Beholder (EvilHack)
e beholder 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 14 |
| Attacks |
Gaze slowing, Gaze 2d25 sleep, Gaze 0d0 disintegration, Gaze 0d0 stoning, Gaze 4d4 cancellation, Bite 8d8 |
| Base level | 8 |
| Base experience | 280 |
| Speed | 6 |
| Base AC | -8 |
| Base MR | 50 |
| Alignment | -10 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Requires killing Tal'Gath |
| Weight | 800 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Large |
| Resistances | cold,electricity,poison,petrification |
| Resistances conveyed | poison |
|
A beholder:
| |
| Reference | EvilHack 0.8.3 - monst.c, line 457 |
A beholder, e, is a type of monster that appears in EvilHack. The beholder is a large eye creature that can fly, has infravision and can be seen via infravision - it will pick up gold, gems and magical items that it comes across, and cannot be made tame. Warning will always display an unseen beholder within range of the player character as 5, regardless of its level.
A beholder has a slowing gaze, a sleep-inducing gaze, a disintegration gaze, a stoning gaze, a canceling gaze, and a powerful bite attack. Beholders possess cold resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance, and stoning resistance.
Eating a beholder corpse or tin conveys 2⁄25 additional poison resistance.
Generation
Randomly generated beholders are always created hostile, and are not a valid form for polymorph. A normally-generated beholder will be created asleep 4⁄5 of the time unless your character has the Amulet of Yendor at the time of its generation.
Three beholders are generated in the Hidden Dungeon at level creation. Two beholders are generated awake on the middle floor of Vecna's Domain. A beholder is generated behind a set of iron bars on the middle floor of the Wizard's Tower.
Beholders cannot be targeted for genocide unless Tal'Gath is killed.
Strategy
Beholders pose a significant threat from the time they begin generating randomly: most beholders will be created asleep, but an awakened one will direct its many deadly gazes at you, which can turn you to stone instantly, disintegrate you, or cancel your inventory among other undesirable effects - reflection has no effect on any of them. This also makes them impossibly deadly for pets that lack a means of resisting their gazes, and even pets with proper resistances are likely to be debilitated.
Thankfully, blinding yourself or the beholder will render its gaze attacks ineffective against you: neutralizing the beholder's gaze attacks leaves its strong bite as the sole remaining threat, which is much easier to mitigate and preferable by far to the many possibilities of instadeath. Beholders are an enticing genocide target, but doing so requires a character to reach the Castle, access the Hidden Dungeon and successfully kill Tal'Gath, forcing them to remain thoroughly prepared for their threat in the interim.
Origin
The beholder is a well-known creature from Dungeons & Dragons, and is one of the franchise's most iconic original creations. Beholders have spherical bodies with a single large eye, ten smaller eyes on stalks above it, and a mouth full of teeth. The smaller eyes are used for offense or defense; each one has a different magical ability. Beholders are typically hostile to other creatures, and often hostile to one another.
Encyclopedia entry
The beholder is the stuff of nightmares. This creature,
also called the sphere of many eyes or the eye tyrant,
appears as a large orb dominated by a central eye and a
large toothy maw, has 10 smaller eyes on stalks sprouting
from the top of the orb. Among adventurers, beholders are
known as deadly adversaries.
[ Monstrous Manual, AD&D 2nd edition ]
