Memorable Beholder solo encounters?

[CapnZapp]

Once again the adventure I'm running is setting up a solitary Beholder as a set-piece encounter.

(Note: at the end of this post there are minor spoilers for Tomb of Annihilation)​

I must admit I have never fully understood how to utilize these monsters, and I have perused both power gaming and monster tactics blogs, and looked at my fair share of beholder lairs.

The issue remains - once the adventurers arrive, they rush the beholder and either stunlock it or simply shred it to pieces.

If you want an exciting multi-stage combat encounter, where the heroes desperately dodge and absorb eye rays as they slowly come closer to actually getting to the monster, how do you do it?

The first order of business is the antimagic cone itself. As I see it no beholder can become truly exciting (as a solo encounter) unless in cheats with its rays, plain and simple. But as I said, I have never understood how it is supposed to work...

A beholder absolutely must have the means to zap the heroes at the same time it keeps its antimagic cone squarely on most if not all heroes. Right?

This means that beholder nests tend to feature a vertical shaft, with the beholder at the top so gravity works in its favor, and flying and spellcasting is negated. Then it needs mirrors or portals or somesuch to bring its eye rays to bear despite the antimagic, or it simply won't present an actual threat.

On the other and, few parties feature more than one competent archer. (I'm fine with the notion that a party of five archers will simply stand there and shoot the beholder out of the sky like a balloon) For the purposes of this thread, I will assume the party will need to close to melee in order to win the encounter. That is, that the beholder will outgun the party at range (assuming party spellcasters can't escape antimagic).

A complicating factor is that my party is 12th level. At low levels, a "plain" Beholder might be enough on its own and that's totally fair. It might even get away with playing around with the antimagic cone and play "fair". Not so at double-digit levels - the second the antimagic cone isn't there, any single monster not of epic CR will simply be dead.

Increasing monster hit points and upping the DC of the eye rays is one thing. I'm also massively ignoring the limits on legendary actions, so the Beholder can shoot one ray after each and every adventurer's action without limits. Monster upgrades I can handle. What I'm asking for here is encounter design: what the lair looks like, any nifty traps or features to add, what monster tactics to use...?

But I'm looking for more. Are you aware of any especially clever encounters featuring a BBEG Beholder?

Where the encounter design allows us poor DMs to actually stage a fight that reasonably extends long enough for the party to get "worn down" before they finally reach the Beholder for a final desperate showdown, trying to kill it before they all fall prey to its attacks?

Please note: the one piece of advice I am not soliciting is "add more monsters". This thread is exclusively for enworlders that agree that D&D should be able to handle a good solo monster BBEG fight!

Thanks muchly,


Zapp

PS. Bonus question: are you aware of any good attempts to "upgrade" the beholder's set of eye rays. I'm afraid too many of the default rays are "low level" effects. Things like Charm and Fear doesn't cut it anymore. Articles and ideas from all editions welcome!

PPS. The specific Beholder I need to "juice up" is Belchorzh the Unseen from Tomb of Annihilation if that helps. This also means that at least in this case it's far too late to replace the monster with something else. They stand outside the mirror door and have all ten eyeballs. If you are familiar with the adventure (pages 146-), you know it basically must be a Beholder.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

If the beholder is solo and it doesn't have any minions serving it that need to get around the lair that means we can really abuse it's flight. The entire floor should be hazardous. At the very least have each tile have the caltrop effect, but for higher level you could fill the entire lair with acid or lava for continuous damage to anyone that's in contact with it. Treat any of the hazards as difficult terrain to increase the amount of time you have in the "shooting gallery" phase of the fight. A lot of flight is magical so concentrate the anti-magic field as appropriate to keep the party grounded. Also use telekinesis ray to force PCs into these hazards and push them back.

You won't want to give cover that prevents shooting the eye rays but you'll want something to protect against return ranged fire. Wind spells like Wall of Wind can completely prevent arrows from travelling through them. As the beholder kites through its layer it can activate glyphs with the spell stored in them. Though it might be tough to justify how a beholder was able to set that up without aid.
The antimagic field will already prevent ranged spells from getting to you.

 

[Cornpuff]

With the acknowledgment that your party is going to hit a little harder than what Belchorzh is designed for, do they have ways to negate the challenges of the room itself? If I recall correctly, the floor is slicked, there's a big ol magnet in the middle that futzes with ranged weapon attacks, and Belz already has a vertical shaft to bob in and out of in addition to being invisible. Maybe you could extend the shaft so that it does a loop and can also spit Belz out over the party members who hang back by the door?

With that being the case, Belz could probably keep antimagic cone trained on casters, and then use the eyebeams to fire on martials while staying in the sky and uncovering the magnet to impose disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks (if this isn't a condition of the magnet, I'd make it one).

 

[cmad1977]

Escape routes with heavy doors to prevent pursuit. Murder holes through which to blast. Places where it can heal. Lots of asymmetrical/3 dimensional travel options. Beefed up lair actions.

Ooh. The lair is like a beholder with a large central area ringed by eight or so snaking tunnels that switch back on each other and the central room. It’s gotta be big enough for it to hover above AND below the heroes. Maybe teleport areas so that it can switch angles on the heroes before they realize it. Illusions to distract and confuse.

 

[dave2008]

Unfortunately I have never run a beholder encounter, but I think [MENTION=6900857]Cornpuff[/MENTION] has the right idea with the magnet and tactics. After reviewing the beholder here are some thoughts:

1) I think the eye rays could be very effective against a party, but you may want to up the DC if you think the are trivial.
2) You might want to give it the ability to counterspell & shield, trading an eye ray for a counterspell or shield spell (essentially giving it the reactive trait). This allows it to attack and defend itself without worrying about hitting creatures in the antimagic cone.
3) Give it a bonus action and/or lair action and/or reaction ability to relocate the antimagic cone. This would help neutralize magic while still dishing out punishment.
4) swap charm for dominate monster
5) swap fear for phantasmal killer

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] I've honestly never run a beholder fight, only some roleplaying with one back in AD&D. Just looked over the encounter in ToA, and several things popped out.

The fight is heavily influenced by the party's access to magical flight & how much metal armor they wear. No metal armor and plentiful magical flight makes the fight a lot easier than presented.

A beholder favors a long-range fight with ~120-feet to work with, and ideally some kind of obstacles for PCs to overcome / slow them down in approaching the beholder. Yet Belchorzh only has 50-feet from the top of the domed room to PCs on the floor. The iron sphere magnet trap serves as a potent obstacle, though with an easy way to overcome it. Also, in the event it becomes an "aerial" fight, the risk of falling for 5d6 isn't too bad for 9th+ level PCs, so I'd be tempted to make the room larger (more on that below).

A beholder wants to include as many creatures within its Antimagic Cone. Yet Belchorzh has to make sure not to look at the iron sphere magnet trap, lest it dispel the sphere's magic. Given that constraint and the cone maths, it can only target roughly 1/4 of the floor below at a time with its Antimagic Cone. However, if most of the party are not restrained & are flying via spells or magic items to reach the beholder, it would certainly ignore that constraint (since the fight is no longer on the trapped ground) and target all creatures in the room with its Antimagic Cone.

The frictionless floor doesn't seem to have any real purpose - it doesn't seem to be an obstacle to PCs trying to reach the beholder floating above nor does it risking sending PCs sliding into a trap. This seems to be an opportunity to increase the challenge of the encounter – what if the alcoves contain a trap that PCs could inadvertently slide into. Maybe the candles fire a magic missile (dealing fire damage instead of force) at prone creatures entering an alcove?

Because creatures magnetized to the iron sphere are restrained (thus suffering disadvantage on Dex saves), Belchorzh would preferentially target these restrained creatures with Petrification, Disintegration, and Death Rays (targeting Dex). I imagine the way 5e beholders work is you'd randomly roll which eye rays gets it gets that turn, and then apply those to targets of your choosing.

What if the polished marble floor making the room appear to be a sphere is an illusion, and the room actually is a 100-foot-diameter sphere? This makes the frictionless floor more interesting, as PCs would slide to the bottom of the "basin" floor (good luck climbing out!), increasing the range to the beholder from 50-feet to 100-feet. From that bottom point, the iron sphere would serve as cover (+2 AC, +2 Dex) for any ranged attacks against the beholder. Since the beholder only has Save powers (and would focus its Dex-based eye rays on PCs restrained to the iron sphere), it would ignore the cover provided by the iron sphere. Furthermore, this increases the risk of falling if magical flight is negated by the Antimagic Cone to 10d6, and potentially trapping the creature at the bottom of the frictionless "basin" floor.

 

[77IM]

My players fought a souped-up beholder a couple of weeks ago. In the center of the room was a 25-foot-wide disintegration pit (if you touch it, 10d6+40 damage; Dex save for half, and if it reduces you to 0, you are disintegrated). That really made a the telekinesis ray a lot more useful. The beholder only managed to kill one PC -- a wizard who had cast fly and was foolishly hovering over the disintegration pit, when the anti-magic eye turned towards him.

I wish I had included more cover in the room, like columns or something, to break line of sight between the beholder and the more serious PCs. That might have cost me some Legendary eye-ray opportunities, but I think it would have been worth it. Holes in the ceiling that the dude can pop in and out of would have been good. Instead, one of the PCs managed to climb a wall (slippers of spider climb) and knock the beholder down to ground-level so that the others could dogpile him.



EDIT: I attached my souped-up beholder stats. The main problem with beholders, mechanically, is that their hit points are terribly low for a solo fight. I elected to give this guy a Healing Ray that he could use to zap himself for +40 HP, which came in handy, except that I didn't roll it very often. Also, defensive magic items are very useful.

The PCs don't realize it, but this particular beholder is still alive, via the clone spell. The whole encounter was a setup to help him fake his own death. (They had plenty of opportunity to figure this out, they just persistently ignored the clues I dropped instead of following up.)

 

[77IM]

Also, we decided that if you look past all the eyeballs and teeth, a beholder is really just a giant floating testicle. That's why they're all nuts.

 

[Leatherhead]

I made my party fight a Gauth in a hall of mirrors from a carnival.
It was a great success, with eye-beams reflecting for odd-angled shots and a few stray mirrors being broken because the party couldn't quite figure out which beholder was the real one all the time.

You could easily use a True Beholder in that situation and run with it. Even add in some magical mirrors that reflect attacks or create copies of the party if you really want to go nuts.

 

[Eltab]

You can unleash a beholder in the Doomvault (in Yawning Portal). My party did.
A few sessions later, we were run over by some Thayans we had skirted past, fleeing for their lives from an angry beholder.

It made us feel like we were accomplishing something after all.