concept; amnesiac beholder, maybe even blind. everything the same, except the beholder has no idea how to get out, and is convinced that it is stuck inside the lair of a different beholder; it keeps setting off, disarming, rearming and making new traps as it expands its smooth stone halls in search of a nonexistent enemy.
@@tomarmadiyer2698 I petition to name this spawn a Kobolder. It's main eye should be a fabricate eye to create traps. This one's lair should make JIGSAW blush.
The first step is a trapdoor that opens into an acid pit The second step isn't real, it's just an illusion. there's no pit below it though, there's just no real stair there The third step is made of a sticky ooze that looks exactly like solid stone, holding you in place The fourth step is scorching hot The fifth step will electrocute you if you touch it The sixth step is actually a hidden ledge that will shoot out of the staircase and attempt to ram you The seventh step is sentient and will start screaming obscenely if you touch it The eighth and ninth steps are completely normal The tenth step causes the 8th and 9th steps to rise out of the staircase and form a stone wall The eleventh step causes all remaining steps to rotate 45 degrees The twelfth step has a glyph of warding on it The thirteenth step is made of paper, and there are spikes under it The fourteenth step is a hidden dart launcher that will shoot upward at anything that tries to fly above it The fifteenth step quadruples in size if touched The sixteenth step stops time for 6 seconds if the word "wait" is spoken aloud Congrats, you've made it past the entrance
@@SirPogsalotCreates The stairs aren’t all that dangerous, but they are used as a way to intimidate the would be adventures so much that by that time you get into the dungeon you have a -4 to your wisdom saving throws for a few hours due to paranoia of how many traps could be around any corner, what Random tile in a seemingly mundane room can open a trapdoor releasing a gelatinous cube into the room disallowing escape.
@@SirPogsalotCreates Each "step" is about 2.5' in length, hard to not step on without having to hop onto the one in front of it. Just inconvenient and unpleasant traps. Could be the whole dungeon in a gag wizard tower
Hilarious idea: a “Reasonable” Beholder. That being a beholder whose actions and motivations are tinted through the completely understandable lens of “Oh god what the fuck how did I get here where am I what am I how do I make it stop” A beholder that eye-lasers everything with a pulse because it doesn’t know what is and isn’t dangerous and is not taking any chances. It doesn’t know what the fuck a “squirrel” is and it doesn’t care. That thing has sharp teeth that look like they could scratch its eyes. Zap. A beholder collecting magic items because it wants to try and get a grasp of what the rules are for the universe. Not rules like “how does wind work” or “gravity” it’s above such things. Literally. That’s why it can fly. No, it wants to know rules like the balance of magical energies, what thoughts it can and can’t think safely without causing dimensional disturbances or making babies. It could ask a wizard, but wizards can’t be trusted. Just look at those pointy hats! A beholder that backstabs the party because it VERY REASONABLY does not know whether or not to take the words of a bunch of lunatics that broke past all its security at face value and thinks their claims that “they want to help it and send it home” are bullshit. If they wanted to help they could have helped by staying the hell out there behind the hallway of explosions that says “Do Not Enter”.
I agree as a wizard main we are paranoid. We are planning plans for the plan that didn't go as planned. Trying to befriend the party as much as possible so we have an endeared bunch of murder hobo's. People say don't take or use 'haste' but use it on party paladin, barbarian, wild shaped druid or least optimal fighter etcetera as you win as the wizard if you have happy allies that go into melee instead of you. You can play a Gish but that basically locks you into blade singer, abjurer or war mage. The most powerful wizard is the field control & buffer that the party never notices you are the strongest member of the party till you are not present for a session so they get a near or total TPK. If I can only have 1 friend as a wizard it is the paladin & I'm going to buff them so they are smiting with delight.
The one level dip into cleric does wonders for you. Especially if it's one of the subclasses that have heavy armor and can lose armor casting penalties. Not only do you have the ability to heal any Ally with a bonus action but you have the ability to mess stuff up. Especially if you use lightning spells like shocking grasp. After that my wizard has the highest chance at survival
@@nicholaslabonte620You can also start 1 level in artificer for much the same but with shield & medium armour. Thing is multiclassing is entirely up to the DM allowance. Nice if you get it but not guaranteed. If variable ability score allocation is available & multiclassing is not allowed start mountain or hill dwarf as you get medium armour proficiency with either +2 to 2 stats or dwarven toughness to give 1 extra hp per level. Githyanki get medium armour as well though better for a gish. If not dwarf play classic Yuan Ti as you get magic resistance & poison immunity will increase survival from level1 to 20 considerably. Mind custom lineage & variant human are plenty powerful as feats are brilliant which feats are an optional rule by the DM which never tell the DM.
Important note that got skipped: the eye rays can’t function within the antimagic cone. Beholder knows this and will take that into account when targeting the rays
@@sidecharacter7165 Arguably it may begin to do this on purpose if the fight is going poorly. I'd definitely put some interesting effects in the modified Wild Magic table for the Beholder to use in desperation. Imagine a Beholder in its death throws purposefully trying for a self-centered Fireball to get the Monk off of its face.
The beholder does not need to touch surfaces to move. The beholder wants nothing other than itself to occupy its lair. The beholder’s lair is designed to disrupt, trap, and kill everything that needs to touch surfaces to move. Ideally, it should do this without the beholder having to come out of hiding at all. Make a monster maze. Flip it 90 degrees. It is now vertical. The beholder looks straight up and straight down to see where it is going while it traverses its lair. Everyone who can’t do that can go frick themselves. All approximately “horizontal” surfaces are kept either smooth and heavily slanted so you cannot stand on them, or covered in spikes or acid or magma. You can try to climb without handholds, but the beholder will dump boulders and more acid and rabid squirrels on you as you go. You can try to fly, but you’d best be doing it without magic, or the beholder will pop out of a hole in the wall and look at you when you’re a 90 foot sheer drop above a pit full of acid, boulders, spikes, magma, and rabid squirrels. If you get close to cornering it anyway, it’ll slip around a corner as you climb the last few dozen feet and take a hidden exit into a dead end closet with a switch to collapse the whole lair. It hits the switch and disintegrates an exit passage for itself from the hidden closet. This is private property. If you want a death slalom, go get your own.
I’m heavily considering having a beholder or maybe a spectator as the principal of the university in my campaign’s main town but idk if I could get away with that from a lore perspective
@@SirPogsalotCreatesI mean neutral or even good beholders can exist according to lore. In Spelljammer, a beholder named Large Luigi achieved nirvana and turned neutral.
My favorite concept for a beholder fight is that since Beholder's often have extremely specific fears and countermeasures for extremely specific things, a Beholder by pure coincidence might come up with the perfect lair to challenge the players as much as possible. Like, the beholder had it revealed to them in a dream that the aarakocra bard was going to be part of a group that kills them, so the majority of the lair has low ceilings to prevent flight and silence spells to prevent the playing of music or usage of magic that requires verbal components. Alternatively, it turns out the lair is designed to perfectly counter a completely different adventuring party but it's super easy for the PCs who actually show up. As an example, the low ceilings thing from before, but nobody in the party can fly so all the Beholder has done is make it harder for itself to fly around the battlefield made its living space way more cramped for no reason. Finally, there's the idea of finding an already dead beholder who had the perfect plan to kill the entire party with contingency plans and tons of details, but the dungeon is abandoned because the beholder was killed by some random other party before the PCs got there.
The King in Yellow deserves its own video. In Pathfinder, he's called "Hastur" and has a holy text which reads like an interesting play. It literally consumes and entire city if the play is acted out in its entirety.
How about a beholder that wants to devour everything visually pleasing to it. Spice it up by giving it a weird sense of beauty: Maybe it really likes a certain color or shape. Artists going missing and getting forced to provide the beholder with what its ever increasing hunger demands.
I think what I might do is have the beholder remain completely out of sight while using its telekinesis to move around the cultists it’s allied with and provide cover fire from behind holes in the walls. But it’s set up in a way to make it seems like the cultists are the ones who possess magic and the ability to levitate on their own, so that everyone’s focus is on the cultists and nobody suspects there’s a beholder with them
I'm thinking that the "not a boss" room you fight this guy in should be a multi-layered cavern filled with pillars to stand on, for the beholder to hide behind, and for the beholder to knock the party off of. In order to get a clean bow shot against it or a melee swing, you've got to walk out on pillars precariously positioned over a '20 drop down to a level filled with nasty things like water. Maybe a pool filled with sharks or piranhas or some other such aquatic menace. The beholder can essentially always screen out some of the party by simply descending and force them to come to it out on its little stone forest. For this, please refer to the standing long jump rules. Also, have some pillars created such that the beholder could decapitate them with the disintegration beam and send any adventurers sliding into the shark tank below. You could also telekin the players into the abyss. And, of course. The most important thing to give a creature that frets over its own demise so much is a final contingency. Along the lines of "how do I get out of here if all my preparation comes to naught and the intruders are too powerful".
To absolutely guarantee that the telekinesis will work, have the tops of the pillars as separate pieces from the rest, with the top slab weighing less than 50 pounds. Then, so long as your adventurer weighs less than 250 pounds, the beholder can target the slab rather than the person. No saves. Just falling into sharks. Alternatively, have the tops of the pillars held in place by a key that weighs very little. Then the beholder can remove the key with telekinesis, thus dropping adventurers into the depths below. Another use for disintegration and telekinesis would be projectiles. Above every single pillar is a giant boulder set to fall onto it. The beholder can sever the ropes holding these boulders in place with disintegration. Also, all around the room are giant stone spikes sitting on carved out shelves. Each of these spikes just so happens to weigh 299 pounds, so the beholder can throw them at players with telekinesis.
While these meaty orbs are far from equal to us necromantic lords, they look like formidable minions. Perhaps I should convince one that my dungeon is the safest place in the planes? Thanks for the inspiration my Dark Lord
@@bruuuuuuuuhhhh HA! As if those cowards could come close to the might of us ancient necromancers. They'd rather run away to their caves than fight casters such as myself!
One very fun homebrew monster I've run is the dracoseer, a half-dragon beholder. Not an eyedrake, a proper half-dragon beholder, smashing together the two monsters. Roleplay, they are a ton of fun: they possess both the haughty pride of dragons and the revulsion for all things not beholders of the eye tyrants. They seek to acquire vast hordes of treasure, but are paranoid of it attracting attention, looters, and adventurers. Mechanically, I just take a beholder and give it dragon breath, legendary resistance, fly speed, natural weapons, and a bit higher AC. The two compliment each other very, very well. The dragon's weaknesses include limited magical options and ranged options when its breath is on cooldown, and inability to hover. Beholder eye rays and hovering cover those. Beholders are relatively slow, lack legendary resistance, have no area damage, pitiful non-magic attacks, and very limited ways to target people in their anti-magic cone. Dragon wings, breath weapon, and natural weapons cover those. The strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither. Well, except the weakness in personality that makes it want to kill you. Roll initiative.
The entrance to its lair is a straight drop down, down, down. A bottomless pit whose mouth is obscured by magical fog. The actual entrance is a hole 50ft down the shaft wall hidden by a perfectly fitted stone cutout moved by telekinesis. Inside the lair it all appears to be a run-of-the-mill mostly horizontal maze dungeon with very high ceilings, monsters, and no light sources. The important stuff/actual lair is in vertical shafts in the ceiling naturally hidden by the dark environment, easily missed if the players don't have a light source that can illuminate the uppermost reaches of the room.
25:34 use immovable rods to hold up ceilings so that it has a great way to attack players that try to exploit its inability to use eye rays within its antimagic cone
So much fun you can have with this when you realize the beholder does not need to touch any surface: - Triangular hallways, so the pcs risk spraining their ankles every step, or reversed, preventing vertical movement - Floor covered in grease and marbles (halfway through there are pressure plates which ignites the grease) - Walls are heavily magnetized - Floor has a pit of caltrops - Floor has a pit of boiling water or oil (or liquid nitrogen) - Floor has a long pit of tar or quicksand. Encumbered pcs risk drowning if they try to walk across. - Floor is covered in a shallow puddle connected to powerful electrical source - Bottom of hallway is criss-crossed with fishing lines filled with razor blades and fish-hooks (1/4 chance a cut wire springs another trap) - Floor covered in barbed wire - Floor and Walls are made of metal and heated to the point of glowing red-hot - Floor has chemical compound, rusting steel, iron and bronze - Any of the above, but the hallway is just a long cylinder, limiting climbing options - Hallway filled with poisonous gas or deadly pathogens the Beholder is immune to - Doors requiring opening with mechanism from across the room. If the door is propped open too long, a trap or alarm is triggered - Floor covered in thick brush, closer inspection reveals the bushes to be filled with poisonous plants, insects and animals like spiders and snakes - Brain-washed or mind-dominated villagers, rigged to perform suicide attacks - Pits of rotting and decaying caracasses, which the beholder is immune to - If your beholder has no nose: rooms filled with smelling salts, causing intense headaches or even fainting - If your beholder does not breathe: rooms filled with vacuum, liquid, tear gas, or even worse chemicals. - If your beholder has no hearing: rooms filled with very loud noises like grinding gears, making communication almost impossible - Permanently casted darkness on hallways, since the beholder knows where all hallways lead, and where the traps are - Hallways where noise triggers traps or alarms. Possibly the floor is covered in dry twigs. - Floor covered in superglue (flammable, of course) - All objects in the room are superheated/electrified, except for the things the beholder actually uses, which are just illusioned to be heated/electrified. Also, low level adventure idea: Beholder press gangs a group of low-level pcs, to test how safe its lair is. It hovers behind them watching their every move and mumbling notes to himself on how to improve. If the players make it through, the beholder is likely to want these capable intruders to come back later and try again, once he has made improvements.
I think there should be a greater beholder. A dreamer that dreams all lesser ones. It can't manifest in our world and so it's dreams are the only way in. It's why every beholder is a paranoid isolationist - they are all slivers of this one being and act as it would, even if they don't know it.
Ladies gentlemen, evil proposal: take a underground maze, and make it entirely vertical. Not only will be dark and confusing, it'll also mandate flight or else you are just shit out of luck. Additionally; have the maze transform. Every now and then, some of the floors raise and make themselves flush with the ceiling, making themselves into walls. Then some walls lower to reveal other paths. Become lost.
Honestly, reading how Charmed is such a dangerous status at the Beholder's disposal and that they'll always target the up-front fighter with it, how their tunnels are designed around verticality, all makes me consider how much of a Beholder-hunter Monks are. They completely justify paranoia in how they're able to counter much of their physical and mental assaults, and perfectly capable of chasing them down in their own territory, especially at level 9. And depending on your interpretation of how the Magical Unarmed Strikes and Deflect Missile abilities interact, you could justify the ability to deflect and reduce the damage of ray attacks, too.
I built a beholder lair to be mostly vertical because it is not beholden to gravity. Leaning into the transdimensional hoarding, it had amongst its treasured possessions a collection of cassette tapes including the Beasty Boys and Elvis records.
You know, I was just hoping that you'd make a video so I could request a beholder video when the comments were fresh. Beholders paranoia and intelligence lends itself incredibly well to your preparation and intelligent monster based play-style. Welp, here we are- Look forward to the next, keep up the good work and thank you! Would love to see your take on drow, kuo tua or maybe yugoloths. The last two are kinda niche, but still-
I've been running a campaign focused around Aberrations for the better part of a year now, specifically with a continent that's ruled in part by a sprinkling of Beholders that always seek to discover and annihilate each other. As a result, here are the two main categories that I classify them into: OCD - This type of Beholder is entirely obsessed with order, and is often within the throws of obsessions and sudden compulsions. Pretty much the only way to defeat or even discover it is to do so before they've set up or to disrupt their way of life, because they ponder fine details like an edgelord obsesses over Death Note. I typically have them use a signature shape that they incorporate into their design, which changes in combat based on the traps and flooring that the party has to go through. While their lairs are easier to find because they defy natural geometry, actually getting to the important parts of the lair is incredibly difficult. Traps and detection systems that rival the Dwarves can be seen throughout each section of the layer, making it more a game of endurance and praying for consistent rolls than an active threat. I typically have the Beholder hole up in its little lair in the center once an intruder has been detected. Schizophrenia: This type of Beholder is obsessively paranoid, spiritualistic, only vaguely comprehensible, and makes "creative" look like an understatement. I typically roll on a thing I call the "SchizoTable," which I devised in order to determine its likes, dislikes, base layout, and so on. Perhaps it sees intruders as prey, in which case its use of traps is altered. Perhaps it seeks to convert them like a cult leader, in which case it uses sheer rizz or ingenuity to convince said intruders to worship it (or the thing _it_ worships). You get the picture. I rarely run these because they're just difficult to do without micro-dosing LSD, and I always take a lot of inspiration from Little Nightmares, Rain World, Life Eater and PsychoPomp. Incorporating a specific vibe to go off of, some core emotion like helplessness or warped poeticism, is key in pulling these guys off.
I feel like a Beholder would enjoy using cement mixing traps that would fill up the bottom layers of its lairs with a cement mixture if one of the traps is triggered, not only alerting the Beholder but also giving the players a literal death timer. Said trap would have the mixture pour in via those service tunnels and smaller air vent type tunnels, starting by filling up primary entrances and exits. And this trap could be made by setting up simply carved and hidden tiles in the floor that would "unplug" the primary cement mixing chamber.
Honestly the vanilla beholder stat block is probably my favourite stat block in the entire monster manual its so well designed, simple to run since most of it is "roll dice then read from the book what it does", has a ton of unique and interesting effects, and while the weakness the anti magic cone does give it a now infamous weakness, this is a cool thing that prepared players can exploit, especially if a newer group figures it out for themselves, thats gonna be an amazing moment at the table. (I also like how the anti amgic cone reinforces the narrative idea of them being so self absorbed paranoid narcissists that they dont hesistate to ntoice their own functional flaws in the so called perfect creature)
I've got a Blood Kiss Beholder added as an unwilling servant guarding the halls of Castle Ravenloft in my Curse of Strahd campaign. Definitely using some of these tips for it
If the PCs are climbing, make them have to jump to a ledge to continue(i.e, a square vertical tunnel that bends at some point) and have some sort of persistent illusion that has the appearance of solid stone, but you would phase right through if you attempted to jump to it. So as a player jumps to the ledge, they instead fall to the bottom and get seriously injured if not killed
This video came just in time for the lvl 6 party I'm DM'ing to fight a beholder next week. I do not have high hopes for their survival but I'm welcome to being surprised
reading schizo threads on 4ch is great inspiration, have smart lethal traps yes, but also have bizarre rube goldberg nonsense that counters very specific avenues of attack whether they make sense or not, have glyphs of warding that only trigger for halflings because one time a halfling stole a tome from the lair, have an elaborate set up to destroy trolls, a giant ballistae that will only trigger if a dragon enterred the lair, go insane and plan for things the party would never do, its funny, in character but also generates unique opportunities and problems to solve
The volos guide book has a lot of great info for beholders and even a great illustration of a beholder lair. One of my favorite bits from that book is it has spells you can sub the eye rays for, and you can sub feeblemind for the deathray lol
Damn, didn’t even mention that Beholders are a spacefaring race with their own spaceships for both interdimensional (planes) and interplanetary (spelljammer) travel
Had a beholder who set up shop in a volcano and used its telekinesis ray to drop and shove players into lava, along with picking up lava to limit mobility and use as a projectile. Keep in mind falling in lava does 10d10 fire damage so having a flung ball of it do 5d10 fire damage was pretty nice of me. What wasn’t nice of me was the cloak of displacement and superior potion of healing the beholder had made Edit: spelling and grammar
A beholder's paranoia can be also used against it. A weak party that comes up with a plan (and a good execution) can probably trick one into thinking it's best to run away or prehentively activating countermeasures to add more chaos to the fight.
I also think a Beholder's paranoia can be used to excuse "sub optimal" actions. Just have the Beholder scream "you don't fool me! I see through your petty scheams!" And then bite off it's own disintegration casting eye and laugh triumphantly.
My favorite pairing for Beholders is giving them non human cultists. I've made kobold fun houses that from the outside look like junkyard raiders built a borg cube. A lattice of steel girders and service tunnels only sized for a kobold. I could reuse this but instead of actual kobolds, make them some sort of horrid arcane creation the Beholder uses to man his hamster tube network of traps and for food. All of this built vertically into the ceiling of and underdark Cavern with that being the only entry into the main sphere it's carved out with the lair hanging from the center. Like a hornet nest.
I've noticed that UA-cam likes to shoot out recommendations to my alt almost anytime I set my videos to public. I would guess it depends on what you usually have in your feed. I've been postulating that it might actually be to my advantage that I only upload once a month, as it seems to increase the amount of people the video gets suggested out to as a result. However, I'm rambling. Thank you for enjoying my work!
Beholders are like small gun turrets having a Major advantagde if they can just blast someone from safety. Therefore i think it would be useful for a Beholder to have sone kind of transportation system to quickly travel around its dungeuon. Maybe a ring of teleport, a minecart or an elevator.
Dungeon idea - standard horizontal dungeon layouts, but completely made up of suspended platforms over a yawning abyss below. Some are dummy platforms that break with any pressure put on them, enemies try and shoot the ropes holding up the platforms players stand on. Flying PC's? The beholder made sure every cultist learned the 2nd lvl spell earthbind
Wanted to run a unique monster for my hunter: the reckoning game. Then I saw Archlich posted. And I knew what I had to do. Thank you, my lord. They'll never see it coming.
Something I thought about as a concept to use for beholders is ironically because of the "Master of Monsters and The Arcane" Archlich's Elder brain video, and how he taught about making elder brain lairs. It involves pieces of information both covered by Beholder Lore and the "Illithid Dossier" book that covers mind flayers more in detail, more specifically how beholders are apparently created (sourced from a Runesmith video) and what Illithids can do to Beholders Fun fact, which in of itself is something you can use to make the beholder dungeon even more interesting, beholders can reproduce asexually. Not on command however. They have to long rest and dream of another beholder in order to do so. In fact, they can create anything in their dreams accidentally, beholder birth included. That also includes not only the stock beholder covered in this video, but other "Beholder-kin" as they are called (although caused by factors that cause variation). The types of which I will not list here (Comment's going to be a mile long and that's not the point). But if the idea I'm about to present to you is not appealing enough, having more beholders of different kinds can keep the party on its toes. Now how Mind Flayers play into this. According to the Illithid Dossier (which sources several DnD books by wizards of the coast), when Illithids get ahold of a beholder (or maybe a creature belonging to the beholder-kin category, let's assume) and transform it, they create something called a "Mindwitness", which is a creature that boosts telepathic communication. So imagine having a bunch of these placed all throughout the elder brain lair in order to boost communications. That's where Beholder Farming comes in. The illithids, with enough information, could possibly think of a way to contain the beholder and keep it constantly asleep, while continuously farming the offspring it creates. Beholders and Mindflayers also speak the same languages of Deep Speech and Undercommon, so mind flayers could telepathically influence the beholder to dream of anything they want by telepathically communicating it in their head while they sleep. This can be something you can run while the party sneak into the lair and find the beholder trapped. You could use the same glass like substance as the one protecting the elder brain because it's immune to necrotic (granted put it at a smaller health pool) and have the tank be full of something that both keeps the beholder alive and asleep. And when the party comes upon it, they can break it and release the beholder. Why would they do that? While granted it's going to let the elder brain know something is immediately wrong as this is going to not be subtle for what happens next, it can introduce another factor into their attempt to kill the elder brain because the beholder is probably going to do one of two things: 1. Break out of where it's being held and try to escape through the Underdark, which the elder brain is going to want to catch to keep its Mindwitness factory going. 2. Kill every living thing, possibly the party included, but the Elder Brain colony is going to try and scramble to either get it subdued or killed, which will split the Elder Brain's focus and forces as the Party heads closer to it. Tl;dr: You can use Beholders as a resource the Elder brain has to boost its forces within its lair, while at the same time providing the party an incentive to explore more after finding it, toss a new factor into the encounter to make it more interesting, and reward the based note takers within the group by introducing the glass-like substance that will come into play later.
Thank you for making and releasing this video today half an hour before i got a notification for this video, i got a call from the vet while I was at work telling me my cat lost 25% of her total body weight and her stomach was riddled with cancer. I left work early and just laid on the floor. i just clicked on the video and the music and meatwad's stupid face really cheered me up. (" You look at him and tell me there's a god.") I am, and there is one... It's a silly guy covered with eyes. And he was foretold by a wonderful lunatic.❤
@The_Archlitch You did more than provide brevity. You gave me a few ideas with some of the advice you gave for the beholder's lair... a labyrinth 60% of witch is made of walls of flesh. (This isn't too mean the campaign follows next to no rules, and all party members are at least 3 classes to start. The whole point of the campaign is to Frick around and find out in a bugs bunny plot armor way.) And what you said about what the beholder would be materialistic about made me think about the loot at the end😊
I imagine that a beholder that was aware of its reality warping abilities and could lucid dream would be geniunly one of the most powerful beings in all of fiction, let alone DnD.
He does not miss! I’d love to see how you’d run a low-mid game dragon boss! Any chromatic color would be cool! I like the lairs and abilities in the books but I feel like you’d add so much more flavor to the bbeg!
With the undead powers of a Death Tyrant (variant beholder), it could potentially make an even more ungodly underwater lair than an Aboleth. Underwater caves can be deadly to fully prepared humans with modern technology, let alone medieval fantasy tech. The sad part is the Death Tyrant loses the antimagic cone, and magic does counteract this. For example, if the party has access to the water breathing spell they can mostly invalidate the threat of drowning in the horrible nightmare maze.
I like leaning into beholders their madness. It is 2 sentient minds in 1 body, the dreams of the creature alter reality. So I like to represent this with the area warping around the beholders. A room that the players went through no longer exist. In combat I like to show this with the idea of a mechanic I call momentum. Everything something great happens it gains 1, and every time something horrible happens it loses 1. When momentum is positive it gets passive buffs like rerolling an eye ray or temp hp at the start of its turn. When it is negative maybe the save dc gets a little easier and now its trying to retreat and regain momentum. If you want to have fun, maybe its madness is making creatures in the dungeon because it is now afraid that you aren't the only things in here anymore. A creature of reality warping insanity can allow for major effects because what it changed even as it died. Escaping the dungeon is just as hard as clearing it if your players need more of a challenge.
Excellent work Archlich! If you do dragons, I'd love to see how you'd run each dragon in their lair. Surely a red dragon fights with different tactics and resources compared to a black dragon. Fighting a dragon in their lair should be like getting to a lich phylactery: completely unfair.
Consider this, the eye rays have a range of 120 feet and darkvision of the same. Average creatures with darkvision have range of 60 feet. Chris Perkins says that for sake of D&D, an object will fall 580 feet per round. It could have a fight chamber that is tall enough that no creatures will see the ceiling and place disintegration targets up there to collapse the room on everyone below, and they would not get time to leave the room.
In dungeon magazine 141 there’s a one shot where you break into a vault on the elemental plane of fire operated by a beholder. And his stat block has a really cool mechanic where he only has 3 regular eye rays and the others are called spell stalks where he can cast an array of spells from them but he HAS to turn off the anti magic cone in his central eye making him vulnerable at the cost of casting a bunch of insane spells. The reason behind this is he’s labeled as a beholder mage. But still cool mechanic I think beholders should have.
As the beholder can keep any one object under 300 under its telekenisis, it could do something as anxiety inducing as keeping one player underwater as they drown. Verticality is the name of the game, so the floor should be all but hostile, and going from the floor to anywhere on his level should be a pain in the ass Cover the floor in tar to reduce their movement options, add a web of tripwires about 10 feet above the party in case they try to use their levitation Since its attacks are mostly beams, its up to the DM's discretion if that means they go through thick glass, allowing the beholder to strike while it cant be attacked by arrows, maybe put them in a maze while being shot at from above to be especially annoying If it looks like they are coping well, flood the maze, too I mentioned glass, so naturally its up to you if rhose beams can also refract, allowing it to fire at a magical prism or a lens and either split into mulptiple beams, cover a wider but diluted area, or a focused and more potent one Use mirrors as well, to work with the beholder's narcissistic personality, but you will have to actively figure out angles, too Since the beholder can use telekinesis, make it able to shift the angles of those mirrors too to increase accuracy as well as do a little disco light show of death with that prism i mentioned earlier, spinning it around and generally being a menice Since its a very narcissistic creature, it needs to keep a following to bolster its ego Devout cultists, enthralled captives, or just straight up lobotomized people with their tongues cut out Keeps a wealth of oddities and knicknacks, so you can be creative with rewards, or even a monster zoo that it keeps for its enjoyment
Nice video, loved it. A few points though and some ideas I had watching it, for the other acolytes in the comments: Cover-based fighting tactics and telekinesis to me screams using the telekinesis to pull enemies out of cover (the players are presumably also in cover) and then having your allies pepper them with arrows. However with ray-based attacks they still require line of sight, so maybe use of thin 5x5 pillars for cover that make it easy for the beholder to swing around, shoot eye-ray, and scoot back. Alternatively, it can carve 'pavise shields' out of rock that have a little window by the feet. The beholder floats, so hiding behind these shields doesn't expose their body, but if a player does, they only benefit from 1/2 cover instead of the usual 3/4 cover, and they can be targetted by spells since you can see their feet. These pavise shields should be collapsible by means of fireball, shatter, or by a firm push if they can get up close. They could be used in a room where the beholder is planning to attack intruders (and separate from its 'true lair'), and in conjunction with cultists wielding longbows who sit in carved alcoves all the way in the back. Lastly the mention of slides and chutes had me think of a classic trapdoor pit style trap, which instead of falling upon spikes, the vertical chute becomes a slide delivering the victim into a room and can double as a 'food collection system' for the beholder. Since it doesn't want its food to crawl back out, a different, unintelligent and agressive creature is set up in this area to dispatch intruders, after which the beholder periodically eats the unintelligent creature and replaces them with a new one. I think oozes would work best for this, working as a sort of pre-digestion system for the beholder. They can be as easily stored in buckets, clay pots, or barrels and be set by traps to be released by gravity just like water. Also this is the second video that mentions enemies using flight to its advantage (I believe the mindflayers was the first), and while it does make the mind churn, I believe a separate video might be in order with concrete examples of some common stratagems in terrain and tunnel layout, in both labyrinth-type areas and combat arenas. Do you have a subreddit or discord where your acolytes may discuss ideas?
I think you'd have to use the lair actions for this unless they weren't in total cover, but yes I like that idea with telekinesis a lot. I was operating off of the assumption that the beholder would have cover in it's lair. The more in depth videos will have to come at a later time when there's more people interested in the minutia, but until then, I think you have the right idea.
One change I make to my Beholders is that I replace their Anti-Magic cone with a giant disintegration ray instead, the kind that could instantly carve out a huge tunnel in seconds or reduce a raging Barbarian to a burn mark on a wall.
A beholder can create other beholderkin creatures from its dreams. If it has done it would assuredly subjogate and put them in different rooms to ambush interlopers. im thinking a room full of mirrors to 'bounce' the guaths paralyze eye or a very tightly wound series of corkscrew caverns full of deathkisses
The real BBEG of my current campaign (aside from the obvious starved archlich who's been recently awakened, ready to commit multiple acts of genocide to recover his lost artefacts) is pretty effectively just a massive beholder that eats life force and has grown far too large in size to need be paranoid about anything. It's just too low energy to do anything but rest at the bottom of the ocean filter feeding on anything stupid enough to enter its domain or striking deals with dumb adventurers that can feed it souls. It hungy
How to make it an actual CR 13 threat? The Beholder gets to choose its rays. How to make it a CR14+ threat? Old school; it fires up to three rays in each of its 6 directional 90 degree cones...or three rays at each target, as a simpler but less forgiving version. Each ray is different; maximum of all 10. Bonus dickishness: If it deactivates its cone for its turn, it can use it as a Counterspell until the start of its next turn. Also, the beholder can choose to inflict no damage with its enervation ray, but instead inflict a level of exhaustion on a failed save. Also also, an object flung using the Telekinetic ray could do 4d6 damage like its bite attack. Likely bludgeoning, but potentially slashing or piercing damage. Note that an object could potentially be flung into the Antimagic Cone without losing momentum.
Love this channel. Can you upload a video about dragons? I feel like whenever I run one it’s underwhelming, so I’d like to hear what an expert has to say about them.
ALL of the floors are at crooked angles making it difficult to keep your balance or even inducing nausea since none of the walls and floors line up quite right
With that Int and lifespan give it some Verbal-component Wizard spell options: Cantrip: Mind Sliver Tier 1. 2/Day: Silvery Barbs Tier 2 2/day: Blur, Blindness/Deafness, Earthbind, Misty Step, Tasha Mind Whip Tier 3 1/day: Thunderstep Make the lair have iron bars or slats at points where the beholder can flee behind with a Misty Step and then shoot eyes rays or spells from cover. Also could be an a,Bush place that leads into a trap when the iron bars that were supporting the wall/trap crumble.
So true Archie
you😡
concept; amnesiac beholder, maybe even blind. everything the same, except the beholder has no idea how to get out, and is convinced that it is stuck inside the lair of a different beholder; it keeps setting off, disarming, rearming and making new traps as it expands its smooth stone halls in search of a nonexistent enemy.
I frickin love this idea
I love this but I feel like the beholder would die from stress
If it sleeps, it'll spawn hella freaky-holders
@@tomarmadiyer2698 I petition to name this spawn a Kobolder. It's main eye should be a fabricate eye to create traps. This one's lair should make JIGSAW blush.
Beholder that has stairs around it’s lair, but every single step is trapped in a different way
The first step is a trapdoor that opens into an acid pit
The second step isn't real, it's just an illusion. there's no pit below it though, there's just no real stair there
The third step is made of a sticky ooze that looks exactly like solid stone, holding you in place
The fourth step is scorching hot
The fifth step will electrocute you if you touch it
The sixth step is actually a hidden ledge that will shoot out of the staircase and attempt to ram you
The seventh step is sentient and will start screaming obscenely if you touch it
The eighth and ninth steps are completely normal
The tenth step causes the 8th and 9th steps to rise out of the staircase and form a stone wall
The eleventh step causes all remaining steps to rotate 45 degrees
The twelfth step has a glyph of warding on it
The thirteenth step is made of paper, and there are spikes under it
The fourteenth step is a hidden dart launcher that will shoot upward at anything that tries to fly above it
The fifteenth step quadruples in size if touched
The sixteenth step stops time for 6 seconds if the word "wait" is spoken aloud
Congrats, you've made it past the entrance
@@SirPogsalotCreatesI’m using this
@@SirPogsalotCreates The stairs aren’t all that dangerous, but they are used as a way to intimidate the would be adventures so much that by that time you get into the dungeon you have a -4 to your wisdom saving throws for a few hours due to paranoia of how many traps could be around any corner, what Random tile in a seemingly mundane room can open a trapdoor releasing a gelatinous cube into the room disallowing escape.
@@SirPogsalotCreates Each "step" is about 2.5' in length, hard to not step on without having to hop onto the one in front of it. Just inconvenient and unpleasant traps. Could be the whole dungeon in a gag wizard tower
Hilarious idea: a “Reasonable” Beholder.
That being a beholder whose actions and motivations are tinted through the completely understandable lens of “Oh god what the fuck how did I get here where am I what am I how do I make it stop”
A beholder that eye-lasers everything with a pulse because it doesn’t know what is and isn’t dangerous and is not taking any chances. It doesn’t know what the fuck a “squirrel” is and it doesn’t care. That thing has sharp teeth that look like they could scratch its eyes. Zap.
A beholder collecting magic items because it wants to try and get a grasp of what the rules are for the universe. Not rules like “how does wind work” or “gravity” it’s above such things. Literally. That’s why it can fly. No, it wants to know rules like the balance of magical energies, what thoughts it can and can’t think safely without causing dimensional disturbances or making babies. It could ask a wizard, but wizards can’t be trusted. Just look at those pointy hats!
A beholder that backstabs the party because it VERY REASONABLY does not know whether or not to take the words of a bunch of lunatics that broke past all its security at face value and thinks their claims that “they want to help it and send it home” are bullshit. If they wanted to help they could have helped by staying the hell out there behind the hallway of explosions that says “Do Not Enter”.
Archlich: Expertise in perception? Reflection of its paranoia i suppose
The giant eyeball monster with several eyeball tentacles: Am i a joke to you
All these eyes I had.
Yet I was blind to the truth.
It is all Joever.
@@The_Archlich Not even Archliches are safe from the almighty twitter technique "Pointing out minor flaws in great content"
@@The_Archlich there's joething we can do 😔😔😔
The most paranoid creature in the game, you've never met any of my wizard characters.
I agree as a wizard main we are paranoid.
We are planning plans for the plan that didn't go as planned.
Trying to befriend the party as much as possible so we have an endeared bunch of murder hobo's.
People say don't take or use 'haste' but use it on party paladin, barbarian, wild shaped druid or least optimal fighter etcetera as you win as the wizard if you have happy allies that go into melee instead of you. You can play a Gish but that basically locks you into blade singer, abjurer or war mage.
The most powerful wizard is the field control & buffer that the party never notices you are the strongest member of the party till you are not present for a session so they get a near or total TPK.
If I can only have 1 friend as a wizard it is the paladin & I'm going to buff them so they are smiting with delight.
The one level dip into cleric does wonders for you. Especially if it's one of the subclasses that have heavy armor and can lose armor casting penalties. Not only do you have the ability to heal any Ally with a bonus action but you have the ability to mess stuff up. Especially if you use lightning spells like shocking grasp. After that my wizard has the highest chance at survival
@@nicholaslabonte620You can also start 1 level in artificer for much the same but with shield & medium armour.
Thing is multiclassing is entirely up to the DM allowance.
Nice if you get it but not guaranteed.
If variable ability score allocation is available & multiclassing is not allowed start mountain or hill dwarf as you get medium armour proficiency with either +2 to 2 stats or dwarven toughness to give 1 extra hp per level.
Githyanki get medium armour as well though better for a gish.
If not dwarf play classic Yuan Ti as you get magic resistance & poison immunity will increase survival from level1 to 20 considerably.
Mind custom lineage & variant human are plenty powerful as feats are brilliant which feats are an optional rule by the DM which never tell the DM.
We're not paranoid. We're just "prepared".
@@The_Archlich ''paranoid'' or ''prepared'' is the same though a matter of confidence?
Our dungeon lord is back with the milk, praise be.
Important note that got skipped: the eye rays can’t function within the antimagic cone. Beholder knows this and will take that into account when targeting the rays
I would make that WILD magic Cone impact those as well, but with an increased chance.
@@sidecharacter7165 Arguably it may begin to do this on purpose if the fight is going poorly. I'd definitely put some interesting effects in the modified Wild Magic table for the Beholder to use in desperation. Imagine a Beholder in its death throws purposefully trying for a self-centered Fireball to get the Monk off of its face.
The beholder does not need to touch surfaces to move.
The beholder wants nothing other than itself to occupy its lair.
The beholder’s lair is designed to disrupt, trap, and kill everything that needs to touch surfaces to move. Ideally, it should do this without the beholder having to come out of hiding at all.
Make a monster maze.
Flip it 90 degrees. It is now vertical. The beholder looks straight up and straight down to see where it is going while it traverses its lair. Everyone who can’t do that can go frick themselves.
All approximately “horizontal” surfaces are kept either smooth and heavily slanted so you cannot stand on them, or covered in spikes or acid or magma.
You can try to climb without handholds, but the beholder will dump boulders and more acid and rabid squirrels on you as you go.
You can try to fly, but you’d best be doing it without magic, or the beholder will pop out of a hole in the wall and look at you when you’re a 90 foot sheer drop above a pit full of acid, boulders, spikes, magma, and rabid squirrels.
If you get close to cornering it anyway, it’ll slip around a corner as you climb the last few dozen feet and take a hidden exit into a dead end closet with a switch to collapse the whole lair. It hits the switch and disintegrates an exit passage for itself from the hidden closet.
This is private property. If you want a death slalom, go get your own.
I had a beholder in my eberron game who ran a bookstore. He ate the dreams of his pet cats to sustain himself. Pretty cool guy.
I’m heavily considering having a beholder or maybe a spectator as the principal of the university in my campaign’s main town but idk if I could get away with that from a lore perspective
@@SirPogsalotCreatesI mean neutral or even good beholders can exist according to lore. In Spelljammer, a beholder named Large Luigi achieved nirvana and turned neutral.
My favorite concept for a beholder fight is that since Beholder's often have extremely specific fears and countermeasures for extremely specific things, a Beholder by pure coincidence might come up with the perfect lair to challenge the players as much as possible. Like, the beholder had it revealed to them in a dream that the aarakocra bard was going to be part of a group that kills them, so the majority of the lair has low ceilings to prevent flight and silence spells to prevent the playing of music or usage of magic that requires verbal components.
Alternatively, it turns out the lair is designed to perfectly counter a completely different adventuring party but it's super easy for the PCs who actually show up. As an example, the low ceilings thing from before, but nobody in the party can fly so all the Beholder has done is make it harder for itself to fly around the battlefield made its living space way more cramped for no reason.
Finally, there's the idea of finding an already dead beholder who had the perfect plan to kill the entire party with contingency plans and tons of details, but the dungeon is abandoned because the beholder was killed by some random other party before the PCs got there.
The King in Yellow deserves its own video. In Pathfinder, he's called "Hastur" and has a holy text which reads like an interesting play. It literally consumes and entire city if the play is acted out in its entirety.
Funny Skeleton man has come to strengthen our mind bones once again
mmm calcium for the brain
How about a beholder that wants to devour everything visually pleasing to it. Spice it up by giving it a weird sense of beauty: Maybe it really likes a certain color or shape. Artists going missing and getting forced to provide the beholder with what its ever increasing hunger demands.
Cool idea
I think what I might do is have the beholder remain completely out of sight while using its telekinesis to move around the cultists it’s allied with and provide cover fire from behind holes in the walls. But it’s set up in a way to make it seems like the cultists are the ones who possess magic and the ability to levitate on their own, so that everyone’s focus is on the cultists and nobody suspects there’s a beholder with them
I'm thinking that the "not a boss" room you fight this guy in should be a multi-layered cavern filled with pillars to stand on, for the beholder to hide behind, and for the beholder to knock the party off of. In order to get a clean bow shot against it or a melee swing, you've got to walk out on pillars precariously positioned over a '20 drop down to a level filled with nasty things like water. Maybe a pool filled with sharks or piranhas or some other such aquatic menace. The beholder can essentially always screen out some of the party by simply descending and force them to come to it out on its little stone forest. For this, please refer to the standing long jump rules. Also, have some pillars created such that the beholder could decapitate them with the disintegration beam and send any adventurers sliding into the shark tank below. You could also telekin the players into the abyss. And, of course. The most important thing to give a creature that frets over its own demise so much is a final contingency. Along the lines of "how do I get out of here if all my preparation comes to naught and the intruders are too powerful".
To absolutely guarantee that the telekinesis will work, have the tops of the pillars as separate pieces from the rest, with the top slab weighing less than 50 pounds. Then, so long as your adventurer weighs less than 250 pounds, the beholder can target the slab rather than the person. No saves. Just falling into sharks. Alternatively, have the tops of the pillars held in place by a key that weighs very little. Then the beholder can remove the key with telekinesis, thus dropping adventurers into the depths below.
Another use for disintegration and telekinesis would be projectiles. Above every single pillar is a giant boulder set to fall onto it. The beholder can sever the ropes holding these boulders in place with disintegration. Also, all around the room are giant stone spikes sitting on carved out shelves. Each of these spikes just so happens to weigh 299 pounds, so the beholder can throw them at players with telekinesis.
@@ClashBluelight Ah yes. Taken to the next level.
See the first 30 minutes of Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts in "Conspiracy Theory" for inspiration
While these meaty orbs are far from equal to us necromantic lords, they look like formidable minions. Perhaps I should convince one that my dungeon is the safest place in the planes? Thanks for the inspiration my Dark Lord
Eye Tyrant shows up:
@@bruuuuuuuuhhhh HA! As if those cowards could come close to the might of us ancient necromancers. They'd rather run away to their caves than fight casters such as myself!
@@Logic6405 bold words coming from a Lich who most likely has 4 demiplanes to hide behind
One very fun homebrew monster I've run is the dracoseer, a half-dragon beholder. Not an eyedrake, a proper half-dragon beholder, smashing together the two monsters.
Roleplay, they are a ton of fun: they possess both the haughty pride of dragons and the revulsion for all things not beholders of the eye tyrants. They seek to acquire vast hordes of treasure, but are paranoid of it attracting attention, looters, and adventurers.
Mechanically, I just take a beholder and give it dragon breath, legendary resistance, fly speed, natural weapons, and a bit higher AC. The two compliment each other very, very well. The dragon's weaknesses include limited magical options and ranged options when its breath is on cooldown, and inability to hover. Beholder eye rays and hovering cover those. Beholders are relatively slow, lack legendary resistance, have no area damage, pitiful non-magic attacks, and very limited ways to target people in their anti-magic cone. Dragon wings, breath weapon, and natural weapons cover those. The strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither. Well, except the weakness in personality that makes it want to kill you. Roll initiative.
The entrance to its lair is a straight drop down, down, down. A bottomless pit whose mouth is obscured by magical fog. The actual entrance is a hole 50ft down the shaft wall hidden by a perfectly fitted stone cutout moved by telekinesis.
Inside the lair it all appears to be a run-of-the-mill mostly horizontal maze dungeon with very high ceilings, monsters, and no light sources. The important stuff/actual lair is in vertical shafts in the ceiling naturally hidden by the dark environment, easily missed if the players don't have a light source that can illuminate the uppermost reaches of the room.
25:34 use immovable rods to hold up ceilings so that it has a great way to attack players that try to exploit its inability to use eye rays within its antimagic cone
So much fun you can have with this when you realize the beholder does not need to touch any surface:
- Triangular hallways, so the pcs risk spraining their ankles every step, or reversed, preventing vertical movement
- Floor covered in grease and marbles (halfway through there are pressure plates which ignites the grease)
- Walls are heavily magnetized
- Floor has a pit of caltrops
- Floor has a pit of boiling water or oil (or liquid nitrogen)
- Floor has a long pit of tar or quicksand. Encumbered pcs risk drowning if they try to walk across.
- Floor is covered in a shallow puddle connected to powerful electrical source
- Bottom of hallway is criss-crossed with fishing lines filled with razor blades and fish-hooks (1/4 chance a cut wire springs another trap)
- Floor covered in barbed wire
- Floor and Walls are made of metal and heated to the point of glowing red-hot
- Floor has chemical compound, rusting steel, iron and bronze
- Any of the above, but the hallway is just a long cylinder, limiting climbing options
- Hallway filled with poisonous gas or deadly pathogens the Beholder is immune to
- Doors requiring opening with mechanism from across the room. If the door is propped open too long, a trap or alarm is triggered
- Floor covered in thick brush, closer inspection reveals the bushes to be filled with poisonous plants, insects and animals like spiders and snakes
- Brain-washed or mind-dominated villagers, rigged to perform suicide attacks
- Pits of rotting and decaying caracasses, which the beholder is immune to
- If your beholder has no nose: rooms filled with smelling salts, causing intense headaches or even fainting
- If your beholder does not breathe: rooms filled with vacuum, liquid, tear gas, or even worse chemicals.
- If your beholder has no hearing: rooms filled with very loud noises like grinding gears, making communication almost impossible
- Permanently casted darkness on hallways, since the beholder knows where all hallways lead, and where the traps are
- Hallways where noise triggers traps or alarms. Possibly the floor is covered in dry twigs.
- Floor covered in superglue (flammable, of course)
- All objects in the room are superheated/electrified, except for the things the beholder actually uses, which are just illusioned to be heated/electrified.
Also, low level adventure idea: Beholder press gangs a group of low-level pcs, to test how safe its lair is. It hovers behind them watching their every move and mumbling notes to himself on how to improve. If the players make it through, the beholder is likely to want these capable intruders to come back later and try again, once he has made improvements.
I think there should be a greater beholder. A dreamer that dreams all lesser ones. It can't manifest in our world and so it's dreams are the only way in. It's why every beholder is a paranoid isolationist - they are all slivers of this one being and act as it would, even if they don't know it.
Isn't that the Great Mother deity?
@@nottarealguy3954 NO CLUE :D I hope it already exists though, because it's a good idea
There's a god for that I believe, and I also believe the guy before me is mentioning that one.
@@The_Archlich Yey
THE OVERLORD HAS RETURNED!!!
Ladies gentlemen, evil proposal: take a underground maze, and make it entirely vertical. Not only will be dark and confusing, it'll also mandate flight or else you are just shit out of luck.
Additionally; have the maze transform. Every now and then, some of the floors raise and make themselves flush with the ceiling, making themselves into walls. Then some walls lower to reveal other paths.
Become lost.
Honestly, reading how Charmed is such a dangerous status at the Beholder's disposal and that they'll always target the up-front fighter with it, how their tunnels are designed around verticality, all makes me consider how much of a Beholder-hunter Monks are. They completely justify paranoia in how they're able to counter much of their physical and mental assaults, and perfectly capable of chasing them down in their own territory, especially at level 9.
And depending on your interpretation of how the Magical Unarmed Strikes and Deflect Missile abilities interact, you could justify the ability to deflect and reduce the damage of ray attacks, too.
I built a beholder lair to be mostly vertical because it is not beholden to gravity. Leaning into the transdimensional hoarding, it had amongst its treasured possessions a collection of cassette tapes including the Beasty Boys and Elvis records.
You know, I was just hoping that you'd make a video so I could request a beholder video when the comments were fresh. Beholders paranoia and intelligence lends itself incredibly well to your preparation and intelligent monster based play-style.
Welp, here we are-
Look forward to the next, keep up the good work and thank you! Would love to see your take on drow, kuo tua or maybe yugoloths. The last two are kinda niche, but still-
Glad I read your mind Acolyte.
Ugh I LOVE this stuff
It took me like 2 hours to watch this video because I had to keep rewinding after I got distracted in my demented imagination
The key to every beholder encounter is to loudly proclaim "behold!" when the creature is revealed.
I've been running a campaign focused around Aberrations for the better part of a year now, specifically with a continent that's ruled in part by a sprinkling of Beholders that always seek to discover and annihilate each other. As a result, here are the two main categories that I classify them into:
OCD - This type of Beholder is entirely obsessed with order, and is often within the throws of obsessions and sudden compulsions. Pretty much the only way to defeat or even discover it is to do so before they've set up or to disrupt their way of life, because they ponder fine details like an edgelord obsesses over Death Note. I typically have them use a signature shape that they incorporate into their design, which changes in combat based on the traps and flooring that the party has to go through. While their lairs are easier to find because they defy natural geometry, actually getting to the important parts of the lair is incredibly difficult. Traps and detection systems that rival the Dwarves can be seen throughout each section of the layer, making it more a game of endurance and praying for consistent rolls than an active threat. I typically have the Beholder hole up in its little lair in the center once an intruder has been detected.
Schizophrenia: This type of Beholder is obsessively paranoid, spiritualistic, only vaguely comprehensible, and makes "creative" look like an understatement. I typically roll on a thing I call the "SchizoTable," which I devised in order to determine its likes, dislikes, base layout, and so on. Perhaps it sees intruders as prey, in which case its use of traps is altered. Perhaps it seeks to convert them like a cult leader, in which case it uses sheer rizz or ingenuity to convince said intruders to worship it (or the thing _it_ worships). You get the picture. I rarely run these because they're just difficult to do without micro-dosing LSD, and I always take a lot of inspiration from Little Nightmares, Rain World, Life Eater and PsychoPomp. Incorporating a specific vibe to go off of, some core emotion like helplessness or warped poeticism, is key in pulling these guys off.
Bro you gotta drop the SchizoTable
I feel like a Beholder would enjoy using cement mixing traps that would fill up the bottom layers of its lairs with a cement mixture if one of the traps is triggered, not only alerting the Beholder but also giving the players a literal death timer.
Said trap would have the mixture pour in via those service tunnels and smaller air vent type tunnels, starting by filling up primary entrances and exits. And this trap could be made by setting up simply carved and hidden tiles in the floor that would "unplug" the primary cement mixing chamber.
Honestly the vanilla beholder stat block is probably my favourite stat block in the entire monster manual its so well designed, simple to run since most of it is "roll dice then read from the book what it does", has a ton of unique and interesting effects, and while the weakness the anti magic cone does give it a now infamous weakness, this is a cool thing that prepared players can exploit, especially if a newer group figures it out for themselves, thats gonna be an amazing moment at the table. (I also like how the anti amgic cone reinforces the narrative idea of them being so self absorbed paranoid narcissists that they dont hesistate to ntoice their own functional flaws in the so called perfect creature)
Agreed TBH. Lots of options without having to break out a new page to run them
Finally, a new video
Next video in 3 years. See you there nerd : ^ )
(Thank you for watching)
I've got a Blood Kiss Beholder added as an unwilling servant guarding the halls of Castle Ravenloft in my Curse of Strahd campaign. Definitely using some of these tips for it
I’ve been waiting for this 🥳
If the PCs are climbing, make them have to jump to a ledge to continue(i.e, a square vertical tunnel that bends at some point) and have some sort of persistent illusion that has the appearance of solid stone, but you would phase right through if you attempted to jump to it. So as a player jumps to the ledge, they instead fall to the bottom and get seriously injured if not killed
I love this stuff this is so helpful. Gonna use this for a labyrinth in my campaign
This video came just in time for the lvl 6 party I'm DM'ing to fight a beholder next week. I do not have high hopes for their survival but I'm welcome to being surprised
Archie: Guard this knowledge jealously
Also Archie: Like and Subscribe so the algorithm pushes this video out to more and more people
Real G's move silent, like lasagna.
reading schizo threads on 4ch is great inspiration, have smart lethal traps yes, but also have bizarre rube goldberg nonsense that counters very specific avenues of attack whether they make sense or not, have glyphs of warding that only trigger for halflings because one time a halfling stole a tome from the lair, have an elaborate set up to destroy trolls, a giant ballistae that will only trigger if a dragon enterred the lair, go insane and plan for things the party would never do, its funny, in character but also generates unique opportunities and problems to solve
"It's Rewatch Time!"
-Will Smith, veracity unknown
The volos guide book has a lot of great info for beholders and even a great illustration of a beholder lair. One of my favorite bits from that book is it has spells you can sub the eye rays for, and you can sub feeblemind for the deathray lol
Damn, didn’t even mention that Beholders are a spacefaring race with their own spaceships for both interdimensional (planes) and interplanetary (spelljammer) travel
Had a beholder who set up shop in a volcano and used its telekinesis ray to drop and shove players into lava, along with picking up lava to limit mobility and use as a projectile. Keep in mind falling in lava does 10d10 fire damage so having a flung ball of it do 5d10 fire damage was pretty nice of me. What wasn’t nice of me was the cloak of displacement and superior potion of healing the beholder had made
Edit: spelling and grammar
Really good stuff Archy
Been wanting to run a proper beholder but haven't been able to.
This will help when the time comes
Glad I could help
A beholder's paranoia can be also used against it.
A weak party that comes up with a plan (and a good execution) can probably trick one into thinking it's best to run away or prehentively activating countermeasures to add more chaos to the fight.
I also think a Beholder's paranoia can be used to excuse "sub optimal" actions.
Just have the Beholder scream "you don't fool me! I see through your petty scheams!" And then bite off it's own disintegration casting eye and laugh triumphantly.
Post more my guy I love ya stuff
My favorite pairing for Beholders is giving them non human cultists. I've made kobold fun houses that from the outside look like junkyard raiders built a borg cube. A lattice of steel girders and service tunnels only sized for a kobold. I could reuse this but instead of actual kobolds, make them some sort of horrid arcane creation the Beholder uses to man his hamster tube network of traps and for food. All of this built vertically into the ceiling of and underdark Cavern with that being the only entry into the main sphere it's carved out with the lair hanging from the center. Like a hornet nest.
I love this channel! Thanks again.
I'm glad to find my work bringing enjoyment to others!
YES THANK YOU. This has been on my mind for a long time and I am very excited to run this.
Now that's one SPICY meatball.
Mama Mia Pizzeria
If this ain't gold, it's glory. Praise be our darkened lord
Just recently found your channel but I love how you make these smart creatures really feel super intelligent. Keep being a a chad lich
Thank you!
For some reason I never got this recommended to me?
Turned on notifications for your channel. Love all Archlich videos
I've noticed that UA-cam likes to shoot out recommendations to my alt almost anytime I set my videos to public. I would guess it depends on what you usually have in your feed. I've been postulating that it might actually be to my advantage that I only upload once a month, as it seems to increase the amount of people the video gets suggested out to as a result. However, I'm rambling. Thank you for enjoying my work!
Beholders are like small gun turrets having a Major advantagde if they can just blast someone from safety.
Therefore i think it would be useful for a Beholder to have sone kind of transportation system to quickly travel around its dungeuon. Maybe a ring of teleport, a minecart or an elevator.
Dungeon idea - standard horizontal dungeon layouts, but completely made up of suspended platforms over a yawning abyss below. Some are dummy platforms that break with any pressure put on them, enemies try and shoot the ropes holding up the platforms players stand on. Flying PC's? The beholder made sure every cultist learned the 2nd lvl spell earthbind
Oh overlord, for the next lecture, can we learn about Archdevils and Demon Lords?
10:48 Its far more eldritch if you describe it as the beholder focusing on a target and reality just changing, no ray
A lot of what you're describing is what I used for my bugman city, Buwatecia! Keep up the great content!
Wanted to run a unique monster for my hunter: the reckoning game. Then I saw Archlich posted. And I knew what I had to do.
Thank you, my lord. They'll never see it coming.
Something I thought about as a concept to use for beholders is ironically because of the "Master of Monsters and The Arcane" Archlich's Elder brain video, and how he taught about making elder brain lairs. It involves pieces of information both covered by Beholder Lore and the "Illithid Dossier" book that covers mind flayers more in detail, more specifically how beholders are apparently created (sourced from a Runesmith video) and what Illithids can do to Beholders
Fun fact, which in of itself is something you can use to make the beholder dungeon even more interesting, beholders can reproduce asexually. Not on command however. They have to long rest and dream of another beholder in order to do so. In fact, they can create anything in their dreams accidentally, beholder birth included. That also includes not only the stock beholder covered in this video, but other "Beholder-kin" as they are called (although caused by factors that cause variation). The types of which I will not list here (Comment's going to be a mile long and that's not the point). But if the idea I'm about to present to you is not appealing enough, having more beholders of different kinds can keep the party on its toes.
Now how Mind Flayers play into this. According to the Illithid Dossier (which sources several DnD books by wizards of the coast), when Illithids get ahold of a beholder (or maybe a creature belonging to the beholder-kin category, let's assume) and transform it, they create something called a "Mindwitness", which is a creature that boosts telepathic communication. So imagine having a bunch of these placed all throughout the elder brain lair in order to boost communications.
That's where Beholder Farming comes in. The illithids, with enough information, could possibly think of a way to contain the beholder and keep it constantly asleep, while continuously farming the offspring it creates. Beholders and Mindflayers also speak the same languages of Deep Speech and Undercommon, so mind flayers could telepathically influence the beholder to dream of anything they want by telepathically communicating it in their head while they sleep.
This can be something you can run while the party sneak into the lair and find the beholder trapped. You could use the same glass like substance as the one protecting the elder brain because it's immune to necrotic (granted put it at a smaller health pool) and have the tank be full of something that both keeps the beholder alive and asleep. And when the party comes upon it, they can break it and release the beholder. Why would they do that? While granted it's going to let the elder brain know something is immediately wrong as this is going to not be subtle for what happens next, it can introduce another factor into their attempt to kill the elder brain because the beholder is probably going to do one of two things:
1. Break out of where it's being held and try to escape through the Underdark, which the elder brain is going to want to catch to keep its Mindwitness factory going.
2. Kill every living thing, possibly the party included, but the Elder Brain colony is going to try and scramble to either get it subdued or killed, which will split the Elder Brain's focus and forces as the Party heads closer to it.
Tl;dr: You can use Beholders as a resource the Elder brain has to boost its forces within its lair, while at the same time providing the party an incentive to explore more after finding it, toss a new factor into the encounter to make it more interesting, and reward the based note takers within the group by introducing the glass-like substance that will come into play later.
Lair has many False puzzle that opens a door to a blank wall or doors randomly open and close each other at random points in the maze
This new reimagining of Aquateen is pretty dark, gotta admit
Wild series reboot
Now, I may BEHOLD greatness...
No way Archie just dropped a dungeon trap tutorial like that
Bless you sir, you have been missed
YES! The glorious overlord is back with more word of wisdom, praise be the gods
Praise be the gods? So you mean praise be to our glorious overlord since he’s our god
Thank you for making and releasing this video today half an hour before i got a notification for this video, i got a call from the vet while I was at work telling me my cat lost 25% of her total body weight and her stomach was riddled with cancer. I left work early and just laid on the floor. i just clicked on the video and the music and meatwad's stupid face really cheered me up.
(" You look at him and tell me there's a god.") I am, and there is one... It's a silly guy covered with eyes. And he was foretold by a wonderful lunatic.❤
Sorry to hear that man. I know I'm just some stranger on the internet, but glad I could provide some brevity.
@The_Archlitch You did more than provide brevity. You gave me a few ideas with some of the advice you gave for the beholder's lair... a labyrinth 60% of witch is made of walls of flesh. (This isn't too mean the campaign follows next to no rules, and all party members are at least 3 classes to start. The whole point of the campaign is to Frick around and find out in a bugs bunny plot armor way.) And what you said about what the beholder would be materialistic about made me think about the loot at the end😊
I imagine that a beholder that was aware of its reality warping abilities and could lucid dream would be geniunly one of the most powerful beings in all of fiction, let alone DnD.
He does not miss! I’d love to see how you’d run a low-mid game dragon boss! Any chromatic color would be cool! I like the lairs and abilities in the books but I feel like you’d add so much more flavor to the bbeg!
Very cool, Archie.
With the undead powers of a Death Tyrant (variant beholder), it could potentially make an even more ungodly underwater lair than an Aboleth. Underwater caves can be deadly to fully prepared humans with modern technology, let alone medieval fantasy tech. The sad part is the Death Tyrant loses the antimagic cone, and magic does counteract this. For example, if the party has access to the water breathing spell they can mostly invalidate the threat of drowning in the horrible nightmare maze.
I like leaning into beholders their madness. It is 2 sentient minds in 1 body, the dreams of the creature alter reality. So I like to represent this with the area warping around the beholders. A room that the players went through no longer exist. In combat I like to show this with the idea of a mechanic I call momentum. Everything something great happens it gains 1, and every time something horrible happens it loses 1. When momentum is positive it gets passive buffs like rerolling an eye ray or temp hp at the start of its turn. When it is negative maybe the save dc gets a little easier and now its trying to retreat and regain momentum. If you want to have fun, maybe its madness is making creatures in the dungeon because it is now afraid that you aren't the only things in here anymore. A creature of reality warping insanity can allow for major effects because what it changed even as it died. Escaping the dungeon is just as hard as clearing it if your players need more of a challenge.
Excellent work Archlich! If you do dragons, I'd love to see how you'd run each dragon in their lair. Surely a red dragon fights with different tactics and resources compared to a black dragon. Fighting a dragon in their lair should be like getting to a lich phylactery: completely unfair.
Yeeeee a new video from the undead maker of funny traps
the cirus music is just gold
Made my day measurably better. Lets begin the schemin
Thanks for the video. It will most certainly be used.
You're welcome!
Consider this, the eye rays have a range of 120 feet and darkvision of the same. Average creatures with darkvision have range of 60 feet. Chris Perkins says that for sake of D&D, an object will fall 580 feet per round. It could have a fight chamber that is tall enough that no creatures will see the ceiling and place disintegration targets up there to collapse the room on everyone below, and they would not get time to leave the room.
Xanathar is the pinnacle of what all Beholders should aspire to be
In dungeon magazine 141 there’s a one shot where you break into a vault on the elemental plane of fire operated by a beholder. And his stat block has a really cool mechanic where he only has 3 regular eye rays and the others are called spell stalks where he can cast an array of spells from them but he HAS to turn off the anti magic cone in his central eye making him vulnerable at the cost of casting a bunch of insane spells. The reason behind this is he’s labeled as a beholder mage. But still cool mechanic I think beholders should have.
That's pretty sick.
As the beholder can keep any one object under 300 under its telekenisis, it could do something as anxiety inducing as keeping one player underwater as they drown. Verticality is the name of the game, so the floor should be all but hostile, and going from the floor to anywhere on his level should be a pain in the ass
Cover the floor in tar to reduce their movement options, add a web of tripwires about 10 feet above the party in case they try to use their levitation
Since its attacks are mostly beams, its up to the DM's discretion if that means they go through thick glass, allowing the beholder to strike while it cant be attacked by arrows, maybe put them in a maze while being shot at from above to be especially annoying
If it looks like they are coping well, flood the maze, too
I mentioned glass, so naturally its up to you if rhose beams can also refract, allowing it to fire at a magical prism or a lens and either split into mulptiple beams, cover a wider but diluted area, or a focused and more potent one
Use mirrors as well, to work with the beholder's narcissistic personality, but you will have to actively figure out angles, too
Since the beholder can use telekinesis, make it able to shift the angles of those mirrors too to increase accuracy as well as do a little disco light show of death with that prism i mentioned earlier, spinning it around and generally being a menice
Since its a very narcissistic creature, it needs to keep a following to bolster its ego
Devout cultists, enthralled captives, or just straight up lobotomized people with their tongues cut out
Keeps a wealth of oddities and knicknacks, so you can be creative with rewards, or even a monster zoo that it keeps for its enjoyment
Nice video, loved it. A few points though and some ideas I had watching it, for the other acolytes in the comments:
Cover-based fighting tactics and telekinesis to me screams using the telekinesis to pull enemies out of cover (the players are presumably also in cover) and then having your allies pepper them with arrows. However with ray-based attacks they still require line of sight, so maybe use of thin 5x5 pillars for cover that make it easy for the beholder to swing around, shoot eye-ray, and scoot back.
Alternatively, it can carve 'pavise shields' out of rock that have a little window by the feet. The beholder floats, so hiding behind these shields doesn't expose their body, but if a player does, they only benefit from 1/2 cover instead of the usual 3/4 cover, and they can be targetted by spells since you can see their feet. These pavise shields should be collapsible by means of fireball, shatter, or by a firm push if they can get up close. They could be used in a room where the beholder is planning to attack intruders (and separate from its 'true lair'), and in conjunction with cultists wielding longbows who sit in carved alcoves all the way in the back.
Lastly the mention of slides and chutes had me think of a classic trapdoor pit style trap, which instead of falling upon spikes, the vertical chute becomes a slide delivering the victim into a room and can double as a 'food collection system' for the beholder. Since it doesn't want its food to crawl back out, a different, unintelligent and agressive creature is set up in this area to dispatch intruders, after which the beholder periodically eats the unintelligent creature and replaces them with a new one. I think oozes would work best for this, working as a sort of pre-digestion system for the beholder. They can be as easily stored in buckets, clay pots, or barrels and be set by traps to be released by gravity just like water.
Also this is the second video that mentions enemies using flight to its advantage (I believe the mindflayers was the first), and while it does make the mind churn, I believe a separate video might be in order with concrete examples of some common stratagems in terrain and tunnel layout, in both labyrinth-type areas and combat arenas.
Do you have a subreddit or discord where your acolytes may discuss ideas?
I think you'd have to use the lair actions for this unless they weren't in total cover, but yes I like that idea with telekinesis a lot. I was operating off of the assumption that the beholder would have cover in it's lair. The more in depth videos will have to come at a later time when there's more people interested in the minutia, but until then, I think you have the right idea.
Love your videos man. Always a pleasure to see a new video from you.
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoy my work.
I've been waiting sooo long for this! Great style and content. Can't wait for your next dish sir
One change I make to my Beholders is that I replace their Anti-Magic cone with a giant disintegration ray instead, the kind that could instantly carve out a huge tunnel in seconds or reduce a raging Barbarian to a burn mark on a wall.
A beholder can create other beholderkin creatures from its dreams. If it has done it would assuredly subjogate and put them in different rooms to ambush interlopers. im thinking a room full of mirrors to 'bounce' the guaths paralyze eye or a very tightly wound series of corkscrew caverns full of deathkisses
Our great boney lord has returned with another banger
The real BBEG of my current campaign (aside from the obvious starved archlich who's been recently awakened, ready to commit multiple acts of genocide to recover his lost artefacts) is pretty effectively just a massive beholder that eats life force and has grown far too large in size to need be paranoid about anything. It's just too low energy to do anything but rest at the bottom of the ocean filter feeding on anything stupid enough to enter its domain or striking deals with dumb adventurers that can feed it souls.
It hungy
Idea: have eyeholes set up at different points of the lair, so that the beholder could use it’s rays while staying safe from melee attacks
Les go, archy video!
How to make it an actual CR 13 threat?
The Beholder gets to choose its rays.
How to make it a CR14+ threat?
Old school; it fires up to three rays in each of its 6 directional 90 degree cones...or three rays at each target, as a simpler but less forgiving version. Each ray is different; maximum of all 10.
Bonus dickishness:
If it deactivates its cone for its turn, it can use it as a Counterspell until the start of its next turn.
Also, the beholder can choose to inflict no damage with its enervation ray, but instead inflict a level of exhaustion on a failed save.
Also also, an object flung using the Telekinetic ray could do 4d6 damage like its bite attack. Likely bludgeoning, but potentially slashing or piercing damage. Note that an object could potentially be flung into the Antimagic Cone without losing momentum.
My calling has come
Ladies and gentlemen
WAKE UP BABE NEW ARCHLICH
A big round rock to fall down a vertical shaft so that it one can crush those trying to get up the shaft. may also block the entrance.
Beholder's Greed being NEET collectible obsessions. Xanathar has EVERY LOTR FunkoPop
Mirrors, mirrors everywhere. If you look deep into any one you can see something staring back at you.
Love this channel. Can you upload a video about dragons? I feel like whenever I run one it’s underwhelming, so I’d like to hear what an expert has to say about them.
EXACTLY! I'd love to see how different dragons are run and how dragons that aren't evil are run/ancient dragons would be played vs a younger dragon
ALL of the floors are at crooked angles making it difficult to keep your balance or even inducing nausea since none of the walls and floors line up quite right
With that Int and lifespan give it some Verbal-component Wizard spell options:
Cantrip: Mind Sliver
Tier 1. 2/Day: Silvery Barbs
Tier 2 2/day: Blur, Blindness/Deafness, Earthbind, Misty Step, Tasha Mind Whip
Tier 3 1/day: Thunderstep
Make the lair have iron bars or slats at points where the beholder can flee behind with a Misty Step and then shoot eyes rays or spells from cover. Also could be an a,Bush place that leads into a trap when the iron bars that were supporting the wall/trap crumble.
I cant deny a lich wearing sunglasses.
The Shades of Compellment are quite...compelling...