Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 64 - Monster Series - Beholders - The Eyes Have It

Episode Date: March 14, 2021

Continuing the monster series, this time Jeremy tackles the iconic Beholder, a potential floating Total Party Kill with eyestalks.  What are these creatures and how should DMs use them in an adventure?  Come on in and find out! Like what you hear?  Buy me a ko-fi!  www.ko-fi.com/taking20podcast.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to episode 64 of the Taking 20 podcast. Continuing the Monster Series, this week about Beholders, the eyes have it. This week's sponsor, Meatloaf. The absolutely best way to ruin two pounds of ground beef. Finally, I have everything finalized for the contest. To enter to win a $50 gift card to Amazon, please send me an email to contest at taking20podcast.com. If inside the body of the email,

you'd like to provide some feedback or tell me where you listen from, that would be great, but it's absolutely not necessary. I promise you I won't sell your contact information, it doesn't sign you up for an email newsletter, although I hope to have one of those someday in the future, and I won't be spamming you with announcements, begging you for money, or anything else. I just want to have a small way to say thank you to the listeners, because it's you who make this podcast possible.

The winner of the contest will be announced at the beginning of episode 75, so that's 10-11 weeks in the future. You've got a little bit of time, but go ahead and get it sent in. If you or your company would like to sponsor a giveaway on this podcast, I'd be happy to work with you. Please reach out to me at feedback at taking20podcast.com. My last announcement is I have a Ko-fi account set up, so if you'd like to donate to the podcast, ko-fi.com slash taking20podcast. Anything would be greatly appreciated, and 100% of the donations will go to continued operation of the podcast. Okay, enough with the damn announcements, Jeremy. Let's talk about some weird-ass monsters. The Eye Tyrant, Sphere of Many Eyes, the Floaty, Stary, Beamy Death Ball, the Beholder. No matter what you call it, the

creature has haunted D&D players since first edition. Beholders are a Dungeons & Dragons monster and copyrighted by Wizards of the Coast, so most of our conversation today will need to focus on 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. But there are ways to convert 5e content to other game systems as needed. Google is your friend here. Beholders are iconic in Dungeons & Dragons. How iconic? Well, they're the cover art of the 5th edition Monster Manual kind of iconic. Been around since the beginning of Dungeons & Dragons iconic. They even bleed over to other media. I mean, a Beholder once appeared in the episode of Futurama, Sleeping on Guard Duty. A Beholder

was in the criminally underrated movie called Big Trouble in Little China. The movie Onward has a beholder and a gelatinous cube. Beholders have a long and storied history. They originated in the 1975 Greyhawk D&D supplement and were described as greedy and chaotic. If that supplement sounds familiar, it's because I've mentioned it before. Many of our popular monsters come from there. Mind flayers, owlbears, gelatinous cubes, displacer beasts. Hell, druids were a monster type, and now they're just the monsters we love in our party. But of all the monsters from D&D First Edition, why are beholders so pervasive and capture our imagination so?

Okay, let's start with how they look. Beholders look like floating orbs three to eight feet in diameter with a large central eye, giant maw of sharp teeth, and 10 little eye stalks sticking out of the body. This body type, by the way, is sometimes called an oculothorax

with a giant eye dominating the body's form. Mike Wazowski from Monsters Incorporated is an example of that body type. So if they're a giant eye, do they just roll around getting all dirty-like? Mike Wazowski from Monsters Incorporated is an example of that body type. So if they're a giant eye, do they just roll around getting all dirty-like? Nope. They can fly at will and do not land even when resting. They hover effortlessly with a 20-foot fly speed.

Every beholder looks a little different. Coloring of the skin, coloring of the eye, shape of the pupil, the eye stalk placement and skin texture. Some even have eye stalks at the end of tentacles. Some look like they have chitinous armor. They can look like however you would like them to look for your campaign and your adventure. Now as far as abilities go, beholders have 360 degree dark vision out to 120 feet. You can't sneak up on a beholder. They can see in pure darkness all the way around themselves, 120 foot range. They are paranoid. Beholders constantly run scenarios in their heads

for how someone could try to kill them, and then they prepare contingencies for that scenario. How paranoid are beholders? Let me quote Volo's Guide to Monsters here. A beholder has plans on top of plans, even for the least likely circumstances. It doesn't matter if invading adventurers arrive at its lair with summoned angel allies or enslaved demons. By breaking through the floor, teleporting in, or riding dinosaurs are girded with layers of magical defenses and armed with advanced weapons. defenses and armed with advanced weapons. In any case, the Beholder's reaction is calculated because it's thought about what it and its minions must do in response to every situation. Oh, to have the ability to plan like that. I could have used that ability dealing with an asshole former boss who liked to shake things up at meetings just because he could. Dick.

Anyway, speaking of my old boss, Beholders are lawful evil. Beholders have an unchecked ego. They believe they are superior to everyone and everything around them, even other Beholders. Beholders believe they are the center of the world. I mean, they're round and the world is round. Makes sense to them. It laughs at attempts to kill them. If it readily becomes available that the attack will be ineffective, it will mock the attacker.

Beholders are native to the Underdark, and they are just so weird, strange, alien. They don't sleep in the traditional sense. Their mind is aware of their surroundings at all times. It may look like they're hovering there dormant, but their mind is still running through scenarios at 100 miles an hour. Their cute little eyestalks are always scanning the environment for threats no matter how safe and secure the beholder feels at that moment. Another interesting thing about beholders is that their dreams can actually change reality around them. By dreaming of another beholder, they can make another beholder.

By dreaming of becoming undead, they can become an undead version of a beholder, they can make another beholder. By dreaming of becoming undead, they can become an undead version of a beholder. By dreaming that all the walls of their home are covered in delicious sliced roast beef, then bam, they're covered in sliced roast beef. Speaking of which, have you ever had that dream where you're eating a sheep and you wake up and your pillow's gone? Beholders could dream they were eating a sheep and they would wake up and there would be a sheep standing there. Their dreams literally manifest in reality and modify the reality of the area around them. I am really glad human beings can't do this because I have had some weird ass dreams in my life. Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women

screaming and throwing little pickles at you? No. Why am I the only person that has that dream? So combine their paranoia, the lack of the need to sleep, 360 degree dark vision, and all the scenario building they do, and it's nearly impossible to surprise a beholder. So yeah, they're weird. How can you use them in a campaign? For the most part, Beholders should be boss monsters of adventures or campaigns. Beholders can easily wipe a low-level party, and they are a challenge for a medium to high-level party. Beholders can be a convenient big bad evil guy because they are brilliant, territorial, xenophobic, evil, and generally batshit insane. If they see the PCs are

a threat, or believe they could be a threat, or theoretically eventually may possibly become a threat, they will do whatever they think they need to in order to deal with these real or perceived threats. Beholders as big bad evil guys give you, the DM, free reign to do whatever you would like. You can use different creatures which normally don't work together, but the Beholder is keeping them under its, um, thumb? Or whatever passes as a thumb for Beholders. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! Beholder's paranoid nature and proclivity for planning and complicated layers

screams good dungeon adventure. They collect minions so the adventure could kick off with minion interference with the PCs or some sort of quest giver saying, hey, we're being attacked by minotaurs or whatever. The PCs go to investigate only to realize that the threat is much, much bigger than they expected. So I mentioned Beholders reproducing by dreaming. If they dream of another beholder, bam, there's another beholder. It could be a variant beholder. It could be one of the smaller or bigger ones or one of the weirder ones that we're going to talk about here in a little

bit. But the problem is, if they dream another beholder into existence, beholders are aggressively territorial. If one dreams the other one into existence right next to it, they will likely try to kill each other. Beholders tend to be alpha predators around their lairs. They are challenged 13 monsters, meaning they are a match for a party of 11th level characters. They have magic eye rays that we'll talk about more in a minute that can deal with a wide variety of foes. They are supremely intelligent, default of 17. I mentioned Beholders collect minions, and they use these minions to help defend their lair and to prey on the surrounding area. They're aberrations, and they have motives

and thoughts that humanoids just don't understand. I do strongly recommend if you can get hands on Volo's Guide to Monsters. It does a great job of covering them and their variants, and I highly recommend you go there for more information than we have time to cover here. So let's talk about tactics. Beholders have 10 eyestalks, and each eyestalk has its own spell-like ability that it can fire at an opponent. It has three abilities that require wisdom-saving throws, charm, fear, and sleep. It has two eyestalks which require a constitution-saving throw, a paralyzing eyestalk, and an innervation eyestalk that does necrotic damage. It has four eyestalks that require dexterity saving throws, a slowing eyestalk, petrification, meaning turning to stone, disintegration, which means turns you to nothing, and death. And then it has one eye ray ability that's focused on a strength saving throw,

which is its telekinetic ability. Listen to the variety there. Four different saving throws with effects ranging from being charmed into thinking the beholder is your friend to being turned to stone or disintegrated. The only thing that keeps beholders from being much, much stronger foes is that it can only use eye attacks chosen at random each round and then only three of them. Once they are randomly chosen, however, the beholder picks the targets and they choose intelligently. Remember, Intelligence of 17. You got a big guy in heavy armor trying to kill it? Hit it with something that requires a Dexterity save. You've got this little weak wizard in the corner? Hit it with something that requires a Strength save or a Constitution. This doesn't mean that your beholder has to use the 10 spells that are listed. Those are the default ones for the monster

description, but even the description says that you can change those based on your own needs or your own whim for your campaign. Use those default spells as a basis or estimate for the type and strength of spells that you'd like your beholder to have. Beholders at their very nature adapt and evolve. If it would make more sense for the beholder to have. Beholders, at their very nature, adapt and evolve. If it would make more sense for the Beholder to have lightning spells, necrotic spells, poison spells to kill the most common enemies in an area, then it'll have it. All it has to do is dream that it's different, and poof, it will be. So when designing your Beholders, be flexible and give your players a unique experience fighting this Beholder, not just any Beholder.

Continuing on, Beholders have three legendary actions that allow it to use an additional random eye ray in a round. And let's not forget that giant eye in the middle. That giant eye is a 150-foot cone anti-magic ray, meaning magic inside the cone may not work or likely won't work. The eye stalk rays are magic, so they don't work at targets inside the cone, but of course the beholder knows this. If all opponents are in front of it, the anti-magic cone, well, it can wipe out magic for the entire suite of attacking people. That's great. But fighting on multiple fronts actually benefits the beholder in a lot of ways. If it can keep the cone focused on spellcasters and using eye rays at others, then that gives it the best chances to survive the combat.

Beholders are one of the few monsters we're facing really matters. The Beholder decides the direction the cone faces and whether it's currently active. Should you wander up to it, by the way, and think, oh, well, I'll just get up close to it so it's going to have a hard time hitting me with those eye rays, number one, that's not true, and number two, it can bite you with that giant row of teeth with a plus five to hit and it does an average of 14 damage each time it does. Beholders are nasty combatants. If they figure out one of the characters is a spellcaster, it's going to A, turn its anti-magic cone towards the spellcaster, and B, back up so the

cone hitting the spellcaster is as wide as possible, ideally keeping the spellcaster trapped inside the cone where it can't use its spells effectively. It has 360 degree vision so it doesn't hamper combat by staring at one direction. It'll fire off three eyestalks around in other directions and pick the rest of the party apart. But honestly, Beholders are some of my favorite monsters to run as a DM. There's a little randomness thrown in that you can fudge or not depending on your DM style to determine what ray attacks are going to happen that round. They're smart so they don't fight to the death unless they absolutely have to. You can use a Beholder as a recurring villain fight because A, they're smart enough not to just stand toe-to-toe and slog it out when they might be overmatched.

B, they're smart enough to learn the PC's tactics and use counter tactics next combat. And C, they will secure more minions and keep throwing them at the PCs. They don't give much of a care at all about the minions' lives. They are ants to the Beholder, and if they have to die for the Beholder to learn how PCs react to attacks on their campsite, so be it. I can always collect more. They are fun, and you can do fun things with them. Imagine the little sorcerer fails his constitution saving throw and is paralyzed. If the next round the telekinetic ray came up, if you wanted to have some fun as a beholder, why wouldn't you pick up that sorcerer, toss its paralyzed form into the 100-foot vertical shaft? I'd laugh doing it. I'm sure it would too. And if the big great sword-wielding fighter cuts it, make it a friend with a charm ray. Suggest it takes this combat

off and give the beholder a chance to protect it, because that's what friends do for one another. Beholders live in the Underdark. They tend to lair there. They're cavernous areas under the surface of the world. They tend to allow the beholder to take advantage of its flight ability, so think really high ceilings. Lairs are decorated with trophies and reminders of difficult opponents and those who had the hubris to think that they were equal to the mighty beholder. Beholders have lair actions. They can make a 50-foot square area of ground slimy and difficult terrain. I mean, they can fly, so who cares if the ground is hard to walk on? Walls can sprout grasping appendages that can grapple opponents, and you can make these appendages whatever you would like.

They can be hands, they can be tentacles, they can be chitinous crab-like pinchers, whatever you would like. Also inside of a lair, an eye can appear on a solid surface and shoot a random eye ray. Beholder la layers tend to be three-dimensional and vertical. That gives the movement advantage over the lesser creatures that require these piddly things called legs to move. They have connecting tunnels that would allow beholders to move quickly to surprise invaders. It will have strange rooms and traps designed to be safe for flying creatures that your players will have to work their way through. There should be areas of a beholder layerir that are safe for minions,

but there also should be areas that are quote-unquote beholder-only. Only flying creatures can safely pass. There are pressure plates on the ground or sensors low on the walls. It allows shortcuts to and from areas of their lair and areas where they can rest in relative peace. But that being said, beholders are paranoid, and they think about thousands or tens of thousands of potential threats, real, perceived, or purely theoretical. Their lair will be set up to prevent against some of those threats.

Concrete example. Imagine a beholder thinks that there's some sort of threat from a nearby vampire. Whether there are actually vampires nearby or not doesn't matter. It dreamed that there were. So while it rested, maybe the main entrance was changed to have running water running across it, and the entry door spike trap is now coated in alchemical silver and garlic. To get to the beholder resting area, you have to fly through a room with a hundred holy symbols hanging to a hundred different deities. PCs invade that crucifix room, and I don't know about your parties, but I know't know about your parties, but I know exactly what mine would do.

They would inevitably spend an hour trying to figure out why this room has a hundred holy symbols in it. It's a clue, I know it! As they stare off into oblivion, trying to solve the riddle of the holy symbols that doesn't even exist. Now imagine if besides undead,

the beholder also thinks constructs are going to be a problem. So maybe it has cage traps, magnets, spells, and attacks that do not allow for saving throws and bypass any damage reduction. But we're not done. There are different types of beholders and beholderkin out there. There's one called an eye tyrant that doesn't lead a solitary life and instead it wants to rule over a group or an organization. It doesn't mean that they like the organization or the people in it, but they see the value of having a collective of creatures that reports to you. They're still paranoid and they still don't hesitate to eliminate potential rivals.

A perfect example of this is the Beholder who runs Xanathar Thieves Guild, named, ironically, Xanathar. There's also a Death Tyrant Beholder, which is the Beholder that dreams itself into a state of undeath because it fears a mortal life. The eyestalks become little motes of light that fly around it, and they are tougher than beholders. There's a death's kiss beholder whose eyestalks are replaced with blood-draining tentacles because it dreamed it lost a lot of blood. There's one called a goth from the same plane as spectators, but the goth feeds on magic and magic objects to sustain its life. There's a gazer known as an eyeball, which is a tiny little eight-inch beholderkin with four eye stalks and an intelligence of three.

There's also a spectator, which is an extra planar beholderkin with four eye stalks. But if you dig further into history, you'll find directors which were hive shock troopers, eyes of the deep which were aquatic beholders with two big crab claws. There were gougers which were created by an evil aberration race called the Faerims. They were ruthless carnivores that hunted beholders. There were observers and overseers and others as well. Not only do I recommend Volo's Guide, by the way, I also once again want to recommend the blog and the book

The Monsters Know What They're Doing by Keith Amon. Beholders are meant to be unique big bads in your campaign. Imagine them with crazy modifications like adamantine-coated teeth or fitted armor, the mouth on the bottom of the creature instead of the front so it can chew on someone's head while still firing off eye rays. Change the eye rays to be whatever you need for this unique beholder. Does it layer in a cold terrain?

Maybe it has more fire damaging spells to give it an advantage. Make the beholder an intelligent adversary, customize it to make it yours and make it unique and memorable for your campaign. Thank you so much for listening. I once again want to thank our sponsor, Meatloaf. Serving suggestion, pull it out of the oven,

place it on an attractive disposable platter, chuck that shit in the garbage, and order a pizza. This has been episode 64 of the Monster Series, Beholders, The Eyes Have It. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.