DriveThruRPG.com
Browse Categories
$ to $















Back
pixel_trans.gif
Unveiled Masters: the Essential Guide to Mind Flayers $9.95
Average Rating:4.7 / 5
Ratings Reviews Total
3 1
0 2
0 0
0 0
0 0
Unveiled Masters: the Essential Guide to Mind Flayers
Click to view
You must be logged in to rate this
pixel_trans.gif
Unveiled Masters: the Essential Guide to Mind Flayers
Publisher: Paradigm Concepts, Inc.
by Michael I. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/29/2016 16:31:53

A awesome book for those who love the brain eaters. It has a wealth of history, tips, insights, and expanded abilities to make illithiads even deadlier threat.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Unveiled Masters: the Essential Guide to Mind Flayers
Publisher: Paradigm Concepts, Inc.
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/17/2006 00:00:00

Unveiled Masters: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers is a race book on mind flayers from Paradigm Concepts. The product comes in a zipped file 7.18 megabytes in size, containing a single PDF of just over 8 meg. The PDF is 114 pages long, with a page for the front cover, a page for the credits/legal/table of contents, a page for the OGL, and a page for the back cover. The table of contents isn?t hyperlinked, but the product is bookmarked.

The product?s only full-color art is on the covers, with the remaining art being black-and-white. Each page has borders along the top and bottom, with the bottom having the name of the book, and the top having the chapter you?re currently in. No options for a printer-friendly version are given.

It?s worth noting that this book uses 3.0, not 3.5, statistics. However, it?s also worth noting that roughly a little over half of this book is fluff (non-mechanical), so that?s not as big a problem as it may seem at first glance.

The book?s introduction sets the tone for the entire work. This product is meant as a GM aid to help fully flesh out the illeth (mind flayers), and isn?t meant to be a player reference. While it may be possible for PCs to find something of use here, this book is slanted towards giving the GM material to work with.

The first chapter covers the history of the illeth. It describes how in the previous multiverse, the Great One named Ftaghn grew so powerful that he survived that multiverse?s death and fashioned new servants in the new multiverse ? the illeth. It then covers the founding of the Illeth Empire, its expansion to other planes, the Outsider War as they tried to invade the Outer Planes, and Gidh?s Rebellion, which led to the slow decline of the Empire. This chapter is pure fluff, with no mechanics.

The second chapter covers illeth mindset and society. This chapter discusses what the illeth think about many different topics, including magic, psionics, the gods, flesh crafting, the Great Work (achieving dominion over all existence and attaining a perfect physical and mental form), each other, and more. This chapter also has no mechanics.

Chapter three covers how the mind flayers deal with other races. This is a short chapter (also purely fluff) outlining how the illeth relate to other races, such as drow or beholders.

Chapter four covers the biology of mind flayers, and while there is a bit of material on physiology and feeding, this chapter actually focuses on two different topics ? how mind flayers reproduce, and how they dodge death. Multiple ways of doing both are given. For creating new mind flayers, discussion is given to releasing egg-clusters (which hatch tadpoles that mature into illeth), egg-implantation, and even psionic alteration of other races. Likewise, to avoid death, this chapter discusses illeth brains joining the community?s master-minds (brain collectives), cloning, mentally inhabiting another body, taking ectoplasmic form, and even undeath. Some new mechanics are given here, such as the ectoplasmic form template, or rules on using psionic powers to inhabit another body permanently (and then altering the body).

Chapter five discusses the illethkin, creatures that illeth have made that are similar to themselves. First, an illethkin template is given, which can be laid onto any creature to make them like a mind flayer. Then nine creatures are given, all but one of which are new (the other being the aboleth; here they?re listed as being aquatic forms of illeth that were created). Each creature has an abbreviated stat block given for them. Quick discussion and stat blocks are given for a few existing humanoid creatures transformed into illethkin. Finally, PHB-style racial stats are given for two former slave races of the illeth.

Chapter six covers illeth technology. The first of these are flesh crafted items. These are things that are not psionic or magical, but are quasi-alive. While interesting, these stats are somewhat patchy; carapace armor is very interesting, for example, but what arcane spell failure chance does it have? A standardized table of the flesh crafted items would have been more helpful here. The new psionic weapons, armor, and universal items (including a new major and minor artifact) are much better, given in the familiar style.

Chapter seven covers new spells and psionic powers. Discussion is given to illeth using magic rather than psionics, along with a few ways of distinguishing one from the other (or even illeth magic from normal magic). After that, four new domains are followed by several new spells and new psionic powers, virtually all of which are rather obviously meant to be used by the illeth.

Chapter eight has a relatively small collection of new feats for mind flayers, ranging from general to metamagic to metapsionic.

Chapter nine discusses how well mind flayers work with each of the PHB classes, as well as psions and psychic warriors, before giving us seven new illeth-specific prestige classes: the Aggrithid (illeth who hunt drow), Skull Collector, Mind Eater, Keeper (illeth lore masters), Warrior of the Violet Line, Dark Slayer, and Master of Flesh.

Chapter ten discusses alternate methods of using the illeth in your campaign. Three different origins are given (one of which has alternate powers for standard mind flayers). Following this are five new mind flayer gods. Each one lists their name (and pronunciation), a few paragraphs of descriptive text, their alignment, their domains, and their symbol.

The book?s final chapter discusses using the illeth in your campaign. It outlines several archetypes for using them, such as how they always use pawns, and have schemes within schemes. This chapter basically serves as a reminder that the illeth should never be mere monsters.

Altogether, Unveiled Masters does a very good job in laying out how to use mind flayers as major campaign villains. This book serves as an excellent counterpoint to Wizards of the Coast?s own Lords of Madness; that book focuses on mechanics (particularly for fighting monsters), whereas this book is largely fluff text on how to flesh them out more and make them a larger part of your campaign. Unveiled Masters: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers is a book that?s guaranteed to get you inside a mind flayer?s head, before it gets into yours. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: This product did a fantastic job laying out the history and outlook of the mind flayers. It paints a vivid picture of them that's as enthralling as it is monstrous.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: It couldn't be helped that some of the book's material has been rendered obsolete by the 3.5 rules, such as the section dealing with how mind flayers extract brains, or how various psionic disciplines use different attributes (they don't in 3.5). Also, a printer-friendly version would have been helpful.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Creator Reply:
Thanks for the review, we are pleased that you like it. Save for the diciplines and attack/defense mode rules, we find that Unveiled Masters serves very well for 3.5 games.
pixel_trans.gif
Unveiled Masters: the Essential Guide to Mind Flayers
Publisher: Paradigm Concepts, Inc.
by Nathan C. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/14/2006 00:00:00

Unveiled Masters: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers, written 4 years ago and recently converted to PDF, is a comprehensive expose of our favorite brain sucking villains. The book does a great job of bringing out the true alien culture of the Illeth (Yeah its those guys, but the name change was necessary for weird copyright reasons. Heck, I?m so afraid of WOTC I won?t even mention the other name in my review, else they may copyright Nathan Collins, which will be bad for my career).

For the DM: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers features 11 chapters of detail for the Dungeon Master. The writers delve into the history and thinking of the mind flayer in the first few chapters, helping the DM provide a lot of flavor to Mind Flayer NPCs. This flavor includes information on their home world, its history and their origin. The book then moves into different races of Mind Flayers and their technology and magic. These were my favorite three chapters as they provided instant components I could assign to the major Mind Flayer NPC in my campaign. I?ll be honest, I really liked the flesh crafted items. It just made sense for these beasts to eat the brains and adorn the skin like a nice fur coat. The magic is more geared towards the alien culture as well, giving their spells a sinister feel.

The last few chapters are DM specific options. One of which I am using is Mind Flayers as the avatars of evil psionic gods.

For the Player: The book specifically warns against using this as a means for a players guide for mind flayers. Of course, if your DM is running a side evil campaign as I am, you can use this book to develop a compelling evil character.

The Iron Word: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers presents very complete presentation of a race. There are a lot of different directions you can take mind flayers with this supplement. Its use can be almost immediate with the assortment of feats, spells and items for the creatures. More so, you can use this supplement to expand on the psionic inhabitants of your world or focus the campaign on the culture of mind flayers. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: There is a lot of crunch and flavor for the DM<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: This obviously was not geared toward the player. But I would have liked to see a class or two for those of us whom have evil campaigns (though I do admit that is rare). <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Creator Reply:
The Prestige classes, though designed as opponents, could serve to make a formidible evil PC. I am personally fond of the Violet Line. Glad you liked the book and thanks for the review!
pixel_trans.gif
Displaying 1 to 3 (of 3 reviews) Result Pages:  1 
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif Back pixel_trans.gif
0 items
 Gift Certificates