Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

Brain Mole

... Pfft... Hah... Hahahahaha! No, really, I find the 1e art hilarious. It's just a star-nosed mole, but you can make everything psionic by drawing lots of zigzag lines around it!

The Brain Mole is a Magical Psionic Beast whose only interesting part is feeding on psionic energy. For this, it uses its Power Leech PLA, slowly draining power points from its "prey". Its strategy is pretty clear: come close to an unsuspecting psionic creature, detected using Detect Psionics, while staying hidden with its great Hide bonus and Hide Mind, then use Power Leech and immediately burrow 5ft into the ground (what? No reason 5ft-steps cannot be taken vertically) to be safe while siphoning power points for a few rounds before the psionic creatures goes away or finds it. If someone becomes really dangerous and it can't just run away, it will instead use Aversion to be able to flee without being immediately in danger. This is quite the consistent and well-rounded tactics for an animal, and that is a good world-building monster. However, it is in no way a challenge, to litterally anybody. It's slow, and has no actual means of attacking. It's a nice pet for your resident Psion NPC, but probably won't be making an appearance anytime soon. You know what? I'm adding one to my campaign this instant. Just a nearly blind mole emerging in the psionic PC's room. I predict that it will either become a pet or die an horrible death before the end of the session.

Interestingly, in 1e, the cascade flu was a simple insanity inflicted when the brain mole tried to Power Leech a creature with no psionic ability because they had either an active power manifested on them or a psionic item and so were positive to Detect Psionics. This is quite a nice interaction, and makes much more sense than a bite-transmitted disease. Brain Moles shouldn't even bite anyone, since they feed exclusively on psionic energy. In fact, I'm half-convinced that Power Leech was created specifically for Brain Moles, since the whole "once triggered, you keep losing power points until you get out of the area or stop the user from concentrating" is how the Brain Mole's "brain burrowing" works since 1st edition. It would explain why this power is so absurdly bad (4th level for 1d6 PP per round, seriously??), because it was never intended for PCs to use it.

This change however, opens the can-o'-worms that is the cascade flu. It's a mental disease that makes it so that once you start manifesting something, you automatically use all your power points in the following rounds, manifesting one power, then 2, then 3, and so on, all that without costing actions. Now, it's usually pretty bad (you can only last one fight per day, and you can't control either the powers used or the target, which means that in general you're gonna blast yourself with some of your worst powers and die before your cascade is finished. But if you're a Naberius Binder/Psychic Warrior with the Body Fuel feat, and you only know self-buff powers, you can use it to manifest several powers per round for the price of one single action at the beginning of combat, then use Body Fuel+Naberius to recover slowly all your power points before the next fight. Something like PsyWar 7 with Empathic Feedback, Hustle, Body Adjustment, Dissolving Touch/Animal Affinity, Prevenom, Adrenaline Boost and Claws of the Beast may be interesting. However, it heavily depends on your party composition, as there's no way the Brain Mole is going into melee with a racial -4 to Con and -8 to Str, so I'll ignore it for now.


- Magical Beast, 1 RHD, Tiny, all good
- -8 Str, +4 Dex, -4 Con, -8 Int, +4 Wis, +0 Cha, 0 NA. Aaaand there it is. These stats are a bit too specialized to be useful. It seems taylor-made for an Unarmed Swordsage, but low Int and low Con will cripple the mole in melee. I mean, Ardent exists, but I'm a bit tired of recommending it for half the monsters I review. I'd like to see it become a cleric with Surrogate Spellcasting.
- Speed 15ft, burrow 15ft. That's slow, but being able to burrow is always pretty good. The problem is the brain mole doesn't have tremorsense, so it will be completely blind under the earth. That's super bad.
- PLA: basically useless. Most of these shouldn't even be 2nd level. Detect Psionics wil come up sometimes so that's still good.
- Hide Mind: How to pass as a regular mole familiar. Sure.
- Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. Good, but once again, you don't really want to be in melee.

Low Int, low Str and no hand push it over the edge of LA-0, but the brain mole has way too much going for it to be worth DLA-1. Sadly, 1 RHD, DLA-0.


Well, that was fun, and though I don't understand how it survived three editions, I happily welcome it! I am now half tempted to make an awakened mole character named "Brian Mole the Brain Mole" who has a level 1 psion as a cohort, and drains his power points every day to eat, while protecting him and using him as his mouth. The Psion wanted to go adventuring, but knew he was too weak for that, so Brian Mole suggested they go together.
After this good laugh, we will try screaming with the Caller in Darkness. From art to abilities, nothing in the Caller is even remotely close to okay.