Illithid Race

by Cthulhu

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The original form of the race was vastly overpowered, with a huge number of abilities that conflicted, and an extremely hard to read and understand introduction. Much of the intro was removed or reworded, though some is currently unchanged. Expect the starting flavor to be reworded at a later date.

As for features, their Mind Blast and Telepathy were totally reworked, and their Superior Darkvision was replaced. While this race is still rather powerful overall, it feels a lot more connected, and has some weaker abilities in many places. Mind Blast was a cool ability, but I found it really loaded the race, so it is instead used as a Racial Feat shown after.

Illithid

Nightmarish, alien invaders from another time and place, illithids typically live in societies of their own kind, hidden away from the light of the sun, feeding on the brain matter of living creatures to sustain themselves, as well as fuel their strange and unnatural powers. Notorious as the "mind flayers" on dozens of worlds, the illithid are possessed of a desire to dominate and master all things around themselves, using their mental powers to force enemies into thralldom.

Rare Adventurers

Still, members of illithid-kind can and do take up the adventuring life, from time to time at least, and only under rare and extraordinary circumstances. Leaving the collective networked intelligence of their own kind diminishes the powers of illithids that brave the outside world, and severely reduces their psionic abilities. Most illithids encountered outside their citadels and outposts are spies, renegades, and ones long banished for crimes even their alien moralities find unspeakable, illithids left with no choice but to leave their collective intelligence.

Alien Form

An illithid resembles a human in basic body structure, but
is generally taller and more slender. They often have lighter colored skins, such as pale green, mauve, or sky blue, and when it is well-fed, is coated in a thin film of mucus. Its skin is smooth and completely hairless, with a tall, sloping cranium, two roughly humanoid eyes, and four long,
coiling tendrils concealing an alien mouth, evolved to open the skulls of other creatures and feed on their contents.

Illithid Names

Illithids are hermaphrodic, reproducing via a process known as ceremorposis, which consists of producing "tadpoles" via parthenogenesis, then allowing them to consume the brains of other creatures, eventually mutating them into new illithids. They often use unique psychic impressions rather than true names among themselves, but many use Common equivalents to allow non-psionic creatures to address them.

Names: Altharid, Ilsenparint, Malinbossk, Qorik, Ullipsine, Xalliordell, Clarota, Quixillion

Illithid Traits

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Constitution increases by 1.

Age. Illithids complete ceremorphosis within a week, and have become fully mature by age 20. Illithids live longer than humans, and can live to be older than 120 years old.

Aberrant Form. Your creature type is both humanoid and aberration.

Size. Most illithids are usually usually similar in height to taller humans, standing at least six feet in height, though they weigh less than humans of the same size. Your size is Medium.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Devour Brain. When a living creature within 5 feet of you is reduced to 0 hit points, you can, as an action on your next turn, devour their brain, gaining temporary hit points equal to your level + your Intelligence Modifier (with a minimum of 1).

This creature must have a size of Medium or smaller. You can use this ability once per long rest.

Telepathy. You can speak telepathically to any creature within 30 feet of you. The creature understands you only if the two of you share a language. You can speak telepathically in this way to one creature at a time.

Psionic Power. ou know the Mage Hand cantrip, and the hand is invisible when you cast the cantrip with this trait.

Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast Comprehend Languages spell once. Once you reach 5th level, you can also cast the Detect Thoughts spell once. You must finish a long rest to cast these spells again with this trait. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Deep Speech, Undercommon, and Common.

Feat: Psionic Mindblasts

Prerequisites: Must be an illithid

Your intelligence increases by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Additionally, you gain the ability to fire psionic blasts. You can use your action to emit a psionic blast in a 15-foot cone. When you use your mind blast, each creature in the area of the blast must make an Intelligence saving throw. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Intelligence modifier + your proficiency bonus. A creature takes 2d6 psychic damage and is stunned until the end of your next turn on a failed save, and take half as much damage on a successful one.

After you use your mind blast, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.

Feat: Mental Fortitude

Prerequesites: Must be an illithid

When someone attempts to read your mind, they take psychic damage equal to your intelligence modifier + your proficiency bonus.

Additionally, you can add your intelligence modifier to saving throws against being charmed or frightened.

Art Credits

Art used for the document was done by:

Pg 1, Xal'tath the Unbidden by Matt DeMino on Artstation

Pg 2, Illithid by Evgeny Smirnov

Like what you see?

I'm Cthulhu, and I've been making homebrew for nearly a year now. I'm still getting better, but I'm gonna start releasing new homebrew every few weeks starting soon. If you're interested, check out some of my previous work:

Warlord Expansion

(Old Content) Blood Hunter: The Forgotten Orders



































Changelog

1.0.0
  • Original Release.
1.0.1
  • Removed Alignment to set it on a TCoE path
  • Made Psionic powers more logical power scaling, and fixed the wording to make the hand invisible
  • Made Devour Brains able to be used (originally, it was only INT times EVER and not per long rest)
  • Made Devour Brain use an action. It does make it rather niche, but originally, it was really easy to use it as free health early on
  • Fixed a lore oversight
  • Prevented tons of spelling errors from continuing
  • Fixed accidentally calling it a "class" a bunch of times (I don't know how that escaped the first draft)
 

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