Only related due to the pun, but once for a one shot, I played a grappling-based character called the BeHolder whose personality, voice, etc. were all based on the character the Boulder from Avatar the Last Airbender (e.g. telling my DM in the third person "The BeHolder would like to put the goblin in a headlock")
By far my favorite thing about beholders is how they literally create things from nothing when they dream; and forming adventures based on that. Perhaps trying to get to a beholder in order to simply waking it up so that it stops creating monsters all over the place.
Oh wait, I have an idea in my brain-hole. Have players create like 5th level PCs or something with no knowledge of the game world etc. Start them in the Beholder's dungeon, no idea who they or each other are, no idea how they got there. Dreamed into existence by the very Beholder at the center of it all.
HUMAN MELTING POINTS REMAIN... INCONSISTENT.. ;D he my favorite character already in league of legends and kind of the reason im checking out the cool video!
@MrRhexx Personally I am the opposite, I hate this bit of lore. It is one of those lore things were its like, "yeah, cool, of course it can" but the practical implications of this is insane. Creating Armies of Beholders that can also dream more beholders into existence, or perhaps dreaming of having miniature spheres of annihilation inside all their enemies that detonate at a given time. Another name for a character like this is a god, and shouldn't be used in any self-respecting plot.
Dael must be SUCH a magnificent DM Her imagination and rhetoric astounds me every time I watch her DnD videos. She also kinda _gets_ DnD, she knows how and when it's supposed to be weird... no, not just weird... also eerie, fantastic, curious, mystical, fantastical, inconceivable... I love her views of the fey and I love this
Funnily enough, instead of a lamp-eye, I used a candle. The beholder held a candle as it prowled its lair (no dark vision) For it's aberrant nature, I took the idea of friendship and extrapolated it to the extreme. The beholder can't fathom the abstract nature of friendship so he has driven himself mad trying to cut the friendship out of lesser beings for his own uses. Having this alien creature rambling to himself as they held their breath just 20ft away... it was great fun.
I ran a beholder once whose body had been destroyed, and it was just a huge eye floating in a useless robot body. It's various other eyes could operate independently, attached to a modified ogre (eyegre). It was sacking a library looking for a manual on Biomancy to rebuild it's body.
"[these things] can leave a player frustrated, rather than /delighted by the misfortune that has befallen them/." That's it, that's the best approach to dm'ing ever :D
My party did a match maker thing and that's how I ended the session, he now is being stalked by a beholder named Karen, which works perfectly for a beholder. She stole her shoes after that date :/
I've been cooking up an idea for a warlock who gets his powers by replacing his eye with one from a Beholder's stalk. What he doesn't know is that this is how Beholder's reproduce and he's going to be slowly turning into a Beholder.
technically speaking, beholders reproduce by dreaming up themselves. Which is why they are rare. I saw a video on it that went all the way back to 1e for the lore about them. But I highly... highly doubt your player knows this, as it's such an obscure fact. So your idea is clever and I wish you GL with it. :D
This feels like what the monster manual should be trying to do more - giving a unified thematic idea around a monster & how that plays into mechanics. Cause I now want this for every major monster. The imagery of the single light in a dark and forbidding city hits HARD.
I think the books need to provide more advice on how to customize and adjust monsters, instead of presenting them as a "take it or leave it" stat block.
@@dicorockhimself Actually there are a bunch of tables for customizing beholders. I think they're in Xanathar's. But that only applies to aesthetic stuff and a few personality traits, not to things like powers.
@@Myzelfa oh I know and their rad for flavor I just wish they took that a stpe further for my buddies who are new to dming. So I dont have to teach them from the ground up how to buff monsters berf monsters and customize them at the level that a lot of good dms do
I love the idea in Volo’s that the eyes symbolize paranoia, but at the same time it seems uncharacteristic for a creature who meticulously makes plans for every eventuality to go into battle and suddenly say “lol let’s throw some random beams around and see what happens.”
I really like the idea of Beholders having different eyestalk powers. Like, there could be a table of 100 stalk powers, and you pick ten from the list. One of the things I like about Beholders are their supreme arrogance and belief in their superiority. They even have two brains, one of which is filters out information that would contest the idea of their superiority.
"I want it to feel like it reaches beyond the game to touch the players". * DM throws a water balloon at a player *. So evocative, love it, my beholders will be like this from now on, those crit beam effects are sweet.
I like the idea of 2 Vel'Koz meeting and arguing over the existential meaning of the last group of adventurers one of them murdered. I think it could get bloody.
What's really inspiring (I think) is Aberration who is ALSO a massive narcissistic paranoid. That way you have some grasp of the monster's goals and relationships with factions. Also, you get more satisfaction out of the alien intelligence of these things when they're pulling strings from the background; much more monologuing that way and an actual opportunity to experience bent aspects of reality.
I once heard beholders described as "...an intensely alien, Lovecraftian physiology, but instead of having an equally alien mindset they just have the personality of H.P. Lovecraft himself."
"The first one is called Gulf. When it hits all of your numbers are reversed. You have to get lower numbers and AC goes backwards." By the gods...the beholder brought back THAC0! :O
Such a great video, the ideas about the desolated and warped city were awesome. I feel like a good solution for keeping the "permanent" effects only for a short time would be using the specific eye that caused the efect to beging with a alchemic component for a cure to the effect. That way the characters only have to have that knowledge, extract the eye wihout damaging it and concoct the potion themselves or look for someone who can do it for them.
I think this would work great as a first generation Beholder. One that has only recently arrived on the prime material. And as they dream offspring they slowly become accustomed to the world but eclectic like Xanathar.
Ma'am, I like your grasp of aberrations. This is always what I'm going for when I run Mind Flayers, Aboleth, Beholders, anything to do with the Far Realm. I love the Lovecraftian effects that result in: "Wait, reality _doesn't like that."_
At present whenever I watch one of Dael's videos I take notes because I want to steal that (which is most of it) and because I need to suddenly try put Bandanas again. Gorgeous Look Dael!
Dear Dael, I did * not * plan to listen to 4 minutes of voice-acting from a video game I don't play, and yet, here we are; you, me, Vel'Koz, and Eric Braa. I hope you gave your brother a high five for that connection! Another great creature, thanks for sharing. (Now all I need is for pandemic to end, so I can gather my party and freak them out...)
If you need other good voicelines from the game I suggest just another nobody videos. He dose a really good job showing the nerative in characters voices
Couple more ideas: - What if, when the eyestalk gets severed, two more come out of the wound? - Eyestalk power: a player suddenly sees another beholder next to them, until, when they attack, they see a fellow party member, tying into the whole "perception" thing - Eyestalk power: a player gets microvision/their mental filters go off. I once heard a story of someone who did a little bit too many drugs one night, causing their mental filters to shut down and they said it was terrifying. Have the player see so many details on their surroundings and other party members, that it almost becomes uncannyvalley-like and disgusting, giving them, idk, a save against fear or disadvantage or something - Eyestalk power: the player suddenly feels every microorganism in and on their body. - Something weird and wacky: what if thr eyestalks could creep out of or extend from the main body? That could create horrifying moments where only an eye on a gross slimy stalk is creeping around, looking for the players, or during combat, creeping around them and potentially sneak attacking or grappling
Beholders aren't Hydras. Their eyestalks (aka heads for hydras) don't just grow back. And plus, they only get so many eyestalks uses per round, so it doesn't really make sense.
Here I thought I was being creative with the idea of a beholder who's primary concern and occupation was experimenting on the people and creatures of our world. The only addition I had to that was the ultimate goal of the experimentation was seeking greater perfection for themselves.
I like the idea that the beholder breaks reality so much that it can effect the players not just the characters. There is the easy you failed your save or there was no save this happens to you character sheet but i think it would be fun if it was like your cookie competition. You were affected by the ray of silence your character can not speak or use verbal components and as a player you must now mime out what you character dose on there turn for the next minute. Or you were effected by the ray of dilapidation until you successfully build two dice towers out of all seven dice your character is unable to leave prone.
I did something a little like this when my players encountered a Beholder. It had been drawn to the call of a cult operating out of a farmhouse. As they approached, they found space and time warping; ranged attacks were unreliable, and occasionally would either hit the round after they were fired, or work in reverse, like in TENET. Inside the house, doors led to the wrong rooms. The players went back and forth, trying to force their way into the right room by willpower and feeling a sense of being observed press in on them, before finally dropping into the beholder's dream space, where fragments of the farmhouse's rooms drifted in a void around the Beholder, which had a few of the time/gravity effects from Mercer's dunamancy spells added to its eyebeams to shift people around, and a lair action which could shift one of the chunks of room. In retrospect, the execution wasn't all that I hoped, in part because of the restrictions of my online play setup, which meant I wasn't using the flexibility of the map to maximum effect for fear that my remote players wouldn't be able to follow. My original plan also had the PCs arriving one at a time in the beholder's dream, but they got so dinged up getting there that I was worried they'd just get picked off one by one, which is not a fun way to end an encounter. If I had it over, I would bring them in individually, but have the beholder open by questioning them - not necessarily asking them questions, but maybe questioning the fact of them, because that chaos science idea is dope - rather than going straight into physical combat.
Yes, just yes. This was a fantastic take on beholders. Dael: "...beam permanently changes the player's race. Now, put down your pitchforks..." Me: "Pitchforks? You mean pen and paper? Please continue >:)"
I love these videos, they’re a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of the d&d videos I see. Most I think get far too bogged down with the mechanics and what’s “good” but what you said about thinking about the metaphorical implications of certain monsters has completely revamped how I think about monster encounters.
She didn't want to do a "West Wing" because she can't. She knows that if she tried walking in that room, while focusing on the camera, there's at least an 85% chance that she'll trip over a pile of research material. 🤣😂🤣
A thing I still desperately want to do for a Beholder encounter is prepare a bunch of dialogue lines and Twin Peaks reverse record it. I mean saying the line backwards and then reverse the recording so it sounds like words but reeaally weird. Because in my world, that's how Beholders talk. Especially with laughter this is so very creepy.
"yknow, like the ninja turtles" got me choking on my water, thank you I really, really like the flavor here. It's taking the visual design and extrapolating it in a very different direction. And the chaos, my god, the wonderful chaos. Rerolling initiative all the time and diluting spell slots is _aaaawesome._ I think I'd avoid things like the flipping lows with highs and ancestry changes, not because it's not interesting, but because it would slow play down too much? Swapping character sheets would be _great_ in person but over discord might be a bit of a hassle, as well. I'd love to hear back from people testing these, though! Another interesting way to take beholders is to go all in on their accidental reality bending, "dumb-god" abilities. If you check the origins of other Beholderkin, they're all pretty much summarised as "A Beholder had a bad dream or a panic attack and woops, things happened." The twisted, absurd enviroment they inhabit can be simply a consequence of their paranoia, fear or curiosity _bleeding into_ the world around them. If they visit a town, they might leave a trail of dead bodies mimicking things that _look_ like daily life, speaking something that _sounds_ like language, until you actually pay attention. If they're particularly paranoid or cowardly, their labyrinthine home could be full of horrors they themselves dreamt up and ran away from, that your party now has to deal with.
Yeah, I'm going straight to that amazing Special Beam Effect table. Characters are likely to only ever meet a beholder once. It should be a memorable experience! You're the best Dael.
I think vibrato Dael is my new favourite form of yours. The energy in this video is absolutely spectacular and infectious. Something I think would fit Beholders well (or at least this manifestation of them) would be to not have reactions of something which is being attacked. The creature should never screech out in pain when harmed or attempt to defend itself to signal it being under duress, perhaps going so far to not actually bleed or release any such fluid from what others would normally consider a wound. Simply responding to their attacks with "Interesting physiology... I must remember to inspect the subjects muscular structure after it becomes exhausted." or "Hypothesis: Increased aggression is caused by a sudden influx of adrenaline. Perhaps from a gland?" and even upon hitting 0 HP it doesn't let loose a death knell, but is instead cut-off mid sentence. Always mark down the damage but don't give any recognition of it being a lot or a little, just deadpan & calm responses, make them question if they are even doing anything to it.
I love beholders so so much. I have always loved aberrations. In my world, creatures from the far realm must conform partially to material laws, or they are powerful enough to bend reality around them. Personally, the beholder Kin are some of my favorites. I loved role playing “ralthun the gatekeeper the keeper of gates” who was guarding a sword and would always refer to itself in the third person using its full title. I also love the idea of a beholder hunting down other beholders and grafting other eyestalks onto its body.
Absolutely love this take on the Beholder! It is such an archetype of d&d, but also such a deadly thing to encounter. It always felt like the rules as written and the creature as written was falling far short of its potential. I actually sculpted a large high detail Beholder from polymer clay with glass eyes. Still haven't had the opportunity to use it.
I agree with this video 100%! The MM Beholder is alot of fun, but a little safe. I don’t think i would go with your table exactly as described but the idea of having a custom table is phenomenal! This is now one of my favorite videos of yours!
Beholders used to have all round vision. They were immune to sneak attacks. So at least they had that. Also, none of that random stuff. They had full control over their eye rays.
The beholder doesn’t need true sight because of their antimagic cone ability. It should remove the invisibility of the heroes. I think its more scary that way, like a child hiding under a blanket and the adult just removing the blanket entirely instead of just knowing the kid is there.
Directional Eye Rays: Beholder is represented on battlemat by a 10x10 "face" tile. Tell the players "facing direction matters", and rotate the face as a demonstration. Then put 4 colored stones on the face (1 in each corner). At the beginning of each turn, roll 1d10 three to four times on the following table (or one of your own), and replace the stones with those you roll (placing stones clockwise around creature, in the order they were rolled): 1-(black)-See Invisibility 2-(white)-detect magic/counterspell 3-(red)-ray of fire 4d6 4-(blue)-single target slow (wisdom save). target re-rolls their initiative. 5-(yellow)-single target petrify/crystalize (con save, permanent, as you described) 6-(green)-charm/dominate/suggestion (wisdom/charisma save) 7-(orange)-reroll race. next round reroll again. (permanent spell effect. restoration spell cures). ----also take 1d4+1 psychic and 1d12 necrotic damage each change. 8-(purple)-?????? Central eye--15ft antimagic cone, 30ft bright light, 60ft dim light Each stone represents which magical eye is facing that way each round. Each eye that can target a creature in its quadrant will. If a character moves into an area which could be effected by an eye that did not previously have targets, they are targeted immediately (as beholder's reaction). Finally the non-permanent effects of eyes will end if the stone representing that eye is not also rolled the next round. Any specific eye might be disabled permanently if it is destroyed. The eyes can be targeted by a melee attack if their colored stone is visible on the battlemat. AC __, hp ___ to remove. If attacking the central eye, beholder WILL use its reaction to try and bite you. if it succeeds, the attack fails and your turn ends; beholder does not otherwise bite.
velkoz is a great reference for beholders, league in general is a great place to pull lots of stuff, from voices and character ticks, to monster abilities.
Other possibilities of "eyes as metaphores": Paranoia: this Beholder is scared of everything and has prepared a plan B, C and D for every conceivable scenario. It's traps and illusions everywhere, and it always has a way of bugging out and a counter for every trick the players throw at it. Control: combine 1984 with the Eye of Sauron. This Beholder rules over a city with an iron fist (iron eye?). It has perfect knowledge of everything that happens within its demesne. Players must be extra careful about what they do and what they say. For extra weird points give the Beholder a drop of Ruin from Mistborn and let it alter written records and/or memories.
So I just found this channel and binged a bunch of your videos and there are just SO. MANY. GOOD. IDEAS. Like, I've been on hiatus from d&d for several reasons one of which was just an overall lack of inspiration or motivation and now these videos make me want to run a beholder. And a displacer beast. And witches. And the list goes on. For this video in particular when you mentioned the eye rays from a monster manual beholder all kinda doing the same thing that was exactly the kind of opinion I had. Such an awesome and insane amount of ideas. (So far your traps video is my favourite though. :P)
Old sci-fi radio dramas have the main characters talking to themselves about their discoveries. I could imagine a similar feel, but a bizarro uncanny version
In terms of what they represent, I've heard it argued that they're all about the feeling of being observed. Like how when so many eyes see you, it feels like they have power over you. Like they get to define who and what you are as the "objective" outside force, even if totally contradicts your experience of reality.
Haha, awesome :D A couple of months back I sculpted a redesigned beholder as I thought the "official" ones aren't aberrant enough - they have a face, for starters - but this kicks it up several levels. Will be yoinking these, thanks! Except maybe the body swap one - I can just see the bard hitting on himself and I think that's a mental image most of the party* wouldn't appreciate. The build up on the other hand - gold. * Everyone except the bard.
This actually corresponds with a lot of my ideas for an "Argus Titan", which would be a sort of über- and/or ur-beholder which wouldn't even fight the players directly. In the adventure I have planned for it, it just shows up to fight another incomprehensibly powerful being called a Chrononaut, and the sparks flying off of this fight create effects like your beholder's eye rays.
i like the extra variant abilities in volo’s guide. you can replace the incapacitating abilities with things like wall of ice, silence, blindness, etc. still bad, still something to deal with and not just damage, but doesn’t shut the player down and suck the fun out of the game.
Thanks, this gave me a lot of inspiration! Aberrations seem like mutations caused by radiation, but in this case Magic from another plane! So, I think I'm going to make my Beholder's, Wizards who lost themselves to the Far Realm and have been altered by there time there. *I would make the lasting crit effects physical characteristics. Like; their left arm is now a 10ft Tentacle, Bound to their Weapon - Quest for Camelot style, Scaled, or Disintigrated (Which could be a fun quest to find a Gnome Artificer to make a new one)!
I was so disappointed when beholders won their bracket, and now I want to run a beholder. Congratulations Dael, you are a master of dungeons and storytelling.
The "every beholder has different abilities" thing reminds me of an Into the Odd... blogpost? Something about a chimera style monster where you randomly roll both amount and type of heads/limbs/etc, just pure madness
One of the things I might add to the change in hit points is that if your new maximum hp is lower than your current hp, you get to keep the difference as temporary hit points until they are lost.
I just ran a modified Mindwitness that was an amalgamation of it's original statblock and the eye beam effects in the video! Unfortunately I made the mistake of forgetting the party included a monk, but before it got stunlocked to death it managed to hit the cleric with the 5d4 beam, which was a super cool reveal when she went to make an attack and started gathering D4s.
"I'm just telling the internet my truth!" If ever there was a definition for Playing With Fire, that's it. But also, this is an excellent video and I'm very grateful for all the truth.
Very inspiring video, Dael! I have something in the works for my players (for about 5 years now, finally found a spot to start stopping it on them) that needs some otherworldly flavor. Not quite aberration, but some of your ideas have, pun intended, opened my eyes to all the options out there. Thanks for sharing!
This is topical: I have a beholder encounter in the next few sessions! My players have been marooned on "an island" since level 0 and found out around level 8 that they weren't just on some island, but instead are in a biodome on the shell of Realmspace. I meta-said they'd probably be able to get into space around 11/12, and we're a bit behind the eightball. They're already 12 now. Well, the fit hit the shan several sessions ago when the biodome CRACKED and all the Spelljamming races of the 'verse started pouring in. Gith dragon riders and gith ships have already pounded the area, and for nearly the whole campaign the stuff of nightmares and the Far Realm have been showing up. Next session (depending on how much RP time we burn off) they'll encounter a beholder and it's crew after it's ship has been shot down into a frozen lake. I was gonna play it straight as the crazy, conspiratorial-suspecting typical beholder......but I like a few of your ideas and may have to add a bit more of my own. Also, if you have the chance, see if you can dig up a copy of "I, Tyrant". It goes through all the various types of beholders "out there" including a good many who've not-yet-made-their-way into 5e. So looking forward to pulling out some of the weirder ones of those on my Monster-Manual-memorizing player at the table. :D
I'm glad you mentioned how to make the permanent effects less permanent. I lowered a players constitution score and did not make it clear that I had an item for them to fix it with and it was not a fun time
Gotta love aberrations. Sometimes it's fun just to think about which of the rules of reality that we take for granted might turn out to be more guidelines than actual rules.
I've used Nothics for minions for the beholder. Given their curious nature and large central eye, I felt it fit very well thematically. For an example, I've used them spying on whole towns trying to gather information. Alot is useless gossip, but sometimes there's a bit of interest for the Beholder. If the Nothics all had similar markings (I used a ring of 9 eye brands around their eye) it would make an interesting plot hook for an adventure.
This really plays into my idea that aberrations (and elder gods) are like a disease that's trying to infect reality. I already have tentacles that bend space/time :D
My players need to go into the underdark to retrieve a lost item from a previous bossfight. This is exactly what I'm going to have happen to them now... Thanks for the inspiration!
the rock monsters that a beholder can animate should be called beboulders
Wah wah wahhh! 😆
Shut up and take my money!
Only related due to the pun, but once for a one shot, I played a grappling-based character called the BeHolder whose personality, voice, etc. were all based on the character the Boulder from Avatar the Last Airbender (e.g. telling my DM in the third person "The BeHolder would like to put the goblin in a headlock")
@@samking8548, oooh, that's good!
Heboulders
Dale: "I've never really thought about Beholders before"
*thinks about beholders*
Everyone: "The world was safer before she thought about them."
By far my favorite thing about beholders is how they literally create things from nothing when they dream; and forming adventures based on that. Perhaps trying to get to a beholder in order to simply waking it up so that it stops creating monsters all over the place.
You could even have the beholder be grateful that the players woke it from it's monster-filled nightmare and let them go in peace.
Oh wait, I have an idea in my brain-hole. Have players create like 5th level PCs or something with no knowledge of the game world etc. Start them in the Beholder's dungeon, no idea who they or each other are, no idea how they got there. Dreamed into existence by the very Beholder at the center of it all.
HUMAN MELTING POINTS REMAIN... INCONSISTENT.. ;D he my favorite character already in league of legends and kind of the reason im checking out the cool video!
@MrRhexx Personally I am the opposite, I hate this bit of lore. It is one of those lore things were its like, "yeah, cool, of course it can" but the practical implications of this is insane. Creating Armies of Beholders that can also dream more beholders into existence, or perhaps dreaming of having miniature spheres of annihilation inside all their enemies that detonate at a given time. Another name for a character like this is a god, and shouldn't be used in any self-respecting plot.
@@schemage2210 with the key difference being that the beholder has zero control of its reality-warping powers
"Subject proves... elusive... Ah, there you are."
'Hello SCP? Yeah it's me we've got another [REDACTED]'
11:07 for bonus immersion, inform all your players that they are now breathing manually.
Reading that completely messed with me as I became suddenly aware of the act of breathing. A curse upon thee!
Dael must be SUCH a magnificent DM
Her imagination and rhetoric astounds me every time I watch her DnD videos. She also kinda _gets_ DnD, she knows how and when it's supposed to be weird... no, not just weird... also eerie, fantastic, curious, mystical, fantastical, inconceivable...
I love her views of the fey and I love this
So true, her "vague and evocative" sets the mind afire.
Yes, she must, because her videos have risen the bar and now most people can't even imagine a real game run by her
"Tears appear to serve no function. Further study needed."
You need more vespene gas.
Funnily enough, instead of a lamp-eye, I used a candle. The beholder held a candle as it prowled its lair (no dark vision)
For it's aberrant nature, I took the idea of friendship and extrapolated it to the extreme. The beholder can't fathom the abstract nature of friendship so he has driven himself mad trying to cut the friendship out of lesser beings for his own uses.
Having this alien creature rambling to himself as they held their breath just 20ft away... it was great fun.
I ran a beholder once whose body had been destroyed, and it was just a huge eye floating in a useless robot body. It's various other eyes could operate independently, attached to a modified ogre (eyegre). It was sacking a library looking for a manual on Biomancy to rebuild it's body.
"[these things] can leave a player frustrated, rather than /delighted by the misfortune that has befallen them/." That's it, that's the best approach to dm'ing ever :D
If you don't make a joke about beauty being in the eyes of the beholder by the end of this video, I'm going to be a little bit sad
I blame the taurine/caffeine haze
Especially since the Beholder's experimenting on people.
My party did a match maker thing and that's how I ended the session, he now is being stalked by a beholder named Karen, which works perfectly for a beholder. She stole her shoes after that date :/
@@MonarchsFactory fair enough, I'm trying to go caff free so I feel ya
I'm glad she didn't. An episode of the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was based on that, and Dael is better than a 1980s cartoon.
I've been cooking up an idea for a warlock who gets his powers by replacing his eye with one from a Beholder's stalk. What he doesn't know is that this is how Beholder's reproduce and he's going to be slowly turning into a Beholder.
At least "a" way they reproduce
But it sounds cool! They'll grow eyes as their powers increase
@@leviangel97 I always assumed it was the budding of an eye stalk.
technically speaking, beholders reproduce by dreaming up themselves. Which is why they are rare. I saw a video on it that went all the way back to 1e for the lore about them.
But I highly... highly doubt your player knows this, as it's such an obscure fact. So your idea is clever and I wish you GL with it. :D
@@FrustratedProgrammer I'm fully aware of it, but i like this better. which is the great power of DnD
The Beholder is in my opinion, the peak of D&D monster design... You just made it 10 times better.
“Myriad hushed hypotheses”
Badass word choice.
This feels like what the monster manual should be trying to do more - giving a unified thematic idea around a monster & how that plays into mechanics. Cause I now want this for every major monster. The imagery of the single light in a dark and forbidding city hits HARD.
I think the books need to provide more advice on how to customize and adjust monsters, instead of presenting them as a "take it or leave it" stat block.
@@Myzelfa like old school monster feats and templates? /any creature progression at all lol
@@dicorockhimself Actually there are a bunch of tables for customizing beholders. I think they're in Xanathar's. But that only applies to aesthetic stuff and a few personality traits, not to things like powers.
@@Myzelfa oh I know and their rad for flavor I just wish they took that a stpe further for my buddies who are new to dming. So I dont have to teach them from the ground up how to buff monsters berf monsters and customize them at the level that a lot of good dms do
There is an OSR monster book titled "Fire on the Velvet Horizon". It is a must read for those who want unique monsters for their game.
"It's eyes...so many eyes..."
This is now going in my game as the ravings of a madman whose mind has been hollowed out by a beholder.
100% excellent content! Perfect depiction of a mad scientist beholder. I love it!
I love the idea in Volo’s that the eyes symbolize paranoia, but at the same time it seems uncharacteristic for a creature who meticulously makes plans for every eventuality to go into battle and suddenly say “lol let’s throw some random beams around and see what happens.”
I really like the idea of Beholders having different eyestalk powers. Like, there could be a table of 100 stalk powers, and you pick ten from the list.
One of the things I like about Beholders are their supreme arrogance and belief in their superiority. They even have two brains, one of which is filters out information that would contest the idea of their superiority.
"I want it to feel like it reaches beyond the game to touch the players". * DM throws a water balloon at a player *.
So evocative, love it, my beholders will be like this from now on, those crit beam effects are sweet.
This is SO much more inspiring than the classical “Beholders are massive narcissistic paranoids “.
I AM THE VERY GRATEFUL
I like the idea of 2 Vel'Koz meeting and arguing over the existential meaning of the last group of adventurers one of them murdered. I think it could get bloody.
What's really inspiring (I think) is Aberration who is ALSO a massive narcissistic paranoid. That way you have some grasp of the monster's goals and relationships with factions. Also, you get more satisfaction out of the alien intelligence of these things when they're pulling strings from the background; much more monologuing that way and an actual opportunity to experience bent aspects of reality.
I once heard beholders described as "...an intensely alien, Lovecraftian physiology, but instead of having an equally alien mindset they just have the personality of H.P. Lovecraft himself."
@@davidwatches Wasn’t that Runesmith?
"Just let it zap people occasionally" a sure sign Dael is on the DM's side when balancing the action economy. Fantastic monster rework thanks.
"Eyes as observation..."
Aha, I should point her towards Vel'koz!
"He pointed me towards Vel'koz"
Great minds...
Me: OMG, she's talking about Vel'Koz, that's such a great vibe and accidental crossover!
Dael: I'm talking about Vel'Koz
Me: *dies of excitement*
My level 10 party just arrived in the underdark this week and I am SUDDENLY A LOT MORE SCARED DAEL
I can’t express the amount of excitement I felt when I saw this video
"The first one is called Gulf. When it hits all of your numbers are reversed. You have to get lower numbers and AC goes backwards."
By the gods...the beholder brought back THAC0! :O
I stat out my unearthly horrors in a different system than the one we're using. They literally run on different rules.
How do you balance out things like AC and HP? Or just let the players deal with it?
When you were describing the scene all I could think about was Vel’koz and then you name dropped my boi! Truly a fantastic moment...
Such a great video, the ideas about the desolated and warped city were awesome. I feel like a good solution for keeping the "permanent" effects only for a short time would be using the specific eye that caused the efect to beging with a alchemic component for a cure to the effect. That way the characters only have to have that knowledge, extract the eye wihout damaging it and concoct the potion themselves or look for someone who can do it for them.
I've got money ready to buy Monarch's Monster Menagerie
Nice name!
Please make this a thing
We all do
I think this would work great as a first generation Beholder. One that has only recently arrived on the prime material. And as they dream offspring they slowly become accustomed to the world but eclectic like Xanathar.
Like future generations lose their alien mind but keep the paranoia
Ma'am, I like your grasp of aberrations. This is always what I'm going for when I run Mind Flayers, Aboleth, Beholders, anything to do with the Far Realm. I love the Lovecraftian effects that result in: "Wait, reality _doesn't like that."_
At present whenever I watch one of Dael's videos I take notes because I want to steal that (which is most of it) and because I need to suddenly try put Bandanas again. Gorgeous Look Dael!
I want play in a world like yours with these immersive, surreal locales.
Dear Dael,
I did * not * plan to listen to 4 minutes of voice-acting from a video game I don't play, and yet, here we are; you, me, Vel'Koz, and Eric Braa. I hope you gave your brother a high five for that connection! Another great creature, thanks for sharing. (Now all I need is for pandemic to end, so I can gather my party and freak them out...)
If you need other good voicelines from the game I suggest just another nobody videos. He dose a really good job showing the nerative in characters voices
My group recently fought K'Varn and did cast darkness on one of its adorned metalplates... I was so proud of them :-)
Couple more ideas:
- What if, when the eyestalk gets severed, two more come out of the wound?
- Eyestalk power: a player suddenly sees another beholder next to them, until, when they attack, they see a fellow party member, tying into the whole "perception" thing
- Eyestalk power: a player gets microvision/their mental filters go off. I once heard a story of someone who did a little bit too many drugs one night, causing their mental filters to shut down and they said it was terrifying. Have the player see so many details on their surroundings and other party members, that it almost becomes uncannyvalley-like and disgusting, giving them, idk, a save against fear or disadvantage or something
- Eyestalk power: the player suddenly feels every microorganism in and on their body.
- Something weird and wacky: what if thr eyestalks could creep out of or extend from the main body? That could create horrifying moments where only an eye on a gross slimy stalk is creeping around, looking for the players, or during combat, creeping around them and potentially sneak attacking or grappling
Beholders aren't Hydras. Their eyestalks (aka heads for hydras) don't just grow back. And plus, they only get so many eyestalks uses per round, so it doesn't really make sense.
@@Dyanosis ok but what if they did was my point
Here I thought I was being creative with the idea of a beholder who's primary concern and occupation was experimenting on the people and creatures of our world. The only addition I had to that was the ultimate goal of the experimentation was seeking greater perfection for themselves.
I like the idea that the beholder breaks reality so much that it can effect the players not just the characters.
There is the easy you failed your save or there was no save this happens to you character sheet but i think it would be fun if it was like your cookie competition.
You were affected by the ray of silence your character can not speak or use verbal components and as a player you must now mime out what you character dose on there turn for the next minute. Or you were effected by the ray of dilapidation until you successfully build two dice towers out of all seven dice your character is unable to leave prone.
I did something a little like this when my players encountered a Beholder. It had been drawn to the call of a cult operating out of a farmhouse.
As they approached, they found space and time warping; ranged attacks were unreliable, and occasionally would either hit the round after they were fired, or work in reverse, like in TENET.
Inside the house, doors led to the wrong rooms. The players went back and forth, trying to force their way into the right room by willpower and feeling a sense of being observed press in on them, before finally dropping into the beholder's dream space, where fragments of the farmhouse's rooms drifted in a void around the Beholder, which had a few of the time/gravity effects from Mercer's dunamancy spells added to its eyebeams to shift people around, and a lair action which could shift one of the chunks of room.
In retrospect, the execution wasn't all that I hoped, in part because of the restrictions of my online play setup, which meant I wasn't using the flexibility of the map to maximum effect for fear that my remote players wouldn't be able to follow. My original plan also had the PCs arriving one at a time in the beholder's dream, but they got so dinged up getting there that I was worried they'd just get picked off one by one, which is not a fun way to end an encounter.
If I had it over, I would bring them in individually, but have the beholder open by questioning them - not necessarily asking them questions, but maybe questioning the fact of them, because that chaos science idea is dope - rather than going straight into physical combat.
Yes, just yes. This was a fantastic take on beholders.
Dael: "...beam permanently changes the player's race. Now, put down your pitchforks..."
Me: "Pitchforks? You mean pen and paper? Please continue >:)"
Pen and paper? Are we taking a test? Is Dael the teacher? Are we going to be kicked from class if we don't?
I love these videos, they’re a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of the d&d videos I see. Most I think get far too bogged down with the mechanics and what’s “good” but what you said about thinking about the metaphorical implications of certain monsters has completely revamped how I think about monster encounters.
Thank you very much 😊
Watching you have all the fun ripping through those tables flinging numbers about with glee made my morning and set the theme for my day.
I love all of this. Can't wait for people to share their beholder stat blocks here for everyone.
She didn't want to do a "West Wing" because she can't. She knows that if she tried walking in that room, while focusing on the camera, there's at least an 85% chance that she'll trip over a pile of research material. 🤣😂🤣
Also, it is important to note that all beholders are different, so any variations to their appearance or eye stalk abilities are justified!
A thing I still desperately want to do for a Beholder encounter is prepare a bunch of dialogue lines and Twin Peaks reverse record it. I mean saying the line backwards and then reverse the recording so it sounds like words but reeaally weird. Because in my world, that's how Beholders talk.
Especially with laughter this is so very creepy.
All I want is to end up as the grandma my grandchild emails D&D videos to.
"yknow, like the ninja turtles" got me choking on my water, thank you
I really, really like the flavor here. It's taking the visual design and extrapolating it in a very different direction. And the chaos, my god, the wonderful chaos. Rerolling initiative all the time and diluting spell slots is _aaaawesome._ I think I'd avoid things like the flipping lows with highs and ancestry changes, not because it's not interesting, but because it would slow play down too much? Swapping character sheets would be _great_ in person but over discord might be a bit of a hassle, as well. I'd love to hear back from people testing these, though!
Another interesting way to take beholders is to go all in on their accidental reality bending, "dumb-god" abilities. If you check the origins of other Beholderkin, they're all pretty much summarised as "A Beholder had a bad dream or a panic attack and woops, things happened." The twisted, absurd enviroment they inhabit can be simply a consequence of their paranoia, fear or curiosity _bleeding into_ the world around them.
If they visit a town, they might leave a trail of dead bodies mimicking things that _look_ like daily life, speaking something that _sounds_ like language, until you actually pay attention. If they're particularly paranoid or cowardly, their labyrinthine home could be full of horrors they themselves dreamt up and ran away from, that your party now has to deal with.
Yeah, I'm going straight to that amazing Special Beam Effect table. Characters are likely to only ever meet a beholder once. It should be a memorable experience! You're the best Dael.
I really like the "reroll stats /race" ideas
that's awesome!
PS: and the ability to let the player say "please don't" afterwards is really important
I think vibrato Dael is my new favourite form of yours. The energy in this video is absolutely spectacular and infectious.
Something I think would fit Beholders well (or at least this manifestation of them) would be to not have reactions of something which is being attacked. The creature should never screech out in pain when harmed or attempt to defend itself to signal it being under duress, perhaps going so far to not actually bleed or release any such fluid from what others would normally consider a wound. Simply responding to their attacks with "Interesting physiology... I must remember to inspect the subjects muscular structure after it becomes exhausted." or "Hypothesis: Increased aggression is caused by a sudden influx of adrenaline. Perhaps from a gland?" and even upon hitting 0 HP it doesn't let loose a death knell, but is instead cut-off mid sentence. Always mark down the damage but don't give any recognition of it being a lot or a little, just deadpan & calm responses, make them question if they are even doing anything to it.
"I'm not about to pick up the camera and do a West Wing" Yes Dael!
"You know how you already see everything upside down?" No, sorry I don't live in Australia.
I knew there was a reason they called it the Land Down Under.
@@nikkibrowning4546 I thought that was because of the heat and humidity? You know, like a human's "down under"?
I love beholders so so much. I have always loved aberrations. In my world, creatures from the far realm must conform partially to material laws, or they are powerful enough to bend reality around them.
Personally, the beholder Kin are some of my favorites. I loved role playing “ralthun the gatekeeper the keeper of gates” who was guarding a sword and would always refer to itself in the third person using its full title.
I also love the idea of a beholder hunting down other beholders and grafting other eyestalks onto its body.
Absolutely love this take on the Beholder! It is such an archetype of d&d, but also such a deadly thing to encounter. It always felt like the rules as written and the creature as written was falling far short of its potential.
I actually sculpted a large high detail Beholder from polymer clay with glass eyes. Still haven't had the opportunity to use it.
I agree with this video 100%! The MM Beholder is alot of fun, but a little safe. I don’t think i would go with your table exactly as described but the idea of having a custom table is phenomenal!
This is now one of my favorite videos of yours!
Damn Dael, that was amazing! I now want to go through the entire Monster Manual and Daelify every one! Maximum daelification!!!
Beholders used to have all round vision. They were immune to sneak attacks. So at least they had that.
Also, none of that random stuff. They had full control over their eye rays.
The beholder doesn’t need true sight because of their antimagic cone ability. It should remove the invisibility of the heroes. I think its more scary that way, like a child hiding under a blanket and the adult just removing the blanket entirely instead of just knowing the kid is there.
Very cool! My players wanted to island hop in our Saltmarsh game, now I have some very interesting ideas for running my first beholder.
Directional Eye Rays:
Beholder is represented on battlemat by a 10x10 "face" tile. Tell the players "facing direction matters", and rotate the face as a demonstration. Then put 4 colored stones on the face (1 in each corner). At the beginning of each turn, roll 1d10 three to four times on the following table (or one of your own), and replace the stones with those you roll (placing stones clockwise around creature, in the order they were rolled):
1-(black)-See Invisibility
2-(white)-detect magic/counterspell
3-(red)-ray of fire 4d6
4-(blue)-single target slow (wisdom save). target re-rolls their initiative.
5-(yellow)-single target petrify/crystalize (con save, permanent, as you described)
6-(green)-charm/dominate/suggestion (wisdom/charisma save)
7-(orange)-reroll race. next round reroll again. (permanent spell effect. restoration spell cures).
----also take 1d4+1 psychic and 1d12 necrotic damage each change.
8-(purple)-??????
Central eye--15ft antimagic cone, 30ft bright light, 60ft dim light
Each stone represents which magical eye is facing that way each round. Each eye that can target a creature in its quadrant will. If a character moves into an area which could be effected by an eye that did not previously have targets, they are targeted immediately (as beholder's reaction). Finally the non-permanent effects of eyes will end if the stone representing that eye is not also rolled the next round.
Any specific eye might be disabled permanently if it is destroyed. The eyes can be targeted by a melee attack if their colored stone is visible on the battlemat. AC __, hp ___ to remove. If attacking the central eye, beholder WILL use its reaction to try and bite you. if it succeeds, the attack fails and your turn ends; beholder does not otherwise bite.
velkoz is a great reference for beholders, league in general is a great place to pull lots of stuff, from voices and character ticks, to monster abilities.
Other possibilities of "eyes as metaphores":
Paranoia: this Beholder is scared of everything and has prepared a plan B, C and D for every conceivable scenario. It's traps and illusions everywhere, and it always has a way of bugging out and a counter for every trick the players throw at it.
Control: combine 1984 with the Eye of Sauron. This Beholder rules over a city with an iron fist (iron eye?). It has perfect knowledge of everything that happens within its demesne. Players must be extra careful about what they do and what they say. For extra weird points give the Beholder a drop of Ruin from Mistborn and let it alter written records and/or memories.
Beholders are underappreciated.
There was an episode in the D&D animated centered around a beholder.
So I just found this channel and binged a bunch of your videos and there are just SO. MANY. GOOD. IDEAS. Like, I've been on hiatus from d&d for several reasons one of which was just an overall lack of inspiration or motivation and now these videos make me want to run a beholder. And a displacer beast. And witches. And the list goes on. For this video in particular when you mentioned the eye rays from a monster manual beholder all kinda doing the same thing that was exactly the kind of opinion I had. Such an awesome and insane amount of ideas. (So far your traps video is my favourite though. :P)
Thank you! I hope your inspiration comes back in floods! 💕
Old sci-fi radio dramas have the main characters talking to themselves about their discoveries. I could imagine a similar feel, but a bizarro uncanny version
In terms of what they represent, I've heard it argued that they're all about the feeling of being observed. Like how when so many eyes see you, it feels like they have power over you. Like they get to define who and what you are as the "objective" outside force, even if totally contradicts your experience of reality.
Possibly my favorite video of yours yet. I hope this monster series is popular and we can get some more from you. ❤️
Haha, awesome :D A couple of months back I sculpted a redesigned beholder as I thought the "official" ones aren't aberrant enough - they have a face, for starters - but this kicks it up several levels. Will be yoinking these, thanks! Except maybe the body swap one - I can just see the bard hitting on himself and I think that's a mental image most of the party* wouldn't appreciate. The build up on the other hand - gold.
* Everyone except the bard.
The way you described the beholder analysing it's test subjects is very very similar to the League of Legends' character Singed's short story.
This actually corresponds with a lot of my ideas for an "Argus Titan", which would be a sort of über- and/or ur-beholder which wouldn't even fight the players directly. In the adventure I have planned for it, it just shows up to fight another incomprehensibly powerful being called a Chrononaut, and the sparks flying off of this fight create effects like your beholder's eye rays.
I literally told my friend that she's describing Vel'koz. . . 1 minute later 5:08
i like the extra variant abilities in volo’s guide. you can replace the incapacitating abilities with things like wall of ice, silence, blindness, etc. still bad, still something to deal with and not just damage, but doesn’t shut the player down and suck the fun out of the game.
Thanks, this gave me a lot of inspiration!
Aberrations seem like mutations caused by radiation, but in this case Magic from another plane!
So, I think I'm going to make my Beholder's, Wizards who lost themselves to the Far Realm and have been altered by there time there.
*I would make the lasting crit effects physical characteristics. Like; their left arm is now a 10ft Tentacle, Bound to their Weapon - Quest for Camelot style, Scaled, or Disintigrated (Which could be a fun quest to find a Gnome Artificer to make a new one)!
I love all your ideas here, especially the body/player-swap one! Really looking forward to the remaining videos!
I was so disappointed when beholders won their bracket, and now I want to run a beholder. Congratulations Dael, you are a master of dungeons and storytelling.
The "every beholder has different abilities" thing reminds me of an Into the Odd... blogpost? Something about a chimera style monster where you randomly roll both amount and type of heads/limbs/etc, just pure madness
Turning into a diamond statue is pretty dang cool.
You became the raw materials to resurrect you!
@@marvalice3455 🤔 that's just might be crazy enough to work!
@@anthonynorman7545 the rogue didn't need that hand anyways
@@kaboomluong9373 I hope they like throwing knives!
Pretty sure my party would sell me to a goldsmith :)
One of the things I might add to the change in hit points is that if your new maximum hp is lower than your current hp, you get to keep the difference as temporary hit points until they are lost.
I just ran a modified Mindwitness that was an amalgamation of it's original statblock and the eye beam effects in the video! Unfortunately I made the mistake of forgetting the party included a monk, but before it got stunlocked to death it managed to hit the cleric with the 5d4 beam, which was a super cool reveal when she went to make an attack and started gathering D4s.
"I'm just telling the internet my truth!"
If ever there was a definition for Playing With Fire, that's it. But also, this is an excellent video and I'm very grateful for all the truth.
Very inspiring video, Dael! I have something in the works for my players (for about 5 years now, finally found a spot to start stopping it on them) that needs some otherworldly flavor. Not quite aberration, but some of your ideas have, pun intended, opened my eyes to all the options out there. Thanks for sharing!
This is topical: I have a beholder encounter in the next few sessions!
My players have been marooned on "an island" since level 0 and found out around level 8 that they weren't just on some island, but instead are in a biodome on the shell of Realmspace. I meta-said they'd probably be able to get into space around 11/12, and we're a bit behind the eightball. They're already 12 now.
Well, the fit hit the shan several sessions ago when the biodome CRACKED and all the Spelljamming races of the 'verse started pouring in. Gith dragon riders and gith ships have already pounded the area, and for nearly the whole campaign the stuff of nightmares and the Far Realm have been showing up.
Next session (depending on how much RP time we burn off) they'll encounter a beholder and it's crew after it's ship has been shot down into a frozen lake. I was gonna play it straight as the crazy, conspiratorial-suspecting typical beholder......but I like a few of your ideas and may have to add a bit more of my own.
Also, if you have the chance, see if you can dig up a copy of "I, Tyrant". It goes through all the various types of beholders "out there" including a good many who've not-yet-made-their-way into 5e. So looking forward to pulling out some of the weirder ones of those on my Monster-Manual-memorizing player at the table. :D
most important thing about beholders is that beholders like themselves, and person reading should too
Excellent ideas as expected. Thank you for this series!
I'm glad you mentioned how to make the permanent effects less permanent. I lowered a players constitution score and did not make it clear that I had an item for them to fix it with and it was not a fun time
This sounds absolutely insane. Loads of fun, but a nightmare to keep track of.
Gotta love aberrations. Sometimes it's fun just to think about which of the rules of reality that we take for granted might turn out to be more guidelines than actual rules.
I LOVE this take on beholders.
I've used Nothics for minions for the beholder. Given their curious nature and large central eye, I felt it fit very well thematically. For an example, I've used them spying on whole towns trying to gather information. Alot is useless gossip, but sometimes there's a bit of interest for the Beholder. If the Nothics all had similar markings (I used a ring of 9 eye brands around their eye) it would make an interesting plot hook for an adventure.
This really plays into my idea that aberrations (and elder gods) are like a disease that's trying to infect reality. I already have tentacles that bend space/time :D
This was a joy to listen to, thank you so much Dael!
Dale taking diamonds hands too literally !
I wasn’t planning on running a Beholder, but this has given me so many ideas for one, or some other customized aberration!
Now I'm all for this observant personailty for the beholder, but it still has to say "pew pew" when it fires its lasers.
My players need to go into the underdark to retrieve a lost item from a previous bossfight. This is exactly what I'm going to have happen to them now... Thanks for the inspiration!
5:08 My thoughts exactly, Dael's brother.