How *Fun* Are Beholder Fights?

[Joe the Rat]

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.

Oh I love gas spores. In addition to being foreshadowing of a beholder in the area, they seem to regularly draw out the inner Leeeeeroy Jenkins of my players. They see a beholder, caught unawares, and have to rush up to melee to foul any attack roll rays. And Blammo!


Including them in the beholder battle has so much potential. If you combine air currents with limited lines of sight, losing track of which is the real thing and which is a biohazard opens up some delightful complications. But I am not familiar with the map you are using, so I don't know how viable that is. but having a few blow-up orbs about that can be telekinetically moved in the direction of the party, or do a little pais de deux to redirect fire (give your uberholder stealth proficiency) can add a bit of survivability. Though now I am also picturing a Gas Spore Balloon Drop - as an emergency defensive move, a side chamber is forcibly emptied, causing dozens of gas spores to go bouncing and floating out and around the battlefield. Bonus points if your beholder already has a penchant for moving randomly and occasionally bouncing off surfaces.

[da newt]

I'll have to make a note to use the OG Pacman maze as the layout of my next beholder BBEG, and I guess now it needs a few ghosts for minions.

Shoot - This stuff writes itself if you just let it ....

[Chronos]

You can also have beholder thematics in a fight without having an actual beholder. One encounter my group had once, there was a ring of 11 pillars in a clearing, each topped with an eye pointing towards the center of the ring. We all, of course, knew better than to go into that ring, because of course anything that entered the ring got blasted by eye rays... except that the Macguffin we were seeking was on a pedestal in the center. And while we were there, the largest eye was projecting a spectral image of an actual beholder, floating above the middle... and as time passed, the image of the beholder appeared to be getting more and more substantial. And then, an unrelated wild T-rex just happened to wander by. Great fun.

(my ranger and the party's wizard ended up tricking the T-rex into wrecking most of the pillars for us).