The behir's CR

[Chronos]

I'm thinking of maybe springing a behir on my party, but one thing in the stats is giving me pause: The breath weapon. It's only 20' long, so it'll have a hard time hitting more than two party members, but it's smart enough to speak a language, so it's probably also smart enough to maneuver to get two of them. And it does a whopping 12d10 damage.

At CR 11, it's supposedly only slightly above a medium difficulty encounter for an 11th-level party of 4, and everyone knows those difficulties are inflated anyway. But 12d10 is a lot of damage for that level, and it's likely to hit two party members for that much on the first round of combat. That's more, on average, than an 11th level cleric with a +1 Con, and it's plausible (1 standard deviation) that it'll do enough even if the cleric has a +2 Con. And of course, clerics have poor Dex saves. So you could see two characters going down in the first round, one of them the healer. And then, with just a little bit of luck, it could recharge, and do the same thing on the second round. OK, probably not all of the party members are squishy: Some will still survive that... but it'll now be a much tougher fight, especially if one of the folks who survived the lightning gets swallowed.

Of course, it's also possible that the folks who get hit by the breath all save, and it doesn't recharge until after it's taken down, and nobody gets swallowed. It's certainly not a guaranteed TPK. But there seems to be a real risk of it. Am I missing something, here?

[Kane0]

Are the PCs going to be aware of it? I remember having the same thought about a catoplepas encounter during a hunting expedition but the PCs wisely kept their distance and turned a potentially lethal encounter into a cakewalk

Also, do your PCs have any sources of resistance, evasion, Temp HP, etc?

[Chronos]

In my specific case, I anticipate one or more PCs having enough advance warning that they can do a round of buffing, and I also have a larger-than-usual party, with two healers. I'm not too worried about them. But they probably won't know what it is, at least not in enough detail to know the range on its breath, and none of them has a particularly high Dex save (though the barbarian will probably be OK, with advantage and likely resistance).

I'm more wondering in general, because for the classic four adventurers, it sure seems like this is likely to see the cleric and wizard twitching on the ground, the rogue eaten, and the fighter being beaten down, within the first few rounds.

[J-H]

12d10 is an average damage of 66, with a DC 16 Dex save for half. Barbarians, rogues, monks, paladins, and artificers are all likely to pass and will only take about 33 damage. You may have one PC on the ground from the breath weapon, but probably not more than that... and that's its only breath weapon, and it only has AC 17 and only 168hp. It'll likely die in 2 rounds against an 11th-level party.

[Kane0]

I wouldnt be terribly concerned. By level 11 the party is sure to have a bundle of potential countermeasures on hand, off the top of my head:
Absorb elements, protection from energy, Aid, Bless,
Evasion, Danger Sense, paladin aura
Shield Master, resilient, inspiring leader, lucky feats
Storm cleric/barbarian/sorcerer, war, diviner or abjuration wizard, indomitable
Goliath or half orc, death monk
Tomb of levistus

Not to mention any magic items or healing available to the party

[MrStabby]

The breath attack... is brutal. But it isn't that likely to kill an 11th level PC. Generally it needs a failed save a below average HD character and an average or above damage roll... no absorb elements or similar.

And if it downs a PC then there are likely others to bring them back. I think 6 classes have healing spells on the core class list with other subclasses like celestial warlock and divine soul adding more.

And all of this is based on the assumption that the breath weapon goes off. With a party of 4, that is a lot of chances for someone to roll higher in initiative or to spot it/track it. A chance to not get in range or of it to fail a save and be incapacitated.

It is a real threat, but there are a lot of reasons why single monsters tend to die to competent parties even when they look like they should be a big threat.

[Dork_Forge]

I'm thinking of maybe springing a behir on my party, but one thing in the stats is giving me pause: The breath weapon. It's only 20' long, so it'll have a hard time hitting more than two party members, but it's smart enough to speak a language, so it's probably also smart enough to maneuver to get two of them. And it does a whopping 12d10 damage.

At CR 11, it's supposedly only slightly above a medium difficulty encounter for an 11th-level party of 4, and everyone knows those difficulties are inflated anyway. But 12d10 is a lot of damage for that level, and it's likely to hit two party members for that much on the first round of combat. That's more, on average, than an 11th level cleric with a +1 Con, and it's plausible (1 standard deviation) that it'll do enough even if the cleric has a +2 Con. And of course, clerics have poor Dex saves. So you could see two characters going down in the first round, one of them the healer. And then, with just a little bit of luck, it could recharge, and do the same thing on the second round. OK, probably not all of the party members are squishy: Some will still survive that... but it'll now be a much tougher fight, especially if one of the folks who survived the lightning gets swallowed.

Of course, it's also possible that the folks who get hit by the breath all save, and it doesn't recharge until after it's taken down, and nobody gets swallowed. It's certainly not a guaranteed TPK. But there seems to be a real risk of it. Am I missing something, here?

What's the actual party composition?

Average damage of the breath is 66 and the average hp of a Cleric at 11th level is 69, so a fail and average damage and the (hypothetical?) Cleric would still be up.

I really wouldn't worry about this being a TPK, the Behir's hp and ac are meh for the level that you're using it and as a solo creature it would go down hard and fast.

The only way I can see this being a TPK is if you catch two party members in the breath and they both fail, with one going down. Otherwise it's okay if the party has to burn resources and heal, heck it's even okay if they have to retreat!

I'd just go ahead and use it as is, you'll probably be surprised how quickly they stomp it. Likewise I wouldn't so much about swallowing either, if you're breathing on turn 1 then it takes at least until turn 3 to swallow a PC, which then won't take the damage from acid until the Behir's next turn. It looks scary on the surface, but unless you buff it or give it hunting companions it really isn't that bad.


12d10 is an average damage of 66, with a DC 16 Dex save for half. Barbarians, rogues, monks, paladins, and artificers are all likely to pass and will only take about 33 damage. You may have one PC on the ground from the breath weapon, but probably not more than that... and that's its only breath weapon, and it only has AC 17 and only 168hp. It'll likely die in 2 rounds against an 11th-level party.

Worth noting that the Rogue and Monk will take half at most and very likely take nothing at 11th level with a +8/+9 Dex save against a DC 16.

[Kane0]

Monster idea: behir hydra

But if you're worried about a single behir being too feast-or-famine in terms of encounter design, consider a pair of younger/smaller ones (lower individual damage output and HP pools, but double the chances to get some damage in)

[MaxWilson]

I'm thinking of maybe springing a behir on my party, but one thing in the stats is giving me pause: The breath weapon. It's only 20' long, so it'll have a hard time hitting more than two party members, but it's smart enough to speak a language, so it's probably also smart enough to maneuver to get two of them. And it does a whopping 12d10 damage.

At CR 11, it's supposedly only slightly above a medium difficulty encounter for an 11th-level party of 4, and everyone knows those difficulties are inflated anyway. But 12d10 is a lot of damage for that level, and it's likely to hit two party members for that much on the first round of combat. That's more, on average, than an 11th level cleric with a +1 Con, and it's plausible (1 standard deviation) that it'll do enough even if the cleric has a +2 Con. And of course, clerics have poor Dex saves. So you could see two characters going down in the first round, one of them the healer. And then, with just a little bit of luck, it could recharge, and do the same thing on the second round. OK, probably not all of the party members are squishy: Some will still survive that... but it'll now be a much tougher fight, especially if one of the folks who survived the lightning gets swallowed.

Of course, it's also possible that the folks who get hit by the breath all save, and it doesn't recharge until after it's taken down, and nobody gets swallowed. It's certainly not a guaranteed TPK. But there seems to be a real risk of it. Am I missing something, here?

It takes about 130 HP of damage to kill an 11th level PC. The Behir's isn't even close to that amount. Whether it has a chance at killing someone if it gets lucky depends therefore on whether you're going to keep targeting downed PCs, and what the party's healing options are including pop-up healing (if you allow it).

If you disallow pop-up healing and try your level best to kill a PC outright with focus fire until they die, I give you no better than 5% odds of accomplishing it, assuming the players don't act foolishly (e.g. if two of them run away once someone goes down, that's probably game over for the guy that went down, unless the guy that didn't run is a caster with control spells). You can get a better estimate by running a few practice combats based on your knowledge of the PCs, but my money says the danger is minimal. A simple Tasha's Hideous Laughter, for example, can disable the creature long enough to seriously wound or kill it.

The worst that will happen is attrition: one or more PCs are left with HP in the single digits, but not dead.

If this were a CR 6 Young White Dragon vs. a level 6 party, or two Young White Dragon vs. a level 11 party, I'd be giving you the opposite advice: TPK very possible. But Behirs don't actually punch above their weight class.

[MrStabby]

Monster idea: behir hydra


OK, now that might be a nightmare.

[PhoenixPhyre]

OK, now that might be a nightmare.

(Blue) no, nightmares are demonic horses (/blue)

Mobile, so no actual blue.

[Lord Vukodlak]

It takes about 130 HP of damage to kill an 11th level PC. The Behir's isn't even close to that amount. Whether it has a chance at killing someone if it gets lucky depends therefore on whether you're going to keep targeting downed PCs, and what the party's healing options are including pop-up healing (if you allow it).

If you disallow pop-up healing and try your level best to kill a PC outright with focus fire until they die, I give you no better than 5% odds of accomplishing it, assuming the players don't act foolishly (e.g. if two of them run away once someone goes down, that's probably game over for the guy that went down, unless the guy that didn't run is a caster with control spells). You can get a better estimate by running a few practice combats based on your knowledge of the PCs, but my money says the danger is minimal. A simple Tasha's Hideous Laughter, for example, can disable the creature long enough to seriously wound or kill it.

The worst that will happen is attrition: one or more PCs are left with HP in the single digits, but not dead.

If this were a CR 6 Young White Dragon vs. a level 6 party, or two Young White Dragon vs. a level 11 party, I'd be giving you the opposite advice: TPK very possible. But Behirs don't actually punch above their weight class.
On that subject I was in a group where our level five party fought a young black dragon and it ambushed us, and it won initiative. Then it continually failed the save against the bards hideous laughter. Sure he made is save at some point before the bard went again but then he’d fail the initial save against another casting. But if not for the bards position in the initiative order and the dragons bad luck with saves it’s have been a TPK.

[MaxWilson]

On that subject I was in a group where our level five party fought a young black dragon and it ambushed us, and it won initiative. Then it continually failed the save against the bards hideous laughter. Sure he made is save at some point before the bard went again but then he’d fail the initial save against another casting. But if not for the bards position in the initiative order and the dragons bad luck with saves it’s have been a TPK.

This raises a tangential issue, which is that a level 5 adventuring party is a TPK risk for a black dragon. All it takes is some unlucky rolls, and now you've got a dead dragon.

In principle, dragons and behirs should withdraw as soon as the party shows its teeth. Neither side wants even a 10% chance of TPK.

P. S. Tasha's Hideous Laughter doesn't prevent a dragon from crawling away (20' per round).

[Chronos]

Quoth MaxWilson:

It takes about 130 HP of damage to kill an 11th level PC. The Behir's isn't even close to that amount. Whether it has a chance at killing someone if it gets lucky depends therefore on whether you're going to keep targeting downed PCs, and what the party's healing options are including pop-up healing (if you allow it).
Even a hill dwarf fighter with an 18 Con still only has 125 HP. That's the damage to insta-one-shot-kill a typical PC, but that's not the only way to kill. The behir can still roll high enough to down two PCs in the first round, and even if another party member pop-up-heals them, it's only half an action from the behir to put them back down again. Or, if it hits a popped-up party member again with its breath, it just might insta-kill them. And that's assuming that the healer wasn't one of the ones downed.

There are mitigating circumstances that can make this much less likely (for instance, if the party has more than one healer, as my party does). But those circumstances won't always apply, and there are some reasonable parties for which this looks like it should be a moderately easy fight, but where it'll be far from it.

[MrStabby]

Even a hill dwarf fighter with an 18 Con still only has 125 HP. That's the damage to insta-one-shot-kill a typical PC, but that's not the only way to kill. The behir can still roll high enough to down two PCs in the first round, and even if another party member pop-up-heals them, it's only half an action from the behir to put them back down again. Or, if it hits a popped-up party member again with its breath, it just might insta-kill them. And that's assuming that the healer wasn't one of the ones downed.

There are mitigating circumstances that can make this much less likely (for instance, if the party has more than one healer, as my party does). But those circumstances won't always apply, and there are some reasonable parties for which this looks like it should be a moderately easy fight, but where it'll be far from it.

The thing that I think is relevant is that so many ways to succeed are spread amongst different characters.

If you don't have access to healing, then it is more likely Con is higher or you have a higher HD, or dex save proficiency or access to absorb elements etc.. it isn't just that there are plenty of tools to help, but that they are distributed amongst different classes.

Not saying it is impossible for it to be a tough fight, or that you might have clerics without healing spells prepared or that even a ranger can fail a dex save, but just that it isn't quite as tough a fight as it might look.

[da newt]

A behir is a great foe for a party of 4 lvl 11 PCs - enough of a threat to make them take it seriously, a small chance that one PC could actually die if everything goes the behir's way, but they should prevail and have ample opportunity to heal anyone who falls before they die.

For a larger party with multiple healers - no big deal.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I don't recall what level we were, but the idea that a Behir risks one death and spends party resources tracks with my experience. We fought one a long time ago in Dungeon of the Mad Mage and our Monk was swallowed, a single death saving throw from dying before we killed it.

[Eldariel]

Honestly, Wizard/Sorc/Artificer/Druid/Ranger have Absorb Elements to halve it, Rogue/Monk have evasion and Cleric/Barbarian/Fighter/Paladin have a goodly bunch of HP if nothing else (a d10 class with 14 Con would have 10+6*10+2*11=82 HP and that's lowballing; 16 Con Cleric with a level 4 Aid would have 8+5*10+3*11+15 = 96 before any possible Temp HP). So almost all classes can take it even on a failed save and Behir has very little else (a fair bit of damage and constrict but not nearly as strong as the breath weapon). And the save is still doable for even a Dex 10 non-proficient character with no useful abilities 25% of the time. Overall, I don't think it's really a big deal: a closet troll to soften the party before something dangerous comes up.

It has no saves or anything so it goes down to save-or-x FAST and its physical toughness is nothing to write home about either. Overall, it has somewhat scary offense but fairly anemic defense making it perhaps more dangerous than average CR11 if it gets to do its thing, but it is fairly easy to stop from doing its thing.

[Dork_Forge]

Honestly, Wizard/Sorc/Artificer/Druid/Ranger have Absorb Elements to halve it, Rogue/Monk have evasion and Cleric/Barbarian/Fighter/Paladin have a goodly bunch of HP if nothing else (a d10 class with 14 Con would have 10+6*10+2*11=82 HP and that's lowballing; 16 Con Cleric with a level 4 Aid would have 8+5*10+3*11+15 = 96 before any possible Temp HP). So almost all classes can take it even on a failed save and Behir has very little else (a fair bit of damage and constrict but not nearly as strong as the breath weapon). And the save is still doable for even a Dex 10 non-proficient character with no useful abilities 25% of the time. Overall, I don't think it's really a big deal: a closet troll to soften the party before something dangerous comes up.

It has no saves or anything so it goes down to save-or-x FAST and its physical toughness is nothing to write home about either. Overall, it has somewhat scary offense but fairly anemic defense making it perhaps more dangerous than average CR11 if it gets to do its thing, but it is fairly easy to stop from doing its thing.

I agree that the breath isn't that much of a problem, but a Cleric with an unusually high Con and a level 4 spell buffing their hp may not be the best example.

[MaxWilson]

Even a hill dwarf fighter with an 18 Con still only has 125 HP. That's the damage to insta-one-shot-kill a typical PC, but that's not the only way to kill. The behir can still roll high enough to down two PCs in the first round, and even if another party member pop-up-heals them, it's only half an action from the behir to put them back down again. Or, if it hits a popped-up party member again with its breath, it just might insta-kill them. And that's assuming that the healer wasn't one of the ones downed.

That's what I meant when I said "Whether it has a chance at killing someone if it gets lucky depends therefore on whether you're going to keep targeting downed PCs, and what the party's healing options are including pop-up healing (if you allow it)."

And even then, it's pretty unlikely you can pull this off even if you're trying to kill someone. E.g. you need to regain your breath weapon before the popped-up guy can Dash away or get behind cover, you need to roll unusually high on your damage and he needs to fail his save, and no one else in the party can incapacitate the behir in the meantime.


I agree that the breath isn't that much of a problem, but a Cleric with an unusually high Con and a level 4 spell buffing their hp may not be the best example.

Is Con 16 unusual for an 11th level cleric? I think Resilient (Con) is fairly popular at least among a certain subset of players, and getting Con 16 + Con save proficiency in place by 11th level (+7 to Con saves, so 90% chance to make most concentration saves) is likely to be a high priority.

Con 16 is going to be a minority of all clerics, yes, but it's not really unusual any more than e.g. blue is an "unusual" color. Minority != unusual.

[Dork_Forge]

Is Con 16 unusual for an 11th level cleric? I think Resilient (Con) is fairly popular at least among a certain subset of players, and getting Con 16 + Con save proficiency in place by 11th level (+7 to Con saves, so 90% chance to make most concentration saves) is likely to be a high priority.

Con 16 is going to be a minority of all clerics, yes, but it's not really unusual any more than e.g. blue is an "unusual" color. Minority != unusual.

With only two ASIs I'd say a 16 Con is unusual for any caster that didn't roll particularly well on average. Dwarves are an obvious exception, but generally caster races (races with a relevant mental boost) don't usually also give Con.

Spending ASI's on not bumping the primary stat is also a hard choice, especially on a Cleric since Wis is so useful, it affects the number of spells they have and depending on domain, how many uses of an ability they get.

...What is the usual if not the average within a certain degree of deviation?

And regardless of just how unusual or improbably it might be, it still seems an inappropriate shoe horn to get the Cleric lumped with martials that have... a lower Con despite a greater liklihood of racial bump and arguably higher need?

[MaxWilson]

With only two ASIs I'd say a 16 Con is unusual for any caster that didn't roll particularly well on average.

A lot of people seem to use point buy though. You can with 100% reliability build a level 11 Wis 16 Dex 14 Con 16 vhuman Resilient (Con) cleric on point buy and still have 4 points and two ASIs left over for e.g. Int 10 and Cha 10 and Wis 20, or Mobile and Defensive Duelist (or Warcaster) if feats are more your thing than maxing Wis.


Spending ASI's on not bumping the primary stat is also a hard choice, especially on a Cleric since Wis is so useful, it affects the number of spells they have and depending on domain, how many uses of an ability they get.

...What is the usual if not the average within a certain degree of deviation?

And regardless of just how unusual or improbably it might be, it still seems an inappropriate shoe horn to get the Cleric lumped with martials that have... a lower Con despite a greater liklihood of racial bump and arguably higher need?

Eldariel was just giving one example. It could just as easily have been a Con 14 cleric with an Inspiring Leader in the party, or a Twilight Cleric. He's just pointing out that having less than 66 HP at level 11 is itself somewhat unusual, and I would agree that if someone overlooks all of that low-hanging fruit and then gets unlucky and dies to a Behir because their Con 10 58 HP cleric got zapped by a lucky Behir's breath weapon two rounds in a row and failed both saves, the DM has absolutely no reason to feel responsible for that death.

[Dork_Forge]

A lot of people seem to use point buy though. You can with 100% reliability build a level Wis 16 Dex 14 Con 16 vhuman Resilient (Con) cleric on point buy and still have 4 points and two ASIs left over for e.g. Int 10 and Cha 10 and Wis 20, or Mobile and Warcaster if feats are more your thing than maxing Wis.

I didn't mean it wasn't feasible to build, I meant I think it's uncommon unless you rolled well and thus have the higher numbers to throw around.

If you build for Con, it's not unusual at all, but ime most casters don't look so heavily on Resilient as the forums talk about, Warcaster comes up first and usually to make weapon and shield casting viable as much as making concentration easier.

When you go Variant Human: Res your entire racial package pretty much amounts to only that, that's unusual imo outside of forum optimisation *shrug*



Eldariel was just giving one example. It could just as easily have been a Con 14 cleric with an Inspiring Leader in the party, or a Twilight Cleric. He's just pointing out that having less than 66 HP at level 11 is itself somewhat unusual, and I would agree that if someone overlooks all of that low-hanging fruit and then gets unlucky and dies to a Behir because their Con 10 58 HP cleric got zapped by a lucky Behir's breath weapon two rounds in a row and failed both saves, the DM has absolutely no reason to feel responsible for that death.

A Cleric with 12 Con has 69hp, a more reasonable to assume in an example 14 Con would land them at 80hp, there wasn't any specifics needed for a Cleric (well any d8 class) to be out of the danger zone in that regard. My issue was the example was a bunch of martials with 14 Con (including a Barbarian) to lowball, whilst the Cleric got an unnecessarily high showing.

I know there's a lot of low hanging fruit to make that even better, but none of it is even necessary to withstand the Breath, and two back to back assumes (ignoring the recharge roll) incredibly bad tactics from the PC.

[LudicSavant]

I'm thinking of maybe springing a behir on my party, but one thing in the stats is giving me pause: The breath weapon. It's only 20' long, so it'll have a hard time hitting more than two party members, but it's smart enough to speak a language, so it's probably also smart enough to maneuver to get two of them. And it does a whopping 12d10 damage.

At CR 11, it's supposedly only slightly above a medium difficulty encounter for an 11th-level party of 4, and everyone knows those difficulties are inflated anyway. But 12d10 is a lot of damage for that level, and it's likely to hit two party members for that much on the first round of combat. That's more, on average, than an 11th level cleric with a +1 Con, and it's plausible (1 standard deviation) that it'll do enough even if the cleric has a +2 Con. And of course, clerics have poor Dex saves. So you could see two characters going down in the first round, one of them the healer. And then, with just a little bit of luck, it could recharge, and do the same thing on the second round. OK, probably not all of the party members are squishy: Some will still survive that... but it'll now be a much tougher fight, especially if one of the folks who survived the lightning gets swallowed.

Of course, it's also possible that the folks who get hit by the breath all save, and it doesn't recharge until after it's taken down, and nobody gets swallowed. It's certainly not a guaranteed TPK. But there seems to be a real risk of it. Am I missing something, here?

Last time I used Behirs, I was throwing multiple of them at the same time against a Tier 2 party.

A single Behir against a level 11 party should be cake for a well-put-together party. The breath weapon is Dex-based (meaning it's subject to cover, Evasion, Shield Master, whatever), Lightning-based (meaning it's subject to Absorb Elements and the like), short range, small AoE, and only DC 16.

Likewise, Tier 3 parties have all kiiiinds of countermeasures. By that point they can get extra death gates, resurrect each other, temp HP, aid, and so forth.

Even if the Behir gets lucky and downs someone (even more than one someone) in a turn, they can just bump right back up, it's not that big a deal.

[MrStabby]

Last time I used Behirs, I was throwing multiple of them at the same time against a Tier 2 party.

A single Behir against a level 11 party should be cake for a well-put-together party. The breath weapon is Dex-based (meaning it's subject to cover, Evasion, Shield Master, whatever), Lightning-based (meaning it's subject to Absorb Elements and the like), short range, small AoE, and only DC 16.

Likewise, Tier 3 parties have all kiiiinds of countermeasures. By that point they can get extra death gates, resurrect each other, temp HP, aid, and so forth.

Even if the Behir gets lucky and downs someone (even more than one someone) in a turn, they can just bump right back up, it's not that big a deal.

I wouldn't say a cake walk - it depends how it is played. If the behir supprises a party (+7 stealth), and grapples and swallows a PC (say for example a wizard) and then uses its 40ft climb speed to escape then things can start to go wrong. Even if the swallowed creature manages to to the 30 damage in a round needed to break free it could still have a nasty fall ahead. And if the Behir has used its climb speed it might mean that the melee elements of the rest of the party are unable to help. And if it is in the caverns in the dark then 30ft darkvision might not be enough for spellcasters to see it after it runs away to digest its prey.

In its natural habitat of dark caverns with steep sides and winding passageways to block line of sight a DM can play even a single one of these as a serious threat. If PCs line up to go through a passage then lightning can hit the party hard. If they spread out then they can be picked off in the dark.

Behirs are like vampires - how you play them really determines their strength.

[Keravath]

12d10 is an average damage of 66, with a DC 16 Dex save for half. Barbarians, rogues, monks, paladins, and artificers are all likely to pass and will only take about 33 damage. You may have one PC on the ground from the breath weapon, but probably not more than that... and that's its only breath weapon, and it only has AC 17 and only 168hp. It'll likely die in 2 rounds against an 11th-level party.

The creature will likely die in 2-3 rounds so depending on initiative it may not be that much of a threat. This is especially true if the party separates a bit during the first round since it could be hard to get the squishier characters in the area for the breath weapon.

However, the OP is correct that with an unfortunate set of die rolls the encounter could become a TPK - probably not - but it is possible.

First, in your list, only the rogue and monk are likely to pass the save. They are both proficient in dex saves and boost dexterity giving them likely a +8 or +9 and passing a DC16 dex save on a 7+ (still a 30% chance of failing).

All the rest, barbarian, paladin and artificer are likely to fail. A Barbarian usually boosts strength and con so by level 11 is looking at a 16 dex at most, maybe 14. Paladin in heavy armor is 8 or 10 dex (-1 or 0) + charisma (say 18) for a net +3 or +4. An Artificer is likely 14 dex for a +2.

This means that each of these needs to roll a 13+, 12+ or 14+ to pass a DC16 dex save - failing 60%, 55% and 65%. So honestly, the odds are good that some of these WILL fail the save. The same goes for cleric, wizard, sorcerer and any other class not proficient with dex saves and no reason to have a high dex.

So the odds are that, depending on classes, the party is more likely than not to have at least one and possibly two characters fail the save.

---

With good luck, the fight is easy, the party takes a bit of damage.
With average luck, a couple of characters are significantly damaged but the behir still goes down in a couple of rounds.
With bad luck, at least one character hit zero hit points, possibly two, death is typically uncommon using the 5e RAW rules since a healing spell will get them back on their feat and stop the death save progression.
With terrible luck, initiative to Behir, two failed breath weapon saves, several party attacks miss, breath weapon recharge, a couple more failed saves - a TPK is possible but unlikely.

[da newt]

The Rogue and Monk will have evasion, so worst case scenario 1/2 damage, but likely zero damage, and the Barb will have ADV on their save (and a bunch of HP), the Pali gets his +CHA to saves which helps, and the Artificer can use their +INT on themselves or another PC ...

And the breath is a 20' long 5' wide line, so could hit 2 maybe 3 PCs at once and then has a 1 in 3 chance of recharging per round.

[KorvinStarmast]

If a behir surprises a party, it's a whole different fight than if it doesn't.
That's been my experience.

[Eldariel]

I wouldn't say a cake walk - it depends how it is played. If the behir supprises a party (+7 stealth), and grapples and swallows a PC (say for example a wizard) and then uses its 40ft climb speed to escape then things can start to go wrong. Even if the swallowed creature manages to to the 30 damage in a round needed to break free it could still have a nasty fall ahead. And if the Behir has used its climb speed it might mean that the melee elements of the rest of the party are unable to help. And if it is in the caverns in the dark then 30ft darkvision might not be enough for spellcasters to see it after it runs away to digest its prey.

In its natural habitat of dark caverns with steep sides and winding passageways to block line of sight a DM can play even a single one of these as a serious threat. If PCs line up to go through a passage then lightning can hit the party hard. If they spread out then they can be picked off in the dark.

Behirs are like vampires - how you play them really determines their strength.

It's not all that easy to surprise a level 11 party though. We're on the level where you have +4 Proficiency so a 10 Wis Expertise Perception Rogue would have 18 PP, 20 Wis Cleric with Proficient Perception would likely have 19 PP, familiars still have 18 or Blindsight and there's a lot in terms of means for detecting outside one's immediate surroundings. Also it seems quite unlikely that only one character has ways to easily disable it. In the "archetypal" Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric-party, even if the Wizard gets eaten (getting gobbled up would take 3 turns though; breath followed by bite and then swallow on the next turn), Cleric can likely try to e.g. Banishment it, and Battlemaster can maybe knock it prone dropping it down).

While of course all monsters with a modicum of intelligence range greatly in efficiency depending on how well they are played, I think in this case the ball of squarely on the side of the party, where how well the party plays determines how dangerous the Behir is, rather than the play of the Behir necessarily having a large impact. It has few abilities but frankly nothing compared to e.g. most Dragons or spellcasting enemies.

[Lord Vukodlak]

It's not all that easy to surprise a level 11 party though. We're on the level where you have +4 Proficiency so a 10 Wis Expertise Perception Rogue would have 18 PP, 20 Wis Cleric with Proficient Perception would likely have 19 PP, familiars still have 18 or Blindsight and there's a lot in terms of means for detecting outside one's immediate surroundings. Also it seems quite unlikely that only one character has ways to easily disable it. In the "archetypal" Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric-party, even if the Wizard gets eaten (getting gobbled up would take 3 turns though; breath followed by bite and then swallow on the next turn), Cleric can likely try to e.g. Banishment it, and Battlemaster can maybe knock it prone dropping it down).

While of course all monsters with a modicum of intelligence range greatly in efficiency depending on how well they are played, I think in this case the ball of squarely on the side of the party, where how well the party plays determines how dangerous the Behir is, rather than the play of the Behir necessarily having a large impact. It has few abilities but frankly nothing compared to e.g. most Dragons or spellcasting enemies.
Ah here’s the rub, while normally DMs do attacks in order. In actuality. The Behir can constrict first then bite and swallow on the first round.
It’s the Rehmoraz that grapples with its bite then swallows.

[LudicSavant]

I wouldn't say a cake walk - it depends how it is played. If the behir supprises a party (+7 stealth), and grapples and swallows a PC (say for example a wizard) and then uses its 40ft climb speed to escape then things can start to go wrong. Even if the swallowed creature manages to to the 30 damage in a round needed to break free it could still have a nasty fall ahead. And if the Behir has used its climb speed it might mean that the melee elements of the rest of the party are unable to help. And if it is in the caverns in the dark then 30ft darkvision might not be enough for spellcasters to see it after it runs away to digest its prey.

In its natural habitat of dark caverns with steep sides and winding passageways to block line of sight a DM can play even a single one of these as a serious threat. If PCs line up to go through a passage then lightning can hit the party hard. If they spread out then they can be picked off in the dark.

Behirs are like vampires - how you play them really determines their strength.

While that's certainly true, the exact same goes for the PCs: How you play them really determines their strength, and I specified a well-put-together party. These sorts of tactics are just kind of expected for me -- if a 40 foot climb was gonna stop me then what would I do when dealing with things like, say, a Phoenix doing 120 foot flybys and retreating through 1-inch wide gaps?

A party with a tactical DM's gonna be accustomed to fighting burrowing dragons, fast-kiting ranged characters, incorporeal monsters jumping through walls, surprising/bonus-action hiding assassin cabals, mind dominating Mind Flayers, and spellcasters doing shenanigans.

The Behir has an uphill battle here. Your example of the character getting swallowed is a Wizard... they aren't going to have a "nasty fall" because Wizards prepare Feather Fall (at least... I do...). They also can just Dimension Door out of dodge, Restrained and Blind doesn't stop that. And that's all assuming the Behir doesn't get detected, reaches the Wizard, lands two hits, and can't be dealt with by others in the party.

Darkvision is usually at least 60 feet, not 30. And if the players prefer, they don't need to use Darkvision, they can just use Control Flames-boosted lanterns or the like.

And the real issue for the lone Behir isn't going to be downing a player (it can do that if it's lucky), it's going to be actually finishing off anyone (let alone everyone, which is what you need since resurrection is a thing at this level), it doesn't really have the action economy for that, unless it can somehow keepaway from the party.

I like the Behir. It's something that can actually threaten players if they screw up, but it's far from the only monster that can do that.

____

+7 stealth: Not good enough to reliably get past decent anti-surprise tools at this level (it's got less than even chances of getting past a familiar's eyes, let alone better detectors).
Swallow: Casters usually have a way out of this sort of thing (like Freedom of Movement, Dimension Door, damage, etc), whereas martials can usually deal 30 damage in a turn at this level.
Lightning Breath: It's big damage (it's a little more than a CR 10 dragon's breath!), but it's a small area lightning-based dex-based AoE, and has to roll to recharge, and takes its entire action (so players can pop-up unless it somehow downs all of 'em).
Climbing: Just the usual "guys, I keep telling you to invest in mobility/range!"

[Eldariel]

Ah here’s the rub, while normally DMs do attacks in order. In actuality. The Behir can constrict first then bite and swallow on the first round.
It’s the Rehmoraz that grapples with its bite then swallows.

Its multiattack is "Bite and Constrict", not "Constrict and Swallow". Bite and Swallow are separate attacks, only one of which occurs in the multiattack. Not that it really matters that much; even if it got to swallow + constrict, it'd still have some problems; namely the action economy. It needs a turn to breathe, a turn to constrict+bite, a turn to swallow. It has a bunch of fairly strong options but it can only use two-three before it goes down, instead of breathing while constricting, mouthgrappling for full damage breath weapons or whatever.

[MaxWilson]

Ah here’s the rub, while normally DMs do attacks in order. In actuality. The Behir can constrict first then bite and swallow on the first round.
It’s the Rehmoraz that grapples with its bite then swallows.

Not possible actually without first altering the Behir, because the MM Behir's Multiattack does not include Swallow.

Swallow is a separate action which includes a bite attack. It's not part of the bite itself.

Edit: oh yeah, Eldariel already said that.

[Nidgit]

Recently threw a Behir against a level 10 party consisting of a Monk, Bard, Sorcerer, and Cleric. They destroyed it.

The Bard Perceived the behir and avoided a surprise round but the rest of the party was still stuck on a small cliffside. The behir immediately landed a crit on the constrict to bloody the Bard, but was promptly stunned by the Monk and then summarily torn apart by the rest of the party as they arrived. It got to the point that the party kind of felt sorry for killing this disabled beast, until it got off one last-gasp lightning breath before dying to a cantrip.

My impression was that, unless the behir gets quite lucky, it simply doesn't have the stats to be anything more than a bit of a glass cannon by itself. It'll punch hard enough to scare an on-par party but probably not enough to seriously endanger them. Fun monster to mix things up with though.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Not possible actually without first altering the Behir, because the MM Behir's Multiattack does not include Swallow.

Swallow is a separate action which includes a bite attack. It's not part of the bite itself.

Edit: oh yeah, Eldariel already said that.

While this is absolutely true, the Behir is a constrictor snake like creature, and can still use it's Constrict attack for damage, even when grappling another creature, the Behir just can't have more than one medium creature grappled.

I recommend DMs represent the Behir not as a Huge square block on the board, that representation is only appropriate for when the Behir is tightly coiled.

The Behir should, in my view, be represented as a line, that can, coil and stretch and climb, and wrap around stalactites and stalagmites and and be able launch a Constrict attack from any part of it's body.

A Behir is not a TPK threat for an 11th level party, it shouldn't even try to be one. A well played Behir should kill one PC or NPC, though.

That has always been the role of the Behir: the creature is a toll collector of the subterranean realms..it will take a pack Donkey or Hierling as it's toll, or a PC by force if the party won't negotiate.

Lightning Breath isn't intended to be used as an A.o.E.
"Since the behir is immune to electricity, it can use its breath weapon on someone caught in its coils." -Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth - 1982

This bit of tactical advice is still effective today.
The ideal attack sequence for a Behir, should look like the following:

Round 1: Behir has Surprised a PC. (Since it is a huge line it can select a good target). Behir Constricts it's prey for 34 damage..prey is now Grappled and Restrained. Behir then Bites for 22 damage.

Round 2: Behir now uses Lightning Breath on the Restrained PC. Depending upon initiative, the prey may not even have been able to act yet. The Restrained Condition the PC is subjected to, of course comes with Disadvantage on Dexterity Saving Throws.

Even Monks and Rogues have an approximately 51% chance of failing the Saving Throw, with Disadvantage. A PC with a +4 bonus to Dexterity saving throws is nearly 80% likely to fail the saving throw.

A PC that has failed the Lightning Breath saving throw has taken 122 points of damage, assuming average damage. An Evasion-less PC has taken 89 points of damage, even if they made the saving throws.

Round 3: The Behir Swallows the still Grappled and Restrained PC, (remember this is the ideal scenario...YMMV🃏).....this Bite adds another 22 points of damage.


A completely unlucky PC has taken 144 points of damage and is Swallowed.
A somewhat unlucky PC has taken 111 points of damage and is Swallowed.
A somewhat unlucky Rogue or Monk PC has taken 78 points of damage and is Swallowed.

The Behir should be moving the entire time, and likely will know every bolt hole and defensive position...thus the Behir is likely to have it's own cover bonuses applied to AC and Saving Throws.

After Round 3, the Behir should, just Dash away and break off contact with the Adventuring Party.... the 21 points of acid damage will finish off the swallowed PC.

Behir's are cunning enough, to use the release of swallowed PCs, (or their remains 😈), as bargaining chips. I typically rule that fatal acid damage rules out using Raise Dead from working.

This is how I envision a Behir's dream encounter would precede. What am I missing? (Outside Absorb Elements damage reductions).

[Dork_Forge]

While this is absolutely true, the Behir is a constrictor snake like creature, and can still use it's Constrict attack for damage, even when grappling another creature, the Behir just can't have more than one medium creature grappled.

I recommend DMs represent the Behir not as a Huge square block on the board, that representation is only appropriate for when the Behir is tightly coiled.

The Behir should, in my view, be represented as a line, that can, coil and stretch and climb, and wrap around stalactites and stalagmites and and be able launch a Constrict attack from any part of it's body.

A Behir is not a TPK threat for an 11th level party, it shouldn't even try to be one. A well played Behir should kill one PC or NPC, though.

That has always been the role of the Behir: the creature is a toll collector of the subterranean realms..it will take a pack Donkey or Hierling as it's toll, or a PC by force if the party won't negotiate.

Lightning Breath isn't intended to be used as an A.o.E.
"Since the behir is immune to electricity, it can use its breath weapon on someone caught in its coils." -Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth - 1982

This bit of tactical advice is still effective today.
The ideal attack sequence for a Behir, should look like the following:

Round 1: Behir has Surprised a PC. (Since it is a huge line it can select a good target). Behir Constricts it's prey for 34 damage..prey is now Grappled and Restrained. Behir then Bites for 22 damage.

Round 2: Behir now uses Lightning Breath on the Restrained PC. Depending upon initiative, the prey may not even have been able to act yet. The Restrained Condition the PC is subjected to, of course comes with Disadvantage on Dexterity Saving Throws.

Even Monks and Rogues have an approximately 51% chance of failing the Saving Throw, with Disadvantage. A PC with a +4 bonus to Dexterity saving throws is nearly 80% likely to fail the saving throw.

A PC that has failed the Lightning Breath saving throw has taken 122 points of damage, assuming average damage. An Evasion-less PC has taken 89 points of damage, even if they made the saving throw.

Round 3: The Behir Swallows the still Grappled and Restrained PC, (remember this is the ideal scenario...YMMV🃏).....this Bite adds another 22 points of damage.


A completely unlucky PC has taken 144 points of damage and is Swallowed.
A somewhat unlucky PC has taken 111 points of damage and is Swallowed.
A somewhat unlucky Rogue or Monk PC has taken 78 points of damage and is Swallowed.

The Behir should be moving the entire time, and likely will know every bolt hole and defensive position...thus the Behir is likely to have it's own cover bonuses applied to AC and Saving Throw.

After Round 3, the Behir should, likely, just Dash away and break off contact with the Adventuring Party.... the 21 points of acid damage will finish off the swallows PC.

Behir's are cunning enough, to use the release of swallowed PCs, (or their remains 😈), as bargaining chips. I typically rule that fatal acid damage rules out using Raise Dead from working.

This is how I envision a Behir's dream encounter would precede. What am I missing? (Outside Absorb Elements damage reductions).

Now that would be pretty devastating, I think the core difference is philsophy of play here. If you targeted a single PC and initiaitive went well, then this could be devastating, especially if said PC was a primary heal/support role.

However whilst such tactics make sense, whichever player that is could very well feel targeted or that the encounter was 'unfair.' So it ultimately comes down to your table and your players.

That said I'm probably going to send two Behirs at one of my parties doing this exact tactic...

[LudicSavant]

This is how I envision a Behir's dream encounter would precede. What am I missing? (Outside Absorb Elements damage reductions).

144 damage spread over 3 rounds just isn't that much for "dream encounter" levels of luck. That's not going to be devastating anyone (barring major shortcomings on the side of Team PC). After all, PCs are doing their own things during that time. They do damage, heal, CC, buff, push creatures around (breaking grapples), etc etc.

A lone Behir might (emphasis on might) be able to take someone to zero, but it doesn't really have the action economy to finish people off before teammates can intervene.

For comparison, a CR 12 Archmage could dump more damage than that on every single party member in the same time period with upcast 60' Cones of Cold each round.

And of course, every step of that Behir's 3 round plan is very prone to being interrupted by PC action. For example:


After Round 3, the Behir should, just Dash away and break off contact with the Adventuring Party.... the 21 points of acid damage will finish off the swallowed PC.

This is a Behir that engaged in melee 2 rounds ago -- it's probably going to be surrounded by melee characters, injured, and/or CCed by then, and it doesn't have any particularly good tools for disengaging. It has to take the full brunt of OAs and the like, and mobile PCs will just chase it down anywho.

[Eldariel]

This is how I envision a Behir's dream encounter would precede. What am I missing? (Outside Absorb Elements damage reductions).

I mostly agree with how to run it though I do think it's worth it to take the opportunity to blast with Lightning Breath on round 1 if the party is properly clumped and it gets the drop on them (no reaction - no Absorb Elements or Shield Master) and I would prioritise Swallow over Constrict + Bite. That said, there are a couple of challenges it faces:
- Its attacks are "only" +10 so they're only 50%ish to hit vs. highish AC types. While that's a good chance, there's a very real chance of one or even two misses. Which it really can't afford.

- Its saves (especially mental) are anemic particularly for a CR11 creature. One of our parties (of 5; Scout, Knowledge Cleric, Diviner, Open Hand Monk & Blade Bard) fought a what amounts to a breathless Behir on level 5 (DM fluffed it as a young one). It swallowed one character (the Cleric) on surprise round and tried to make a run for it...but failed the save on Alert Diviner's Hypnotic Pattern and then the party all took a round to ready actions to hit it (the Hypnotic Patterner just readied a Light Crossbow shot of course and IIRC the Blade tried to Bestow Curse it for bonus damage but failed) followed by a full turn of smacking it, over the course of which it failed another save vs. the Monk's Stunning Fist and then one more. Two more rounds of beating and it was down. So over the course of those 5 turns it lived, it got to take one action, and it used it well with the Swallow removing an enemy (indeed, the Cleric went down to acids before we got them out but ultimately didn't quite die in time; that was quite lucky, I think one death save away). Though in another instance of the same campaign, it did indeed manage to snag a PC and get out (DM told us afterwards) - the difference was the presence and absence of solid CC.

- Many PCs do have means to get out of grapple + bite. This is mostly stuff like Misty Step (or sheer Acrobatics/Athletics on frontliners), which means it has to either chase down or split its damage making it hard to focus a single target down. Even Swallow can be gotten out of with Dimension Door or the like.

Overall, its inability to take save-or-X effects thrown at its face is its biggest weakness. It has no save proficiencies and all its mentals are average or just plain poor in the case of Intelligence (though that's a bit harder to punish outside Illusions; Phantasmal Force is the big one but it of course takes DM adjudication).

[MaxWilson]

While this is absolutely true, the Behir is a constrictor snake like creature, and can still use it's Constrict attack for damage, even when grappling another creature, the Behir just can't have more than one medium creature grappled.

I recommend DMs represent the Behir not as a Huge square block on the board, that representation is only appropriate for when the Behir is tightly coiled.

The Behir should, in my view, be represented as a line, that can, coil and stretch and climb, and wrap around stalactites and stalagmites and and be able launch a Constrict attack from any part of it's body.

A Behir is not a TPK threat for an 11th level party, it shouldn't even try to be one. A well played Behir should kill one PC or NPC, though.

That has always been the role of the Behir: the creature is a toll collector of the subterranean realms..it will take a pack Donkey or Hierling as it's toll, or a PC by force if the party won't negotiate.

Lightning Breath isn't intended to be used as an A.o.E.
"Since the behir is immune to electricity, it can use its breath weapon on someone caught in its coils." -Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth - 1982

This bit of tactical advice is still effective today.
The ideal attack sequence for a Behir, should look like the following:

Round 1: Behir has Surprised a PC. (Since it is a huge line it can select a good target). Behir Constricts it's prey for 34 damage..prey is now Grappled and Restrained. Behir then Bites for 22 damage.

Round 2: Behir now uses Lightning Breath on the Restrained PC. Depending upon initiative, the prey may not even have been able to act yet. The Restrained Condition the PC is subjected to, of course comes with Disadvantage on Dexterity Saving Throws.

Even Monks and Rogues have an approximately 51% chance of failing the Saving Throw, with Disadvantage. A PC with a +4 bonus to Dexterity saving throws is nearly 80% likely to fail the saving throw.

A PC that has failed the Lightning Breath saving throw has taken 122 points of damage, assuming average damage. An Evasion-less PC has taken 89 points of damage, even if they made the saving throws.

Round 3: The Behir Swallows the still Grappled and Restrained PC, (remember this is the ideal scenario...YMMV🃏).....this Bite adds another 22 points of damage.


A completely unlucky PC has taken 144 points of damage and is Swallowed.
A somewhat unlucky PC has taken 111 points of damage and is Swallowed.
A somewhat unlucky Rogue or Monk PC has taken 78 points of damage and is Swallowed.

The Behir should be moving the entire time, and likely will know every bolt hole and defensive position...thus the Behir is likely to have it's own cover bonuses applied to AC and Saving Throws.

After Round 3, the Behir should, just Dash away and break off contact with the Adventuring Party.... the 21 points of acid damage will finish off the swallowed PC.

Behir's are cunning enough, to use the release of swallowed PCs, (or their remains 😈), as bargaining chips. I typically rule that fatal acid damage rules out using Raise Dead from working.

This is how I envision a Behir's dream encounter would precede. What am I missing? (Outside Absorb Elements damage reductions).

If you're playing a Behir by strict-and-stupid RAW, you probably want to Swallow the PC before breathing lightning on it, so you can get more acid damage in less time.

I still don't think the Behir has a good chance of pulling this off against an 11th level party, but I still like this tactic much better than attempting a TPK because it feels like something a Behir would actually do: securing a meal and then leaving. I tend to play dragons similarly.

However, dragons have much higher movement and a much better chance of actually getting away. I think the Behir's chances of getting away with this depend entirely upon how reluctant the PCs are to chase after the Behir into the darkness, which means it's dependent on campaign style and how willing the DM has been in the past to let the players get themselves in over their heads against waaaay too many monsters or deadly traps.

Anyway, sounds like a fun encounter if you do it this way.

[LudicSavant]

I still don't think the Behir has a good chance of pulling this off against an 11th level party

I agree.

To elaborate on my previous answer, there's a lot of things that can interrupt every step of this Behir's plan. It could get detected and lose surprise (or the players could just be immune to surprise because Alert or Sentinel Shield or whatever). It could miss attacks (or otherwise have those attacks countered). A player could make a save. It could have its grapple broken (the PCs have two rounds to do it). A player could burst or yo-yo heal, or grant their ally some kind of strong protection (like a Nature Cleric using a Reaction to give Resistance to damage, or a Redemption Paladin redirecting damage, or Warding Bond, or the like). It could straight up die. It could be less mobile than the PCs. It could be surrounded and CCed and unable to retreat. It could just fail to do enough damage to kill a PC through their temp HP, mitigation abilities, etc. All kinds of stuff.

3 rounds is a lot of time, and level 11 PCs have access to an awful lot of tools.

[MaxWilson]

I agree.

To elaborate on my previous answer, there's a lot of things that can interrupt every step of this Behir's plan. It could get detected and lose surprise (or the players could just be immune to surprise because Alert or Sentinel Shield or whatever). It could miss attacks (or otherwise have those attacks countered). A player could make a save. It could have its grapple broken (the PCs have two rounds to do it). A player could burst or yo-yo heal, or grant their ally some kind of strong protection (like a Nature Cleric using a Reaction to give Resistance to damage, or a Redemption Paladin redirecting damage, or Warding Bond, or the like). It could straight up die. It could be less mobile than the PCs. It could be surrounded and CCed and unable to retreat. It could just fail to do enough damage to kill a PC through their temp HP, mitigation abilities, etc. All kinds of stuff.

3 rounds is a lot of time, and level 11 PCs have access to an awful lot of tools.

I agree with everything you say here. At the same time, not all players play the same way, and there's lots of ways for even experienced players who've been playing for decades to mess things up. So, I think it would still be a fun encounter for most play groups**. I just wouldn't bet on the Behir surviving. :)

** For certain play groups, it will be a cake walk instead, and kind of boring, but if you're dealing with one of those play groups as a DM, you'll already know it. The OP's player are clearly not one of those play groups.

[Thunderous Mojo]

A lone Behir might (emphasis on might) be able to take someone to zero, but it doesn't really have the action economy to finish people off before teammates can intervene..

Agreed...as I stated previously...this is an ideal situation, and not likely to happen as written. Dork Forge's response indicates to me, that many games wouldn't even try to use the tactics described, for fear that the assault would be effective.

Ludic you used multiple Behirs in your game, how did you use the creatures?


I mostly agree with how to run it though I do think it's worth it to take the opportunity to blast with Lightning Breath on round 1 if the party is properly clumped and it gets the drop on them (no reaction - no Absorb Elements or Shield Master) and I would prioritise Swallow over Constrict + Bite. That said, there are a couple of challenges it faces:..........

I agree. Unless the terrain somehow precludes Hypnotic Pattern or other mental attacks from functioning...perhaps Behir sized "snake bolt holes" to hide it's eyes....the Behir can easily be short circuited.

The preset Grapple DCs for creatures are too low in my mind. A Behir should have a Grapple DC of 18 up to DC 24 if you want to challenge Tier 3 PCs with Expertise in Athletics with a lone Behir.


If you're playing a Behir by strict-and-stupid RAW, you probably want to Swallow the PC before breathing lightning on it, so you can get more acid damage in less time.


Agreed! My modification for the Behir is I increase the movement to 60'/40' climb, remove the recharge on Lightning Breath, (it can breath every round if it so chooses), increase the grapple DC to 18, increase Stealth to +11, and allow Swallow to substitute for Bite in the Behir's Multiattack ability.

The Behir in AD&D,(either 1e or 2e), could Swallow a creature automatically with a good dice roll. The Action Economy hang up the RAW 5e Behir has cuts against the grain of the original creature.

Long Live Ludd the Behir! The first monstrous NPCs, that I as a young child DM, felt that I really nailed the acting performance....and of course swallowed a PC. 🤫

[Dork_Forge]

Agreed...as I stated previously...this is an ideal situation, and not likely to happen as written. Dork Forge's response indicates to me, that many games wouldn't even try to use the tactics described, for fear that the assault would be effective.


Not just about it succeeding (though it should be noted that the dice gods can turn the feeblest of encounters in to TPKs), but about a player feeling targeted, particularly if there's no known reason. This is definitely a table thing, but it's certainly possible and something I have experienced as a reaction whilst DMing.

Incidentally I'll be using 2 (maybe 3) Behirs against my part of 13th level PCs (more powerful than that due to magic items and boons) with at least the following changes: 18AC, 180HPand maybe making the bite 4d10. The party is incredibly hearty so I'm not really worried about killing them.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Not just about it succeeding (though it should be noted that the dice gods can turn the feeblest of encounters in to TPKs), but about a player feeling targeted, particularly if there's no known reason. This is definitely a table thing, but it's certainly possible and something I have experienced as a reaction whilst DMing..

I can see that. To assuage my guilt, as a "killer DM", I try to leave Exploration Tier clues to forewarn the group. If the players ignore, or lack the resources, or will to investigate the clues...then some or all of the PCs may find themselves in Thunderdome:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EncnPexRrOo

[Chronos]

OK, let's assume an iconic party of four: Evoker wizard, life cleric, thief rogue, and champion fighter, core-only. The fighter and the cleric are probably the toughest, so they're in the front, while the wizard and the rogue are in the back. They round a corner and encounter a behir in front of them, with nobody surprised.

Now, let's say that the behir's initiative is better than the wizard's (approximately a 50% chance), and the cleric probably doesn't have any save-or-incapacitate spells that'll work, so it'll get to act before it faces any such spells (the other three might do some damage to it, if they won initiative, but they won't do enough to put it down immediately). It chooses to use its breath weapon for its first action, and can probably hit two PCs. If we assume that it doesn't know and can't figure out anything about the PCs (which it might; it has enough Int that it might know to prioritize the guy in the dress), it's probably going to pick one of the two front-liners and one of the two back-liners, because they're the easiest ones to line up from its position. 1 in 4 chance, then, that the two PCs it breathes on are the cleric and the wizard. And now, suppose that it rolls a bit above average on the breath, say 1-sigma high (16% chance), and both fail their unproficient saves (about 50%): Its breath just reduced both the cleric and the wizard to 0.

At this point, we've got a behir who's taken one fighter-round, one rogue-round, and maybe one cleric-round worth of damage, vs. one fighter and one rogue. Nobody's going to Healing Word either of the spellcasters back up, because nobody left standing has Healing Word. The rogue might Fast Hands a medikit to stabilize them, but they're still out of the fight. If the party has potions, then one of the mundanes might pour one down a spellcaster's throat, but then the behir can just bite that spellcaster and constrict the rogue next round, and we're back to both spellcasters being down, plus now the rogue is grappled. No more sneak attacks, no more spells, no saves at all needed for the behir. This is not a fight that looks good for the party. And yes, it took some luck on the behir's part to get to this point, but not all that much: There was about a 1% chance of this exact situation playing out. 1% chance of taking out all of the magic in a party on the first round is extremely high, for a "medium" encounter. And there's also the possibility for other encounters, that don't match this exact profile but still go just as bad or worse for the party, so really, the chance is greater than 1%.

[PhoenixPhyre]

By the numbers, a behir is a defensive CR 8 and an offensive CR 13. Average calculated CR is 10.5.

Thus, a reasonably successful party at level 8 is expected to take ~3 rounds to kill it, and it can (if it focus fires and gets lucky), on average, take down a "weak" level 13 character in one round. All assuming baseline parties.

A level 11 baseline party is expected to be able to handle 6 of them (in 6 separate fights with 2 short rests) with no significant risk of being downed. That matches my experience--the party was level 9-ish (but not baseline) and took it down in 2 rounds with no significant damage done to themselves. Of course I'm not the most tactical DM, nor were conditions optimal for either side. But it doesn't feel too far off to me. Sure, it can hurt if they all fail their saves. But a level 11 party has lots of ways to not fail their saves (or to mitigate the damage).

[MaxWilson]

OK, let's assume an iconic party of four: Evoker wizard, life cleric, thief rogue, and champion fighter, core-only. The fighter and the cleric are probably the toughest, so they're in the front, while the wizard and the rogue are in the back.

Side note: I have generally found that it is a bad idea to make the healer tank, no matter how relatively-tough they are. It puts a lot of pressure on the party to save them, which is the exact opposite of what you want the healer to be doing. The healer's job is to make combat completely non-stressful because the worst that can happen (death) is both unlikely and trivially reversed. Making the healer tank flips that dynamic on its head.


If we assume that it doesn't know and can't figure out anything about the PCs (which it might; it has enough Int that it might know to prioritize the guy in the dress)

One of the many reasons I believe wizards should acquire armor proficiency somehow (and wear a greatsword even if they aren't proficient in it). Misdirection is powerful.

[da newt]

A quasi philosophical question for the DMs out there - when playing a monster/creature with any intelligence how do you justify the single predator deciding it's a good idea to attack the party of well armed humanoids?

In this case, a Behir (INT 7) that decides to ambush a party of lvl 11 PCs has most likely just signed it's death warrant - with decision making like that, how does the species last long enough to breed?

[Dork_Forge]

A quasi philosophical question for the DMs out there - when playing a monster/creature with any intelligence how do you justify the single predator deciding it's a good idea to attack the party of well armed humanoids?

In this case, a Behir (INT 7) that decides to ambush a party of lvl 11 PCs has most likely just signed it's death warrant - with decision making like that, how does the species last long enough to breed?

Most armed people aren't adventurers of notable power, PCs are meant to be the exception not the standard.

[Kuulvheysoon]

A quasi philosophical question for the DMs out there - when playing a monster/creature with any intelligence how do you justify the single predator deciding it's a good idea to attack the party of well armed humanoids?

In this case, a Behir (INT 7) that decides to ambush a party of lvl 11 PCs has most likely just signed it's death warrant - with decision making like that, how does the species last long enough to breed?

Well, a big thing to consider is that 11th level PCs are extremely rare (unless you're playing in the Forgotten Realms). 95% of the "heavily armored" humanoids that pass through its territory are likely in the CR 0-4 range.

[ProsecutorGodot]

A quasi philosophical question for the DMs out there - when playing a monster/creature with any intelligence how do you justify the single predator deciding it's a good idea to attack the party of well armed humanoids?

In this case, a Behir (INT 7) that decides to ambush a party of lvl 11 PCs has most likely just signed it's death warrant - with decision making like that, how does the species last long enough to breed?

Adventurers are a minority and typically not the first thing a monster finds, they do have a life before The PC's show up.

To add to that, just because an Adventurer is very likely to look about as well armed as a regiment of soldiers or guards, they're not even close to comparable in terms of capability. A party of adventurers at level 11 is poised to handle a Behir, several a day even. A party of the same size of Guards (which are well armed and capable by most standards) is barely a registerable threat. I'm not sure even Veteran's would fair all that well and they're pretty much the top of non-pc fighting man that can be mustered in considerable numbers.

A lot of the times adventures are written where the party is tasked with hunting down some bloodthirsty beast that's been terrorizing or hunting the citizens in the area, they're let in on information that even soldiers sent to the area have been slain. From the creatures perspective, the Adventurers don't appear all that different and only after engaging them expecting a simple meal like its previous engagements will it quickly realize the mistake it has made. It's not really a problem with the creatures decision making, unless we assume that the Behir (or equivalent monster) is somehow able to tell that these Adventurers are PC's (powerful spongy creatures that defy any common sense the creature had about how durable a humanoid can be) and not a typical armed humanoid, something that is almost always food for them.

[MaxWilson]

Well, a big thing to consider is that 11th level PCs are extremely rare (unless you're playing in the Forgotten Realms). 95% of the "heavily armored" humanoids that pass through its territory are likely in the CR 0-4 range.

Yeah, but that just shifts the motivation question slightly into "why doesn't the monster break contact and withdraw after the first round of combat when it becomes obvious that these humanoids bite back way harder than the norm?"

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah, but that just shifts the motivation question slightly into "why doesn't the monster break contact and withdraw after the first round of combat when it becomes obvious that these humanoids bite back way harder than the norm?"

In part, because it knows it generally can't. Especially since I'd be willing to bet that the most common (which isnt' very common, but...) isn't "party and behir meet out in the wasteland/cavern some random place" but "party is hunting behir (or other monsters) near the behir's lair". It doesn't really have a good way to run, nor does it have a good place to run to.

And that explains why it's attacking--it's either hungry, or they're encroaching on its lair. Or (usually) both.

[MaxWilson]

In part, because it knows it generally can't. Especially since I'd be willing to bet that the most common (which isnt' very common, but...) isn't "party and behir meet out in the wasteland/cavern some random place" but "party is hunting behir (or other monsters) near the behir's lair". It doesn't really have a good way to run, nor does it have a good place to run to.

And that explains why it's attacking--it's either hungry, or they're encroaching on its lair. Or (usually) both.

Hungry isn't worth dying for.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I mean, they're smart enough for a sunken cost fallacy?

EDIT: Also worth thinking about - we talk about 3 rounds like it's such a long time, and for 5E combat, it can be. But 3 rounds is 18 seconds. That's hardly long enough for the behir to realize quite how outclassed they are and flee before they're turned into sashimi.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Hungry isn't worth dying for.

Possibly if it not attacking your party (and killing at least one member to eat) would mean starving to death if they flee. This would be an exceptionally rare instance, but it is possible. I think then far more likely reason is that it's territorial, Behir are mentioned specifically to be exceptionally territorial.

They're also mentioned to engage in some risk to defend their territory (attacking a dragon) but have the self preservation to understand when they're in over their head.

So for a Behir specifically, fighting to the death is pretty far outside of their normal behavior but engaging with above average threats until they realize they're risking death is not. They're even willing to up and abandon their lair if a Dragon they can't kill nests nearby, so a party managing to near mortally wound a Behir should actually be a sufficient win condition if the quest is "get this Behir away from here".

[LudicSavant]

Ludic you used multiple Behirs in your game, how did you use the creatures? The tier 2 PCs stumbled upon a pair of Behir siblings searching for a way to break into a sealed mummy dragon's lair (since Behirs have a canonical hate-on for dragons). A lair that, of course, was the PCs' main objective. The Behirs immediately decided that they must be the dragon's minions (because the Fighter happened to be a member of a desert tribe that worshiped a rain-giving Blue Dragon, and they could smell it! Mind, an entirely different dragon, but the Behir aren't picky about which dragons they hate).

I don't recall the specifics of how the fight played out -- I remember that the party used Banishment on one, and that the Warlock shoved the other around with Eldritch Blast to stop its grappling and climbing. I also recall the Battle Master negating the lightning breath with Shield Master. They had several more encounters that day.


And that explains why it's attacking--it's either hungry, or they're encroaching on its lair. Or (usually) both.

In my case, the Behirs were hunting dragon! And dragon-worshiping humans that smell of dragon. :smallbiggrin:

Quoth the Monster Manual: "the behir is compelled to kill the dragon or drive it off."


OK, let's assume an iconic party of four: Evoker wizard, life cleric, thief rogue, and champion fighter, core-only. The fighter and the cleric are probably the toughest, so they're in the front, while the wizard and the rogue are in the back. They round a corner and encounter a behir in front of them, with nobody surprised.

Okay, Evoker Wizard, Life Cleric, Thief Rogue, Champion Fighter, core only. Sounds good!

What doesn't seem so good is that you don't seem to have these characters using the tools available to them to succeed.


the cleric probably doesn't have any save-or-incapacitate spells that'll work
Why wouldn't they? Spells like Banishment are on the Cleric's spell list, and the Behir has poor saves.


And now, suppose that it rolls a bit above average on the breath, say 1-sigma high (16% chance), and both fail their unproficient saves (about 50%): Its breath just reduced both the cleric and the wizard to 0.

There are numerous tools that can reduce the chances of this, or eliminate it outright. For example, since the Life Cleric seems to be the sole healer in your group, they might be inclined to put a Death Ward on themselves. They might also add on Aid and temp HP.


Nobody's going to Healing Word either of the spellcasters back up, because nobody left standing has Healing Word.
They don't need Healing Word. Heck, Healing Word wouldn't even be my preferred way of popping people up in a Thief/Evoker/Life/Champion party composition.

The Wizard's familiar can fly in with a cheap healing potion. The Thief Rogue can use the Healer feat (which they should absolutely have at a level where they have 3-4 feats/ASIs and are in a party where there's only one person capable of reviving).


If the party has potions, then one of the mundanes might pour one down a spellcaster's throat, but then the behir can just bite that spellcaster and constrict the rogue next round

This is the suboptimal way of popping them up, but it'll still work -- it's eating the Behir's actions faster than it's eating the PCs' actions. Especially since whoever got popped up with a potion might get to act before the Behir does. The Life Cleric can do a big burst heal combo (unlike many Clerics, they have legitimately good in-combat healing). Both the Life Cleric *and* the Wizard can help CC it or kill it.

[Talakeal]

Man, reading all of these cool behir tactics really makes me wish I had players who didn’t cry foul at everything.

/pityparty

[LudicSavant]

OK, let's assume an iconic party of four: Evoker wizard, life cleric, thief rogue, and champion fighter, core-only. The fighter and the cleric are probably the toughest, so they're in the front, while the wizard and the rogue are in the back. They round a corner and encounter a behir in front of them, with nobody surprised.

Now, let's say that the behir's initiative is better than the wizard's (approximately a 50% chance), and the cleric probably doesn't have any save-or-incapacitate spells that'll work, so it'll get to act before it faces any such spells (the other three might do some damage to it, if they won initiative, but they won't do enough to put it down immediately). It chooses to use its breath weapon for its first action, and can probably hit two PCs. If we assume that it doesn't know and can't figure out anything about the PCs (which it might; it has enough Int that it might know to prioritize the guy in the dress), it's probably going to pick one of the two front-liners and one of the two back-liners, because they're the easiest ones to line up from its position. 1 in 4 chance, then, that the two PCs it breathes on are the cleric and the wizard. And now, suppose that it rolls a bit above average on the breath, say 1-sigma high (16% chance), and both fail their unproficient saves (about 50%): Its breath just reduced both the cleric and the wizard to 0.

At this point, we've got a behir who's taken one fighter-round, one rogue-round, and maybe one cleric-round worth of damage, vs. one fighter and one rogue. Nobody's going to Healing Word either of the spellcasters back up, because nobody left standing has Healing Word. The rogue might Fast Hands a medikit to stabilize them, but they're still out of the fight. If the party has potions, then one of the mundanes might pour one down a spellcaster's throat, but then the behir can just bite that spellcaster and constrict the rogue next round, and we're back to both spellcasters being down, plus now the rogue is grappled. No more sneak attacks, no more spells, no saves at all needed for the behir. This is not a fight that looks good for the party. And yes, it took some luck on the behir's part to get to this point, but not all that much: There was about a 1% chance of this exact situation playing out. 1% chance of taking out all of the magic in a party on the first round is extremely high, for a "medium" encounter. And there's also the possibility for other encounters, that don't match this exact profile but still go just as bad or worse for the party, so really, the chance is greater than 1%.

So say the characters look something like this:

Evoker:
- VHuman, Int, Int, Res:Con
- 20 Int / 16 Con / 16 Dex.
- Owl familiar.
- Casts Mage Armor at the start of the adventure.
- Always prepares Shield, Feather Fall, and at least one teleportation ability (aka "does not forget to wear their seat belt").

Life Cleric: The classic core-only HDLC ("Hill Dwarf Life Cleric") setup.
- Hill Dwarf, Wis, Res:Con
- 18 Wis / 18 Con
- Casts Death Ward on themselves at the start of the adventure.

Champion:
- VHuman, GWM, Str, Str, Sentinel
- 20 Str / 16 Con / 14 Wis
Fighting Style: Defense / GWF

Thief:
- VHuman, Healer, Dex, Dex, Inspiring Leader
- 20 Dex / 16 Con / 14 Cha
- Inspiring Leader provides 13 temp hp to the whole party each short rest. Healer can be used as a bonus action with Fast Hands, and heals an average of 18.5 hp as a bonus action.
- The low number of attacks vs Uncanny Dodge and the Dex-based breath vs Evasion means the Behir will have trouble damaging this one.

Now the first thing about this setup is that the Behir cannot come even close to one-shotting the Life Cleric, because they have 126 hit points and a Death Ward. They might even have more hit points than that if they cast Aid. Meanwhile the Behir's breath weapon has a <1% chance (https://anydice.com/program/66c) of doing 90+ damage (even less if you count the chance of succeeding on the save), and it caps out at a (vanishingly unlikely) 120 damage.

And if the Life Cleric gets beat on enough to trigger their Death Ward, they can yawn and Channel Divinity for 55 healing. And still have a bonus action spell that turn, which can totally be something like Blessed Healer + Disciple of Life enhanced Mass Healing Word or something. They can do that multiple times per short rest.

The second thing is that the Champion isn't even going to let the Behir engage with other people for free, because of Sentinel.

The third thing is that if anyone actually goes down, they can pop up. And I don't mean pop up a little bit, I mean pop up so hard that the Behir can't take them down again. The Life Cleric has a big burst heal. The Rogue can heal 18.5 as a bonus action. Even the familiar can feed people potions. And unlike the Behir's attacks, healing doesn't miss.

The fourth thing is that two of these characters (the Evoker and the Cleric) can basically just save-or-lose the Behir, and that the Behir has poor saves. Or the Wizard could just say "you know, I don't even want you to have a save" and just cast Wall of Force.

The fifth thing is that the damage output is not going to allow the Behir to live for many turns, nor can it really retreat (because the Champion has Sentinel, the Rogue has sneak attack OAs and a bonus action dash and Second Story Work, and the Cleric and Wizard have strong CC).

The Behir is gonna get steamrolled.

It's not like these PCs are optimized (heck, they are core only and have a Champion) or doing anything special. A lone Behir just won't be that scary to competently-put-together level 11 PCs.

[MrStabby]

+7 stealth: Not good enough to reliably get past decent anti-surprise tools at this level (it's got less than even chances of getting past a familiar's eyes, let alone better detectors).
Swallow: Casters usually have a way out of this sort of thing (like Freedom of Movement, Dimension Door, damage, etc), whereas martials can usually deal 30 damage in a turn at this level.
Lightning Breath: It's big damage (it's a little more than a CR 10 dragon's breath!), but it's a small area lightning-based dex-based AoE, and has to roll to recharge, and takes its entire action (so players can pop-up unless it somehow downs all of 'em).
Climbing: Just the usual "guys, I keep telling you to invest in mobility/range!"

+7 stealth is going to be enough to make it likely that at least one person in the party is going to be surprised if the Behir ambushes the party. If it is in the dark and the party are relying on darkvision then this is even higher.

Casters and swallow - some of this will depend on whether a DM rules you can breathe inside a Behir's stomach to allow verbal components. That said, other common tools like misty step are out. Even if a wizard does dimension door, that is a win for the Behir - costing a 4th level spell slot and an action is still applying pressure. And the thing about spell slots, is they get used up through the day; we don't have to assume that this is the first encounter of the day and the party still has every resource they started with.

I see the Behir working to try and separate the party. Hit and run from an ambush position - those not surprised can try and chase down. Those not surprised and with high mobility might close the gap. Those not surprised, with high mobility and can see in the dark get to take on the Behir.

A party can certainly do well, but the Behir's best chance is to make such a response need many moving parts - for example if the fighter is going to chase down the Behir with the help of a fly spell from the wizard then the wizard needs to have not gone down from the breath weapon. And the cleric is held up healing them. Taking a turn or two to follow means that the actual number of party members dashing up the walls after the Behir are small.

A DM pushing it can make this feel very close and/or expend an inordinate amount of party resources.

[Chronos]

Quoth LudicSavant:

So say the characters look something like this:
I should have also specified that the characters weren't using any optional rules, so no variant humans, no Inspiring Leader, no Healer.

The spells you have prepared for the wizard are perfectly reasonable, but none of them will protect them in any way from the lightning breath.

Death Ward and Aid, however, are fair points, and both will make the cleric significantly harder to take down (and if the cleric stays up, it makes it much easier to keep everyone else up, too). I haven't played a cleric since 3rd edition, so I hadn't internalized just how much those two spells have changed since then.

[da newt]

Ludic - Are you interpreting the thief's Fast Hands ability that allows a bonus action 'Use an Object action' supersedes the specific wording of the Healer Feat's "As an action, you can spend one use of a healer's kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6 + 4 hit points to it, plus additional hit points equal to the creature's maximum number of Hit Dice." in order to create a once per short rest per recipient BA heal?

I always thought specific overrules general and the feat provides a specific Action cost?

[LudicSavant]

I should have also specified that the characters weren't using any optional rules, so no variant humans, no Inspiring Leader, no Healer. Then the characters just invest in Con bumps instead of feats, and take other useful races.

It's not as good (it hits the poor Champion hardest, and they were already the weak link), but it's still going to make the fight one-sided in favor of Team PCs.

There is nothing a Behir can really do to deal with the Life Cleric or familiar-dropped potions. And either of the casters can disable it in one round if they actually feel like it.


Ludic - Are you interpreting the thief's Fast Hands ability that allows a bonus action 'Use an Object action' supersedes the specific wording of the Healer Feat's "As an action, you can spend one use of a healer's kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6 + 4 hit points to it, plus additional hit points equal to the creature's maximum number of Hit Dice." in order to create a once per short rest per recipient BA heal?

I always thought specific overrules general and the feat provides a specific Action cost?

Fast Hands works on Healer. (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/525714673614602241)

The rule is that if a non-magic item takes an Action to use, it's the Use an Object Action. If it's the Use an Object action, it takes a bonus action to use for a Thief. Fast Hands is the specific part that overrules the general part.

Also, Healer has unlimited yo-yo heals, and 1/short rest/character bigger heal.

It's generally one of the best feats a core Thief Rogue can take in this sort of party composition.


Casters and swallow - some of this will depend on whether a DM rules you can breathe inside a Behir's stomach to allow verbal components. That said, other common tools like misty step are out.

Misty Step is in fact not out -- the Behir has to grapple on one round, then swallow on another. If you prepared it, you can Misty Step after the first round, before you get swallowed.

Several things need to go wrong in order for the Behir to have swallowed anyone at all, it's a very interruptible move (all the usual attack counters and grapple counters work). And even once it's happened, there's still multiple ways out... including just killing it, since it takes a while for the Behir to do it.

[Dork_Forge]

+7 stealth is going to be enough to make it likely that at least one person in the party is going to be surprised if the Behir ambushes the party. If it is in the dark and the party are relying on darkvision then this is even higher.

Casters and swallow - some of this will depend on whether a DM rules you can breathe inside a Behir's stomach to allow verbal components. That said, other common tools like misty step are out. Even if a wizard does dimension door, that is a win for the Behir - costing a 4th level spell slot and an action is still applying pressure. And the thing about spell slots, is they get used up through the day; we don't have to assume that this is the first encounter of the day and the party still has every resource they started with.

I see the Behir working to try and separate the party. Hit and run from an ambush position - those not surprised can try and chase down. Those not surprised and with high mobility might close the gap. Those not surprised, with high mobility and can see in the dark get to take on the Behir.

A party can certainly do well, but the Behir's best chance is to make such a response need many moving parts - for example if the fighter is going to chase down the Behir with the help of a fly spell from the wizard then the wizard needs to have not gone down from the breath weapon. And the cleric is held up healing them. Taking a turn or two to follow means that the actual number of party members dashing up the walls after the Behir are small.

A DM pushing it can make this feel very close and/or expend an inordinate amount of party resources.

Strongly agree, a +7 is pretty good for a monster and a Behir has better Darkvision than the majority of races, night time/dark place ambushes should be its bread and butter.

The proposed strategy assumes that the party is both fresh and under the effects of limited time spells, as well as a very questionable tactic of familiar feeding healing potions (whilst it may be RAW, I don't know a DM that would allow it unless it was a chainlock).

Assuming the Behir is out for take out, the softest looking target makes sense, this means the one covered in the least metal and holding the least amount of sharp things, the Rogue is going to look soft but undoubtedly carrying sharp things, this basically just leaves the full caster, in this case a Wizard.

The Wizard is incredibly likely to be surprised (proposed build gives a -1 Wisdom...) and it's entirely down to a die roll if the get a higher initiative than the Behir, if they do, they might be able to Shield, if they don't... they're going to get messed up.

[Chronos]

Quoth LudicSavant:


There is nothing a Behir can really do to deal with the Life Cleric or familiar-dropped potions. And either of the casters can disable it in one round if they actually feel like it.
And if they ever get an action with which to do it (which is not guaranteed), and if the behir isn't lucky enough to make its save.

And I'm still not clear how the cleric would shut it down with one spell-- Even if you waive the nontrivial material component on Banishment, that's a problem postponed, not a problem solved. Command requires a shared language, which is unlikely, given that behirs speak only Draconic and clerics aren't known for having a plethora of languages, and Hold Person only works on humanoids.

[Kuulvheysoon]

And if they ever get an action with which to do it (which is not guaranteed), and if the behir isn't lucky enough to make its save.

And I'm still not clear how the cleric would shut it down with one spell-- Even if you waive the nontrivial material component on Banishment, that's a problem postponed, not a problem solved. Command requires a shared language, which is unlikely, given that behirs speak only Draconic and clerics aren't known for having a plethora of languages, and Hold Person only works on humanoids.

I mean, the material component for banishment is completely waived by using a holy symbol to cast the spell, no? Which would solve the problem.

[J-H]

I mean, the material component for banishment is completely waived by using a holy symbol to cast the spell, no? Which would solve the problem.

Last session, the Vengeance Paladin in my party cast Banishment on a titanic snake (CR 16) from the inside while swallowed. You can still attack while restrained, so you can do somatic spellcasting, and he had a holy symbol and could (presumably) speak. I did call for a Concentration check, but he got a 20-something.

The snake was very confused for the remaining few seconds of its life.

[Dork_Forge]

Last session, the Vengeance Paladin in my party cast Banishment on a titanic snake (CR 16) from the inside while swallowed. You can still attack while restrained, so you can do somatic spellcasting, and he had a holy symbol and could (presumably) speak. I did call for a Concentration check, but he got a 20-something.

The snake was very confused for the remaining few seconds of its life.

Huh... not sure I'd have ruled that the same way, I mean if you're inside of the creature when banished it sounds risky to not banish yourself.

[MaxWilson]

+7 stealth is going to be enough to make it likely that at least one person in the party is going to be surprised if the Behir ambushes the party. If it is in the dark and the party are relying on darkvision then this is even higher.

Note that the Behir relies on darkvision too, so it's likely to overlook many of the PCs (passive Perception only 11 in darkness). A surprised PC that the Behir can't see isn't an asset in combat, but they're not a liability either.

[Dork_Forge]

Note that the Behir relies on darkvision too, so it's likely to overlook many of the PCs (passive Perception only 11 in darkness). A surprised PC that the Behir can't see isn't an asset in combat, but they're not a liability either.

That does assume that the PCs are all sneaking, which not unlikely, depends on where the ambush is happening. If the PCs are just in a travel phase for example, they're probably not doubling their travel time for the sake of stealth unless they know there's powerful creatures in that particular area. Though this is just in my experience, PCs tend to stealth at specific times, the breadth of those times depending on how many non sneaky members are in the party.

[MrStabby]

Note that the Behir relies on darkvision too, so it's likely to overlook many of the PCs (passive Perception only 11 in darkness). A surprised PC that the Behir can't see isn't an asset in combat, but they're not a liability either.

I was thinking mainly to know the other is there, and for one or more to be surprised.

If neither party knows the other is there, they pass like ships in the night.

If the Behir doesn't see a PC it doesn't matter so much, as long as it can fruitfully attack another. It is really to minimise incoming effects for a round or so.

[Nidgit]

And I'm still not clear how the cleric would shut it down with one spell-- Even if you waive the nontrivial material component on Banishment, that's a problem postponed, not a problem solved. Command requires a shared language, which is unlikely, given that behirs speak only Draconic and clerics aren't known for having a plethora of languages, and Hold Person only works on humanoids.
This is what buffs and Readied Actions are for. The Cleric casts Aid if they haven't already, casts Spiritual Weapon a round or two before Banishment drops, and readies Guiding Bolt or some other attack. The Wizard has tons of options, like casting Haste on the Rogue, and then readies Scorching Ray. The Rogue and Fighter are ready to attack as soon as it shows back up, with the Rogue safely concealed somewhere.

The behir pops back in and immediately takes something like 73 damage as everyone's attacks go off before initiative resumes and it has to deal with some very prepared adventurers. Banishment is a massively effective spell.

[MrStabby]

This is what buffs and Readied Actions are for. The Cleric casts Aid if they haven't already, casts Spiritual Weapon a round or two before Banishment drops, and readies Guiding Bolt or some other attack. The Wizard has tons of options, like casting Haste on the Rogue, and then readies Scorching Ray. The Rogue and Fighter are ready to attack as soon as it shows back up, with the Rogue safely concealed somewhere.

The behir pops back in and immediately takes something like 73 damage as everyone's attacks go off before initiative resumes and it has to deal with some very prepared adventurers. Banishment is a massively effective spell.

Well given the quantity of resources this is using up it looks like the Behir is punching above its weight anyway, even without any tactics or doing any damage at all.

[Eldariel]

This is what buffs and Readied Actions are for. The Cleric casts Aid if they haven't already, casts Spiritual Weapon a round or two before Banishment drops, and readies Guiding Bolt or some other attack. The Wizard has tons of options, like casting Haste on the Rogue, and then readies Scorching Ray. The Rogue and Fighter are ready to attack as soon as it shows back up, with the Rogue safely concealed somewhere.

The behir pops back in and immediately takes something like 73 damage as everyone's attacks go off before initiative resumes and it has to deal with some very prepared adventurers. Banishment is a massively effective spell.

That's not all. The banisher of course has to ready a physical attack since readying spells doesn't work, but generally, you not only get all readied attacks but you can drop Banishment right after its Initiative has gone meaning you all get to attack twice before it gets to act. This goes for any disabling spell that ends on damage, like Hypnotic Pattern or Sleep too: you tend to be able to brutalise the target before they get an action edgewise and if it looks like you can't, you can just cast another CC spell during the round of beat-up.

[LudicSavant]

So I ran the Behir fight described previous by Chronos, against the Evoker/Life Cleric/Thief/Champion team (they had feats though).

I also boosted the Behir's rolls to simulate it being "lucky."

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/841980415115919381/864533305034801152/unknown.png

Round 1 results:
Thiefman's stealth beats the Behir's Perception. He does 29 damage with a sneak attack.

Behir rolls up to the team and rolls its 12d10 damage *ten times* and takes the highest result, because it's cheating. It gets 50. 54. Then 68. Then 69. Then 60. Then 78. Then 55. Then 43. Then 62. Then 74.

So we go with the highest, 78 damage.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/841980415115919381/864534566424805396/unknown.png

It then walks up to Lifeboi so that he can't walk away without taking an OA (let's say there's more space above than below, so it doesn't have to squeeze. Map advantages the climbing Behir).

Lifeboi just Readies Channel Divinity for next time someone takes damage. He knows that he can't get one-shotted because he has Death Ward active, so might as well maximize CD's output by waiting until people are hurt more.

Familiarman uses Help and grants Advantage on the next attack.

Wizgirl casts Empowered Evocation Fire Bolt and actually crits on the second roll, for 6d10+5 damage. The damage roll comes up 36. The Behir doesn't like this, so it cheats and rerolls Wizgirl's dice to be a normal hit for... 29 damage? She rolled 2 10s on the damage dice? The Behir doesn't like this so it rerolls AGAIN to bring her damage down to just 18.

Champion rolls 3 GWM/GWF attacks... missing 2, but critting on the third. That triggers a bonus action attack... which misses. So out of 4 attacks, he misses 3. Still, that GWF/GWM crit does 32 damage (4d6 is 1+3+6+3, the 1 rerolls with GWF to a 5, then he adds +15 on top of that).

Thiefman then goes, hides, and makes an Advantaged sneak attack for... wow another crit (yes, I actually rolled this). Behir cheats again and turns it into a normal hit. And so the Behir takes 27 damage from the normal, definitely-not-critical sneak attack.

It's taken "just" 106 damage so far, thanks to its cheating. Now it gets its turn 2, and proceeds to try and constrict / bite Lifeboi. It's heard of healers and doesn't like the idea.

It hits the first attack and misses the second (despite Advantage vs Restrained), but Behir cheats so that it gets two hits. It deals 30 damage with its first attack (Triggering the Readied Channel Divinity that heals a total of 55 between himself and the Champion), and 26 with its second. Lifeboi is now at 30 health (still with Death Ward up), and Poor Man's Beatstick is now at 55 health.

The Behir... doesn't survive the next round. Lifeboi misses a Sacred Flame. Wizgirl hits an Advantaged EE Fire Bolt. Beatstick's luck turns around and he lands all of his attacks this time and finishes the Behir off with overkill damage to spare. And Thiefman still had his turn left over.

Total resources used: 1 Channel Divinity.

Rest was just at-wills.

Note that this was with the Behir outright cheating to simulate luck (he rerolled his lightning breath damage ten times, and turned a miss into a hit, and turned two enemy crits into normal hits). Maybe it could have been even luckier... but it often won't be. And if the Behir gets super lucky, the PCs can always start spending more resources to turn the fight back their way.

[J-H]

Huh... not sure I'd have ruled that the same way, I mean if you're inside of the creature when banished it sounds risky to not banish yourself.

Oh, that's a great idea! I wish I had thought of it. A banished creature is incapacitated, so concentration on the spell immediately ends.
Then again, the caster is a distinct entity inside the creature's stomach and Banishment only affects 1 target (unless upcast).

If cast from outside the swallower, then the stomach contents would go with.

[LudicSavant]

Well given the quantity of resources this is using up it looks like the Behir is punching above its weight anyway, even without any tactics or doing any damage at all.

There's a big difference between the resources that a lone Behir is likely to use up (not that much), vs the resources that a Behir has to go through in order to actually kill off PCs in a well-put-together party (because if the party feels threatened, they're going to start using things). And the OP was concerned about the latter happening.

Just for fun, I ran the encounter described by the OP here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?633861-The-behir-s-CR/page2&p=25121506#post25121506) several times and every time the PCs were using few resources. Even when I made the Behir cheat. The best case the Behir had was when it rerolled its Lightning Breath on turn 2, but all that did was pop Death Ward (and even then, only if it rolled well enough on its damage rolls, which it didn't the first time I tried having it do two Lightning Breaths in a row).

And if I were actually bringing a better-optimized party composition, things would only get worse for the Behir.

By tier 3, PCs should be well prepared to deal with things like "a decent chunk of AoE burst damage" or "constrict into swallow" or "a melee foe that has a climb speed." If your party isn't, then the problem probably isn't the Behir... it's probably your party, or the tactics you're using for them.

Edit For reference, here's the probability of a Behir doing at least X damage with its Lightning Breath damage roll. (https://anydice.com/program/310d) (The ones listed "0.00" aren't actually 0, they're just... less than 0.01 and AnyDice doesn't display values that small. Likewise, some of the 100s aren't actually 100%, they're just less than 0.01 away from 100%). And of course this isn't even counting the chance of making saves or the like.

As you can see, the chance of it bringing even the Evoker to zero is less than 1% (assuming the party didn't forget to have someone apply Aid and/or Inspiring Leader or the like... which it should be doing at this level). And if the Evoker is non-core and has Absorb Elements, the chance straight up is 0%.

12 100.00
13 100.00
14 100.00
15 100.00
16 100.00
17 100.00
18 100.00
19 100.00
20 100.00
21 100.00
22 100.00
23 100.00
24 100.00
25 100.00
26 100.00
27 100.00
28 100.00
29 100.00
30 99.99
31 99.99
32 99.99
33 99.98
34 99.97
35 99.95
36 99.92
37 99.89
38 99.84
39 99.77
40 99.67
41 99.54
42 99.38
43 99.16
44 98.88
45 98.53
46 98.09
47 97.55
48 96.88
49 96.08
50 95.13
51 94.00
52 92.68
53 91.16
54 89.42
55 87.45
56 85.25
57 82.81
58 80.13
59 77.22
60 74.10
61 70.77
62 67.26
63 63.59
64 59.80
65 55.92
66 51.98
67 48.02
68 44.08
69 40.20
70 36.41
71 32.74
72 29.23
73 25.90
74 22.78
75 19.87
76 17.19
77 14.75
78 12.55
79 10.58
80 8.84
81 7.32
82 6.00
83 4.87
84 3.92
85 3.12
86 2.45
87 1.91
88 1.47
89 1.12
90 0.84
91 0.62
92 0.46
93 0.33
94 0.23
95 0.16
96 0.11
97 0.08
98 0.05
99 0.03
100 0.02
101 0.01
102 0.01
103 0.01
104 0.00
105 0.00
106 0.00
107 0.00
108 0.00
109 0.00
110 0.00
111 0.00
112 0.00
113 0.00
114 0.00
115 0.00
116 0.00
117 0.00
118 0.00
119 0.00
120 0.00

[Dork_Forge]

So in a thread of conversation about surprising adventurers a simulation has been run that just looks like the Behir walking up to a party in the open, head on..?


Oh, that's a great idea! I wish I had thought of it. A banished creature is incapacitated, so concentration on the spell immediately ends.
Then again, the caster is a distinct entity inside the creature's stomach and Banishment only affects 1 target (unless upcast).

If cast from outside the swallower, then the stomach contents would go with.

I kinda see being swalled a double edged sword, on the one hand acid damage, but on the other your allies can aoe it freely. If you're inside it though, I'd make the argument: If you banished a creature with a backpack, would the backpack be banished too?

I haven't had to make this ruling for a while though, the poor Paladin in one of my games has tried to use this twice and failed both time. The second was a nat 20 from a creature with a -2 to its save, I felt so bad...

[LudicSavant]

So in a thread of conversation about surprising adventurers a simulation has been run that just looks like the Behir walking up to a party in the open, head on..?

Here's the actual thread of conversation.


OK, let's assume an iconic party of four: Evoker wizard, life cleric, thief rogue, and champion fighter, core-only. The fighter and the cleric are probably the toughest, so they're in the front, while the wizard and the rogue are in the back. They round a corner and encounter a behir in front of them, with nobody surprised.

I ran the combats based on the OP's post #45 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25121506&postcount=45).

[Dork_Forge]

Here's the actual thread of conversation.

Neat, here's what Chronos also said:


It chooses to use its breath weapon for its first action, and can probably hit two PCs. If we assume that it doesn't know and can't figure out anything about the PCs (which it might; it has enough Int that it might know to prioritize the guy in the dress), it's probably going to pick one of the two front-liners and one of the two back-liners, because they're the easiest ones to line up from its position. 1 in 4 chance, then, that the two PCs it breathes on are the cleric and the wizard. And now, suppose that it rolls a bit above average on the breath, say 1-sigma high (16% chance), and both fail their unproficient saves (about 50%): Its breath just reduced both the cleric and the wizard to 0

And the simulation instead had the 'front line' not be a line at all, with the party spread out beyond what they were meant to be and with the front line taking the entire breath, despite that not being the intent.

Don't point to a post for what you were doing, if you're not going to actually do it.

And since this is a topic, if your proposed Wizard has a +3 Dex how do they have a 3 in initiative?

[MaxWilson]

So I ran the Behir fight described previous by Chronos, against the Evoker/Life Cleric/Thief/Champion team (they had feats though).

I also boosted the Behir's rolls to simulate it being "lucky."

...

Total resources used: 1 Channel Divinity.

Rest was just at-wills.

Note that this was with the Behir outright cheating to simulate luck (he rerolled his lightning breath damage ten times, and turned a miss into a hit, and turned two enemy crits into normal hits). Maybe it could have been even luckier... but it often won't be. And if the Behir gets super lucky, the PCs can always start spending more resources to turn the fight back their way.

That was really fun to read, thanks!

[LudicSavant]

That was really fun to read, thanks!

https://forums.giantitp.com/images/sand/icons/icon_thumbsup.png


Neat, here's what Chronos also said

Yes, and the entire point of the post is that I would make a difference via tactics. Ergo, the part that involved the party's tactics changed.

Mind, it wouldn't have actually mattered if the Wizard was hit instead -- the result would have been the same.


And since this is a topic, if your proposed Wizard has a +3 Dex how do they have a 3 in initiative?

Because I had originally given them 14 Dex when I played it out. (The 16 Dex only makes the case better for the PCs, anyways).

[ProsecutorGodot]

And the simulation instead had the 'front line' not be a line at all, with the party spread out beyond what they were meant to be and with the front line taking the entire breath, despite that not being the intent.

Don't point to a post for what you were doing, if you're not going to actually do it.

The image attached looks, to me, a lot like then scenario Chronos described. Parties don't have to march shoulder to shoulder so with such a short breath attack it's not reasonable in my mind for the Behir to be able to line up a shot at a front and back line fighter, especially in their very own preferred terrain of corridors and holes to hide in.

It could use its climb speed to angle a breath attack from the wall, hitting the Wizard in the back and ignoring the Fighter. That's not entirely relevant though, because even taking the best of 10 rolls it wouldn't have done enough damage to down either of the targets it attacked. Even if it had done that, the fight would have continued the same. In fact I'd wager that the most it managed to take extra from the party is a first level Absorb Elements from the Wizard while dealing less total damage to them.


And since this is a topic, if your proposed Wizard has a +3 Dex how do they have a 3 in initiative?
Presumably to make sure Wizard gets advantage on Fire Bolt, which the Behir simply takes away because he's cheating. Or a mistake and it changes little either way.

[MrStabby]

There's a big difference between the resources that a lone Behir is likely to use up (not that much), vs the resources that a Behir has to go through in order to actually kill off PCs in a well-put-together party (because if the party feels threatened, they're going to start using things). And the OP was concerned about the latter happening.

Just for fun, I ran the encounter described by the OP here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?633861-The-behir-s-CR/page2&p=25121506#post25121506) several times and every time the PCs were using few resources. Even when I made the Behir cheat. The best case the Behir had was when it rerolled its Lightning Breath on turn 2, but all that did was pop Death Ward (and even then, only if it rolled well enough on its damage rolls, which it didn't the first time I tried having it do two Lightning Breaths in a row).

And if I were actually bringing a better-optimized party composition, things would only get worse for the Behir.

By tier 3, PCs should be well prepared to deal with things like "a decent chunk of AoE burst damage" or "constrict into swallow" or "a melee foe that has a climb speed." If your party isn't, then the problem probably isn't the Behir... it's probably your party, or the tactics you're using for them.

Edit For reference, here's the probability of a Behir doing at least X damage with its Lightning Breath damage roll. (https://anydice.com/program/310d) (The ones listed "0.00" aren't actually 0, they're just... less than 0.01 and AnyDice doesn't display values that small. Likewise, some of the 100s aren't actually 100%, they're just less than 0.01 away from 100%). And of course this isn't even counting the chance of making saves or the like.

As you can see, the chance of it bringing even the Evoker to zero is less than 1% (assuming the party didn't forget to have someone apply Aid and/or Inspiring Leader or the like... which it should be doing at this level). And if the Evoker is non-core and has Absorb Elements, the chance straight up is 0%.

12 100.00
13 100.00
14 100.00
15 100.00
16 100.00
17 100.00
18 100.00
19 100.00
20 100.00
21 100.00
22 100.00
23 100.00
24 100.00
25 100.00
26 100.00
27 100.00
28 100.00
29 100.00
30 99.99
31 99.99
32 99.99
33 99.98
34 99.97
35 99.95
36 99.92
37 99.89
38 99.84
39 99.77
40 99.67
41 99.54
42 99.38
43 99.16
44 98.88
45 98.53
46 98.09
47 97.55
48 96.88
49 96.08
50 95.13
51 94.00
52 92.68
53 91.16
54 89.42
55 87.45
56 85.25
57 82.81
58 80.13
59 77.22
60 74.10
61 70.77
62 67.26
63 63.59
64 59.80
65 55.92
66 51.98
67 48.02
68 44.08
69 40.20
70 36.41
71 32.74
72 29.23
73 25.90
74 22.78
75 19.87
76 17.19
77 14.75
78 12.55
79 10.58
80 8.84
81 7.32
82 6.00
83 4.87
84 3.92
85 3.12
86 2.45
87 1.91
88 1.47
89 1.12
90 0.84
91 0.62
92 0.46
93 0.33
94 0.23
95 0.16
96 0.11
97 0.08
98 0.05
99 0.03
100 0.02
101 0.01
102 0.01
103 0.01
104 0.00
105 0.00
106 0.00
107 0.00
108 0.00
109 0.00
110 0.00
111 0.00
112 0.00
113 0.00
114 0.00
115 0.00
116 0.00
117 0.00
118 0.00
119 0.00
120 0.00

Given you are talking about the OP's comments rather than mine... I am unsure why you are responding quoting my post?

What is your point?


If it is that a Behir doesn't threaten a party much in a fair fight... then yeah - thats what I have been saying from the start.

If it is that the Behir can't be a lot tougher than it looks when the DM ambushes the players in favourable terrain - well then you need to address that scenario rather than the OP's scenario.

[Chronos]

If your 11th level wizard just took 79 damage, how is she doing anything but rolling death saves?

[PhoenixPhyre]

If it is that a Behir doesn't threaten a party much in a fair fight... then yeah - thats what I have been saying from the start.


Nor should it--it's CR 11. Which is a Medium encounter for a baseline party of 4 in a straight-up slugfest. It should burn a spell slot, do some damage. The party should be able to handle 6 or so of them with two short rests.

At defensive CR 8, it should die in about 2 rounds (8/11*3 ~ 2.2). Which the evidence says it will. At a CR 13, it should be able to deal about a level 11 mid-liner's[1] HP in damage per turn. Which it seems to have done, just spread out over several people.

CR does not (nor does it try to) account for things like ambushes, clever tactics, etc.

[1] ie d8 HD with +2 or +3 CON and some armor. oCR 12 would be able to down a squishy (d6 + 2 CON) level 11 in one turn, so oCR 13 should be able to do about a d8 + 2 CON level 11's HP in damage. Roughly, with significant error margins.

[LudicSavant]

If your 11th level wizard just took 79 damage, how is she doing anything but rolling death saves?

Any number of ways exist to buff hp or mitigate damage. In this particular case, it's because Inspiring Leader put their hit point total above 79.

If it wasn't Inspiring Leader, it would have been something else, like Aid or whatever. There's no shortage of this kind of thing in 5e, and well-put-together parties tend to have one or more of them.

Moreover, even if there wasn't something else, it wouldn't really matter, because "rolling death saves" is not actually "at risk of dying." They would just pop-up as described.

And of course, if you're not doing core only, then the chance of one-shotting the Wizard goes down to zero, because of Absorb Elements.

[MrStabby]

Nor should it--it's CR 11. Which is a Medium encounter for a baseline party of 4 in a straight-up slugfest. It should burn a spell slot, do some damage. The party should be able to handle 6 or so of them with two short rests.

At defensive CR 8, it should die in about 2 rounds (8/11*3 ~ 2.2). Which the evidence says it will. At a CR 13, it should be able to deal about a level 11 mid-liner's[1] HP in damage per turn. Which it seems to have done, just spread out over several people.

CR does not (nor does it try to) account for things like ambushes, clever tactics, etc.

[1] ie d8 HD with +2 or +3 CON and some armor. oCR 12 would be able to down a squishy (d6 + 2 CON) level 11 in one turn, so oCR 13 should be able to do about a d8 + 2 CON level 11's HP in damage. Roughly, with significant error margins.

OK, so you too are strongly in agreement with me?

[LudicSavant]

If it is that a Behir doesn't threaten a party much in a fair fight... then yeah - thats what I have been saying from the start.

Fair enough.

[PhoenixPhyre]

OK, so you too are strongly in agreement with me?

Yup. Amplification, not opposition. Apologies for not being clear on that.

[MrStabby]

Yup. Amplification, not opposition. Apologies for not being clear on that.

No problem. Its always hard to read tone and context - and having got confused about this many times before (albeit some of it before understanding the meaning of blue text) I find it best to seek confirmation.

[Dork_Forge]

The image attached looks, to me, a lot like then scenario Chronos described. Parties don't have to march shoulder to shoulder so with such a short breath attack it's not reasonable in my mind for the Behir to be able to line up a shot at a front and back line fighter, especially in their very own preferred terrain of corridors and holes to hide in.

The scenario described was a two line formation, they don't have to be shoulder to shoulder at all, but the lay out presented is an unevenly staggered party, it's more single file than it is font and back line.

Heck, the familiar (which is so often touted for being great for scouting) is literally the rear most creature and closer to the Rogue than the Wizard. This makes it incredible safe on the first turn, but makes very little sense practically unless familiar rear guard became a popular strategy when I wasn't looking whilst non Darkvision humans take the vanguard.

Notable that the chose map and formation of the PCs also puts them around a bend in a corridor, making lining up surprisingly difficult.

So an oddly favourable positioning given the chosen map and place on said map, neither of which really resemble the scenario.


It could use its climb speed to angle a breath attack from the wall, hitting the Wizard in the back and ignoring the Fighter. That's not entirely relevant though, because even taking the best of 10 rolls it wouldn't have done enough damage to down either of the targets it attacked. Even if it had done that, the fight would have continued the same. In fact I'd wager that the most it managed to take extra from the party is a first level Absorb Elements from the Wizard while dealing less total damage to them.

The proposed scenario is core, so Absorb Elements isn't on the table.

That said if the Behir is able to 'walk up to life boi' then there's no reason why it couldn't have moved up to the Cleric immediately and breathed on the Cleric and the Wizard.

The end result being the party being significantly more injured and having to spend more resources, assuming they were at full to begin with.


Presumably to make sure Wizard gets advantage on Fire Bolt, which the Behir simply takes away because he's cheating. Or a mistake and it changes little either way.

The advantage wasn't taken away, the crit was rerolled. The familiar going just above the Wizard (which is very unlikely), whilst the Wizard has a lower initiative than should have been possible based on what was declared. It doesn't inspire confidence in the simulation.

To clarify my position the Behir under non surprise conditions is just a resource tax, but the simulation still didn't seem to actually represent what was intended (imo) and I'd stretch and say not a typical party lay out (whilst I'm aware that some people certainly do play this way, ime not many people willingly dump half of their array to -1 for example).

[Thunderous Mojo]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/841980415115919381/864534566424805396/unknown.png
(Thanks for the image and write up Ludic)

My sometimes, irrepressible, obsessive tendencies are forcing me to make a general comment on the square shape of the Behir Token. My apologies, if this is repetitive.

Giant pythons don't typically, curl up unless the snake is sleeping.
Yes, a creature's space is an abstraction, but why is the Behir the same shape as a Hill Giant or Huge Gelatinous cube?

A Behir that is stretched out as a line could threaten both of the PCs in it's Lightning Breath range. While this change has little impact to the overall outcome of the battle, it might make the encounter a bit more fun and/or engaging as both PCs have to worry about provoking OA's..(until the Behir takes a OA of course).

If a Behir is going to be a cube shaped punching bag, it might as well hang on the ceiling, (or on a large stalactite), and "cannonball !" itself onto a PC, and use it's breath weapon before landing.

The Behir takes falling damage, but deals a squishingly amount of bludgeoning crush damage, and possibly pins a PC. This is better Action Economy than in the Behir Stat block. 🤷🏻 🃏.

If a creature is only going to survive 2 rounds...might as well make it the most memorable two rounds possible. ✌️

[ProsecutorGodot]

The scenario described was a two line formation, they don't have to be shoulder to shoulder at all, but the lay out presented is an unevenly staggered party, it's more single file than it is font and back line.

Heck, the familiar (which is so often touted for being great for scouting) is literally the rear most creature and closer to the Rogue than the Wizard. This makes it incredible safe on the first turn, but makes very little sense practically unless familiar rear guard became a popular strategy when I wasn't looking whilst non Darkvision humans take the vanguard.

Notable that the chose map and formation of the PCs also puts them around a bend in a corridor, making lining up surprisingly difficult.

So an oddly favourable positioning given the chosen map and place on said map, neither of which really resemble the scenario.
That looks very much like "rounding the corner" with nobody surprised. I find that in optimal cases Familiars are better kept in the back to use the help action than to actually be a scout unless you have an improved familiar like a Tressym or Imp.

The vanguard was decided by Chronos, not Ludic, both are in front and despite some distance the party is positioned in a way that does allow for the breath attack to target the two that Chronos deemed important targets. That doesn't matter though, because under the strategy that Ludic used for the party given these criteria, they don't actually die to the breath attack and still manage to slay the creature with minimal resources spent.

The Behir could even manage to strike all 4 of them and it still wouldn't make a much more significant impact.


The proposed scenario is core, so Absorb Elements isn't on the table.
My mistake, though it doesn't change much because the Wizard remains alive even without resistance.


To clarify my position the Behir under non surprise conditions is just a resource tax, but the simulation still didn't seem to actually represent what was intended (imo) and I'd stretch and say not a typical party lay out (whilst I'm aware that some people certainly do play this way, ime not many people willingly dump half of their array to -1 for example).
I think it more than demonstrates that exact point (not sure what you mean by typical party layout here though, positioning or stats?) that the Behir is at best a mildly dangerous speedbump, even if given an unreasonable degree of luck to reroll its breath weapon to a best of 10 damage roll and ignore enemy critical hits.

This is a pretty "fair" simulation of the prompt as Chronos presented it.

[LudicSavant]

The Behir could even manage to strike all 4 of them and it still wouldn't make a much more significant impact.

Yep. They can even heal back from such surprisingly quickly via Life Cleric CD + Disciple of Life/Blessed Healer Mass Healing Word + Healer feat Rogue + familiar potion + Second Wind.

Seriously, a level 11 Life Cleric can heal 55 hp (Channel Divinity) plus a Disciple of Life/Blessed Healer Mass Healing Word in the same turn if they're so inclined (for a total of 51 average healing with a level 3 slot, or 81 if they upcast, or more if they have 20 Wis instead of 18). And a Healer Thief can drop an 18.5 bonus action heal each round on one of the AoE'd party members. And the familiar can drop potions if it wants. And the Fighter can Second Wind themselves.

The Behir can't really keep up with that, especially since it's going to be eating damage the whole time (the Wizard, Fighter, and Rogue are still getting their actions to attack), and it's not going to really be able to line up a good multi-hitting shot a second time even if it recharges its breath (because the players can spread out as soon as they get a chance to act).

The Life Cleric's prodigious ability to bounce back is also why they should be habitually casting Death Ward on themselves (at least in a party composition where there's no other resurrection-capable people in the party). It actually synergizes with their Channel Divinity, which is better if you're at very low health.

[PattThe]

Don't know if it's been said but Behir are supposed to be loath to use their breath weapon, only as a last resort. Granted while the party is killing it it will absolutely be using it, but still. No Behir opens up by softening a party with lightning breath, that's not the creature's ecology. RP it's mental scores.

[Dork_Forge]

One of my parties (3 13th level PCs, boat load of items, free feat, each happened to draw a positive card from the Deck of Many Things, as well as multiple DM boons) came up against two Behirs recently.

I bumped the hp on them to 220hp, and the flat damage modifier on the attacks to 8. The party were... pushed.

The opening round saw all but the Barbarian/Rogue surprised, the first Behir double critted him before he got the chance to rage.

Through the combat the breath was used 4 times, 3 of them by the same Behir. The damage rolls were:

77

88

73

55

There was one more crit on the constrict, I didn't get to swallow any of them, the Bard D'Door'd out and the last Behir was killed before he got the chance to try and swallow the Barbarian/Rogue.

It was a very difficult fight for them, the dice were... not kind to them.

[PattThe]

One of my parties (3 13th level PCs, boat load of items, free feat, each happened to draw a positive card from the Deck of Many Things, as well as multiple DM boons) came up against two Behirs recently.

I bumped the hp on them to 220hp, and the flat damage modifier on the attacks to 8. The party were... pushed.

The opening round saw all but the Barbarian/Rogue surprised, the first Behir double critted him before he got the chance to rage.

Through the combat the breath was used 4 times, 3 of them by the same Behir. The damage rolls were:

77

88

73

55

There was one more crit on the constrict, I didn't get to swallow any of them, the Bard D'Door'd out and the last Behir was killed before he got the chance to try and swallow the Barbarian/Rogue.

It was a very difficult fight for them, the dice were... not kind to them.

A couple of frost salamanders are basically the same thing but take less resources. If you want an encounter to be a setpiece, behirs. If you want it to be a medium encounter as one of multiple in an adventuring day, just use a couple of something of lower cr like a frost salamander or a myrmidon.

[Chronos]

For what it's worth, my specific party handled it without too much difficulty, largely because it failed its save against the sorcerer's Levitate spell, despite Con being its best save, and it didn't take long before it was high enough to not be able to reach the party with anything (that breath is awfully short). Though it did almost take out the wizard with its breath.

It did, however, result in the image of a floating, flaming*, lightning-breathing, many-legged crocodile. Which the city watch arrived just in time to ask "What the Hell is that thing?".



*The wizard decided to speed things up by casting Immolate on it.

[da newt]

Did the encounter take place outside during daylight hours inside a city?

[Dork_Forge]

A couple of frost salamanders are basically the same thing but take less resources. If you want an encounter to be a setpiece, behirs. If you want it to be a medium encounter as one of multiple in an adventuring day, just use a couple of something of lower cr like a frost salamander or a myrmidon.

Looking at the Frost Salamanders, they're actually worse in a number of ways:

-Burrow Speed

-Better Wis and Con save

-Breath weapon is less damage, but it's a 60 foot cone and a Con save

-Attacks all have greater than 5ft reach

If ran sensibly the Frost Salamander is a pretty terrifying skirmisher, and whilst it has vulnerability to fire I'd personally just wear it down normally than be subjected to repeated breath weapons.

[PattThe]

Looking at the Frost Salamanders, they're actually worse in a number of ways:

-Burrow Speed

-Better Wis and Con save

-Breath weapon is less damage, but it's a 60 foot cone and a Con save

-Attacks all have greater than 5ft reach

If ran sensibly the Frost Salamander is a pretty terrifying skirmisher, and whilst it has vulnerability to fire I'd personally just wear it down normally than be subjected to repeated breath weapons.
Edit: Oh yes, I misread the message here. Yeah, behir might be worse at the job than the lower CR Frost Salamander. Here's the thing about Behir- they EAT dragons. Before you get anywhere near one, you shuold fight Dragons or incredibly dangerous scavengers to show that this thing isn't just lairing anywhere. Use that to make the Behir so powerful, that you may resort to negotiating with it. That's how you use a higher CR monster- they are excitations in a map's natural environment. They don't slink around harmlessly, they tear up the environs. Frost Salamanders are potentially more violent and killer, but their nature limits their ambition as they just eat- and they don't have a reputation for eating anything specific or terrifying.

[MaxWilson]

Looking at the Frost Salamanders, they're actually worse in a number of ways:

-Burrow Speed

-Better Wis and Con save

-Breath weapon is less damage, but it's a 60 foot cone and a Con save

-Attacks all have greater than 5ft reach

If ran sensibly the Frost Salamander is a pretty terrifying skirmisher, and whilst it has vulnerability to fire I'd personally just wear it down normally than be subjected to repeated breath weapons.

Oh, it took me a while to process that by "worse" you mean "deadlier," not weaker.

Yeah, I agree. They even have higher movement speed without burrowing, and getting to bypass Evasion (because Con save) makes a big difference. Burrowing lets them hide underground until their breath weapon recharges, so the slower recharge doesn't matter much. They even have similar Int (both Int 7).

On balance I'd rate the Frost Salamander as slightly deadlier despite its lower CR.

[Dork_Forge]

Edit: Oh yes, I misread the message here. Yeah, behir might be worse at the job than the lower CR Frost Salamander. Here's the thing about Behir- they EAT dragons. Before you get anywhere near one, you shuold fight Dragons or incredibly dangerous scavengers to show that this thing isn't just lairing anywhere. Use that to make the Behir so powerful, that you may resort to negotiating with it. That's how you use a higher CR monster- they are excitations in a map's natural environment. They don't slink around harmlessly, they tear up the environs. Frost Salamanders are potentially more violent and killer, but their nature limits their ambition as they just eat- and they don't have a reputation for eating anything specific or terrifying.

In the context I used them, a pair of Behirs were attacking a colony inside a mountain where dragons were being summoned to for m a flight to fight an apocalyptic army.

When the wards were triggered in the erm... 'drainage tunnel' the party were sent to investigate, partly because they were the most powerful beings willing to, partly because they'd just arrived.

They may not have a reputation for hating something in particular, but they're close (if not superior) in lethality to the Behirs and have the same Int. It could easily be the myth behind the infamous ice cave on the mountain isn't the spirit of lost travellers seeking eternal company, but the lair of the Frost Salamander.

Seeing as they seek and attack heat, you could easily put them in a fire-based dragon eating roll as well.




Oh, it took me a while to process that by "worse" you mean "deadlier," not weaker.

Yeah, I agree. They even have higher movement speed without burrowing, and getting to bypass Evasion (because Con save) makes a big difference. Burrowing lets them hide underground until their breath weapon recharges, so the slower recharge doesn't matter much. They even have similar Int (both Int 7).

On balance I'd rate the Frost Salamander as slightly deadlier despite its lower CR.

In my particular circumstance the party uses fire and a little cold. So there would have been damage negation (lightning wasn't attempted on the Behirs at any point) and an AOE that probably would have killed the Bardlock.

These beasties are surprisingly deadly for their CR, maybe not Shadow deadly, but enough I'm now looking forward to using them en masse.

[MaxWilson]

These beasties are surprisingly deadly for their CR, maybe not Shadow deadly, but enough I'm now looking forward to using them en masse.

And the best part is, you can (potentially) summon them through Conjure Elemental IX and then Planar Bind them. Optionally: assign a Tiny Servant or two to light a flask of oil underneath them every other round to recharge their breath weapon constantly.

Ergo it's not just the DM who gets to use them en masse, Tier 4 PCs potentially can too.

[Dork_Forge]

And the best part is, you can (potentially) summon them through Conjure Elemental IX and then Planar Bind them. Optionally: assign a Tiny Servant or two to light a flask of oil underneath them every other round to recharge their breath weapon constantly.

Ergo it's not just the DM who gets to use them en masse, Tier 4 PCs potentially can too.

I wonder if you could get some kind of fire elemental with a touch burn effect to ride them...

[ff7hero]

I wonder if you could get some kind of fire elemental with a touch burn effect to ride them...

Moon Druid?

[MaxWilson]

I wonder if you could get some kind of fire elemental with a touch burn effect to ride them...

I think you wouldn't want that because it might inflict a large amount of damage, to which they're vulnerable, even when they're not using their breath weapon. I think having a Tiny Servant hit them for 2 points of fire damage with a torch in order to supercharge their 8d10 (44) breath weapon against a large mob of enemies is about the sweet spot.

[Chronos]

Quoth da newt:

Did the encounter take place outside during daylight hours inside a city?
Yes, because (short answer) Xanathar is insane, and thought it would be amusing.

[PattThe]

Yes, because (short answer) Xanathar is insane, and thought it would be amusing.

"The Xanathar, sir, you have such a vast quantity of magical rings. Perhaps we should equip these multi-limbed creatures with an onslaught of offensive magic! It would be flavorful too because it'd be like a beholder."

""LIKE A BEHOLDER? LIKE ME? NEVER. SEND IT IN NAKED. I would never part with but a single ring. They do such fun things! I want to be there when we set them loose so I can use my ring of telekinesis to kick it in the butt.""

[Chronos]

"...Which I'm wearing on my telekinesis eyestalk, so I can kick it in the butt twice! Let's see those puny bipeds try that!"