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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    PirateCaptain

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    Default How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    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!
    Last edited by DragonBaneDM; 2023-03-14 at 09:46 AM.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    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.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Quote Originally Posted by Unoriginal View Post
    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.
    Completely agree. The quintessential Beholder fight is a crazy video game boss-fight with platforms and moving parts and death ray beams flying in all directions, except you're up against a Dr Who villain.

    Mechanically, there are two issues to consider. The first is the case with any "boss" monster in 5E with legendary actions...those 180 hit points don't go so far when the whole party is single-target bashing on it. Canon fodder minions and/or interesting terrain make or break the encounter.

    The second issue is one you've already alluded to...the save-or-suck nature of the Beholder's attacks. They take the player out of the fight for an extended period, which might make the fight a slog for a particular player (which is bad, and should be avoided), but amps up the pressure on the party as a whole. Most of them are not IMMEDIATE sucks, they are "sucks for a round or two", or "sucks if you're low on HP". Death and Disintegrate are scary if they reduce you to 0...so players should be well aware of the consequences and in-combat healing actually becomes relevant. Fear, Charm, Slow and Paralyze all let the victim save each round, so they aren't so bad (paralyzing a player surrounded by cannon-fodder minions is a rough trick, though, even for a round, so be mindful of that). Telekinesis can be fun, until you've telekinetically held the barbarian 30 feet in the air and they can't act until the Beholder is incapacitated...I houserule this to be a concentration effect, so beating on it might make it drop a held target. Petrification gives you a round to react and a second chance to save; you'll still want to make sure the party has some means of unpetrifying someone.

    I've seen two beholder fights and this was the deciding factor between the one that was a blast, and the one that was less so. In the first, the party had a good idea of what the creature could do, and the means to counter some of it. Lots of actions spent healing, slapping someone awake, buffing a save or etc. The whole time the Beholder was making creepy, cryptic non-sequitur statements about dreams.
    Dynamic, and strategic, and engaging. The other was just a slugfest, where they ran in and beat on it, knocking off one player at a time, but still doing enough damage that it was dead on round 2. Boring, and half the party barely got to act.

    TL/DR; it can go either way, depending on how you play it, and what the players are into, strategically.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    I have a beholder fight looming on the horizon for one of my campaigns. I'm pretty worried about how to run it for many of the same reasons you cited: save-or-suck abilities and loads of things to keep track of.

    If ever there were a time to brainstorm within the space of Matt Colville's "Action Oriented Monsters" encounter design, this might be one.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Super boring from 10th level on so far. The warriors have to stop and recalculate a bunch of stuff when their magic items get turned off and then piss & moan about it hovering out of melee reach. The casters just move out of the antimagic and cast normally or dodge/hide if they're trapped in it. If you land a decent line of sight blocker the thing is hosed if it's forced into melee and then it's just standing around whittling down the hp. If it isn't forced into melee it just wanders off and keeps hosing the warriors. There's nothing gor players to really do defensively because the eye rays are lol-random, and even the GM can't make any tactical plans around using them.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    I'm personally not a fan. In my experience, they're super-swingy, due to the fact Beholders don't have much HP but come with the plethora of save-or-suck/die eye rays, plus the random nature of which rays get triggered at a time. They seem to either hit one end of the spectrum or another: Anti-climactic cakewalks with good prep/good rolls, or frustrating near-TPKs with some bad rolls.
    Last edited by RogueJK; 2023-03-14 at 12:02 PM.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    I thought you meant two beholders fighting each other.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    In my last campaign we came up against them semiregularly.

    The first one killed the warlock but the rest of us managed to stay behind cover and whittle it down with ranged weapons and cantrips while it disintegrated our cover and tried to force us out into the open

    Second time we had a bunch of NPCs along with us absorbing the direction of the antimagic cone so it was a much easier affair even if we had to dodge the occasional eye ray

    Third time was my favourite, three were descending a chasm chasing us but the paladin was also trying to catch up and ended up behind them at the top of the chasm, dropping boulders on them they could do little about due to speed and range. They ended up carving a tunnel in the rock wall with disintegration in order to get away and we had to hustle to meet in the middle (flight, spiderclimb and dimension door) and chase them down in that tunnel before they could get away. That was much more gruelling but the paladin had great saves (of course) and we were fresh on resources for that fight so we could nova them.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    There is definitely a problem in that, like all bosses, you need to minion-screen them or else they will just go down to concentrated fire; but if you give them too many rounds of unimpeded eye rays on the party PCs are going to die without feeling like they had a lot of real agency in the situation. In particular because of how many of the eye rays are the on the 'avoid or die' end of the 'save or suck' spectrum; and also because of how many things 5e makes into spells/how much a well-placed concentration spell is the biggest situation-changer and how anti-magic interacts with that. There's a real fine line between giving the party a good fight and making it feel like an unfair fight -- especially retroactively after a TPK or near TPK (perhaps with perma-dead PCs).

    That said, it's not wildly worse than a couple of illithids, or a dragon and a giant and minions, or a bunch of NPCs (built as PCs or the MM equivalents) also with minion support. They all run a fine line between 'too easy' and 'unfair-feeling TPK.'

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    I would STRONGLY advise getting rid of the Random eye beams, either entirely or at least for the main action 3 beams. I tend to run them with the following (I don't detail the beams themselves since that's WotC property):

    Eye Ray: The Beholder fires 3 eye beams of its choice from below.

    Charm Ray: Can only have one target charmed at a time.

    Paralyze Ray, Fear Ray, Slow Ray, Enervating Ray, Sleep Ray: Business as Usual

    Petrification Ray, Disintegration Ray, Death Ray: Each can only be used once per Round (Per round, not turn).

    Legendary Action: Use a Ray of the Beholder's choice (Keeping in mind, above, so if you used Death ray as a normal attack you can't Legendary Act it too)

    I also would consider bumping HP up to 250 depending on the party.

    Now a few corrections or comments from earlier posts.

    Telok mentions them being boring from 10th level on. They're only a CR 13 so that's to be expected. You need to ramp them up for Tier 3 and 4 encounters.

    Monster Manuel mentions the beams that get saves each round. Charm isn't one of them, It specifies the target is charmed for 1 hour or until the Behold Damages them. So charming a target can quickly give the Beholder an Ally and force the party to take action to trick the Charmed target through the Anti Magic Eye or hit them with Calm Emotions or Dispel.

    I've run 2 Behold Encounters in 5e (More before, but not important here). The first was a group of level 8's and was fun on both sides, I was running the adventure from Candlekeep with the one trapped in a painting. The other was level 2's, the group stole Sylgar... Because of course they did.
    Last edited by Pixel_Kitsune; 2023-03-14 at 03:57 PM.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    It makes a huge difference whether or not the party is expecting to fight a beholder. If you just randomly stumble upon a wandering beholder without being prepared for it, you're very likely to be screwed. But if you know it's coming, you can prepare, and it's that preparation beforehand where the real action is: Prepare enough, and it'll be easy, don't prepare enough, and you're likely to be screwed. The fight isn't the action, it's just where you find out if your preparations were enough.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Use a bunch of terrain / pillars etc so movement and LOS are interesting.
    Add a couple other bad guys into the fight so it's not just one BBEG vs the whole party.
    I always use the eye beams sequentially rather (than randomly).
    And give it a ton of insane hyper-confident personality.

    In a recent AL adventure there was a room w/ a beholder and a couple helmed horrors (reskinned as undead so they function in the antimagic beam just fine), the room had a bunch of wormhole portals that created crazy LOS and was shaped in tiers so the PCs were always climbing up a 10' tier, or jumping down or falling, etc. It was pretty interesting.

    Beholders are as fun as you make them.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Quote Originally Posted by Monster Manuel View Post
    except you're up against a Dr Who villain.
    Very accurately said.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pixel_Kitsune View Post
    Telok mentions them being boring from 10th level on. They're only a CR 13 so that's to be expected. You need to ramp them up for Tier 3 and 4 encounters.
    It's not that you need to "ramp up" the beholder. It's that shutting off the mundane's gear & buffs in T3+ is a bitch that makes them stop, recalculate stuff, wastes time, and introduces mistakes. Combined with it's abilities being either "move a bit and ignore it" or "guess what saves you're making this round" means that everything interesting about it leans on the GM setting up an interesting location. But if you've got a good location you can make pretty much any fight interesting.

    Even basic zombies can be an interesting fun fight at high levels with the right scenery & set up. The corallary being that no matter how fancy the monster, if you fight it in an empty box it's probably going to be pretty dull. Ultimately beholders just aren't very interesting in a mechanical sense any more, an antimagic cone and random saves attached to a pile of hp aren't inherently interesting or fun.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Beholders get pretty thoroughly hosed if you block their vision.
    Last edited by LudicSavant; 2023-03-15 at 03:23 AM.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Quote Originally Posted by LudicSavant View Post
    Beholders get pretty thoroughly hosed if you block their vision.
    Messing with their vision is the most obvious way to deal with a Beholder, but their Lair actions can make that much harder.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Quote Originally Posted by RogueJK View Post
    I'm personally not a fan. In my experience, they're super-swingy, due to the fact Beholders don't have much HP but come with the plethora of save-or-suck/die eye rays, plus the random nature of which rays get triggered at a time. They seem to either hit one end of the spectrum or another: Anti-climactic cakewalks with good prep/good rolls, or frustrating near-TPKs with some bad rolls.
    IMO they're best as a supporting monster adding chaos to a highlevel fight, rather than a main enemy. 5e beholders are very random and can get very hard countered (or even just shot to death pretty quickly. They are not tanky) so they're not great as a boss monster because its just too whacky and wild.

    But if they're just there to be a supplement monster to a superpowered boss? The chaos is great for spicing things up.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    They need to be properly screened and supported by minions. Lots of pillars, mirrors, portals or other terrain to make line-of-sight interesting are also a must. I had great success with a Death Tyrant, but it was supported by a death kiss, a pair of Flameskulls and over 400 hp of zombie giants the PCs had to chop through.

    I will agree that for regular beholders tracking what magical effects are suppressed is a real pain. You need to decide ahead of time whether a concentration spell is suppressed when the beholder is looking at the caster, or just the area of effect, as well as whether mobile spells (like moonbeam) can be moved while they are suppressed. Also whether monk ki and Paladin smites are magic, and basically every other anti-magic field interpretation question.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    As a player I never have fun fighting beholders. Playing the game of course you must accept monsters attacking you, and they will have nasty attacks sometimes. However, even against a dragon the breath weapon is bad news but otherwise its melee attacks are standard fare for warriors if on the upper echelon of power. With beholders every attack is save or suck. For me there's no fun in facing the danger. I want the combat over with and at least one PC will drop if not outright die. It's too random whether you live or die.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    It's too random whether you live or die.
    That is why I select the powers a Beholder uses, when I DM.
    It isn’t random, when the Beholder kills you.🃏

    I love Beholders.
    AD&D Beholders, might be scarier, than 5e

    AD&D Beholders, we’re glass cannons, but damn..AD&D Death Ray really killed you.

    5e Death Ray,(in comparison), is a Dex save, for damage…and thus a Fugazi, (false), Death Ray. The poor ray isn’t even a Minor Threat to classes with Evasion.
    Last edited by Thunderous Mojo; 2023-03-16 at 12:09 AM.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    I had 6 beholder fights in my campaigns and loved them all.

    I found the interesting puzzle was almost always connected to terrain/minions :
    The beholder cannot use their beams in their own anti magic cone. If the lack of terrain/minion makes it trivial to get in and out of said cone, the fight will be swingy but not really interesting.

    Of course like every fight against a smart opponent, HOW they engage changes the game. A round of surprise amps the tension tremendously, for example.

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
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    It's not that you need to "ramp up" the beholder. It's that shutting off the mundane's gear & buffs in T3+ is a bitch that makes them stop, recalculate stuff, wastes time, and introduces mistakes. Combined with it's abilities being either "move a bit and ignore it" or "guess what saves you're making this round" means that everything interesting about it leans on the GM setting up an interesting location. But if you've got a good location you can make pretty much any fight interesting.

    Even basic zombies can be an interesting fun fight at high levels with the right scenery & set up. The corallary being that no matter how fancy the monster, if you fight it in an empty box it's probably going to be pretty dull. Ultimately beholders just aren't very interesting in a mechanical sense any more, an antimagic cone and random saves attached to a pile of hp aren't inherently interesting or fun.
    I think this is a very fair critique and as a fan of martials I get going to bat for them. The antimagic cone, despite the name, does shut down the melee PCs the most.


    That being said, I have run a Beholder fight as strictly a boss battle and for that I absolutely leaned into terrain and the Beholder being super intelligent/knowing its own strengths. There was a lot of narrow tunnels and verticality. I also stole some material ideas from a 2E beholder supplement on DMs Guild, mirrors that reflected eye beams and stone that disappeared and reappeared when exposed to an antimagic cone or not respectively. The first half of the fight the party was running down a zig zagging hall smashing mirrors to stop eye rays from coming down at them from around corners. When they got to the end of the mirror zig zag hallway of death they realized it opened out at the top of a huge shaft with disappearing-rock platforms and an acid bath at the bottom. Some clutch teleportation from a bard and toughing it out athletics checks from the barbarian and the party won but I beat them down pretty good from full and they had a paladin (albeit one of mercy w/ low Str who ended up being the primary target of Telekinesis) to buff their saves so it could have probably gone worse.

    I also rolled the Beholder's eye rays out a day ahead of time and then came up with a flow chart and targeting priorities with the PC's sheets in hand. Beholders are super intelligent super paranoid ultra xenophobes, once they see a foe for a second or two they can assess the best wat to defeat it imo. I keep the randomness to represent the ultra paranoia but I think planning/being tricky and brutal is a very important aspect to the Beholder encounter mythos.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    My players enjoyed it, but it ended up far less dynamic than I'd hoped.

    From what I've learned:

    • - Keep that sucker mobile. Nothing blahs it out like the ball of beams just hanging out in one spot. If the players want to nail it down, make them work for it. Beware of Giant Ape polymorph.
    • - Minions (or adjacent small enemies) keeps things active. You can't just ignore the ground game. If your minions aren't allied with Big B (or even if they are), having them as part of the collateral damage is on brand and a little fun.
    • - The antimagic ray makes a good penalty box for casters. Let the martials mull about and get eyebeamed while the beholder forces the party to move around. If you have an easy way to represent the AM space, (dynamic lighting, pipe cleaner cone, whatever), it can help you and your players keep track of where to move.
    • - Make sure there are things to climb up, hide behind, manipulate, and destroy. A nice disintegration ray turns your full cover into an empty space.
    • - DO NOT FORGET LAIR ACTIONS AND LEGENDARY ACTIONS! With or without minions, this helps rebalance the action economy some.
    • - Roleplaying. Be the Giant Floating Ham. Go nuts with your mania. Chew the scenery and milk the giant space cow. Let the players goad, cajole, flatter, deceive, negotiate, or threaten during combat. But keep in mind it doesn't have to stop acting and attacking just because it agrees to listen to the players. Startling a beholder is a great way to get a random beam shot at you.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Quote Originally Posted by DragonBaneDM View Post
    Do you like running beholders?
    Until recently, no. They never felt dangerous enough in my hands.

    Quote Originally Posted by DragonBaneDM View Post
    Do ya like FIGHTING beholders?
    Nooo. In complete contrast to what I said above, they always seem too dangerous when facing them as a player, in the off chance they get lucky with their rays and the pc's too unlucky with their saves.

    Quote Originally Posted by DragonBaneDM View Post
    Any eye beams you've changed up or beholder subtypes/homebrewery content like r/BetterMonsters I should be looking at to tweak this up?
    The recent discussion about beholders in another thread, made me think that a beholder fight could be made challenging by focusing on lair design. It seems to me that a vertical trap filled maze with many sharp turns (to make up for its lack of speed) and with plenty of cracks and openings (and mirrors, strategically placed mirrors are fun!; plus, beholders are vain) from where the beholder could zap from behind cover as it is playing hide and seek with the disoriented adventurers would be a very memorable challenge. I'm seriously thinking of adding some homebrew abilities to beholders for allowing them to change a bit the layout of the lair on the fly (not too drastically, but perhaps enough to attempt at throwing off pursuiers and at making advanced scouting of the lair be too much of an I-win-button), something like at will stone shape, maybe as part of a legendary action that allows it to disintegrate a 10x10x10 area of stone/earth. At least that's the basic idea so far. It should feel like playing pacman IMO, but with the beholder being allowed some cheats ("I am not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with ME!").
    Last edited by Corran; 2023-03-17 at 12:01 PM.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Enjoying this thread as a Beholder (that is attuned to the Eye of Vecna, having lopped off its Charm Ray stalk and replaced it) is the "Big Bad" of this leg of my campaign. My players are terrified of this threat, and have already talked about how much a monster that can fire Death/Disintegrate/Sleep rays and an Antimagic Cone (nevermind whatever the Eye of Vecna lets it do) is going to suck. Meanwhile behind the screen, I've been worried that a monster with 180 HP, 18 AC, no Magic Resistance, mediocre Dex and Con saves, slow speed (although at least it flies) and no meaningful immunities is going to go down in 2 rounds versus my hyper-violent level 11 murder hobos. My players are cool with me homebrewing, but I've been debating how much I need to customize this sucker to make it live up to the fear and hype of like six months of build-up. Sounds to me like with the right lair and a few minions, it might do just fine as is (minus however I decide to rule the Eye of Vecna working for it when it is now one of its eye stalks).

    In a feedback session last we played, one of my most seasoned players pointed out that a Beholder represents the fundamental problem of high-level DND encounters - it's total RNG Rocket Tag. If the Beholder wins initiative and/or rolls mostly 7+ for eye rays, the players are going to have an extremely bad time. If it rolls poorly on initiative, there's a very good chance it dies before it gets to do anything meaningful - like a lot of high-level play it's a matter of "who can do their cool trick fastest and mostest" rather than the agonizing resource management and risk-reward play of Tier 1 and lower Tier 2 D&D.

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    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    I have not had a go at a 5e Beholder, but I have fought beholders a few times in earlier editions, and that earlier experience is lining up well with what others have said in this thread.

    In term of satisfaction as a memorable combat am not a fan. Do not be discouraged by my opinion, but perhaps keeping it in mind will help give you some useful ideas...

    You plan out your beholder fight with effective tactics, and it will probably be weird and hard. Weird and hard is not bad (it is more promising that weird and easy), but it is not automatically very good either. The fundamental problem is that "total RNG Rocket Tag" is on the mark. At some level of power and weirdness there are no meaningful clever tactics the players can use beyond employing basic competence.

    Sure the PCs will try to spread out so the casters are not easily antimagicked. Sure the PCs will try to not spread out too much. Sure the PCs will try to get close and hit the enemy hard. But how is this so different tactically than how your 6th level party fought hobgoblins? It isn't. The beholder is sufficiently weird and unpredictable that there is no point in attempting cleverness.

    If you really want to make a beholder fight memorable, you have to imagine why it is going to be memorable. I would plan on making memorable clusters of minions that the beholder helps for 1 round and then abandons. Make the roleplaying of the beholder and the minions the memorable part. Let the players have their jollies cutting down minions who have their own personalities and are distraught to be abandoned to their fate.

    In the final showdown, the beholder is just a glass cannon that will go down in 1-1/2 rounds. Poor thing. Give it some memorable final words about the unfairness of it all.

  27. - Top - End - #27
    Titan in the Playground
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    Ooh, if anything, the Eye of Vecna should be even more effective on a beholder than it is on a humanoid, because using eyes is their entire schtick. That's a good one.

    Also remember that artifacts aren't affected by antimagic.
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    On the subject of minions, gas spores are a delightful addition to beholder lairs and fights. Have a nice, gusty lair full of tunnels that can have a popped gas spore blow those spores right onto the party if they are unwise about attacking when the wind is behind the spore, and they must ask themselves if that is a charging beholder or a gas spore blowing down the hall.

    Reduce visibility and introduce wind walls to limit projectile range, and while the reduced visibility hinders the beholder, it also means the party has to get into explosion range to attack. The beholder can use stealth and angles of attack for hit and run tactics in the tunnels.

  29. - Top - End - #29
    Titan in the Playground
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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    And a gusty lair also limits the effectiveness of fog, smoke, etc.

    As for the beholder with the Eye of Vecna, the Eye grants Truesight, which is certainly useful, and can also cast some spells. I'd recommend that, rather than needing an action, the beholder can use it as if it were one of its own eyes (i.e., three at a time as an action, or as a legendary action).
    Time travels in divers paces with divers persons.
    As You Like It, III:ii:328

    Chronos's Unalliterative Skillmonkey Guide
    Current Homebrew: 5th edition psionics

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    Orc in the Playground
     
    PirateCaptain

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    Default Re: How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

    They are super fun. But get beat BADLY by Fog Cloud.

    Essentially their eye rays are targeted spells. If they have no target, the rays can't fire.

    Definitely a design oversight.

    Now that's technically the rules. If you want to house rule something about the Beholders being able to target spaces while making sure the players have advantage on the save that would more than likely be acceptable.

    But just be aware that RAW the beholder rays can't target what it can't see.
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