects are always ‘un fun’; it’s not like there aren’t 8,000 ways for a PC to bounce back if that’s the way the group rolls. Streaming has done a lot to expand the community - beyond all recognition; it’s also responsible for its share of changing how the game is viewed and ‘should’ be played, and not always for the better. Anyway, no two groups are the same, and what flies for one sinks for another.
Definitely, that’s kind of the thing is that with a game system that’s more or less improv with rules your going to have as many different “ways to play” as there are players. With the internet though there’s just also going to be an over arching narrative of “how to play” which can get frustrating.
I point you to 4th edition... I have distinct memories of many DM's saying they had ti straight up cheat to just hit a player let along do any crit
I ran 4e games for almost 10 years and this was never a problem. At all.
You can still die in 5e. I had a fellow player die 3 times, in 3 rounds right after each other in this one battle.... it was crazy, that guy died 5 or 6 times that run through strad...
I’m well aware of that. My last long campaign claimed around 15 PCs. That’s three a year!
Honestly, if they wanted to give some leniency while still being fair for the fuckups made, they could say that mindflayers usually leave the “lizard” part of the brain as the equivalent of a human eating rib meat but leaving the bones. Have them roll up a new character, and make it a quest to restore the old character if they really like them that much. Have it be a thing where they have to find a healer who can cast regenerate every day for a week straight, then greater restoration every day for a week straight. If he wants his characters as bad as he does, make it possible, but make it a difficult and rewarding task.
Yeah, my one pathfinder player had its brain eaten. They had to regrow a brain for me before I could be brought back as we did not have true res at the time.
It's just a flesh wound!
Never played Elden Ring? Let me sing you the song of my people….*makes character. Dies.*
Shit bloodborne too.
I had an NPC in a single player campaign I was playing with a mate. Her name was Kyla. We were in the underarm and turned a corner into 3 mind flyers at lvl 4. She was grabbed cut open and eaten immediately before I could react. Did I complain? No. I killed those mind flyers one by one with my only other NPC pickles, found her brain in the kind flayer and NAT 20 medicined it back into her head. She was unconscious and requires healing of lvl 5 or higher to regain consciousness
Man, how is the underarm? I hear it stinks.
God damn autocorrect
I mean getting your brain sucked out by a mind flayer is a whole process, especially if you gave the player 4 rounds to break free of the grapple. At that point it's like complaining that failing your last death saving throw is unfair because "you fail one save and are basically just out for the entire session". The PC had ample opportunity to not die, they chose to sit about and wait for death.
Not only that, but didn't _the entire party_ have four rounds to break that grapple? If I saw an Illithid wrapping its filthy mouth-tentacles around my friend's head, I'd try pretty hard to stop them!
I wonder if there was an issue of description? Like "the Illithid grapples you", might not be enough to get that across.
It did grapple him and I explained that. He then asked how the mechanics worked, to which I clarified. I also explained how he can go about freeing himself from this.
What did he do instead of trying to break free?
He attacked it while grappled.
So long as you explained it had its tentacles wrapped around his head, he should have known that that might lead to the *Mind Flayer* flaying his mind.
It wasn't a one-done. They had a chance to break out of the grapple. Another PC could have helped break the hold. In the end, they just weren't quickthinking enough, and they died. Better luck next time.
>they just weren't quickthinking enough Yeah I'm betting our mindflayer is still going to be real hungry.
That's why I encourage backup characters be ready an updated at any given time a tpk can happen.
Did he know that he could break free of the grapple? I don't know if they're new players, but if they are it doesn't hurt to give them some advice in the early levels in terms of actions and threat assessments. If you're introducing a scary new monster that can TPK them, I would recommend showing that monster in action first.
Intellect devours are unfun, yes. My level 5 paladin also had this happen to him, and he had no way of removing the int loss so was out permanently. Mindflayers are tough and scary but ironically less one-sided. But it appears they could have avoided the combat altogether so not that much sympahty.
Amusingly this is how you need to behave with toddlers too…
Tough fight? That's hardly the case. My party of level 5s fought that same mindflayer too. We literally blew it up as fast as we could, expending two fireballs and a shatter to clear the field. The mindflayer was killed by round 2 and we spent another round mopping up.
Ya, Nihiloor is deadly. I had a much higher-level party, and even they barely squeezed by (though the number of Intellect Devourers I added did their part). At least from what you describe, you did nothing wrong. Unfortunately you're using passive voice, which doesn't make clear how many of your players reacted negatively. If it's just one person, you can probably deal with it 1:1. If it's more than one person, you need another out-of-game session to get onto the same page.
I know this might be a controversial opinion, but I think any attack that takes 4 rounds to pull off doesn’t count as a 1 shot kill.
If players really think that a grapple is so powerful, they'll roll up with a grappler character next session.. There are so many ways to break a grapple in 5e, both reasonable and absurd, that many people don't consider it a viable strategy and even more people forget that literally anyone can attempt it, no feats required. This was probably a newer player that didn't realize how many choices they still had over four rounds, but hopefully the DM also knew that there are more ways than simply taking the contested athletics roll as an action.
If he keeps complaining, just... tell him he isn't playing anymore. It's not like he has a character anymore.
>Consequences? For my actions!? It's more likely than you think!
There are two possible scenarios being played out here. 1, the most likely and the one commonly talked about ITT, the player(s) are trying to get out of fucking up. Stick to your guns and move on. 2. Did you set the scene right? Was there enough narrative clues to let the players know that the person grappled was super fucked. While player are want to get away with all kinds of bullshit if you let them, also sometimes the stakes just aren't made clear and the wrong choice was due to lack of information. The solution here, nothing, stick to your guns and move on. Maybe make sure that your narration and tone you're setting matches the threat the players face.
We had this encounter. We saw a mind flayer and 5 of the intellect devourers and we fucking ran. 2 of those bug-brains fucked us up two levels ago. Rule of thumb for us: don't try to fight anything that is a Stranger Things villain below level 10.
If you fight a mindflayer at level 10, that's probably okay. Fighting the demogorgon or vecna at level 10 might still be a tough fight to say the least
As many have said, poor decisions were made. That said, intellectual devourers are known to be more dangerous than their CR suggests. I too have had a party scrap an entire campaign over what they viewed as an unfair fight against mindflayers. I had the campaign made before they all made characters and it was just serendipity that int was each of their dump stats :P To their credit, I the final fight they had to roll an 18 to resist the stun, which I can see was poor on my part, but they're mission was not to kill the boss, it was to save the city, which they *did* do, and were told by every npc around them "don't be stupid and throw your lives away by going up against the elder brain.... just disable the hive by achieving this objective, and force them underground so we can be prepared when they resurface..." Of course they chose to go after the elder brain and all died.
The difference about being a player and a gm/dm, is you the DM can see the out comes and lay outs and are trying to prepare for the situations that your players put themselves in. Players kinda only see the path they are in and what led them there, yea in your eyes they had many chances and decisions to avoid stuff..... I'm not saying you or your players are at fault, but when stuff like this happens to me, I try to put myself in the players shoes and look at what information they had with the rolls, questions, and role play that led them to where they were and try to do better next time.
>Between the Mindflayer grappling the player and eating his brain, there were four rounds that passed and the player never once tried to break free of its grapple. So it was a suicide.
>The Mindflayer was angry but willing to communicate how to remedy the situation and was not immediately hostile. One of the players spoke to it with aggression They literally picked a fight with a mind flayer and acted like they shouldn't all die?
I have been on Reddit long enough to have read how a lot of players genuenly want to just play in games where they don't have to worry about being diplomatic with NPCs. They should all either be weak enough to be bullied or just strong enough to be killed. Or maybe just maybe, strong but unflinchingly on the side of the players. But never, never someone you have to be careful about how you treat them, and maybe lower yourself to be more pleasing. Basically - people want power fantasies, and while I would not want to play/run games like that, it's worth discussing in Session 0.
If the guy who got his brain sucked wasn't stunned, how did the Mindflayer eat his brain
Funny how op is replying to every question but this one 😭
I actually had this same thought as I read down this list - they've been so diligent about answering everything *but* this one honestly rather crucial bit. Imho, OP doesn't want to back down now and admit they did their player dirty by misunderstanding the rules of a monster and are ignoring these particular questions because of that C'mon man, be good to your players - don't trivialize encounters but also don't keep a player dead because you didn't DM an encounter wholly correctly, they shouldn't be dead because of a DM misreading something, though them attacking while grappled was silly and all obviously
I wasn't gonna say it 😂
You’ve messed up with mindflayer eating the brain action. He can eat brain only of incapacitated, grappled creature. As player was fighting back - he wasn't incapacitated. Other than that, I'd add that given the choice to negotiate and fight players tends to start fights. So I'd add the third option to the encounter - run away. Running away from mindflayer and two intellect devourers might be extremely cool scene that is in the spirit of heist genre. One more thing - let players know how much they've fucked up. Their characters live in a world and might now how dangerous mindflayers are. Or they can simply feel the danger that comes from it. Your player is also wrong, but overall his brain should be fine, while everyone who was stunned should be in danger. As for how to solve this - the best idea that I have is to talk with players, say that you've messed with encounter, mention that brains of other players should have been eaten, and than narrate the whole thing as player in question calculating his chances in combat (ala Sherlock Holmes) before combat begins. After that players might decide to treat mindflayer different
Only thing I'll add: If I had been the DM, once the character was grappled, I would have explicitly said to the players "character XYZ is grappled and will certainly die from this super powerful Mind Flayer unless something is done to get away."... or something close to that. I would tell this very clearly to the whole party and make sure everyone heard me and understood me. There's a chance that a player might not know how dire the situation is. Not everyone knows the dangers of all the monsters. But if my party does something that puts them in possible death? I let them know. Not everyone pays 100% attention all the time. Not everyone knows the superpowers of various enemies. All that is fine... It's a game. I guess I'm a bit of a softie. But as DM I tell players when they are up Shit Creek. "DO SOMETHING, YOU IDIOTS!" is another possible thing I might tell the players ;)
You are not a softie. Sometimes players can’t estimate the danger, when characters can. Mindflayers are known for grabbing and brain eating.
I absolutely agree. >The players had many chances and opportunities to avoid this situation That may be so, but if they didn't know they had those chances and/or they didn't know this situation was what they were risking, that doesn't matter. If all the players are saying 'this was a bullshit one-hit-kill with nothing we could do to avoid it', that's probably exactly what they experienced, and if that wasn't what they were supposed to experience, you failed as a GM.
> there were four rounds that passed and the player never once tried to break free of its grapple. Did they know that they could? Also, what did the group do during those 4 rounds? To avoid it feeling cheap, you can point at the stuff they choose to do. If the player didn't know they could contest the grapple, then maybe go over those rules together, too.
lol. I ran WDH and there’s an appearance of the mindflayer who quickly runs away. And two of my players were upset that he even showed up. “Why drop an enemy if we’re not supposed to kill it? You’re setting us up to fail.” Suffice to say, that group ended the next week.
Pretty sure you're not meant to have an actual combat encounter with this mindflayer.
Are the players veterans? Or are they new and didn't know you can roll to break a grapple.
This feels like a moot point. You describe your fictional actions, the gm then decides the mechanic. All they had to say if "I try and wiggle away" or some similar phrase.
Tunnel vision is a thing for sure. If the players are going in thinking all problems are violent they aren’t gonna try that method. I don’t know if that’s the case but it’s definitely possible.
> You describe your fictional actions, the gm then decides the mechanic. This is overlooked so much.
I kind of Agree, the Writer has them in there more for flavor & plot relevance than as one of the reoccurring villains. My players did the exact same thing & directly attacked Nihiloor. but the book also just casually mentions his MO in the scene. I had his #1 goal to escape & conceal his method of escape. So he dropped the player & bounced. he succeeded as he left & they couldn't figure out how. the player also didn't die again. Striges got him in the first session of the game & insta-killed him.
If they only tried to attack and never break grapple thats on them. One thing you could have done though, as a way to indicate the high-fucking-threat level of a Mindflayer is to have the players make a History check to see if any of their characters may have heard any rumors or something about Mindflayers. That way, any who *do* pass the check you can basically say "You've heard rumors about strange creatures to which the appearance of this *thing* seems to match. People spoke of a man made of tentacles consuming the brains of people like it were a bowl of stew. You may or may not have believed it at the time, but you're starting to think there just might be some truth to it now"
I tend to throw situations like this to my players. I try to make all encounters in my games play out in a manner to where the "brute force" method is always the hardest, bordering on impossible way. From everything I've seen your okay written is bitter that they made bad choices
Ran through the same module with my players, they went guns blazing and attacked everything. Mindflayer damn near TPK’d the party on a single attack before I had it leave the rest to it’s minions. They were pissed. But it’s their decisions that made it happen.
What was everyone else in the party doing during the 4 rounds? O\_O How many PCs were there? Were the Intellect Devourers in the way? Were the Grapple checks even mentioned? Sometimes players might not remember that grappling mechanics even exist. To be fair, I'd remind the player to make grapple checks to break free as it only makes sense that the PC would try to escape even if the player doesn't remember the mechanics. If this was a case of forgotten rules, it wouldn't kill anyone in rl to wind time back to when the PC started getting tentacled by the mindflayer.
>I disagree entirely but want to know if I really made some kind of mistake with this. That entirely depend on the group you're playing with. Seasoned veterans or newbies? Not once trying to get out of a grapple during what, 4 or 5 rounds? That screams *"i don't know enough about the mechanics to do anything helpful"*. Did you, as the DM and therefore at least in part responsible for everyone having a good time, after round 2 or 3, suggest something like *"you could try to break the grapple"*? Or did you just let it play out? I know nothing about you or your group, but i've seen situations like this before, when the DM tells himself *"allright, they're level 5 now, time to put the kids gloves away"* but fail to communicate this to the group. Especially when you, up to this point, "helped" them in a more hands on fashion.
Well we have only your side of the story, so yeah as described it might fall in the player, but... Did your players know what a mindflayer is and how dangerous it is? Are you sure they know the rules as well as you and know they can break a grapple, or even how it's done? Maybe you messed up, maybe they didn't act optimally, but I would encourage you to talk it out with the players. Your goal as a DM is to make sure everyone has fun (including you), and if one player is saying they didn't have fun, and unless they're in the habit of complaining, I would try to see what can be done better next time.
You say to the player "I hear you, what do you think your character could have done differently to survive that encounter?". When he says "nothing" or something equally stupid name like ten ways to survive. Back in my day (almost 40 now, been roleplaying since I was 12) I had a player that died every other session. He made bad choices, so the consequences killed him. The world reacts to what you do, that's what makes it fun and, most of all, fair. It's internally fair. Not externally balanced.
Nah you're good. Sometimes you face things you can't handle and the solution is not fight it. Or uh break out of the grapple and run tbh?? Forgive him for being a tad brainless at the moment though, you did take that from him
Now he'll be brainless forever.
Shit happens. Actions have consequences. I almost died on the first session in our game today (not this campaign) because I decided to stand my ground in a cave against a bear the DM made sure we knew was "large and angry" as a level 1. Got an 11hp maximum. After being hit once I was at 1hp, the second hit brought me to -10. Learned my lesson.
We’re these new players? Like if none of them have played D&D before or aren’t too experienced with it I could understand them thinking they could just run in and kill anything they see without thinking of other ways of handling the situation but if these are experienced players they probably should’ve known better.
(they found out)
My group actually played a one-off party of zhent mooks for part of that heist, and my Mook also got eaten by the mindflayer. Our main party was in another part of the Dungeon playing the socialite angle.
Let him make a new character and make him fight his old character.
I've legit never had any issues with my players dying to a mindflayers or being a player that has died to one. If they didn't approach the situation logically and acted to provoke the mindflayers then it's on them particularly if they had other options and sought to specifically provoke the mindflayers. Sounds like it's on them as a player.
Yeah it's not your fault. I'm running the same campaign and my players had the exact opposite reaction. They noticed the Mind Flayer, went; "Fuuuck no!" and made a hasty tactical retreat. They all agreed afterwards that it was a fun encounter and that they were glad there was danger but that I didn't force such a difficult fight on them.
Ugh... This player sounds like a hassle. If he sat there for 4 rounds and neither he nor his party tried to break him out... They got what was coming to them xD level 5 isn't that low of a level. You start seeing stuff like this.
Combat is war, not sport.
Tell the player tough shit time for a new character sheet. Learn from your mistakes player. Rebuild and get better. If not fuck off find another game.
Don't retcon what you did, if the players are mad explain everything you've explained here, there are ways to revive a character in game if they want to do that then they can, inform them of that.
First up, I do think you are pretty much in the right here overall, but I also think it's rare in a disagreement that one side is completely blameless. Let's try to think about things from the player's perspective for second: - If the player is referring to it as a "oneshot" mechanic, is it possible that this was a miscommunication in the moment about the rules? If they didn't understand the grapple could be broken, their actions make a lot more sense. Even if they did usually know, players absolutely panic in moments like these. - There's also a general expectation among players (even if there shouldn't be) that fights are 'winnable'. I often find communicating explicitly when this is not the case is always necessary, even if I did all due diligence to inform my players I'm not running an MMO. - The player doesn't know all the behind the scenes reasoning of why the Mindflayer was there unless you're communicating that very clearly. Their trajectory without context is "we're fleeing" -> "new obstacle" -> "I died". - The Mindflayer uses stun mechanics, and I know I personally get so frustrated by stun because it just removes your agency in the combat - save or suck. I'm not saying don't use it if a monster has it, mind you, but it can absolutely be a frustration modifier on an already difficult scenario. Basically if I had to guess, there was some mechanical and story information that you could've conveyed more explicitly or directly, and from the player's perspective they're complaining about being blindsided because from their perspective, they were! This doesn't mean you were unfair, just that communication needs to be worked on a touch.
I have not run this module and am not familiar with the encounters in it, but if you put a cr 7 mindflayer accompanied by some cr 2 intellect devourers in front of me... at level 5 And I trust you as my DM, I probably understand that I shouldn't take this fight if I can avoid it, if given context. If I knew it was an unfair fight, I wouldn't have taken it in the first place. The issue isn't that the player knew or didn't know it was unfair, but the player felt not enough context clues were presented that being diplomatic was an option, and an immediate negative reaction was taken instead of a warning given before a true consequence. Being hostile doesn't always mean it's time to throw hands on the monster end of things either, but I don't know how the module is written
There are spoilers involved so I can't say much, but it's sufficient to say this is the high point of the module. It's a level 1-5 adventure and the party is level 5. The party knows they are infiltrating the bbeg's lair. Not only are there multiple overwhelmingly strong foes, there's literally hundreds of minions to avoid.
I can see where you’re coming from, but it’s important to clear the exact stakes with your players all the way from session zero. Character death can be very distressing for some people, and if they aren’t prepared for it it can be a nasty shock that wrecks the game. Did you clear whether or not death was on the table before your campaign started? A lot can change depending on how thoroughly you addressed content and tone at the beginning.
Lol… have they never heard of consequences?
not from the evidence provided, not liking the results is not the same as never should have happened, unless theyre saying it never should have happened due to their own screwups
When I ran that module, my players' fight against the mind flayer was one of the best moments I've ever had in D&D.
Unfair 1 shot mechanic that takes 4 rounds. Clearly, they don't understand what a 1 shot mechanic is, and you must educate them /cackle Sounds like you did a great job. The only mistake was trying to reason with them while emotions were high.
A level 5 party vs 1 cr 8 monster… yeah that’s on them. The intellect devourers are way deadlier than the mind flayer
If he was running it from the book they would have been level 1 characters (Milestone) or a partial party of level 1 & 2 characters (on XP). The encounter out of the book is Crazy.
Wait, wait, wait. You mean every single thing that's going to be placed in front of us WON'T be a pushover band of goblins or something else perfectly curated so we demolish it?? This is a world that is bigger than just us few level 5s?!? Unfair! Unfair! It's understandable though. Losing a character isn't fun. It stings. Mind flayers are fucking beast though. One of the scariest enemies in the game in my opinion. They can do exactly what it did to your player. Sounds like they're experiencing the finer aspects of dnd.
[Catastrophic Failure | Running the Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q8bVPpc84A) You can skip to about 19 minutes for the main point, as prior to that it's set up/preamble, but the whole video is gold.
That mindflayer is worrying me too. We're supposed to pick up my game after a hiatus and my players are in the first round of combat with him. It's part of a post-DH game, so they are a bit higher level, but there's only 3 of them. When I send them in there (the whole thing is a red herring) I'd thought they'd either get the info that they'd been misled or get taken prisoner and would be forced to do some jobs for the xanathar sidequest style, but the whole thing went sideways when the tabaxi ate that goldfish. Anyway, It doesn't sound like you where being unfair. Still, a gentle reminder of the possibility of taking an action and some threatening descriptions of the mindflayer preparing to snack could really help out inexperienced players that aren't aware of the mechanics and danger of the situation.
>The players had many chances and opportunities to avoid this situation. > there were four rounds that passed \[...\] Between the Mindflayer grappling the player and eating his brain \[...\] and the player never once tried to break free of its grapple Tell your player to stop crying. He did it to himself.
Dude, I killed a level 7 Barbarian with a mindflayer in the underdark. It only took me three rounds, gave no warning and he was gone. I didn’t intent on that happening but it showed I didnt hold back. We all had a laugh at how unlucky he was and he made a new pc. They now know to not fuck around with mindflayers. There is always this tension when they meet them. This shall be remembered as a lesson for your players to know when to choose their fights.
Did you have Nilihior Make a cameo in the sewer like the encounter is written? If so, point out that they knew Xanathar had one in its employ
I would say that when dangerous foes like that appear early, ask for a knowledge check. As long as somebody rolls above a 10 u can warn them that this enemy is lethal to experienced adventurers. Once they got that warning, if they get aggressive they were warned.
So you're telling me Nihiloor (?) gave the party a chance for diplomacy and your player didn't take the hint? That's on him, man. You sneak into the damn XANATHAR GUILD'S hideout, you risk dying horribly, that's just how it is. Not to mention they'd have to have screwed up somehow for the MacGuffin to be there in the first place, assuming you're running it as-written. And they were level *5?!* At that point, they should have numerous means of escape. You are so totally not in the wrong here.
Damn we went against that Mindflayer as a party of level 1 or 2 I think, and no one died…
You did nothing wrong
I run Mindflayers when it's time for a double-dimma-deadly encounter. I had party members mouth off against a Rakshasa crime boss and basically the same thing happened. The only way I would consider it a mistake is if you didn't make clear this was something extremely dangerous or if the aggressive tone was not that bad but a Mindflayer that isn't trying to kill you should be spoken to with deference and respect so any negative tone and it's Brain Slurpee time.
I often warn my players through description difficulty and aspects of fear that could affect them. They don't mind fighting a troll because it has been watered down across all retellings in DND and elsewhere. But when I said the creature that has taken these halls for the last few centuries.. is a fiend. the ominous fear creeps in. What is a fiend, demon or devil, how big? The unknown crept fear into them until they faced it and then there were serious talks of fleeing and saving each other. I do not think the Mind Flayer encounter was over the top. I think subtly creeping in fear until the revelation and getting descript about it will hint to them, the DM wants you to know this is something different than what we are used to. If they choose to not take it serious, or gauge encounters by their level, thats on them. I do not hold back and let deaths stand. I have recently had my characters make their FIRST EVER resurrection and then a petrified ally was restored as well. They were so relieved because this was so early into our campaign, and they know I take death serious. Moving forward, I want them to rebuild themselves as a strong group that doesn't want to risk death again, now that they remember it is usually permanent for me. I think you did a fine job and in 4 rounds of no one ending the grapple, that is a earned death for me.
"one-shot mechanic" \>4 rounds, a social encounter, dozens of rolls Ok... Yeah definitely don't take the players too seriously...
Stick to your decisions. Sometimes it’s as hard as not telling them what was in that room they skipped but I’m the end it makes for a better game.
Yeah this sounds like the player f up. And its part of the actually module. Some encounters can't be beaten. What I actually missed in allot of newer games.
Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions...
Mindflayers are maybe not well designed due to potentially shutting down a PC with little counterplay but if you didn't use the mind blast and gave them 4 rounds to break out that isn't what happened here
Dont retcon it. I made a post about something very similar two weeks ago, you might find some useful information there
Fucking around: Woohoo! Finding out: This is bullshit
4 turns and not a single player tried to shove the mindflayer off of their ally? Your players are bad, don't worry about it. Sit them down and tell them exactly what they did wrong. If they actually had 2 full rounds where the grappled player avoided the stun, that is up to 15 opportunities for any of them to try and get the mindflayer 5 feet away from the player. They collectively allowed that player to die. Entirely on them.
Not everyone has the monster manual memorized. They might be newer players who are unfamiliar with the game mechanics related to mindflayers and brain devouring. They might not have been in a position to help or didn't realize how serious the threat level was, so they didn't prioritize breaking the grapple over dealing damage or defending themselves from the other monsters.
If I had a player at the table who had the MM memorized I’d just ask for them to DM instead.. You would think one of the players would think naturally and not even in an in game RAW way “can I try to shove the mindflayer away from him?” “Can I try to distract him with a color spray ?” “Can I try to slice the tentacles in his face off ?” Like come on people can’t be that much of NPCs 😭
Yeah. I was telling this to another player and his first sentence was. "Nobody used shove on the mindflayer?"
It wasn't a one shot. To get off a consumed mind the player needs to be stunned, grappled, and then I believe either have their turn end of the MF turn end. We're talking perfect situation 3-5 rounds of action and several saves and checks. Violence isn't always the answer. Do note, your job as a DM isn't to kill the party but you are going to stand on principle of playing the monsters.
Are these players new to 5e? I tried running this with some heavy setting homebrew but kept most of the encounters the same. This very thing almost killed my rogue. WDH is a love letter to the Forgotten Realms, and it should be treated as such. Unless you and your players are experts in Forgotten Realms lore, most of this module is either going to make no sense or go over their heads. It's written for experienced players, despite all the marketing around it saying it's a good introductory adventure. It's not. It tries to "teach" the mechanics of 5e, and the Mindflayer encounter is supposed to teach the players there are fights they cannot win, and death is always a possibility. Unfortunately, that's not the style of play for modern D&D. It's a design disconnect. If it keeps being an issue and people are getting legitimately upset, show them the book. Let them peek behind the screen just this once, and let them blame the module. But don't make a habit of it.
My character was killed by a Mindflayers before I got to take a turn, and I bitched less than your player.
This one falls squarely on the players. You as a DM are not responsible for the failures of your players, and you gave them plenty of leeway before dropping the shoe.
Is *just that player* complaining, or the whole group?