Only related due to the pun, but once for a one shot, I played a grappling-based character called the BeHolder whose personality, voice, etc. were all based on the character the Boulder from Avatar the Last Airbender (e.g. telling my DM in the third person "The BeHolder would like to put the goblin in a headlock")
By far my favorite thing about beholders is how they literally create things from nothing when they dream; and forming adventures based on that. Perhaps trying to get to a beholder in order to simply waking it up so that it stops creating monsters all over the place.
Oh wait, I have an idea in my brain-hole. Have players create like 5th level PCs or something with no knowledge of the game world etc. Start them in the Beholder's dungeon, no idea who they or each other are, no idea how they got there. Dreamed into existence by the very Beholder at the center of it all.
HUMAN MELTING POINTS REMAIN... INCONSISTENT.. ;D he my favorite character already in league of legends and kind of the reason im checking out the cool video!
@MrRhexx Personally I am the opposite, I hate this bit of lore. It is one of those lore things were its like, "yeah, cool, of course it can" but the practical implications of this is insane. Creating Armies of Beholders that can also dream more beholders into existence, or perhaps dreaming of having miniature spheres of annihilation inside all their enemies that detonate at a given time. Another name for a character like this is a god, and shouldn't be used in any self-respecting plot.
My party did a match maker thing and that's how I ended the session, he now is being stalked by a beholder named Karen, which works perfectly for a beholder. She stole her shoes after that date :/
Dael must be SUCH a magnificent DM Her imagination and rhetoric astounds me every time I watch her DnD videos. She also kinda _gets_ DnD, she knows how and when it's supposed to be weird... no, not just weird... also eerie, fantastic, curious, mystical, fantastical, inconceivable... I love her views of the fey and I love this
"[these things] can leave a player frustrated, rather than /delighted by the misfortune that has befallen them/." That's it, that's the best approach to dm'ing ever :D
I've been cooking up an idea for a warlock who gets his powers by replacing his eye with one from a Beholder's stalk. What he doesn't know is that this is how Beholder's reproduce and he's going to be slowly turning into a Beholder.
technically speaking, beholders reproduce by dreaming up themselves. Which is why they are rare. I saw a video on it that went all the way back to 1e for the lore about them. But I highly... highly doubt your player knows this, as it's such an obscure fact. So your idea is clever and I wish you GL with it. :D
Other possibilities of "eyes as metaphores": Paranoia: this Beholder is scared of everything and has prepared a plan B, C and D for every conceivable scenario. It's traps and illusions everywhere, and it always has a way of bugging out and a counter for every trick the players throw at it. Control: combine 1984 with the Eye of Sauron. This Beholder rules over a city with an iron fist (iron eye?). It has perfect knowledge of everything that happens within its demesne. Players must be extra careful about what they do and what they say. For extra weird points give the Beholder a drop of Ruin from Mistborn and let it alter written records and/or memories.
Funnily enough, instead of a lamp-eye, I used a candle. The beholder held a candle as it prowled its lair (no dark vision) For it's aberrant nature, I took the idea of friendship and extrapolated it to the extreme. The beholder can't fathom the abstract nature of friendship so he has driven himself mad trying to cut the friendship out of lesser beings for his own uses. Having this alien creature rambling to himself as they held their breath just 20ft away... it was great fun.
This feels like what the monster manual should be trying to do more - giving a unified thematic idea around a monster & how that plays into mechanics. Cause I now want this for every major monster. The imagery of the single light in a dark and forbidding city hits HARD.
I think the books need to provide more advice on how to customize and adjust monsters, instead of presenting them as a "take it or leave it" stat block.
@@dicorockhimself Actually there are a bunch of tables for customizing beholders. I think they're in Xanathar's. But that only applies to aesthetic stuff and a few personality traits, not to things like powers.
@@Myzelfa oh I know and their rad for flavor I just wish they took that a stpe further for my buddies who are new to dming. So I dont have to teach them from the ground up how to buff monsters berf monsters and customize them at the level that a lot of good dms do
Such a great video, the ideas about the desolated and warped city were awesome. I feel like a good solution for keeping the "permanent" effects only for a short time would be using the specific eye that caused the efect to beging with a alchemic component for a cure to the effect. That way the characters only have to have that knowledge, extract the eye wihout damaging it and concoct the potion themselves or look for someone who can do it for them.
The beholder doesn’t need true sight because of their antimagic cone ability. It should remove the invisibility of the heroes. I think its more scary that way, like a child hiding under a blanket and the adult just removing the blanket entirely instead of just knowing the kid is there.
I ran a beholder once whose body had been destroyed, and it was just a huge eye floating in a useless robot body. It's various other eyes could operate independently, attached to a modified ogre (eyegre). It was sacking a library looking for a manual on Biomancy to rebuild it's body.
I like the idea of 2 Vel'Koz meeting and arguing over the existential meaning of the last group of adventurers one of them murdered. I think it could get bloody.
What's really inspiring (I think) is Aberration who is ALSO a massive narcissistic paranoid. That way you have some grasp of the monster's goals and relationships with factions. Also, you get more satisfaction out of the alien intelligence of these things when they're pulling strings from the background; much more monologuing that way and an actual opportunity to experience bent aspects of reality.
I once heard beholders described as "...an intensely alien, Lovecraftian physiology, but instead of having an equally alien mindset they just have the personality of H.P. Lovecraft himself."
I really like the idea of Beholders having different eyestalk powers. Like, there could be a table of 100 stalk powers, and you pick ten from the list. One of the things I like about Beholders are their supreme arrogance and belief in their superiority. They even have two brains, one of which is filters out information that would contest the idea of their superiority.
I did something a little like this when my players encountered a Beholder. It had been drawn to the call of a cult operating out of a farmhouse. As they approached, they found space and time warping; ranged attacks were unreliable, and occasionally would either hit the round after they were fired, or work in reverse, like in TENET. Inside the house, doors led to the wrong rooms. The players went back and forth, trying to force their way into the right room by willpower and feeling a sense of being observed press in on them, before finally dropping into the beholder's dream space, where fragments of the farmhouse's rooms drifted in a void around the Beholder, which had a few of the time/gravity effects from Mercer's dunamancy spells added to its eyebeams to shift people around, and a lair action which could shift one of the chunks of room. In retrospect, the execution wasn't all that I hoped, in part because of the restrictions of my online play setup, which meant I wasn't using the flexibility of the map to maximum effect for fear that my remote players wouldn't be able to follow. My original plan also had the PCs arriving one at a time in the beholder's dream, but they got so dinged up getting there that I was worried they'd just get picked off one by one, which is not a fun way to end an encounter. If I had it over, I would bring them in individually, but have the beholder open by questioning them - not necessarily asking them questions, but maybe questioning the fact of them, because that chaos science idea is dope - rather than going straight into physical combat.
Directional Eye Rays: Beholder is represented on battlemat by a 10x10 "face" tile. Tell the players "facing direction matters", and rotate the face as a demonstration. Then put 4 colored stones on the face (1 in each corner). At the beginning of each turn, roll 1d10 three to four times on the following table (or one of your own), and replace the stones with those you roll (placing stones clockwise around creature, in the order they were rolled): 1-(black)-See Invisibility 2-(white)-detect magic/counterspell 3-(red)-ray of fire 4d6 4-(blue)-single target slow (wisdom save). target re-rolls their initiative. 5-(yellow)-single target petrify/crystalize (con save, permanent, as you described) 6-(green)-charm/dominate/suggestion (wisdom/charisma save) 7-(orange)-reroll race. next round reroll again. (permanent spell effect. restoration spell cures). ----also take 1d4+1 psychic and 1d12 necrotic damage each change. 8-(purple)-?????? Central eye--15ft antimagic cone, 30ft bright light, 60ft dim light Each stone represents which magical eye is facing that way each round. Each eye that can target a creature in its quadrant will. If a character moves into an area which could be effected by an eye that did not previously have targets, they are targeted immediately (as beholder's reaction). Finally the non-permanent effects of eyes will end if the stone representing that eye is not also rolled the next round. Any specific eye might be disabled permanently if it is destroyed. The eyes can be targeted by a melee attack if their colored stone is visible on the battlemat. AC __, hp ___ to remove. If attacking the central eye, beholder WILL use its reaction to try and bite you. if it succeeds, the attack fails and your turn ends; beholder does not otherwise bite.
This is topical: I have a beholder encounter in the next few sessions! My players have been marooned on "an island" since level 0 and found out around level 8 that they weren't just on some island, but instead are in a biodome on the shell of Realmspace. I meta-said they'd probably be able to get into space around 11/12, and we're a bit behind the eightball. They're already 12 now. Well, the fit hit the shan several sessions ago when the biodome CRACKED and all the Spelljamming races of the 'verse started pouring in. Gith dragon riders and gith ships have already pounded the area, and for nearly the whole campaign the stuff of nightmares and the Far Realm have been showing up. Next session (depending on how much RP time we burn off) they'll encounter a beholder and it's crew after it's ship has been shot down into a frozen lake. I was gonna play it straight as the crazy, conspiratorial-suspecting typical beholder......but I like a few of your ideas and may have to add a bit more of my own. Also, if you have the chance, see if you can dig up a copy of "I, Tyrant". It goes through all the various types of beholders "out there" including a good many who've not-yet-made-their-way into 5e. So looking forward to pulling out some of the weirder ones of those on my Monster-Manual-memorizing player at the table. :D
Couple more ideas: - What if, when the eyestalk gets severed, two more come out of the wound? - Eyestalk power: a player suddenly sees another beholder next to them, until, when they attack, they see a fellow party member, tying into the whole "perception" thing - Eyestalk power: a player gets microvision/their mental filters go off. I once heard a story of someone who did a little bit too many drugs one night, causing their mental filters to shut down and they said it was terrifying. Have the player see so many details on their surroundings and other party members, that it almost becomes uncannyvalley-like and disgusting, giving them, idk, a save against fear or disadvantage or something - Eyestalk power: the player suddenly feels every microorganism in and on their body. - Something weird and wacky: what if thr eyestalks could creep out of or extend from the main body? That could create horrifying moments where only an eye on a gross slimy stalk is creeping around, looking for the players, or during combat, creeping around them and potentially sneak attacking or grappling
Beholders aren't Hydras. Their eyestalks (aka heads for hydras) don't just grow back. And plus, they only get so many eyestalks uses per round, so it doesn't really make sense.
I think this would work great as a first generation Beholder. One that has only recently arrived on the prime material. And as they dream offspring they slowly become accustomed to the world but eclectic like Xanathar.
"I want it to feel like it reaches beyond the game to touch the players". * DM throws a water balloon at a player *. So evocative, love it, my beholders will be like this from now on, those crit beam effects are sweet.
Beholder Lore from the standard books dosent work for me... 50 different types and even these nice sociable city living beholders... Bah no thx... THIS though... this works! Thanks so much!
I love the idea in Volo’s that the eyes symbolize paranoia, but at the same time it seems uncharacteristic for a creature who meticulously makes plans for every eventuality to go into battle and suddenly say “lol let’s throw some random beams around and see what happens.”
I love beholders so so much. I have always loved aberrations. In my world, creatures from the far realm must conform partially to material laws, or they are powerful enough to bend reality around them. Personally, the beholder Kin are some of my favorites. I loved role playing “ralthun the gatekeeper the keeper of gates” who was guarding a sword and would always refer to itself in the third person using its full title. I also love the idea of a beholder hunting down other beholders and grafting other eyestalks onto its body.
I agree with this video 100%! The MM Beholder is alot of fun, but a little safe. I don’t think i would go with your table exactly as described but the idea of having a custom table is phenomenal! This is now one of my favorite videos of yours!
I was so disappointed when beholders won their bracket, and now I want to run a beholder. Congratulations Dael, you are a master of dungeons and storytelling.
Old sci-fi radio dramas have the main characters talking to themselves about their discoveries. I could imagine a similar feel, but a bizarro uncanny version
Yeah, I'm going straight to that amazing Special Beam Effect table. Characters are likely to only ever meet a beholder once. It should be a memorable experience! You're the best Dael.
I like the idea that the beholder breaks reality so much that it can effect the players not just the characters. There is the easy you failed your save or there was no save this happens to you character sheet but i think it would be fun if it was like your cookie competition. You were affected by the ray of silence your character can not speak or use verbal components and as a player you must now mime out what you character dose on there turn for the next minute. Or you were effected by the ray of dilapidation until you successfully build two dice towers out of all seven dice your character is unable to leave prone.
The "every beholder has different abilities" thing reminds me of an Into the Odd... blogpost? Something about a chimera style monster where you randomly roll both amount and type of heads/limbs/etc, just pure madness
In terms of what they represent, I've heard it argued that they're all about the feeling of being observed. Like how when so many eyes see you, it feels like they have power over you. Like they get to define who and what you are as the "objective" outside force, even if totally contradicts your experience of reality.
This actually corresponds with a lot of my ideas for an "Argus Titan", which would be a sort of über- and/or ur-beholder which wouldn't even fight the players directly. In the adventure I have planned for it, it just shows up to fight another incomprehensibly powerful being called a Chrononaut, and the sparks flying off of this fight create effects like your beholder's eye rays.
I just ran a modified Mindwitness that was an amalgamation of it's original statblock and the eye beam effects in the video! Unfortunately I made the mistake of forgetting the party included a monk, but before it got stunlocked to death it managed to hit the cleric with the 5d4 beam, which was a super cool reveal when she went to make an attack and started gathering D4s.
Yes, just yes. This was a fantastic take on beholders. Dael: "...beam permanently changes the player's race. Now, put down your pitchforks..." Me: "Pitchforks? You mean pen and paper? Please continue >:)"
I think vibrato Dael is my new favourite form of yours. The energy in this video is absolutely spectacular and infectious. Something I think would fit Beholders well (or at least this manifestation of them) would be to not have reactions of something which is being attacked. The creature should never screech out in pain when harmed or attempt to defend itself to signal it being under duress, perhaps going so far to not actually bleed or release any such fluid from what others would normally consider a wound. Simply responding to their attacks with "Interesting physiology... I must remember to inspect the subjects muscular structure after it becomes exhausted." or "Hypothesis: Increased aggression is caused by a sudden influx of adrenaline. Perhaps from a gland?" and even upon hitting 0 HP it doesn't let loose a death knell, but is instead cut-off mid sentence. Always mark down the damage but don't give any recognition of it being a lot or a little, just deadpan & calm responses, make them question if they are even doing anything to it.
Ma'am, I like your grasp of aberrations. This is always what I'm going for when I run Mind Flayers, Aboleth, Beholders, anything to do with the Far Realm. I love the Lovecraftian effects that result in: "Wait, reality _doesn't like that."_
Gotta love aberrations. Sometimes it's fun just to think about which of the rules of reality that we take for granted might turn out to be more guidelines than actual rules.
One of the things I might add to the change in hit points is that if your new maximum hp is lower than your current hp, you get to keep the difference as temporary hit points until they are lost.
This is great. I would add a result where time super speeds up like in that movie Ice Pirates, where the main characters and their robots get so old they can’t fight anymore but the hero and heroines kid (or the players’ descendants!) comes to the rescue 😂
I actually think that beholders don't necessarily *need* true sight, because their central eye annihilates any magic that it looks at already, giving it the truest sight of all! Also it gives the players an opportunity to have a scenario that sounds kind of like a riddle. "What can become invisible without magic?", it would certainly be a unique blind spot (heh) in the beholder's vision that could be a plot point in itself.
I really love this video, as someone whose players usually know that to me the monster manual is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules. I wanna share 2 of the changes I made for beholders, in case anyone is scanning the comments for ideas: 1. I always remove the mouth of beholders. No way is a creature like this getting close to take a chomp, and the idea of a extraplanar aberration needing material food is just not my thing. Besides, no one's gonna bat an eye if you give a beholder telepathy. Leave the mouths to the Gibbering Mouthers. I replace the bite with Eldritch Blast as a 17th level spellcaster, 4 beams of 1d10 force damage, an easy way to add more generic ray attacks. I realize the bite provides a melee alternative, but beholders don't actually get a penalty for using their eye rays at close range (they're all saves, not attack rolls), so it doesn't really matter. 2. If the characters manage to slay a beholder, they can harvest the eyes, which I usually represent as gem or crystal-like, filled with swirling mist-like astral...stuff. Each of the small eyes retains enough power to replicate a beholder's eye rays once (whether they get one of each or they roll for each is up to the DM, I go with rolls for each). The central eye ball can be used up to cast antimagic field a limited number of times for free. Kinda obvious rewards, but it's always cool as a player to gain the powers of the creatures you kill. You could even make it into a Perseus-style quest, where players need the eyeball's antimagic properties for whatever reason so they gotta hunt a beholder. Also, love the dilemma of needing a bunch of diamond dust to undo a character's diamond transformation. They'll be fine if we shave off just a bit...right?
Here I thought I was being creative with the idea of a beholder who's primary concern and occupation was experimenting on the people and creatures of our world. The only addition I had to that was the ultimate goal of the experimentation was seeking greater perfection for themselves.
i like the extra variant abilities in volo’s guide. you can replace the incapacitating abilities with things like wall of ice, silence, blindness, etc. still bad, still something to deal with and not just damage, but doesn’t shut the player down and suck the fun out of the game.
If the underground city is steeped in ancient magic, then, maybe the Beholder's Anti-magic eye would interact with the ambient magic, creating a sort of beam of darkness? Eyes as a metaphor? Now I want a Beholder called Dr Mabuse.
A thing I still desperately want to do for a Beholder encounter is prepare a bunch of dialogue lines and Twin Peaks reverse record it. I mean saying the line backwards and then reverse the recording so it sounds like words but reeaally weird. Because in my world, that's how Beholders talk. Especially with laughter this is so very creepy.
Beholders used to have all round vision. They were immune to sneak attacks. So at least they had that. Also, none of that random stuff. They had full control over their eye rays.
Haha, awesome :D A couple of months back I sculpted a redesigned beholder as I thought the "official" ones aren't aberrant enough - they have a face, for starters - but this kicks it up several levels. Will be yoinking these, thanks! Except maybe the body swap one - I can just see the bard hitting on himself and I think that's a mental image most of the party* wouldn't appreciate. The build up on the other hand - gold. * Everyone except the bard.
velkoz is a great reference for beholders, league in general is a great place to pull lots of stuff, from voices and character ticks, to monster abilities.
"The first one is called Gulf. When it hits all of your numbers are reversed. You have to get lower numbers and AC goes backwards." By the gods...the beholder brought back THAC0! :O
I just want to say I once had an old witch contract the party to hunt a beholder to get it's eye. Turns out the witch had made an artisan a beholder because he asked her to give him the power "to make his dreams come true" and now he is super paranoid she is out to get him. She just wants it's eye because she wants to be beautiful again when they returned with it's eye (they cut it off and ran he is alive and angry) she promptly takes the eye plops it in her mouth swishes it around for a second and spits out a massive emerald. Realizing her spell went wrong she gives the gem to the party as reward (it was the Kiss of the Changebringer from the Taldorei Guide). Then the party and the witch went on their own ways. The beholder one eye short and the witch still seeking true beauty.
I've used Nothics for minions for the beholder. Given their curious nature and large central eye, I felt it fit very well thematically. For an example, I've used them spying on whole towns trying to gather information. Alot is useless gossip, but sometimes there's a bit of interest for the Beholder. If the Nothics all had similar markings (I used a ring of 9 eye brands around their eye) it would make an interesting plot hook for an adventure.
Some day I want to run a Beholder that is spider-themed and dream-themed. Each "tentacle" is a long spider leg that ends in a compound eye, instead of "slime" it creatures sticky black webs, it would "catch" people's dreams and thoughts in its webs, and weave new realities. Considering how the lore says Beholders can all look so different I have been very disappointed to be unable to find any bug-themed Beholder art.
So I just found this channel and binged a bunch of your videos and there are just SO. MANY. GOOD. IDEAS. Like, I've been on hiatus from d&d for several reasons one of which was just an overall lack of inspiration or motivation and now these videos make me want to run a beholder. And a displacer beast. And witches. And the list goes on. For this video in particular when you mentioned the eye rays from a monster manual beholder all kinda doing the same thing that was exactly the kind of opinion I had. Such an awesome and insane amount of ideas. (So far your traps video is my favourite though. :P)
"yknow, like the ninja turtles" got me choking on my water, thank you I really, really like the flavor here. It's taking the visual design and extrapolating it in a very different direction. And the chaos, my god, the wonderful chaos. Rerolling initiative all the time and diluting spell slots is _aaaawesome._ I think I'd avoid things like the flipping lows with highs and ancestry changes, not because it's not interesting, but because it would slow play down too much? Swapping character sheets would be _great_ in person but over discord might be a bit of a hassle, as well. I'd love to hear back from people testing these, though! Another interesting way to take beholders is to go all in on their accidental reality bending, "dumb-god" abilities. If you check the origins of other Beholderkin, they're all pretty much summarised as "A Beholder had a bad dream or a panic attack and woops, things happened." The twisted, absurd enviroment they inhabit can be simply a consequence of their paranoia, fear or curiosity _bleeding into_ the world around them. If they visit a town, they might leave a trail of dead bodies mimicking things that _look_ like daily life, speaking something that _sounds_ like language, until you actually pay attention. If they're particularly paranoid or cowardly, their labyrinthine home could be full of horrors they themselves dreamt up and ran away from, that your party now has to deal with.
My players need to go into the underdark to retrieve a lost item from a previous bossfight. This is exactly what I'm going to have happen to them now... Thanks for the inspiration!
By the way, I had a character once who had his foot petrified into some ruby. Never got around to getting it restored, but he never slept well after that. Had to keep one eye open to make sure no one else would steal it.
Thanks, this gave me a lot of inspiration! Aberrations seem like mutations caused by radiation, but in this case Magic from another plane! So, I think I'm going to make my Beholder's, Wizards who lost themselves to the Far Realm and have been altered by there time there. *I would make the lasting crit effects physical characteristics. Like; their left arm is now a 10ft Tentacle, Bound to their Weapon - Quest for Camelot style, Scaled, or Disintigrated (Which could be a fun quest to find a Gnome Artificer to make a new one)!
I will say that for an in-person game this sounds absolutely awesome....for a VTT game this sounds like a god damn nightmare with the whole body swapping mechanics and involves waaaay more work dumped onto the DM with having to change token permissions, character sheet permissions and so on, it would really bog combat down.
She didn't want to do a "West Wing" because she can't. She knows that if she tried walking in that room, while focusing on the camera, there's at least an 85% chance that she'll trip over a pile of research material. 🤣😂🤣
"If it isn't a metaphor then why so many eyes" I think the world of you Ms. Kingsmill but...the reason for so many eyes is so many random directions for death rays to come from ! Imagine if it only had the eyestalks it needed .Three eye stalks, meh that isn't an aberration that is an abbreviation. ; )
My characters went to a plane where there were rosewood row houses owned by beholder families. Think snooty Englishmen wearing bowler hats who say things like “I say…” and “By George…”. They didn’t understand why these people kept coming out of their sheds or closets (that’s where the portals were). One of them had a school project which turned the party into caterpillars which wasn’t bad until the chickens started pouring out of the henhouse. They still get twitchy when I mention chickens or caterpillars. 😂
I fear some of the effects can draw out a turn immensely such as changing race, changing bodies. The Other effects such as negative rolls, time perception distortions and more are fantastic additions to a beholder. And I agree that every beholder should have different effects. For a conceptual campaign, I have a mad scientist hook up multiple beholders to a device that controls their dream, making use of their dream-to-reality creating powers. When it all goes down, the machine is activating at full power and creates an entity that is an aberration by aberration standards, epic level with its body present in multiple planes of existence. And its presence warps the surrounding lands as it goes by in the radius of miles.
Dear Dael, I did * not * plan to listen to 4 minutes of voice-acting from a video game I don't play, and yet, here we are; you, me, Vel'Koz, and Eric Braa. I hope you gave your brother a high five for that connection! Another great creature, thanks for sharing. (Now all I need is for pandemic to end, so I can gather my party and freak them out...)
If you need other good voicelines from the game I suggest just another nobody videos. He dose a really good job showing the nerative in characters voices
As you started talking about it's alien behaviour I was thinking to myself "Dael would probably find the dialogue of Vel'Koz interesting" and then 5 seconds later... XD
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the rock monsters that a beholder can animate should be called beboulders
Wah wah wahhh! 😆
Shut up and take my money!
Only related due to the pun, but once for a one shot, I played a grappling-based character called the BeHolder whose personality, voice, etc. were all based on the character the Boulder from Avatar the Last Airbender (e.g. telling my DM in the third person "The BeHolder would like to put the goblin in a headlock")
@@samking8548, oooh, that's good!
Heboulders
Dale: "I've never really thought about Beholders before"
*thinks about beholders*
Everyone: "The world was safer before she thought about them."
"Subject proves... elusive... Ah, there you are."
By far my favorite thing about beholders is how they literally create things from nothing when they dream; and forming adventures based on that. Perhaps trying to get to a beholder in order to simply waking it up so that it stops creating monsters all over the place.
You could even have the beholder be grateful that the players woke it from it's monster-filled nightmare and let them go in peace.
Oh wait, I have an idea in my brain-hole. Have players create like 5th level PCs or something with no knowledge of the game world etc. Start them in the Beholder's dungeon, no idea who they or each other are, no idea how they got there. Dreamed into existence by the very Beholder at the center of it all.
HUMAN MELTING POINTS REMAIN... INCONSISTENT.. ;D he my favorite character already in league of legends and kind of the reason im checking out the cool video!
@MrRhexx Personally I am the opposite, I hate this bit of lore. It is one of those lore things were its like, "yeah, cool, of course it can" but the practical implications of this is insane. Creating Armies of Beholders that can also dream more beholders into existence, or perhaps dreaming of having miniature spheres of annihilation inside all their enemies that detonate at a given time. Another name for a character like this is a god, and shouldn't be used in any self-respecting plot.
@@schemage2210 with the key difference being that the beholder has zero control of its reality-warping powers
'Hello SCP? Yeah it's me we've got another [REDACTED]'
11:07 for bonus immersion, inform all your players that they are now breathing manually.
Reading that completely messed with me as I became suddenly aware of the act of breathing. A curse upon thee!
If you don't make a joke about beauty being in the eyes of the beholder by the end of this video, I'm going to be a little bit sad
I blame the taurine/caffeine haze
Especially since the Beholder's experimenting on people.
My party did a match maker thing and that's how I ended the session, he now is being stalked by a beholder named Karen, which works perfectly for a beholder. She stole her shoes after that date :/
@@MonarchsFactory fair enough, I'm trying to go caff free so I feel ya
I'm glad she didn't. An episode of the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was based on that, and Dael is better than a 1980s cartoon.
Dael must be SUCH a magnificent DM
Her imagination and rhetoric astounds me every time I watch her DnD videos. She also kinda _gets_ DnD, she knows how and when it's supposed to be weird... no, not just weird... also eerie, fantastic, curious, mystical, fantastical, inconceivable...
I love her views of the fey and I love this
So true, her "vague and evocative" sets the mind afire.
Yes, she must, because her videos have risen the bar and now most people can't even imagine a real game run by her
"Tears appear to serve no function. Further study needed."
You need more vespene gas.
"[these things] can leave a player frustrated, rather than /delighted by the misfortune that has befallen them/." That's it, that's the best approach to dm'ing ever :D
I've been cooking up an idea for a warlock who gets his powers by replacing his eye with one from a Beholder's stalk. What he doesn't know is that this is how Beholder's reproduce and he's going to be slowly turning into a Beholder.
At least "a" way they reproduce
But it sounds cool! They'll grow eyes as their powers increase
@@leviangel97 I always assumed it was the budding of an eye stalk.
technically speaking, beholders reproduce by dreaming up themselves. Which is why they are rare. I saw a video on it that went all the way back to 1e for the lore about them.
But I highly... highly doubt your player knows this, as it's such an obscure fact. So your idea is clever and I wish you GL with it. :D
@@FrustratedProgrammer I'm fully aware of it, but i like this better. which is the great power of DnD
Other possibilities of "eyes as metaphores":
Paranoia: this Beholder is scared of everything and has prepared a plan B, C and D for every conceivable scenario. It's traps and illusions everywhere, and it always has a way of bugging out and a counter for every trick the players throw at it.
Control: combine 1984 with the Eye of Sauron. This Beholder rules over a city with an iron fist (iron eye?). It has perfect knowledge of everything that happens within its demesne. Players must be extra careful about what they do and what they say. For extra weird points give the Beholder a drop of Ruin from Mistborn and let it alter written records and/or memories.
The Beholder is in my opinion, the peak of D&D monster design... You just made it 10 times better.
Funnily enough, instead of a lamp-eye, I used a candle. The beholder held a candle as it prowled its lair (no dark vision)
For it's aberrant nature, I took the idea of friendship and extrapolated it to the extreme. The beholder can't fathom the abstract nature of friendship so he has driven himself mad trying to cut the friendship out of lesser beings for his own uses.
Having this alien creature rambling to himself as they held their breath just 20ft away... it was great fun.
This feels like what the monster manual should be trying to do more - giving a unified thematic idea around a monster & how that plays into mechanics. Cause I now want this for every major monster. The imagery of the single light in a dark and forbidding city hits HARD.
I think the books need to provide more advice on how to customize and adjust monsters, instead of presenting them as a "take it or leave it" stat block.
@@Myzelfa like old school monster feats and templates? /any creature progression at all lol
@@dicorockhimself Actually there are a bunch of tables for customizing beholders. I think they're in Xanathar's. But that only applies to aesthetic stuff and a few personality traits, not to things like powers.
@@Myzelfa oh I know and their rad for flavor I just wish they took that a stpe further for my buddies who are new to dming. So I dont have to teach them from the ground up how to buff monsters berf monsters and customize them at the level that a lot of good dms do
There is an OSR monster book titled "Fire on the Velvet Horizon". It is a must read for those who want unique monsters for their game.
“Myriad hushed hypotheses”
Badass word choice.
Such a great video, the ideas about the desolated and warped city were awesome. I feel like a good solution for keeping the "permanent" effects only for a short time would be using the specific eye that caused the efect to beging with a alchemic component for a cure to the effect. That way the characters only have to have that knowledge, extract the eye wihout damaging it and concoct the potion themselves or look for someone who can do it for them.
The beholder doesn’t need true sight because of their antimagic cone ability. It should remove the invisibility of the heroes. I think its more scary that way, like a child hiding under a blanket and the adult just removing the blanket entirely instead of just knowing the kid is there.
I ran a beholder once whose body had been destroyed, and it was just a huge eye floating in a useless robot body. It's various other eyes could operate independently, attached to a modified ogre (eyegre). It was sacking a library looking for a manual on Biomancy to rebuild it's body.
This is SO much more inspiring than the classical “Beholders are massive narcissistic paranoids “.
I AM THE VERY GRATEFUL
I like the idea of 2 Vel'Koz meeting and arguing over the existential meaning of the last group of adventurers one of them murdered. I think it could get bloody.
What's really inspiring (I think) is Aberration who is ALSO a massive narcissistic paranoid. That way you have some grasp of the monster's goals and relationships with factions. Also, you get more satisfaction out of the alien intelligence of these things when they're pulling strings from the background; much more monologuing that way and an actual opportunity to experience bent aspects of reality.
I once heard beholders described as "...an intensely alien, Lovecraftian physiology, but instead of having an equally alien mindset they just have the personality of H.P. Lovecraft himself."
@@davidwatches Wasn’t that Runesmith?
I really like the idea of Beholders having different eyestalk powers. Like, there could be a table of 100 stalk powers, and you pick ten from the list.
One of the things I like about Beholders are their supreme arrogance and belief in their superiority. They even have two brains, one of which is filters out information that would contest the idea of their superiority.
100% excellent content! Perfect depiction of a mad scientist beholder. I love it!
I did something a little like this when my players encountered a Beholder. It had been drawn to the call of a cult operating out of a farmhouse.
As they approached, they found space and time warping; ranged attacks were unreliable, and occasionally would either hit the round after they were fired, or work in reverse, like in TENET.
Inside the house, doors led to the wrong rooms. The players went back and forth, trying to force their way into the right room by willpower and feeling a sense of being observed press in on them, before finally dropping into the beholder's dream space, where fragments of the farmhouse's rooms drifted in a void around the Beholder, which had a few of the time/gravity effects from Mercer's dunamancy spells added to its eyebeams to shift people around, and a lair action which could shift one of the chunks of room.
In retrospect, the execution wasn't all that I hoped, in part because of the restrictions of my online play setup, which meant I wasn't using the flexibility of the map to maximum effect for fear that my remote players wouldn't be able to follow. My original plan also had the PCs arriving one at a time in the beholder's dream, but they got so dinged up getting there that I was worried they'd just get picked off one by one, which is not a fun way to end an encounter.
If I had it over, I would bring them in individually, but have the beholder open by questioning them - not necessarily asking them questions, but maybe questioning the fact of them, because that chaos science idea is dope - rather than going straight into physical combat.
Directional Eye Rays:
Beholder is represented on battlemat by a 10x10 "face" tile. Tell the players "facing direction matters", and rotate the face as a demonstration. Then put 4 colored stones on the face (1 in each corner). At the beginning of each turn, roll 1d10 three to four times on the following table (or one of your own), and replace the stones with those you roll (placing stones clockwise around creature, in the order they were rolled):
1-(black)-See Invisibility
2-(white)-detect magic/counterspell
3-(red)-ray of fire 4d6
4-(blue)-single target slow (wisdom save). target re-rolls their initiative.
5-(yellow)-single target petrify/crystalize (con save, permanent, as you described)
6-(green)-charm/dominate/suggestion (wisdom/charisma save)
7-(orange)-reroll race. next round reroll again. (permanent spell effect. restoration spell cures).
----also take 1d4+1 psychic and 1d12 necrotic damage each change.
8-(purple)-??????
Central eye--15ft antimagic cone, 30ft bright light, 60ft dim light
Each stone represents which magical eye is facing that way each round. Each eye that can target a creature in its quadrant will. If a character moves into an area which could be effected by an eye that did not previously have targets, they are targeted immediately (as beholder's reaction). Finally the non-permanent effects of eyes will end if the stone representing that eye is not also rolled the next round.
Any specific eye might be disabled permanently if it is destroyed. The eyes can be targeted by a melee attack if their colored stone is visible on the battlemat. AC __, hp ___ to remove. If attacking the central eye, beholder WILL use its reaction to try and bite you. if it succeeds, the attack fails and your turn ends; beholder does not otherwise bite.
This is topical: I have a beholder encounter in the next few sessions!
My players have been marooned on "an island" since level 0 and found out around level 8 that they weren't just on some island, but instead are in a biodome on the shell of Realmspace. I meta-said they'd probably be able to get into space around 11/12, and we're a bit behind the eightball. They're already 12 now.
Well, the fit hit the shan several sessions ago when the biodome CRACKED and all the Spelljamming races of the 'verse started pouring in. Gith dragon riders and gith ships have already pounded the area, and for nearly the whole campaign the stuff of nightmares and the Far Realm have been showing up.
Next session (depending on how much RP time we burn off) they'll encounter a beholder and it's crew after it's ship has been shot down into a frozen lake. I was gonna play it straight as the crazy, conspiratorial-suspecting typical beholder......but I like a few of your ideas and may have to add a bit more of my own.
Also, if you have the chance, see if you can dig up a copy of "I, Tyrant". It goes through all the various types of beholders "out there" including a good many who've not-yet-made-their-way into 5e. So looking forward to pulling out some of the weirder ones of those on my Monster-Manual-memorizing player at the table. :D
I've got money ready to buy Monarch's Monster Menagerie
Nice name!
Please make this a thing
We all do
I stat out my unearthly horrors in a different system than the one we're using. They literally run on different rules.
How do you balance out things like AC and HP? Or just let the players deal with it?
Couple more ideas:
- What if, when the eyestalk gets severed, two more come out of the wound?
- Eyestalk power: a player suddenly sees another beholder next to them, until, when they attack, they see a fellow party member, tying into the whole "perception" thing
- Eyestalk power: a player gets microvision/their mental filters go off. I once heard a story of someone who did a little bit too many drugs one night, causing their mental filters to shut down and they said it was terrifying. Have the player see so many details on their surroundings and other party members, that it almost becomes uncannyvalley-like and disgusting, giving them, idk, a save against fear or disadvantage or something
- Eyestalk power: the player suddenly feels every microorganism in and on their body.
- Something weird and wacky: what if thr eyestalks could creep out of or extend from the main body? That could create horrifying moments where only an eye on a gross slimy stalk is creeping around, looking for the players, or during combat, creeping around them and potentially sneak attacking or grappling
Beholders aren't Hydras. Their eyestalks (aka heads for hydras) don't just grow back. And plus, they only get so many eyestalks uses per round, so it doesn't really make sense.
@@Dyanosis ok but what if they did was my point
"Just let it zap people occasionally" a sure sign Dael is on the DM's side when balancing the action economy. Fantastic monster rework thanks.
I think this would work great as a first generation Beholder. One that has only recently arrived on the prime material. And as they dream offspring they slowly become accustomed to the world but eclectic like Xanathar.
Like future generations lose their alien mind but keep the paranoia
My level 10 party just arrived in the underdark this week and I am SUDDENLY A LOT MORE SCARED DAEL
"I want it to feel like it reaches beyond the game to touch the players". * DM throws a water balloon at a player *.
So evocative, love it, my beholders will be like this from now on, those crit beam effects are sweet.
Watching you have all the fun ripping through those tables flinging numbers about with glee made my morning and set the theme for my day.
I can’t express the amount of excitement I felt when I saw this video
Damn Dael, that was amazing! I now want to go through the entire Monster Manual and Daelify every one! Maximum daelification!!!
Me: OMG, she's talking about Vel'Koz, that's such a great vibe and accidental crossover!
Dael: I'm talking about Vel'Koz
Me: *dies of excitement*
Beholder Lore from the standard books dosent work for me... 50 different types and even these nice sociable city living beholders... Bah no thx... THIS though... this works! Thanks so much!
I really like the "reroll stats /race" ideas
that's awesome!
PS: and the ability to let the player say "please don't" afterwards is really important
I love the idea in Volo’s that the eyes symbolize paranoia, but at the same time it seems uncharacteristic for a creature who meticulously makes plans for every eventuality to go into battle and suddenly say “lol let’s throw some random beams around and see what happens.”
I love beholders so so much. I have always loved aberrations. In my world, creatures from the far realm must conform partially to material laws, or they are powerful enough to bend reality around them.
Personally, the beholder Kin are some of my favorites. I loved role playing “ralthun the gatekeeper the keeper of gates” who was guarding a sword and would always refer to itself in the third person using its full title.
I also love the idea of a beholder hunting down other beholders and grafting other eyestalks onto its body.
"It's eyes...so many eyes..."
This is now going in my game as the ravings of a madman whose mind has been hollowed out by a beholder.
"Eyes as observation..."
Aha, I should point her towards Vel'koz!
"He pointed me towards Vel'koz"
Great minds...
Omar is just the coolest.
I agree with this video 100%! The MM Beholder is alot of fun, but a little safe. I don’t think i would go with your table exactly as described but the idea of having a custom table is phenomenal!
This is now one of my favorite videos of yours!
"You know how you already see everything upside down?" No, sorry I don't live in Australia.
I knew there was a reason they called it the Land Down Under.
@@nikkibrowning4546 I thought that was because of the heat and humidity? You know, like a human's "down under"?
I was so disappointed when beholders won their bracket, and now I want to run a beholder. Congratulations Dael, you are a master of dungeons and storytelling.
Old sci-fi radio dramas have the main characters talking to themselves about their discoveries. I could imagine a similar feel, but a bizarro uncanny version
Yeah, I'm going straight to that amazing Special Beam Effect table. Characters are likely to only ever meet a beholder once. It should be a memorable experience! You're the best Dael.
I like the idea that the beholder breaks reality so much that it can effect the players not just the characters.
There is the easy you failed your save or there was no save this happens to you character sheet but i think it would be fun if it was like your cookie competition.
You were affected by the ray of silence your character can not speak or use verbal components and as a player you must now mime out what you character dose on there turn for the next minute. Or you were effected by the ray of dilapidation until you successfully build two dice towers out of all seven dice your character is unable to leave prone.
The "every beholder has different abilities" thing reminds me of an Into the Odd... blogpost? Something about a chimera style monster where you randomly roll both amount and type of heads/limbs/etc, just pure madness
Beholders are underappreciated.
There was an episode in the D&D animated centered around a beholder.
In terms of what they represent, I've heard it argued that they're all about the feeling of being observed. Like how when so many eyes see you, it feels like they have power over you. Like they get to define who and what you are as the "objective" outside force, even if totally contradicts your experience of reality.
This actually corresponds with a lot of my ideas for an "Argus Titan", which would be a sort of über- and/or ur-beholder which wouldn't even fight the players directly. In the adventure I have planned for it, it just shows up to fight another incomprehensibly powerful being called a Chrononaut, and the sparks flying off of this fight create effects like your beholder's eye rays.
I just ran a modified Mindwitness that was an amalgamation of it's original statblock and the eye beam effects in the video! Unfortunately I made the mistake of forgetting the party included a monk, but before it got stunlocked to death it managed to hit the cleric with the 5d4 beam, which was a super cool reveal when she went to make an attack and started gathering D4s.
Yes, just yes. This was a fantastic take on beholders.
Dael: "...beam permanently changes the player's race. Now, put down your pitchforks..."
Me: "Pitchforks? You mean pen and paper? Please continue >:)"
Pen and paper? Are we taking a test? Is Dael the teacher? Are we going to be kicked from class if we don't?
I think vibrato Dael is my new favourite form of yours. The energy in this video is absolutely spectacular and infectious.
Something I think would fit Beholders well (or at least this manifestation of them) would be to not have reactions of something which is being attacked. The creature should never screech out in pain when harmed or attempt to defend itself to signal it being under duress, perhaps going so far to not actually bleed or release any such fluid from what others would normally consider a wound. Simply responding to their attacks with "Interesting physiology... I must remember to inspect the subjects muscular structure after it becomes exhausted." or "Hypothesis: Increased aggression is caused by a sudden influx of adrenaline. Perhaps from a gland?" and even upon hitting 0 HP it doesn't let loose a death knell, but is instead cut-off mid sentence. Always mark down the damage but don't give any recognition of it being a lot or a little, just deadpan & calm responses, make them question if they are even doing anything to it.
Ma'am, I like your grasp of aberrations. This is always what I'm going for when I run Mind Flayers, Aboleth, Beholders, anything to do with the Far Realm. I love the Lovecraftian effects that result in: "Wait, reality _doesn't like that."_
Gotta love aberrations. Sometimes it's fun just to think about which of the rules of reality that we take for granted might turn out to be more guidelines than actual rules.
One of the things I might add to the change in hit points is that if your new maximum hp is lower than your current hp, you get to keep the difference as temporary hit points until they are lost.
This is great. I would add a result where time super speeds up like in that movie Ice Pirates, where the main characters and their robots get so old they can’t fight anymore but the hero and heroines kid (or the players’ descendants!) comes to the rescue 😂
I actually think that beholders don't necessarily *need* true sight, because their central eye annihilates any magic that it looks at already, giving it the truest sight of all! Also it gives the players an opportunity to have a scenario that sounds kind of like a riddle. "What can become invisible without magic?", it would certainly be a unique blind spot (heh) in the beholder's vision that could be a plot point in itself.
I really love this video, as someone whose players usually know that to me the monster manual is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules. I wanna share 2 of the changes I made for beholders, in case anyone is scanning the comments for ideas:
1. I always remove the mouth of beholders. No way is a creature like this getting close to take a chomp, and the idea of a extraplanar aberration needing material food is just not my thing. Besides, no one's gonna bat an eye if you give a beholder telepathy. Leave the mouths to the Gibbering Mouthers. I replace the bite with Eldritch Blast as a 17th level spellcaster, 4 beams of 1d10 force damage, an easy way to add more generic ray attacks. I realize the bite provides a melee alternative, but beholders don't actually get a penalty for using their eye rays at close range (they're all saves, not attack rolls), so it doesn't really matter.
2. If the characters manage to slay a beholder, they can harvest the eyes, which I usually represent as gem or crystal-like, filled with swirling mist-like astral...stuff. Each of the small eyes retains enough power to replicate a beholder's eye rays once (whether they get one of each or they roll for each is up to the DM, I go with rolls for each). The central eye ball can be used up to cast antimagic field a limited number of times for free. Kinda obvious rewards, but it's always cool as a player to gain the powers of the creatures you kill. You could even make it into a Perseus-style quest, where players need the eyeball's antimagic properties for whatever reason so they gotta hunt a beholder.
Also, love the dilemma of needing a bunch of diamond dust to undo a character's diamond transformation. They'll be fine if we shave off just a bit...right?
Possibly my favorite video of yours yet. I hope this monster series is popular and we can get some more from you. ❤️
Here I thought I was being creative with the idea of a beholder who's primary concern and occupation was experimenting on the people and creatures of our world. The only addition I had to that was the ultimate goal of the experimentation was seeking greater perfection for themselves.
i like the extra variant abilities in volo’s guide. you can replace the incapacitating abilities with things like wall of ice, silence, blindness, etc. still bad, still something to deal with and not just damage, but doesn’t shut the player down and suck the fun out of the game.
If the underground city is steeped in ancient magic, then, maybe the Beholder's Anti-magic eye would interact with the ambient magic, creating a sort of beam of darkness?
Eyes as a metaphor? Now I want a Beholder called Dr Mabuse.
All I want is to end up as the grandma my grandchild emails D&D videos to.
The way you described the beholder analysing it's test subjects is very very similar to the League of Legends' character Singed's short story.
A thing I still desperately want to do for a Beholder encounter is prepare a bunch of dialogue lines and Twin Peaks reverse record it. I mean saying the line backwards and then reverse the recording so it sounds like words but reeaally weird. Because in my world, that's how Beholders talk.
Especially with laughter this is so very creepy.
Beholders used to have all round vision. They were immune to sneak attacks. So at least they had that.
Also, none of that random stuff. They had full control over their eye rays.
Haha, awesome :D A couple of months back I sculpted a redesigned beholder as I thought the "official" ones aren't aberrant enough - they have a face, for starters - but this kicks it up several levels. Will be yoinking these, thanks! Except maybe the body swap one - I can just see the bard hitting on himself and I think that's a mental image most of the party* wouldn't appreciate. The build up on the other hand - gold.
* Everyone except the bard.
velkoz is a great reference for beholders, league in general is a great place to pull lots of stuff, from voices and character ticks, to monster abilities.
"The first one is called Gulf. When it hits all of your numbers are reversed. You have to get lower numbers and AC goes backwards."
By the gods...the beholder brought back THAC0! :O
I just want to say I once had an old witch contract the party to hunt a beholder to get it's eye. Turns out the witch had made an artisan a beholder because he asked her to give him the power "to make his dreams come true" and now he is super paranoid she is out to get him.
She just wants it's eye because she wants to be beautiful again when they returned with it's eye (they cut it off and ran he is alive and angry) she promptly takes the eye plops it in her mouth swishes it around for a second and spits out a massive emerald.
Realizing her spell went wrong she gives the gem to the party as reward (it was the Kiss of the Changebringer from the Taldorei Guide). Then the party and the witch went on their own ways. The beholder one eye short and the witch still seeking true beauty.
I've used Nothics for minions for the beholder. Given their curious nature and large central eye, I felt it fit very well thematically. For an example, I've used them spying on whole towns trying to gather information. Alot is useless gossip, but sometimes there's a bit of interest for the Beholder. If the Nothics all had similar markings (I used a ring of 9 eye brands around their eye) it would make an interesting plot hook for an adventure.
I LOVE this take on beholders.
When you were describing the scene all I could think about was Vel’koz and then you name dropped my boi! Truly a fantastic moment...
I love all your ideas here, especially the body/player-swap one! Really looking forward to the remaining videos!
Dale taking diamonds hands too literally !
Also, it is important to note that all beholders are different, so any variations to their appearance or eye stalk abilities are justified!
Some day I want to run a Beholder that is spider-themed and dream-themed. Each "tentacle" is a long spider leg that ends in a compound eye, instead of "slime" it creatures sticky black webs, it would "catch" people's dreams and thoughts in its webs, and weave new realities. Considering how the lore says Beholders can all look so different I have been very disappointed to be unable to find any bug-themed Beholder art.
So I just found this channel and binged a bunch of your videos and there are just SO. MANY. GOOD. IDEAS. Like, I've been on hiatus from d&d for several reasons one of which was just an overall lack of inspiration or motivation and now these videos make me want to run a beholder. And a displacer beast. And witches. And the list goes on. For this video in particular when you mentioned the eye rays from a monster manual beholder all kinda doing the same thing that was exactly the kind of opinion I had. Such an awesome and insane amount of ideas. (So far your traps video is my favourite though. :P)
Thank you! I hope your inspiration comes back in floods! 💕
"yknow, like the ninja turtles" got me choking on my water, thank you
I really, really like the flavor here. It's taking the visual design and extrapolating it in a very different direction. And the chaos, my god, the wonderful chaos. Rerolling initiative all the time and diluting spell slots is _aaaawesome._ I think I'd avoid things like the flipping lows with highs and ancestry changes, not because it's not interesting, but because it would slow play down too much? Swapping character sheets would be _great_ in person but over discord might be a bit of a hassle, as well. I'd love to hear back from people testing these, though!
Another interesting way to take beholders is to go all in on their accidental reality bending, "dumb-god" abilities. If you check the origins of other Beholderkin, they're all pretty much summarised as "A Beholder had a bad dream or a panic attack and woops, things happened." The twisted, absurd enviroment they inhabit can be simply a consequence of their paranoia, fear or curiosity _bleeding into_ the world around them.
If they visit a town, they might leave a trail of dead bodies mimicking things that _look_ like daily life, speaking something that _sounds_ like language, until you actually pay attention. If they're particularly paranoid or cowardly, their labyrinthine home could be full of horrors they themselves dreamt up and ran away from, that your party now has to deal with.
My players need to go into the underdark to retrieve a lost item from a previous bossfight. This is exactly what I'm going to have happen to them now... Thanks for the inspiration!
Very cool! My players wanted to island hop in our Saltmarsh game, now I have some very interesting ideas for running my first beholder.
Excellent ideas as expected. Thank you for this series!
By the way, I had a character once who had his foot petrified into some ruby. Never got around to getting it restored, but he never slept well after that. Had to keep one eye open to make sure no one else would steal it.
"No!!! You can't just pit level 3 characters against a beholder! That's so unbalanced!"
"Heh heh, eyes go pew."
Thanks, this gave me a lot of inspiration!
Aberrations seem like mutations caused by radiation, but in this case Magic from another plane!
So, I think I'm going to make my Beholder's, Wizards who lost themselves to the Far Realm and have been altered by there time there.
*I would make the lasting crit effects physical characteristics. Like; their left arm is now a 10ft Tentacle, Bound to their Weapon - Quest for Camelot style, Scaled, or Disintigrated (Which could be a fun quest to find a Gnome Artificer to make a new one)!
I will say that for an in-person game this sounds absolutely awesome....for a VTT game this sounds like a god damn nightmare with the whole body swapping mechanics and involves waaaay more work dumped onto the DM with having to change token permissions, character sheet permissions and so on, it would really bog combat down.
She didn't want to do a "West Wing" because she can't. She knows that if she tried walking in that room, while focusing on the camera, there's at least an 85% chance that she'll trip over a pile of research material. 🤣😂🤣
This feels so much like an aberration to me. I prefer it in every single way to RAW. Thank you for your work, oh goddess of the DM tips.
"If it isn't a metaphor then why so many eyes"
I think the world of you Ms. Kingsmill but...the reason for so many eyes is so many random directions for death rays to come from !
Imagine if it only had the eyestalks it needed .Three eye stalks, meh that isn't an aberration that is an abbreviation. ; )
My characters went to a plane where there were rosewood row houses owned by beholder families. Think snooty Englishmen wearing bowler hats who say things like “I say…” and “By George…”. They didn’t understand why these people kept coming out of their sheds or closets (that’s where the portals were).
One of them had a school project which turned the party into caterpillars which wasn’t bad until the chickens started pouring out of the henhouse. They still get twitchy when I mention chickens or caterpillars. 😂
This is great, a few tweaks are just what the ol’ Blinkers needed.
I fear some of the effects can draw out a turn immensely such as changing race, changing bodies. The Other effects such as negative rolls, time perception distortions and more are fantastic additions to a beholder. And I agree that every beholder should have different effects.
For a conceptual campaign, I have a mad scientist hook up multiple beholders to a device that controls their dream, making use of their dream-to-reality creating powers. When it all goes down, the machine is activating at full power and creates an entity that is an aberration by aberration standards, epic level with its body present in multiple planes of existence. And its presence warps the surrounding lands as it goes by in the radius of miles.
Creative Beholding!! Awesome!
Beholders are my absolute favorite monsters in D&D and you can bet your ass I'm going to use this version next time
Dear Dael,
I did * not * plan to listen to 4 minutes of voice-acting from a video game I don't play, and yet, here we are; you, me, Vel'Koz, and Eric Braa. I hope you gave your brother a high five for that connection! Another great creature, thanks for sharing. (Now all I need is for pandemic to end, so I can gather my party and freak them out...)
If you need other good voicelines from the game I suggest just another nobody videos. He dose a really good job showing the nerative in characters voices
As you started talking about it's alien behaviour I was thinking to myself "Dael would probably find the dialogue of Vel'Koz interesting" and then 5 seconds later... XD