Mind Flayers

Going by the most common 5e sources that discuss mind flayers, it would seem they spend most of their time learning things. Each mind flayer dedicates its life to a certain cause and strives to become as useful as it can for the hive and the Elder Brain in this particular field. Some of these mind flayers, therefore, take an interest in biology or other aspects of the material world and could be said to come the closest to a modern approach to science one will find in the average DnD setting. Perhaps only rivaled by certain wizard colleges.

When it comes, specifically, to biology, Volo tells us in his VGtM (Volo's Guide to Monsters, 2016, p71-81) that many of these attempts at research and experiments go wrong. Some specimens simply die, others become twisted monstrosities, but still others become stronger.

Now, while Volo does mention some of these creations, such as the Mindwitness, surely these are the result of successful experiments. Which leaves one to wonder: What are the results of these unsuccessful experiments? And, perhaps more importantly, what stats do they have? After all, you can't fight a paragraph of text.

Animated Objects

When a mind flayer is both arcanically gifted and has a lot of experiments to do, often involving a lot of preparation, it might look to enhance some of the objects it uses frequently. Following are a couple of things this mind flayer might animate, to perform tasks on its own, making the mind flayer's life easier.

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Animated Scalpel

Tiny, unaligned

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• Armor Class 14 (natural armor)
• Hit Points 3 (1d4+0)
• Speed 0 ft., fly 20 ft. (hover)

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STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
12 (+1)	12 (+1)	10 (+0)	1 (-5)	3 (-4)	1 (-5)

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• Damage Immunities poison, psychic
• Condition Immunities blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned
• Senses Blindsight 60ft. (blind beyond this radius), passive Perception 6
• Languages -
• Challenge 0 (0 XP)

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Antimagic Susceptibility. The scalpel is incapacitated while in the area of an antimagic field. If targeted by dispel magic, the scalpel must succeed on Constitution saving throw against he caster's spell save DC or fall unconscious for 1 minute.

False Appearance. While the scalpel remains motionless and isn't flying, it is indistinguishable from a normal scalpel.

Meticulous Instrument. Given sufficient time, equal to how long it would take an expert, the animated scalpel can dissect a creature, separating skin, membrane and organs like an expert, as if it had +11 Wisdom (Survival) and Intelligence (Nature) proficiencies.

Actions

Slice. Melee weapon attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 3 (1d4+1) slashing damage.

Animated Clamp

Tiny, unaligned

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• Armor Class 14
• Hit Points 3 (1d4+0)
• Speed 0 ft., fly 20 ft. (hover)

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STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
12 (+1)	12 (+1)	10 (+0)	1 (-5)	3 (-4)	1 (-5)

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• Damage Immunities poison, psychic
• Condition Immunities blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned
• Senses Blindsight 60ft. (blind beyond this radius), passive Perception 6
• Languages -
• Challenge 0 (0 XP)

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Antimagic Susceptibility. The clamp is incapacitated while in the area of an antimagic field. If targeted by dispel magic, the clamp must succeed on Constitution saving throw against he caster's spell save DC or fall unconscious for 1 minute.

False Appearance. While the clamp remains motionless and isn't flying, it is indistinguishable from a normal clamp.

Clamp. When instructed to hold onto something, animated clamps will work together when performing grapple checks, giving each other advantage.

Actions

Pinch. Melee weapon attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 3 (1d4+1) bludgeoning damage.

Animated Scalpel

A useful tool for any mind flayer is its scalpel. Carefully removing organs from a body without damaging them allows the mind flayer to store it in a special fluid that keeps it fresh. The less damaged this organ is after removal, the more trustworthy the results of any experiment will be when compared to th effects on living humanoids that are still in one piece.

Animated Clamp

For the scalpel to do its work, skin and membrane have to often be removed or pulled out of the way to get to the interesting bits. This is where the clamp comes in. With its innate flying speed it can dig into a corpse (or living being) and remove whatever is necessary. When something heavy or resilient must be removed, such as bones or tendons, animated clamps often work together.

Animated Brain Extractor

Another terribly useful tool for any mind flayer interested in ("intelligent") creatures is its brain extractor, which is terribly handy when, you guessed it, one wants to extract brains. Instead of having to use its own beaked mouth, which, honestly, can get tedious, the brain extractor does the job for the mind flayer.

It is easily placed on most humanoid-sized heads, after which it drills a moderately sized hole. From this hole it saws through the skull and extracts the brain, all in a matter of minutes.

Abominations

Many mind flayer experiments go wrong or at least have one or more unintended effects. Whenever something is taken away from the monsters, for example a pegasus is stripped of its wings, but it survives, it often goes insane. This in itself makes its brain more tasty to most mind flayers, but if it is kept alive nevertheless, you can represent this with simple changes to the statblock. For example:

Note how, while the Pegasus is still a horse, it lost its proficiency in Dex saving throws, as it can no longer use its wings to aid its movements. Of course, it also lost its flying speed. Furthermore, its alignment changed due to the tortures it had to endure. Now, its only salvation is quelling its own pains by inflicting suffering on others.

There are as many of these abominations possible as there are creatures for the mind flayers to dissect. However, most of these don't need an elaborate new philosophy behind them. If they are alive, it is barely, and often with specific features missing.

Successful modifications

Other creations might, by any sane person, be regarded as as much as an abomination as the failed experiments, but mind flayers often see this in a different light. Anything useful or interesting is a success.

After much careful research, mind flayers sometimes come across something that they find interesting enough to try and create themselves. Example given, a particular hive might live close to a merfolk colony, or even underwater, and one of the mind flayer scholars recently learned of syrens. While these creatures aren't around to investigate, this mind flayer and one of the ones specializing in biology's fantasy was sufficiently provoked to make them wonder how such a creature might have come to be.

As a result, they start experimenting on the aforementioned merfolk to try and get one to fly.

Corrupted Fungus

When doing experiments on fungi, mind flayers sometimes created corrupted specimens capable of sentience. Oftentimes these fungi search out or are consciously placed near windows, doors or other openings. When this is the case, they envelop the borders of the opening and enclose it, turning it into a portal. Especially advanced mind flayer colonies might use these creatures purposefully.

When a mind flayer colony can be located in a demiplane the hive created or stole, corrupted fungi might be used, not only to communicate who is at the front door, but also to conceal the only way into the hive.

Urophion

While dwelling in the Underdark, mind flayers often come upon already interesting creatures that they can reshape and use for themselves. Such a craeture is the urophion. Once trapped, the defenseless roper is blasted with psionic energies until itself becomes psionically adept. It is then freed again and guards not necessarily the entrance to the hive itself, but, example given, the entrances to the Duergar village the mind flayers are using as cover.

Mole Orcs

One special mention in these examples must be made to an entirely new race (or at least its possibility) created by mind flayers: Mole Orcs. By selectively breeding a tribe of orcs after having altered and blasted them with psionic energies, these orcs are now hereditarily blind and have claws for hands. Consequent observations pointed out that when released back into the wild, these orcs have a strong preference for living underground and digging their own tunnels, hunting down Underdark insectoids, such as Kruthiks.

Combined, this document is less than the tip off the iceberg of mind flayer creations. As mentioned above, anything they could get their hands on and dissect might result in a wicked abomination. Furthermore, many other outcomes of experiments might just cling to life. For inspiration, I can recommend some of the demons or demonically influenced creatures. As the Abyss has twisted many forms of life that nevertheless still roam the Material Plane, so can the mind flayers have a similar influence.