By D&D cosmology and lore standards, the life of a Beholder is unfortunate but not excessively so considering it's liable to die at some point. That is a luxury many extra planar creatures don't have.
Fun fact: Beholder's brains actually house two separate consciousnesses, both of which are antagonistic to one another. So the main reason why adventurers can kill them is because both consciousnesses are plotting to cause the downfall of the other consciousness while the battle goes on. They're actively sabotaging themselves, despite the fact that this will get both 'minds' killed. *Beholders are quite literally their own worst enemies.*
@@silentdrew7636 The Beholder could, unwittingly, make the Cannon he's holding ridiculously powerful, like "it launches cannonballs that don't explode, but rather disintegrate everything they touch, leaving cannonball-sized tunnels that go on forever".
One time during a campaign I just sat down in front of a beholder and confronted it about its fear. The DM was so confused he just gave up and said that it had a stroke from its new realization and died
Sooo, does that mean you could have a one shot where the players are trying to kill a beholder for reasons they do not know about, only to discover that they are the Beholder's greatest fears literally come to life?
"I don't recall existing prior to this moment." Or for added mind games. Have the party come into contact with the actual party that inspired the beholder's nightmare.
man, they really took the term "lovecraftian" to heart with this one. Right down to the crippling fear of everything unfamiliar, and being unfamiliar with everything.
I’m just starting watching “The Unnameable” on Amazon Prime like 6 minutes ago simultaneously checking my notifications and this is the comment that vindicates the simulation theory of reality..... whatever, right?
@Kel'Thuzad Phobia literally means *fear* , not *irrational fear* Just in modern psychology it's *mostly* used for irrational-ish fears. But that doesn't mean that every phobia inherently describes an irrational fear by definition.
At one point I had a character manage to convince a beholder that they were in fact the actual beholder and the beholder was just a figment sent to kill itself. The beholder recoiled in horror and self-doubt giving the party time to flee. I mean, they never killed the beholder but at least they escaped alive. I'd call that a win.
"Look at them run. They really fell for that? I've got no time for them right now as the real danger may be near by. Nevertheless I'll send some minions after that party and make sure them and their friends, family, home towns, and treasures are destroyed and enslaved in my dungeons. What? We sent them here? Oh...dang, that's right; i forgot." - beholders
Imagining two beholders fighting is hilarious because they have to either both look away from each other so they can shoot their magic eye rays at their opponent without fucking it up with their own anti-magic cone or they both say screw that and just start biting each other to death.
Beholders looking at the players is like humans looking at lobsters. They're amusing and pose no real threat until they pull out weapons and try to kill you.
@@poppymon007 And then as Eldritch Horrors who were afraid of sand and lobsters we would find a place to hide and gather power. However, gathering so much power would gain the attention of the lobsters and thus a group of Lobster adventurers would gather and come to slay said Eldritch Horror with weapons.
Ah yes. Beholders. I had a high level paladin back when disintegrate actually disintegrated you, period. No messing with hitpoint damage or anything like that. Fail the save and you're dust. Anyways, this paladin came had gotten separated from his party for some reason, I seem to remember some sort of fear magic from a lich was involved. So, he runs around a corner in the dungeion and comes face to eyeballs with a beholder. Paladin vs Beholder - Round one, FIGHT! Zap! Result one round later: Dungeon corridor with one beholder and one small pile of dust. Ah. Memories.
I'm pretty sure when he said the party of Adventures shouldn't be able to beat them , he's talking about their obsessive over planning means they have a contingency plan. For example, a Beholder might have a setup in place for when 5 adventurers show up at his door. Lets call this plan number 1,692. Now if this party consists of a wizard, a bard, two clerics, and a paladin, we move to plan 1,692 subsection 411. Now if possible we divise what subclasses they are and what spells they might have prepared and finally after going through about 30 subsections, you have a plan for when the envoker wizard uses fireball you activate the waterfall, while keeping anti magic on the vengeance paladin, having your minions shooting at the lore bard and engaging the paladin ib melee while you attempt to stone the life cleric and disintegrate the Tempest cleric. And all that my just be step 3 lol
Yeah, beholders are the kind of thing that, if played realistically, cannot be beaten. Imagine if all of humanity genius got on a cave, and started thinking of ways to kill YOU when you come to kill THEM. Now imagine they're doing this 24/7, for years on end, all the while amassing armies and powerfull treasures to kill YOU. Now imagine all of them have laser guns. One of them even has a laser gun that jam your laser guns, so you can't fire your lasers on them. Hell, if a beholder is old enough, there's no reason to even have a setting, the thing probably rules the world on a Iron Fist by now, and kills everything that gets a little uppity (which, for a beholder, means beyond level 1)
@@Aplesedjr yup, Beholders can't have infinite plans,it only takes a few possible combinators before there are too many outcomes to plan for. More importantly, Beholders don't really understand other beings so they can't predict them intuitively like humans do. They have to use up all their intelligence on brute-forcing like a chess AI trying to play the stockmarket.
gracefool and even if they make a perfect plan, the dice determine what happens. The party can roll nothing but good for attacks and saves, then the beholder gets destroyed.
It's not so much fear everything as are 100% sure that everything is trying to kill them so they have to make sure to set things up to where they can kill whatever that is actively trying to kill them at this moment before they can. Seems a difference without distinction, but it's sort of not in that a beholder won't huddle in terror at the thought of something trying to kill it, or even think of most creatures as actual threats, but it does realize that enough working together or getting lucky might get it. It's kind of a cop out but it's more a paranoia than a fear... But most things really do want to kill beholders
Ah, I remember my first Beholder encounter. It spoke German. Like, our DM did not know what to do with a Beholder, so it just spoke German. That's literally it. Oh, no wait, it was strong.
Best video yet, I laughed till I cried. Then I remembered I dreamt I'd die from drowning, so I burned out my tear ducts. Now all I need to do is disintegrate all the oceans.
It wasn't Gary's nightmare about a soccer ball with eyes that gave us the Beholder. It was one of his friends nightmare about a soccer ball with eyes that he shared with Gary Gygax that gave us the Beholder! THANKS GARY'S FRIEND!
This actually made me feel sorry for them, I never actually considered that the root of their xenophobia was constant paranoia driven fear. An existence of constant fear is rather sad to imagine.
if it makes you feel better i would like to inform you that there is canonically at least one beholder who got over it and is super chill, his name is Large Luigi and he runs a tavern
Beholders constantly think about how the world is out to get them, they dream about stuff they think about, and there dreams alter reality to create things. How are they not just constantly being killed.
@@magnusanderson6681 not when a red dragon suddenly spawns in your bedroom when your plan was that it would fall through the portal to the celestail realms if it tried to enter from catacombs, the only playce it would fit.
i imagine that the rampage would kill him because he would be utterly unstable and enraged and would eventually succumb to numbers. also i think there i a mindflayer there.
I kinda want to have my party fight a beholder, and when they kill it, It'll say "nevermind, I dont want to be dead" and just get back up as a death tyrant
The beholder in my campaign had a pet goldfish that died and was really sad. We all found him a new pet and he was very happy. He was the sweetest beholder I ever met.
The god of war had quite a long fall from grace, after losing Atreus prompted him to become a philosopher, searching for the meanings of life as a sock puppet.
This gives me a fascinating idea for a character concept: A beholder that in its paranoia, desires to find a way to understand people. It creates not just one person but an entire settlement and watches them to try and understand what they think about, how likely they may be to kill them, etc. It leads to eventually the beholder has created this town or city that believes the beholder is their god protector, not seeing the true reason they were created and watched over. It'd be an interesting thing for a party or some characters to interact with, a beholder that tries to counter the paranoia with knowledge
my thoughts on this is that the Beholder's paranoia is so cripplingly strong that it is constantly double/triple/quadruple/pentuple/etc. guessing itself about how everything it could do to protect itself might backfire, thus ruining any attempt at long term planning, as it scraps and revises plans that would have been perfectly fine to keep, thus in combat it never exp[loits weakness in their enemies, fearing that any opening is actually a cleaver trap.
Ethan Hall Have them be arranged in a circle around the Beholder, then have each one cast Imprisonment until it takes after the first one casts Force Cage.
@Ethan Hall death tyrants don't have their antimagic sight anymore, only a "No-regaining-hit-points-and -if-you-die-you-turn-into-a-zombie- slave" sight
_Death Tyants - when great-grandpa Beholder reflects on his mortality, and then pulls the badass move of just straight up refusing it._ Best description for a DnD monster I think I've ever heard XD
I might actually use that as a possible weird quirk if a warlock player of mine chooses the Aberration(Great Old One) subclass. Just every once in a while he'll hear a cosmic scream of "DESTROY" when he sees anything made of wheat.
Irrational oddities are what make ADD great! "Hey guys im just going to eat this Loaf of bread real quick, im hungry." *ZzaaPP!!* "Dude what the hell! You almost hit me with lightning!"
I heard of a DM who made a very shitty pun once. He told the players rumours of a beholder lurking on the outskirts of town. They went into the woods to investigate and got jumped by a dude holding beehives in both hands who yelled out "BEHOLD, IT IS I, THE BEE HOLDER!" You're welcome.
So uh, Gary took the concept and body part of Vision, and stuck enough together with magic that it became a terrifying monster. My turn: Hands. The Snatcher is a monstrosity that manifests at rest as a large pile of dozens to hundreds of humanoid hands, each one ending at the mid-forearm, surrounding a gooey, gray, sticky core. When active, the hands interlock into whatever shapes are necessary for their task. Large pillars of interlocking hands acting as muscles in an arm ending with fist-like ball, daisy-chains of hands holding the base of other hands reach very, very far, acting as long tentacular structures, hands can line its underside to crawl rapidly over nearly any surface, eyes sprout from the palms of a few, and groups of clawed hands tear away at prey, killing them messily but efficiently, if no sharp utensils are in its possession. A Snatcher that gets its many hands on a cutlery box or a silverware drawer can be quite lethal in close quarters. An urban ambush predator, The Snatcher will lure humanoid prey to dark alleyways with glittering coins or enchanted weapons placed on the edge of the shadows, where it grabs the curious humanoid by the head, covering their mouth, eyes, and ears, and pulling them through a nearby window, doorway, hall, drain cover, trapdoor, Sewer grate, or other opening where they are pulled and carried back to its den, along with the bait. It then uses clawed hands or sharp utensils to kill and slice up its prey, dropping the meat chunks into its gooey core, which then spits out more hands for the pile. A city with a snatcher infestation will be characterized by streets surprisingly clear of rats, stray dogs, or homeless people, all of which snatched up long ago, and while few thieves hide in the alleys, party members will find coin pouches cut off and pockets pilfered if they rest very long on a city street. A very lethal threat to any greedy party rogue, the Snatcher will happily devour any adventurer foolish enough to walk over to that perfectly good sword someone just left there...
This certainly has grabbed my attention. How intelligent would it be? I could see it on par with a monkey, animalistic but can use tools and form simple plans or set traps. I'd give it tremor sense, because it can feel vibrations with it's more sensitive hands. Some hands could have mouths in their center which can speak and eat. How does it procreate? Maybe it gets so large that all the hands struggle to coordinate, making it unable to go hunting. In frustration it tears itself apart, creating multiple smaller versions of itself. This is usually a great time to attack it, as each part is weakened from the procedure.
@@DanaTheLateBloomingFruitLoop it eats by dissolving stuff in its core, and for intelligence, about on par with a human. Smart enough to use tools, maybe make some plans or traps, but nit a genius by any means. It only speaks Sign Language, of course. It procreates by splitting off a section of its core when it's too large for its available food. The child then scuttles away to find a different hunting ground.
The antimagic ray is the safest place to be since the other eyes can't magic you there, so you bunch up with your melee members in front, magic casters behind and if it looks away it gets a lightning bolt to the face
"Everyone introduce yourselves." "I am a dwarven paladin named Bulgor Stoenfist." "I am an Elven Sorcerer named Anaror." "I am a Beholder Wizard. Named Gugbugolith." "I'm the DM, and I'm stopping you right there."
To make it extra Lovecraftian, a beholder nest also needs to be a source of some wandering monsters and have a village of frog people nearby, whose shaman speaks the will of the many-eyed god who dreams.
If your players do Literally Anything you have the right to scream "Ah approach 3215A with the badger! WELL HAVE SOME OCTOPUS!" And telekinesis a giant summoned octopus onto the cleric
I'd go out of my way to make a Beholder NPC that's virtually omnipotent but is both extremely paranoid and eccentric to the point where they are basically a conspiracy theorist hermit that instantly dispatches anything unfamiliar in increasingly bizarre ways.
From the 1930s through the late 1950s, "Pepsi-Cola Hits The Spot" was the most commonly used slogan in the days of old radio, classic motion pictures, and later television.
Honestly these things sound like a combination of hilarious antics, tough bosses, and a tragic existence I wouldn't wish on anyone. I can kinda see why they wound up so popular over the years.
Funny thing is, i'm pretty sure that's happened. I've lived in the farming communities with enough crotchety old folks who don't let a little thing like missing chunks of a body or cancer slow them down.
Dude, I rewatch your old videos on a weekly basis. They are just so good! You have a marvealous sense of humour and comedic timing. Whenever you make a new video, it skyrockets to the very top of my watch-list. What I'm trying to say here, is thank you mate! You make a tremendous difference to this guy. Stay frosty!
Loose? LOOSE?!? My biggest english pet peeve! Lose! It's lose! You loose a plague! You lose the hounds upon your enemies! The convict got loose! But you sir? You lose! Also fun video.
Nice video. But when you made me count all the eyes at 2:19 you didn't give a big marker for eye number 9. I was so confused I would like to kindly ask you to just delete this video as it caused me great distress.
My beholder was created by another beholder to be a more perfect beholder. Proceeds to dream up the main bad guy who is destined to kill him. Then decided if he is gonna kill me then I will make a beholder strong enough to kill him. A cycle of beholders making 'better' beholder to 'save' then from a horrible fate. Cue the 'alliance' with the party because the enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally until I decide to kill them.
Yep, there are actually quite a lot of things in the monster manuals across all editions that a party of players really can't beat without some kind of handicap from the gm. including dragons.