WoTC Rich: Beholder!

[Lonely Tylenol]

Okay, laying this out in order of your arguments, some solid, some rather thin...

Yeah, I had a huge post that dealt with all this, but my new Microsoft webcam froze my system (yay Microsoft!) and I lost it. So here's the short version:
1. Step outside the cone to cast your dispel. Rocket science!
2. Parties carry light sources. Sunrods illuminate to 60 feet, 120 feet if you're an elf. Even past that, your penalties to Spot are fairly minor.
3. The amount of effort required to set up an elaborate falling rock trap on the hopes that a wizard will end his movement directly under it is completely out of proportion to the expected rewards.
4. Due to the mass of stone as compared to an equivalent volume of meat, any Medium petrified character is too heavy to lob with Telekinesis. I did the math. A halfling, sure. But then, if you don't have a halfling? Rogues are notoriously difficult to hit with touch attacks anyway, halfling rogues additionally so.
5. Charm Person and Charm Monster aren't going to turn the party members on each other. They make the target "friendly" toward the beholder, an effect that is completely negated by the first-level spell Protection from Evil.
6. Improved Precise Shot doesn't work against Mirror Image or Greater Invisibility, both of which are likely effects for a 13th level wizard to have.
7. When you're flying next to a beholder and he turns his antimagic cone on you, you fall until you leave the cone, and then start flying again. He can't follow you down with it, because of the way movement works in 3E. If you're close enough to the ground that you hit it anyway, it won't hurt much.
8. A party with any brains whatsoever will make sure that they gird up their weak points before they fight a beholder. This means saving throw buffs and the afore-mentioned Protection From Evil.
9. All this effort spent disabling the wizard just makes it easier for the flying, hasted, buffed meat shields to fly up and butcher the beholder. They only have 93 HP, and 26 AC.

This last point is pretty much the important one. Beholders are designed to show up, mess up the party, and go down. They're glass cannons by design, which is one of the things that was discussed by the developers (Mearls, in particular) as a rationale for their redesign. That design is no good. But that's the intent behind the wizard's design as well. No armour, poor saves vs. damaging effects, and low hit points are supposed to balance the wizard's capacity for arcane doom. But it didn't work out that way because the wizard can improve his defences so profoundly using spells without seriously reducing his offencive abilities, especially once you clear the lower levels.

The 4E redesign of the wizard is quite a bit like the redesign of the beholder. They both have their powers nerfed, in exchange for more HP and better innate defenses. The beholder, being a solo monster, also gets extra actions.

Show me the mage who can cast dispel magic in an anti-magic cone, and I'll concede this one in a heartbeat. Honestly, it's why the cone is -there-, to stop the be-all-end-all mage from being able to ruin the beholder's plans so easily. And if the beholder's aiming the cone at the fighter instead, or some other strangeness, then something's wrong.



Let's look at this one -without- the sarcasm. A simple trap door in a ceiling, even a jarringly obvious wooden one in a stone ceiling, has a pretty high spot DC in a dark-to-pitch-black 30' high room. If you have the dwarven fighter/rogue with the darkvision 60ft. in there doing his job, he points it out, and no big deal. You don't have to make a trap insane, simplicity and realism are good enough. Reflex save versus falling objects damage, equal to the maximum volume of the beholder's telekinesis. After all, if it's his trap, he has to keep reloading it. And if your party whines because the monsters can set traps, they should go back to smiting trolls. To say it in lolcat form: Intelligent monster is intelligent.



Again, anti-magic cone, Mister Wizard's Mirror Image (and mage armor, protection from arrows, shield, you name it) has gone the way of my cable during a hurricane. Lobbed petrified rogue has standard Telekinesis attack roll. May the gods have mercy on your AC.



Most don't have flight that operates in an anti-magic cone...after the mage is toast, those repetitive 30ft drops onto broken masonry(see petrified teammates/previous parties) are going to feel alot like spiked pit traps till they get it through their heads that [5 ft. adjust back from meleer, slow eye/flesh to stone eye/disintegrate eye as free action, then turn anti-magic eye on him] makes for a bad day. And as for the bows, see Flyby Attack and other anti-will tactics, like beating the little elf ranger against the wall with telekinesis till you make the illithid in the next room sad you spilled his lunchtray.



"A beholder can tilt and pan its body each round to change which rays it brings to bear in any given arc." I'll give you that your argument on this one is entirely viable, as we're not clear whether this is the "up" of the battlefield, or the "up" of the rotating beholder. So, I'll leave this one to individual rulings by DMs.



+1 to hit is a big deal at times, but I'm really laying the groundwork for 1 HD of advancement. At 12HD, take Improved Precise Shot, and ignore anything less than full cover. If you're not going to do that, sure, keep the saving throw bonuses instead.



A wizard should not be aimed at with eye rays, as they can't work in the cone either. He should be dealing with incoming halfling-shaped masonry. With all his "reasonably defensive" spells as useful as a paper bag in a blade barrier, he should be summarily executed with the swiftness, while the other eye-rays keep the rest of the party at bay. Then, the cleric, then, keep the fighter and rogue as pets as they should be perma-charmed till they get uppity, then beaten against the walls like ragdolls with the telekinesis ray.

 

[InfernalistGamer]

Rather than quote our horrendously long, yet fascination, I'm going to clip off out quoting and go on to my validations of my arguments.

1)A 150 ft. cone of antimagic should not be easy to escape. Allow me to show why. Take the 30ft tall room I was using before. If said room is, say, 30ft wide by 100 ft long...

|##%%##|
|##O)##|10ft
|##A###|
|##AA##|20ft
|#AAA##|
|#AAAA#|30ft
|AAAAA#|
|AAAAAA|40ft
|AAAAAA|
40ft. to 100 ft.

Every square past 35 ft is antimagic. Add shattered statues for seriously difficult terrain, and it's going to be a while till -anyone- gets close. Angle the cone downward at a 45 degree angle (Another one of those DM rulings) so the top 10 feet are open, and the -likely more than one- traps are ripe for disintegrating the doors.

2)Add blackstone pit covers, and a simple flick of the antimagic cone, and the traps are uncapped, no disintegrate needed. Same with the floor...100 ft pit trap, capped with a blackstone floor. Antimagic eye...bam, floor go byebye, down go the heroes, eye closes, floor reappears. Sure, the mage can throw a dispel magic up to uncap it, but honestly, someone's getting hurt in that one, especially if the floor that vanishes is right under the boulder traps above. *glee!* And I just thought about it...if the beholder has access to the ceiling traps from above, he can load those monsters down with ALOT of 325lb chunks. Maybe, say, 10 in a 10ft square shaft...thats, oh, a f-load of damage.

3)Honestly, all encounters are about more than the monster, it's the environment too, and in it's favored environment, tall, long rooms, with traps, pits and bad terrain, a beholder can really live up to it's CR, even gain some serious EL. Now, when I use beholders, they are geniuses, Int 17 is an -average-... so, these guys plan.

4)Telekinesis and Flesh to Stone. 13th level telekinesis lifts...325lbs...+10 to hit with the thing...13d6 damage. A chunk of petrified adventurer or monster should be easy to find and throw, as you pointed out, a human wizard should provide, two, maybe more chunks that weight. Gotta wear that trick out as much as you can. Flying masonry does not stop at the edge of an antimagic cone. Finally, you're assuming that I mean just the PCs there -at the moment-. A good beholder lair, like a medusa lair, should be covered in the failures of lesser men. That's one of the things that makes it good. Plus, you can put an unbroken one or two for a "stone to flesh" spell to save...instant PC introduction or cohort!

 

[small pumpkin man]

Yes, yes, Beholders are the epitomy of 3.x's "annoying fights where the Players feel powerless to affect the battle, but the fight takes hours because the particular abiltity the monster has which allows it shut down the players prevents it from quickly killing them".

Yes, it's not that hard make a beholder encounter incredibly hard, it's making the encounter fun that's hard.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I've run many, many fun and exciting beholder fights, but then again, to be fair... I houseruled out save-or-die effects ten years ago, so what do I know about running a "proper" 3.5 beholder?

Fitz

 

[Ahglock]

Which is why you use Extend until you can use Persist.

Um, so minutes and for a few spells hours. How is this all day invulnerability?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Interestingly, our favorite Anti-Beholder tactic was to approach him protected by a Antimagic field (I think a Cleric with the Protection domain helped here). It doesn't matter if no-one in the group can get into melee and nobody is a decent ranged fighter. Either he comes to you, trying to bite you while getting mauled to death, or he is shot down after a few dozens of rounds or so... I think we "invented" that tactic in 3.0, and I am not sure how well it still fares in 3.5 (we used Admantite weapons to get our "natural enhancement bonus" to attacks and damage even in anti-magic fields...)

 

[Jhaelen]

3)Honestly, all encounters are about more than the monster, it's the environment too, and in it's favored environment, tall, long rooms, with traps, pits and bad terrain, a beholder can really live up to it's CR, even gain some serious EL. Now, when I use beholders, they are geniuses, Int 17 is an -average-... so, these guys plan.

Well, that's a self-defeating argument. A level 13 wizard will typically have a higher Int than 17 so she should prepared for any kind of plan the beholder might come up with, right?

Also, as you correctly mentioned using the environment the way you suggest will increase the EL which is not always something you want.

Not having used beholders in my game yet, there is something I don't understand:
Doesn't using the antimagic ray negate the beholders own (other) eye ray effects? How can you keep the pcs from using magic while still using the (other) eye rays on them?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, that's a self-defeating argument. A level 13 wizard will typically have a higher Int than 17 so she should prepared for any kind of plan the beholder might come up with, right?

Also, as you correctly mentioned using the environment the way you suggest will increase the EL which is not always something you want.

Not having used beholders in my game yet, there is something I don't understand:
Doesn't using the antimagic ray negate the beholders own (other) eye ray effects? How can you keep the pcs from using magic while still using the (other) eye rays on them?

Well, most PCs rely heavily on magic to be effective in the first place, so there is a good chance that they will try escaping the Antimagic Cone. In theory, the Beholders Bite should ensure that staying in the Antimagic field isn't a good option, either. But see my post above how well this can work out for Beholders.

If nothing else helps, the Beholder can just suppress his Antimagic Cone.

 

[hong]

Not having used beholders in my game yet, there is something I don't understand:
Doesn't using the antimagic ray negate the beholders own (other) eye ray effects? How can you keep the pcs from using magic while still using the (other) eye rays on them?

You don't. This is why a beholder is ideally paired with a bunch of melee brutes to beat up the PCs while their magic is fizzled.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Um, so minutes and for a few spells hours. How is this all day invulnerability?

Because it's a second level spell, so you can prepare a couple since they're so useful. Also, Scribe Scroll is a wizard class feature.