D&D General Give me Beholders!

[Richards]

Back in the 3E/3.5 days, Goodman Games put out a Complete Guide to Beholders. It had a bunch of beholder variants, as I recall.

Johnathan

 

[dave2008]

You should bring back the older beholder abilities that 5th ed left out. Like the antimagic beam - its not an attack its just always on. So if beholder is facing you, 100% of magic items cease to function. This alone makes them WAY more dangerous.

It is always "on" in 5e too (if the beholder wants), this s a "trait" not an attack:

Antimagic Cone. The beholder’s central eye creates an area of antimagic, as in the antimagic field spell, in a 150-foot-cone. At the start of each of its turns, the beholder decides which way the cone faces and whether the cone is active. The area works against the beholder’s own eye rays.

Edit:

 

[dave2008]

So, I'm working on my own version of Undermountain, which is basically going to be a cross of old Undermountain, new Undermountain and Dungeon Meshi. And I want to make it about beholders. Like, make beholders the one unifying thing, ideally having different types of beholders on every level. However, official sources on D&D Beyond only give me the Death Tyrant, normal beholder, Death Kiss, Gauth, Beholder Zombie, Spectator and Gazer. Many of the older ones are missing, especially Gouger, Observer, Overseer, Director, Eye of the Deep, Eye of Shadow, Beholder Mages, Elder Orbs, Hive Mothers and Doomspheres. And I'm sure others I don't know about.

Is there a book on D&D Beyond you can recommend that has good beholder variants?

DM's guild recommendations are great, too, but I'm searching for 5e stats. I have stuff in earlier version form.

Cheers for the help!

I found this free on the UA Reddit: Complete Beholders: 14 variants from CR 1/2-23

It has:

• Gazer
• Spectator (Guardian and Venerable Sage)
• Mindwitness
• Eye of the Deep
• Gouger
• Eye Tyrant
• Director
• Doomsphere
• Death Kiss
• Death Tyrant
• Overseer
• Elder Orb
• Hive Mother

So it looks like it is just missing Eye of Shadow and Beholder Mages

So that is everything you asked for. I can't vouch for the quality of the conversions, but those should help you get started!

 

[Keefe the Thief]

This is what I use:

Dungeon Masters Guild

www.dmsguild.com

Most of the older beholder monsters are updated here.

That's great, thanks! It especially covers the directors, I liked their idea.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

WOTC held a DM competition a few years ago, and I made a Beholder-themed trap for it. Perhaps you can use it!
It is not for low level groups.

Wow that is very creative! But looks extremely deadly. I'll save it for later.

I've done buttloads of monster conversions, and yet somehow, of the ones you mentioned, I have only done the director (and crawler, the monster that directors use as a mount). These contain my versions, if you want them, along with... a few other monsters.

EDIT: Oh- I use a slightly different method for running beholders. Instead of giving them legendary actions, I use the 4e mechanic where at the start of a creature's turn, if it's close enough, the beholder fires a random eye ray at it. If you prefer legendary actions, you could easily swap that out.

Yes, 4e had several good ideas, and this was one of them.

Lords of Madness for 3.5 still can't be beat for aberrations IMO.

It's a great book, but I'm not the biggest fan anymore of 3.5 statblocks

Yum Beholder Eye tempura (horn sound plays)

I think the team would rather make a gumbo inside of the beholder body. A kind of ramen with beholder bacon and the eyestalks as eel replacements.

You should bring back the older beholder abilities that 5th ed left out. Like the antimagic beam - its not an attack its just always on. So if beholder is facing you, 100% of magic items cease to function. This alone makes them WAY more dangerous.

Antimagic beam is a must. It's sad that they scrubbed all antimagic fields from the newer Undermountain maps. I'll put those back in.

I found this free on the UA Reddit: Complete Beholders: 14 variants from CR 1/2-23

It has:

• Gazer
• Spectator (Guardian and Venerable Sage)
• Mindwitness
• Eye of the Deep
• Gouger
• Eye Tyrant
• Director
• Doomsphere
• Death Kiss
• Death Tyrant
• Overseer
• Elder Orb
• Hive Mother

So it looks like it is just missing Eye of Shadow and Beholder Mages

So that is everything you asked for. I can't vouch for the quality of the conversions, but those should help you get started!

Wow thank you! Don't know how I missed this! Unearthed arcana is good, Reddit is otherwise full of whine, but that subreddit is still nice.

 

[Blackhoof]

You should bring back the older beholder abilities that 5th ed left out. Like the antimagic beam - its not an attack its just always on. So if beholder is facing you, 100% of magic items cease to function. This alone makes them WAY more dangerous.

The 5e Beholder does have an anti-magic cone from its main eye, always pointing forwards and outwards.

 

[Blackhoof]

You should bring back the older beholder abilities that 5th ed left out. Like the antimagic beam - its not an attack its just always on. So if beholder is facing you, 100% of magic items cease to function. This alone makes them WAY more dangerous.

But Beholders in 5e do have an antimagic cone from their central eye.