Are you interested in playing some D&D from the monster’s point of view?
Play a Beholder you say? For the BYOB, Bring Your Own Beholder event, you will make a Beholder (subject to the rules linked to below) and Bring that near divine creature of creative beauty to PrairieCon. You and your team of Beholders, working as cooperatively as Beholders do . . . must restore the figurehead Queen of Harrowdeep to the throne lest the usurping Paladin Princess unleash her Holy Wrath on you and your schemes.
How do you make a Beholder for the PrairieCon XL BYOB, Bring Your Own Beholder event?
Step 1) Start with the basic Beholder on page 28 of the 5e Monster Manual. Use all the standard stats and abilities unless customized.
Step 2) You will have neither Lair Actions nor Legendary Actions. You do have your amazing antimagic central eye. Do be careful with it.
Step 3) Instead of using the standard eye rays, you will select custom eye ray powers! You will roll randomly to see which 3 eyes are active for any given attack, but you may pick what each eye does. You may use the default powers (but why?) or pick powers (spells) of the same level or lower as the ones you replace.
- Eye 1 – Sleep or another level 1 Sorcerer Spell effect
- Eye 2 – Charm or another level 1 Sorcerer Spell effect
- Eye 3 – Fear or another level 3 Sorcerer Spell Effect
- Eye 4 – Slow or another level 3 Sorcerer Spell Effect
- Eye 5 – Enervation or another level 5 Sorcerer Spell Effect
- Eye 6 – Paralyzing or another level 5 Sorcerer Spell Effect
- Eye 7 – Telekinesis or another level 5 Sorcerer Spell Effect
- Eye 8 – Petrification or another level 6 Sorcerer Spell Effect
- Eye 9 – Disintegration or another level 6 Sorcerer Spell Effect
- Eye 10 – Death or another level 7 Sorcerer Spell Effect
e.g. Suppose you don’t like the level 3 Fear effect of Eye 3. You may replace it with Fireball or any other level 3 Sorcerer spell effect.
Step 3b) Don’t like to be restricted to Sorcerer Spells? No worries. You may substitute another class’ spells but with a 1 level penalty. e.g. Suppose you don’t like the level 3 Slow effect of Eye 4 and don’t want to substitute any other Sorcerer spell. You could instead replace the Slow effect with the level 2 Cleric spell Lesser Restoration or the level 2 Druid spell Barkskin.
Step 3c) Still not enough variety for you? You may choose to stunt any of your eyes. So instead of a spell effect, a stunted eye gives a constant +2 to an ability stat. Beware, you will still roll to see which eyes are active each round. Pick too many stunted eyes, which have no spell attacks, and you may not have any effective attacks in a given round!
Step 4) Calculate your stats, saves and DCs (if they changed), then find a photo and pick a Beholder worthy name. The DM will reward the best name with a free drink from the canteen!
Step 5) Get fired up for PrairieCon!
Questions?
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