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Critical Role Wiki
Critical Role Wiki

Beholders are powerful aberrations that originate in the Far Realm.

Description[]

A beholder's body consists of a hovering head with a wide and toothy maw, an enormous central eye, and ten independently moving eyes at the end of their own eyestalks.

Abilities[]

Note: This section does not specify the copywritten monster ability details, which are available in the D&D 5th edition Monster Manual.
  • Immunities: The "prone" condition.
  • Senses: Darkvision.
  • Languages: Deep Speech, Undercommon.
  • Attacks
    • Antimagic Cone: The beholder can negate magic within a 150-ft cone in front of its central eye.
      • Also negates the effects of its own eye rays within that area.
    • Bite: The beholder can bite at a target with its giant, toothy maw.
    • Eye Rays: A beholder has ten different eyes attached to its head, each of which can emit a different magical ray at separately selected targets.
  • Charm Ray
  • Paralyzing Ray
  • Fear Ray
  • Slowing Ray
  • Enervation Ray (necrotic damage)
  • Telekinetic Ray
  • Sleep Ray
  • Petrification Ray
  • Disintegration Ray (force damage)
  • Death Ray (necrotic damage)
  • Legendary Action: A beholder can use one of its eye rays at the end of another character's turn.

Known beholders[]

Stephen-oakley-k-varn-illustrated

Fan art of K'Varn, by Stephen Oakley.[art 2]

  • K'Varn, bearing a Horn of Orcus and metal armor plating, came through a rift from the Far Realm to the ancient underground city of Yug'Voril, where he enslaved a mind flayer colony, expanded his influence to the duergar Emberhold, and began threatening Kraghammer before he was slain by Vox Machina.
  • A beholder—possibly named something pronounced "Yar-voss," based on what its kuo-toa servant said as it died[1]—occupied the sunken tomb of Purvan Suul.
  • Enxanash is an eccentric beholder living in a hidden valley in the Cyrios Mountains.[2]
  • Taryon Darrington claimed to have killed a small beholder at some point in the past with help from sellswords, who "took it out into a field and sort of roughed it up" for Taryon, who then dealt the killing blow to the creature.[3]

Trivia[]

  • Due to beholders being Product Identity of Wizards of the Coast under the Open Game License, they are replaced with unspecified extraplanar aberrations in the Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting. One adventure hook involves aberrant "Death Eyes",[4] which sound similar to a nickname for despotic beholders, "eye tyrants", and an undead type of beholder called a "death tyrant".[5]
  • A common fan theory was that Fresh Cut Grass's former party may have been killed by a beholder, due to F.C.G. asking Ariks Eshteross specifically about one-eyed monsters.[6] However, this was later proven false when Dancer confirmed that the party was killed by F.C.G. himself.[7]

References[]

  1. See "The Sunken Tomb" (1x44) at 3:38:35.  A servant croaks something as it dies that Vex doesn't recognize as an Undercommon word. For contrast, other servants called to their master at 2:46:12 and chanted in reverence at 3:10:10, both times in Undercommon.
  2. See Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, p. 62.
  3. See "A Bard's Lament" (1x85) at 3:05:41.
  4. See Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, p. 69.
  5. See D&D: Monster Manual (2014), 5th ed., pp. 26–27.
  6. See "The Trail and the Toll" (3x03) at 3:27:16.
  7. See "A Stage Set" (3x32) at 1:04:49.

Art:

  1. Beholder on D&D Beyond. This page contains unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Wizards of the Coast Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
  2. Fan art of K'Varn, by Stephen Oakley (source). Used with permission.