Mearls Monster Makeover: Beholder

[Arnwyn]

It's not hard at all.

Whatever.

 

[Arnwyn]

It's terribly written, but here's how it works:

Beholder has two initiative counts. Each turn he choses one as his normal initiative. The other is Barrage. In that round he can shoot two extra rays. These rays may only be of the blast or telekinesis variety, but are under no other constrained, so he can fire the same ray twice at the same target, which he usually can't.

It's not such a terrible ability.

Thanks, Gold Roger! No, it's not a "terrible ability" - but it is (as you note) terribly written. And if the goal is simplicity, then I certainly do question the inclusion of the ability in the first place. There are probably a myriad number of directions to go instead of adding this multiple-initiative thing (which I don't think has a precedent anywhere else).

But, in any case, enough people have criticized it here that I don't want to get bogged down discussing this one ability.

 

[D'karr]

That's definitely true, but when you're talking about a critter whose standard move of locomotion is magical flight, it seems pretty reasonable to say that it can turn on a dime, making facing irrelevant.

And that change would only require changing the Beholder from a "good" flyer to a "perfect" flyer. Seems simple enough.

The flight rules are more complicated than most other rules. That much is true. But the beholder can hover. Why should he have a problem using his abilities in all directions?

Remove the 90 degree non-sense and let the flying eyeball shoot whatever it wants in whatever direction it wants. He can have his own "cinco de Mayo" routine.

 

[Felix]

Don't like.

I fundamentally disagree with Mearl's crusade against Save-or-Die effects, evident from my disgust at his Rust Monster and my "For pity's sake" at his reconstruction of the Beholder. So it keeps Finger of Death, Flesh to Stone, etc.

I prefer that the 3.5 version adds the tactic of "Don't spread out too much" via the fact that beholders can only fire so many Eye beams into a given 90 degree arc.

I like the fact that the beholder can negate magic. All magic; the beholder has to choose if he's going to give his enemies a sanctum from the eyestalks or not.

Besides, I always figured the cone of Anti-magic was as much an anti-other-beholder device as it was an anti-PC device. I mean, these things are evil, right? So they'll turn on each other eventually, yeah? As a beholder, I would like someway to stop the Flesh to Stone, Finger of Death, and Disintegrate from zapping me. An anti-spellcasting ray isn't going to help me there.

I think the gripe with facing on the beholder is that facing has been removed from the whole game has kept stuck with one monster, which is quite stupid.

The cone of anti-magic is not facing. It's a cone with a longer duration. Think of it as Detect Magic. The damn thing is immune to flanking anyway, so what does it matter?

The eye stalks arn't really facing either; any one of them can fire into any arc, they just can't all do it at the same time. It's a limit on the pain the beholder can dish out.

when you're talking about a critter whose standard move of locomotion is magical flight

I thought so too. But it's Flight (Ex) in the MM. So Beholders can't make each other plunge into the abyss by focusing their anti-magic cones on each other.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Whatever.

It's not hard at all...the implication being that the ability itself is simple to understand, but it was described in a way which made it seem much more complicated than necessary. So I put up a simplified description, hoping that this would be helpful.

But, if you want to take my words as trying to be insulting and get upset over nothing, you can go right ahead.

 

[painandgreed]

Seems like the bit about facing is just trying to make somethign out of a non-issue to up his word count. By "B-O-R-I-N-G", I think he means "unsuitable for miniatures combat". Indeed, I get the feeling that the entire purpose of this redesign (much like the others) was to create creatures and abilities that fit nicely onto a DDM card with easy to resolve effects in a minatures game rather than an RPG.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Eh... I don't follow his logic on the facing thing. Have to institute spot modifiers? For facing? No, you really don't. A beholder is a creature with eyes facing all directions, so it doesn't need to turn its "head" quickly or anything... on could easily conclude that the beholder could only rotate slowly, thus confining facing considerations to such a creature. No need to extrapolate this to all creatures.

Mearls is right that the rules for Eye Rays are unnecessarily complex. I've also never understood the "only X number of eye rays can be looking in one direction" rules -- those eyes are at the end of extendable stalks that can clearly point in any direction (except, possibly, directly below the beholder).

The way to model the eye rays is simple: The beholder can target any creature within range once per round.

If you want to limit the number of rays which can be turned on any given character simultaneously, just do it directly: "The beholder's eye rays interefere with each other, however. The beholder can only hit a single target with X number of rays in a single round."

The Antimagic Cone doesn't need any change at all. The beholder determines the direction the cone is facing as a free action on its turn and can turn the cone on or off as a free action. Changing the cone so that it doesn't interfere with the beholder's eye-stalks is a fundamental and completely unnecessary change to the beholder.

The only other problem with the beholder are the save-or-die effects. Personally, I don't like save-or-die effects at all, for exactly the reasons that Mearls talks about. But the solution there is not to change the beholder, it's to fix the save-or-die effects. (In my house rules, save-or-die effects cause 3d6 points of Constitution damage. Any special effects -- such as being reduced to a fine powdery dust or having your soul trapped in a gem -- only occur if the Con loss results in your death. If I was actually redesigning those effects wholesale, I'd have more powerful save-or-die spells deal more Con damage -- but this makes for a convenient, easy-to-remember, and easy-to-apply rule.)

(Charm and fear, however, are not save-or-die effects. You'll notice the complete lack of dying in those effects, Mike. Flesh to stone probably does qualify, since there's no way to recover without outside assistance if you fail the saving throw.)

And once you've fixed the save-or-die effects, you probably should crank up the save DCs like Mearls suggests.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Seems like the bit about facing is just trying to make somethign out of a non-issue to up his word count. By "B-O-R-I-N-G", I think he means "unsuitable for miniatures combat". Indeed, I get the feeling that the entire purpose of this redesign (much like the others) was to create creatures and abilities that fit nicely onto a DDM card with easy to resolve effects in a minatures game rather than an RPG.

I think we have a winner!

 

[Fishbone]

The Beholder seems weaker because it trades some very powerful abilities for the ability to have smaller abilities hit harder. Except for the Disintegrate ray. This thing would be scary for any class with low HP to fight against.

 

[diaglo]

Seems like the bit about facing is just trying to make somethign out of a non-issue to up his word count. By "B-O-R-I-N-G", I think he means "unsuitable for miniatures combat". Indeed, I get the feeling that the entire purpose of this redesign (much like the others) was to create creatures and abilities that fit nicely onto a DDM card with easy to resolve effects in a minatures game rather than an RPG.

I think we have a winner!

thirded or is that 3ed