Dungeons and Dragons: What does a Beholder do in 5E? How have others used them in their campaigns?
Planning out my next campaign and considering character options and monster options. I'm wondering how others have used Beholders in their campaigns and if you have some suggestions on how to weave one into my particular campaign.
I don't anticipate the Beholder being the final confrontation, but I also think it will lay a nice trap for even the most prepared party. But seeing this coming at you in real life must strike some fear!
Answers ( 1 )
I've been involved in a long running Monday night D&D game in Atlanta. We've been meeting regularly for almost forty years. Currently the group numbers around 12 players plus a Dungeon Master. And we've got a waiting list for players wanting to join. Two of us alternate at DM. We run a sort of hybrid mixture of 1st and 2nd Edition with game mechanics from subsequent editions that we like and found usable. Numerous players have characters that have been around for years, even decades. In our game world a Beholder is a character killer.
I looked over the 5e version of the Beholder, I've been involved in a couple of 5e games as a player, and while it isn't quite as deadly as the 2nd Edition version, it's still a bad-ass monster. If you're going to send it against a party you need to be prepared for character death. Now some gaming groups can handle character deaths just fine, and it should be part of the game, it's one of the things that makes D&D exciting. In our Monday night game character death is fairly rare, but it does happen. The first time I dealt with a Beholder it was as a player. It ambushed our group and as we were orgainzing ourselves to fight it the damned thing shot a character with its Disintegrate Ray. The player missed her saving throw. Boom! That character was just gone, in a puff of smoke. This character was around five years old, one of the players favorites. It was a rather sobering moment. Now the player took it well, all things considered, but there's no doubt that it hurt.
I don't know how your particular gaming group deals with character death. But when dropping a Beholder on a party you've got to be ready to deal with such an event. Some players take a death better than others and that's another thing you've got to consider. Make sure that there's no hint of controversy surrounding the events leading up to a character's dying. It must be judged as fair by all involved. This is especially important if the character has been around awhile. As long as a character death is deemed fair and square without any kind of ulterior motive attached to it, such an event adds weight to the game. Developing a character is an investment of both thought and time. The danger of losing those investments is what makes the game thrilling.
A Beholder is a challenging critter to deal with. It makes for a very exciting encounter. As a DM you just have to be ready to deal with the repercussions of such an encounter, which can include a character's death.