Mind Flayer Arcanist

D&D 2024 monster: Mind Flayer Arcanist. Source: Monster Manual (2014). challenge rating 8, creature type Aberration, Medium size, speed 30 ft. A few mind flayers supplement their psionic power with arcane spells. However, they are regarded as deviants by their illithid peers and usually shunned. Mind flayers, also called illithids, are the scourge of sentient creatures across countless worlds. Psionic tyrants, slavers, and interdimensional voyagers, they are insidious masterminds that harvest entire races for their own twisted ends. Four tentacles snake from their octopus-like heads, flexing in hungry anticipation when sentient creatures come near. In eons past, illithids controlled empires that spanned many worlds. They subjugated and consequently warped whole races of humanoid slaves, including the githyanki and githzerai, the grimlocks, and the kuo-toa. Conjoined by a collective consciousness, the illithids hatch plots as far-reaching and evil as their fathomless minds can conceive. Since the fall of their empires, illithid collectives on the Material Plane have resided in the Underdark. Psionic Commanders Mind flayers possess psionic powers that enable them to control the minds of creatures such as troglodytes, grimlocks, quaggoths, and ogres. Illithids prefer to communicate via telepathy and use their telepathy when issuing commands to their thralls. When an illithid meets strong resistance, it avoids initial combat as it orders its thralls to attack. Like physical extensions of the illithid's thoughts, these thralls interpose themselves between the mind flayer and its foes, sacrificing their lives so that their master can escape. Hive Mind Colonies Solitary mind flayers are likely rogues and outcasts. Most illithids belong to a colony of sibling mind flayers devoted to an elder brain-a massive brain-like being that resides in a briny pool near the center of a mind flayer community. From its pool, an elder brain telepathically dictates its desires to each in...