Let’s Read the 4e Monster Manual 2: Beholder

This article is part of a series! Click here to see the other entries.

Beholders appeared in the first Monster Manual, and I covered them here. The Monster Manual 2 brings us a few more varieties, including some that also made it into the Monster Vault.

Each of the three beholder varieties here gets its own bit of lore, so let’s combine that with their numbers below.

As before, beholders are Aberrant Magical Beasts. They have All-Around Vision and Darkvision, and a variable fly speed with hover capability. In general their attacks consist of a very weak bite and a whole bunch of thematic ranged attacks from their eye stalks and central eye. Beholder eye rays are Ranged, but don’t provoke opportunity attacks.

Beholder Gauth

This one appeared in the Monster Vault, and so we discussed them a bit here. Gauths are the least of their kind, but they’re still as unpleasant and power-hungry as any beholder. Their relative weakness means they often don’t end up on the top of whatever evil org chart they join, and so they are constantly scheming to rise in its ranks. They’re the most Starscream-like of beholders.

Gauths also like to capitalize on the fearsome reputation of their larger relatives, so people who don’t know better might confuse them for the more dangerous varieties.

I already covered the Monster Vault version of gauths in the post on MM1 beholders. The Monster Manual 2 is pretty much identical, except it suffers from the damage bug and has a remarkably weak bite. Just use the MV stats for this one.

Beholder Eye of Frost

A counterpart to the MM1’s Eye of Flame, this is a beholder with a great affinity for elemental ice. It prefers to dwell in very cold climates in the world and Elemental Chaos, where it keeps company such as ice archons, frost giants, and oni. Since eyes of frost aren’t that much stronger than these other ice monsters, they often end up in the same narrative position as gauths, scheming to gain the power and respect they feel is due to them.

Eyes of Frost are Large and have a fly speed of 6. They’re Level 14 Elite Artillery with 222 HP. When first bloodied they coat themselves in Ice Armor, increasing their AC and Fortitude by 2 for the remainder of the fight.

Their bite is super weak: 2d6 damage. You’d need to triple this to get it in line with the new math.

Much more interesting are the eye beams. The Central Eye (Ranged 8 vs. Reflex; minor action 1/round) weakens on a hit (save ends). If a target weakened by this power would become slowed, they become immobilized instead, and this lasts until they’re no longer weakened!

The Eye of Frost has access to 3 Eye Rays, and Eyes of the Beholder allows it to use one of them as a free action against any enemy that starts its turn within 5 squares of the beholder. That enemy also gains Vulnerable 5 Cold until the end of the beholder’s next turn. A ray attack can also be done with a standard action, of course, further increasing the beholder’s rate of fire.

The rays have Range 10, and have the following effects:

Freeze Ray: vs. Fortitude, deals cold damage.
Telekinesis: vs. Fortitude, slides 6 squares.
Ice Ray: vs. Fortitude, deals less cold damage than the freeze ray but also deals ongoing cold damage and immobilizes (save ends both).

Cold resistance on the PCs will go a long way towards making the eye of frost less dangerous, though its control effects will still be a problem.

Beholder Eye of Chaos

Once upon a time, there was a beholder Eye Tyrant who dove into the Abyss in search of the Shard of Ultimate Evil wielded by Tharizdun. Though the creature never found the shard, it nevertheless emerged from the experience infused with all sorts of demonic energies, which increased its power and warped its body and mind. This stat block could represent that individual or one of its descendants, or perhaps another beholder who thought he could do it better.

Eyes of Chaos are still quite capable of concocting complex schemes and directing armies of underlings… only now those underlings tend to be demons more often than not, and those schemes end up having widespread destruction and bloodshed as either their main goals or as desirable side effects.

This twisted thing is Large, and Level 25 Elite Artillery. It has a pretty impressive fly speed of 8, which makes it a lot zoomier than your average beholder.

The bite is once again nothing to write home about, despite all those lovely teeth. The Central Eye (Ranged 20 vs. Fortitude) has the traditional antimagic/enervation effect that forbits the target from using encounter or daily powers until the end of the beholder’s next turn.

After that we get the six eye rays, all Ranged 10:

Telekinesis: vs. Fortitude, does physical damage and slides 6 squares.
Blinding: vs. Reflex, does physical damage and blinds (save ends).
Confounding: vs. Will, does psychic damage, slides 6 squares, and dazes (save ends).
Maddening: vs. Will, does psychic damage and dominates until the end of the beholder’s next turn.
Fear: vs. Will, does psychic damage and forces the target to move its speed away from the beholder by the safest route possible.
Teleporting: vs. Reflex, does physical damage and teleports 10 squares.

The usual Eyes of the Beholder trait means anyone starting their turn within 5 squares of the beholder gets hit with a random eye ray. When the monster is first bloodied it releases a Ripple of Chaos that allows it to target every enemy within 5 squares with a random eye ray and then teleport 6 squares.

I kinda want to make a random roll even for the standard-action eye rays with this critter. For all the randomness, though, it seems the eye ray effects are actually a bit less exciting than those of a “normal” beholder, since there are no sudden death effects here.

Beholder Ultimate Tyrant

If you manage to talk to the Ultimate Tyrant, it will tell you that it has the most valid of reasons for hating all other beholders: they’re a bunch of posers. They were born in the world or otherwise went native, but the Ultimate Tyrant is part of the original generation that came directly from the Far Realm and still keeps its connection to that place.

Depending on the particulars of your campaign it might even be the original beholder. If not, it’s at least among the first to arrive in the world. Perhaps the only creature that might dispute its claims of OG-ness is the Gibbering Orb.

The Ultimate Tyrant is Huge, and a Level 29 Solo Artillary menace with 1080 HP. This can even make it suitable as a final boss for a campaign that ends in the mid-epic levels. Its fly speed is 8, again making it a lot faster than the MM1 beholders. The damage for all of this beholder’s attacks is quite low, and should likely be at least doubled.

There’s the basic bite, and there’s the stuff you’ll actually be using. The Central Eye (Ranged 30 vs. Fortitude; minor action 1/round) does no damage but dazes and slows on a hit (save ends both). This worsens to a full Stun on the first failed save. A miss still slows the target (save ends).

Eyes of the Beholder works as usual, and Spasmodic Rays makes it so the beholder attacks every enemy within 10 squares with an eye ray when it’s first bloodied and again when it dies.

The eye rays themselves are quite scary. Instead of simple ranged attacks, all of them are Area Burst 1 Within 10, and they still don’t provoke opportunity attacks. If the standard Eye Tyrant is a slow-moving battleship, the Ultimate Tyrant is a hyper-mobile orbital laser cannon.

Madness: vs. Will; does psychic damage and forces the target to make a basic attack against its nearest ally.
Unraveling: vs. Fortitude; does physical damage and 10 ongoing damage (save ends). The first failed save causes an additional 1d10 damage; the second an additional 2d10; the third causes an additional 3d10 and automatically ends the effect. So if you fail all of your saves, you’ll be taking a total of 6d10+30 damage over those three turns.
Withering: vs. Fortitude. Does immediate and ongoing necrotic damage (save ends), with the first failed save also weakening the target. There’s a (save ends) after the weakening effect, so I’m guessing that’s a separate save from the ongoing damage.
Burning: vs. Reflex. Does immediate and ongoing fire damage, and also inflicts a -2 attack penalty (save ends both).
Telekinesis: vs. Fortitude. Slides the target 8 squares and knocks it prone.
Frost: vs. Reflex. Cold damage, and a -2 penalty to saves until the end of the beholder’s next turn.
Petrifying: vs. Fortitude. Causes slowness (save ends), which worsens to immobilization (save ends) with the first failed save and with petrification with the second. Petrification is permanent until cured.
Disintegrate: vs. Fortitude. Physical damage, and ongoing 15 physical damage (save ends). There’s also an ongoing 10 damage after-effect, so in practice passing that first save only reduces the ongoing damage a bit.
Attraction: vs. Reflex; -5 penalty to all defenses, and at the start of the target’s turn the beholder pulls it 2 squares (save ends). There’s also a -2 penalty to defenses as an after-effect (save ends).
Repulsion: vs. Reflex. -2 penalty to Reflex, and at the start of the target’s turn the beholder pushes it 6 squares (save ends). As an after effect, the target gets pushed 3 squares in the same way (save ends).

Though the Ultimate Tyrant only has one outright deadly effect among its ray selection, it has a few other very interesting effects: the increasing ongoing damage from the Unraveling Ray, the extra-sticky ongoing damage from Disintegrate, and the first instances I’ve seen of ongoing forced movement!

It bears repeating that all of these are area attacks. Yes, even the free-action ones from Eye of the Beholder and Spasmodic Ray. This thing is an army-killer.

Sample Encounters and Final Impressions

We get a total of four sample encounters here.

Level 5: A gauth, 2 barghest savagers, and a goblin underboss. The gauth is likely the leader here, making the goblins think it’s a fully powered beholder.
Level 13: An Eye of Frost, an oni mage and two wyverns. What haunts the cold mountain at night.
Level 24: An Eye of Chaos and a Chaos Hydra. That enough chaos for you?
Level 29: The Ultimate Tyrant and 2 Slaughterstone Hammerers. What if the kaiju teamed up with the giant robots?

I love beholders and it’s always good to have more. The Eye of Frost feels weirdly limited in what it can do, like is fiery counterpart in the first MM, but the Ultimate Tyrant is an absolute unit.