http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/MM_IntellectDevourer.pdf
So, in this latest MM tease, we get to see this guy. It's CR is 2...Seems low.
My main question/problem relates to its ability to drop your INT to 0.
"Devour Intellect. The intellect devourer targets one creature
it can see within 10 feet of it that has a brain. The target must
succeed on a DC 12 Intelligence saving throw against this
magic or take 11 (2d10) psychic damage. Also on a failure,
roll 3d6: If the total equals or exceeds the target’s Intelligence
score, that score is reduced to 0. The target is stunned until it
regains at least one point of Intelligence."
So...how do you regain INT? How does ability damage work in 5e? I didn't even know ability damage/drain was going to be a thing again. I'm seriously dissapointed. What's next? will the new MM have level drain too?
Then there's this:
"Body Thief. The intellect devourer initiates an Intelligence
contest with an incapacitated humanoid within 5 feet of it. If
it wins the contest, the intellect devourer magically consumes
the target’s brain, teleports into the target’s skull, and takes
control of the target’s body. While inside a creature, the
intellect devourer has total cover against attacks and other
effects originating outside its host. The intellect devourer
retains its Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores, as
well as its understanding of Deep Speech, its telepathy, and
its traits. It otherwise adopts the target’s statistics. It knows
everything the creature knew, including spells and languages.
If the host body drops to 0 hit points, the intellect devourer
must leave it. A protection from evil and good spell cast on the
body drives the intellect devourer out. The intellect devourer
is also forced out if the target regains its devoured brain by
means of a wish. By spending 5 feet of its movement, the
intellect devourer can voluntarily leave the body, teleporting to
the nearest unoccupied space within 5 feet of it. The body then
dies, unless its brain is restored within 1 round."
So, it can auto-succeed this ability after it uses 'Devour Intellect'? Among other ways you could be 'incapacitated'... We have a CR 2 creature that can easily take down, and distroy, a low INT PC. (Fighters, etc.) And, the only way you can recover is via a 9th level wizard spell.
WTF? A little bit more proof that the Devs are drunk, and don't understand balance. (Sure, you have to get two bad rolls first...But this is still 'save or die' for most PC's, really.)
Yup, save-or-save-or-die is a thing.
Of course with 21 hit points and 12 AC, a fighter can also do his version of save-or-save-or-die with a maul.
So it's actually balanced. Whoever rolls well first, wins.
Edit: Ooops, missed the damage resistance. So yea, the fighter's at a loss.
It's nice there is more to the game than just a HP bar.
Yeah, it's just like save or die...
Except for the whole thing where you don't *actually* die.
The scary party about save or die was losing your character. Being reduced to 0 int and incapacitated temporarily is not nearly as scary as failing a save vs poison and being actually killed, in the older editions.
In older editions, if you failed a save and died, it didn't matter if the rest of your party could still finish the encounter and win. You were still dead. In comparison, this is very tame. You get a temporary time-out, and then after your party wins the fight they can take you back to town to rest until your Int is restored. Yes, you lose campaign time, there is a consequence for failure! There must be consequences for failure to make victory meaningful, but it's not even remotely as scary as "save or die" was.
Edit: and the whole "body thief" thing is not really anything special. An incapacitated PC (0 hp) can already be killed by 1 monster melee attack (auto crits because character is incapacitated) and a failed death save, 50% chance! Body thief gives you a chance to still save the character by healing him within one round after the intellect devourer gives up control.
4 level 2 PCs should be able to kill it in probably 1-2 rounds without much issue (especially with such a low AC and low STR score) (as it is a CR2 monster). I'd actually be more concerned fighting a group of them...but by then you have AoE attacks/magic available when that would be challenge-appropriate so still non-issue. It reminds me of the Cockatrices from the Mines of Madness adventure in the playtest. My players had no issues with them (as they just stayed the hell away from them when possible)
Depending on how you rule blindsight, someone could throw a bag/cloak over it and grapple it (probably able to pick up and tie the bag up wouldn't be out of the question) at which point it can't get "sight" of you and can beat it to death from within the bag.
I actually like the idea of attacks/abilities that can targeting attributes. What we get here with the roll-against makes this a simpler all-or-none attack (same chances each time) rather than a 3e style wear-down (where you will hit 0 eventually). You don't have to recalculate all of your bonuses each time, and getting 19+ in an ability makes you immune to the ability drain.
Anybody know what the ability recovery system is now? Do you sleep it off or what?
Intelligence can be gained with an attribute increase. So the rest of the party just has to drag your drooling incontinent body along on adventures until you level up to your next one.
Don't go adventuring in the Underdark if you've used Int as a dump stat 
You'll want Greater Restoration to get that intelligence back.
Yeah, but...Where are the rules about regaining INT (or any other ability score drain/loss)?
Also...only a wish can save you from having your brain 'magically eaten'. (According to the text in the monster's stat block.) No one has access to wish, without serious and generous DM help, until level 17 or so.
This is why I don't like it being CR 2.
True, a party of wizards would have little trouble. But the fighters, who pretty much have to get within 10 feet of it, have an disproportionately high chance of being removed from the game perminently.
Karnos wrote:
mellored wrote:
"So not only can you not get resurected that way. "
You can get Resurrected. just not Raised or Revivified.
Still a 7th level spell, but easier to get than than a Wish.
seti wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
mellored wrote:
This creature is obviously meant as a plot device, so the DM can take control of an NPC and lure the adventures into a mind flayer trap as part of an adventure. The intellect devourer's goal is not to kill the creature it inhabits, but to serve its mind flayer masters. I doubt there will be even a direct combat that is percieved by the players. The ID probably is hidden in the shadows, and a moment later after Gruffy McGuide lurches and seems to loose his balance, he's apologizing and claims to be fine, and oh, he remembers a better path through the underdark to the cave of jewels.
It's basically a stargate goa'uld, except it predates it by quite a bit.
The monster Shadow has a strength 1d4 drain that states that a short rest recovers the ability drain. So far this is the only rule I've ran across for gaining back ability drain.
DemoMonkey wrote:
good. It's about time the game stop coddling. Having terrible things happen to your character is just part of the fun.
dmgorgon wrote:
seti wrote:
seti wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
The PHB was sent to print before the MM was finished. So they may not have finalized if there was even going to BE ability damage before the PHB had to be completed.
If the ability shows up on Monsters, I would expect the rules for it to show up in the MM.
mellored wrote:
So it requires a level 9 Bard, Cleric or Druid to counter a CR 2 creature's ability drain? I'm thinking that maybe it ought to be used as minions against mid- to high-level parties, rather than springing them on low-level PCs who don't have the means of recovering from it. Unless you have a contigency plan or somesuch. I just hope the books make that clear if that's the intent.
It's fine. Nothing forces your DM to eat your PC's brain. In our campaign a recurring villain is an intellect devourer who has a number of bodies on ice so it crops up and the PCs didn't suspect for years that there was a connection between them. The reveal was really cool too. His favourite body is an ogre mage.
Karnos wrote:
Hrm....
An 8 int fighter has a -1 mod.
This gives him a 60% failure rate on the saving throw. After that rolling an 8 or better on 3d6 is (181/216) ~83.8% this gives this fighter ~50.3% chance of being stunned in the first round.
Body Steal is another action so that has to wait for the next round (obviously void if there are more than 1 creature)
After that it is an opposed roll of 1d20+1 v 1d20-5 which the fighter has about a 70% chance for the fighter to fail. P(A and B and C) = P(A)*P(B)*P(C) or about 35.2%
Not that bad as first glance makes it look.
*I am at work and had to do this quickly, I didn't double check the math, but I'm pretty sure I'm close.
DemoMonkey wrote:
You know, the DM could always have the ID eat your character's brain, and then let YOU play the ID as it imitates your character without the rest of the party ever knowing. There's a lot of fun roleplaying potential in that.
I expect the DMG will have rules regarding the healing of Ability damage and similar things..... It would not surprise me to a see a similar rule to that in 3.5 - natural healing restores each damaged ability score by 1 point - at the end of a long rest most likely. Alternatively, it might take a page from the shadow - and have ability damage restored at the end of a short rest.
dmgorgon wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Also the ID is meant to be a pet/helper to illithids so you may run into them individually or in small groups but more likely they're going to be part of an encounter with a mind flayer which means it'll be a party above level 2 that deals with them.
There are two things I want to do with this creature as a DM.
The first one is to have the PC's encounter a massive cavern full of them. Enter at their own risk.
The second is to have one stealthily attack a PC and teleport in without the other PC's knowing, and then taking the player aside and telling them what happened and asking them to roleplay the Intellect Devourer in as subtle a manner as possible whilst covertly sabotaging the other PC's actions and trying to lead them into a mind flayer trap.
I think it'd be fun. The players would be aware that something was wrong, given the PC falling to the ground and then getting up and acting a bit odd. Plus it might take a few attempts against each PC before one falls.
The_Jester wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
It's bad editing/writing/design choices to put ability drain in the MM when it's not in the basic pdf or PHB. Putting it in the DMG is a sloppy fix. This is why they should have just released all 3 core books in november, and only let out the starter set and the basic PDFs until they actually had the books READY, and making sense.
This roll out is as bad as 4e's roll out, methinks.
seti wrote:
Tashiro wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
I don't like this monster. On an aesthetic and a mechanical level.
First off, it's a brain. With legs. Flumphs are kind of cute in their own odd way, but Intellect Devourers just look dumb. "Okay, it;s a psionic monster, so what does it look like." "PSIONIC MEANS BRAIN. PUT LEGS ON A BRAIN."
Second, it's mechanics make no sense. It's an Intellect Devourer, so that means it goes after smart people, right? It literally devours intellects. So why, then, are wizards resistant/immune to it? Shouldn't Wizards be more vulnerable to a creature that is specifically out to eat the brains of smart people than anyone else?
This just feels poorly designed all around.
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
RCanine wrote:
They can't devoer the brains of geniuses. Remember 10 is average human intelligence, so an 18-20 is in Einstein territory. It does seem odd that they roll 3d6 same as you would for the ability score in the first place rather than say a d20+2 (giving a 3-22 range) and therefore still possible to get a maxed out INT character while still unable to roll under the minimum for PC's and guarantee the ability to almost always get animals without fail (since most animals have 1-2 INT).
As for the look it's an illithid creation, not a naturally occuring creature. It's also created from brains of the illithid's stock of humanoids. It literally is a brain mutated to have legs and bring back more bodies for the illithid. It doesn't truly consume the brain since that'd defeat the goal of the illithid. Instead it subsumes it and brings it and the body back to the illithid for them to feed on or expirement on. You can't think of it behaving by the rules of natural predators because it's not natural, and being an aberrration of the Far Realm it doesn't go by the mechanics of sanity or our reality.
Higher level wizards probably shouldn't be too concerned with a CR2 creature anyway which is a "minion" creature to them?
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Wuzzard wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Timborama wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Illithids, more than most races, understand how powerful human wizards and psionicists are. It stands to reason, then, that they engineered Intellect Devourers precisely to take out these threats.
Or who knows? Maybe they did breed them to take out other illithids. You think evil is one big happy family?
Point is, they can't actually Devour the Intellects of intelligent beings more often then not. That makes their name false advertising, among other things.
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
I'm telling you that Intellect Devourers are real. I know, for a couple of my college professors were one. And yes, they do Intelligence damage and yes they eat your brain!
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Kishri wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Kishri wrote:
...Must...not .... post...
Then hands reach up to cover a face twisting scream, "Gah!" It made me post again... and it laid another egg.
Thanks for the chuckle Mecha! 
Always glad to be able to give others a good laugh.
Say, do you think Deep Speech, when it's written, is written in texting language? I like to think it is. And all the emojis have tentacled heads.
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Kishri wrote:
It's not that binary.
You just have to fight at range to deal with it safely (outside of 10' it's got very little ability to do anything other than move).
As far as taking out other illithid that's not likely to happen. The lore on illithid is they are individuals (not hive mind) but still work with each other under the orders of their "Mother brain" type entity. There may be squabbles and it's possible that one "pod" may be hostile to another but the lore indicates they tend to get along with each other fairly well.
The ID seems to be mostly designed to deal with lower INT creatures that are more often a pest to the illithid (or grunts in the slave armies of drow). Also the illithids like the high INT types for food and slaves so likely don't want the ID to take out the really tasty/useful morsels.
The ID may only be CR 2 but they're not likely to show up for a low-level party (and even a low level wizard may have a 18+ INT if they roll well or sacrifice other stats if using point buy/array) but instead be "minions" for an illithid and other higher level threats. Yes at CR 2 a single ID is a threat to a party of four level 2 characters and they should be or they shouldn't be CR 2. By level 2 a party of four should have some ranged capability and are likely to have at least one caster with either damage spells or buffs to help the rest of the party. Since CR's are based around a party of four you can roughly estimate a single ID as being roughly equivalent to a level 8 PC (sure it's not exact but that's just a rough power level guage).
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
I'll play forum bingo
I'm betting I can cross out "DM who says 'PC's only die if they do something stupid'" on my bingo card?
I WANT to cross out the 'DM who doesn't want any PC to ever die (whether the event actually kills the PC or not) unless the DM decides the PC can die' box.
But that's a rare one to be able to cross out on the ol' forum bingo card. Not that there aren't DM's who are like that, but that they can't acknowledge it to themselves, let alone to other people.
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
I think what they've done to the INTellect Devourer is great, and I hope that many more monsters have unique and interesting attacks, powers, vulnerabilities. It brings back that feeling of not knowing what the hell a rust monster/carrion crawler/draconian/mind flayer/gelatinous cube (remember the first times) is all over again. Discovering monster's abilities is part of D&D's charm. I think many that are crying foul of the monster's balance, forget that there is a living breathing thinking planning conniving narrating DM that is managing every encounter, (s)he can best decide whether it's too powerful a critter to just throw in on the way to the real encounter, or to make it the Big Encounter of the night, or not to include it until the players have earned another level, or to reward smart thinking players a way to not have to fight it, or to teach the foolhardy party that rushes into every encounter weapons raised a valuable lesson in that, that approach costs lives, and in this case usually the life of the 8 INT fighter... hell he wasn't the sharpest sword in the scabbard.
bravo!
Alynn wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Also a CR 2 creature by itself SHOULD be a threat to a party of level 2 characters. There's a reason the bulk of what a level 1 party fights is 1/8 and 1/4 CR creatures. A 1/4 CR creature is roughly equal to a single level 1 character. A single ID is meant to be a challenge to a party of 4 level 2 characters. That means those characters need to work together to survive.
Mearls tweeted ("
- Question does is there any details on Ability damage and recovering from it we should know for stuff like the Int Devourer. Greater restoration restores it.")
that greater restoration is needed to 'heal' such INT damage. So...Even if a level 2 party of four killed the intellect devorer (which they probably would, if it was the only threat in the room)...They'd still need to drag their drooling buddy to a high level cleric.
I kind of like the monster too, but only if ability drain/ability damage can be healed through ways that don't require spells that a party fighting a CR 2 monster cannot know yet. Greater restoration is a level 5 cleric spell, btw. So...This is a CR 2 monster that can do essentially perminent debilitating stuff to any player that doesn't have a 9th level or higher cleric in their party.
Again, I am not mad at the monster itself, I am mad at the CR system.
Grazel wrote:
Maybe I am missing something but isn't the CR just a warning that if the party is not this level dealing with them will be a major problem. I think people are forgetting ecology here. Just because it is a CR2 monster does not mean level 2 parties should just stumble onto them. I'm guesing by the time you do encounter these jumping brains there are going to be other things around like mindflayers and Driders who are going to make you their play things much faster. I really doubt you will bumb into any of these in that goblin lair you are trying to clear out.
Ignoring the inevitable argument in this thread (can there be a thread without an argument?) after the ID clears out a mind and takes over a body can it then makes its mental attacks from the new body?
eleran wrote:
It is unfortunate that Ability Drain, and how to restore it, is not addressed in the PHB. Greater Restoration works, of course, but I think there should also be something like 3rd editions's natural healing (1 point/day or something similar). If it's not an option explained in the DMG, I will house rule it into my games.
I think the monster is great though, and should scare the bejesus out of some low level characters (or even high level, low INT characters). Monsters SHOULD be scary.
As for that nasty brain eating thing, it's been addressed in this thread, but just to consolidate, it can be fixed by: Resurrection, True Resurrection, Reincarnation, Wish. Am I missing anything?
BTShire wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
BTShire wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
The shadow drains Str, which is restored after a short or long rest, right?
pedro2112 wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
I run a campaign ripe with Mind Flayers. One of my PCs wandered off alone. Time for an intellect devourer. At level 5 he should have EASILY handled it. He missed. Failed his save throws and died within 12 seconds.
He was the party's beast.
But guess what. One of the other PCs was able to use command and "eject" the ID. A lovely phlumph also happened to be nearby. He had warned the other PCs of the change. It transferred its intelligence into the PC.
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Well, if they're introducing new monsters with new abilities, they have no reason not to introduce new races that will bend the 5e paradigm. Meaning things like the Dvati, Warforged, Large-sized races, and others should be within the PC's grasp as well, sometime soon. I don't like the idea that something this horrifying could be such a low-level encounter, but I'd be more accepting if there are more possibilities for the PCs to make use of that can counteract such a devastating monster.