Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
I’d have used the Beholders extra eye lair action to introduce an anti-magic eye because chaos Magic!
unfortunately though Beholders and Tyrants arent combat optimised despite their impressive stats. Only 3 of their eye rays cause direct dmage and making them random is a nerf that makes it hard to use good tactics. Beholders need to be stealthy and use their superior intelligence (which I consider as permission for DMs to bend the rules on the fly)
personally though I’ve gone from focussing on boss monsters to using the whole Lair, sometimes without the monster even appearing. Eg because Beholders hover, I’d keep the Tyrant hidden up amongst the stalactites at 130 ft, so too high for the PCs to hit with sniping spells. Their center eye has a 150ft range and the eye rays are 120.
Lairs have 3 dimensions to work with, verticle shafts, platforms, ledges and pits all mean the PCs need to use resources to climb, jump or fly themselves. Then theres the slimey difficult terrain, glowing spectral eyes (50 ft range from the hiding Tryrant), disintegration rays to drop stalactites from above, and slimey appendages reaching out from the walls.
The PCs will be harrassed by zombie minions, glaring eyeballs, appendages from the walls and glowing lights shooting beams and may never get to see the giant skull dominating the room high above them
unfortunately though Beholders and Tyrants arent combat optimised despite their impressive stats. Only 3 of their eye rays cause direct dmage and making them random is a nerf that makes it hard to use good tactics. Beholders need to be stealthy and use their superior intelligence (which I consider as permission for DMs to bend the rules on the fly)
personally though I’ve gone from focussing on boss monsters to using the whole Lair, sometimes without the monster even appearing. Eg because Beholders hover, I’d keep the Tyrant hidden up amongst the stalactites at 130 ft, so too high for the PCs to hit with sniping spells. Their center eye has a 150ft range and the eye rays are 120.
Lairs have 3 dimensions to work with, verticle shafts, platforms, ledges and pits all mean the PCs need to use resources to climb, jump or fly themselves. Then theres the slimey difficult terrain, glowing spectral eyes (50 ft range from the hiding Tryrant), disintegration rays to drop stalactites from above, and slimey appendages reaching out from the walls.
The PCs will be harrassed by zombie minions, glaring eyeballs, appendages from the walls and glowing lights shooting beams and may never get to see the giant skull dominating the room high above them
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