Basidirond

Basidironds present an interesting role-playing challenge.  The gut reaction is to use them for comedic encounters—the d6 Hallucination table certainly pushes GMs in that direction with nicely silly, exclamation point-studded prose, and a DC 16 Fortitude check isn’t insurmountable.  Yet there is an underlying danger there as well—the plant is still CR 5 and demands that save be repeated each round, so there’s totally possibility for the dreaded TPK…which will, in the players’ minds, likely turn the preceding comedy into insult turned to unforgivable injury. 

One way to balance the two is by teaming basidironds up with fey masters.  Good faeries can laugh at the PCs’ folly and rescue them if they get in over their heads.  And a party facing evil fey will know that behind the illusions are alien, wicked minds, and they must break through the comic hallucinations to survive…

A clurichaun (a kind of leprechaun particularly devoted to brewers and drink) spreads chaos at the local ale festival by hiding a basidirond in an open but unremarked cask.  It’s all meant in fun, until the clurichaun gets too deep in his cups to monitor the madness and the basidirond escapes its barrel prison while surrounded by drunk and hallucinating potential prey.

The Nymph of the Grotto guards an underground vivarium of ferns and cave plants with a grove of basidironds.  She attempts to blind any threats that do not fall under the plants’ hallucinatory influence.

In the Void, basidirond spores are considered a drug.  Most of the seedier bars in the asteroid red light districts have at least one basidirond plant, usually tended by lizardfolk druids.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 28