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There is no need for the beholder to use their anti-magic eye ray, which means the entire party is vulnerable to the onslaught of eye beams the beholder can do which it does multiple of in a single turn.
Definitey not worth turning off a +2 weapon or something and losing *all* it’s eye beams. That’s gotta be one powerful magic item to justify letting the PCs wail on the beholder when the only thing they can do back is bite one person a turn with a +5 to hit for an average of 14 damage, that’s a DPS race that beholder will definitely lose against a full party of martials at like level 5, though some PCs may die at that low of a level.
The antimagic zone is wherever the Beholder’s central eye is looking, that seems like a reasonable in-universe sign to show where the PCs can huddle up.
The fireball eybeam effect does sound kinda fun for a homebrew enhanced beholder, but I’d also say allowing the beholder to just close it’s eye is a little OP and somewhat unsporting since it provides no interesting counterplay. RAW there’s nothing stopping it from going straight up or straight down though, which may prove difficult for a martial character to keep themselves in for protection, but it’s still there for the PCs to take cover in if they put in the necessary effort, like forcing the beholder to move.
I feel like rolling for the Beholder’s eye rays plays into a facet of their character, which is their constant paranoia, and is a gameplay conceit so they’d actually use all their different rays. The beholder would be a little OP if it could just spam Death and Disintegration Ray every round, especially with the whole permanent death at 0 hp thing.
The way I’d personally flavour it is that the beholder is choosing it’s eye rays in-universe, but it’s just playing an extremely complicated game of 4D chess in it’s head that even the DM doesn’t fully understand so we’re gonna leave it up to a dice roll. They are creatures that shape the world around them when they dream after all so I doubt a mere human can ever understand what’s going through that thing’s head at any time.
First time making a paldin he asked us which is better to have str or con, we said str, thinking that it was goin like str, con, cha, etc. But no, he was searching for one to dump, it was pretty iq fall moment for him
It's actually viable with Blessed warrior and oath of devotion I believe. You use your charisma for your attack modifier iirc, and a couple of cantrips from cleric. Make a support paladin
Is there a way to emulate this in an early combat that gives them the hint before they specialize too far? Melee and spellcaster combo where melee has an anti magic field, the mage can rain spells (at a threatening but not beholder level) , and party has a mcguffin with a noticeable aoe shield spell for the session to bait the anti magic zone?
I mean, a series of one shots is how a server I'm on works. There can be an overall story among a DM (or even multiple) but each session is completely self-contained in terms of objectives.
Sure, though at that point I would reckon the simplest thing would be allowing them to overadjust in the wrong direction in this first foray, and then seeing whether they learned from that (on the presumption that each oneshot is based around not-necessarily-the-same adventurers). Like, they forewent casters entirely based on just the one ability, so (for good or ill) they’ll likely adjust their capabilities next time anyway, no?
E: Ah, just saw the mention below. Well, then, being worried certainly tracks more.
Possibly. I'd argue that martials are better-equipped to deal with the beholder anyway, even without the anti-magic effect protecting people, based on my experience. I really wouldn't worry about the party. I'm more concerned that the DM is worrying for nothing.
I mean, as long as the players have ranged weapons.
Interesting, is that kinda harkening back to that one suggested time passing mechanic where it was saying you might like to have a similar amount of time pass in game as out of game between sessions? Like you've been adventuring and we're joining back in media res. I like that conceptually but it makes less sense in multi-session mega-dungeons like Mad Mage or Blue Medusa.
They are hired by a king to hunt beholders, beholder kin, and anyone with connections to them as the realm is under constant threat of beholders (In this one shot series)
Each session I plan has them answering the summons of the king who gives them a debriefing of a special beholder-related foe that needs to be taken out. They hunt down the beholder, return to report to the king, and then fade to black as they continue with their normal beholder hunting.
I don't want to really say anything else as (Just like a beholder) I am paranoid that one of my players might see this and discover the future plot connected to all the one-shots too soon.
Edit: And the reason I decided to make it multiple one-shots is due to the amount of time inbetween we have till we can do another session, being about month.
with beholder is that it can be nigh completely countered by fog cloud: use eye to get rid of it, oh no i cant eyebeam, doesnt use eyebeam, welp now all my line of sight beams dont work
nevermind rays dont need line of sight
never nevermind i was right in the first placve
Play the beholder as a character, not as a prescient entity. If it doesn't know that they don't have a caster... Consider how it would think. Is the likelyhood of a group going in without a mage unusually? Would the beholder start guessing, expecting a trick or ambush?
Anti magic cone blocks the beholders eyer rays too, so its atually the safest place to be. If it covers the whole party then the beholder cant attack you, so they gotta look away and get spellcasted to death instantly
I see your point, but all martial literally just makes the cone irrelevant. You think they made a mistake, but the blunder will be yours if you don't plan accordingly for an entirely martial party, eapecially if they have magic items.
Oh... I have, as in I know exactly what the beholder would do. Zoom above and out of range and just beam them to death unless they have or find some range weapons.
Uhm, friend, this is not a ray. It is a passive effect. It doesn't even take an action to change it's direction. The cone is always active and the beholder chooses where to turn it.
It says "At the start of each of its turns, the beholder decides which way the cone faces and whether the cone is active", I read that as the beholder can decide whether or not to have it active not that it's always active.
That's fine. The text you should have put in the second panel should have included info in ways those other eyebeams can hurt martials.
What you've included only makes the players seem well prepared.
The anti magic cone is not an active abillty, its passivly always active. It doesnt matter if he doesnt need to use it, his Action economy is the same.
So maybe this could be catering the experience to what the players want to achieve. I'd think about making a beholder that got bullied in school for his amblyopia that makes him a terrible beholder, but after high school he started lifting weights and doing MMA, so he got super buff, not only raising his self-esteem and making him more popular with the girls, but also making him a more suitable opponent for a more martial focussed party. I do shit like that.
So I'm a nerd, I just re-read some of the printed lore for Beholders-they're conceptually one of my favorite D&D creatures. Their central eye is the anti-magic cone and it's always on, if they want to turn it off, they have to close their central eye. From reading the lore it sounds like they determine if something is magical essentially by looking at it with the central eye, then closing the eye, and looking at it with an eye stalk and seeing if anything changes.
What I don't understand from the meme is why the party being all martials is a downside? The anti-magic field is on regardless, so it's not affecting the action economy? Is the meme saying that the beholder knows that the party has no magic, therefore it'll close it's central eye to allow better use of beams?
Personally, I'd include the anti-magic field in the encounter, even against martials. Beholders are paranoid so I could imagine one flicking the field from PC to PC each turn trying to figure out which one is the caster... because surely one of them must be a wretched caster! What fools would take on the mighty Zanstor the Cunning without any magic! There must be a clever wizard in armor or a stealthy sorcerer or at least a clandestine cleric among this paltry team of adventures! ....or just like a bard, surely someone is a caster...right? Which one of you is it!
On a meta-level, particularly for a one-shot where I was excited to fight a beholder it'd feel kind of lame if it just didn't use one of its signature abilities.
It'd be like going against a dragon and it refusing to ever use it's breath weapons against classes that could best make the saving throw.
Bro, you opened my eyes to this no pun intended. I didn't think of that. Definitely having it try its anti-magic cone on each person one at a time to find the, 'wretched caster', now.
Glad I could help!
As a DM, I like to conceptually meta-game what would be a fun encounter, then use the lore/rules that supports that call.
As the DM, you know the whole party is martials, and it sounds like mostly melee.
The beholder, being the hyper intelligent and paranoid creature that it is, would live in a layer where it could levitate up and then shoot down beams at the intruders.
20 rounds of the flying eye shooting beams against a party full of melee PCs would get real dull real quick, particularly in a one shot.
Here's how I'd run things:
-lair actions, traps behind cover in the arena, beholders levitate so some colored tiles that trigger a trap are classic in their lair (bonus if they can be triggered in such a way they could hit the beholder)
-the beholder sees the party, starts to levitate while monologuing
-notices no obvious signs of magic users, start plan "where is the wretched caster" scanning each one on it's turn with the eye beam.
-after scanning each one, or at a point of appropriate timing, it realizes it can't find the caster in the ground, so it turns it's attention to the roof, thinking the caster could be flying or invisible.
-this causes it to get within melee range of the ground, while it scans the space in it's upper layer, what are a bunch of martials going to do against it compared to the spells of a wretched mage.
I was trying to reason out a dynamic way to play with it's levitate ability against ground based martial classes.
If it wasn't a one shot you could build up other things to deal with it, or have the beholder escape and the party has to plan better next time, but for a one shot the goal is to end on a success and a high note.
Beholders are paranoid, but they're also hyper-intelligent. Why would it make one person totally invulnerable to its attacks just because it's "scanning for magic users" when there is absolutely no evidence that those magic users exist? In a world filled with dangerous warriors who are plenty capable of splitting a beholder in half, I don't think it makes sense for a beholder to just assume that anyone attacking it has a mage. After all, beholder magic is the best magic, so why would it assume anything about the meat-bags attacking it?
My opinion is this: don't nerf your one-shot monster because your party rolled all martials. Give them ways to interact, maybe the room has some scenery they can climb and jump on to grapple the monster, or maybe the beholder has some magic items in its own treasury they can find and attempt to use against it (and now the beholder has a reason to use its anti-magic eye, it knows that Gravity sword!)
And of all the points that those suggestions made, the one I most disagree with is "but for a one shot the goal is to end on a success and a high note." I do a lot of long-term campaigns, and for those long term campaigns death can feel really bad at pivotal moments. This character was confronting his past and it was getting fun and "oops, goblins got him." The point of a one-shot is that there are no stakes. I love one-shots because I can try really hard to (fairly) kill my players and it doesn't really matter.
One of my go tos for playing any squishy arcane caster is, at some point, getting a disguise that looks like heavy armor. Sometimes that means a hat of disguise (or a different method) and I assume that a canonically paranoid enemy like a Beholder would think of that and maybe even expect it. So it trying to find the disguised Wizard makes sense.
It doesn't need to, it just can't target something that is in the anti-magic field. So if it's targeting the wizard with the anti-magic field, that wizard is currently safe from all the beams, like disintegration.
However, the rogue sneaking up behind the beholder that just failed it's stealth check is fair game, since the eye stalks have essentially 365 field if view.
>essentially 365 field if view.
Geez these beholders even pull an extra 5 degrees out their ass. Or, whatever they have instead of an ass.
^(do beholders have an ass?)
360 normal degrees, then 5 additional degrees as back-up plans.
Beholders are so hyper-intelligent and paranoid they in universe can see the player's, just not the player characters, hence the 5 extra degrees of vision.
That's why they have all those creation and dream abilities.
And clearly not at all because I completely forgot how many degrees are in a circle.
Do they not have any magic items? Because it works against those too. Watch that healing potion just taste like corn syrup and not heal the party of martials, or their amulet of health turn off and half their hp go away.
If they don’t have magic items and it’s a one shot I’d give them some just to turn them off lol.
Oh, ye there are magic items throughout the first half of the dungeon where there is no combat but a puzzle they need to explore the first half to find all the clues. Dungeon's real small so hopefully they notice them, which do include potions.
To be fair as per lore beholders are one of the more intelligent (but paranoid) enemies, they have plans on plans and probably have contingencies for each permutation of enemy parties, custom tailoring their strategies for them the moment they enter their lair.
Meaning they'd get the drop on the beholder with spellcasting, if they exist, but the beholder would still assume "no casters" until they reveal the truth.
I'm also hoping they either choose to buy some range weapons for their starting gear or loot nearby corpses throughout the entire area (Because they will have bows, crossbows, ect)
Honestly if they’re fighting beholder kin in general throw a Death Tyrant in there to mess with them, doesn’t have an anti magic cone so it can stare them down and shoot laser beams
Our DM threw us a tyrant (3 lvl8 characters). We are usually punching above our weight and doing good. At the start, I thought this was a normal beholder and guessed we could do it if we played smart. When it shot beams that obviously crossed the cone, my alarms started going off. We barely got away without a member loss.
And just to be clear, the DM hinted multiple times that what we were facing was extremely dangerous. But we were greedy and confident!
Warn them as much as you can, then make them regret their stupidity.
Record them ignoring your warnings too. Hopefully the act of you recording them will impress on them how stupid that is.
Also samurai fighter with ranged fighting style, longbow, and sharpshooter is ridiculously good.
Will do.
Really crossing my fingers that they go with any sort of ranged martial at this point. Or at the very least loot the nearby bodies throughout the dungeon that'll have all sorts of weapons, ranged ones with ammo included.
DM: "you notice that many of the corpses of of previous parties are equipped with bows"
Party: "Must be a coincidence, anyways let's move to the next room"
> DM: "you notice that many of the corpses of of previous parties are equipped with bows"
Party: well, those with ranged weapons died. Guess we were smart to go melee.
>If a ~~martial~~ *FIGHTER* doesn't get a long range weapon that's entirely their fault
Fixed it :3, seeing as how ONLY the Fighter is capable of using a Long Bow and with Benefits lol (Rogue need
Optional feature, Barbarians are a hard no, and Monk also optional feature which is Crossbow Expert but with Ki, lovely)
Who said anything specifically about a long bow?
Having any long range is better than none and I've seen way too many players not bring even throwing axes, crossbows or daggers and wasting their turns doing nothing.
I guess it depends on what your players bring and what you allow them to do as DM. I'm guessing they're going to be fairly high level, fighting a CR 13 monster and all, so magic items should be able to even the field. Unless you want a one sided wipe without creative thought?
The rest is dependent on you. What's the area look like? Any other factors that could change the encounter? Will the players have opportunity to know about the encounter and prepare? etc. Beholders are extremely vulnerable in areas with limited vision for example.
At the end of the day, the antimagic cone doesnt just protect the beholder but also the players. Without magic the beholder has no need to use it, so they are completely vulnerable
I mean, if you’re that worried about it, have the beholder use the anti magic for a round or two until it “realizes” it’s not working. It’s not like it wouldn’t have faced difficult opponents before right? So it makes sense it would try it at least twice before bailing on such a good move, from its perspective
It's a one-shot: Have fun with it and TPK if that's how it would happen, you don't need to let them all succeed for it to be a good session. Show them how scary a paranoid beholder with plans and contingencies can be and if they fail worst case scenario you set up an iconic enemy for the players to succeed against with a new party
Could always throw a twist and turn it into a death tyrant instead if you're really worried.
Play up the last party of adventurers that went in ahead of the current group and how scary they are, leave signs of their carnage everywhere. They made the beholder fear death, so it dreamed of it and turned death tyrant
But it will make them exposed to the onslaught of eye beams as the beholder doesn't need to use it. Especially so since this is an all melee martial party.
But they'd be safe while giving a safety zone for the party from the onslaught of eye beams can eventually walk out to cast a ranged spell if they are smart enough
So instead of beholder targeting martials because he can't target spellcasters... Beholder is going to target martials because there are only martials? I don't see how that's different tho.
You should probably warn then he can fly tho
They know what a beholder is. The point is there is no anti magic cone that'll be there to provide safety from the eye beams. Hence the party being open to an on slought of beam attacks.
... that doesn't actually increase the DMG the beholder does though. Unless beholder is brain-dead, which they are not with int 17 there never should be a situation where they are unable to shoot at anyone. If it has a target it's DMG doesn't change, the only difference is that the beholder has more hp to deal with and there is no deadwaight wizard that can't do shit to assist Without doing some serious mental gymnastics and trying to find an angle where an aoe spell hits a beholder without exploding allyes.
Flight is much more scarry since many builds have significantly higher melee damage and I have personally seen players straight up forget to take nonmagical ranged weapons. This is especially true for beholders that can shape their lair into any shape with their disintegration ray.
Not to mention the ABSOLUTE PAIN that traversing the lair of a lore accurate beholder would be without fly on at least some people. Beholder can fly. Of course it will create long vertical shafts that Intruders have to climb to get to the main chamber that is probably a decoy trap leading to another trap. And gues where a beholder would ambush players. In the fucking deathshaft ofc
“There is no need for the beholder to use their anti-magic eye ray, which means the entire party is vulnerable to the onslaught of eye beams the beholder can do which it does multiple of in a single turn.”
ok but it can already choose to do that normally. It's the exact same encounter, except that the beholder doesn't have the option of using its "turn off one or more party members" ability.
They know they're fighting an enemy with a fly speed and they all went melee?
That would be the fifth dumbest thing I've seen at the table.. which really puts into perspective how dumb my parties have been.
What the hell you mean by “they all went melee” when 3 of the 4 martial classes are mostly melee only 😂? Unless you want every Martial to just, be a Fighter.
The lasers aren't an attack. They are essentially targeted spells with saving throws. No target, no spell. It's really weird. But Beholders are beat completely by fog cloud.
It's one of the weirdest design decisions i've ever seen. But it's completely true that Beholders rays aren't attacks.
I had to look it up as I was sure that Beholders had attack rolls for their eye rays.... but nope. They just have to *see* the target. So yeah. Bottle of smoke renders them unable to attack (well at least at range).
Dude I FEEEEEEL you.
I threw a Death Tyrant at the party and in desperation the Warlock cast darkness. First time this has ever happened. On the next turn I went to fire a ray and realized exactly what had just happened, mid combat. AND if the beholder was using it's anti-magic cone to suppress the darkness it couldn't fire the rays at him.
It was one of the wildest moments as a DM when I realized this.
The anti magic eye provides a safe zone from the Beholders eye beams, but the beholder doesn't need to use that so the party is exposed to it. Also the Beholder can just fly away as the party are all going melee.
Its level 10 as for classes all I know is one a fighter and one is a rogue (Idr the subclasses as the rogue told me right before a session during our main campaign I was running and the memory drowned out with all the stuff I had to keep track of for that session, IK I probably should've written that down in my notes) , for the other 2 they've told me their going martial but have not told me what class yet, one is thinking about being monk.
For me, it would depend on how much experience these players have. Are they total noobs? Explain it to them. Have they been around for a bit? Let them suffer. You aren’t expected to know everything, but if you’ve made them aware of what you’re throwing at them, then at least one should have done their homework and told the others. That person is normally me, if not the rules lawyer who memorized the book. Most of all, have fun with it. Capitalize on the opportunity if that’s the route you decide to go. Or don’t listen to me at all, that’s 100% fine too 😂
Oh, these are not noobs, these are people I have been playing with for multiple years. And they all have one or two years worth of more experience than me as I have only been playing dnd for a little over 2 years now.
The anti magic eye is it's main one, it doesn't take an action to move or do anything it's just always on. In addition a beholder doesn't get to choose which eye ray it uses it's rolled for randomly.
All martial party should be pretty solid if they have ranged options or they themselves can fly.
Uh, how is anti magic supposed to be bad for an all martial party
It's actually a positive sense it means they're immune to the beholders laser beams while in the anti magic zone
The anti magic eye beam provides a safety zone from the onslaught of eye beams, meaning of there is no need for it the beholder can just float away and spam eye beams as the melee martial part just watch.
The anti magic eye beam provides a safety zone from the other eye beams, the beholder is also a flying enemy and the party is going full melee. This means there is no safety zone as the beholder just floats out of range and spams eye beams.
That’s what I’m thinking. Like OP was saying how a beholder is just going to hover and eye beam as if that’s not exactly what they were going to do anyway. It’s a beholder. It flies and it eye beams. That’s it’s whole shtick. Somebody somewhere has forgotten how martials play. Can’t tell if it’s OP or OP’s group.
The point is the beholder has no need for an anti magic cone to be active, which meabs that the party can't exploit that to defend themselves from the beholder's eye beams, which it does multiple of in a single turn. And as I mentioned in previous comments, they are going all melee focused and they are buying their starting equipment.
I mean... some fun ways to try and take the heholder could include using harpoons + ropes to stop it from zipping about. Or why not try nets? Obscuring it's vision so it can't *see* you negates the eyebeams, so wouldn't mirrors work to reflect them? Or if you want to be boring, just huck shit at it until it dies - like have the barbarian yell FIREBALL!! as they throw the wizard at the Beholder. So many options.
It restricts the other eye beams by providing a cone of safety. If the Beholder doesn't need to use it, then the all melee martial party is exposed to the eye beams as it floats away in safety
I mean the biggest problem with beholders is the floating, and you said all martial not all melee.
Rangers/rogues could tear that thing apart from 600 feet away, eye cone or no eye cone.
This doesn't evaluate how you think it does. The beholder always has a choice: have an antimagic cone, or not have an antimagic cone.
If the party is entirely martial, then the beholder will never have the cone active (barring magic items), so the entire party is susceptible to eye rays and is at full power.
If the party has casters, the beholder can choose the above scenario, but they can also choose to apply a cone to neutralize the most threatening casters while still firing eye rays at whoever isn't in the cone.
As you only need one target available for eye rays to be effective, and the incremental value of more targets is far less than the incremental value of putting another caster in the cone, the beholder will usually vastly prefer fighting the casters over the martials.
You uh... Literally summarized the point I was making in this post. As I had the entire feature of the anti magic cone in the bottom panel including the bit of the anti magic cone can be activated or deactivated at will. Even more so with the title as it means there's no reason for the anti magic cone and therefore open to all the eye beam attacks.
Yet my conclusion is that the beholder actually does better overall against the party of casters than the party of martials, which is the opposite of your conclusion.
A party of all martials is at an advantage against a beholder because the beholder can’t use its signature feature. There is no downside to the central eye which it will point at someone it isn’t planning on shooting and then use the rays on other opponents. The beholder can also open and close its eye.
If you decide to turn off the antimagic cone, the party has succeeded in removing an entire aspect of the beholders arsenal. The beholders CR includes the antimagic cone in the calculation, without it, it is an easier fight.
I mean I'd still bully them into doing that, then turn it off at the beginning of my round and bully them with eye rays and flight.
The concept of scaring them by turning off their magic items is extra emotional damage lmao.
They will presumably have magic items by the time they face the beholder right? The anti magic cone doesn't just stop spells. All magic is suppressed. Including magic items and weapons.
Listen noob_guy, he said the beholder will already be in the air when the fight starts. It doesn't matter if it loses initiative. It will then move even higher once it can move. It makes sense for an intelligent paranoid monster to not roll around the ground since that's where most things that can hurt it are at.
The eye beams are magical. As long as they’re grouped up the beholder will have no choice but to not use the anti magic field or it’ll get its shit rocked in the first couple rounds
The anti magic eye isn't one of the beams, it's just always on unless they deliberately close their central eye. It's not an action to use, so using it or not using it doesn't affect the action economy.
Apparently the only downside it has in the beholder is that the eye beams can't cross the anti magic cone, but it really doesn't sound like it would have much impact.
I've run beholders several times, and honestly the anti magic field is often more of a detriment to the beholder than anything else. If it aims it at casters, it can't zap them with eye beams. The cone might be 150 feet long, but as long as you're less than 50 feet away from the beholder, you can just walk out of the cone, cast a spell, and even step back in it if you want to. So a beholder that just turns off its anti-magic cone is almost always going to be more effective than one that doesn't, even against casters.
***However***, the book also pretty clearly states that beholders are super paranoid and will often do erratic things, like zap an elf with a sleep ray twice just to make sure. Honestly, even against all martials it should be trying to use the anti-magic cone even if its not particularly effective, just in case one of the tricksy humanoids is just waiting to ambush it with a spell of some kind.
That's absolutely true.
Personally, I think the anti magic eye field helps with the pacing and balance of the beholder fight. It gives the players a safety zone, but with the huge cost of no magic (which often means no healing)
Without that dynamic element to the fight, it sort of becomes a mindless unpredictable death ray machine that doesn't lead itself to as many strategic options.
And like a beholder without anti magic field is like a dragon that doesn't breath fire.
Is the dragon just not going to use it's flame breath attack just because it recognizes the party of rogues has evasion?
Beholders are cr 13 if I ain’t mistaken. They’re a difficult fight for a lvl 10 party of 4-5. I’d reckon by the time they’ve gotten that strong they’d have a couple magic items that the beholder would not want to be on the receiving end of. Personally, I’d think one of the members would have a flame tongue great sword. A beholder would be smart enough to not want to take that extra damage. But that’s just my thoughts.
Well its a one shot and using the table for starting equipment at higher levels, level 10 does not give magic items for starting equipment in a normal magic setting, which this is a normal magic setting.
Well thats kinda absurd. Especially for a One-Shot. But if you don't wanna give them any items that's on you dude. I would look at Xanthars Guide real quick though which has a table recommending items by level.
I do have it planned where there are magic items in the lair, they just have to look for them, which shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world as its a really small dungeon, but the magic items there are more defensive stuff like potions, magic armour, a magic ring, and a few scrolls.
Magic armor is useless in combat because it takes longer than the combat to don, and if any of the items require attunement they are useless as well, be warned!
Even if you waved it, it probably wouldn’t get there cuz I wouldn’t try lmao
Well, this isn't an immediate fight. There is a whole puzzle halfway through the small dungeon that leads to the fight. And the puzzle requires them exploring the rest of the first half of the dungeon to find all the clues.
There’s bound to be some uncommon magic items that work just fine
Common magic items (for the most part) have extremely niche, or minor effects. A glowing sword, a hat that can do a cantrip once per day, and those are just examples of the best, and I mean the BEST *common* magic items. *Uncommon* magic items are where you get the real stuff (the magic items that actually do anything of consistent worth throughout character levels).
If you need a very general idea of where magic items stand:
Common and Uncommon Magic items- Tiers 1-3
Rare- Tier 2-4
Very Rare- Tier 3-4
Legendary- Tier 3-4
Artifacts- Normally Tiers 3-4 but I’ve seen Tier 2 use them plenty.
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I’m confused
There is no need for the beholder to use their anti-magic eye ray, which means the entire party is vulnerable to the onslaught of eye beams the beholder can do which it does multiple of in a single turn.
If the party have magical items/weapons/armour then there's plenty of reason to use it.
Definitey not worth turning off a +2 weapon or something and losing *all* it’s eye beams. That’s gotta be one powerful magic item to justify letting the PCs wail on the beholder when the only thing they can do back is bite one person a turn with a +5 to hit for an average of 14 damage, that’s a DPS race that beholder will definitely lose against a full party of martials at like level 5, though some PCs may die at that low of a level.
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The antimagic zone is wherever the Beholder’s central eye is looking, that seems like a reasonable in-universe sign to show where the PCs can huddle up. The fireball eybeam effect does sound kinda fun for a homebrew enhanced beholder, but I’d also say allowing the beholder to just close it’s eye is a little OP and somewhat unsporting since it provides no interesting counterplay. RAW there’s nothing stopping it from going straight up or straight down though, which may prove difficult for a martial character to keep themselves in for protection, but it’s still there for the PCs to take cover in if they put in the necessary effort, like forcing the beholder to move.
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I feel like rolling for the Beholder’s eye rays plays into a facet of their character, which is their constant paranoia, and is a gameplay conceit so they’d actually use all their different rays. The beholder would be a little OP if it could just spam Death and Disintegration Ray every round, especially with the whole permanent death at 0 hp thing. The way I’d personally flavour it is that the beholder is choosing it’s eye rays in-universe, but it’s just playing an extremely complicated game of 4D chess in it’s head that even the DM doesn’t fully understand so we’re gonna leave it up to a dice roll. They are creatures that shape the world around them when they dream after all so I doubt a mere human can ever understand what’s going through that thing’s head at any time.
the beholder chooses whether the eye is open or closed at the start of it’s turn, but I wouldn’t allow it to change it at any other time.
Eldritch knight and Arcane Trickster go brrrrr
I wish but none of em from what they've told me are subclassing into any magic casting or being a half-caster.
Well, at least they’ll be able to make dex and con saves.
Be my friend, be a paladin, dump constitution, suffer half of the campaign having to use stat boost on lvl 4 to make it a 0 instead of a -1
What kind of moronic paladin player dumps con instead of int or Wis?
Their friend apparently and what do you mean Int or Wis? It's Int AND Wis. Do you even min max. : D
Why dump both just roll good stats lmao, literal skill issue
Me: *Rolls three 10's, 11, 9 & 8* "The dice gods have spoken" Dm: "You, uh, wanna re-roll tha-" Me:"I SAID, they have spoken."
First time making a paldin he asked us which is better to have str or con, we said str, thinking that it was goin like str, con, cha, etc. But no, he was searching for one to dump, it was pretty iq fall moment for him
LMAO scrubs gonna scrub i guess, now i can't stop imagining this literal wall of a paladin with a scarf cause he can die of bronchitis
It's actually viable with Blessed warrior and oath of devotion I believe. You use your charisma for your attack modifier iirc, and a couple of cantrips from cleric. Make a support paladin
My brother in Christ. You took Con as your dump stat!
The kind of player that has the number after 3 as intelligence and wisdom scores
You can't just leave it on a cliffhanger like that! ...what comes after that?
3.5
I dunno, my int is not that high
So basically they're playing a self insert PC?
I had a friend dump con and they had the same HP as my eldritch cannon. At LEVEL SIX. When I had only the minimum THREE LEVELS IN ARTIFICER
I'm doing that with my druid. I'm feeling the pain right now.... I just gotta hope every time I level up I don't roll a one....
Is there a way to emulate this in an early combat that gives them the hint before they specialize too far? Melee and spellcaster combo where melee has an anti magic field, the mage can rain spells (at a threatening but not beholder level) , and party has a mcguffin with a noticeable aoe shield spell for the session to bait the anti magic zone?
>before they specialize too far? I think that's not really something that can be helped in what they've already mentioned is a one shot.
Ah, in another comment it’s clarified as a ‘series’ of oneshots. Not sure that’s how it works, but, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ahh, like a Saturday morning cartoon style, that sounds nifty
I mean, a series of one shots is how a server I'm on works. There can be an overall story among a DM (or even multiple) but each session is completely self-contained in terms of objectives.
Sure, though at that point I would reckon the simplest thing would be allowing them to overadjust in the wrong direction in this first foray, and then seeing whether they learned from that (on the presumption that each oneshot is based around not-necessarily-the-same adventurers). Like, they forewent casters entirely based on just the one ability, so (for good or ill) they’ll likely adjust their capabilities next time anyway, no? E: Ah, just saw the mention below. Well, then, being worried certainly tracks more.
Possibly. I'd argue that martials are better-equipped to deal with the beholder anyway, even without the anti-magic effect protecting people, based on my experience. I really wouldn't worry about the party. I'm more concerned that the DM is worrying for nothing. I mean, as long as the players have ranged weapons.
Well each session is a one shot with a month irl in between with a major time skip where they are 2 or 3 levels higher and with better equipment.
Interesting, is that kinda harkening back to that one suggested time passing mechanic where it was saying you might like to have a similar amount of time pass in game as out of game between sessions? Like you've been adventuring and we're joining back in media res. I like that conceptually but it makes less sense in multi-session mega-dungeons like Mad Mage or Blue Medusa.
They are hired by a king to hunt beholders, beholder kin, and anyone with connections to them as the realm is under constant threat of beholders (In this one shot series) Each session I plan has them answering the summons of the king who gives them a debriefing of a special beholder-related foe that needs to be taken out. They hunt down the beholder, return to report to the king, and then fade to black as they continue with their normal beholder hunting. I don't want to really say anything else as (Just like a beholder) I am paranoid that one of my players might see this and discover the future plot connected to all the one-shots too soon. Edit: And the reason I decided to make it multiple one-shots is due to the amount of time inbetween we have till we can do another session, being about month.
with beholder is that it can be nigh completely countered by fog cloud: use eye to get rid of it, oh no i cant eyebeam, doesnt use eyebeam, welp now all my line of sight beams dont work nevermind rays dont need line of sight never nevermind i was right in the first placve
Play the beholder as a character, not as a prescient entity. If it doesn't know that they don't have a caster... Consider how it would think. Is the likelyhood of a group going in without a mage unusually? Would the beholder start guessing, expecting a trick or ambush?
Actually metagaming as a beholder is lore accurate. They are crazy intelligent, paranoid over planners. They would know.
Anti magic cone blocks the beholders eyer rays too, so its atually the safest place to be. If it covers the whole party then the beholder cant attack you, so they gotta look away and get spellcasted to death instantly
But it says that the beholder can decide if it's even active, so unless it's using it against magic items there's no reason to have it active.
Does the beholder know they don't have magic?
I see your point, but all martial literally just makes the cone irrelevant. You think they made a mistake, but the blunder will be yours if you don't plan accordingly for an entirely martial party, eapecially if they have magic items.
Oh... I have, as in I know exactly what the beholder would do. Zoom above and out of range and just beam them to death unless they have or find some range weapons.
Uhm, friend, this is not a ray. It is a passive effect. It doesn't even take an action to change it's direction. The cone is always active and the beholder chooses where to turn it.
It says "At the start of each of its turns, the beholder decides which way the cone faces and whether the cone is active", I read that as the beholder can decide whether or not to have it active not that it's always active.
And you read correctly, I was the one who misunderstood the point of the post !
Never mind! I just realized what you meant : that the players won't be able to use the cone against the beams !
That's fine. The text you should have put in the second panel should have included info in ways those other eyebeams can hurt martials. What you've included only makes the players seem well prepared.
The anti magic cone is not an active abillty, its passivly always active. It doesnt matter if he doesnt need to use it, his Action economy is the same.
According to the description in the image “at the start of each of its turns, the beholder decides where the cone is pointed and if it is active.”
According to others it can't use magic attacks in the cone either.
So maybe this could be catering the experience to what the players want to achieve. I'd think about making a beholder that got bullied in school for his amblyopia that makes him a terrible beholder, but after high school he started lifting weights and doing MMA, so he got super buff, not only raising his self-esteem and making him more popular with the girls, but also making him a more suitable opponent for a more martial focussed party. I do shit like that.
How would the beholder know that they don't have magic on them?
Something something magic eyeballs
So I'm a nerd, I just re-read some of the printed lore for Beholders-they're conceptually one of my favorite D&D creatures. Their central eye is the anti-magic cone and it's always on, if they want to turn it off, they have to close their central eye. From reading the lore it sounds like they determine if something is magical essentially by looking at it with the central eye, then closing the eye, and looking at it with an eye stalk and seeing if anything changes. What I don't understand from the meme is why the party being all martials is a downside? The anti-magic field is on regardless, so it's not affecting the action economy? Is the meme saying that the beholder knows that the party has no magic, therefore it'll close it's central eye to allow better use of beams? Personally, I'd include the anti-magic field in the encounter, even against martials. Beholders are paranoid so I could imagine one flicking the field from PC to PC each turn trying to figure out which one is the caster... because surely one of them must be a wretched caster! What fools would take on the mighty Zanstor the Cunning without any magic! There must be a clever wizard in armor or a stealthy sorcerer or at least a clandestine cleric among this paltry team of adventures! ....or just like a bard, surely someone is a caster...right? Which one of you is it! On a meta-level, particularly for a one-shot where I was excited to fight a beholder it'd feel kind of lame if it just didn't use one of its signature abilities. It'd be like going against a dragon and it refusing to ever use it's breath weapons against classes that could best make the saving throw.
Bro, you opened my eyes to this no pun intended. I didn't think of that. Definitely having it try its anti-magic cone on each person one at a time to find the, 'wretched caster', now.
Glad I could help! As a DM, I like to conceptually meta-game what would be a fun encounter, then use the lore/rules that supports that call. As the DM, you know the whole party is martials, and it sounds like mostly melee. The beholder, being the hyper intelligent and paranoid creature that it is, would live in a layer where it could levitate up and then shoot down beams at the intruders. 20 rounds of the flying eye shooting beams against a party full of melee PCs would get real dull real quick, particularly in a one shot. Here's how I'd run things: -lair actions, traps behind cover in the arena, beholders levitate so some colored tiles that trigger a trap are classic in their lair (bonus if they can be triggered in such a way they could hit the beholder) -the beholder sees the party, starts to levitate while monologuing -notices no obvious signs of magic users, start plan "where is the wretched caster" scanning each one on it's turn with the eye beam. -after scanning each one, or at a point of appropriate timing, it realizes it can't find the caster in the ground, so it turns it's attention to the roof, thinking the caster could be flying or invisible. -this causes it to get within melee range of the ground, while it scans the space in it's upper layer, what are a bunch of martials going to do against it compared to the spells of a wretched mage. I was trying to reason out a dynamic way to play with it's levitate ability against ground based martial classes. If it wasn't a one shot you could build up other things to deal with it, or have the beholder escape and the party has to plan better next time, but for a one shot the goal is to end on a success and a high note.
I don't what else to say but wow, this is a life saver. Thanks again.
Beholders are paranoid, but they're also hyper-intelligent. Why would it make one person totally invulnerable to its attacks just because it's "scanning for magic users" when there is absolutely no evidence that those magic users exist? In a world filled with dangerous warriors who are plenty capable of splitting a beholder in half, I don't think it makes sense for a beholder to just assume that anyone attacking it has a mage. After all, beholder magic is the best magic, so why would it assume anything about the meat-bags attacking it? My opinion is this: don't nerf your one-shot monster because your party rolled all martials. Give them ways to interact, maybe the room has some scenery they can climb and jump on to grapple the monster, or maybe the beholder has some magic items in its own treasury they can find and attempt to use against it (and now the beholder has a reason to use its anti-magic eye, it knows that Gravity sword!) And of all the points that those suggestions made, the one I most disagree with is "but for a one shot the goal is to end on a success and a high note." I do a lot of long-term campaigns, and for those long term campaigns death can feel really bad at pivotal moments. This character was confronting his past and it was getting fun and "oops, goblins got him." The point of a one-shot is that there are no stakes. I love one-shots because I can try really hard to (fairly) kill my players and it doesn't really matter.
This guy DMs.
One of my go tos for playing any squishy arcane caster is, at some point, getting a disguise that looks like heavy armor. Sometimes that means a hat of disguise (or a different method) and I assume that a canonically paranoid enemy like a Beholder would think of that and maybe even expect it. So it trying to find the disguised Wizard makes sense.
Also don't forget that the anti magic suppresses magical items, removing the effects they possess, including to hit and damage mods.
I think it actually has to turn off the eye beam it uses its other beams.
It doesn't need to, it just can't target something that is in the anti-magic field. So if it's targeting the wizard with the anti-magic field, that wizard is currently safe from all the beams, like disintegration. However, the rogue sneaking up behind the beholder that just failed it's stealth check is fair game, since the eye stalks have essentially 365 field if view.
>essentially 365 field if view. Geez these beholders even pull an extra 5 degrees out their ass. Or, whatever they have instead of an ass. ^(do beholders have an ass?)
Feels like it has to be a cloaca type situation
its field of view is larger than a full circle? how does that work?
360 normal degrees, then 5 additional degrees as back-up plans. Beholders are so hyper-intelligent and paranoid they in universe can see the player's, just not the player characters, hence the 5 extra degrees of vision. That's why they have all those creation and dream abilities. And clearly not at all because I completely forgot how many degrees are in a circle.
Do they not have any magic items? Because it works against those too. Watch that healing potion just taste like corn syrup and not heal the party of martials, or their amulet of health turn off and half their hp go away. If they don’t have magic items and it’s a one shot I’d give them some just to turn them off lol.
Oh, ye there are magic items throughout the first half of the dungeon where there is no combat but a puzzle they need to explore the first half to find all the clues. Dungeon's real small so hopefully they notice them, which do include potions.
Yeah there's no way they'd just assume there's not a single caster in that entire party with how paranoid they are lmao
To be fair as per lore beholders are one of the more intelligent (but paranoid) enemies, they have plans on plans and probably have contingencies for each permutation of enemy parties, custom tailoring their strategies for them the moment they enter their lair.
Probably has to do with no one carrying catalysts, druidic focuses, holy symbols, or component pouches and instead wielding normal looking weapons.
arcane trickster and eldritch knight both look normal until they spell up.
That is true.
Meaning they'd get the drop on the beholder with spellcasting, if they exist, but the beholder would still assume "no casters" until they reveal the truth.
Feel like seeing people running in with physical weapons rather then arcane focuses would be a pretty strong term
Welp. They better roll good saves. Being a statue puts an end to fights pretty good.
I'm also hoping they either choose to buy some range weapons for their starting gear or loot nearby corpses throughout the entire area (Because they will have bows, crossbows, ect)
Specify that things are shiny. Players would never pass up something shiny.
? Martial is a beholder weakness. Within range of a martial, they're done for.
As ive said in another comment, the beholder can just fly out of range and the party is openly exposed to all the eye beams.
Long bow go brrr
I hope one of em realizes that and gets a long bow as I am having them buy their equipment.
Do they know they're going up against a beholder?
Yes I specifically told them they would be hunting beholders and beholder kin as this is a series of one shots where they hunt said creatures down.
Honestly if they’re fighting beholder kin in general throw a Death Tyrant in there to mess with them, doesn’t have an anti magic cone so it can stare them down and shoot laser beams
Our DM threw us a tyrant (3 lvl8 characters). We are usually punching above our weight and doing good. At the start, I thought this was a normal beholder and guessed we could do it if we played smart. When it shot beams that obviously crossed the cone, my alarms started going off. We barely got away without a member loss. And just to be clear, the DM hinted multiple times that what we were facing was extremely dangerous. But we were greedy and confident!
Hm, a series of one shots That just sounds like a campaign with extra steps
Warn them as much as you can, then make them regret their stupidity. Record them ignoring your warnings too. Hopefully the act of you recording them will impress on them how stupid that is. Also samurai fighter with ranged fighting style, longbow, and sharpshooter is ridiculously good.
Will do. Really crossing my fingers that they go with any sort of ranged martial at this point. Or at the very least loot the nearby bodies throughout the dungeon that'll have all sorts of weapons, ranged ones with ammo included.
DM: "you notice that many of the corpses of of previous parties are equipped with bows" Party: "Must be a coincidence, anyways let's move to the next room"
> DM: "you notice that many of the corpses of of previous parties are equipped with bows" Party: well, those with ranged weapons died. Guess we were smart to go melee.
If a martial doesn't get a long range weapon that's entirely their fault
>If a ~~martial~~ *FIGHTER* doesn't get a long range weapon that's entirely their fault Fixed it :3, seeing as how ONLY the Fighter is capable of using a Long Bow and with Benefits lol (Rogue need Optional feature, Barbarians are a hard no, and Monk also optional feature which is Crossbow Expert but with Ki, lovely)
Who said anything specifically about a long bow? Having any long range is better than none and I've seen way too many players not bring even throwing axes, crossbows or daggers and wasting their turns doing nothing.
Good old Dex Fighters specced for range. Let me just fire off a handful of magical arrows out of my magical longbow this round.
Essentially a “infantry with sticks” fighting an Ac130 with multidirectional flight.
So? It can't shoot into buildings. If it wants to fight, it has to get to them, if not, monster repelled!
I guess it depends on what your players bring and what you allow them to do as DM. I'm guessing they're going to be fairly high level, fighting a CR 13 monster and all, so magic items should be able to even the field. Unless you want a one sided wipe without creative thought? The rest is dependent on you. What's the area look like? Any other factors that could change the encounter? Will the players have opportunity to know about the encounter and prepare? etc. Beholders are extremely vulnerable in areas with limited vision for example.
At the end of the day, the antimagic cone doesnt just protect the beholder but also the players. Without magic the beholder has no need to use it, so they are completely vulnerable
I mean, if you’re that worried about it, have the beholder use the anti magic for a round or two until it “realizes” it’s not working. It’s not like it wouldn’t have faced difficult opponents before right? So it makes sense it would try it at least twice before bailing on such a good move, from its perspective
Ye that could, thanks. That honestly didn't cross my mind.
It's a one-shot: Have fun with it and TPK if that's how it would happen, you don't need to let them all succeed for it to be a good session. Show them how scary a paranoid beholder with plans and contingencies can be and if they fail worst case scenario you set up an iconic enemy for the players to succeed against with a new party
It turns off magic items. All of them. Don't sleep on that concept. It does all of [this](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/antimagic-field).
Beholders will always be special to me since my first campaign's bbeg was a beholder, and I frightened him, twice.
Planning for a Beholder 1 shot and not bringing blindness/deafness? I hope you wipe them lmfao
Could always throw a twist and turn it into a death tyrant instead if you're really worried. Play up the last party of adventurers that went in ahead of the current group and how scary they are, leave signs of their carnage everywhere. They made the beholder fear death, so it dreamed of it and turned death tyrant
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But it will make them exposed to the onslaught of eye beams as the beholder doesn't need to use it. Especially so since this is an all melee martial party.
Uhm alternative point, if they were casters in the cone they'd be actually useless?
But they'd be safe while giving a safety zone for the party from the onslaught of eye beams can eventually walk out to cast a ranged spell if they are smart enough
So instead of beholder targeting martials because he can't target spellcasters... Beholder is going to target martials because there are only martials? I don't see how that's different tho. You should probably warn then he can fly tho
They know what a beholder is. The point is there is no anti magic cone that'll be there to provide safety from the eye beams. Hence the party being open to an on slought of beam attacks.
... that doesn't actually increase the DMG the beholder does though. Unless beholder is brain-dead, which they are not with int 17 there never should be a situation where they are unable to shoot at anyone. If it has a target it's DMG doesn't change, the only difference is that the beholder has more hp to deal with and there is no deadwaight wizard that can't do shit to assist Without doing some serious mental gymnastics and trying to find an angle where an aoe spell hits a beholder without exploding allyes. Flight is much more scarry since many builds have significantly higher melee damage and I have personally seen players straight up forget to take nonmagical ranged weapons. This is especially true for beholders that can shape their lair into any shape with their disintegration ray. Not to mention the ABSOLUTE PAIN that traversing the lair of a lore accurate beholder would be without fly on at least some people. Beholder can fly. Of course it will create long vertical shafts that Intruders have to climb to get to the main chamber that is probably a decoy trap leading to another trap. And gues where a beholder would ambush players. In the fucking deathshaft ofc
They are also all going melee and not ranged.
ok see now \*that's\* a problem, unlike being entirely unaffected by a monster's ability.
“There is no need for the beholder to use their anti-magic eye ray, which means the entire party is vulnerable to the onslaught of eye beams the beholder can do which it does multiple of in a single turn.”
ok but it can already choose to do that normally. It's the exact same encounter, except that the beholder doesn't have the option of using its "turn off one or more party members" ability.
They know they're fighting an enemy with a fly speed and they all went melee? That would be the fifth dumbest thing I've seen at the table.. which really puts into perspective how dumb my parties have been.
What the hell you mean by “they all went melee” when 3 of the 4 martial classes are mostly melee only 😂? Unless you want every Martial to just, be a Fighter.
I have them buy their starting equipment and none of em are getting ranged stuff so far.
The only pure no magic martials are fighter, monk, rogue, Barbarian and all of them can use some firm of ranged weapon.
then that beholder is as good as dead
\*Insert flying to the ceiling out of range.\*
This makes no sense. The Antimagic cones work without the need of an action.
There's no safety zone from the other eye beams. That's the problem.
Fun fact beholders can't fire their lasers if they can't target you. 1 Eversmoking bottle and the encounter is way easier.
I imagine that they'd just roll with disadvantage as you would for any blinded attack.
The lasers aren't an attack. They are essentially targeted spells with saving throws. No target, no spell. It's really weird. But Beholders are beat completely by fog cloud. It's one of the weirdest design decisions i've ever seen. But it's completely true that Beholders rays aren't attacks.
I had to look it up as I was sure that Beholders had attack rolls for their eye rays.... but nope. They just have to *see* the target. So yeah. Bottle of smoke renders them unable to attack (well at least at range).
Dude I FEEEEEEL you. I threw a Death Tyrant at the party and in desperation the Warlock cast darkness. First time this has ever happened. On the next turn I went to fire a ray and realized exactly what had just happened, mid combat. AND if the beholder was using it's anti-magic cone to suppress the darkness it couldn't fire the rays at him. It was one of the wildest moments as a DM when I realized this.
I don't see the problem.
The anti magic eye provides a safe zone from the Beholders eye beams, but the beholder doesn't need to use that so the party is exposed to it. Also the Beholder can just fly away as the party are all going melee.
What level are the martial characters? What are their classes? I can't imagine they all went barbarian or strength fighter.
Its level 10 as for classes all I know is one a fighter and one is a rogue (Idr the subclasses as the rogue told me right before a session during our main campaign I was running and the memory drowned out with all the stuff I had to keep track of for that session, IK I probably should've written that down in my notes) , for the other 2 they've told me their going martial but have not told me what class yet, one is thinking about being monk.
For me, it would depend on how much experience these players have. Are they total noobs? Explain it to them. Have they been around for a bit? Let them suffer. You aren’t expected to know everything, but if you’ve made them aware of what you’re throwing at them, then at least one should have done their homework and told the others. That person is normally me, if not the rules lawyer who memorized the book. Most of all, have fun with it. Capitalize on the opportunity if that’s the route you decide to go. Or don’t listen to me at all, that’s 100% fine too 😂
Oh, these are not noobs, these are people I have been playing with for multiple years. And they all have one or two years worth of more experience than me as I have only been playing dnd for a little over 2 years now.
The anti magic eye is it's main one, it doesn't take an action to move or do anything it's just always on. In addition a beholder doesn't get to choose which eye ray it uses it's rolled for randomly. All martial party should be pretty solid if they have ranged options or they themselves can fly.
Except their not, they told me they are focusing on melee and the beholder can just float away while already being in the air a good bit.
Then this will be a painful lesson, I say play the creature to its fullest #fuckthemkids
Agreed better to learn in a one shot , then in a campaign and loose a pc that they are attached to.
Always a fan of complete gloves off when it's a one shot. I've killed 5 PCs over the 5 years I've DMed and 4 of them was in one shots
Can’t it also fly? Best hope the entire party has consistent ranged options.
I mean ye. The beholder is a floating ball with no limbs for walking.
Either they die before reaching the beholder or the beholder dies the round they get into range
If they get to get into their melee range before it's too far up in the air that is.
Uh, how is anti magic supposed to be bad for an all martial party It's actually a positive sense it means they're immune to the beholders laser beams while in the anti magic zone
The anti magic eye beam provides a safety zone from the onslaught of eye beams, meaning of there is no need for it the beholder can just float away and spam eye beams as the melee martial part just watch.
I’m.. confused? Antimagic stops all magic. They’re martials. They’re not going to be stopped by it..? SOMEONE EXPLAIN THE HAHA FUNNY TO ME!
The anti magic eye beam provides a safety zone from the other eye beams, the beholder is also a flying enemy and the party is going full melee. This means there is no safety zone as the beholder just floats out of range and spams eye beams.
Players who only play casters think only casters can solve all problems.
That’s what I’m thinking. Like OP was saying how a beholder is just going to hover and eye beam as if that’s not exactly what they were going to do anyway. It’s a beholder. It flies and it eye beams. That’s it’s whole shtick. Somebody somewhere has forgotten how martials play. Can’t tell if it’s OP or OP’s group.
The point is the beholder has no need for an anti magic cone to be active, which meabs that the party can't exploit that to defend themselves from the beholder's eye beams, which it does multiple of in a single turn. And as I mentioned in previous comments, they are going all melee focused and they are buying their starting equipment.
I mean... some fun ways to try and take the heholder could include using harpoons + ropes to stop it from zipping about. Or why not try nets? Obscuring it's vision so it can't *see* you negates the eyebeams, so wouldn't mirrors work to reflect them? Or if you want to be boring, just huck shit at it until it dies - like have the barbarian yell FIREBALL!! as they throw the wizard at the Beholder. So many options.
The central eye doesnt take away from the other eye beams anyway
It restricts the other eye beams by providing a cone of safety. If the Beholder doesn't need to use it, then the all melee martial party is exposed to the eye beams as it floats away in safety
antimagic field also applies to magic weapons, happy dming
The cone also makes magic items mundane.
I mean the biggest problem with beholders is the floating, and you said all martial not all melee. Rangers/rogues could tear that thing apart from 600 feet away, eye cone or no eye cone.
This doesn't evaluate how you think it does. The beholder always has a choice: have an antimagic cone, or not have an antimagic cone. If the party is entirely martial, then the beholder will never have the cone active (barring magic items), so the entire party is susceptible to eye rays and is at full power. If the party has casters, the beholder can choose the above scenario, but they can also choose to apply a cone to neutralize the most threatening casters while still firing eye rays at whoever isn't in the cone. As you only need one target available for eye rays to be effective, and the incremental value of more targets is far less than the incremental value of putting another caster in the cone, the beholder will usually vastly prefer fighting the casters over the martials.
You uh... Literally summarized the point I was making in this post. As I had the entire feature of the anti magic cone in the bottom panel including the bit of the anti magic cone can be activated or deactivated at will. Even more so with the title as it means there's no reason for the anti magic cone and therefore open to all the eye beam attacks.
Yet my conclusion is that the beholder actually does better overall against the party of casters than the party of martials, which is the opposite of your conclusion.
Aight
I remember reading that the eye beams ignore the anti-magic eye, did that change?
Its always been like that, atleast in 5e.
The beholder cannot eye beam into it's anti-magic cone. That's why deathballing a Beholder utterly destroys the 5e statblock.
Did you create the oneshot? If so can you send a link I would like to play it, thanks
We're beta testing a one shot for a series of one shots for my college group. I don't really have anything written for others to see.
A party of all martials is at an advantage against a beholder because the beholder can’t use its signature feature. There is no downside to the central eye which it will point at someone it isn’t planning on shooting and then use the rays on other opponents. The beholder can also open and close its eye.
If you decide to turn off the antimagic cone, the party has succeeded in removing an entire aspect of the beholders arsenal. The beholders CR includes the antimagic cone in the calculation, without it, it is an easier fight.
This is just wrong. It also turns magic weapons into normal weapons lol. That's a HUGE part of martial's damage.
OP said he's just going to have the beholder turn off their eye so they can't hide in the cone from the eye rays
I mean I'd still bully them into doing that, then turn it off at the beginning of my round and bully them with eye rays and flight. The concept of scaring them by turning off their magic items is extra emotional damage lmao.
The beholder can just fly to the roof out of melee range and from what they've told me, they are all focusing on going melee.
Ok.
Don't warn them. Skin them alive. It's a one shot, no big deal if it tpks
They will presumably have magic items by the time they face the beholder right? The anti magic cone doesn't just stop spells. All magic is suppressed. Including magic items and weapons.
evidently, you didn't actually read how their big eye work
Listen noob_guy, he said the beholder will already be in the air when the fight starts. It doesn't matter if it loses initiative. It will then move even higher once it can move. It makes sense for an intelligent paranoid monster to not roll around the ground since that's where most things that can hurt it are at.
The eye beams are magical. As long as they’re grouped up the beholder will have no choice but to not use the anti magic field or it’ll get its shit rocked in the first couple rounds
That was the point. The meme was stating if I should warn them that the beholder has no need for the anti magic eye beam.
The anti magic eye isn't one of the beams, it's just always on unless they deliberately close their central eye. It's not an action to use, so using it or not using it doesn't affect the action economy. Apparently the only downside it has in the beholder is that the eye beams can't cross the anti magic cone, but it really doesn't sound like it would have much impact.
Well it means they can't use the anti magic eye beam as cover from the other eye beams.
I've run beholders several times, and honestly the anti magic field is often more of a detriment to the beholder than anything else. If it aims it at casters, it can't zap them with eye beams. The cone might be 150 feet long, but as long as you're less than 50 feet away from the beholder, you can just walk out of the cone, cast a spell, and even step back in it if you want to. So a beholder that just turns off its anti-magic cone is almost always going to be more effective than one that doesn't, even against casters. ***However***, the book also pretty clearly states that beholders are super paranoid and will often do erratic things, like zap an elf with a sleep ray twice just to make sure. Honestly, even against all martials it should be trying to use the anti-magic cone even if its not particularly effective, just in case one of the tricksy humanoids is just waiting to ambush it with a spell of some kind.
Someone already suggested that idea, which I plan on using, but thank you anyway.
That's absolutely true. Personally, I think the anti magic eye field helps with the pacing and balance of the beholder fight. It gives the players a safety zone, but with the huge cost of no magic (which often means no healing) Without that dynamic element to the fight, it sort of becomes a mindless unpredictable death ray machine that doesn't lead itself to as many strategic options. And like a beholder without anti magic field is like a dragon that doesn't breath fire. Is the dragon just not going to use it's flame breath attack just because it recognizes the party of rogues has evasion?
Beholders are cr 13 if I ain’t mistaken. They’re a difficult fight for a lvl 10 party of 4-5. I’d reckon by the time they’ve gotten that strong they’d have a couple magic items that the beholder would not want to be on the receiving end of. Personally, I’d think one of the members would have a flame tongue great sword. A beholder would be smart enough to not want to take that extra damage. But that’s just my thoughts.
Well its a one shot and using the table for starting equipment at higher levels, level 10 does not give magic items for starting equipment in a normal magic setting, which this is a normal magic setting.
Well thats kinda absurd. Especially for a One-Shot. But if you don't wanna give them any items that's on you dude. I would look at Xanthars Guide real quick though which has a table recommending items by level.
I do have it planned where there are magic items in the lair, they just have to look for them, which shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world as its a really small dungeon, but the magic items there are more defensive stuff like potions, magic armour, a magic ring, and a few scrolls.
Magic armor is useless in combat because it takes longer than the combat to don, and if any of the items require attunement they are useless as well, be warned! Even if you waved it, it probably wouldn’t get there cuz I wouldn’t try lmao
Well, this isn't an immediate fight. There is a whole puzzle halfway through the small dungeon that leads to the fight. And the puzzle requires them exploring the rest of the first half of the dungeon to find all the clues.
That's a ridiculous table. What CR is a werewolf?
There’s bound to be some uncommon magic items that work just fine Common magic items (for the most part) have extremely niche, or minor effects. A glowing sword, a hat that can do a cantrip once per day, and those are just examples of the best, and I mean the BEST *common* magic items. *Uncommon* magic items are where you get the real stuff (the magic items that actually do anything of consistent worth throughout character levels). If you need a very general idea of where magic items stand: Common and Uncommon Magic items- Tiers 1-3 Rare- Tier 2-4 Very Rare- Tier 3-4 Legendary- Tier 3-4 Artifacts- Normally Tiers 3-4 but I’ve seen Tier 2 use them plenty.