So Many Monsters: The Basilisk

(Fig 1: Sometimes when we put clothes on the cat he makes this face too)

This entry goes for the cockatrice too, because you don't need two petrifying animals in your game and snakes are cooler than penises. I mean, roosters.

The big question about gaze weapons is: should one glance (with or without a failed save) kill you, or should the damage be gradual? The first is certainly more in fitting with the legends, and makes fighting one a big fucking deal, but there's something to be said for campaigns where you're not bringing along ten henchmen apiece as trap and ambush fodder. And if players don't have multiple characters and character making takes forever, a monster that kills with a glance might as well be a giant middle finger pointed at one player's whole evening. Here are some gaze weapons that could be lethal but could also lead to some interesting challenges or scenarios if someone gets hit. Some classics, some... a little odd.

1d12 GAZE WEAPONS

1. King Basilisk - a snake so poisonous it kills with a glance. Constitution drain or poison damage every round. The basilisk can delay, reactivate, or nullify this venom with a thought. It likes when people owe it favors.
2. Geolisk - petrification, bitch. Stone gets in the joints, immobilizes the limbs. Take dexterity drain every round and turn into a statue at Dex 0. Statue can still see and hear (somehow) and can be communicated with telepathically. If statue is broken, body survives until reanimated as long as the head is intact. So, this.
3. Pyrolisk - its gaze sets you on fire, like a boss. Rolling on the ground won't save you but jumping in water might. Cover yourself in soaked hides before you approach - it just might buy you enough time.
4. Cryolisk - ice lizard that freezes you solid. Slows actions and reduces movement each round; at 0 movement you're helpless. Can stop the process for a round if you take damage from fire. (Downside: gives no resistance to fire.)
5. Sanguilisk - you look in its eyes and then your eyes explode and you start bleeding from every orifice and it's awful. Blindness and rapidly escalating damage over time. Maybe immediate healing will close the wounds, or maybe if you want to get all Cronenberg you can still control your body parts when your limbs fall off and your guts slide out.
6. Chronolisk - The serpent's gaze TORE OPEN A PORTAL IN TIME. The other players will have to fight the snake without you while you have your own weird adventure in the scaly past or terrible future.
7. Gravilisk - Eye beams reverse gravity. Usually lairs in caves with lots of stalactites in the roof. Gaze weapon remains potent for some time (hours? days?) after death.
8. Mutalisk no wait Teratolisk - horrible tumescent green wormy thing with a gaze that makes flesh grow back quickly and wrong. Heals every round but also causes a random mutation.
9. Psychelisk - weird warbly eyes like the Hypnotoad or that snake in the Jungle Book movie. Gaze implants suggestions or causes uncontrollable rage, lust, paranoia, cannibalism, all that good stuff.
10. Gomorralisk - gaze turns people into pillars of salt. Can be turned or rebuked like an undead monster; is frequently commanded by clerics to smite heathens. Won't attack if targets can persuade the serpent of their virtue.
11. Nihilisk - small, ash grey, extremely grumpy lizard. Gaze erases body parts from existence, painlessly and bloodlessly. Once the body is completely gone the spirit remains trapped in the world - can observe, but is powerless to act. Those able to see ghosts notice the lizard is surrounded by the mopey dead.
12. Ossilisk - desiccated white worm with a gaze that animates skeletons - even if they're still in a body. Can use your muscles to fight for control at the cost of massive internal damage, or let the worm use you like a puppet. If you die while your skeleton is animated the bones rip their way out and go on a happy skeleton rampage.

EDIT: Just as I was finishing this entry I discovered this is a thing. Fortunately not much in the way of duplification. More gazes for everyone!