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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Baron Opal II" data-source="post: 7516845" data-attributes="member: 6794067">I don't know how relevant all of these are, but I'll mention them in case 5e beholders are really different. I also forget what is house rulings or not. This was for originally 2e, but upgraded easily to 3e. This was for mid-level adventurers, so 9-12. I’m sure I’m not remembering everything.The beholder can fire three eye beams a round plus the central eye. Targets in the central eye are safe from the other eyes. The rays can be any of the powers, but only one at a time (e.g. cause wounds, TK, and disintegrate, not disintegrate x3). They have 360 deg vision coronally, 270 deg vision sagittally. They can rock forward to look straight down, but it's uncomfortable for them much like looking straight up for us. Their cause serious wounds ray is a cutting force. Best on soft flesh, but can harm objects similarly (sectumsempra). Lastly, an aspect of my campaign is that obsidian mirrors can reflect magic. This is why obsidian flakes are incorporated into protective talismans.Setting: cave complex under a forest. A stream is nearby.The outer ring was mostly natural caves and tunnels. There were a number of noise traps, pits and deadfalls. A few gas spores* drifted about. After a short time, it became obvious that this section was to scare away nuisances and animals. The noise traps and trip wires didn't tie to anything else, just made noise to make intruders think that the inhabitants were warned. Higher level PCs figure things out pretty quick.The middle ring is also just traps, but serious ones. This is where the beholder, having scared away things not worthy of its time, takes care of the stupid threats. The first set of traps is right after a set of the irritant traps. Hopefully the intruders will be sufficiently frustrated with the dumb trap to charge into the lethal one. This is also a narrow ring, compared to the first. If they don't get nailed by the first one or two death traps, that isn't going to work. All of the traps in the middle ring have some way of alerting the beholder.The inner ring is the fun one. The way in was a broad avenue with a trapped ceiling. Many timbers are in the ceiling, poised to fall down vertically when a restraining beam was disintegrated. These are scattered along the avenue, not just in a line. The purpose is not actually to squash invaders (although that would be nice), but to convert a comfortably wide avenue into a narrow one that disallowed archers having a line of sight. Another block restrained water from the stream. When disintegrated, the water flows down one or two channels, depending if you want both to fire or just one at a time. The water flushes intruders down the avenue, and makes going forward slower. Some of the water flows forward, however, and flushes some into a pit trap.  There is an obsidian mirror mounted in the ceiling that allows the beholder to reflect a ray into the pit trap. Fear can be useful, as if they panic they may eventually drown.Farther on, you have the 3D maze with obsidian mirrors. Every once in a while, the beholder will fire off the CSW ray, or maybe the charm, and bounce them along the maze to rattle the invaders. The beholder wants the invaders edgy, so that they charge at the right time (for it). Once they get to the main cavern, there is a wide depression, almost bowl-like, with the beholder a bit behind the center. It is slightly filled with water. The bottom has a timber plug, and when disintegrated anyone standing in the pool gets flushed. The tunnel leads to a cavern that drains to an underground river. The slow ray works well here.For the most part, I don’t think this is really clever. I thought about how to use flowing water to its advantage, and to use gates, plugs, and timbers harvested from the nearby woods. It does use the disintegrate and telekinesis rays heavily as construction tools. I also used the ray mirror idea for the maze.I also had the ice box, where invaders successfully grabbed by the telekinesis ray were thrown through an opening. The doorway was a stone slab that crashed down when the support was disintegrated. If you can’t teleport or tunnel through stone, you better have a lot of food.*They're such a minor threat at this level, I don't really consider them "extra monsters". But, do as you wish.</blockquote>

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