Monster of the Week: Beholder

Bringing back the trend of floating eyes with tentacles, the Beholder emerges from its slumber in this week’s post!

Another classic TTRPG monster already, at this time of year and this time of day? Localized entirely within a 300(ish) word count!?… Yes.

From an aesthetic standpoint, the Beholder could be easily dismissed from other classic TTRPG monsters; it’s an angry flying orb with eyes and tentacles. Yet it is one of the few monsters to constantly re-appear in different iterations of popular TTRPGs.

Why is that? One reason being: the Beholder loves confrontation. It thrives off instilling fear into its opponents (kind of like how old people treat retail employees). This severe personality flaw is one that makes the Beholder so endearing to players, they’re incredibly xenophobic and that adds a level of unpredictability to their actions. Beholder’s are creepy because of their human-like qualities, and these qualities often represent the worst aspects of mankind.  They consider other creatures to be lesser beings and are known to keep slaves… Yeah they might be some of the worst as far as evil TTRPG creatures go, but for the sake of gameplay a good bad guy can bring up a lot of powerful and genuine conversation between players. You can enjoy the presence of a bad guy, and recognize that their actions are unjustifiable. (Not every villain has to be a hurt baby rejected by society after all…*cough* Disney. *cough*)

If you see one… immediately go the other direction.

Definitely don’t try to sneak up on it; The Beholder can see in all directions, even when it sleeps.  As you’d expect, they can attack you with eye rays. What kind you ask? Just… all of the above. You might get a charm ray, but you could also get a death ray. Only the dice can tell!

I think I’ll stick with the Spectator

Good call. At first glance, the Beholder and Spectator are difficult to separate from one another. You wouldn’t be wrong to confuse the two though, the Spectator is a form of Beholderkin. In fact, the Beholder has many different variants that have spun off from it over the last few decades. I won’t ramble on about those though, since they could earn a post of their own eventually! 

Thus concludes this week’s post on the Beholder, the real MVP of ball-shaped malevolence. If you liked this week’s post, comment below and yell at us with positive vibes and what monster you’d like to hear about next!

Check out last week’s monster, the Ginormous Squirrel here!