Beholders and Gauth's in Rift and Lair

Ridcully

Building up to a no reload run. I've sorted most things, however I can not consistently survive the two Beholder and Gauth fights in the unseeing eye quest. One just after the bridge in the rift and the other just below the Blind priests in the lair. I tried using a fire elemental and / or animate dead but there is a spell being cast that kills them straight away. Any suggestions?

jmerry

Beholders in the standard game have one instance of Death Spell each, which they use if they see summoned creatures. While you can beat them down with skeleton warriors fairly effectively, you need to start with a sacrificial summon to draw out that Death Spell. Or maybe one sacrificial summon per beholder; that "high level" spawn group is three beholders and two gauths in its strongest form.

Fighting groups of beholders ... you pretty much have to do something cheesy, because a group of beholders is inherently cheesy. In traditional tabletop D&D, beholders are supposed to be solitary boss monsters.

So, some tricks.
- If you're capable of using a medium shield, the Shield of Balduran (bought from Diedre in the Adventurer Mart) makes you virtually immune to beholder rays. Antimagic rays ignore it, and elder orbs can get a few rays through it with double reflections off their Minor Spell Turning (in 2.6, spells can't reflect back and forth repeatedly), but that's it. Fortunately, the only elder orb in the lair under Athkatla is the Unseeing Eye itself, and the rift device breaks its spell protection.
- The Cloak of Mirroring grants immunity to all of the damage and instant death rays. It drops in the sahuagin city, so the first beholders you'll have it for are in the Underdark.
- Potion and spell buffs can protect against offensive rays ... until an antimagic ray breaks them. There's only one way to block antimagic rays and protect your other buffs: Spell Shield. Which is way too good, as it not only blocks antimagic rays completely but also sticks around to block future rays rather than being used up like it is against normal defense-breaking spells. Spell Shield + 2x Potion of Magic Protection = full beholder ray immunity, as long as that Spell Shield lasts. Or you could build up that full protection with a bunch of mage and priest spells: Remove/Resist Fear, Death Ward, Chaotic Commands, Free Action, Protection From Electricity, Protection From Magic Energy, Spell Shield.
- Beholders have no magic resistance or damage type resistances. Damaging battlefield effects like Cloudkill and Incendiary Cloud are very effective against groups of them, especially because the large area of effect means you don't have to be in sight of them to cast the spell.
- Beholders can't see through invisibility. Well, Hive Mothers can, but none of the lesser varieties have that ability. An invisible party member can scout to help others target the enemies.
- If you have a party, you don't have to send everyone in. Keep anyone who isn't protected back.
- All beholder rays except the Hive Mother's magic damage ray are subject to magic resistance. All of the instant death rays are subject to either spell saves or death saves, and only the Hive Mother's Disintegrate ray has any penalty (that's a spell save at -4). For full protection from instant death from normal beholder rays, you need either spell and death saves of 1 or better, specific protections against death magic and petrification, one of the super-protective items, or 100% magic resistance. If you've got anything less than that, don't let them see you.

Ridcully

Cheers. Didn't realize they only had the one instance of Death spell. Will go down the sacrificial summons route