Tony Vargas
Legend
We could just blame the system, since you followed it. The beholder was undead, the cleric could turn, it failed it's save. Not your fault, D&D's fault.turned undead right away. This poor beholder critically failed (he rolled a natural 1), and was subsequently turned as per the rules.
This made this particular battle easy as the beholder could not escape and was tucked into a corner.
What bugged me,...is later that night, i heard one of the players scoffing at the battle, telling someone on the phone, that "I went easy on them" by throwing a "cowardly beholder".
Except D&D isn't written to be perfect for your table, that night - rather, it Empowers you to adapt it to your needs. IDK if 'fudging' would have been the best course of action, or if making the beholder immune to turning in the first place might have been better, or if it'd've made sense to you to give it some other way out of the effect - but there was probably some way you could have ruled or run it or set it up that might've given better results.
Doesn't mean you should beat yourself up over it, but you've had an experience that you can learn from. You know a bit more about one of your players' attitudes and expectations. You've been reminded of the vagaries of a linear-distribution dice mechanic.
Just part of the DMing journey.
But it was turned, in effect, because Clerics have always had 'Turn Undead' that could swing an undead encounter (indeed, if you look at old modules, they tend to have a /lot/ more minor undead per room/'encounter' than similarly-tough creatures of other types) and 5e wasn't about the change nor bowdlerize that.I wanted to have a more challenging battle myself, of course. A Death Tyrant is the most difficult beholder in the game, with a CR 14. He was a guardian in a wizards tower. By no means, was he a coward.
I can't speak for him, but, per the above, I don't think that's nearly the only way you could have handled it. Indeed, under slightly different circumstances, you might've had reason to fudge it the other way...I can only speculate that this player wanted me to fudge the dice so the battle would be more formidable...
Remember the core 5e resolution system isn't "roll a d20," it's player describes action, DM decides what happens including whether a roll is called for. So, really, you're always within your rights to not even roll, and just describe the results of a PC action. Fudging is a minor, defensible, IMHO, corollary of that.Admittedly, I have fudged dice in the past. But its a tricky thing to do as DM. I want some adherence to the rules, and dont want to break them every time. Plus, the beholder rolled a critical fail, in which really I really couldn't justify fudging the saving throw for this poor beholder.