Beware!!! Beholders a Head

[Harmon]

Mage armor and Shield would not protect from any attacks directly in front of the eye. Since they both would be within the area of effect of the eye.

In a game w/o hit locations I would say- nah, the Shield and Mage Armor go up when the central eye is closed and drop when it opens. Not sure on the offical ruling but I think just because of the lack of hit location, that is how I would rule. Course that is just my thoughts on the subject.

 

[coyote6]

We traveled for about six hours or so, and I (the leader and Wizard) of the group mentioned that if we did not find the Beholder soon then we would leave, sealing the entrance behind us. Well that caught his attention, our magical light went (I had been using Sunrods from the get go, so that was little concern there) and Mr. Beholder spoke up. We talked to him trying to discover the plot of the campaign. Fairly quickly things went down hill after that-

Specifically, it went downhill when the druid moved forward until he turned back into a lion (and thus knew he was out of the antimagic cone), and then cast transmute rock to mud on the ceiling above the beholder. The beholder made his save, and avoided being buried. The druid followed that with a flame strike. The druid thus drew the finger of death-disintegrate-flesh to stone combo. Fortunately, he failed the right save.

Before all that, the beholder was quite willing to negotiate. He was in a good mood. (He'd gotten his scroll, after all*.)

generally we don't do well with the talking to the villian

IIRC, the wizard has the highest Diplomacy skill. That might be a factor.

Our fighter type used the darkness and the battle to circle the battle,

He was invisible (and out of the antimagic zone). And I rolled really badly for the beholder's Spot check to realize that there was something invisible sneaking up on him.

Grimlocks showed as well as some semi stone guys that had been hanging on the ceiling.

They craggy guys were actually stalagmites that turned into craggy guys. The things that were on the ceiling were piercers that tried to fall on the druid (and, FWIW, the piercers were summoned by the craggy guys, and were mostly useless. Though they did do damage after the fight, when the druid lion decided to kill them by biting & clawing them).

it was about then that the minions showed and the GM is not known for using minions with 1 HD.

Absolutely.

These guys had two hit dice. Boo-yah!

*The beholder was bribed/paid off by the orcs, who gave it a scroll containing the secrets of beholder magic. So if he'd had just a few weeks to study, he would have had mage armor...