D&D 5E Beholders, concentration, antimagic fields

[bleezy]

The Beholder seems particularly vulnerable to a few powerful priest spells:

Freedom of Movement (level 4, no concentration, negates paralyzing, slowing, telekinetic, and petrification rays)
Protection from Evil (level 1, concentration, negates charm and fear rays)
Bless (level 1, concentration, bolsters resistance to all rays)

If most of the party is covered by FOM, there isn't much the beholder can do about it. If he covers them with his anti-magic cone, his eye rays won't work. With PFE also, the beholder only has a 40% chance for any given eye ray to work! His priority should be taking on the PFE or Bless casters, to kill them or get them to break concentration (he might not be able to tell who cast which spell though), but even so his rays only have a 40% chance of even affecting that character. So my question is:

Can he project his anti-magic cone onto spellcasters concentrating on PFE and Bless, suppress the spells, and blast his eye rays at the rest of the party outside of the cone? I would say no based on strict RAW, but it does seem counter-intuitive considering that you cannot cast a spell out of an antimagic field from within an antimagic field.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The answer is "don't roll randomly for the rays". Open with a disintegrate, worry about the rest later.

On the topic of Charm effects, having an Oath of Devotion paladin in the party really negates the primary effect of a lot of interesting monsters. It drives me a little nuts.

 

[Tormyr]

The answer is "don't roll randomly for the rays". Open with a disintegrate, worry about the rest later.

On the topic of Charm effects, having an Oath of Devotion paladin in the party really negates the primary effect of a lot of interesting monsters. It drives me a little nuts.

And an Ancients Paladin negates spell damage. For a while the party would purposefully get into fireball formation when going up against a spellcaster. The bad guy would hit with a fireball.

0% - Monk makes saving throw, no damage.
0% - Rogue makes saving throw no damage.
25% - Tiefling wizard makes saving throw takes half damage, halved again for paladin aura
25% - Fighter misses saving throw, indomitable makes saving throw takes half damage, halved again for paladin aura
50% - Paladin misses saving throw but takes half damage from aura
25% - Sorcerer makes saving throw takes half damage, halved again for paladin aura

On average, the group took about 20% of an AoE's potential damage. They were in an arena, and the announcer and crowd were mocking them because they were standing so close together, then they just took an overchannelled fireball with little damage. There were a string of very puzzled creatures that couldn't figure out what had happened to their spells.

 

[Krachek]

The Beholder will die as others monsters.

 

[flametitan]

0% - Monk makes saving throw, no damage.
0% - Rogue makes saving throw no damage.
12% - Tiefling wizard makes saving throw takes half damage, halved again for resistance to fire damage, halved again for paladin aura
25% - Fighter misses saving throw, indomitable makes saving throw takes half damage, halved again for paladin aura
50% - Paladin misses saving throw but takes half damage from aura
25% - Sorcerer makes saving throw takes half damage, halved again for paladin aura

Resistance doesn't stack. Your tiefling should've only gotten 25%.
EDIT: Really? Why would they do that to the eye beams?

 

[aco175]

This is good to know since my group will be going against a beholder shortly. I'll have to add the night hag that got away last adventure for some extra power.

 

[Tormyr]

Resistance doesn't stack. Your tiefling should've only gotten 25%.
EDIT: Really? Why would they do that to the eye beams?

Oops, you are right. This was a year ago. Now that I think about it more, I think I let it go once, picked up that it was resistance rather than half damage, and nixed the double resistance.

The clustering together was when they knew area of effect spells were coming. When they fought the beholder, they spread out so at least some PCs were not in the anti-magic cone.

 

[flametitan]

Alright, thinking about it more, here's what you do: The MM entry says that antimagic affects it own eye rays, right? (I really think it shouldn't, but that's irrelevant) It says nothing about affecting another beholder's eye rays. Therefore, what you do is get multiple beholders, standing back to back. Their eye rays will prevent magic in large swaths of area, and then they're free to eye ray you.

Need to justify it? Point to the beholder hives entry in Volo's Guide to Monsters.

 

[Tormyr]

For concentration spells, the caster is using a portion of their magical energy while concentrating on a spell. If the concentration is dropped, the spell ends. So magical energy is still coming from the caster. If the caster's magical energy is suppressed by an antimagic field or the beholder's antimagic cone, the magical energy is not flowing to the target of the spell. So bless, protection from evil and good, paladin auras, anything using ki, etc. will not work while the source of that magical energy is in the area of antimagic.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

For concentration spells, the caster is using a portion of their magical energy while concentrating on a spell. If the concentration is dropped, the spell ends. So magical energy is still coming from the caster. If the caster's magical energy is suppressed by an antimagic field or the beholder's antimagic cone, the magical energy is not flowing to the target of the spell. So bless, protection from evil and good, paladin auras, anything using ki, etc. will not work while the source of that magical energy is in the area of antimagic.

That is an interesting idea. I hadn't thought of anti-magic field vs. concentration spells (whether being in the field automatically breaks concentration). I will have to think on that some more (probably while this turns into a 20 page thread with 3 spin offs as people argue whether WotC forgot about concentration when bringing the AMF into 5e, didn't forget and concentration isn't affected, and/or didn't forget but left it unclear so DM's could rule as they pleased). I don't have the MM with me, but the relevant parts of antimagic field (assuming the beholder's eye uses the same rules) would seem to be:

Targeted Effects. Spells and other magical effects, such as magic missile and charm person, that target a creature or an object in the sphere have no effect on that target.

Creatures and Objects. A creature or object summoned or created by magic temporarily winks out of existence in the sphere. Such a creature instantly reappears once the space the creature occupied is no longer within the sphere.

The latter being an argument that things pop back into effect when the field is passed.