Gamemaster Tactics Masterclass: Beholders

[Wippit Guud]

Seeing as we have a thread on how players can beat various creatures, why not have a thread on how DMs can use creatures more effectively. After reading the current Adventure masterclass, beholders look screwed.

So, post here tactics you would use as a dungeon master to take that pesky adventuring group and turn them into ramdom disintegrated particles.

 

[shilsen]

Couple of basic ones:

Make sure to hire (or charm) some big beefy help, like giants. Then have them attack the party while you have the latter in the antimagic cone. A hill giant is a whole lot tougher when all those GMW and Haste spells aren't working.

Hollow out the beholder's lair so that there are walls behind which it can hide and fire its eye rays without being fired at in turn.

 

[Berk]

Shilsen took two of my tactics.

Also make sure the only way to get around the beholders main lair is to either fly, levitate, or have a very hard time climbing. Make sure the lair has tons of tunnels about the size of the beholder, a lil bigger, that intertwine and twist and cross and everything.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

You can work those tunnels in three dimensions but beware that the beholder cannot freely rotate in any direction (he is vulnerable from below and scary from above).

Setup areas that can be collapsed. Try to split the party with tunnel collapses and/or antimagic cone to deny flying magic.

Definitely Charm some grunt monsters to be your bodyguards.

 

[Eldorian]

Have his lair covered in extremely nasty magical traps that he uses his anitmagic eye to avoid, but the PCs can't. Forcing the PCs to use magical flight to fight him is also a good idea, he can turn on the anitmagic for falling damage. Have him chew on healing potions after he gets hit, I'd say it's a move equivalent to eat something that's in your mouth. Perhaps a potion of eagle's splendor, that will raise the DCs on his rays. I'm at school so I don't have my MM on me, or I'd thunk up some more combos.

Eldorian Antar

 

[officeronin]

I ran a beholder that had made an alliance with a kobold sorcerer, who had a scroll of improved invisibility...

Wht avoided the TPK was that the party was alerted to the presence of the anti-magic field when the bull's strength spells dropped.

OfficeRonin

 

[nikolai]

I think one of the interesting things to do would be to try and come up with alternate monster builds. So the standard 15 point buy (3/3/3/2/2/2) would be spend differently and alternate feats would be selected from the 5 slots available.

Weapon focus: touch attack, Great Fortitude & Lightning Reflexes all look like good choices. Of the standard feats: Alertness, Flyby Attack & Iron Will all seem pretty redundant.

Would Spell Focus work with the eyerays? The SDR says:

Add +2 to the Difficulty Class for all saving throws against spells from the school of magic the character selects to focus on.

And the Beholder entry mentions that the eyerays "resemble a spell".

yours,

nikolai.

P.S. Thanks to whoever resurected the Beholder thread. I think most of the uber-tactics came out early and the thread just dropped dead. It's nice to see it back with some new ideas.

 

[Dwarmaj]

The only problem I have with the "charmed" giant senerio is that when the anti magic field goes up, the charm gets supressed. Who is the giant going to be madder at, the PC or the beholder that has been controlling it?

This happened in one of the games I play in. Most of the giants ran away when freed of the charm, some battled the PCs, while a few turned on the beholder. It was a pretty chaotic battle.

 

[Grog]

Find a way to keep the spellcasters in the anti-magic cone AT ALL TIMES, or the beholder is going to be either a worm or a pile of ash in the first round. A good idea might be to set up the fight in a cone-shaped cave, so there's no room to get outside the anti-magic. Of course, that limits the beholder's offensive options considerably, so he'd better have some help with him.

 

[shilsen]

Find a way to keep the spellcasters in the anti-magic cone AT ALL TIMES, or the beholder is going to be either a worm or a pile of ash in the first round. A good idea might be to set up the fight in a cone-shaped cave, so there's no room to get outside the anti-magic. Of course, that limits the beholder's offensive options considerably, so he'd better have some help with him.

One problem with doing the above is that if the party has a decent archer, the beholder is toast. AC 20 just isn't going to stand up against an archer of close to the beholder's CR, even without magical items.

Another option is to find a lair with lots of stalactites (or do a little creative sculpting in its lair and create a number of large stone blocks, connected to the ceiling with slender rods). Then when those pesky adventurers show up, just catch them in the antimagic zone and start disintegrating the bases of the stalactites.