In their lair I usually drink potions to raise Magic Resistance to 100% and then cast Cloud Kills from the wand at the general direction of beholders group congregation to lure them to follow me. Then I just go to the exit (or far end of the map) and on the way cast more Cloud Kills behind me. If done with two spellcasters and two wands rarely any beholder survives till the exit (or far end of the map). This also works during the test at the end of SoA - send baits with 100% MR at the front while others use ranged attacks and spells. Too bad that Cloud Kill wand no longer works on illithids - they are a real headache to deal with. If it's only one beholder then I just rush him with the group - it usually fails to cast something nasty in time.
The squids are easy, if you have a devine caster of rank and a little intelligence to spare.
I've seen now that monks work well against them, my question is:
How do Wizard Slayers, particularly those that specialize in 2h weapons, stand up to them? Thinking of doing a canon party run through with a wizard slayer.
The original theory being that she was raised in Candlekeep and thus knew plenty of mages, but also didn't have a high enough intelligence, (I'm thinking between 10-13 for this, maybe 14 depending on stat rolls), to actually become a wizard. She did however, come to respect them and understand the threat they possessed, so she learned how to use her own skills against them. Originally planning on joining the Candlekeep guard to help.
Edit: Or even better I could just run a Dwarven Wizard Slayer since none of the party members really use axes or hammers. WOOHOO!
Honestly my beating up Beholders was pretty much involving me buffing up and going YOLO on them with phys attacks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it ends HORRIBLY. That's pretty much the brain-dead way to do it, but the "smart" ways to do it involve, well. "cheese".
Ha. Ironically, the "YOLO" method is predicated on an understanding that your characters, in fact.... don't. YOLO behavior works better with reloads actually...
I wish I had known that last night before I finally caved in and bought the shield of balduran for my Wizard Slayer. I couldn't even get close before she was gibber by Gauths. =/
@Dragonspear Yeah, Beholders are almost impossible to reliably go toe-to-toe with. If you feel cheesy using the shield of balduran, but aren't much of a magic user you can install SCS (which I couldn't play without anyway).
The smarter beholder option gives beholders a "telekinesis" power allowing them, "after a few rounds", and realizing your trick to steal the shield of balduran or mirror cloak. So - those items stop being instant wins and instead give you a brief space of time to act; which seems like more fun to me.
(SCS will make the game harder albeit, with a few exceptions like the above (which you can choose not to load or turn off) it's only an AI mod - lots of fun! - http://www.gibberlings3.net/scs/ )
Trying to avoid SCS and Rogue-Rebalancing until I finish the 3 play throughs I'm working on atm. Topics for them will be in the challenges and play throughs forum. Unfortunately my wizard slayer will be a "when I'm in the mood character", so I'll prolly beat BG2 with her awhile from now. I unfortunately planned her with Crom Faeyr AND Axe of the Unyielding in mind, and those really won't come into effect till after spellhold (and intro ToB) really.
Edit: Also I will probably go straight to spellhold after I finish gathering my preferred party + finish all the Nalia related quests.
I always wondered what's stopping 2nd Edition Beholders from just taking over the entire world, considering how cheesy they are. In fact, I want to become a Beholder when I grow up, who cares about swords and sorcery when you have unlimited rays of ultimate death and suffering?
I always wondered what's stopping 2nd Edition Beholders from just taking over the entire world, considering how cheesy they are. In fact, I want to become a Beholder when I grow up, who cares about swords and sorcery when you have unlimited rays of ultimate death and suffering?
Have you ever thought...I mean really, really thought...about how those things might reproduce? /shudder I doubt their birth rate is all that high.
I've found a 3-person beholder disposal recipe. It was in Dradeel's cookbook:
Spells Invisibility 10 ft radius Haste/Improved Haste
Characters Korgan and 2 more melee characters. I used Dorn and F/T charname
1. Haste 2. Korgan rages. 3. Cast invisibility 10 ft radius on your 3 melee damage characters (it's a little faster than a casting invisibility 2 to 3 times.
Korgan strikes first, since he's immune to the death stuff because of rage (I think?), he has great saves and he has hit points if he doesn't make the saves. Then Dorn and F/T join in the fun.
Since you start right next to the beholder, you can get 45+ damage in your first swings. Beholder's dead before it can react.
This approach does require scouting to be kosher non-cheesy.
Without the Shield of Balduran... I'd guess Protection from Petrification, Chaotic Commands (Priest spell, but unless you're soloing, you should have a cleric or druid with you...), Spell Turning and Improved Invisibility... The Turning and Invisibility may help you keep your protections longer so they can't dominate and/or petrify you instantly.
Without the Shield of Balduran... I'd guess Protection from Petrification, Chaotic Commands (Priest spell, but unless you're soloing, you should have a cleric or druid with you...), Spell Turning and Improved Invisibility... The Turning and Invisibility may help you keep your protections longer so they can't dominate and/or petrify you instantly.
Skeleton warriors and bombardment spells work, this time I did the SCS upgraded beholder lair without shield of balduran only had cloak of mirroring and I had to make judicious use of traps on elder orbs and use lots of summons... Also had two imp hasted 9-10 attack fighters rip at them.
I think the best non-cheesy suggestion I have read so far is scouting followed by blindness (and potentially stun). Scouting followed by summons and/or 100% magic resistance (difficult to obtain) seems decent as well.
Korgan alone can pretty much solo most of them and their cave. All you need is a Ring of Protection +2, Necklace of Form Stability, Boots of Grounding, Dragon Scale Shield+2, Gift of Peace, Belt of Inertial Barrier and Eventar's Gift, all easily available by the end of Chapter 2, and even for the Unseeing Eye all you'll miss is the FoM ring, but then again there are only a few beholders there and the Unseeing Eye itself can't do crap if you have the Belt of Inertial Barrier, can't even dispel you from what I remember. Beholders and Gauths cannot cast Greater Malison, so a level 13 Korgan with this gear and berserk can simply ignore all their rays except for Slow, that's why Eventar's Gift. Gauth's elec and wound rays are heavily countered by the belt and all that gear gives you 95% elec resist. You'll want to kill the Gauths first, poor common Beholders can't do anything against you with their rays. As soon as you kill the Elder Orb in the Underdark and hit level 17, you swap Necklace of Form Stability with Amulet of Spell Warding. Korgan now has most saving throws in the negative( Spell at -4), and Poly at 1, feel free to swap Eventar's Gift for something else if you want. There you go, pure unbuffed Korgan love with no cheese at all. You can probably do the same with a shorty pc and high CON, the saving throw bonuses are the key against Beholders.
Korgan alone can pretty much solo most of them and their cave. All you need is a Ring of Protection +2, Necklace of Form Stability, Boots of Grounding, Dragon Scale Shield+2, Gift of Peace, Belt of Inertial Barrier and Eventar's Gift, all easily available by the end of Chapter 2, and even for the Unseeing Eye all you'll miss is the FoM ring, but then again there are only a few beholders there and the Unseeing Eye itself can't do crap if you have the Belt of Inertial Barrier, can't even dispel you from what I remember. Beholders and Gauths cannot cast Greater Malison, so a level 13 Korgan with this gear and berserk can simply ignore all their rays except for Slow, that's why Eventar's Gift. Gauth's elec and wound rays are heavily countered by the belt and all that gear gives you 95% elec resist. You'll want to kill the Gauths first, poor common Beholders can't do anything against you with their rays. As soon as you kill the Elder Orb in the Underdark and hit level 17, you swap Necklace of Form Stability with Amulet of Spell Warding. Korgan now has most saving throws in the negative( Spell at -4), and Poly at 1, feel free to swap Eventar's Gift for something else if you want. There you go, pure unbuffed Korgan love with no cheese at all. You can probably do the same with a shorty pc and high CON, the saving throw bonuses are the key against Beholders.
Hmmm... My CHARNAME this time is a Fighter/Illusionist with shorty saves and I wasn't able to tank them the way your suggesting... Might be SCS but if I sent in my CHARNAME alone I would quickly get a loading screen. My solution to that was to run in a simulacrum of CHARNAME first with the real one behind doing damage which seemed to make everything work a lot better. I'm not sure which of the instant death effects was getting me but every time I tried it even with perfect negative saves, I would die.
That's weird. I'm playing with SCS too, and have a save with Korgan at level 13, earliest I tried Beholders from the Unseeing Eye quest. He has all that gear besides the boots of grounding, FoM ring and is using Neklace of Form Stability. A level 13 Fighter has 5/7/6/5/8. My 13 Korgan with all the above gear has -3/-1/-2/-3/0. I don't recall any of the Beholder rays having a saving throw penalty, besides the Slow spell like ability. Korgan keeps shrugging Disintegrate, Flesh to Stone and Death Rays, which are the only ones that would lead to an instant death scenario like you said. I noticed my common Beholders won't use cause wounds though, only the Gauths are using it along with elec ray, but it's been a while since I've played so I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to work.
I always wondered what's stopping 2nd Edition Beholders from just taking over the entire world, considering how cheesy they are. In fact, I want to become a Beholder when I grow up, who cares about swords and sorcery when you have unlimited rays of ultimate death and suffering?
They'd need hands to write laws and open doors and stuff that's what stopping them from taking over the world.
That's weird. I'm playing with SCS too, and have a save with Korgan at level 13, earliest I tried Beholders from the Unseeing Eye quest. He has all that gear besides the boots of grounding, FoM ring and is using Neklace of Form Stability. A level 13 Fighter has 5/7/6/5/8. My 13 Korgan with all the above gear has -3/-1/-2/-3/0. I don't recall any of the Beholder rays having a saving throw penalty, besides the Slow spell like ability. Korgan keeps shrugging Disintegrate, Flesh to Stone and Death Rays, which are the only ones that would lead to an instant death scenario like you said. I noticed my common Beholders won't use cause wounds though, only the Gauths are using it along with elec ray, but it's been a while since I've played so I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to work.
I suspect I'm just much better at rolling critical fails than you?
I believe critical failures on saving throws aren't implemented in BG, if you have 0 vs Spells for example nothing that requires a failed save will ever hit you assuming no penalties.
@RedWizard Hmmmm... I'll have to check again then because you'd think a 16 Fighter 15 Illusionist with 19 CON and shorty saves with a few + saves items would pretty much be immune to these effects then... I definitely wasn't immune to instant death while wearing the cloak of mirroring though... Maybe some of my saves weren't negative yet...
That should be base: Death: 4 Wand: 6 Poly: 5 Breath: 4 Spell: 7
With Shorty Saves and 19 Con that would be -5 on each, then -2 with wooden horse necklace should make me immune to everything...
So, I just noticed only Gauths are using Cause Wounds and Lightning rays, while Beholders and Elder Orbs use the normal death/petrify/charm/etc rays together with spells in the Orb's case, is this normal behaviour? -
Comments
How do Wizard Slayers, particularly those that specialize in 2h weapons, stand up to them? Thinking of doing a canon party run through with a wizard slayer.
The original theory being that she was raised in Candlekeep and thus knew plenty of mages, but also didn't have a high enough intelligence, (I'm thinking between 10-13 for this, maybe 14 depending on stat rolls), to actually become a wizard. She did however, come to respect them and understand the threat they possessed, so she learned how to use her own skills against them. Originally planning on joining the Candlekeep guard to help.
Edit: Or even better I could just run a Dwarven Wizard Slayer since none of the party members really use axes or hammers. WOOHOO!
+
Chaos
= WIN
Note: Confused ("gibberred") creatures don't use complex attacks like spells or innates. The worst the beholders will do is try to bite you.
Ha. Ironically, the "YOLO" method is predicated on an understanding that your characters, in fact.... don't.
YOLO behavior works better with reloads actually...
I wish I had known that last night before I finally caved in and bought the shield of balduran for my Wizard Slayer. I couldn't even get close before she was gibber by Gauths. =/
Yeah, Beholders are almost impossible to reliably go toe-to-toe with.
If you feel cheesy using the shield of balduran, but aren't much of a magic user you can install SCS (which I couldn't play without anyway).
The smarter beholder option gives beholders a "telekinesis" power allowing them, "after a few rounds", and realizing your trick to steal the shield of balduran or mirror cloak. So - those items stop being instant wins and instead give you a brief space of time to act; which seems like more fun to me.
(SCS will make the game harder albeit, with a few exceptions like the above (which you can choose not to load or turn off) it's only an AI mod - lots of fun! - http://www.gibberlings3.net/scs/ )
Trying to avoid SCS and Rogue-Rebalancing until I finish the 3 play throughs I'm working on atm. Topics for them will be in the challenges and play throughs forum. Unfortunately my wizard slayer will be a "when I'm in the mood character", so I'll prolly beat BG2 with her awhile from now. I unfortunately planned her with Crom Faeyr AND Axe of the Unyielding in mind, and those really won't come into effect till after spellhold (and intro ToB) really.
Edit: Also I will probably go straight to spellhold after I finish gathering my preferred party + finish all the Nalia related quests.
In fact, I want to become a Beholder when I grow up, who cares about swords and sorcery when you have unlimited rays of ultimate death and suffering?
"I came in like a wrecking bhaaall!!"?
Spells
Invisibility 10 ft radius
Haste/Improved Haste
Characters
Korgan and 2 more melee characters. I used Dorn and F/T charname
1. Haste
2. Korgan rages.
3. Cast invisibility 10 ft radius on your 3 melee damage characters (it's a little faster than a casting invisibility 2 to 3 times.
Korgan strikes first, since he's immune to the death stuff because of rage (I think?), he has great saves and he has hit points if he doesn't make the saves. Then Dorn and F/T join in the fun.
Since you start right next to the beholder, you can get 45+ damage in your first swings. Beholder's dead before it can react.
This approach does require scouting to be kosher non-cheesy.
mustard jelly from polymorph self gives 100%
mustard jelly is slow and does low damage. cast a contingency or spell trigger on yourself with ghoul touch in it before shapeshifting.
the beholder anti magic ray will dispel your ghoul touch and give you back your equipped weapons! then crush the beholders/gauth into goo.
Good to know.
Beholders and Gauths cannot cast Greater Malison, so a level 13 Korgan with this gear and berserk can simply ignore all their rays except for Slow, that's why Eventar's Gift. Gauth's elec and wound rays are heavily countered by the belt and all that gear gives you 95% elec resist.
You'll want to kill the Gauths first, poor common Beholders can't do anything against you with their rays.
As soon as you kill the Elder Orb in the Underdark and hit level 17, you swap Necklace of Form Stability with Amulet of Spell Warding. Korgan now has most saving throws in the negative( Spell at -4), and Poly at 1, feel free to swap Eventar's Gift for something else if you want.
There you go, pure unbuffed Korgan love with no cheese at all. You can probably do the same with a shorty pc and high CON, the saving throw bonuses are the key against Beholders.
He has all that gear besides the boots of grounding, FoM ring and is using Neklace of Form Stability.
A level 13 Fighter has 5/7/6/5/8.
My 13 Korgan with all the above gear has -3/-1/-2/-3/0.
I don't recall any of the Beholder rays having a saving throw penalty, besides the Slow spell like ability.
Korgan keeps shrugging Disintegrate, Flesh to Stone and Death Rays, which are the only ones that would lead to an instant death scenario like you said.
I noticed my common Beholders won't use cause wounds though, only the Gauths are using it along with elec ray, but it's been a while since I've played so I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to work.
That should be base:
Death: 4
Wand: 6
Poly: 5
Breath: 4
Spell: 7
With Shorty Saves and 19 Con that would be -5 on each, then -2 with wooden horse necklace should make me immune to everything...