Beholder and its antimagic cone orientation

[World]

Hi, this is my first post here.

I'm stucked with a little problem: can a beholder move off its cone out from an enemy, blast him with one (or more, maximum 3) rays, then put the cone again on that enemy, all in the same round? The monster manual guide describes only informations about the activation of the central eye (opened or closed, once per round), telling nothing about its orientation.

Thank you

[The Rabbler]

I think the beholder is one of the few monsters with which orientation matters. Remember though, that the antimagic field only disables magic, so even if a beholder were to spin all the way around and hit everyone with the field, only the people in the cone at the time of an action will actually feel any penalties.

Yes, this does mean that a beholder can shoot someone with a couple of rays whilst bathing them in an antimagic field and then turn towards someone else before the end of the turn.

[World]

Yeah i know, it affects only people into the cone.

The problem started because the beholder was in 1vs1 with a warrior. It started his turn with the cone oriented on the warrior, then the beholder moved it out from the warrior to use the rays. Could the beholder orient again the cone on the warrior? Or is the beholder limited to just one orientation change during its round?

Reading your post i assume it can do all of his actions, change the orientation any number of times and use its abilities (however limited to 3 maximum ray per 90 degree arc)

[The Rabbler]

Yeah i know, it affects only people into the cone.

The problem started because the beholder was in 1vs1 with a warrior. It started his turn with the cone oriented on the warrior, then the beholder moved it out from the warrior to use the rays. Could the beholder orients again the cone on the warrior? Or is the beholder limited to just one orientation change during its round?

Reading your post i assume he can do all of his actions, change the orientation any number of times and use its abilities (however limited to 3 maximum ray per 90 degree arc)

I suppose it all depends on your DM's ruling on how many times one monster can change position. If I were DMing, I'd let it change position as many times as it wants, as it's certainly not even a similar amount of movement to a move action, so I'd call it a free action. Other DMs might limit the amount of rotation, but I wouldn't really call it unfair to allow it to turn around a couple of times as a free action. Especially when people can talk to eachother as a free action.

[World]

I suppose it all depends on your DM's ruling on how many times one monster can change position. If I were DMing, I'd let it change position as many times as it wants, as it's certainly not even a similar amount of movement to a move action, so I'd call it a free action. Other DMs might limit the amount of rotation, but I wouldn't really call it unfair to allow it to turn around a couple of times as a free action. Especially when people can talk to eachother as a free action.

Ok thank you.

I assumed that too, because with this rule any character using "Detect Magic" during battle couldn't do more than 1 turn per round, which is ridicolous.