D&D General Death Kiss beholderkin

[humble minion]

I've loved these guys since the old diTerlizzi art in the 2e monster manual game me nightmares as a little tacker. The mouthless stare and all the bloodsucking tentacles.

I've never used one in game. They appear to be able to dish the hurt out, but can they stand up against the resources available to an adventuring party? They lack the high intelligence of a regular beholder, and also don't have the flexibility or battlefield control that capabilities like the charm, telekinesis, antimagic, paralysis, disintegration etc eyes give a full beholder, that allow it to play that mastermind role. And the nature of the tentacles imposing grappled/restrained mean that it seems to me like there's no real possibility of it escaping a combat that's going badly, to survive to cause trouble again later. It's a tpk or it dies.

Can they be more than a dungeon speedbump, a simple brawl? Is there potential there for a recurring villain, or a complex plot? How have people used them in game?

 

[Distracted DM]

I guess because they're INT 10, they're low-INT relative to other beholders, so I never used them as big villains- just as a threat. I'm sure you COULD make better use of them, perhaps go through their old (pre-5e) lore for some inspiration.

 

[Richards]

Well, due to their reproductive methods, killing a death kiss could just be the start of your combat...if you kill a pregnant one, you could release a swarm of death kiss young.

I wrote an "Ecology of the Death Kiss" for Dragon many years back; it was one of six that was auto-rejected when a new editor decided to do away with the "fiction and footnotes" format (boy, try saying that five times fast!). But for those interested, here it is:

The Ecology of the Death Kiss​

It's a Monster Hunters Association storyline, for anyone who might remember them.

Johnathan