Beholder - "solo monster"

[AllisterH]

Another point is "what level did you face a beholder in pre 3e".

Both 3e and 4e give explicit levels to when a beholder is appropriate (the CR of a beholder simply means that at that level, in a 4 person party, the monster shouldn't be a threat since it only consumes 20-25% of a party's resources- which is very similar to how the level of a monster in 4e plays out).

So what would be the level of a beholder in pre 3e be then?

 

[Gort]

WHat you really want, in my opinion, is a small chance for a "save or bad things happen" spell to work. So the party can cheer when the enemy mage is taken out by a lucky finger of death but the mage KNOWS he is gambling. The 1st and 2nd edition approach, given saves fail on a 1, is not a bad compromise but the odds seem pretty low. Still, it allows for the desperate spell when the party is about to be overrun.

These rolls, I'd do in the open to increase drama.

So I guess I might replace "this creatures makes X saves automatically" with "this creature fails the first X saves only on a 1 . . . and I roll in the open".

But I like the idea behind the mechanic.

I forgot how much I hated save or die. Would people be comfortable with a system in which every swing of a fighter's sword had a 50% (depending on saves) chance of killing any monster outright? Doubt it. HP exist for a reason, and allowing only the magic classes ways to bypass them entirely was a very poor design decision.

 

[Runestar]

I forgot how much I hated save or die. Would people be comfortable with a system in which every swing of a fighter's sword had a 50% (depending on saves) chance of killing any monster outright? Doubt it. HP exist for a reason, and allowing only the magic classes ways to bypass them entirely was a very poor design decision.

Hence the move to spells which lock down the opponents without even allowing for a save.

Save-or-die is so 3.0. Battlefield control spells is where a wizard's forte lies in 3.5.