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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 5225944" data-attributes="member: 46713">I disagree. The problem here is that a standard party's actions are completely negated by the eye rays. It doesn't matter how easy or difficult the saving throw is. Even if the Fort save only fails on a one, there's nothing to prevent the Catabolignes from using their eye rays for 20 rounds until the save is failed. Then it's coup-de-grace time.To survive such an encounter you need to have some means to negate the daze effect or you're hosed. It's true that the group may have one high-dex character who manages to avoid getting hit once every couple of rounds, but in the not-quite-so-hypothetical encounter I have in mind, that wouldn't have helped a lot.I guess, the idea is to let the party escape after showing them that they're outmatched. Given the chance of preparing for the encounter, they will be better equipped to deal with it.I agree that there are worse things out there, but beholders are not one of them. First, beholders are CR13, second you usually don't encounter them in groups, third, their touch attack isn't as good, fourth, they cannot use their rays when they use their central eye, fifth none of the eye rays are that bad when you make the save (the worst that will happen is some damage).I recently used beholders against the pcs in my group, so my memory of how potent they are is pretty fresh. They're very nasty and a bit unpredictable, but even a party that is unprepared will have plenty of ways to deal with them - or get away and avoid them.I remember one encounter, though, that was indeed similarly bad: Three hezrous. Once they got to act, every round one of them used blasphemy while the other two blasted the group with chaos hammer and unholy blight. That would have been nine rounds of softening up the group unopposed if I didn't have shown some mercy. The group immediately fled by teleporting away when they first got the chance.</blockquote>

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