Mearls Monster Makeover: Beholder

[Lonely Tylenol]

Disintegrate isnt save or die anymore it just does a butt load of damage if you fail the save. It is also a trademark. keep.

Disintegrate: Another cool, iconic beholder ability. It stays.

Flesh to Stone - I agree that the save or be stone effect is lame. It should do Dex damage. When a Target reaches 0 Dex they are turned to Stone. This gives them a chance to do something. Fort save for Half damage and the player shrugs off the effects. This could be linked with the Slow ray.

Not a bad idea at all.

SLow - awesome ability - stays and could be linked to a cumulative effect for the flesh to stone.

Slow: A powerful counter against melee types and casters alike, since it forces PCs to decide if they want to move or attack. It stays.

Antimagic Cone - I dont like the change. Yes, Antimagic fields are a pain and a headache, but this only affects casters. Where before it was a tradeoff for the beholder. Remove all magic and make them try to fight you with normal attacks or blast em with your eye rays. It also made the warriors and rogues worried and wasnt strictly an anti caster ability.

To be honest, I also don't really see what the big deal is with AMF, except that the spell version should be a higher level spell

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

certainly a much better trap and one that makes sense. of course, the PCs should be searching doors, chests, and in this case a bridge.

Right, which is why you don't trap doors and chests. You trap nondescript hallways, rooms that are designed to look like something valuable might be in them, and other places people aren't expecting traps to be.

but more importantly the PCs should search the guys they kill. a random key that doesn't fit anything on a dead opponent is gonna lead to curiosity and a potential plot hook or random attempt to use at every opportunity.

Which is why an interactive trap is better than a reactive one: the interactive trap can become a memorable challenge, while a reactive trap is just some damage or poison out of nowhere.

i don't see this as different from the random damage trap you listed. i see this as one. cuz if the PCs don't search they will take random damage in their eyes.

You seriously think that nobody's going to look at a narrow bridge over a pit of spikes and think "hey, do you suppose that's a trap of some sort?"

 

[D'karr]

I guess it depends on if you think tradition is worth more than good design. Some people think that tradition is equivalent with good flavor or that by changing the traditional way that things were done we are somehow getting rid of an intrisinct quality. I guess someday I might believe the same thing (darn rock music!) but for now, I can appreciate new ideas.

I do believe that tradition is worth much more than good design. The fact that we have a Third Edition of the "World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game" is not because of good design, even though Third Edition is much better designed than previous editions. It is because the game's traditions, those iconic concepts, captured the imagination of millions of players, way before Third Edition was even a glimmer in Peter Adkison's eye. ALL that happened even with the "poor" design, some might even say in spite of it. Third Edition is/was so successful because it provided those same traditions and a more consistent and better designed way to deliver those traditions. It didn't discard the traditions for the sake of efficiency or "better" design.

Monsters that were "scary" in previous editions were still "scary" in 3e. Some even got "scarier." The flavor of some of these creatures is the only reason they existed to begin with. We have different colored dragons today because Gygax was looking for ways to challenge players and keep them on their toes, and many characters found out the hard way. The mechanics are meaningless without the flavor. The sense of wonderment and the challenge are what is important.

In the search for balance and playability, I hope, that game designers keep in mind that the real risk of losing your character is a great part of the challenge of the creatures. If every creature is going to be redesigned so that they are push-overs, then the game loses a great deal of its appeal.

I don't care how well designed and balanced a creature is, if it does not capture my imagination and make me feel like running an encounter right then and there, the creature's design is worthless.

Simplifying is good when it does not at the same time create "boring" creatures; the cookie-cutter monster of the week.

 

[Fishbone]

Lots of people wanted the Beholder to get a Dispel Magic effect. Could this be an extension of the power of the main eye or should 1 of the eye tentacles abilities be turned into Dispel Magic,Greater?

 

[ThirdWizard]

I do believe that tradition is worth much more than good design.

The problem is a lot of "tradition" is actually nostalgia. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was 12 in '91. I don't have fond memories of the good ol' 70s and 80s D&D. Heck, I was born in '79. When I started playing the game beholders had already been around for a decade and a half. I've never even used or seen a beholder in use in game. To say that tradition is more important than good design completely ignores that one person's tradition is another person's annoying design.

One thing that I find strange is that there's this strange dichotomy where on the one hand people can say that flavor and roleplaying are extremely important, and that the beholder is full of the things that encourage this. But, on the other hand, the older games were mostly about running through a dungeon that made no sense, taking everything that wasn't nailed down, and killing everything one sees, while dying randomly. These things just seem incompatable to me.

In short, I have seen nothing great that the old beholder has that the new one doesn't. People can cry out that this beholder lacks soul or the flavor that made the old beholder great and that Mearls is miniaturing the game (which is also an extremly ironic statement to be making), but until someone can say how or why, then the only conclusion I can draw is that these ideas are powered by pure nostalgia and that I can safely ignore them as I would ignore someone ranting about how kids nowadays have no appreciation for <insert random thing here>.

 

[DaveyJones]

You seriously think that nobody's going to look at a narrow bridge over a pit of spikes and think "hey, do you suppose that's a trap of some sort?"

i could say the same thing and have been about your random damage out of nowhere comment.

it isn't random for the guy who designed the trap or on the metagame side the DM who designed it. it serves a purpose and was put in place for that reason whatever it may be. and there are ways to learn its purpose.

as a decoy, as a way to kill intruders, as a means to collapse a hallway, as a way to seal a vault, as whatever. it isn't random.

the pcs and there players should do some legwork or bookwork or in the case of the new editions gather information, divination spells, bardic knowledge, or other means to figure out what they may face. bring the appropriate equipment for the vault/tomb/dungeon. use teamwork to overcome the traps and guards... and continue to adventure to umpteenth level.

 

[Thurbane]

I guess it depends on if you think tradition is worth more than good design. Some people think that tradition is equivalent with good flavor or that by changing the traditional way that things were done we are somehow getting rid of an intrisinct quality. I guess someday I might believe the same thing (darn rock music!) but for now, I can appreciate new ideas.

In this particular case, I do happen to think that tradition is worth more than "good design". I would rather have a monster that is a little more difficult to run smoothly in combat, if it means keeping closer to the traditional version of the beholder. This is strictly a matter of personal opinion, though.

IMHO, I believe that way too much flavour has already been sacrificed in 3E already, in the name of game mechanics or simplicity...

 

[ThirdWizard]

IMHO, I believe that way too much flavour has already been sacrificed in 3E already, in the name of game mechanics or simplicity...

That's your perogotive, of course. From my perspective, though, it is a much improved game (in terms of what I personally want out of an RPG), all around, in both terms of mechanics and flavor.

 

[delericho]

it isn't random for the guy who designed the trap or on the metagame side the DM who designed it. it serves a purpose and was put in place for that reason whatever it may be. and there are ways to learn its purpose.

The problem with encounters with traps as they are now is that the type of trap is utterly meaningless. It could be a poisoned needle, a scything blade, or the most cunning death trap in existence, but it makes no difference. Either the Rogue rolls two d20s, one to find and the other to disarm the trap, or someone gets hit with the trap. Apply the effects, collect the XP, and move on.

There are then two choices in trap placement: either put them in 'odd' places so that they become random damage out of nowhere, or put them in the places a sae person would want trapped, in which case they're basically free XP - we now have 30+ years of experience with dungeon delving, so we know where to look for these things.

I'm sorry, but they've lost their appeal. (Yeah, okay, add the obligatory IMO to that statement.)

 

[delericho]

In this particular case, I do happen to think that tradition is worth more than "good design". I would rather have a monster that is a little more difficult to run smoothly in combat, if it means keeping closer to the traditional version of the beholder.

In my opinion, it is not acceptable to sacrifice the flavour of any monster just to make it a bit easier to run. That way makes the game flavourless and dull, akin to Diet Coke. I'll always take the full-fat version, thanks.

That said, for the most part, I don't think the discussions in "Design & Development" have necessarily been about sacrificing flavour for simplicity, and there are several areas of the game that can and should be simplified in a manner that does not sacrifice the flavour.

My objection to the beholder rewrite, though, is not primarily about flavour. I simply disagree with much of the reasoning behind the changes, such as the 'need' to remove the anti-magic cone, the 'need' to remove the save-or-dies (both because several of those listed weren't save-or-dies, and because I think any fix should be to the save-or-dies themselves rather than this one monster), and I don't understand the benefit of this 'barrage' ability over other options that could have been used. Once you disagree with the underlying thinking, disagreeing with the outcome follows naturally.