So to build on my question, What are the consequences for an illithid rejecting his brain diet?…
To recap, I'm designing an NPC for a non-D&D campaign (but I'm using D&D as my setting inspiration). The NPC is a rogue illithid, fighting against his own race. He will be chaotic evil or chaotic neutral, I have not decided yet. But while he does this it is simply too dangerous, or too tedious, to hunt for brains.
Taking 5E as the main rule source (but If you want to use 3.5 or Pathfinder it's still OK), this illithid knows arcane spells as well as standard mind flayer magic and some illithid alchemy/bioengineering.
Could he keep some slaves around and eat their brains, then cast some healing spell on them to regrow them? I imagine the slave would become completely oblivious to everything, since all his memories would be deleted over and over.
Best Answer
Possibly — if you count spells that bring back the dead as healing. But, this ain't cheap (in 5E — earlier editions might have other answers). The Mind Flayer's "Extract Brain" says:
So, the victim is definitely dead: too late for a quick application of a healing potion, Cure Wounds, or other basic healing spells. We need a bigger ... boat.
Next up might be Revivify, which returns the recently-deceased to life, but it says:
If you made a list of "degree to which a body part can be missing", "extracted and devoured" is way up there. So, that's no use.
And Raise Dead has a similar limitation:
So, you're going to need the 5th-level druid spell Reincarnate (which grows a whole new body) or 7th-level bard/cleric Resurrection (which grows back missing body parts). Both of these consume a 1000gp component.
That's possible, but... your mind flayer will have to decide if this particular brand of evil is an economically viable proposition compared to other options.