Alternative Beholder Eye Rays

jgsugden · Sep 12, 2018

I've always been a fan of making each beholder have their own suite of eye rays... giving each one a distinct suite of terror. I usually use 5 standards and then 5 'originals'.

The standard 10:

01 Charm (Wis)
02 Parayze (Con)
03 Fear (Wis)
04 Slow (Dex)
05 Enervation (Con)
06 Telekenisis (Str)
07 Sleep (Wis)
08 Petrification (Dex - or Con - I use Con)
09 Disintegrate (Dex)
10 Death/Damage (Dex)

Some of my originals:

01 Banishment (Chr) - If not from this plane, banished home, If from this plane, repeat save to come back, incapacitated until you come back.
02 Sever Spirit (Chr) - Your spirit is forced from your body. You become an ethereal spirit standing above your body that can't interact with your current plane until you make a save at the end of your turn.
03 Phantasmal Killer (Int) As the spell, but an Intelligence Save.
04 Psychic Blast (Int) Stunned, 4d10 damage. Lasts until the end of your next turn.
05 Domination (Wis) Charmed, and you must follow the mental orders of the beholder. Save at the end of each turn.
06 Confusion (Wis)As the spell, but must make 2 saves to end it if you fail the initial save.
07 Gnat (Con) You're polymorphed into a gnat, as the polymorph spell.
08 Levitate (Con) As the spell, but you must make 2 saves to end if you fail the initial save.
09 Acid Blast (Dex) The target and all adjacent creatures take 6d10 acid damage, save for 1/2.
10 Wrap (Dex) The target is sheathed in force and unable to move (or be attacked) until it makes a save.
11 Condensed Air (Str) Grappled by Air, DC20 to break/escape with Athletis or Acrobatics.
12 Gravity Well (Str) Until you make a Str save you are captured under heavy gravity - incapacitated. Save every turn.
13 Create a 20' Fire Wall that lasts 5 rounds.
14 Create a 20' Wall of Force that lasts 3 rounds.
15 Vulnerability - (No save)Target will have disadvantage the next time it is hit by an eye beam that requires a save from this beholder.
16 Exhaustion - (No save) Target immediately moves to Exhaustion Level 3 (unless more exhausted - this one is intentionally mean - should be a con save to be fair)
17 Nausea - (No save) Disadvantage on all ability checks and attack rolls until the end of your next turn.
18 Invisibility (No save) Target is invisible for 3 rounds (or until they attack or cast a spell).
19 Flight (No save) Target can fly with a speed of 60 for 3 rounds.
20 Teleport (No save) Target immediately gains the benefit of a Misty Step spell.

Anyone else do anything similar? Anyone else have any other fun ideas?

Warmaster Horus · Sep 13, 2018

Incontinence Ray
Barf Beam
Evil Chiropractic Adjustment Curse
Carol Channing Voice Transmuter

Ath-kethin · Sep 13, 2018

I don't think I have ever used a beholder in an adventure as a direct adversary except in an old Spelljammer adventure (I had one as a behind the scenes villains once). But I think they're super cool and I really like your new eye powers.

jgsugden · Sep 13, 2018

I actually have a lot more that I have used in the past, as well as other main eyes (anti-magic, anti-life, slow (no save), damage (fire - save for 1/2), exhausting (save or 1 level of exhaustion), psionic blast, unlimitad illusions in the cone, summoning swarms of monsters, reverse gravity, repulsion, etc...) Over nearly 40 years I have run at least 20 beholder encounter - not counting their counsins like gauths, spectators, eyes of the deep, gas spores, etc....

robus · Sep 13, 2018

Thanks, a Beholder is coming up in my Oota reboot and this is just the thing.

77IM · Sep 13, 2018

I'm planning to throw this elemental cleric beholder at the party next week: View attachment Ohriman.pdf

I switched out some of his eye rays for ones that felt more elemental and more clerical.

robus · Sep 21, 2018

Seems like some beholders should be able to fire laser beams from an eye stalk:

Blast ray (Dex): 4d10 radiant damage

Mon · Sep 22, 2018

Back in prior editions there were two charm rays (charm monster and charm person) which always seemed a bit superfulous. We once replaced the charm person ray with an animate objects ray which it used in combination with its flesh to stone ray to petrify party members and then turn them on their allies as stone constructs. If the ray hit an unpetrified character, a wielded item would animate instead.

Also, the old BECMI Companion Set (or maybe Master's Set?) had an undead beholder with eye rays that replicated various undead powers (level drains, mummy rot, ghoul paralysis, etc) and could animate dead too if I recall correctly. It was a bit like a beholder lich.

MarkB · Sep 23, 2018

Mon said:
Back in prior editions there were two charm rays (charm monster and charm person) which always seemed a bit superfulous. We once replaced the charm person ray with an animate objects ray which it used in combination with its flesh to stone ray to petrify party members and then turn them on their allies as stone constructs. If the ray hit an unpetrified character, a wielded item would animate instead.

That's genius. I'm totally going to steal it.

Satyrn · Sep 23, 2018

This really tempts me to stat up some lower CR beholders so I can add them to my wandering monster tables as a fairly common result.

My custom monsters tend to have some randomly defined feature so that they can be changed up with each encounter.