I love using beholders as insane, almost comical villains. One in my game was obsessed with finding stylish shoes because it was convinced people were making fun of it behind it's back because it didn't have cool shoes. Eventually it gave up, declared feet to be a conspiracy against it, and proceeded to disintegrate people's kneecaps
My favorite ever encounter with a Beholder in a game I played was run by a DM who did just about everything suggested in this video. The Beholder in question had minions who lived in a sort of pre-dungeon that had the usual expected dungeon layout, but the Beholder itself lived in a special sub-dungeon that only it ever visited. As such, the Beholder's lair was designed entirely with the ability to fly and hover without limit in mind, and was filled with traps specifically designed to be deadly to anyone or anything that couldn't fly, making it basically impossible to traverse unless our Wizard invested the spell slots to keep us all topped up with a Fly spell. And then, when we actually encountered the Beholder itself, the first thing it did was nullify the Fly spell on all but one person in the party, causing us all to plummet to the spike pit below, where we likely would have instantly died if not for someone using Feather Fall. The one person who didn't get their Flight cancelled then proceeded to get gimped by a barrage of eye beams. The entire rest of the fight was a mess of some people trying to avoid its antimagic cone so they could cast spells, and others specifically trying to be in the cone so they couldn't be targeted by the other lasers, all while navigating extremely painful spike and acid floors that caused damage with every 5 ft of movement. The party was five players all Lv 15 at the time, and we were almost TPKed by a single CR13 monster thanks to clever use of its natural abilities. Unfortunately, I was the only one in the party who actually liked that encounter. Everyone else in the party thought it was unfair and lame. Which... was kind of the point? But meh.
Thats the trouble with beholder encounters i think. They are supposed to be so clever that they will endlessly plan to squash intruders, so much so that encountering a beholder in its lair should be a desperate fight for survival for a party. The trick is, to communicate this to the players, to let them know that to actively seek combat with a beholder, is to seek death. Much better to run a beholder lair as a heist, or rescue mission. If the party decide to try and fight to the death after warnings, its on them then
It sounds like what they thought was "unfair" about it is that the beholder acted with legitimate tactical awareness. The fact that a single CR13 legendary monster was almost able to TPK a full group of level 15 PCs says they didn't realize how dangerous a villain can be when it acts tactically.
There is actually a way to "cheese" a Beholder pretty easily, albeit by using what would seem like a counter-intuitive tactic: *keep the party bunched up together* so that while the central eye is open, they are *all* within range of the anti-magic cone. If the party is bunched up together, they can't use any magic while the Beholder's central eye is open, sure....but the Beholder itself also cannot target them with it's eye-rays either, which would leave the Beholder with only *one* option for dealing damage while it's central eye was open: it's comparatively pitiful Bite attack against a single target at melee range (and a smart Beholder would want to *avoid* melee combat like the plague). And if it closed it's central eye, it could then use it's eye-rays, yes, but it would also then be vulnerable to incoming magic (and a single successful Flesh to Stone spell could end a fight with a Beholder *instantly* since they do not have *any* Legendary Resistances). Another factor to remember is that Beholders *cannot* see through magical darkness, and to actually target anyone with an eye-ray, the Beholder must be able to *see* their intended target. So if you have a Warlock with the Devil's Sight ability, they can cast Darkness on their own weapon (or on themselves) and then pelt the Beholder from within that magical darkness with impunity, since Devil's Sight would allow the Warlock to see through even magical darkness (and any non-warlocks could just pelt the Beholder with ranged weapons and spells). The anti-magic zone created by a Beholder's central eye also doesn't "dispel" magic, it simply "suppresses" it. Once the central eye closes, any magic and magical effects within that particular area come back into effect. And one or more Aarakocra would also be the bane of a Beholder's existence, since they have a natural Fly speed of 50 ft., so even if they were within the anti-magic cone, they could still just fly right up to the Beholder and just start laying into it with melee attacks (and Aarakocra make for some very good Monks, since they have claws as a natural weapon, meaning they could feasibly choose between dealing bludgeoning damage [closed fist] and slashing damage [claws] with their unarmed strikes). A Beholder's eye-rays are it's biggest asset in combat, so if you strip it of those options, it becomes a much less dangerous threat, as they only have about 180 HP, which a decent party could burn through pretty quickly (especially with a Barbarian and/or Fighter that had a way to get close enough to just start wailing on the thing in melee range). Beholders *look* scary, sure, but if you can figure out ways to stop them from using their eye-rays, they sort of turn into a sort of "wet blanket" as far as how dangerous they are, and they would become something that *looked* intimidating, but really couldn't present a major threat. If you ask me, the one type of Beholder that you should always be *very* afraid of is the Death Tyrant, since unlike a normal Beholder, it's "central eye" no longer creates an anti-magic zone, but rather it stops *all* forms of healing (including *natural* healing!) within the same cone, and any creature that dies while within that cone *immediately* turns into a zombie under the complete and permanent control of the Death Tyrant. Just *instant* zombification. No time to cast something like Revivify before the zombification happens. And a Death Tyrant has no limit on how many zombies it can control at one time either.
@@gamester512 Grouping up sounds like a great tactic but given the intellect of a Beholder, they could just as easily use their Telekinesis Ray to hurl a large boulder at the tightly clustered group, or Disintegrate the ceiling in such a way that Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. Also, unless the Beholder is literally the only creature (left alive) in the encounter, there are still dominated monsters around that can take advantage of a clustered group of PC's.
When you said that thing about beholder lairs potentially being like a space station, the verticality and the panopticon, the sci-fi element, the group of beholders invading from the Far Realm, that just … Like there’s so much you could do with that. An asteroid. A strange metallic lump drifting into orbit from the alien depths of the planes, honeycombed with passages around a massive central shaft. A beholder ‘city’, now almost completely empty and full of strange aberrations and fragments of specimen collections. A panopticon at the center, an ‘eye’ floating in the heart of the shaft, and the cadre of survivors that run it. Portals, arranged haphazardly around the asteroid, through which they can venture down to whatever realm they’ve drifted into. A cadre of mad scientists absent-mindedly voyaging the cosmos, picking up and stealing and examining whatever catches their ‘eye’ as they steer madly onwards inside the half-dead husk of what was once their city. Like, go full Lovecraft, go full Alien, have a mad, half-dead city drifting in space. Empty passageways and shafts absent-mindedly patrolled by erratic madmen and the gibbering remnants of their experiments. Misfiring portals to various planets snatching random people and creatures. Scavengers and survivors creeping and skulking through the remains, people they picked up and forgot about, factions clinging to survival, avoiding the gaze of the panopticon. A council of five, each mad in their own unique way, jostling uneasily at the centre of it, paranoid and always on the brink of preying on each other. Some that can perhaps be swayed, some that might go abruptly omnicidal. Some that might have *already* gone omnicidal. What killed this city in the first place? Like, for real, you could go full Lovecraft on this. Aberration central. I’m enchanted at the thought.
You guys have so many fun different series, you should do a how to break series. Where you take underpowered classes and make them uniquely strong, could be intersting!
This is a really good idea! Would make for a nice counterpoint to their "How to play..." videos, since those have typically focused on stronger subclasses.
B. Dave Walters put on a great performance as the Xanathar in the G4 Invitation to Party series. Really nailed the enormous alien narcissism and illusion of grandeur, making him both hilarious and terrifying to behold. Highly recommend checking that out!
A puzzle room full of invisible Gazers. Audible chittering and laughing can be heard throughout the room, but the source is unseen. Anytime one or more players try to solve the puzzle, the Gazers use their eye beams to harass the party.
I'm laying the groundwork for a beholder in one of my games and I've spent a bit of time trying to figure out the beholder's character, borrowing aspects from media. At the core of my beholder's personality I've combined two characters: Dr. Manhattan and Deadpool. The detached, aloof nature of Dr. Manhattan, with his ability to see his own past and future, combined with Deadpool's meta knowledge of being a character and the irreverence he has as a result should make for a beholder who has no idea when in time he is, who treats the players as people he's known/fought before, making references to things that haven't happened yet, and talking about "the other reality" (our world), with an obsession with becoming "real," and a hatred for everything "fake." Can't wait to for them to meet him for, from their perspective, the first time.
I used a beholder named 'Edmund' as a sheriff of a small town. It was obsessed with the law, he has some very clear and basic laws, and some more bizarre ones that only he understood (no shoes on Friday). Each of these it had its own punishments for the transgressions, (mostly being turned to stone for a period of time). Largely the populace of the area got along with him, partially because they were scared, but also he was really good at keeping the peace. The town which was located in a mountain pass between two countries that were constantly fighting had not seen a major issue since his arrival. There were no monster attacks, crime was practically unheard of, the towns folk put up with the strange laws and had never been more prosperous. The people in the town thought of him as a terrifying but benevolent hero. Then the adventurers came to town and started transgressing all of the more arbitrary laws that everyone who lived there knew about. A battle ensued, and once it had been beaten, the PC's were faced with death by pitchfork and torches for bringing such chaos to the town and Trying to kill the sheriff. The towns folk drove off the PC's and gave the Edmund the beholder the resurrection potion he had stashed for just such emergencies. The players were very confused.
I loved Monty's lack of commitment to his own bit at the start. The confused look on his face saying "but a beholder is a horror... To.... Behold?" Gives me life.
Great video! And I have to say that I always thought that beholders had some qualities similar to the Daleks of Doctor Who. So that could be some inspiration. Imagine a beholder that has assembled some sort of tank-like armor for itself. Frightening!
This video actually inspired me to make my own Beholder character: Wan Shi Tong, a beholder who's main body is that of a very large owl skull with feather but with all the other classic beholder traits (multiple eye stalks, floating body, large main eye, etc). Will gladly share more info if anybody's intrested.
The beholder I ran had his lair beneath a wealthy city. He was fighting for control against a syndicate or vampires. I had my group convinced it was a council of powerful wizards because they believed there was divination spells being cast to predict the players and movement of the vampires. Plus they always heard a booming voice in some of the locations mocking them. I had the beholder set up a series of interconnected "perescopes" that he would used to spy. Able to watch multiple locations at once and issue orders to agents (like cctv) through a speaker build into a hidden location in each area. I never finished the campaign... But it was pretty cool while it lasted.
Some great ideas and variants here, thanks for sharing! Definitely agree with legendary resistance. I recently did one as a feature encounter. His lair was littered with ropers (so much havoc!) and he had a number of Helmed Horrors which he had setup with immunity to fireball, slow and banishment. (Presumably he'd done some scrying on this famous group and knew what to expect.) The wizard was frothing at the mouth. :) Threw in some flameskulls (presumably from wizards who had failed in previous adventuring groups) and there were plenty of fireballs to soften the group. I had setup the beholder with double the max HP to make it more epic (this group was pretty loaded and the party was reasonably large.) One effective tactic was for the beholder to ascend up a shaft, taking cover behind the rock wall and pointing his eye downward. He'd then slide down, fire his eye beams and fly back up, keeping the cone down. This took his legendary actions out of play, but made him really hard to target while the group was dealing with ropers and prevented the party from using magical flight to reach him. On the first attempt the group got beaten down a bit, then negotiated a deal. They then went for a long rest, decided to reneg on the deal and went back. Of course, the flameskulls had all returned. This entire encounter lasted MANY sessions, but my group LOVED it. When they did finally manage to track him down and finish him, their joy was palpable. Good D&D memories were made on this encounter. Lots of fun.
The first pc I ever killed as a DM was with a Beholder's disintegration ray. Of course, that was after the player dealt over 100 points of damage on their turn taking out nearly half the beholder's hit points
Back in my AD&D days, our high school DM would let the beholder roll its eye back, making it immune to magic AND giving it spell turning. Easier to run in a way. I do something similar with mine. It can reverse the ray, giving it magic resistance (advantage on all saves, and it takes half or no damage from a spell or similar effect if it fails or makes the save). The beholder can switch its ray on and off at the start of each turn or change the anti-magic cone's orientation. Battles become a matter of trying to jockey into position to unleash magic against them, or readying a spell for when the anti-magic cone is off. I also think that (as a DM) it makes the beholder a bit less threatening when its eye rays do nothing if the target saves. I have most do 21 (6d6) damage of a type appropriate to the ray, half on a save. E.g. the slow ray does cold damage, the sleep ray does psychic damage, the paralysis ray does force damage. That means the PCs are still being damaged bit by bit even if they have a paladin in the party or inspirations to burn. As a result, beholders in my game are terrifying, and it makes each fight with them memorable and a lot of fun when they're defeated.
As was noted in one campaign, cast darkness onto one player and have everyone huddle next to them: the beholder can only see the whole party if it uses the antimagic cone on the darkness, and hence it cannot shoot any of its rays.
Then you just have to hope that the GM doesn't counter that response by dropping the "roof" on the huddled parties heads muahaha. Although I have seen this as a strategy in multiple threads and wondered if there GM's were being nice (most likely) or just hasn't thought of all the terrible things they can do to a party huddled together.
I'm planning to run a campaign (3-10) where a village has been terrorised by an unknown force that the party tries to hunt down the source. The source being the Beholder. This video helped a lot
It's not a real campaign unless you can get a shrunknd/baby beholder in the trinket slot that can generate a 5 foot antimagic field and title it a shoulder beholder :D
Between this and the Lich video, I think I'm might've found my new favorite series of your Channel. Please keep going. Reccomendation: Mind Flayer and it's Variants Dragons Mummy Any of the Demon Lords
I was hoping you'd mention the beholder-like guardian creature that worked for Lo Pan in "Big Trouble in Little China". Not nearly as dangerous, but still really creepy.
I had a Beholder that ran a city. He originally saw the humans like they sand, ants to be studied. He still did, but they were HIS ants. They couldn't entertain him if they were sick or dying so he was a good leader. Also he did not tolerate anyone fucking with his ants.
You've got a disintegration ray, a death ray, a petrification ray, a Rey Palpatine, a Ray William Johnson, a Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, a Billy Ray Cyrus, and even a Ray Stevens depending on the edition
I'm currently in a game that has been going on for the better part of 2 years. My character has been carefully acquiring things and setting up for his ultimate rise to power. So in a session a few months ago, I decide to leave the tower where my party is in taking a long rest and take a quick jaunt over to some ruins which we were suppose to investigate. Guess what I meet but a beholder looking for something. No need to bore you with long exposition. Somehow the beholder and I decided to come to an agreement. Were now working together. Apparently, there are two beholders and this one that I'm working with now is neutral. The pact that we made benefits the beholder to a large degree however I don't mind as this being will provide my lair ample protection for my horde and clone and meanwhile the beholder gets to continue his experiments and grow its own cult. The beholder made no qualms about telling me that I was but a worm compared to him. We shall see how this works out. He seems more interested now in destroying the other beholder and gaining knowledge. He has been wanting to study wizardry and I'm the perfect person to help the beholder down that avenue. I fully expect this beholder to try and kill me in the end. Which by that time it will probably be too late. The GM thinks he has a BBEG but he forgets the motivation of my character. The GM isn't happy about this pact. An intended my party to all go out that night to the ruins. Imagine his surprise. Now, the GM stares at me with contempt as I do things behind the party's back.
I like the idea of a beholder following Wild Magic Sorcerers, not to attack them but to see what they do or stumbling onto a village and then liking the village enough to move villagers back into the village that are trying to leave, destroying things coming into the village that it doesn't like and bringing things into the village that it thinks the villagers need. Basically using the village like a ready made ant farm.
The game I run is an adventuring temp agency (a B-Holdings, Inc. subsidiary) working for a beholder named Eye Patchino (and yes they do wear an eyepatch over their center eye) doing odd jobs around Sharn in Eberron.
Two great encounters in Baldur's Gate 2. The one in the sea city where you meet a Beholder guarding a chest. Some great dialogue ensues as to if it is guarding the chest or what is inside the chest. The other one is big bad at the end of the Cult of the Unseeing Eye quest. So really two great ideas, one which revolves around dialogue and some trickery and the other just straight up boss fight.
My Beholder was the warden in a large city’s main prison. The prison was a Panopticon (look it up) and the beholder’s anti magic field actually made it credible that mages would not be able to escape :) The beholder himself used the prison and the human city around it to hide his hoard from dragons and the humans in turn his the beholder as a warden for their criminals, feeding him slaved that the Beholder would use to dig deeper into the earth. Lol!!! Monty just now mentioned the panopticon… great minds think alike!
I was just working on a theoretical encounter where a beholder has mirrors setup all around it's lair. Partially for viewing out into the city that it has taken control of surreptitiously but also to bounce the anti-magic field around some of the columns in the room to disable the magic of players who might take cover there. RAW I know it wouldn't work, but it just struck me as far too much fun to spring on them.
The main way my party typically deals with the anti-magic cone is to skirt along its borders. Then, on their turn, they simply move out of the cone, case whatever spell or melee attack they want wherever they can, and then dip back into the anti-magic cone to protect themselves from the Beholder's eye rays.
The beholder encounter in my campaign focuses around a lost civilization (feel free to borrow/tweak for any other games). In a previous golden age, one civilization trapped a beholder and used it as an arcane "battery" for their city. After the civilization collapsed, the beholder continued to live on, trapped in its cage beneath the rubble, going mad after centuries of isolation. The aberrant psychic energy has drawn other similar creatures to the area, such as Nothics, Gibbering Mothers, Grells, and Allips. When the players get to the area, looking for the McGuffin, before they find it, the beholder telepathically begs them from behind a collapsed wall to break a small pedestal/switch/trigger. This frees the beholder, who then bursts out in a murderous rage.
So many great ideas from this, thanks guys! My first time seeing a beholder was in the Baulders Gate Dark Alliance game and I’ve been inspired to run one in D&D ever since. You’ve Bevin me some ideas for my next campaign!
I’m planning to have a beholder that my players will encounter soon. It lives deep within an abandoned mine in the less traveled part of the mountains and has made almost a zoo for itself of creatures that it has found interesting. And a statue garden of the creatures that have intruded upon its zoo. It likes to show it off first though as it is quite proud of its collection. It doesn’t know how it got there and it’s not really important. But over the years it has gotten quite lonely and bored as it feels like it has collected most of the creatures it finds unique in the area and why it enjoys to show them off to anyone who is dumb enough to travel inside its lair. If the players fight it it’s willing to let one of these creatures free to distract them and give an extra challenge
That line about the eldritch knight/bladesinger gave me a great idea for my own eldritch knight. Casting Darkness and moving in melee range behind it could be real effective. Whether it looks at you or not, it can’t target you with its rays, and if it tries looking away from you while within Darkness’s range, it’ll be blind outside the anti-magic cone anyways. If I had a natural flight speed this strategy might even be a perfect counter…
Really love the different series you guys put out! 😁 Today's was particularly helpful for closing up a concept I've been working on for a while. Just needed the right "Big Boss" for it and the Beholder is it!
I remember the first time I used a Beholder, this was back when we would have a practice combat just before the session. I already had a monster prepared for it, but one of my players asked "hey, could we fight a Beholder?" And I thought, why not? It wiped the floor with them. In fact it killed them so hard the Beholder didn't even use it's Eyerays to kill the Wizard, it ate him. Fortunately it was just a practice combat that didn't have any real consequences.
My first use of a beholder was with an undead one assulting the PCs keep. Wights used it as a sort of seige engine to disintergrate holes in walls for minions to flood in through, got within 5hp of disintergrating the parties Bard too. Second time i used a traditional one in place of the vampire lord in White Plume Mountain. Used the telekenises ray to drown the aformentioned Bard in boiling mud. 😁
Thank you for this series, it really helped me alot. Can you do one about Rakshasas ? I have one in my campaign setting doing its own things in the background since our current campaign started, but I really have no idea how I would ACTUALLY run it if my party encountered it.
Yes, beholders are a reason to lean into the Lovecraft and M.C Escher angle. Make the environment weird, give it strange motivations, and remember to play them tactically. No one is more aware of the fact that the beholder's eye rays are contrasting in use than the beholder itself, especially given how paranoid they tend to be.
My favorite time of day is when they upload because the video is always great but there is often a mistake in the thumbnail or title and it makes me smile every time. (I say mistake because it is usually changed after a little while)
ofc i got a beholder in my world :D a leader of the underground with smuglers and thieves living in the sewers of the big town. it does not like drugs and think what he does is for the best of the town, even if it is against the law, as he helps those who are at the bottom of the humanoids hierarchy. his minions is different humanoids that make up the smuglers and thieves, and gazers that mix with the mage guilds gazers in the sewers and acts as his extended sight and voice. he also got a giant intelligent mimic that acts as the door to its domain :D so he and his minions make up one of the factions in my world. so he is a kin to Xanathar :)
Something I've seen someone else mention with a Beholder is that they could have their lair full of creatures that were petrified by that specific eye-ray, and the Beholder therefore has them in a strange sort of "hostage" situation, where in combat it will use it's central eye to suppress their petrification, but only so long as they help the Beholder kill anyone/thing that tries to kill the Beholder itself. That way, it could give the party a dilemma where they might have to try and persuade the temporarily not-petrified creatures mid-combat that they can cure their petrification (even if this ends up being a lie on the part of the party) permanently, and that they will do so if those creatures help the party rather than the Beholder, since the Beholder's central eye would block any such attempt to permanently "cure" them during combat.
I (the DM of my group) had the idea to use beholders (yes, multiple) to petrify the party and to have them restored many years later(somewhere between 300 and 1000 years), after being buried and lost to time, by a group of archeologists using greater restoration. Very much a futurama idea without the actual "you now see technology you have never seen before, welcome to modern day earth."
My party is going to be contracted to take out a Beholder very soon. This Beholder has read Xanathar's Guide and decided he wants to impress Xanathar, so he has started recruiting in Athkatla and has been making promises to recruits that he can't keep. But the recruits haven't figured that out yet and have been quitting their current jobs in mass. The proprietor of a piracy shipping company has info the party needs and contracts them to kill this Beholder in exchange for the info. During the fight, the Beholder will keep pondering "what would Xanathar do in this situation". The idea of a fanboy Beholder just amuses me.
Now imagine the horror of a nightmare of a combined Beholder and Gibbering Mouther. At the very least, a Beholder has Gibbering Mouthers in its domain.
Because Beholders have super genius intellects, when I used one it had created a prism device that it levitated above it's body allowing it to fire all eyestocks into it for a fireball like effect that had the properties of each ray in a 30' radius. He/It was a true boss.
I like the idea of a town where people were being abducted every night by a floating ring in the sky, but in reality it's just beholder who's not evil or anything, just playful, and he is capturing people, not realizing that they are sentient beings and putting them in glass jars. So when the party tracks him down and asks for the villagers back, he looks really confused, before they explain to him that those people he captured are sentient beings, and he feels really bad and returns them all back to the village. He wasn't a villain or anything, just having some fun.
Here's my beholder story: I was a cleric of a lawful good deity. My group was traversing a underdark labyrinth when we hear a fight ahead. We slowly come up to a beholder and a mindflayer fighting each other. We see the beholder win, but it's severly injured. Our party leader goes up to it and offers it healing from me, the cleric. However, once I agree and go up to the beholder, I'm told by my leader to instead of casting heal, I instead cast inflict. I was like, UHM, NO. I'm a lawful good cleric and I keep my word. But the whole group insisted I kill the beholder. I was torn in two, morally. In the end I casted inflict and finished it off, but I put myself through three days of atonement to make amends to my deity for not honoring my word. It was a major tragedy for the forces of good, despite the defeat of a potenitally potent foe. I still feel the pain of that sin.
Running my first ever beholder in two days. It lives and dreams in an unending library plane where every possible combination of alphabetical characters is written into an infinite number of books, dreaming insane visions from the texts it is obsessed with; reading eleven at a time and driven even more bonkers by the seeking secret patterns from the nonsensical texts.
Great video! I wish I had it 3 months ago. It’s pretty clear that a couple of flying Barbarian lieutenants are needed to make the beholders a legendary adversary. My players loved the Dragon, found the beholder to be kinda stupid. I kept trying to make it “scary “ and they never could get over how “stupid it looked”. I like the color that you guys added…. I really agree that they need to be zany and funny
Monty and Kelly’s idea of a beholder antagonist campaign was to make it like The Collector form The Collector and The Collection films and I just had to pause the video to laugh. Like I love them so much.
I swear I watched this exact before, you guys mesin with me 🤔 Still great inspiration! I would probably steal a page out of Dale Kingsmill's book, having the Beholder bring the Far Realm here; & make it Immune to Magical Attacks, Adv against Spell Saves & switch the main Eye Ray to Polymorph. Also add that anyone that casts Magic within 100ft must make a flat DC-10 or roll on the Wild Magic table, and that effect happens instead.
this is how included them in my main campaign: A beholder is created when 10 or more floating eyeballs group around a big central floating eye & magical optic nerves bind them together, it's usually the eyes of casters &/or magical creatures (dragons, giants, ....) that forms beholders. the eyes & consecuant rays are varied ex: the base is an ice giants eye well instead of an anti-magic cone it's an ice storm cone or if it's a blue dragon a lightning cone, the eye stalks can be any eyes yes even old prosthetics or magic items that can replace an eye, for casters eyes depending on the lvl they can use either cantrips or spells from lv1 to lv20 with next to no limit. In terms of size you can have a mini beholder made of a humanoid eye surrounded by birds, rats, ... eyes or giant ones with the eye of a ginormous beast surrounded by dragons, giants, shinxs, leviathans, .... eyes, it can be anything !
A fun way to use a Beholder for a low-level encounter is having it be this alien cientist-like creature, who is fascinated by the party, and because of that, doesn't want to kill them, just collect and study them
Built my campaign up for a war between a Lich and a Beholder, with the party kind of caught in the middle, fighting for their own interests while also trying to protect the city where it all went down. Their actions ended up causing the Lich to get the upper hand on the Beholder, making it into a Death Tyrant under the Lich's control, running it as the penultimate boss of the campaign which came much closer to killing party members than the Lich itself. I love Beholders and would love to run one again. Love the "collector" idea especially.
My only encounter with a normal encounter was with my kenku monk, flying i the first round up to him, hitting him 4 times with stunning strike and him failing every singe con save. I burned through all his legendary resistances and stunned him befor he had his first turn. It felt pretty good
Thanks Dudes, another great video. Good to see a few variations in the comments of my own Beholder trait - they know it's a game. They know, but they can't do anything about it, and they are LIVID! It drives so much of their paranoia, megalomania and lust for power. Cue many references to party members' stats or abilities hanging out. "You'll never get close with that sort of Dex bonus, sonny jim. Go have a Short Rest and we'll get rolling, see?" Every line of dialogue ends with "See?" btw.
One day my players will find a beholder with a sword named Beauty stuck in his eye. Beauty prevent it's wielder from casting spells but grant them resistance to magic. It is so twisted and vile the wearer has advantage on indimidation checks.
I had a beholder weave a dragon from reeds. Then it convinces a blue, black and green dragon to give it scales. It takes the three dragon scales and weaved to scales on the wicker dragon. When the play attack it would use its antimagic ray to turn off the magic right i front but it had mooks on the sides hurling spells and arrows. A real nast fight. The players are planning for a sick dragon and end up fighting a beholder in a moving basket.
