A Dungeon Master's Guide: How to Run a Beholder Like a Chad

[Music] hey there party people it's your boy archit but you can just call me Archie and today we're finally going to be delving into the cinate orbs of mystery meet known as beholders beholders are perplexing creatures that are often considered one of the poster children of our little game along with well dragons obviously well I love the aesthetic and some of the ideas of what beholders are in the game game I actually haven't really run them that much in play so this little lecture will be a learning experience for all of us in that regard I suppose however their role as being love crafty and Outsiders makes them great villains for Games built around the theme of aberration and the occultish Le eldrich regardless these distant cousins of mewad have been plaguing the tables of unprepared adventurers for longer than most of you have all been alive and they've been giving all of our friendly neighborhood DMS an excuse to indulge themselves in a series of hyper stimulated dissoci paranoid schizophrenic episodes from the perspective of being a massive flying meatball that shoots lasers out of its eyes if you think this description fits you I would urge you to not seek professional help and to not listen to the people telling you that you're not okay the voices are real and you should listen to them the others will betray you no one can be trusted they're out to get you they're coming be careful they're coming they're in your skin run anyhow where were we oh yeah beholders these aberration are renowned for being the most paranoid creatures in the game this combined with their High Intelligence makes them a real pain in the ass to deal with if you try to handle them unprepared their alien nature of navigating space Also allows you to get up to some seriously mean stuff when you keep in mind that they can use their disintegration Ray to carve out some truly hemorrhoid inducing cancer Mazes of death that'll make dealing with them practically impossible for anyone who isn't properly prepared for the cancer inducing copian task that is dealing with the cell self actualized reality tumors that are beholders but I think that's enough for our little introduction to these Rogue testicles so without further Ado let's get into it according to my research beholders were introduced to the game during first edition OD and D in the greyhawk supplement in 1975 wherein it holds most of the iconic abilities that it is known for today in our current edition save for a death ray that wasn't entirely clear on how it works other than death but now it's finger of death death I do have to say that the art was definitely quite funny in comparison to the vibe that these creatures are trying to evoke thematically even though they do look a little goofy in their initial art I think that this age dating back to the very beginning of the game establishes the immense respect that this creature deserves for helping pave the way for the wonderful vibrant game that we see today this was the OG dungeon boss and it deserves to have that respect put on its name with that being said I think this is a good segue for us to talk about our modern mystery meatballs before before we go over the stats or anything in usual fashion I believe it would be wise to consider the themes of this creature and how we want to write them first beholders are pitched to us in the book as these greedy aggressive narcissistic paranoid freaks that are hostile to just about anyone in anything that doesn't grobble at their non-existent feet well I think this psychological profile is a great start I do have to say that the beholder as it's written isn't exactly alien enough for what it's supposed to be in my opinion I think keeping the paranor aggression and narcissism are nice but I think it behooves us to lean more into the otherworldly motives that we may expect perhaps connecting them to a weird Celestial phenomena and the different great old ones that you may have causing problems from the far realm making them signs of ill Omen can allow you to have them be a good mid-level boss for the party to work against only to reveal a greater conspiracy at work that they previously would have never considered this means that they are a great narrative device to bridge you to late tier play but they also give off a more eldrich vibe that is much more fitting for a creature that is supposed to be an anathema to our reality now that our thematics have been ironed out let's take a closer look at some of the core personality traits that are synonymous with these creatures as they are going to be the main driving factors that allow us to develop these patties first and foremost a Beholder is nothing if not ridiculously paranoid well we see this expressed in the official setting well enough I feel like the motivations of most beholders are much too mundane for their stat status is these eldrich Abominations that they're sold to us as I mean xanathar is a Beholder that runs a criminal Syndicate I don't mean to say that it's a bad character by any means but to me that just doesn't Vibe with a cthulu style eldrich horror birthed from the nightmares of Beyond so I say keep the paranoia but write the motives a little differently perhaps it has appeared to a cult of worshippers of Hoster the King in Yellow using the Cults resources to facilitate rituals and other occult activities that will somehow hasten the coming of their maddening master or perhaps it's a byproduct of a wound in reality where a Brash wizard may have attempted to study the far realm the sky really the limit for their motives and all you have to do after that is make them extremely paranoid about their situation to use the cult scenario you would write it to where they are a horror that is only whispered about perhaps only the cult leader is allowed to know of its existence and to converse with it and it kills anyone else who enters its layer within the temple if it has personal servants it has their eyes cut out so that they cannot look upon it and on top of all this it's going to have an insanely paranoid setup for its layer which is something that we'll get to later in this lecture however these are just a few ideas I could come up with and I bet you could all find interesting and creative ways to express this emblematic outlandish paranoia accordingly next let's talk about greed I don't like my cthulu boys to be materialistic in a sense that we could understand I feel that it undermines their alien nature and kind of just makes them boring however I could easily see them being interested in gathering magical items ancient eldrich texts and occult objects in the like their Greed for these items would make sense as it would still contribute to their theme while still exhibiting these qualities that they are known for in a traditional setting this will also make the loot that your players find a lot more interesting than just gold and other boring [ __ ] like that this again allows you to lean into the madness and eldrich themes while also giving your PCS that have knowledge on the occult their time in the spotlight which is always a good time while they're also narcissistic and aggressive I don't think that these make good driving factors as they do personality traits but what I really want to add that I think makes them interesting is some sort of occult motives attach a motive to some sort of great old one or some theme within that vein perhaps they were brought into the World by an occult ritual done under the star sign of one of the terrible gods of the far realm and now they work to engineer the coming of their masters you could even make a little tidbit about them beholding the coming of their Lord and do a funny little meme with that this kind of thinking is an aspect that beholders sorely lack with how they're currently presented to us and I think that leaning into their other worldly nature does a ton of heavy lifting when it comes to giving these creatures a much richer presence within our games with that being said I think this covers much of the basis of what I would suggest prospective DMS looking to run a Beholder should consider when writing them I think writing is arguably the most important foundation to build off of when running any sort of intelligent creatures like these as it usually lets us get into to the mindset of these creatures and better build them according to the foundations that we have constructed using a more comprehensive understanding of them and their nature now let's take a look at the base game stap block and see what we can glean from it the first thing we see when we look at meatwad sheet is that it has a natural AC of 18 which isn't the greatest for its CR but I think it'll work if you throw this at players from the 8 to 10 range of levels for hit points the beholder has 180 HP if you're taking the average rolls additionally for its movement and has a ZT move speed and a 20ft hover this will be important to keep in mind as it is slower than most of its opponents it will face for its ability scores our Beholder comes in with the following stats it has an average strength at 10 an above average deck score at 14 great con at 18 great intelligence at 17 above average wisdom at 15 and a great Charisma score of 17 it gets pretty solid mental saves and comes in base with only expertise and perception giving it a plus 12 total reflect its paranoia I suppose it has dark vision out to 120 ft and it speaks deep speech and undercommon although I would argue it could learn more languages if it wanted to but with the writing I'm leaning into making it more eldrich I doubt it would do so furthermore it would likely kill anyone who summoned it and couldn't speak to it properly out of sheer contempt for them lastly before we get into features and actions it's rated for cr13 I think this is too high for what we're working with and a level 13 party would absolutely wipe the floor with this thing in a vacuum so I would suggest leaving it the same XP for these purposes but throw your players at it at around level 8 to 10 leaning more towards 10 with your inexperienced parties now let's look at features and actions the only passive feature that meatwad has is the feature titled anti-magic cone anti-magic cone specifies that the area within 150 ft cone field from the view of the beholder central eye is considered to be an anti- magic field at the start of each of its turns it can adjust this much like looking around with an eye works this is pretty nifty for absolutely pissing off all of your Casters in the party especially if you lock down the Healer with this this is the effect that'll have all of your players bitching and moaning about it the whole fight so make sure to leverage it to the best of your ability to maximize your enjoyment well that's it for features short and sweet that one now let's get into the actions first is bite if you're using this you've probably already lost it's a plus five to hit it does 46 piercing damage next we have the majority of the stat block and the entire point of this creature ey Rays the beholder has a series of 10 different ey rays that it randomly selects from whenever it uses this ability from reading the qualifying statement in the beginning we can see that the beholder rolls 3d10 to decide which three Rays it uses rerolling duplicates once it knows which Rays it's going to be shooting out it can dull them out to one to three creatures within 150 ft that it can see I would say that these all have to choose a Target before any of them fire as they all fire at the same time before we get into the specific Rays I'm going to say that I treat each of the eye Rays as laser beams that shoot from its eyes so it needs to be able to have a clear line of sight directly to where it's shooting no funny business regardless of the ray type now I'm not going to go through the ey rays in excruciating detail because I don't feel like reading a [ __ ] novel but I'll detail each of them accordingly also the DC on all of these Rays is 16 for whichever save it's asking for so keep that in mind going forward first we have the charm Ray this one's simple it charms for an hour with some conditions it's important to note the charm is not able to be broken by hitting the person Charmed and the only specified way to drop it is if the beholder harms the creature I would argue that to spell magic would work on it but that's about it pretty nasty if you look at it next we have paralyzing Ray very simple you fail the con saave you're paralyzed for a minute with repeating saves thirdly we have the fear Ray again pretty simple pass the wisdom save or you [ __ ] yourself for up to a minute with repeating saves to stop [ __ ] yourself fourth we have the slowing Ray this one's a deck save if you fail your speed is haved and you can't take reactions for a minute the last hibit they'll have to decide between an action or a bonus action this has a repeat save fifth is the innervation Ray this one's a con save they're taking either 88 necrotic damage or half on a success the sixth is the telekinetic Ray if the target's a creature it needs to make a strength save or the beholder moves it up to 30 ft and it's restrained until the next turn or the beholder each [ __ ] this can also move or manipulate objects up to around 300 lb so I would argue that this Ray can't affect creatures that weigh more than 300 lb as well sleep Ray this one requires a wisdom save or you fall asleep for up to 1 minute petrification Ray this one's pretty mean it requires a deck save and on a fail the creature is restrained and starts turning into stone it has to make the save again on the end of its turn or be turned to stone however I'm changing the second save to a con save as it has to do with resisting being turned to stone now rather than dodging the ray ninth is the disintegration Ray this one's a deck save on a fail it does 10 d8 Force damage creatures reduced to zero get the Thanos treatment this can also be used to Blast Away objects as well and finally we come to the death ray at number 10 it's not a complete save or suck but if you don't save it's definitely going to suck this is a deck save and if a creature fails it they take 10 d10 necrotic damage if they get reduced to zero they just die no saves the last part of the stat block is legendary actions the meatball does does not get any legendary resistances but it does get three legendary actions and it only gets one option for how to use them it gets to use one random Ira pretty simple but effective that's it for the stats overall I think it's pretty solid while I stand by throwing this at parties a little lower level than the CR listed on the stat block these eys are very swingy for lack of a better worm and they can really be lethal if the beholder starts rolling hot however I think allowing the beholder to be lethal counteracts the fact that it's it's insanely easy to kill if your players throw a bow at the fighter and the ranger we'll go over some more specifics in the tactics section to come now comes the part that everyone's been no doubt looking forward to Let's cover some of the ways we can have these paranoid freaks setting up their layer this is going to get real crazy real quick before we get into the nitty-gritty I'm going to say that I'm only building this layer according to the capabilities of the base game Beholder no extra magic no special [ __ ] just full crazy paranoia with that being said let's get started firstly let's talk about exactly what a base game Beholder is capable of the main Tools in its repertoire are going to be its telekinesis its disintegration Ray its ability to float around and its intelligence with these tools we can set up a pretty gnarly death trap that'll drive your players about as insane as you are after having made this place while this may not seem like much let me cook and I'll show you that you're wrong in this assumption let me go through each of these real quick before we start throwing out ideas telekinesis is important because it specifies that the beholder is capable of manipulating fine objects and tools as well as moving pretty heavy objects up to 300 lb this means that the beholder can set up mechanisms switches trip wires pressure plates apply poisons fill liquid containers with all sorts of heinous [ __ ] crank crossbows load Springs set explosives and all the little other detail oriented devious activities I allow them to use this and the disintegrate Rays at will while they're not in combat as long as they aren't using them in an offensive manner otherwise they would just be busted so justify this however you want the disintegration Ray is pretty obvious in its importance this will allow the beholder to carve out all sorts of paths tunnels rooms and whatever else into about whatever material it wants to live in this will be very important for our plans on how to set up a beholder's fun house of Hell which we will be covering momentarily it's important to remember that the beholder can fly and this will be the central tenant around which the pathways and rooms of the beholders layer are going to be built it will make traversing its home very impractical for the gravitationally challenged persons within its layer last is intelligence but this really speaks for itself the only thing that I think is worth noting with this is that the high intelligence of this creature combined with its paranoia are going to give you cart blanch to do about whatever you could think of doing with the only real restriction being time frame and resources this will inform that the beholder is capable of thinking out how it set up its layer to be appropriately awful for all of its enemies it could expect with this out of the way let's get into the layer setup and some things to consider while we're doing this okay I'm going to need a drink for this one and I've seen some of you placing your bets as to whether this one will break me or not however I will channel the madness required to understand these creatures and I will come out stronger as a result listen well acolytes as your mind must be resilient Against The Madness of the dark secrets of the universe if you wish to truly Master the dark arts tangent aside how might a Beholder set up its layer firstly let's get through some restrictions that we should think about before going completely Hog Wild I did a little bit of reading up in the Forgotten Realms Wiki about the monster Ecology of these creatures and while I did find some contradictions here's what my research has revealed beholders have an average life expectancy of 120 to 150 years and you can expect them to start becoming infirm around the age of 90 so they can't be working on setting up a layer for a couple hundred years like a lich or some other Immortal creature could furthermore they need to eat drink and sleep so they will need to acquire sustenance in one way or another which will cut into the security of their layers and into the time that they could be spending setting up their Lair this means that we should be considering how they get their food and water I'm going to just assume that there's a cult that summoned this creature and that the beholder will demand sacrifices from them in return for its mercy and counsel with this being kept in mind what could we expect from a beholder's layer before we get into traps let's get into layout a Beholder would most likely carve its layer out of the walls in a cave system somewhere near where it was brought into the world it will take the time to carve out its layer and build it out over time it'll set up all the different Pathways of its layer using the disintegration way which will leave the walls of the tunnel sheer and practically unclimbable the beholder will make all of the methods of navigating its home based off of its ability to levitate meaning that all the pathways between different rooms save for any design to receive Outsiders such as cultist bringing tribute or something of the like should be using verticality rather than horizontal spacing this will extend to about everything possible that a Beholder could use like different rooms being carved into elevated positions along with any type of devices or mechanisms that are convenient to do so as well this will also extend to a series of Maintenance tunnels that the beholder has carved out to give access to the different traps and other mechanisms that it has built into its layer so that it can access the traps without allowing the people going through the pathways to do the same in fact it's entirely possible that the players navigating the space may never actually get into this system and if they do they would likely get lost in there for a long long time if they don't bring the proper tools like markers and magical gear or spells that allow them to navigate the space mapping these out will be a pain in the ass but it should be basically the vertical Labyrinthian hell hole that you would come to expect for this purpose I highly suggest getting a good tool to build this dungeon from scratch as it should already be ridiculously dangerous before we even start adding the traps I highly encourage you all to get creative with the idea of this vertical design don't just limit it to the pathways between rooms in the dungeon but also try to incorporated into the interior design of the rooms themselves perhaps rooms and other Furnishings are carved into the ceilings and access tunnels from a central chamber are all built extending from a main chamber's upper Heights so as to not be accessible to any Ground Dwellers that manage to make their way there the limit is really your imagination on this one and do whatever the most inconvenient thing you can think of is for non- levitating creatures as the beholder is definitely good for it it will also be able to set up a ton of traps using its Rays one of the traps that I could think of would be thinning out the stone floors of areas where creatures that walk would be moving on so that they would crack and fall through the stone floor and onto a set of spikes carved out at the bottom of a Shear Stone pit another option would be putting acid at the bottom keep in mind that these places where the deadly part of the traps would be located would be accessible via the service tunnels that the beholder would use to set these up from the other side the second main trap that I could dream of was the Indiana Jones death Rock of hell where the beholder carves out a giant sphere Rock and then hinges it on a small gravity BAS sliding panel that is held into place by a mechanism activated by a pressure plate or some other triggering mechanism when tripped the Trap unlatches the panel which then Falls or otherwise moves out of the way of the sphere allowing it to fall down and Crush The Intruders in some form or fashion as Mew can get up to setting up fine-tuned mechanisms with its telekinesis ability you can also set up just about whatever you want for mechanical traps as well some things that come to mind as likely to be seen would be loaded spring mechanisms that release darts or bolts most likely tipped in a poison of some kind hinged trap doors that hold some sort of super dangerous [ __ ] like Alchemist fire lava or acid that will fill up the area they pour into when a door is open all sorts of trigger mechanisms are fair game too in my opinion pressure plates trip wires gravity powered Etc imagination is once again the limit on this one well there's virtually an endless amount of crap you can think of here's some stuff I came up with while brainstorming that I think could be a good example of what you could incorporate into your design first up is the silent alarm system the beholder would likely have some sort of mechanism set up to alert it if said mechanism has been triggered since it's so paranoid it's probably just going to operate under the assumption that it's not a false alarm more often than not the manner of how this notification works is really up to you but I usually find that the most practical way of using the tunneling abilities of our giant meatball to facilitate this alarm would be using water or some other sort of similar liquid substance that'll flow down to the lowest point of can reach my method is having a bucket that is upright in a nearby maintenance tunnel out of view to the main pathway this bucket will be attached to some sort of mechanism most likely a very light and meticulously hidden pressure plate of some kind so people don't notice that they've tripped it when the mechanism is triggered the bucket will turn smoothly to quietly pour all or part of its contents down an angled pipeway that will flow down to wherever it needs to upon reaching the end of its Journey the liquid will fill a glass or some sort of other receptacle that the beholder will check obsessively likely almost any time it enters the room where this is stored moreover this alarm mechanism can also be set up to split multiple paths that will be able to alert our meatball as it navigates between the rooms it's most likely to be in when it sees that the receptacle has had the liquid poured into it the beholder will be on high alert immediately assuming that intruders are here to kill it and it will spawn by attempting to kill them however it can a Beholder that has enough time on its hands can have an intricate network of these mechanisms in order to allow it to roughly track what areas The Intruders are moving around within the cave system it has set up this mechanism will play heavily into the hands of my next insane idea the cave-in contingency the beholder if it has access to some sort of demolitions or something else of the like can also have a mechanism set up to rig the different cave systems within its layer to be caved in in the event of intruders this is something that I absolutely see a paranoid freak living in a cave system of its own design getting up to as what paranoid freak doesn't have a good self con struct functionality on their secret base moreover the beholder can use the tracking system I detailed above to figure out which cave systems it needs to cave in furthermore the beholder doesn't really need to worry too much about being stuck in its layer for a while as long as it has some food supplies stocked up as it can bore its way out with its disintegration Ray quickly enough this would be a nasty system indeed as the beholder could cave in the different Pathways that clumsy players are using if they're lucky they just get their paths blocked if they're not lucky they get buried in a ton of C Rubble Falling Rock style which I'm sure will all go well for them keep in mind that this could be potentially very deadly and make sure to keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to add these systems I like to do so because part of what makes a Beholder so deadly is its paranoia and the crazy [ __ ] it can get up to due to all the skitso posting it's going to be partaking in but if you feel like this one's a little too spicy for your fresh face timmies then by all means be a coward and leave this one out next we have creatures the more social beholders which isn't saying that much mind you could possibly also allow lesser creatures of some sort to persist on the outskirts of their layers to help dissuade Intruders and possibly to provide it with a resource of food I think the best fit for this if you want to maintain the whole great old one Vibe would be the cultist of some sort the more freaky and isolated the area they come from the better perhaps the cultists are connected to a remote Village in the region and the beholder is living somewhere deep in a cave system nearby perhaps while the beholder stays much deeper the cult has their meeting in a secret cave entrance somewhere where they make sacrifices to the beholder and the leader seeks its counsel these minions could be very useful for screening for a Beholder and so that a Beholder isn't reduced to hunting for its own food and such another interesting set of fun traps could be gravity based traps traps that take advantage of gravity would likely be leaned on heavily by the beholder as it can set up all sorts of mean stuff using gravity as the driving force due to its disintegration anything you can think of really goes slides are likely to be used a lot is the beholder is capable of boring out completely smooth tunnels traps that drop rocks or other materials like liquids which I did mention before are very pragmatic to be used as well keep in mind that gravity can pull the players to an object just as much as it can pull an object to the players traps that take advantage of their weight are going to be used as well we already mentioned slides but crumbling floors difficult terrain and massive chasms are all things that could be used as well next up are crossbow or spring-loaded traps since the beholder can manipulate objects finely it's definitely going to leverage this being able to use projectile traps as long as it has some grasp of alchemy or poisons which I'm assuming it would definitely love to pick up it will also be using toxin this can be set up in walls shooting from either up through the floors coming down from the ceilings pretty much wherever you want as the beholder is much less limited by spatial practicality due to its floating these will likely be concentrated in areas where the beholder will have determined that any non-flying Intruders will be most likely to be fooling around it in turn the beholder doesn't really have to worry about triggering any of these traps since it floats through these path these are just some things that I could think about adding I'm sure you could come up with more creative ways a skitso floating meatball would go about arranging its Floridian dream home but I'll leave the rest to you in that regard the only other thing that I think is worth stressing in regards to the layer is that it should be intentionally ridiculously complex and alien not only should it be hard to navigate physically but it should also be hard to map out mentally players who aren't doing their due diligence with mapping should have a very hard time navigating this place and they should likely get lost this can only be done Justice in my opinion by putting in the effort and actually having a map set up how exactly you want to do this is up to you but I would stress that you try and find a way that makes the players have to map out the areas that they're in and that they've been in as well just putting a map up in front of them that reveals itself as they go along isn't good enough they should be just as able to get lost trying to find their way back to where they were as they are wandering through an area that they're going through for the first time to capture this effect I usually use something like roll 20 or some other electronic interface so that I can set up a fog this makes it to where they don't see the areas that they came from once they're out of line of sight which then makes them have to get out the pen and paper to start mapping I'm sure there are some other ways to do this but I'll leave it up to you to figure out how best fits the Dynamics of your table furthermore I think this goes without saying that the beholder should know this whole cave system like the back of its non-existent hand and it should be able to effortlessly navigate the maze likee nightmare tunnel system that it has created well I could probably do some more Theory crafting about the layer I think that wouldn't be as useful as it would be getting into the deep specifics I'm here to give advice not to make the whole thing for you so I'll leave the rest of the crafting the layer up to you as I think we've set forth a good foundation with the information I've already provided I do encourage you all to share your ideas in the comments to get each other's creative juices flowing however with that I think we only have one last section to get into which is actually running a Beholder in combat this will likely be more simple than some of the other creatures we've covered but I will add a little spice here and there to get things more intriguing for everyone involved however let's not beat around the bush time to talk tactics before we talk about the specific abilities and how to use them I would like to make one change to the beholder stats I want to change the effect of its anti-magic eye while I still want it to disrupt spells I like to accentuate its otherworldly odd Nature by making the eye not only cancel out spells but also making people whose spells are disrupted roll a d10 on a one they have to roll on the wild magic table to see what happens as their spell goes Ary you can tune the table as you see fit to mitigate any positive effects as well now for the main course let's talk about how it fights firstly a Beholder would know where all of the traps in its layer are it would certainly leverage this in combat by trying to maneuver around them to lure its foes into them make sure to have traps set up pretty much anywhere that a non-flying creature would trigger the beholder will always be flying out of of land bound opponents and it will have multiple different areas carved out for it to take cover and to hide from ranged attacks most of his decisions are going to have to be made on the fly as it cannot expect to be able to reliably know which eyay it's going to be shooting out but we can have a general idea of how it's going to work with each of its options charm Ray is going to be focused on the meat Heroes any hot dumb and strong Chads are going to be the prime targets for this Ray and turning them against their friends keep in mind there are no repeat saves on this one so they are armed for an hour straight up the paralyzing Ray will be more situational it calls for a con save so this will likely be thrown at the casters that are causing problems either throwing this at the Healer or throwing this at an annoying Mage causing you problems is your best bet this can also be situationally thrown at anyone using ranged weapons which can hurt the beholder the fear Ray is most likely to be used against the Chads again in order to keep them from pushing up on the beholder if the party has devised a way to reach them better our Beholder will use this to keep someone from being a problem the slowing Ray will be useful against just about anyone but specifically it'll likely be used against most clerics or Marshalls as it makes them have to choose between actions and bonus actions while having their movement it won't have all that much of an effect on the other casters as they will likely be restricted by the spell casting rules anyways unless they took fighter levels to cheese the inovation ray is going to be used for damage on the anabolically challenged individuals within the party as it's a save or suck requiring a con save use this on all the squishy nerds who can't hold their liquor telekinesis will be your best friend against casters that are causing problems as it requires a strength save this will allow our Beholder to tie up any annoying casters causing problems for a bit so it can focus on other threats the sleeper a is best used against the meat Heroes who are all going to fail the wisdom saves this will remove them from play for a little bit so meatwad can focus on the soft Squishies with its Giga death rays of Hell the petrification ray can be used on casters to great effect as they are likely to both fail con and de saves so they have the greatest chance of being turned into stone by this ability if the beholder's rolling hot this can actually roll the party pretty hard if they're whiffing hard on the dice prioritize clerics Wizards Sorcerers and bars with this one the disintegration Ray is likely to be directed at Fighters barbs Mages and clerics as they're all the most likely candidates to whiff a deck save and this Ray is to save or suck so all or nothing or it can be used situationally to remove terrain as well try not to forget that lastly the death ray is going to be another sa suck deck save that can deal massive damage follow the same guidelines as the disintegration Ray now with the Rays explained I think we're starting to see the big picture here the beholder stays Out Of Reach only moving out of cover to shoot its rays and positioning itself in such a way that creatures on foot will be moving through a ton of traps and minefields to get in line of sight of it it'll do this while also harrying the players with its layer actions the whole time at the start of its turn it'll move out from cover and fire its Rays coming up with how it's going to distribute these Rays after it knows what it's rolled after this it'll move back to cover to break line of sight and maybe even use different elevated tunnels to navigate to different parts of its layer so that it can attack from different angles it wants to slow down disable or otherwise remove the Chads from play and it wants to blast the Squishies into Oblivion and it will be doing all of this while using its eye to lock down anyone trying to use some sort of flying or traversal magic to reach it using the ey raay appropriately and intelligently our beasties will give our adventurers the fight of their lives and if the game plan goes off without a hitch the beholders should prove to be a cunning and lethal enemy that will severely punish unprepared adventurers seeking to intrude in its layer your players will have to make sure to come prepared with the proper traversal tools and they will do well to play smartly as too many missteps could get them killed long before they even realize that they're going up after a Beholder only to [ __ ] themselves when they actually realize what they're up against with all that being said I believe that this is a good point to bring or initial lecture on beholders to a close as always I would like to thank all of my conspirators and acolytes graciously furthering the cause of evil through their contributions to the evil defense fund you help make this work possible and together we can work to make the world just a little bit worse for everyone in it and do you all thank you for attending this lecture I hope you found the information held herein useful hopefully you all find that I've done these iconic creatures Justice with the information I've gathered I sure know that this lecture took quite some time to get together as I had to truly devote myself to the study of the insane paranoid nature of these utterly alien beasts it goes without saying that you should guard this knowledge jealously as there are many in a cultists seeking to learn more about these elusive aberration for their own nefarious gain but I suppose that this is enough for now until next we meet this has been your boy archit stay safe out there acolytes and remember to never underestimate a beholder [Music]

Channel: Archlich

Views: 26,417

Keywords: dnd, DND, DnD, Dnd, dNd, D&D, d&d, Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons and Dragons, Beholders, Dungeon Master, Guide, TTRPG, Meme, meme

Id: 2_ElLKM7nnM

Length: 33min 58sec (2038 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024