The Brain Golem - A New Monster for D&D 5th Edition

I've been running many Dungeons and Dragons games over the past year. It started with just one bi-weekly Waterdeep Dragon Heist game. A few months ago, I started running another bi-weekly game using the excellent Skullport Dragon Swindle module by Alex Clippinger; both games occur in the same timeline with the same NPCs, so there should be some fun interactions eventually, especially when both groups are exploring and looting Undermountain. I'm also doing a little bi-weekly home brew game for some new players. My schedule is full of D&D 5e and it's excellent.

I've been getting a little bored with the monsters available, though. I'd like to see some old favorites return, especially anything having to do with illithids, known to the layman as mind flayers. One monster completely absent from 5th edition is the brain golem, a huge burly mass of brains that somehow ends up being muscular and stupid. I first read about these things in the Illithiad, which is an amazing 2nd-edition book entirely about illithids. Here they're described as being spawned by the elder brain to be used as "muscle" and protection for the colony, but this doesn't make sense to me. Illithids are all about dominating other lesser creatures to their will. Wouldn't they use powerful thrall creatures as muscle and protection? What's the point of diverting the elder brains mass and power towards a big muscle brain? And how the hell does a pile of humanoid brains leverage muscle, anyway? Don't we already have enough monsters that are big tough lugs that swing big fists? This is clearly an example of D&D designers seeing a bit of cool artwork and trying to slap stats onto it.

Bad Brains

I have a fresh take on the brain golem, inspired by Volo's Guide to Monsters. There's one part of the illithid colony section that describes how illithids remove living brains from their victims and store them in magical preservation liquids, keeping the brains alive for study. The best (worst?) part is that the brains are still functioning, but seemingly devoid of any way to perceive their surroundings, so they just babble confused, horrified thoughts. It's greatly terrible, but also inspirational, because there's another part of Volo's Guide detailing how illithids often seek to horrify and disturb nearby humanoid settlements to soften them up for attack. This is where the brain golem comes in.

Eventually, an illithid colony will amass a collection of “bad brains” afflicted with some madness or disease that makes the brain unsuitable for eating - unpalatable, if you will. Instead of destroying the brains, some colonies use their magical preservation liquids and ghoulish surgery to give these brains a horrific humanoid form and send them into settlements that they want to terrify, disturb, and undermine. A psionic procedure fuses the many brains into one insane sentient creature with a powerful telepathic ability - every mind in the mad collective is telepathically talking to everyone nearby, ranting and raving in a terrible cacophony. Some amateur arcanists mistake these creations for true golems, but they are actually living aberrations sustained by the mind flayer’s preservation fluids.

One of these monsters wandering into a village would pretty quickly kill and frighten most of the population. I don't think an illithid colony takes much risk (of being discovered or otherwise) in releasing these monsters: It's ability doesn't affect aberrations, it's not recognizable as an illithid, and interrogating one probably wouldn't result in useful information. It can't be stressed enough how insane these brains have become and how difficult it is to communicate with them. Talking to them is usually how people are killed by these monsters, but it would be fun for a strong-willed character to get some useful information or clues during a combat with a brain golem.

What's Next

I have no idea how I'm going to use them yet, but I'll update this blog when they actually show up in my game. I'll be sure to write a detailed report when that happens... otherwise I might do a quick writeup of how I've been running Dragon Heist and Dragon Swindle concurrently, which should make for interesting reading.

EDIT: Good Ideas from Enworld

User Nebulous at Enworld forums had a good idea to add a rarely used "encounter" power to make the golem more of a threat and to keep the players on their toes. It's an excellent idea, so let's try adding this to the actions a brain golem can take. Note that the brain golem can only use this ability as a reaction to taking damage.

Dreadful Choir (Recharge 6). The brains of the golem can occasionally work in unison to create a loud telepathic scream, usually in reaction to being threatened or frightened. As a reaction to taking damage, the brain golem may unleash a psychic scream. Up to five humanoids within 30 feet must make a DC 14 Intelligence saving throw or take 27 (5d10) psychic damage and be stunned. One a successful save, a target takes half as much damage and isn't stunned. If the target is killed by this damage, its head explodes. A stunned target can make a DC 14 Intelligence saving throw at the end of each of its turns. On a successful save, the stunning effect ends.

Note that I don't own any of the images or proper nouns presented here. Everything came from the forgotten realms wiki and is being used non-commercially. I certainly wouldn't want to anger the Coastal Wizards or draw any litigious ire.