Beholder Lair Design help

[BiPolar]

My party of basically neutral/evil PCs is on a mission to kill a Death Tyrant. The party is made of a 13th level War Cleric, 12th level Shadow Monk, 12th level Swashbuckler rogue and a 12th level Bard (NPC, doesn't go full-force in fights. Bard 10/Warlock 2. Mostly ends up spamming EB).

This group likes combat, and that's about it. I'm hoping to make an interesting lair that will encourage use of tactics to defeat the Death Tyrant. My thought was to have some Gazers harry the party, then within a mile the regional effects come in and there are Gauths (and maybe more Gazers) inside the lair. Possibly some zombies to distract the party as well.

I'm kind of at a loss in how to design the cave lair to make it interesting.

side question: Why do Death Tyrants (and beholders) have random eye rays? Seems like a 19 INT creature should be able to choose.

[CursedRhubarb]

Beholders themselves just float around, as do the gazers. But other things like servants and slaves of the beholders often don't. This can lead to odd combinations of structural design and it would not likely be one floor. Having a multi floor beholder lair would let you play around with design.
For the servants and slaves you'll want a basic design with large wide open rooms and hallways about 5'-10' wide. Stairs or rough ladders in the large open areas to move up or down floors since making one fall would bring delight to a egotistical tyrant like a beholder.
For the beholder and gazers, tunnels in the walls, floors, and ceilings would let them move about at their leisure and create nasty hazards for a party to navigate in any combat situation.
Combining large open areas with the tunnels for the floaters let's you use hit-and-run tactics on the party to catch them off guard and use the natural hazards of the place to increase the difficulty.
Add in a small warlock cult with the beholder as their patron and you can have them EB-Push the players around and create darkness orbs around to cut off LoS so the group can't just run in and tank-n-spank the big floater.
After one or two get knocked back through a tunnel, off a wall or staircase, or into a tunnel that just goes town about four floors and they take a nice fistfull of d6 in fall damage they'll start creeping around and try to use some tactics.

Be kind of like trying to have a nerf war in a giant version of a McDonalds plastic playground, just slightly more deadly.

As for the random eye rays, you don't have to play them random, but it makes it so players don't cry foul when they get the same ray or two over and over. If you don't want to be random just make sure to use some variety and not be obvious on targeting each PC with only the one they'd be weakest against.

[BiPolar]

Beholders themselves just float around, as do the gazers. But other things like servants and slaves of the beholders often don't. This can lead to odd combinations of structural design and it would not likely be one floor. Having a multi floor beholder lair would let you play around with design.
For the servants and slaves you'll want a basic design with large wide open rooms and hallways about 5'-10' wide. Stairs or rough ladders in the large open areas to move up or down floors since making one fall would bring delight to a egotistical tyrant like a beholder.
For the beholder and gazers, tunnels in the walls, floors, and ceilings would let them move about at their leisure and create nasty hazards for a party to navigate in any combat situation.
Combining large open areas with the tunnels for the floaters let's you use hit-and-run tactics on the party to catch them off guard and use the natural hazards of the place to increase the difficulty.
Add in a small warlock cult with the beholder as their patron and you can have them EB-Push the players around and create darkness orbs around to cut off LoS so the group can't just run in and tank-n-spank the big floater.
After one or two get knocked back through a tunnel, off a wall or staircase, or into a tunnel that just goes town about four floors and they take a nice fistfull of d6 in fall damage they'll start creeping around and try to use some tactics.

Be kind of like trying to have a nerf war in a giant version of a McDonalds plastic playground, just slightly more deadly.

Yeah, I was realizing I need to visualize and draw up a 3d lair. That's part of where I'm getting stuck. But I've just go to sit down and start drawing, I think.

Would a Death Tyrant tolerate living warlocks in it's lair?

[Millface]

Beholders themselves just float around, as do the gazers. But other things like servants and slaves of the beholders often don't. This can lead to odd combinations of structural design and it would not likely be one floor. Having a multi floor beholder lair would let you play around with design.
For the servants and slaves you'll want a basic design with large wide open rooms and hallways about 5'-10' wide. Stairs or rough ladders in the large open areas to move up or down floors since making one fall would bring delight to a egotistical tyrant like a beholder.
For the beholder and gazers, tunnels in the walls, floors, and ceilings would let them move about at their leisure and create nasty hazards for a party to navigate in any combat situation.
Combining large open areas with the tunnels for the floaters let's you use hit-and-run tactics on the party to catch them off guard and use the natural hazards of the place to increase the difficulty.
Add in a small warlock cult with the beholder as their patron and you can have them EB-Push the players around and create darkness orbs around to cut off LoS so the group can't just run in and tank-n-spank the big floater.
After one or two get knocked back through a tunnel, off a wall or staircase, or into a tunnel that just goes town about four floors and they take a nice fistfull of d6 in fall damage they'll start creeping around and try to use some tactics.

Be kind of like trying to have a nerf war in a giant version of a McDonalds plastic playground, just slightly more deadly.

I really like all of this. I would go a little further and say that the room the beholder is in should be large, with a high ceiling, and tiered. 3 levels carved out in circles that go all the way around the room (Think gladiator arena). A party that high in level will absolutely punk a beholder on it's own with no trickery to the fight. So the party walks in to three levels of baddies firing EBs/crossbows with the beholder top and center, as high up as the range on his beams will allow. The party will have to climb/levitate/fly to reach, and figure out whether to prioritize the artillery or the beholder itself. Could make for a very tough, fun encounter where your casters will really have to think.

[CursedRhubarb]

Would a Death Tyrant tolerate living warlocks in it's lair?

If remembering right they have gigantic egos and love to be worshipped and praised. A cult of their own that follows their whims seemed fitting. With the variant familiars in Volo's some could even have Gazers as familiars.

A 3D design would be very useful. When I play around making lairs and dungeons I'll sketch it out on grid paper or use Excell or another spreadsheet program. It can be a lot of fun and help plan out how to work an encounter but it can take some time.

[BiPolar]

I love the central tiered room with (undead?) Warlocks blasting them from above, zombies harrying them on the floor and the beholder up top.

Could also set up the entrance and series of small fights leading up to the big room. As they enter the cave, they have to descend along a hallway that covers the 200' distance to give enough space for the central room.

What do you think of holes in the ceiling where the Death Tyrant can retreat and possibly come out another hole somewhere else? Only tough restriction is that 20' flying speed. probably not realistic to re-position it in combat time?

But I do think a Tyrant would be smart enough to have escape options.

Should there be any opportunities for them to have/create cover? What could those be?

[tieren]

There is an interesting sample beholder lair in the Volo's Guide to Monsters that I would start from as a template.

[BiPolar]

There is an interesting sample beholder lair in the Volo's Guide to Monsters that I would start from as a template.

I'll have to check that out. Interetsing an idea to balance exploring a lair rather than straight to a fight, but time is a bit limited and may need to have it lead straight to a fight chamber.

[Millface]

I love the central tiered room with (undead?) Warlocks blasting them from above, zombies harrying them on the floor and the beholder up top.

Could also set up the entrance and series of small fights leading up to the big room. As they enter the cave, they have to descend along a hallway that covers the 200' distance to give enough space for the central room.

What do you think of holes in the ceiling where the Death Tyrant can retreat and possibly come out another hole somewhere else? Only tough restriction is that 20' flying speed. probably not realistic to re-position it in combat time?

But I do think a Tyrant would be smart enough to have escape options.

Should there be any opportunities for them to have/create cover? What could those be?

Holes in the walls on all levels that lead to small series of beholder-sized tunnels are a great idea. 20' speed doesn't really matter since you have plenty of other baddies out there. The beholder fires off some shots, and when the party's attention is on him he disappears into one of the holes for a couple rounds and comes out somewhere else to surprise the party before doing it again? That's hella devious. Have the tunnels in the wall also have an escape route to a final chamber behind this one that the party has to figure out how to get to. In this chamber they can finish off the Beholder, but that chamber should also have some last ditch protection. Maybe a couple of middle of the road constructs or some other sort of trap.

If that starts to seem too difficult don't scale back the tricks and treachery of the encounter, because that stuff is gold and players love to be uniquely challenged as opposed to just running in and fighting in a flat, 2D space. My suggestion would be to give the party something to balance the scales a bit, like two stones with one charge that fully heal whoever uses them as if they had a full rest (restoring spells and abilities as well) to be used by whoever they think needs it, whenever they think it's needed.

[CursedRhubarb]

Letting the tyrant be able to retreat isn't a bad idea. It will add to the PC's struggle as they'll be wondering when and where it will come next.

Letting the mobs use/make cover is more than reasonable, especially with a group of 12-13 players. Just remember cover + tactics can raise the difficulty and lethality exponentially. (I've seen a group of kobolds take out a group of lvl 6 PCs by using cover+tactics. Was brutal.)

Some ways for them to utilize cover would be:

Have some of the lock mobs be Tome pact. They can get Mold Earth that way and OSE that to make cover, difficult terrain, or terrify players as they literally start to come out of the walls by making tunnels from servant passages to the main areas. (PCs may abuse this so make sure the place isn't all earth since you can't ME solid rock. Dirt areas can make for new paths)

If some of the lock mobs get Devil's Sight they can Darkness a tunnel entrance and blast through it at the PCs.

Zombies that don't attack, but carry tower shields to create 3/4 mobile cover.

Zombies from above that unload with nets at the PC when they get close to walls or use stairs would be nifty to deter from wall huggers and let your mobs use tunnel LoS pop-up cover.

Junk piles or crates of supplies or tribute could be spread about and be used for cover. (Can use crates for PC supplies too. Perhaps they find one full of oil flasks or some alchemist fire, some rough disposable wands with a few charges that don't recharge, smashed crate with a bunch of broken glass and a few flasks of holy water...)

Perhaps one room could have a mound of corpses with stench that makes the PCs roll Con saves or get sick. Add a few flesh golems in there as well that the locks are making from used zombies. (Efficiency! Human slave>zombie>stench wall>golem)

And since it's a lair you could have some special things like tunnels magically sealing behind the tyrant when it retreats.

[Millface]

Never underestimate a group of kobolds. Their CR is pathetic, but that's only accounting for an open space with no pre-planning. Kobolds never fight in open spaces without pre-planning :D

The 2e module, Dragon Mountain, is pretty much entirely Kobolds, meant for really high level characters, and it's hard as balls. Ballistas at the end of narrow tunnels and stairwells, murder holes in the walls and in hallowed out pillars for them to hide and shoot dozens of crossbow bolts and retreat to underground tunnels further up to set up again somewhere else, collapsing ceilings, faction vs. faction negotiating and trickery. They even throw down a bag of devouring at one point as a "presant so u stops killing us, we sew 4 piece, take and be frends"

Just shows what you can do when you have your monsters actually think like they realistically would.

[Erys]

Would a Death Tyrant tolerate living warlocks in it's lair?


But I do think a Tyrant would be smart enough to have escape options.

IIRC, Death Tyrants of 5th are products of their own beholder madness- literally taking them over and forcing it into an undead state. They probably only would have zombies (of previous cultist who worshipped it when it lived?) at most as guards.

I doubt they would think of escape also, being that they are remarkably insane and self preservation is not really in the cards anymore.

Last time I ran one I made the lair one giant room with the floor arching up like an internal pyramid with it at the top point and zombies scattered around it. Each new 'level' of the pyramid was 5' making it impossible to just charge the orb. Made for a wicked good encounter.Bbut, using 3d heroscape blocks to build, took a LONG time to create).

[Asmotherion]

My party of basically neutral/evil PCs is on a mission to kill a Death Tyrant. The party is made of a 13th level War Cleric, 12th level Shadow Monk, 12th level Swashbuckler rogue and a 12th level Bard (NPC, doesn't go full-force in fights. Bard 10/Warlock 2. Mostly ends up spamming EB).

This group likes combat, and that's about it. I'm hoping to make an interesting lair that will encourage use of tactics to defeat the Death Tyrant. My thought was to have some Gazers harry the party, then within a mile the regional effects come in and there are Gauths (and maybe more Gazers) inside the lair. Possibly some zombies to distract the party as well.

I'm kind of at a loss in how to design the cave lair to make it interesting.

side question: Why do Death Tyrants (and beholders) have random eye rays? Seems like a 19 INT creature should be able to choose.

About the eye ray question, Volo's Guide included an ironic answear.

The idea is that it would be too overpowered to give it free, at-will access to effects like Finger of Death and Disintegrade, as well as Telekinesis etc... It's basically cantrip frequesncy for 5-7 level spells. So, to balance things off, the rays are chosen at random. If you don't like it, you could just make sure not to spam a specific ray to the character that is weakest against it, or give rays a cooldown similar to a breath weapon.

The RP interpretation behind this is supposedly that the DM can't grasp the complex and allien logic behind a Beholder's pattern of attacks, who supposedly has calculated every move, and concluded that the random ray it chose was the best possible solution.

Now, it's lair is supposed to include servants, petrified victims to warn incomers away, and some traps. It's default ability to interact (instead of hands) is it's telekinesis, so you can use at least this one as a freebe imo.

Now, about escape plans: Beholders in general, and especially undead ones, have such a big oppinion about themselves it's natural they would not even process the idea of loosing. They do think they deserve to be worshiped as gods and such... So, a Beholder's own elitism is enough to be their undoing.