Making the Beholder an Even Scarier D&D Monster

Making the Beholder an Even Scarier D&D Monster

May 9, 2018

D&D monsters — the game is full scary ones, but sometimes you need to ramp things up a little more. Or maybe you want a particular monster to fit a specific role or theme. For instance you want a beholder that has been touched by the demiplane of shadow. We had a viewer to challenge us to just do that: merge the undead shadow D&D monster with the iconic beholder. Nerdarchist Ted and I accepted this challenge and did it as part of the Nerdarchy Fast and Dirty D&D Monsters series.

Beholders can be as strange as the aberrant dreams that bring them into existence. [Art by Tony DiTerlizzi]

A shadow as seen in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

Fast and Dirty D&D Monsters is all about building new or modified monsters as fast and easy as possible. We love the concept of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Sly Flourish. Generally we will reskin and/or tweak instead of creating a new monster whole cloth. In this case we start with the base beholder. From there we started looking at existing monsters in the fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual.

We looked at creatures already connected with the plane of shadow or at least its theme. That brought us to the shadow dragon, shadow demon, and shadow. That gave us a dragon, fiend, and undead type to work with. They all had some similarities as well.

Tweaking the Monster Manual Beholder

Damage Vulnerabilities Radiant
Light Sensitivity While in bright light, the demon has disadvantage on attack rolls, as well as on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Damage Resistances Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder; Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks
Shadow Stealth. While in dim light or darkness, the dragon can take the Hide action as a bonus action.
Each has an mechanical ability that speaks to them being living shadows.
Two of the three have abilities that raise their victims as undead shadow monsters.

By just adding some of these traits to the beholder you’ve got yourself a brand new D&D monster for your game. The ecology of the beholder makes it easy to explain how a strange variation of these critters could easily explained.

Excerpt From Volo’s Guide to Monsters:

Beholders are among the few creatures that can shape reality in their vicinity. In addition, beholders don’t truly sleep when they rest. Instead, a beholder’s mind remains semiconscious even as it dreams. As a result, on rare occasions when a beholder dreams of another beholder, the dream-reality becomes warped and takes on physical form, becoming another actual beholder. To call this process reproduction would be inaccurate, because in most cases the old and new beholders fight to the death — a fact for which the rest of the world is thankful.

Below is the original video on our creation is below. [NERDITOR’S NOTE: Want to really get weird with a beholder? Check out our beholder randomizer and dream your own strange D&D monsters into existence!]

Help Us Create a Shadow Beholder in This Fast and Dirty D&D Monsters

Like this?

Did you enjoy this post? Nerdarchy’s awesome volunteer staff of writers and editors do their best to create engaging, useful and fun content to share. If you like what you find here on our site, consider patronizing us in a good way through Patreon.

On top of reaching our goal of paying our writers, pledging gets you exclusive monthly content for your D&D game, opportunities to game with Nerdarchy, access to patron-only channels on our Discord and more

With your generous support we’ll continue to create quality content between our YouTube channel and blog, invest in equipment to increase recording quality, and eventually create original publications and products to enhance your tabletop role-playing and gaming experience.

Thank you for your consideration and as always, until next time stay nerdy!

[amazon_link asins=’0786966017,0786966114,0786966246′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’nerdarchy-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’70be9fc0-5350-11e8-a454-99bfe0a7d075′]