Quote Originally Posted by DragonBaneDM View Post
Hey folks!

I'm putting together a great big boss battle using Czepeku's Beholder God map. I'm going to be using a levelled down version of their Beholder God stats, and which are in fact just a super levelled up version of the stock beholder. All this stat tweaking made me realize: I've never done a beholder fight in 5E.

I went up against some Death Kisses as my Rogue/Barbarian, and it was a pretty basic/almost forgettable fight. I read the statblock just now, and they share nothing in common with "proper" Beholders, namely the eye beams.

In revising stats/leveling down the Beholder God, I'm noticing that a lot of the eyebeams are straight up save or lose, and I'm worried about how entertaining of a single monster/legendary actions & resistances foe that makes. I've been building atypical combats with telegraphed attacks, baked in skill checks in lieu of attacking, using low level sidekick characters to assist their normal level 10 PCs, and my players (all of which are playing very attack it to 0 HP and/or save-or-suck powerhouses in their own right) have been liking it a lot.

The eyeballs will each take turns casting the eye beams, can be attacked directly, and the "fight this huge map" part makes it different enough, but like...will this be fun? Do you like running beholders? Do ya like FIGHTING beholders? Any eye beams you've changed up or beholder subtypes/homebrewery content like r/BetterMonsters I should be looking at to tweak this up?



Thanks Playground!
I've never had the opportunity to run a 5e Beholder fight, sadly, but IMO there is a principle that applies to all NPCs:

How fun fighting the NPC is less a question of statblock and more a question of presentation.

(Quoth Megamind)

In particular, Beholders tend to have big, quirky, hammy personalities, as well as powerful but alien minds, and both should impact the fight quite a lot.