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The funny part of asserting "the story is over!" is there was actually a planned Baldur's Gate 3 game that got canceled, which was supposed to better link BG and Icewind Dale.

In fact, THIS Baldur's Gate 3 has more to do with BG1 than the original studio's planned BG3 did. At least this one can say it is set in Baldur's Gate in the aftermath (even if it's not necessarily the immediate aftermath) of the Bhaalspawn Crisis.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

Voss wrote:
Yeah, heard about this. I'm... dubious, for a couple reasons.

1) I don't really like Larian's writing. D:OS tended toward goofy and the narrator in D:OS 2 made me not buy it.

2) The BG1/BG2 story is done. The timeline has moved on (dunno if its a century or not- 4e FR was made of nonsense and so was fixing what broke after 4e), and most importantly, Bhaal came back sometime during the time between 3rd and 5th. The story of the Bhaalspawn is over- one or more of them served their purpose and Daddy came home and became the god of murder again.

So this is a 'sequel' in name only, with a completely different team and an unrelated story in a completely different edition of game rules.

3) Mind flayers are simply salt on a pile of worries. Yeah, yeah, iconic and everything. But they're BS monsters with game breaking abilities. A DC 15 Int save or be stunned for a full minute just snaps player agency in half (that's 10 combat rounds of doing jack/squat), particularly since that's hard for any character without an Int bonus and proficiency in Int saves (which is to say... everyone not a wizard). Then they autokill you if you drop to zero HP (and they do about ~55 damage per tentacle grope in those circumstances

Plus... Mind flayers don't do what the trailer has them doing. They don't bother surface cities. They go to other planes and raid for brains there so they don't risk reprisals. They certainly don't implant their young in people wandering around the blood soaked streets of surface cities- they do that safely at home, with other planar kidnap victims.


As much as I want to see a 5e computer game (it's well suited for it), I like nothing of what I see here. Lore breaking name only sequel in and a studio with a writing style that doesn't agree with me.

1: What does the narrator have to do with writing?

2: How do you know the story is done? It could be a continuation or this could just be about the city Baldur's Gate.....

3: Mindflayers are not that bad and ANYBODY can get around their DC saves with the right enchantments on items or buffs. Just be better at the game. Also I hav ine never read anywhere about Mind Flayers not bothering surface cities. They do operate primarily in the Underdark or on other planes, but they go where they get brains.

So uh, what are you on about here?

1) uh, what? OK, this seems obvious, but a narrator adds a tone to writing. In os2 particularly, the narrator is goofy and fairly snide. The narrators voice and tone significantly affects the writing of os2 (for the worse). And that goes beyond just the basics of how having a narrator in a game to _tell_ you what's going on is a cheap device, rather than just letting the game show you what's going on or finding out yourself by exploring the world.

2). Again, obvious. Because they've said it is. Not only are all the bhaalspawn dead and bhaal canonical returned (and the protagonist of the PC games given a single identity and canon name before he died), but the Larian devs have openly stated that the new game has nothing to do with the original beyond 'references' to past events.



3). Ah. A 'get good' for tabletop rpgs. Fantastic.
Feel free to list the spells that 'get around' mind flayer stunning blasts.
Particularly list the ones available at 7th level when mind flayers are level appropriate encounters.

Don't bother with items, because that requires the DM to freely gift the party with 'anti mind flayer' items prior to throwing them at the party, which rather defeats the purpose of using a 'gotcha' monster in the first place.


The rest also seems obvious. Why go after places that might have people who can retaliate (ie powerful adventurers available for hire, or rulers who are powerful themselves, which is a given in the FR), when you can go after victims who can't retaliate? Keep in mind these creatures are innately super-geniuses lead by a godlike intelligence who are all perfectly aware that anyone knowledgeable would kill them on sight. (Except folks.like the drow who find them useful neighbors, because they pacify the immediate area and are a good export market and are intelligent enough to realize a fight against drow cities would involve unacceptable losses).

Mind flayers are risk adverse and intelligent about it.

----
@Malus- my memory of bg2 is that didn't actually work. It should have, but undead weren't coded with immunity to brainsucking.

That mindflayers are risk averse and intelligent about it makes them a good end-game adversary for a campaign.

I mean one could say the same about a Dragon, or a Devil (not necessarily a demon, mind you, chaotic evil tends to be more risk-prone tahn risk-verse), or a Beholder.

Voss wrote:

@Malus- my memory of bg2 is that didn't actually work. It should have, but undead weren't coded with immunity to brainsucking.

Nope, definitely worked. Never would have got through it otherwise!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

3). Ah. A 'get good' for tabletop rpgs. Fantastic.
Feel free to list the spells that 'get around' mind flayer stunning blasts.
Particularly list the ones available at 7th level when mind flayers are level appropriate encounters.

Don't bother with items, because that requires the DM to freely gift the party with 'anti mind flayer' items prior to throwing them at the party, which rather defeats the purpose of using a 'gotcha' monster in the first place.

We're not talking about a PnP game, we're talking about a video game where you don't have to rely on the individual whims of a DM.

The player will have tools available to counter some of the abilities of the mind flayers, just like they did in BG2. That could be items granting immunity to stun or confusion etc., it could be spells such as the old Chaotic Commands (5th level cleric spell) which made the player immune to stun, confusion, chaos, etc., it could be summons of undead creatures which are immune to confusion, charm etc. and cannot be mindsucked.

I believe that Mindflayers were encountered in two of the Neverwinter Nights games (HotU and SoZ), and both of them had the locals concoct some means of resistihng control-- one of them solved the problem by having a merchant sell the player a helmet that blocked mind control / mind reading, for example. Actually I think there was a story element where you were forced to either take it off and risk mind control in order or force a quest to turn violent (and you were not in an advantageous position).

In addition to this, I'm super excited for some really good CRPGs coming to the Switch. Baldur's Gate I & II, Planescape and Icewind Dale all on the same day, and then Neverwinter Nights a few months later. I'm interested to see how they play on the Switch.

Voss wrote:
Yeah, heard about this. I'm... dubious, for a couple reasons.

1) I don't really like Larian's writing. D:OS tended toward goofy and the narrator in D:OS 2 made me not buy it.

2) The BG1/BG2 story is done. The timeline has moved on (dunno if its a century or not- 4e FR was made of nonsense and so was fixing what broke after 4e), and most importantly, Bhaal came back sometime during the time between 3rd and 5th. The story of the Bhaalspawn is over- one or more of them served their purpose and Daddy came home and became the god of murder again.

So this is a 'sequel' in name only, with a completely different team and an unrelated story in a completely different edition of game rules.

3) Mind flayers are simply salt on a pile of worries. Yeah, yeah, iconic and everything. But they're BS monsters with game breaking abilities. A DC 15 Int save or be stunned for a full minute just snaps player agency in half (that's 10 combat rounds of doing jack/squat), particularly since that's hard for any character without an Int bonus and proficiency in Int saves (which is to say... everyone not a wizard). Then they autokill you if you drop to zero HP (and they do about ~55 damage per tentacle grope in those circumstances

Plus... Mind flayers don't do what the trailer has them doing. They don't bother surface cities. They go to other planes and raid for brains there so they don't risk reprisals. They certainly don't implant their young in people wandering around the blood soaked streets of surface cities- they do that safely at home, with other planar kidnap victims.


As much as I want to see a 5e computer game (it's well suited for it), I like nothing of what I see here. Lore breaking name only sequel in and a studio with a writing style that doesn't agree with me.

It's D&D. Every single DM and player LITERALLY makes their own lore, stories, gods, and then mishmashes what is in the books in to fit their theme.

Oh geez, a "narrators are bad I don't need my hand held!" argument. Good grief.

And a "They already said it wasn't related!" because people definitely cannot lie or ommit information intentionally(lolHideoKojimaRaidenMGS2lol) and the story absolutely cannot go on any further AFTER the return of Bhaal. That is ludicrous. Definitely not a thing!

Also, we are talking about a video game and not a PnP. Also, if you are having issues with the PnP Mindflayers I can see your issue right there. You are waiting for the DM to hand feed you items instead of seeking out powerful items or having them enchanted for specific purposes. If you don't have anything at 7th level that boosts INT or Will Saves, you are probably playing the game wrong.

You act as if the Underdark is a place of gentle souls only looking for a peaceful existence. Totally not filled with demon worshiping elves who kill as a hobby and enslave other races for fun and dwarves who are so bitter and curmudgeonly that they don't even like other bitter and curmudgeonly dwarves. Or their escapades on other planes where you run in to the possibility of running in to powerful Archons or the Githyanki and their swords that can cut the strands of fate straight from a creatures soul.

The surface is Disneyland in comparison to planar travel and the Underdark.

Voss wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

Voss wrote:
Yeah, heard about this. I'm... dubious, for a couple reasons.

1) I don't really like Larian's writing. D:OS tended toward goofy and the narrator in D:OS 2 made me not buy it.

2) The BG1/BG2 story is done. The timeline has moved on (dunno if its a century or not- 4e FR was made of nonsense and so was fixing what broke after 4e), and most importantly, Bhaal came back sometime during the time between 3rd and 5th. The story of the Bhaalspawn is over- one or more of them served their purpose and Daddy came home and became the god of murder again.

So this is a 'sequel' in name only, with a completely different team and an unrelated story in a completely different edition of game rules.

3) Mind flayers are simply salt on a pile of worries. Yeah, yeah, iconic and everything. But they're BS monsters with game breaking abilities. A DC 15 Int save or be stunned for a full minute just snaps player agency in half (that's 10 combat rounds of doing jack/squat), particularly since that's hard for any character without an Int bonus and proficiency in Int saves (which is to say... everyone not a wizard). Then they autokill you if you drop to zero HP (and they do about ~55 damage per tentacle grope in those circumstances

Plus... Mind flayers don't do what the trailer has them doing. They don't bother surface cities. They go to other planes and raid for brains there so they don't risk reprisals. They certainly don't implant their young in people wandering around the blood soaked streets of surface cities- they do that safely at home, with other planar kidnap victims.


As much as I want to see a 5e computer game (it's well suited for it), I like nothing of what I see here. Lore breaking name only sequel in and a studio with a writing style that doesn't agree with me.

1: What does the narrator have to do with writing?

2: How do you know the story is done? It could be a continuation or this could just be about the city Baldur's Gate.....

3: Mindflayers are not that bad and ANYBODY can get around their DC saves with the right enchantments on items or buffs. Just be better at the game. Also I hav ine never read anywhere about Mind Flayers not bothering surface cities. They do operate primarily in the Underdark or on other planes, but they go where they get brains.

So uh, what are you on about here?

1) uh, what? OK, this seems obvious, but a narrator adds a tone to writing. In os2 particularly, the narrator is goofy and fairly snide. The narrators voice and tone significantly affects the writing of os2 (for the worse). And that goes beyond just the basics of how having a narrator in a game to _tell_ you what's going on is a cheap device, rather than just letting the game show you what's going on or finding out yourself by exploring the world.

2). Again, obvious. Because they've said it is. Not only are all the bhaalspawn dead and bhaal canonical returned (and the protagonist of the PC games given a single identity and canon name before he died), but the Larian devs have openly stated that the new game has nothing to do with the original beyond 'references' to past events.



3). Ah. A 'get good' for tabletop rpgs. Fantastic.
Feel free to list the spells that 'get around' mind flayer stunning blasts.
Particularly list the ones available at 7th level when mind flayers are level appropriate encounters.

Don't bother with items, because that requires the DM to freely gift the party with 'anti mind flayer' items prior to throwing them at the party, which rather defeats the purpose of using a 'gotcha' monster in the first place.


The rest also seems obvious. Why go after places that might have people who can retaliate (ie powerful adventurers available for hire, or rulers who are powerful themselves, which is a given in the FR), when you can go after victims who can't retaliate? Keep in mind these creatures are innately super-geniuses lead by a godlike intelligence who are all perfectly aware that anyone knowledgeable would kill them on sight. (Except folks.like the drow who find them useful neighbors, because they pacify the immediate area and are a good export market and are intelligent enough to realize a fight against drow cities would involve unacceptable losses).

Mind flayers are risk adverse and intelligent about it.

----
@Malus- my memory of bg2 is that didn't actually work. It should have, but undead weren't coded with immunity to brainsucking.

Now I feel bad about chiding the other dude, really someone resorted to "LULZ GIT GUD SCRUB"

Well I mean, he is being given a ton of resources to deal with these issues pretty easily and his response is "THE DM ISN'T HAND FEEDING ME ANYTHING" sooooo, yeah. He really needs to "git gud" as it were.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Totally not filled with demon worshiping elves who kill as a hobby and enslave other races for fun

Let's be fair, Dreadwinter.

The Drow worship a goddess, not demons. Sure, she's a goddess who makes her lair in one of the various versions of hell and is astonishingly vile and evil.

But still, a divine entity. In DnD, not all gods are good-aligned. It's an important distinction, because Llolth is a very jealous, possessive, and paranoid goddess whom barely tolerates her own children existing as deities that evil drow worship. She really doesn't tolerate drow worshiping anything other than her and her subordinates, and drow that do that usually end up either as sacrifices, or turned in to insane half-spiders.

 Melissia wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Totally not filled with demon worshiping elves who kill as a hobby and enslave other races for fun

Let's be fair, Dreadwinter.

The Drow worship a goddess, not demons. Sure, she's a goddess who makes her lair in one of the various versions of hell and is astonishingly vile and evil.

But still, a divine entity. In DnD, not all gods are good-aligned. It's an important distinction, because Llolth is a very jealous, possessive, and paranoid goddess whom barely tolerates her own children existing as deities that evil drow worship. She really doesn't tolerate drow worshiping anything other than her and her subordinates, and drow that do that usually end up either as sacrifices, or turned in to insane half-spiders.

Eilistraee would like a word with Llolth.

 Melissia wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Totally not filled with demon worshiping elves who kill as a hobby and enslave other races for fun

Let's be fair, Dreadwinter.

The Drow worship a goddess, not demons. Sure, she's a goddess who makes her lair in one of the various versions of hell and is astonishingly vile and evil.

But still, a divine entity. In DnD, not all gods are good-aligned. It's an important distinction, because Llolth is a very jealous, possessive, and paranoid goddess whom barely tolerates her own children existing as deities that evil drow worship. She really doesn't tolerate drow worshiping anything other than her and her subordinates, and drow that do that usually end up either as sacrifices, or turned in to insane half-spiders.

Ehhhh, I guess it really depends on how you look at it. Asmodeus is considered an "Arch-Devil" and not a god, but in reality he has all the power levels of a god and he is worshipped as such. I guess it all depends on what kind of magic you impart to your followers or the title you prefer I guess. To make it even worse, God's/Arch-Devils/Demons are generally not even the highest powers in these settings.

 Togusa wrote:
Eilistraee would like a word with Llolth.

Considering Llolth had her murdered/murdered her (I forgot which, but well, she got better and the distinction isn't important), I'm sure Eilistraee would like numerous pointed words with her mother.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Ehhhh, I guess it really depends on how you look at it. Asmodeus is considered an "Arch-Devil" and not a god, but in reality he has all the power levels of a god and he is worshipped as such. I guess it all depends on what kind of magic you impart to your followers or the title you prefer I guess. To make it even worse, God's/Arch-Devils/Demons are generally not even the highest powers in these settings.

There ARE multiple levels of deities, so that's true. But the main thing about deities in Forgotten Realms is that they are empowered by worship and are granted a Portfolio which are the various concepts they represent. Llolth has a stranglehold on the concept of "Drow" and a major grip on "Spiders". Her actions in control of Drow society are in part to ensure that she maintains this power. Also because she's a cruel-hearted possessive [expletive deleted] who has love for no one but herself. But be that as it may...

Asmodeus actually ascended to become a Lesser Deity, taking on the portfolio of Indulgence and the domains of Knowledge, Order, and Trickery, putting him on the same level as Llolth.

Forgotten Realms theology and divinity are actually kinda fun topics. Anything from quasi-deities, to actual gods starting with demigods up to overdeities.

 Melissia wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Eilistraee would like a word with Llolth.

Considering Llolth had her murdered/murdered her (I forgot which, but well, she got better and the distinction isn't important), I'm sure Eilistraee would like numerous pointed words with her mother.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Ehhhh, I guess it really depends on how you look at it. Asmodeus is considered an "Arch-Devil" and not a god, but in reality he has all the power levels of a god and he is worshipped as such. I guess it all depends on what kind of magic you impart to your followers or the title you prefer I guess. To make it even worse, God's/Arch-Devils/Demons are generally not even the highest powers in these settings.

There ARE multiple levels of deities, so that's true. But the main thing about deities in Forgotten Realms is that they are empowered by worship and are granted a Portfolio which are the various concepts they represent. Llolth has a stranglehold on the concept of "Drow" and a major grip on "Spiders". Her actions in control of Drow society are in part to ensure that she maintains this power. Also because she's a cruel-hearted possessive [expletive deleted] who has love for no one but herself. But be that as it may...

Asmodeus actually ascended to become a Lesser Deity, taking on the portfolio of Indulgence and the domains of Knowledge, Order, and Trickery, putting him on the same level as Llolth.

Forgotten Realms theology and divinity are actually kinda fun topics. Anything from quasi-deities, to actual gods starting with demigods up to overdeities.

Recently I played a Drow rogue in a friends game, and he was really unaware of this deity. He kept having trouble understanding the concept of a Chaotic Good dark elf!

I'm sure Llolth was quite pleased at the success of her propaganda campaign.

So, I am getting ready for several things:

1. Micro Transactions, Loot boxes, and Season passes
2. My beloved 5e to get raped by game designers and regurgitated into a live-service Dragon Age 3 style mess
3. Pandering, oh so much pandering to the nerd crowds
4. A Broken buggy mess that will day 1 be patched, and then promise a "road map" of how it will be the game money bags, I mean fans, deserve
5. Won't be Epic Exclusive, until pre-launch, which will need to be purchased at Game Stop, and then it will go Epic Exclusive.
6. You will need to buy new classes, ala Capcom
7. A few more "gameplay trailers" with no actual gameplay, but a bunch of pre-rendered videos.

I am a mixed bag of thoughts on this one.

1 - I LOVED BG1, BG2, and TOB, best RPG series i've ever played. Thats a high pedigree to live up to.

2 - I liked the gameplay more or less for DOS1 and 2

3 - The writing/premises for DOS 1 and DOS 2 were good

4 - I HATED DOS2 for being a hilarously buggy, exploitable mess to the point where the bugs arbitrarily selected my ending for me. Removed all agency from me, made all the choices I made irrelevant. Just complete, utter nonsense. No developer worth their salt should release a game in that kind of state.

5 - Mind flayers are just completely obnoxious monsters. Pain in the butt to fight.

Would you rather fight:

Mind Flayer

Or

Beholder

I always thought Mind Flayers were simple on paper. By the time you are supposed to be facing them, you have well over 50-60 HP, and you can likely be healed quickly enough by at least 2 members of the party. Also, by that level your magic user SHOULD be able to outright oneshot a single Mindflayer. And if he's being controlled, your fighter should have no problem doing 50-70pts of damage in a single turn.

Traditionally, beholders are a far more dangerous direct combat opponent, while a Mind Flayer requires more work to bring out in to the open to combat.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Would you rather fight:

Mind Flayer

Or

Beholder

I always thought Mind Flayers were simple on paper. By the time you are supposed to be facing them, you have well over 50-60 HP, and you can likely be healed quickly enough by at least 2 members of the party. Also, by that level your magic user SHOULD be able to outright oneshot a single Mindflayer. And if he's being controlled, your fighter should have no problem doing 50-70pts of damage in a single turn.

Mind Flayers are accompanied by subservient monsters, so the main issue is getting to them. Like any Controller, they have a variety of ways to handle PC's, and like any good monster, the PC's have several ways of dealing with them.

Beholders are ri-god-damn-diculous to fight no matter the level or battleground. Hell, even preparing before a fight doesn't really help because of just how paranoid a Beholder can be - they plan for ANY and ALL eventualities, to compare these things to Mind Flayers is just...you can't.

Also, what I think a lot of people forget is that going to find Mind Flayers somewhere, either in their cities or various slave pens, the PC's SHOULD be doing ample research on what they're going to find. Any parties that run into a Mind Flayer controlled area without at least knowing what they're going to be facing deserves a TPK.

Mind Flayer. Even when they've got plenty of mind controlled pets and servants.

Beholders prepare for so much, and even then there's so many small differences that a party can't identify from a simple glance while most Mind Flayers are technically similar enough, but a small difference on a Beholder changes out an eye that swaps out what sorts of deadly spells it knows and potential resistances..

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Would you rather fight:

Mind Flayer

Or

Beholder

Neither. They're both BS rocket launcher tag monsters, though the beholder benefits more from the HP bloat of later editions.

I always thought Mind Flayers were simple on paper. By the time you are supposed to be facing them, you have well over 50-60 HP, and you can likely be healed quickly enough by at least 2 members of the party. Also, by that level your magic user SHOULD be able to outright oneshot a single Mindflayer. And if he's being controlled, your fighter should have no problem doing 50-70pts of damage in a single turn

Not sure what this scenario is based on (or edition). But in 5th edition, no, a 7th level wizard (level appropriate for the 7th level mind flayer) isn't doing 71 points of damage in one shot. Come back at 13th level when you've got disintegrate and are feeling lucky about their saves.
Blasting just isn't that effective, and most control spells got heavily nerfed (and several of the ones that could work aren't even available yet- for example hold monster vs hold person (which affects only humanoids))

Meanwhile, with intelligence saves against stunning blast, any two of your fighter and two healers are likely to be stunned, because everybody bar the wizard (and theoretical rogue) doesn't have an int save bonus to speak of, so their starting point is a 65% chance of failure (+0 vs DC 15). Alternately the mind flayer can just target someone first with dominate monster (DC15 wisdom save) Huzzah for 7th level monsters with 8th level spells (which shouldn't be even showing up for another 7 or 8 levels)

So, rocket launcher tag. And that's just one mind flayer with no help.

Frankenberry wrote:Also, what I think a lot of people forget is that going to find Mind Flayers somewhere, either in their cities or various slave pens, the PC's SHOULD be doing ample research on what they're going to find. Any parties that run into a Mind Flayer controlled area without at least knowing what they're going to be facing deserves a TPK

That's largely true, except....

a) 5e context. A lot of defensive measures went pop and dissolved into the ether of an edition change (or are ridiculously high level and so aren't relevant, like Mind Blank, and that still doesn't prevent the stun effect). In fact there are no spells that prevent stun, and no way to stack bonuses until you can reliably save. About the best you can do is find some way to finagle advantage on saves and add +1d4 from bless.
One of 5e's design goals was to limit the ability to affect the math much, so bonuses are tiny or nonexistent (were talking a 'progression' of +4 over 20 levels). A mid-teen DC is actually a pretty big deal. Especially on the minor saves (Int, Str, Cha) that don't come up very often, because there are literally less than a dozen things in the entire game that use Int and Cha. It's just when they come up, they're campaign-wrecking.


b) BG3 context. This isn't about wandering unprepared into mind flayer territory. This is about an army with multiple squads of mind flayers in your house and spawning more mind flayers. That's functionally untenable for a party using the 5e ruleset- with mulltiple mind flayers, statistics are going to result in a TPK sooner or later. Sooner or later the entire party is going to fail, party members are going to get mulched by the brain attack, and each successive round is going to be worse after that (because you have to save out of the minute long stun, and by that point they will have further chances to stun you).

Voss wrote:
Neither. They're both BS rocket launcher tag monsters

I apologize for the substandard experience you have been provided by your DMs thus far.

Man, I have a great story about my Goliath Battle Master rolling +8 AC three turns in a row and being unhitable by the beholder. The whole party laughed well that night.

Now that is a blast from the past!

Had problems trying to get the first two running so this could be worth a butchers.

 Melissia wrote:

Voss wrote:
Neither. They're both BS rocket launcher tag monsters

I apologize for the substandard experience you have been provided by your DMs thus far.

Yeah, I am not understanding his arguments here. I mean yeah, mindflayers are a pain and you should fear running in to a whole city of them. But one with minions? lolno. 2-3 with Minions, maybe pop some spells and quaff some pots but still no.

Voss, you keep saying 7th level players. If the players are 7th level, then the normal difficulty encounter is one single mind flayer with no support against 4 PCs. The Mind Flayer has +1 to its initiative roll, which doesn't give it good odds to act first and it can only act once per turn. It is severely at a disadvantage due to the action economy.

It has low strength, dexterity and constitution modifiers, so even with advantage it has not amazing odds of passing saves against spells targeting these ability scores. Any non-spell ability targeting those ability scores is golden.

For example, a mind flayer wears a breastplate which is medium armour made of metal. Cast heat metal (a level 2 spell for Bards and Druids) on item, 2d8 (plus 1d8 per extra level cast at) fire damage to anyone touching it and needs to save vs Con or drop the item that is being heated. If it cannot drop the item it has disadvantage on all attack rolls until the beginning of the players next turn. Taking off a breastplate takes 1 minute so it cannot do that in a single round. Voila, you just keep casting Heat Metal with your Bard (who will most likely be acting before the mind flayer as they'll have a higher Dex bonus and also get half their proficiency bonus added to their initiative roll thanks to Jack of all Trades) to keep the mind flayer at disadvantage and use bonus actions to give players bardic inspiration to help save against stun from mind blast or tentacles. The Bard can also use countercharm to give everyone advantage against the 1/per day casting of Dominate Monster.

So, in short, bring a Bard!

Of course they can simply target the Bard. If the bard isn't using bonus actions for Heat Metal he isn't giving disadvantage, if he's using actions for countercharm he's not casting Heat Metal.

And of course Heat metal has the same range as Mind Blast if I remember right, about 60 feet? And Heat Metal requires concentration so you can't hold a buff spell as well. It's pretty good if you can somehow ensure that the angry squiddie isn't going to blast you with something else to break your actions. Heat Metal a pretty powerful spell in it's own right.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Of course they can simply target the Bard. If the bard isn't using bonus actions for Heat Metal he isn't giving disadvantage, if he's using actions for countercharm he's not casting Heat Metal.

And of course Heat metal has the same range as Mind Blast if I remember right, about 60 feet? And Heat Metal requires concentration so you can't hold a buff spell as well. It's pretty good if you can somehow ensure that the angry squiddie isn't going to blast you with something else to break your actions. Heat Metal a pretty powerful spell in it's own right.

If it is targeting the bard then the fighter can get up to it and demolish its face with 2 attacks a round. If you have a Battle Master then you trip it on the first attack (strength saving throw with an Mind Flayers +0 bonus or fall prone) and then pummel it on the next. Then everyone just stamps on its head as it lies on the ground

Basically, there are lots of ways to deal with Mind Flayers, just be creative and find ways to target its weaknesses.