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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 501932" data-attributes="member: 8158">I'm DM'ing for a party that might just be running up a beholder sometime in the near future. I've yet to DM one in 3e, but historically they have lived up to their CR (partially due to a serious lacking of defensive capabilities, and partially due to DM's pulling their punches with the offensive capabilities). I've posted this on the WotC Monster Manual messageboard in the (vain?) hopes of receiving an official sage answer, but I figured I'd run these up the flagpole here at ENWorld to see what the general consensus is:1) Can a beholder pivot its body in 3 dimensions? The MM entry states that a beholder can only fire 3 eyes at its front, left, right, rear, and bottom arcs, but it can fire all of its eyes upwardds. This becomes a much less limiting factor if the beholder is allowed to, for instance, turn upside down while hovering over a party and blast away with all eyes.2) Are firing the eyes treated as multiple free actions, or one standard action, or something else? The MM entry states that the beholder can fire its eyes while moving full speed or making a bite attack. That doesn't exactly clarify the type of action using its eyes is considered. The beholder has the feats Flyby Attack and Shot on the Run, so I'm not sure if the description is simply referring to the capabilites that those feats grant it. Is a beholder with only a partial action (e.g. during a surprise round or when slowed) able to move its speed and still fire off one or more eyebeams? Is a hasted beholder able to use its extra partial action to fire each of its eyes twice in a round? 3) Within a single round, can a beholder shut its central (anti-magic cone) eye, then fire all of its other eyes, and then open it afterwards? The MM entry states that the beholder decides once per round on its turn whether or not the anti-magic is activem so it would seem that's not the case (although shutting or opening one's eye does seem like it would fal into the free action category). Does it necessarily have to decide whether or not to keep the central eye before it takes other actions, or can it do so later in the round? Would being hasted make a difference here?</blockquote>

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