There are few things as iconic to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons as the Beholders꧂,♐ terrifying creatures that have tormented players since the very first edition of the game. These floating masses full of eyes are not only deadly, but most of them will actively hunt you down and kill you.

But where do they come from, why are they so evil, and why do you almost never see them working together? The Beholders have had many descriptions over the years, and while some of these questions h🍬ave been answe🌌red, only one thing has remained constant: they hate everything and everyone, including other Beholders.

The Beholder

The Beholder is a monster in Dungeons & Dragons and, unlike most other creatures, it isn’t based on any pop culture reference or existing mythology. Since its inception, the Beholder has always been an original creation of the tabletop gam﷽e.

Within the D&D universe, a Beholder looks like a fleshy floating sphere, with a face consisting of one massive eye and a large mouth with razor sharp teeth. The top of a Beholder has several small tendrils with eyes on the tips, or Eye Stalks as they are commonly referred to.

The original Beholders were more spherical than the designs we🌠 have today. Nowadays, they have more carefully ꦬdesigned jawlines, making some of them look like floating heads.

All these many eyes are what give Beholders their name, and also why t♑hey are so dangerous. Each eye they have, from their central eye to the Eye Stalks, can cast spells, letting the creature cast several spells per turn.

Beholders, however, aren’t spellcasters, since each eye can only cast a specific spell, and they can’t learn new ones. There have been Beholder Mages in previous editions, but that r🥀equires them to ne💦gate or remove their central eye due to its anti-magic field.

The Eyes

Beholders have many variants, but the most common iteration is the one that, from its central eye, can create an anti-magic field. Running a Beholder can be just as challenging as fighting one, since that anti-magic field also negates the effects of the different Eye Stalks.

The little Eye Stalks are the deadliest part of a Beholder, since the effects they do can be very devastating. The Death and Disintegration Rays can outright kill a creature if they reduce it to zero hit points, and with the damage they doꦇ, it can be a real concern.

Beholder Behavior

Beholders are solitary creatures, meant to be the biggest threat in a dungeon. In the game, they serve a similar role as Dragons, guarding their lair and the treasures inside of it from pesky adven🌊turers that might be foolish enough to anger them.

The difference with Beholders (other than them being Aberrations instead of Dragons) is that each of them thinks they are the perfect version of their entire species. This means that, while Beholders consider themselves to be above every other creature, they also think they alone are the greatest among their kind.

Of course, Beholders are capable of having minions, but only to give them the most inconsequential of tasks. If a Beholder is working for someone else, it is likely because the Beholder in question is being enslaved in some way, and will take any opportunity to free itself.

Alignment

Beholders are commonly Lawful Evil, but there is a little bit of Chaos in how they work. While they will follow their own rules to the letter, their paranoia often prevents them from hatching grand plans, becau🎉se no matter how Evil youཧ are, you need some level of cooperation to, say, rule a city with an iron fist.

The most famous Beholders are the ones that can fight their own nature, becoming proper crime lords that control everyone from the shadows. Some have even changed their alignment, becomi🉐ng Neutral or even Good, but those are merely an exception.

Among the most famed and exceptional Beholders, we can f📖ind:

• Xanathar, the name and title of the leader of the Thieves Guild in Waterdeep.
• Tobulux, a Neutral Good Beholder Ranger that dwelled in the Underdark.
• Large Luigi, a Lawful Neutral Beholder who, after attaining the complete knowledge of the universe, decides to leave his Evil ways behind and open a tavern.

Lair

Technically, Beholders can make any place their lair; it mostly depends on what their plans are for the surrounding area. Yet they rarely roam open spaces, and the areas where t💧hey are most commonly found are in hidden dungeons and throughout the Underdark.

Earlier editions explained this was due to how the Beholder hovers. The magical way in which they move can’t be dispelled, and they can’t be knocked prone, but large gusts of wind could move them against their will, which leads them ♍to prefer closed-off places to large open ar🐓eas.

Beyond that, their lairs tend to use a lot of vertical spaces, with the place they hold their valuables having little to no cover. Since they can see in all directions, they can harᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚdly be surprised without the aid of cover or an elaborate distraction.

Origin And Reproduction Of Beholders

The true origin of the Beholder is a topic of debate, since each edition tends to rewrite and remake how they came to be. Some have them as descendants of a Great Mother, a Beholder Goddess that embodies the perfect version of the species, wh♊ile others make them failed experiments of Wizards from a different dimension.

Since they are classified as Aberrations, the lack of understanding of their origin is on point. An Aberration tends to be something out of a Lovecraftian tale, either hailing from an unknowable dimension (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:like the illithid) or made by forbidden exp♏erimentation (like the Driders).

As for how they reproduce, each edition has their own answer, which completely disregards the previous one. While only the current edition is considered canon, we have lisღted all forms of reproduction for the Beholder, so you can choose which one fits better for your campaign🔯:

• In the 1st Edition, Beholders came from sticky eggs.
• In the 2nd Edition, Beholders still came from eggs, but the “mother” abandoned the eggs after hatching them.
• In the 3rd Edition, Beholders become spontaneously pregnant, vomiting their children and eating any that don’t look like them. The “mother” likely abandoned the surviving ones.
• In the 4th Edition, the only entry about reproduction states that “you don’t want to know.”
• In the 5th Edition, when a Beholder dreams, a new Beholder can be born, depending on the nature of the dream itself.

Beholders don’t seem to have a defined gender, hence why they can become pregnant witജhout interacting with any other of their kind.

Beholder Variants

If you count all the editions, there are far too many Beholder variants to count, some of them 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:not even looking like one at all. We’ve picked the most notable ones, and mostly the ones from the 5th edition of D&D.

Running A Beholder Encounter

Beholders are rarely something you can reason with, and will often rather attack intruders instead of talking to them. When a Beholder has its lair in a place like the Underdark, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it will fight to the death, since their pride𝔉 won’t allow them to do anything less than that.

Beholders that rule a criminal organization or the like might be open to negotiations, but only when they get something of larger value than what they give. They might not even honor their side of the deal, or do so in a way that s🀅till kills the other parties involved.

To give more agency to players during a fight, you can allow them to use careful attacks to remove certain Eye Stalks, or have that happen automatically if a player makes a critical hit. This way, even under-leveled characters can face this fearsome foe, as long as they carefully plan around the strengths and weaknesses of the mighty Beholder.