Beholder
Basically the Supernatural equivalent of a Dalek.
A beholder is giant lump thingy that looks like a floating octopus with a giant eye in the middle.The tentacles also have eyes at the end of them. Yuck.
Beholders, like Mind Flayers, are considered "intellectual property" of TSR Wizards of the Coast, so they aren't allowed to be used in D&D supplements nor mentioned in Open Gaming Licensed'd stuff.
Personality and Characteristics
Beholders are selfish bastards who love to manipulate and enslave any races considerd beneath themselves(i.e. every other species). They are extremely xenophobic even going so far as to kill other individuals of their species that are only different enough to be considered a sub-species. Despite this, the beholder race has a lot of genetic variety (as evidenced by the number of Beholder variants, all of whom hate each other, as listed below). They are greedy, often living in dungeons stuffed with valuables. They can cast magic from their eyes and often rule over unwilling souls through domination. One even managed to rule a highly successful thieves' guild until your character pwned him in Baldur's Gate: Dark alliance.
In 4e, there are three statlines for Beholders. One is a little baby you throw at a low-level party to make them feel significant, and the other two are floating balls of rape and eye lasers.
Notable Variants
- Gauth- Basically, Beholder Lite with only 6 eyestalks of doom.
- Eyeball- Tiny beholder and made of DAAAAAAAAAAAAW!
- Death Tyrant- Basically, a Beholder lich. Yeah, you're probably fucked.
- Death Kiss-Instead of dispensing death-beams from its eyestalks, they instead use them to suck your blood. Made an undead in 4e because FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
- Astereater- Giant asteroid beholder with no eyestalks that eats your ship. Spelljammer was weird.
- Hive Mother/Hive Tyrant- Basically a bigger meaner beholder that holds other beholders under its sway. Replaced with the Hive Tyrant in 4E because -4 Str. yes, this applies even though the Beholders are genderless.
- Overseer- A beholderkin that looks like a giant fleshy tree trunk with several eyestalks, mouths, and tentacles at the base. Yes, I realize that it looks nothing like a beholder, but the book says it is so fuck it, let's call it a beholder.
- Eye of the Deep- It's like a beholder BUT UNDERWATER! And it tastes oddly of shrimp.
- Director- A beholder with three bottom tentacles that it uses to ride vermin, usually giant centipedes. Because haven't we all wanted to ride a giant centipede like a pony up and down the streets... SHUT UP, I DON'T JUDGE YOU!
- Beholder mage- When the DM wants the entire party to die horrible deaths but doesn't feel like using rocks. All the cheese of a wizard with more spells per day, the ability to blast 10 spells at once at you as free actions, and fucking spontaneous casting. Even munchkins shit their pants in fear when they hear of these things. One of the unholy trinity of fuck off broken PCs that you can technically enter, the others being tainted scholars and Illithid Savants. And that's before you start optimizing the bastard because the fucker can still take ten more levels before becoming epic.
Notable Beholders
- That beholder in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
- That funny beholder in Baldur's Gate II
- That blind beholder in Baldur's Gate II
- That beholder in Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes
- That beholder in Futurama who's there for no apparent reason