How to Make Beholders Formidable in Your D&D Campaign! | DnD 5e | Horror | Dark Fantasy

[@CzerwonyRymcer]

ripping that page... That book suffer... You... YOU MONSTER!!!

[@GhostfireGaming]

I AM Formidable!!

[@The_Archlich]

* *Furious Scribbling* *

[@themindofdirge3809]

I always love Ghostfire Gaming Videos regardless of subject, but the Formidable series and the various videos about making settings (especially Grim Hollow) darker and moodier are always my favorite. :) Thanks again for such a cool video.

[@GhostfireGaming]

Thanks for tuning in and commenting! Appreciate it. 🙂

[@ashb8036]

Nice. I like your approach to this aberration.

[@deutschesinferno3078]

These videos keep getting better and better. One might say... formidable!

[@GhostfireGaming]

Glad you think so! 😄 Thanks

[@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954]

The idea of a Beholder as a full fat cosmic horror abomination is definitely the direction I think the creature should be taken. I especially like the idea of Beholders as the heralds of some nightmarish Outer God or the subconscious product of the dreaming mind of some incalculably powerful, slumbering cosmic nightmare monstrosity as it begins to stir toward an apocalyptic awakening. Beholders as equal part nightmarish emissary of doom and living portent of Armageddon - now that sounds like a monster worthy of its reputation.

[@dezopenguin9649]

That was perfectly timed; I just watched this week's Ghostfire podcast last night and what stuck out was the Dungeon Dudes pointing out that beholders weren't scary, on account of their lore and their use over the years. I remember cracking open the 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual for the first time when I was a kid, getting to the beholder entry, and thinking, "that thing is _terrifying_ !" (both from an appearance and a gameplay perspective) and over the years it's just become, well, a thing (as exceptional as _The Order of the Stick_ is, for instance, the fact that Sunny the beholder can be the character they are says pretty much all that needs to be said about what beholders have become for D&D players over the years). I love these various tips--the beholder and its kin are useful stat blocks; they just need their lore and presentation returned to be something frightening. (Also, yeah, I 100% agree with you that mind flayer crossovers are the lesser of both parts. Vampiric mind flayers might be kind of creepy, _once_ (think of it as that _Bloodborne_ moment in the campaign when the eldritch horror reveals itself as the real problem behind the Gothic surface--but in that case I wouldn't make it "a mind flayer with vampirism" but rather "that vampire you were hunting? Well, it just got corrupted by the eldritch abomination warping reality and it just turned _into_ that thing"; the horror comes from the way the eldritch could so utterly subsume what a moment ago had been a figure of atavistic fear in its own right.)

[@jordancabe732]

Pfft, we all know Xanathar is just Sylgar the goldfish's familiar. ... Awesome video! I've been trying to figure out how to bring a beholder into my game and highlighting their Lovecraftian aspects via dreams and the slow, creeping revelation of older powers, I think, is the way to go. Thanks!

[@johnnijenhuis2296]

Definitely going to incorporate it on my campaign

[@EurasianHobos]

This video is helping to make sure each of the four beholders central to this campaign feels truly unique. Thanks so much!

[@GhostfireGaming]

Glad it was helpful!

[@shybard]

A floating shoggoth sounds horrifying. I like it.

[@ericpeirce5598]

This is great inspiration. I'm now working on a Beholder variant that instead of eye stalks it has 3 huge eyes, evenly spaced around the orb. One still has the anti-magic, one with the Stunning Gaze of a Gauth and one that can create a cone of Maddening Darkness (as the spell). The underside of the creature has an open maw with many rows of teeth. If it is able to stun a creature, it can just float over them to attempt to devour the creature. I still need to work on stats and mechanics, but feel free to throw more ideas at me for abilities

[@TheUglyGoblin]

Very cool video! Love it haha very clever move in your opening with the page rip xD

[@fedesiempre]

i was thinking about this video topic yesterday no kidding, love to hear your videos while i paint dnd miniatures

[@GhostfireGaming]

Love hearing that! I also put on YT vids while painting, so glad to hear we're giving back. 😄

[@seandremel337]

I actually really like what 3.5 edition put out for beholder lore in “Lords of Madness: the Book of Aberrations.” In there, beholders are described as mad creations of a dreaming god, and each one believes itself to be the perfect embodiment of beholder-kind, while all others are inferior imitators. This also extends to their view of other creatures as obviously lesser to beholders, especially to themselves. But they are also perfectly paranoid of everything, believing (somewhat rightly) that everything not them is out to kill them and they plan for dozens of perceived threats and attacks (which is why their lairs are labyrinthine and trapped).

[@peterwheeler4928]

Another awesome video! Definitely inspired to plan a few unique beholder encounters for my campaign too!

[@wbbartlett]

Just making them not laughably ridiculous would be a start. And to be fair, you do a decent job.

[@whitbyabbey4830]

Another great video!❤

[@MikChaos]

Tearing pages from a D&D book, Ben is the real Monster! But a great vid on the Beholders sir. Much needed as they have become very much comic relief as of late. One thing I particularly dislike about the normal stat block for them (and therefore don't use) is the random eyestalk roll, they're meant to be super intelligent.

[@ThePa1riot]

I think Xanathar being a crime lord is *supposed* to be a subversion of what one expects of Beholders to be. It would be like if Cthulhu arose from the sea and just opened up an apartment complex with jacked up rent prices. It’s meant to be humorous because it seems so beneath what they’re capable of or would want to do.

[@GhostfireGaming]

That's true, and I agree that an unexpected monster being at the head of a faction, like a lamia leading an assassins guild, is a really fun idea! It's a great way to catch players by surprise. It's just about choosing which tone you'd prefer to set at your table; existential dread or wry humor.

[@ThePa1riot]

@@GhostfireGaming I'm actually a big fan of that sort of setup. There's something cool in a way I can't quite describe when a relatively mundane organization, that's staffed by otherwise ordinary-seeming members and doesn't present itself as anything mystical or outside the norm, is being lead by a Lich, dragon, vampire etc. It can add another layer of intrigue to an adventure or campaign. -The hand of the king is actually a Devil in disguise (or he killed the real one and replaced him.) Meaning the king's finest and most righteous knights are at his command, unknowingly advancing his nefarious cause. -The guild master in charge of the region's inns and taverns is being controlled by a Mind Flayer, who puts a ban across the board that all inns and taverns are to deny service to the party. (Which makes long rests harder to come by.) -Or to flip the moral paradigm, a famed mercenary company known to bolster the ranks of nations at war with hobgoblins or evil giants is being funded and captained by a Bronze Dragon in humanoid form.

[@jokhard8137]

1:14 That's such a great way to describe a beholder

[@BennysGamingAttic]

Making a beholder the leader of a crime gang is like making Cthulu a tax accountant.

[@lozm4835]

It also doesn't really make that much sense with the existing Beholder lore. Ah yes, the creatures so terrified of being backstabbed that they literally have eyes in any direction would run perhaps the most backstabbing sort of organisation concievable.

[@J0K3R_the_Nerd]

😂😂😂

[@piolewus]

A tax accountant is much more scary than Cthulhu as you can comprehend his threat

[@edwardg8912]

My party in my horror game somewhat recently found themselves on the dead body of a massive titan. The big bad of this particular arc was located in the brain, so the players needed to find a way in. They decided to go through the ear, the realm of Carumex, the Wax Tyrant. One of the grossest villains I’ve thrown at my players. He basically was an obsessive collector of warriors and creatures who spent his days in the mire of the dead titan’s earwax. The party found the encounter so compelling and horrible. It was great. Edit: He was a beholder, forgot to mention.

[@SoftwareEngineer3]

Anti-magic and separately targeted body parts were the defining traits of beholders. Why did they drop the second key element? I guess it is implied but it should be explicit. To kill it target the body. To weaken it, target the eyes (stalks or central). Meaningful choices are fun and important! I wish other creatures were designed like this, let alone the beholder itself! BTW, I used to interpret them as floating (not flying) and allowed their magic to work in the anti magic field, and of course no visible rays. Formidable indeed! beCmi black and white and 2e color cover art were the best illustrations of the beholder IMO.

[@daniellambert8381]

I ran my beholder with an Escher Labyrinth. I built one similar to the channel Fantasy Labyrinth. It had magnetic tiles and the minis were magnetized so I could turn the Labyrinth as a lair action and minis would be upside down or sideways. The very edges of the labyrinth had portals to other area. One of my proudest encounters.

[@GhostfireGaming]

Escher Labyrinth! That's the phrase I was trying to find. Sounds like you ran an incredibly epic encounter! I would have loved to play it.

[@ClasticOne]

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder. And as it beholds you, it will soon be in you too.

[@HazzardousEco]

0:00 HOW COULD YOU RIP OUT THAT PAGE?!!! YOU MONSTER!!!

[@GhostfireGaming]

How to make Ben formidable: step #1, tear pages from a monster manual. 😈

[@chrisragner3882]

The film Forbidden Planet gave me the idea of one formed as the monster of the ID, invisible and deadly. The invisible monster of Johnny Quest revealed by being covered with paint.

[@Yo-jx8ej]

OMG CAN U DO PLANTS AND OR BEASTS NEXT?!??

[@wearywyvern3359]

I feel like Dael should have been consulted on this one. Her video on running a beholder is so devious and delightful.

[@dreadmorg]

Yes. That is all I have to say about this.

[@GhostfireGaming]

Indeed. 😑

[@lozm4835]

Something I think that is underappreciated for Aberrations is that some, at least, ARE natural. They're just not natural to HERE. Aberrations can hail from distant planes, but one that are familiar. Realistically, most of the extraplanar creatures act in much the same way as an Aberration does - Devils can't die and meddle in the affairs of souls, Angels act on logic that resembles human law, but on such a vast scale or based on terms vague and subjective to mortals such as 'goodness', and even Dragons as described in 3.5 have at least one alien organ that has effects which ripples outwards and makes their biology completely different to humanoids in such a way that they only resemble mortal creatures on the surface. Aberrations, then, might still function on logic that's comprehensible, but with completely alien parameters. If you understand those parameters, you can understand the Aberration. It brings a greater variety of encounters and motivations. Your beholder could be a victim in its own right, accidentally stumbling into a plane that is completely alien to it, and freaking out at all the weird, ground-clutching creatures wrapped in meat, its vast, twisting catacomb the equivalent of a crude lean-over shelter. Or perhaps it's an invasive species, entering the material plane because whatever resource it considers valuable - its 'food', whatever that may be - is incredibly abundant with no competition. Maybe they're even entirely benign provided they stay on their home plane - if they're dream creatures, maybe they feed on nightmares, eating away bad dreams, but once brought to our realm, they begin to starve, and have no recourse other than to become the nightmare to create enough fear and hate to feed off of. Or, of course, all these thing are normally true, but this Beholder is the willing servant of a great old one, promised (and recieving) immense power in exchange for fulfilling its goals on this plane.

[@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954]

I understand the dramatic reason why it was done, but seeing a page ripped out of a source book like that hurts my soul.

[@larrysellers9204]

Most iconic beholder fight I;ve ran was that the beholder's lair was actually a highly polished dome that the rays could bounce and reflect off, thus leaving the party few places to hide. This fight went on for a few rounds before the beholder used it's telekinetic beam to pull a lever that released several pins in the floor causing it rotate on its axis. beneath said floor was a pool of acid that that couldn't be avoided unles you had a fly speed and since the walls were still polished smooth there were no easy handholds to grab onto. Once defeated the beholder did come back to life, not long after the party left its corpse to rot< as the death tyrant that mercilessly tracked the party down waiting for the opportunity to get even. The party decided to teleport far away from the area leaving the death tyrant unsatisfied. Someday I'll run this encounter again

[@notanotaku1101]

In my campaign setting, a beholder is a being who sees with unearthly insight cosmic and terrible truths. When a beholder's petrifying eye looks upon you, it does not convert flesh to stone- it is simply revealing the truth that all matter is fundamentally the same and attributing living matter some special status is a fallacy of mortal thinking. Beholders aren't twisting anything, merely unveiling terrible truths that the mortal mind is not well suited to receiving.

[@fenthras9463]

Ben Byrne, you made a grown man cry in the first 2 seconds of a video. What did the Monster Manual ever do to you?

[@GhostfireGaming]

Look at me. I am the monster, now!

[@minnion2871]

Though another thought on the "low hanging fruit" of a crime syndicate.... What if the purpose isn't even of the beholders own desire, and is instead just a game meant to keep it occupied and focused on mundane crime stuff, as entertainment and there are a number of other powerful entities with a vested interest in keeping the Beholders crime syndicate going, not for profits but because without it to distract the beholder it will get bored and when beholders get bored things get weird.... Imagine if the world at large is the way it is because shadowy cults strive to keep the beholders distracted and entertained by the most mundane things they can convince the beholders to focus on....

[@GhostfireGaming]

Now that is a weird and incredible idea for a very complex intrigue campaign where the party have to figure out what is ACTUALLY going on. 😂

[@minnion2871]

@@GhostfireGamingAnd as for another weird thing that could be done with beholders, instead of going lovecraftian horror(or at least blatantly so) we instead end up with a beholder that is in love with fairy tales and wants very much to be a pixie or fairy queen.... It ends up forming its body into a "palisade" its main eye shrinking and shifting to its tongue that ends up taking on a more humanoid elf like form.... its eyestalks now look like green vines with its eyes concealed in the flowers on the end, with fake pixie attendants attached to each stalk to "Carry" it around(You can tell they are fake pixies growing off the eye stalks because they have no faces...)

[@JMSouchak]

So... do you have those background videos anywhere for dl?

[@thatshyguy9573]

Is there some kind of shipping delay going on I ordered a hardcover of questonomicon like 10+ weeks ago and haven’t gotten any updates

[@Namatheros]

I was so happy to see the beholder. But ripping that page made me sad :(

[@Marvin-jk9jx]

Did he really just destroy a perfectly fine book? My heart is bleeding when I see this 😓