@@silentdrew7636 The Beholder could, unwittingly, make the Cannon he's holding ridiculously powerful, like "it launches cannonballs that don't explode, but rather disintegrate everything they touch, leaving cannonball-sized tunnels that go on forever".
Fun fact: Beholder's brains actually house two separate consciousnesses, both of which are antagonistic to one another. So the main reason why adventurers can kill them is because both consciousnesses are plotting to cause the downfall of the other consciousness while the battle goes on. They're actively sabotaging themselves, despite the fact that this will get both 'minds' killed. *Beholders are quite literally their own worst enemies.*
One time during a campaign I just sat down in front of a beholder and confronted it about its fear. The DM was so confused he just gave up and said that it had a stroke from its new realization and died
Sooo, does that mean you could have a one shot where the players are trying to kill a beholder for reasons they do not know about, only to discover that they are the Beholder's greatest fears literally come to life?
"I don't recall existing prior to this moment." Or for added mind games. Have the party come into contact with the actual party that inspired the beholder's nightmare.
By D&D cosmology and lore standards, the life of a Beholder is unfortunate but not excessively so considering it's liable to die at some point. That is a luxury many extra planar creatures don't have.
Imagining two beholders fighting is hilarious because they have to either both look away from each other so they can shoot their magic eye rays at their opponent without fucking it up with their own anti-magic cone or they both say screw that and just start biting each other to death.
At one point I had a character manage to convince a beholder that they were in fact the actual beholder and the beholder was just a figment sent to kill itself. The beholder recoiled in horror and self-doubt giving the party time to flee. I mean, they never killed the beholder but at least they escaped alive. I'd call that a win.
"Look at them run. They really fell for that? I've got no time for them right now as the real danger may be near by. Nevertheless I'll send some minions after that party and make sure them and their friends, family, home towns, and treasures are destroyed and enslaved in my dungeons. What? We sent them here? Oh...dang, that's right; i forgot." - beholders
Beholders looking at the players is like humans looking at lobsters. They're amusing and pose no real threat until they pull out weapons and try to kill you.
@@poppymon007 And then as Eldritch Horrors who were afraid of sand and lobsters we would find a place to hide and gather power. However, gathering so much power would gain the attention of the lobsters and thus a group of Lobster adventurers would gather and come to slay said Eldritch Horror with weapons.
man, they really took the term "lovecraftian" to heart with this one. Right down to the crippling fear of everything unfamiliar, and being unfamiliar with everything.
I’m just starting watching “The Unnameable” on Amazon Prime like 6 minutes ago simultaneously checking my notifications and this is the comment that vindicates the simulation theory of reality..... whatever, right?
@Kel'Thuzad Phobia literally means *fear* , not *irrational fear* Just in modern psychology it's *mostly* used for irrational-ish fears. But that doesn't mean that every phobia inherently describes an irrational fear by definition.
I'm pretty sure when he said the party of Adventures shouldn't be able to beat them , he's talking about their obsessive over planning means they have a contingency plan. For example, a Beholder might have a setup in place for when 5 adventurers show up at his door. Lets call this plan number 1,692. Now if this party consists of a wizard, a bard, two clerics, and a paladin, we move to plan 1,692 subsection 411. Now if possible we divise what subclasses they are and what spells they might have prepared and finally after going through about 30 subsections, you have a plan for when the envoker wizard uses fireball you activate the waterfall, while keeping anti magic on the vengeance paladin, having your minions shooting at the lore bard and engaging the paladin ib melee while you attempt to stone the life cleric and disintegrate the Tempest cleric. And all that my just be step 3 lol
Yeah, beholders are the kind of thing that, if played realistically, cannot be beaten. Imagine if all of humanity genius got on a cave, and started thinking of ways to kill YOU when you come to kill THEM. Now imagine they're doing this 24/7, for years on end, all the while amassing armies and powerfull treasures to kill YOU. Now imagine all of them have laser guns. One of them even has a laser gun that jam your laser guns, so you can't fire your lasers on them. Hell, if a beholder is old enough, there's no reason to even have a setting, the thing probably rules the world on a Iron Fist by now, and kills everything that gets a little uppity (which, for a beholder, means beyond level 1)
@@Aplesedjr yup, Beholders can't have infinite plans,it only takes a few possible combinators before there are too many outcomes to plan for. More importantly, Beholders don't really understand other beings so they can't predict them intuitively like humans do. They have to use up all their intelligence on brute-forcing like a chess AI trying to play the stockmarket.
gracefool and even if they make a perfect plan, the dice determine what happens. The party can roll nothing but good for attacks and saves, then the beholder gets destroyed.
Ah yes. Beholders. I had a high level paladin back when disintegrate actually disintegrated you, period. No messing with hitpoint damage or anything like that. Fail the save and you're dust. Anyways, this paladin came had gotten separated from his party for some reason, I seem to remember some sort of fear magic from a lich was involved. So, he runs around a corner in the dungeion and comes face to eyeballs with a beholder. Paladin vs Beholder - Round one, FIGHT! Zap! Result one round later: Dungeon corridor with one beholder and one small pile of dust. Ah. Memories.
It's not so much fear everything as are 100% sure that everything is trying to kill them so they have to make sure to set things up to where they can kill whatever that is actively trying to kill them at this moment before they can. Seems a difference without distinction, but it's sort of not in that a beholder won't huddle in terror at the thought of something trying to kill it, or even think of most creatures as actual threats, but it does realize that enough working together or getting lucky might get it. It's kind of a cop out but it's more a paranoia than a fear... But most things really do want to kill beholders
Ah, I remember my first Beholder encounter. It spoke German. Like, our DM did not know what to do with a Beholder, so it just spoke German. That's literally it. Oh, no wait, it was strong.
Best video yet, I laughed till I cried. Then I remembered I dreamt I'd die from drowning, so I burned out my tear ducts. Now all I need to do is disintegrate all the oceans.
It wasn't Gary's nightmare about a soccer ball with eyes that gave us the Beholder. It was one of his friends nightmare about a soccer ball with eyes that he shared with Gary Gygax that gave us the Beholder! THANKS GARY'S FRIEND!
I kinda want to have my party fight a beholder, and when they kill it, It'll say "nevermind, I dont want to be dead" and just get back up as a death tyrant
i imagine that the rampage would kill him because he would be utterly unstable and enraged and would eventually succumb to numbers. also i think there i a mindflayer there.
Beholders constantly think about how the world is out to get them, they dream about stuff they think about, and there dreams alter reality to create things. How are they not just constantly being killed.
@@magnusanderson6681 not when a red dragon suddenly spawns in your bedroom when your plan was that it would fall through the portal to the celestail realms if it tried to enter from catacombs, the only playce it would fit.
This actually made me feel sorry for them, I never actually considered that the root of their xenophobia was constant paranoia driven fear. An existence of constant fear is rather sad to imagine.
if it makes you feel better i would like to inform you that there is canonically at least one beholder who got over it and is super chill, his name is Large Luigi and he runs a tavern
The god of war had quite a long fall from grace, after losing Atreus prompted him to become a philosopher, searching for the meanings of life as a sock puppet.
Ethan Hall Have them be arranged in a circle around the Beholder, then have each one cast Imprisonment until it takes after the first one casts Force Cage.
@Ethan Hall death tyrants don't have their antimagic sight anymore, only a "No-regaining-hit-points-and -if-you-die-you-turn-into-a-zombie- slave" sight
my thoughts on this is that the Beholder's paranoia is so cripplingly strong that it is constantly double/triple/quadruple/pentuple/etc. guessing itself about how everything it could do to protect itself might backfire, thus ruining any attempt at long term planning, as it scraps and revises plans that would have been perfectly fine to keep, thus in combat it never exp[loits weakness in their enemies, fearing that any opening is actually a cleaver trap.
The beholder in my campaign had a pet goldfish that died and was really sad. We all found him a new pet and he was very happy. He was the sweetest beholder I ever met.
_Death Tyants - when great-grandpa Beholder reflects on his mortality, and then pulls the badass move of just straight up refusing it._ Best description for a DnD monster I think I've ever heard XD
I might actually use that as a possible weird quirk if a warlock player of mine chooses the Aberration(Great Old One) subclass. Just every once in a while he'll hear a cosmic scream of "DESTROY" when he sees anything made of wheat.
Irrational oddities are what make ADD great! "Hey guys im just going to eat this Loaf of bread real quick, im hungry." *ZzaaPP!!* "Dude what the hell! You almost hit me with lightning!"
This gives me a fascinating idea for a character concept: A beholder that in its paranoia, desires to find a way to understand people. It creates not just one person but an entire settlement and watches them to try and understand what they think about, how likely they may be to kill them, etc. It leads to eventually the beholder has created this town or city that believes the beholder is their god protector, not seeing the true reason they were created and watched over. It'd be an interesting thing for a party or some characters to interact with, a beholder that tries to counter the paranoia with knowledge
I heard of a DM who made a very shitty pun once. He told the players rumours of a beholder lurking on the outskirts of town. They went into the woods to investigate and got jumped by a dude holding beehives in both hands who yelled out "BEHOLD, IT IS I, THE BEE HOLDER!" You're welcome.
The antimagic ray is the safest place to be since the other eyes can't magic you there, so you bunch up with your melee members in front, magic casters behind and if it looks away it gets a lightning bolt to the face
"Everyone introduce yourselves." "I am a dwarven paladin named Bulgor Stoenfist." "I am an Elven Sorcerer named Anaror." "I am a Beholder Wizard. Named Gugbugolith." "I'm the DM, and I'm stopping you right there."
So uh, Gary took the concept and body part of Vision, and stuck enough together with magic that it became a terrifying monster. My turn: Hands. The Snatcher is a monstrosity that manifests at rest as a large pile of dozens to hundreds of humanoid hands, each one ending at the mid-forearm, surrounding a gooey, gray, sticky core. When active, the hands interlock into whatever shapes are necessary for their task. Large pillars of interlocking hands acting as muscles in an arm ending with fist-like ball, daisy-chains of hands holding the base of other hands reach very, very far, acting as long tentacular structures, hands can line its underside to crawl rapidly over nearly any surface, eyes sprout from the palms of a few, and groups of clawed hands tear away at prey, killing them messily but efficiently, if no sharp utensils are in its possession. A Snatcher that gets its many hands on a cutlery box or a silverware drawer can be quite lethal in close quarters. An urban ambush predator, The Snatcher will lure humanoid prey to dark alleyways with glittering coins or enchanted weapons placed on the edge of the shadows, where it grabs the curious humanoid by the head, covering their mouth, eyes, and ears, and pulling them through a nearby window, doorway, hall, drain cover, trapdoor, Sewer grate, or other opening where they are pulled and carried back to its den, along with the bait. It then uses clawed hands or sharp utensils to kill and slice up its prey, dropping the meat chunks into its gooey core, which then spits out more hands for the pile. A city with a snatcher infestation will be characterized by streets surprisingly clear of rats, stray dogs, or homeless people, all of which snatched up long ago, and while few thieves hide in the alleys, party members will find coin pouches cut off and pockets pilfered if they rest very long on a city street. A very lethal threat to any greedy party rogue, the Snatcher will happily devour any adventurer foolish enough to walk over to that perfectly good sword someone just left there...
This certainly has grabbed my attention. How intelligent would it be? I could see it on par with a monkey, animalistic but can use tools and form simple plans or set traps. I'd give it tremor sense, because it can feel vibrations with it's more sensitive hands. Some hands could have mouths in their center which can speak and eat. How does it procreate? Maybe it gets so large that all the hands struggle to coordinate, making it unable to go hunting. In frustration it tears itself apart, creating multiple smaller versions of itself. This is usually a great time to attack it, as each part is weakened from the procedure.
@@DanaTheLateBloomingFruitLoop it eats by dissolving stuff in its core, and for intelligence, about on par with a human. Smart enough to use tools, maybe make some plans or traps, but nit a genius by any means. It only speaks Sign Language, of course. It procreates by splitting off a section of its core when it's too large for its available food. The child then scuttles away to find a different hunting ground.
If your players do Literally Anything you have the right to scream "Ah approach 3215A with the badger! WELL HAVE SOME OCTOPUS!" And telekinesis a giant summoned octopus onto the cleric
I'd go out of my way to make a Beholder NPC that's virtually omnipotent but is both extremely paranoid and eccentric to the point where they are basically a conspiracy theorist hermit that instantly dispatches anything unfamiliar in increasingly bizarre ways.
Dude, I rewatch your old videos on a weekly basis. They are just so good! You have a marvealous sense of humour and comedic timing. Whenever you make a new video, it skyrockets to the very top of my watch-list. What I'm trying to say here, is thank you mate! You make a tremendous difference to this guy. Stay frosty!
Honestly these things sound like a combination of hilarious antics, tough bosses, and a tragic existence I wouldn't wish on anyone. I can kinda see why they wound up so popular over the years.
To make it extra Lovecraftian, a beholder nest also needs to be a source of some wandering monsters and have a village of frog people nearby, whose shaman speaks the will of the many-eyed god who dreams.
Funny thing is, i'm pretty sure that's happened. I've lived in the farming communities with enough crotchety old folks who don't let a little thing like missing chunks of a body or cancer slow them down.
Runesmith, I see you. This was one of the better vids I've seen on the topic of ...me. good inspires for my next abberational modulation of a classic tsr adventure. Appreciate. Be extravagant, my dude. Cheers.
New sub here! Love your sense of humor and what you add to the lore! I'm making a module for NWN and you've made it NOT boring to do my mythos research. Thanks!
4:23 The picture of those little plastic monsters instantly sent my memory back some 37 years or more. I haven't seen those (or thought about them) since I was a small child. I remember them being some of my favorite toys.
Your video's often fill me with new information while making me chuckle but this one - This One had me pissing myself with laughter, with my neck in pain cause I couldn't stop, at the description for the many eye's alone. Oh Gawd. Yeah these video's are old but fuck it I subbed to you anyway. Keep making me laugh mate.
I don't understand why laught so hard in this vid but I did. New Sub. That part where the Beholder is about to die but refuses too and becomes a Death Tyrant was too much.
Man, you really threw me for a loop. I saw one of the eyes wasn’t labeled and thought “did he just miscount” and I spent 5 minutes thinking and researching before I realized you just skipped 9.
My beholder was created by another beholder to be a more perfect beholder. Proceeds to dream up the main bad guy who is destined to kill him. Then decided if he is gonna kill me then I will make a beholder strong enough to kill him. A cycle of beholders making 'better' beholder to 'save' then from a horrible fate. Cue the 'alliance' with the party because the enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally until I decide to kill them.
Yep, there are actually quite a lot of things in the monster manuals across all editions that a party of players really can't beat without some kind of handicap from the gm. including dragons.
Loose? LOOSE?!? My biggest english pet peeve! Lose! It's lose! You loose a plague! You lose the hounds upon your enemies! The convict got loose! But you sir? You lose! Also fun video.
Dude I like this guys series a lot. On an off note when I pressed spacebar to pause the video this time it muted the video. Commandable Gremlins imagine the power.
The 12th eye is actually coming from a deformed gazer, tucked behind this particular beholder. Move along.
Or maybe I can't do math and can't spell because I have the brain of a half eaten chicken.
Runesmith: Disses XP to Lvl 3's upload schedule
XP to Lvl 3: Uploads 4 years from now in response
you counted from 8 straight to 10
THE MISSING NINE!
At least it sounds like a good name for an adventure.
So you're just gonna skip 9 like that?
didn't even mention the beholster. a beholder with 6 guns, each more deadly than the last!
Could he technically wield a Cannon with his telekenesis? Not that i would ever make something like that in Pathfinder.
@@TheXell wouldn't that be less harmful though?
Enter the Gungeon
@@silentdrew7636 The Beholder could, unwittingly, make the Cannon he's holding ridiculously powerful, like "it launches cannonballs that don't explode, but rather disintegrate everything they touch, leaving cannonball-sized tunnels that go on forever".
@No Name it's pretty easy once you learn to kill the minios
Fun fact: Beholder's brains actually house two separate consciousnesses, both of which are antagonistic to one another. So the main reason why adventurers can kill them is because both consciousnesses are plotting to cause the downfall of the other consciousness while the battle goes on. They're actively sabotaging themselves, despite the fact that this will get both 'minds' killed. *Beholders are quite literally their own worst enemies.*
Trust no one, not even yourself.
I really love this idea, it sounds fun to roleplay. Wonder how that could work...
Maybe my subconsiousness is trying to kill me, will this be a suicide or a murder?
Debreczeni Árpád It’s neither if you can kill them before they kill you.
'Listen, the only person here going to kill you is yourself."
"WELL NOT IF I KILL HIM FIRST"
"It's immpossible to kill a beholder in any situation unless the DM palys them wrong"
Same goes for half the monsters in the monster manual.
One time during a campaign I just sat down in front of a beholder and confronted it about its fear. The DM was so confused he just gave up and said that it had a stroke from its new realization and died
@@dominicodematte Didn't see that one coming.
Or (bear with me here) you can use stupity of any sort to kill a beholder.
@@dominicodematte lol
If you can fight gods and the tarrasque, pretty sure you can fight a beholder. xD
Sooo, does that mean you could have a one shot where the players are trying to kill a beholder for reasons they do not know about, only to discover that they are the Beholder's greatest fears literally come to life?
I feel like that would be a very interesting way to start off a high level game too, since just imagine how that be like.
Now THAT'S a really good idea!
"I don't recall existing prior to this moment." Or for added mind games. Have the party come into contact with the actual party that inspired the beholder's nightmare.
oooooh that would be interesting.
Damn...thanks for the awesome idea.
I guess the only thing worse than meeting a Beholder is being one. That's kinda sad.
By D&D cosmology and lore standards, the life of a Beholder is unfortunate but not excessively so considering it's liable to die at some point. That is a luxury many extra planar creatures don't have.
@@indan So it's the death tyrants who are the true victims.
But the real question is, gentleman, what if a death tyrrant wish to be squishy again??
Debreczeni Árpád none desire so
my sentiment exactly, it must be such a painful existence.
All beholders born after 1400DR cant cook, all they know is: Take legendary action, collect magic item, shoot beam of decay, and lie.
Imagining two beholders fighting is hilarious because they have to either both look away from each other so they can shoot their magic eye rays at their opponent without fucking it up with their own anti-magic cone or they both say screw that and just start biting each other to death.
That's what usually happens. Beholder fights are long, gruesome, and sort of pathetic to watch.
At one point I had a character manage to convince a beholder that they were in fact the actual beholder and the beholder was just a figment sent to kill itself. The beholder recoiled in horror and self-doubt giving the party time to flee. I mean, they never killed the beholder but at least they escaped alive. I'd call that a win.
Going by Beholder lore, as a DM I would have had that Beholder literally fear itself to death/wish itself out of existence.
@@sircastic959 I think they become liches that way, and thats worse.
"Look at them run. They really fell for that? I've got no time for them right now as the real danger may be near by. Nevertheless I'll send some minions after that party and make sure them and their friends, family, home towns, and treasures are destroyed and enslaved in my dungeons. What? We sent them here? Oh...dang, that's right; i forgot." - beholders
Beholders looking at the players is like humans looking at lobsters.
They're amusing and pose no real threat until they pull out weapons and try to kill you.
...if humans were eldritch horrors that thought lobsters and also the sand they were standing on was going to vaporize them
You mess with the crabbo, you get the stabbo.
@@poppymon007 And then as Eldritch Horrors who were afraid of sand and lobsters we would find a place to hide and gather power. However, gathering so much power would gain the attention of the lobsters and thus a group of Lobster adventurers would gather and come to slay said Eldritch Horror with weapons.
So it's self fulfilling. Or is it just their thoughts coming into reality?
"Wait, lobsters can't wield weapons."
O B S E R V E
man, they really took the term "lovecraftian" to heart with this one. Right down to the crippling fear of everything unfamiliar, and being unfamiliar with everything.
And to some degree unfamiliar to everything.
Yep 😂
I’m just starting watching “The Unnameable” on Amazon Prime like 6 minutes ago simultaneously checking my notifications and this is the comment that vindicates the simulation theory of reality..... whatever, right?
@Kel'Thuzad Do we really need to bring this into a video about a giant death eyeball
@Kel'Thuzad Phobia literally means *fear* , not *irrational fear*
Just in modern psychology it's *mostly* used for irrational-ish fears. But that doesn't mean that every phobia inherently describes an irrational fear by definition.
My favorite bit of beholder trivia i've ever read is that beholders can be created spontaneously just because they think they should.
I love the paradox inherent in their creation, Beholders really have such great lovecraftian flavor
you got one big thing wrong, they don't consciously bend reality, it only works in their dreams. this is why a party can actually beat them.
I'm pretty sure when he said the party of Adventures shouldn't be able to beat them , he's talking about their obsessive over planning means they have a contingency plan. For example, a Beholder might have a setup in place for when 5 adventurers show up at his door. Lets call this plan number 1,692.
Now if this party consists of a wizard, a bard, two clerics, and a paladin, we move to plan 1,692 subsection 411.
Now if possible we divise what subclasses they are and what spells they might have prepared and finally after going through about 30 subsections, you have a plan for when the envoker wizard uses fireball you activate the waterfall, while keeping anti magic on the vengeance paladin, having your minions shooting at the lore bard and engaging the paladin ib melee while you attempt to stone the life cleric and disintegrate the Tempest cleric.
And all that my just be step 3 lol
Yeah, beholders are the kind of thing that, if played realistically, cannot be beaten.
Imagine if all of humanity genius got on a cave, and started thinking of ways to kill YOU when you come to kill THEM. Now imagine they're doing this 24/7, for years on end, all the while amassing armies and powerfull treasures to kill YOU.
Now imagine all of them have laser guns.
One of them even has a laser gun that jam your laser guns, so you can't fire your lasers on them.
Hell, if a beholder is old enough, there's no reason to even have a setting, the thing probably rules the world on a Iron Fist by now, and kills everything that gets a little uppity (which, for a beholder, means beyond level 1)
Zizo Segundo not even beholders can come up with something to overcome the craziness a party is capable of.
@@Aplesedjr yup, Beholders can't have infinite plans,it only takes a few possible combinators before there are too many outcomes to plan for. More importantly, Beholders don't really understand other beings so they can't predict them intuitively like humans do. They have to use up all their intelligence on brute-forcing like a chess AI trying to play the stockmarket.
gracefool and even if they make a perfect plan, the dice determine what happens. The party can roll nothing but good for attacks and saves, then the beholder gets destroyed.
"as inconsistent as XP to Level 3's uploads"
I hope you have Burn Heal!
Mitchell Pierce A self burn! Those are rare.
A Phoenix Down maybe better
Pokemon and Final Fantasy references in the same thread. Yeet
i read that last sentence as " i hope you burn in heal" and i was just picturing the plane of positive energy
got 'em
Ah yes. Beholders. I had a high level paladin back when disintegrate actually disintegrated you, period. No messing with hitpoint damage or anything like that. Fail the save and you're dust. Anyways, this paladin came had gotten separated from his party for some reason, I seem to remember some sort of fear magic from a lich was involved. So, he runs around a corner in the dungeion and comes face to eyeballs with a beholder. Paladin vs Beholder - Round one, FIGHT! Zap! Result one round later: Dungeon corridor with one beholder and one small pile of dust.
Ah. Memories.
Isn't it 3rd edition where disintegrate juat zapped you gone? I remember every wizard running around with Contingency and teleport... Oh man.
Beholder anti magic field
So basically they're narcissistic powerful beings who are feared by others...and yet paradoxically they fear everyone and everything around them?
Don't worry, they fear you mire, but also they got a higher "fucking-killing-you" chance than you....
It's not so much fear everything as are 100% sure that everything is trying to kill them so they have to make sure to set things up to where they can kill whatever that is actively trying to kill them at this moment before they can.
Seems a difference without distinction, but it's sort of not in that a beholder won't huddle in terror at the thought of something trying to kill it, or even think of most creatures as actual threats, but it does realize that enough working together or getting lucky might get it. It's kind of a cop out but it's more a paranoia than a fear... But most things really do want to kill beholders
So communists.
@SaviorOfNirn Oh I know! Nazis! And Daleks, but they're just a salt shaker version of the former.
Hello, Sociopath.
Ah, I remember my first Beholder encounter.
It spoke German.
Like, our DM did not know what to do with a Beholder, so it just spoke German.
That's literally it.
Oh, no wait, it was strong.
nothing says a scary eldritch monstrosity than a german speaking beholder
Did it wipe you guys? Stick you in the furnace?
stark
Most D&D settings refer to the language as "Orcish" instead of "German".
I want to say your DM was utterly wrong, but...
Best video yet, I laughed till I cried.
Then I remembered I dreamt I'd die from drowning, so I burned out my tear ducts. Now all I need to do is disintegrate all the oceans.
removed the icecaps as well, I had a dream I will die of a polar bear riding a penguin
Should we tell him he’s made of water
@@Eggsecuter *dehydrates self and turns to dust*
Soooo, what you're saying is that Beholders are Death Stars of the D&D world, but with eyes.
@Jan Sitkowski frankly, I think a torpedo up your exhaust port would defeat you too.
A beholder duel would just be a staring contest, first one to blink with the anti-magic eye loses
"EYE apolog-EYES, to m-EYE VIEWers"
Got em
Ayy lmao/10 would ayy lmao again
We saw a beholder from a great distance away, once.
We went the other way and never came back lol
@@jonumine6250 Fun fact, cacodaemons are monsters as well.
Use bread like he said
Gaseos form
@@jonumine6250 I would file them under Demons.
Beholder: good
It wasn't Gary's nightmare about a soccer ball with eyes that gave us the Beholder. It was one of his friends nightmare about a soccer ball with eyes that he shared with Gary Gygax that gave us the Beholder! THANKS GARY'S FRIEND!
So were did the gelatinous cube come from?
His grandson nearly choked on some jello
I''m glad you covered the most important fact, beholders like goldfish.
I kinda want to have my party fight a beholder, and when they kill it, It'll say "nevermind, I dont want to be dead" and just get back up as a death tyrant
Are you Satan ?
The Terraria segment was great! The trouble you went through to actually make yourself look like a Beholder in game was fantastic.
Yeah, getting that vehicle is hard.
@@pkennelly74 its not hard, just grindy. I think i ended uo trading a dupe cosmic car key for most of the mats back in the day
Or you could use builders workshop or mods
Patrick Kennelly *ahem* hacked worlds
I'm never going to see that mount as anything else but a beholder now.
This is why I love dragon heist. YOu aren't supposed to kill xanathar. Just ruin his day.
Which, when you think about it, is more cruel. Because if The Xanathar is dead, _he can't suffer anymore._
I thought I was just supposed to replace his dead goldfish.
Ya his own organization hires thieves to replace his pet when it dies without his knowing.
i imagine that the rampage would kill him because he would be utterly unstable and enraged and would eventually succumb to numbers.
also i think there i a mindflayer there.
but then i could steal Sylgar
Bluecho4 there are afterlives for a reason.
Beholders constantly think about how the world is out to get them, they dream about stuff they think about, and there dreams alter reality to create things. How are they not just constantly being killed.
Because they have plans to deal with them.
@@magnusanderson6681 not when a red dragon suddenly spawns in your bedroom when your plan was that it would fall through the portal to the celestail realms if it tried to enter from catacombs, the only playce it would fit.
This actually made me feel sorry for them, I never actually considered that the root of their xenophobia was constant paranoia driven fear. An existence of constant fear is rather sad to imagine.
if it makes you feel better i would like to inform you that there is canonically at least one beholder who got over it and is super chill, his name is Large Luigi and he runs a tavern
Ah, yes. The wise philosopher Sock Kratos. I remember reading his writings in my favorite Muppets book.
The god of war had quite a long fall from grace, after losing Atreus prompted him to become a philosopher, searching for the meanings of life as a sock puppet.
God of War: Atreus' Epic Yarn
First time I ever encountered a beholder was back in 2E AD&D.
It killed us.
IT KILLED ALL OF US.
_What did I cost?_
Cast darkness so it cant see you THEN CAST MAGIC MISSILE AT THE DARKNESS!
@@chrishubbard64 "anti magic cone"
Beholders sound just like DMs
They have canon plot armor. All they have to do is have a dream about being invincible.
@@kylepessell1350 But they only think about being in danger
So it’s a lovecraftian monster with lovecraft’s emotions.
So basically what if the mind flayers were even more neurotic?
And ugly
@@tonydanatop4912
*perfect
Fixed it for you
@@brosephnoonan223 Found the beholder
Or smarter cacodemons
How to deal with Death Tyrants in 3 steps:
1. get about 20 lv20 wizards
2. have whoever goes first cast Darkness and the rest cast Sunbeam
3. profit
Ethan Hall Have them be arranged in a circle around the Beholder, then have each one cast Imprisonment until it takes after the first one casts Force Cage.
@@evannibbe9375 How tf you gonna surround a beholder with 11 death eyeballs
@Ethan Hall death tyrants don't have their antimagic sight anymore, only a "No-regaining-hit-points-and
-if-you-die-you-turn-into-a-zombie- slave" sight
i legit thought "how in the world would someone kill this?'' when i read the beholder manual entry in d&d
It's fun thinking about all the zany traps, magical items and spells they could use on top of all this.
my thoughts on this is that the Beholder's paranoia is so cripplingly strong that it is constantly double/triple/quadruple/pentuple/etc. guessing itself about how everything it could do to protect itself might backfire, thus ruining any attempt at long term planning, as it scraps and revises plans that would have been perfectly fine to keep, thus in combat it never exp[loits weakness in their enemies, fearing that any opening is actually a cleaver trap.
Probably by not being in the same room as it. Or tank and spank from characters that can take eye beams really well.
The beholder in my campaign had a pet goldfish that died and was really sad. We all found him a new pet and he was very happy. He was the sweetest beholder I ever met.
Damn, these are *WAY* more lovecraftian than mind flayers
Waiting for XP to level 3 to respond to that burn damage.
Aaron Slay i think he’s part of that crew right
@@Hazel-xl8in
Ye
@@Hazel-xl8in yeah but it's a friendly self burn. The best kind of burn.
_Death Tyants - when great-grandpa Beholder reflects on his mortality, and then pulls the badass move of just straight up refusing it._
Best description for a DnD monster I think I've ever heard XD
"The gravity gun from half-life"
Never heard a more accurate statement
Beholders true enemies is burnt toast
I might actually use that as a possible weird quirk if a warlock player of mine chooses the Aberration(Great Old One) subclass. Just every once in a while he'll hear a cosmic scream of "DESTROY" when he sees anything made of wheat.
@@eoincampbell1584 that's so good
Irrational oddities are what make ADD great! "Hey guys im just going to eat this Loaf of bread real quick, im hungry." *ZzaaPP!!* "Dude what the hell! You almost hit me with lightning!"
and in the warlocks mind he hears a satisfied "mmm..... yes"
Is burnt toast not the truest enemy of us all? O.o
I love the "I'll use Terraria as an example I guess".
I'll use my Enter the Gungeon example
This gives me a fascinating idea for a character concept: A beholder that in its paranoia, desires to find a way to understand people. It creates not just one person but an entire settlement and watches them to try and understand what they think about, how likely they may be to kill them, etc. It leads to eventually the beholder has created this town or city that believes the beholder is their god protector, not seeing the true reason they were created and watched over. It'd be an interesting thing for a party or some characters to interact with, a beholder that tries to counter the paranoia with knowledge
*begins writing campaign about a mysterious wheat shortage, with the toast fearing beholder as BBEG*
You know what they say, beauty is in the eye of the beekeeper.
... wait
I heard of a DM who made a very shitty pun once. He told the players rumours of a beholder lurking on the outskirts of town. They went into the woods to investigate and got jumped by a dude holding beehives in both hands who yelled out "BEHOLD, IT IS I, THE BEE HOLDER!"
You're welcome.
NOT THE BEES!!!!!
@@kylestanley7843 Was he at least as powerful as a god?
@@corngamming he better have been lol
If I take anything away from this it'll be "They're Coming"
*WELCOME TO THE BONE ZONE*
I was all "well THAT got creepy fast!"
3:22 FACTUALLY 100% TRUE. A lone beholder on Xanax would conquer all the Forgotten Realms, and move on to the Multiverse.
Goblin Slayer and friends killed it in a reasonable way
With a pouch full of flammable eye irritants.
That might have been a spectator though.
"...Viewers."
Eye see what you did there
That was a very cornea joke.
If you wish to master these jokes, you must train... Or become my pupil
@@TheSoliloquyMan Yeah but your not the teacher I'm looking for. I'll set my sights elsewhere.
You're the GCP grey of D&D. I love your basically series. Thank you.
Anyone else think death kiss is super adorable?
I was going to say beholders are hideous, but then i remembered beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
So all beholders are just pusillanimous copies of an original beholder?
That becomes more paranoid with each successive generation
@@adeadvirus5639 wouldn't you be if your creator tried to murder you lol
I bet you call salt sodium chloride
I love everything Lovecraftian. So this is incredible.
The antimagic ray is the safest place to be since the other eyes can't magic you there, so you bunch up with your melee members in front, magic casters behind and if it looks away it gets a lightning bolt to the face
"And a Second Death ray for good measure, you never can be too careful" That Got me
I'm gonna roleplay a beholder at some point.
Obviously I'm DMing in this case.
Nah you totally meant as a player
Damn, imagine a beholder player-character
@@frog_champ If it was well justified I'd let it happen on a high level campaign
@@kylestanley7843 I'd like, but no one would let me, so I'll do the next best thing
"Everyone introduce yourselves."
"I am a dwarven paladin named Bulgor Stoenfist."
"I am an Elven Sorcerer named Anaror."
"I am a Beholder Wizard. Named Gugbugolith."
"I'm the DM, and I'm stopping you right there."
Can a beholder use glasses?
If he uses one his main eye does he need to use it in his other eyes?
A man can only wonder
“Beholders can accidentally create anything”
*has a campaign idea around a beholder accidentally creating a god*
So uh, Gary took the concept and body part of Vision, and stuck enough together with magic that it became a terrifying monster.
My turn: Hands.
The Snatcher is a monstrosity that manifests at rest as a large pile of dozens to hundreds of humanoid hands, each one ending at the mid-forearm, surrounding a gooey, gray, sticky core. When active, the hands interlock into whatever shapes are necessary for their task. Large pillars of interlocking hands acting as muscles in an arm ending with fist-like ball, daisy-chains of hands holding the base of other hands reach very, very far, acting as long tentacular structures, hands can line its underside to crawl rapidly over nearly any surface, eyes sprout from the palms of a few, and groups of clawed hands tear away at prey, killing them messily but efficiently, if no sharp utensils are in its possession. A Snatcher that gets its many hands on a cutlery box or a silverware drawer can be quite lethal in close quarters.
An urban ambush predator, The Snatcher will lure humanoid prey to dark alleyways with glittering coins or enchanted weapons placed on the edge of the shadows, where it grabs the curious humanoid by the head, covering their mouth, eyes, and ears, and pulling them through a nearby window, doorway, hall, drain cover, trapdoor, Sewer grate, or other opening where they are pulled and carried back to its den, along with the bait. It then uses clawed hands or sharp utensils to kill and slice up its prey, dropping the meat chunks into its gooey core, which then spits out more hands for the pile.
A city with a snatcher infestation will be characterized by streets surprisingly clear of rats, stray dogs, or homeless people, all of which snatched up long ago, and while few thieves hide in the alleys, party members will find coin pouches cut off and pockets pilfered if they rest very long on a city street.
A very lethal threat to any greedy party rogue, the Snatcher will happily devour any adventurer foolish enough to walk over to that perfectly good sword someone just left there...
This certainly has grabbed my attention.
How intelligent would it be? I could see it on par with a monkey, animalistic but can use tools and form simple plans or set traps.
I'd give it tremor sense, because it can feel vibrations with it's more sensitive hands.
Some hands could have mouths in their center which can speak and eat.
How does it procreate? Maybe it gets so large that all the hands struggle to coordinate, making it unable to go hunting. In frustration it tears itself apart, creating multiple smaller versions of itself.
This is usually a great time to attack it, as each part is weakened from the procedure.
@@DanaTheLateBloomingFruitLoop it eats by dissolving stuff in its core, and for intelligence, about on par with a human. Smart enough to use tools, maybe make some plans or traps, but nit a genius by any means. It only speaks Sign Language, of course. It procreates by splitting off a section of its core when it's too large for its available food. The child then scuttles away to find a different hunting ground.
If your players do Literally Anything you have the right to scream "Ah approach 3215A with the badger! WELL HAVE SOME OCTOPUS!" And telekinesis a giant summoned octopus onto the cleric
I'd go out of my way to make a Beholder NPC that's virtually omnipotent but is both extremely paranoid and eccentric to the point where they are basically a conspiracy theorist hermit that instantly dispatches anything unfamiliar in increasingly bizarre ways.
@@kylepessell1350 that's the base description for the Beholder in the monster manual lmao
0:17 I literally got the notification that my phone was at 15% at this moment, it was beutiful
Dude, I rewatch your old videos on a weekly basis. They are just so good! You have a marvealous sense of humour and comedic timing. Whenever you make a new video, it skyrockets to the very top of my watch-list. What I'm trying to say here, is thank you mate! You make a tremendous difference to this guy. Stay frosty!
That was awesome! My favorite of the"Basically" series by far. DO NOT STOP MAKING THESE.....Please :)
Beholders are fun. Aka play Waterdeep and have Xanathar as a great villain.
fish
I like how the charming eye is “South of the Border”
This series brought me to this channel. Please keep it up!
Now I see where Mercer modeled his Lucien Omega final boss
“XP to level 3 has inconsistent uploads” - Sock Kratos
Honestly these things sound like a combination of hilarious antics, tough bosses, and a tragic existence I wouldn't wish on anyone. I can kinda see why they wound up so popular over the years.
To make it extra Lovecraftian, a beholder nest also needs to be a source of some wandering monsters and have a village of frog people nearby, whose shaman speaks the will of the many-eyed god who dreams.
This is probably my favorite vid. I come back to watch it all the time; so nonchalant, so upbeat.👍
Eye should have foreseen all these aye puns. Oh the eyerony!
*jesus christ, it's Jason borne.*
must have been an over*sight* on your part
Imagine great-grandpa is in his death bed and the doctor tells him that he will die soon and he just straight up refuses to.
Funny thing is, i'm pretty sure that's happened. I've lived in the farming communities with enough crotchety old folks who don't let a little thing like missing chunks of a body or cancer slow them down.
@@widdershins3785 Yeah, the human mind can be funny that way.
Runesmith, I see you. This was one of the better vids I've seen on the topic of ...me. good inspires for my next abberational modulation of a classic tsr adventure. Appreciate. Be extravagant, my dude. Cheers.
The first minute of this video gave me so much whiplash with all of the jokes and attacks on random people's character.
My favorite is the beholster from enter the gungeon
He was pretty funny ngl
Big Lasagna
*gun*
"It's impossible for a beholder to die unless the DM play him wrong"
Goblin slayer : hold my beer
New sub here! Love your sense of humor and what you add to the lore! I'm making a module for NWN and you've made it NOT boring to do my mythos research. Thanks!
4:23 The picture of those little plastic monsters instantly sent my memory back some 37 years or more. I haven't seen those (or thought about them) since I was a small child. I remember them being some of my favorite toys.
0:46 sick burn
2:19 You forgot 9 Count chockula would be disapointed
But he also skipped an eye, so it's still 11.
@@Freedster Yeah but hes still missing that eye
You mean Count von Count from Sesame Street. The cereal mascot isn't known for counting things.
Your video's often fill me with new information while making me chuckle but this one - This One had me pissing myself with laughter, with my neck in pain cause I couldn't stop, at the description for the many eye's alone. Oh Gawd. Yeah these video's are old but fuck it I subbed to you anyway. Keep making me laugh mate.
I don't understand why laught so hard in this vid but I did. New Sub. That part where the Beholder is about to die but refuses too and becomes a Death Tyrant was too much.
This was extremely informative
I think the next one should be Basically Aboleths
Great video as always Runie.
Thank you! I was having trouble thinking about the next quest for the big arc of my campaign when this came!
For some reason I'm reminded of Futurama's Star Trek episode with the floating cloud of gas.
"Sir..you'll die someday"
"Yeah no, I'm death now"
Man, you really threw me for a loop. I saw one of the eyes wasn’t labeled and thought “did he just miscount” and I spent 5 minutes thinking and researching before I realized you just skipped 9.
My beholder was created by another beholder to be a more perfect beholder. Proceeds to dream up the main bad guy who is destined to kill him. Then decided if he is gonna kill me then I will make a beholder strong enough to kill him. A cycle of beholders making 'better' beholder to 'save' then from a horrible fate. Cue the 'alliance' with the party because the enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally until I decide to kill them.
By this logic the first time I met a beholder (albeit a zombie beholder) Me and my horse got snapped. What a thought.
Yep, there are actually quite a lot of things in the monster manuals across all editions that a party of players really can't beat without some kind of handicap from the gm. including dragons.
Throwing a flash-bang at a beholder should just Be an instant win
0:48 why are these things scared of bleeding to death when they don’t even have blood vessels
Loose? LOOSE?!? My biggest english pet peeve! Lose! It's lose! You loose a plague! You lose the hounds upon your enemies! The convict got loose! But you sir? You lose!
Also fun video.
Hold up.
**HOLD UP**
WHAT IF.....you plunged into a beholders den wearing nothing but GLASS ARMOR?!
Reflection will kill them?
Everything you've described here makes them sound like the perfect companion for a comedy campaign
Dude I like this guys series a lot. On an off note when I pressed spacebar to pause the video this time it muted the video. Commandable Gremlins imagine the power.
Beholder dont use such heresy!