A beholder is going to position itself as you’d place a security camera: in a high-up corner where it can see everything and no one can maneuver behind it. The only function its Antimagic Cone will have is to interfere with its killing the intruders.Īs written, the Antimagic Cone seems at first to be a power of highly questionable usefulness. Every instinct it has tells it to kill the intruders. A group of intruders appears in the doorway. Here’s the problem: According to the Monster Manual, the cone “works against the beholder’s own eye rays.” OK, imagine that the beholder spends all its time with its gaze focused on the entrance to its lair, because that’s exactly the sort of thing an aberration would do. The beholder is aggressive, malicious and antisocial, so when trespassers appear, it’s not going to indulge any attempt to negotiate passage-it’s going to attack immediately.Īt the start of its turn, it must decide whether to use its Antimagic Cone. And a beholder encounter almost always happens in its lair.
It can also project an Antimagic Cone from its central eye, but this ability is problematic, as we’ll see in a moment.įinally, a beholder in its lair has access to three lair actions: slippery slime on the floor, grasping appendages flailing from the walls and random beholder eyes appearing on nearby surfaces. These rays have a range of 120 feet, enough to keep trespassers at a distance for two to five combat rounds. It has an innate ability to hover, so it can never be knocked prone.Īt melee range, it has a bite attack, but the beholder’s trump card is its Eye Rays, which emanate from the many smaller eyes at the end of stalks extending from its body. As you’d expect from a floating blob with a giant central eye, its Perception skill is through the roof it also has darkvision out to 120 feet. Though not strong, it has powerful mental abilities along with a high Dexterity and very high Constitution, protecting it against all of the “big three” types of saving throws. It has little purpose in life beyond guarding its chosen turf. The beholder is an aberration-a magically summoned creature of extraplanar origin-with a hateful, avaricious and territorial temperament. Why do I mention this? Because the beholder is such an iconic D&D monster that our host-who knew hardly anything about the game before we began playing-told me near the beginning of our campaign, “All I want is to run into an ‘eye of the beholder,’ and I’ll be happy.” Thank you! And I've always found it interesting that, despite how chaotic and paranoid Beholder's are, they're still typically lawful creatures.Our current Dungeons and Dragons group got together after one of my wife’s coworkers cattily referred to a client as “someone who looks like he’d play Dungeons and Dragons in his mom’s basement,” and another of them retorted, “I would totally play Dungeons and Dragons.” He ended up being the host of our weekly sessions. Whatever the case, I'll add it in the next version. I'm bouncing between not destroying items and destroying all nonmagical items. Supposed to be 1 hour or until the beholder harms the creature, same as 5e. I like the idea though, and might use it in the next update! I'll see what I can do, but I was worried about making the stat block too big.īecause this was just a quick and dirty conversion from 5e (with being able to use two actions to choose a ray the only idea I had for something uniquely 2e). Not sure what you mean by custom saves, but I see what you mean on everything else. I'm bouncing between occult and arcane, as both make sense, but probably occult because most PF2 aberrations use that. Range should probably be 120 feet, and the eye rays are definitely magical. Beholders are paranoid masters of chaos, and nothing says chaos like 3 random eyebeams and an antimagic field. How long does Charm Ray last? As is, that person is just permanently unable to attack the beholder.Īlso, Sleep Ray has the trait affect listed twice.ĭoes Disintegrate Ray destroy worn or held items? Why doesn't the Enervation ray deal Drained or something, a status often associated with Enervation?
This ain't 5e where things are simple! (also, bump the paralyzing ray crit failure to 1d4+1 or something, it's silly that it can have the same result as a regular fail) This is PF2, give those degrees some flair! Disintegrate is d12's on a crit fail, nothing on a success and up, sleep ray gives you -2 on your next save against a sleep ray. And that Fear ray feels like it should have Frightened 1 as a success result.
I feel you could play around move with custom saves and damage rolls, they're all basic or tiny tweaks on xd8. What is the range of the eye ray? Are eye rays magical? If so, what type?