Beholders are so iconic bc they’re the monster that most relates to the experience being the DM >Dreaming things into existence > Simultaneously of the world and not of the world > Observing and watching over everything > Making paranoid plan after paranoid plan about how to stop adventurers from messing up your world
I Want A Deadpool-esq Beholder That Is Perfectly Self-Aware That Their Entire Universe Is The Imaginary Game Of A Nerd And Just Looses All Fucks As A Result.XD
My DM in loot after the Beholder, included one of the trinkets: A nightcap that gives you nice dreams. Most appropriate loot I've ever found in a game.
Last encounter with a Beholder, 9th level 7 man party. We manage to navigate the Beholder lair pretty well, end up being ambushed by the Beholder, that was alerted of our presence. The final toll was 4 party members dead, one of them desintegrated, one petrified after death and broken in half. After all that terrible fight we managed to kill it. This is one of the few creatures in D&D that really scares me.
I use the aberrations, especially the Mind Flayers and the Beholders, as the minions of the Great Old Ones who send their bizarre, terrifying creatures from the Far Realm into the planes for mysterious perhaps unknowable reasons.
Brian F. The far realm in my games is a shattered space filled with the remains of parts of failed universes, like the clouds of gas and asteroids around a star newly formed. And most abberations have a place in the sci-fi cosmic horror stuff outside of that, most of whom have ties to a faction or Power that exists just outside of the reach of the 'verse, and got in via underdark portals. Even Flumphs, they're like space colonists sent by their god, and they just make the world slightly better by being there, so they're not a problem.
I have this backstory where a changeling was formed when a piece of a Elder Evil star ended up in the Material Plane, but due to their nature, could not retain it's true form and thus took on a separate, physical body with no sense of identity. The way the changeling explains things, Great Old One's are fixated on places like the Material Plane, some out of interest, some out of hunger, some beyond reason...but they are fixated. In the case of this changeling, he is part of a Black Star similarly obsessed with the Material Plane, but who also hates this compulsion and seeks to end it. As he states it: "The Black Star watches...always. It hungers, hates, and so it harms. One day, it will devour this world, the sky, and all the other stars." I based this concept on Beholders; they manifest as this form and create identities...but they're a little off. They become paranoid, egotistical, because they are these foreign invaders who cannot process this place they've entered properly.
Here's an idea: the first Beholder arose as a byproduct of the universe trying to observe itself. What else would come into being from such an attempt, than a creature composed primarily of eyes?
My party encountered some Gas Spores, and thought they were Beholders. I was able to kill a bunch of them in pretty much one blow. Very easy to kill. Later, we encounter some npcs in need of some help. My character tells them - "I single handedly killed nine Beholders. Tell your friends about me!"
Thats their whole thing tho, if a beholder dreams of death it becomes a desth tyrant a completely new creature, their dreams shape the world around them
The Beholder came about when two gods were talking and one said, "Beauty is in the eye of the biholder." the other god mistook the word 'beholder' as a noun rather than a verb, and tried to imagine what a beholder might look like. :D
I always traced their origin back to tharizdun when he was first losing his marbles, they were born of the nightmares that beset him in his growing madness and embody his ego and contempt for existence. This would be long before he became the elder elemental eye
They were intended to be an ultimate enemy. Intelligent, powerful and very difficult to defeat. If their lair is set up correctly, they can be nearly invincible.
I think when Mike uses the term "beholder," it applies to all of the variants, including spectators, eyes of the deep, etc. But then, it's your game, so you can choose how they all fit into your multiverse. :)
The Beholder is an in game manifestation of the DM and the party; the large eye and intellect representing the DM, the eye stalks the varied threats of the party.
it was one of the first creatures that broke the steoreotype of if you are highly intelligent, you have to be frail in body, simple looking, probably with a beard, etc. I lvoe the contrast they have, when you see it, you wouldn't think it's a highly intelligent and cunning sorcerer due to his primitive, savage appearance, you'd think oh it's just another mindless mosnter with big teeth. Then they start casting spells, talking, nullifying your magic, etc. Beholders are my all time favorite fantasy monster among all fantasy works in history, they're so unique, nobody has something remotely similar to a beholder (well, perhaps lovecraft).
Nice video, but a picture or two of a Beholder during the video would have been nice. I was watching with a really new player and we had to Google the monster afterwards.
I play a game called Tibia and they used to have Beholders too but someone complained and they had to change the name years back. Now they're called Bonelords.
In my world, beholders are generated by surges of power occurring in Pandemonium that coalesce into a single point. Beholders are created by particularly powerful concentrations of pure chaotic energy.
In my game world aberrations are created through dreamers entering the dream plane. Those that enter this plane while awake allowed aberrations to enter my multiverse.
Every time a scientist observes a new aspect of science, that observation solidifies how it functions. Sadly that new scientific reality replaces the old magical one. This in-balance is how new beholders are made, so the magic is not lost. As science grows in the dnd world so shall the beholder population.
The vampiric beholder, has all the abilities of a living beholder, plus all the immunities, and abilities of a vampire. Now let us discuss the spectral beholder......
The Far Realm is described on page 302 of the PHB, and mentioned several times before that. Still, 5e does seem to avoid explicitly linking aboleths, beholders, illithids and other aberrations to the Far Realm.
I believe the DM Guide says that aberrations are from the Far Realms at some point, but I forget the page number and don't have access to the book at the moment. I remember the link being explicitly stated at one point or another in 5e though!
My bad, the DMG version of the description, page 68, does say that "Aberrations such as mind flayers and beholders are either from this plane or shaped by its strange influence".
I imagine Mike doesn't want to dwell too much on the Far Realm, because trying to describe what it IS will take away from its mystique. Lovecraftian imagery is built upon unfathomable remoteness and alienation. So throwing out theories about what the DnD multiverse is and how it works must, for the sake of theme, skirt around the topic of the Far Realms. It's also very likely that the farther out from the prime material plane you get, and the closer you get to the Far Realms, the more that rules of magic, cosmology, and causality start to break down. Out there, the concept of "origin" for any given creature, even Beholders, may cease to apply. As if the very _question_ was nonsense, because "beginnings" and "ends" are similarly meaningless or at least removed from our understanding of them.
Ah...I remember the first time I went to a Beholder's lair...It was a very short visit. In the end we all almost died, one guy got turned to stone, and I lost my magic shield.
Thanks Mike, nice video. I'm running a campaign in which the PCs, at the end of all the campaign, will fight against a Beholder that want to create a plane fracture and invade the material plane. You said that he doesn't have an origin, or even a plane. So, if the Beholder want to invade the material plane creating this fracture, from where does he come? Where and what is the other side of the fracture?
Think of it as a bug in the system, the universal data gets a snarl that creates something sentient. Perhaps yours came to be in another plane or was banished there?
David Ragan The idea is that my Beholder feeds on hate, and being that all the races hated each other, the Beholder feeded, and manage to create this fracture in the material plane to invade it and conquer it. I was thinking that the Behloder could be aided by the shadowfell, which is the "neighbor" of the material plane. How does it sounds?
More wariness in many cases than hate, unless he is trying to foment hatred. In which case does he have useful pawns spreading the hatred? Sounds like you might have a decent mastermind.
StylEd Men Going with the canonical Shadowfell, that plane is more about hopelessness and being devoid of emotion than the emotion of hatred. Hatred itself doesn't really have a plane AFAIR, but it might have been born amongst the furious and relentless demons in the Abyss and have now claimed, thanks to its superior intelligence, a position of power amongst them - driving lesser demons ahead of it by force.
The idea that a being as alien as a beholder is not only sentient, but _smarter than you_ is deeply disturbing to a mind intended to relate to beings similar to itself.
Follow me on on this: Beholders dream reality to be as they want. Orks in 40k believe 'red goes fasta' and it becomes true... Just parallels there. Of course 40k Orks aren't geniuses, per se.
You these videos. Now just the very concept of an Old God from the Far Realms either residing in or kicked out of the domain of dreams becomes fun to explore. It's but a tangent of the video and yet the inspiration is messing me up.
Porque ele é propriedade intelectual da Wizards of the Coast. Isso não é exatamente uma novidade, nas primeiras edições do D&D tinham "Balrogs" no manual dos monstros, mas depois de serem processados pela família Tolkien, tiveram que mudar o nome pra "Balor".
Dreaming existance into reality oh how original. Cough "HP Lovecraft Azathoth" Cough. Way to act super original just make sure you sue the hell out of anyone that uses a tentacle eyed monster...
"Was there a god that created them?" Yes, the Great Mother. How do you not know this? The actual Beholder lore is a million times better than this 'it is all a dream' fanfiction nonsense. This is why I moved to Pathfinder, because modern DnD doesn't just ignore prior lore, they seem to despise it and try to destroy it every chance they get.
In 2e Spelljammer they were created by the gods to serve as tutors and repositories of knowledge but they almost instantly turned on each other due to hyper-xenophobia on minor differences in appearance. (I may have the details wrong, even as a Spelljammer fan this lore was always weird and confusing to me.) Official D&D lore has always been shifting and changing.
