So Many Monsters: BEHOLD!

So this is a beholder.

More specifically this is Tony diTerlizzi's beholder illustration from the 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual. I think it's fair to say I really like these guys. I love how the artist has forgone the usual furrowed-brow menace to make the creature look unhinged, perpetually surprised, like it's just noticed you and is about to start screaming how your presence is unacceptable, but if you weren't around it would still be bug-eyed crazy paranoid because freaking out is a fundamental part of its being.

And then you read the monster's description and you find out it's violently offended by everything even slightly different from itself, and its eyes pack enough magical firepower to kill or incapacitate you ten times over in the span of a round. By, like, blinking. A lot of settings use beholders as the scheming masterminds behind grandiose plots, but diTerlizzi's beholders look like they're trying really hard to just hold it together long enough to kill all those other disgusting life forms so it can finally look at something without gagging.

Comparisons to Doctor Who's daleks are apt - both are xenophobes, both try to overcome a somewhat comical appearance with horror of concept. (Obviously I think the eye tyrants do a bit better in that regard.) Beholders don't whisper in the dark, they scream at the injustice of a universe that contains something other than themselves.

More beholders and beholder-kin. They're so much alike that of course they hate each other worst of all. Flipping through the Monstrous Manual as a kid I always had to hurry past these pages (while also, of course, being enthralled). Too many eyes. Too many mad stares.

The "stock" beholder has ten eyes on stalks, each with a different magical eye ray, plus a magic-dispelling ray from the big eye in the center (some editions have turned this into an antimagic cone, but then the creature would have to shut its big eye to use any of the others, and that simply won't do). The beams of petrification and disintegration get lots of love for being batshit deadly, but a lot of the others are essentially duplicates (charm monster and also charm person? Really?) or just kind of weaksauce. I like more variety - seeing an eye beam hit should always inspire some mix of confusion and panic.

That said, if my party were meeting a beholder for the first time and had no idea what to expect anyway, this is the list I'd use:

• True seeing on the main eye. I kind of like the idea that the little eyes are mostly just weapons, and if you rip out the big one its vision kind of sucks. So the main eye lets the beholder see through invisibility and illusions and things, and also extends the range of its other eye beams. (Incidentally if your RPG of choice doesn't let you attack specific body parts, by rule or by ruling, you should fix that. Half-blind beholders with big gory sockets are the best.)
• Scrying and X-Ray vision. It's called a beholder; you shouldn't be able to hide from it behind a wall or in another country. These also give another way to target you if you blind the big eye and stay out of range, albeit a way needing lots more concentration.
• Disintegration and petrification rays. True story: One time I drew a beholder at art camp and the instructor said it "brought back a lot of memories of characters getting turned to stone." These two eye beams are pretty iconic, is what I'm saying.
• Freeze ray and fire ray. Maybe a little video gamey, but I think being slowed or immobilized by a coating of ice is much more evocative than just a slow or hold person spell. And the fire ray is for straight up settin' bitches on fire. Worked for H.G. Wells, works for me.
• Telekinesis. Because hands are for suckers.
• Command, and feeblemind rays. The command ray works like the spell (one verb, followed for one round) unless used on someone already feebleminded. Then it lasts indefinitely. So the beholder can just yell OBEY and watch the witless monkeys scamper about like good little underlings.
• Death ray. Before our good friends Fortitude, Reflex, and Will came along, saving throws had wonderfully evocative (and confusing) names like "save vs rods, staves, and wands" and "save vs dragon breath". And of course, save vs poison or death ray. The way I'd run it, the disintegration and petrification rays affect a body part at a time (slowly building dread), while for most of the fight the eye with the death ray is swollen shut like it's been punched by a boxing glove soaked in pepper spray. Then when the beholder is badly hurt the eye opens and it's this awful blood-red thing and you tell someone to save vs death ray and when they frantically search their character sheet for what the hell that even means you say just roll a d20, and if the result is lower than 20 minus their level you set their character sheet on fire.