Okay, I'm decently new to Dungeons and Dragons, been playing for ~2 years now and just started DM'ing so please bear with me! (:
So. Question one: Are beholders' forms tied to their mindset/mind?
The following is from the 5e Monster Manual.
"On rare occasions, a beholder's sleeping mind drifts to places beyond its normal madness, imagining a reality in which it exists beyond death. When such dreams take hold a beholder can [transform into a Death Tyrant]"
This makes me think beholders transform upon such a dream (or similar dream.)
What if a beholder became truly aware of its own mind? The mind is a wondrous thing, indeed! It is metaphysical, existing anywhere and everywhere without existing at all, in fact, it exists both inside and outside of itself, tethered to nothing!
What if a beholder realizes this? The very thought terrifies me. Pretty cool, huh?
If my logic is flawed, don't hesitate to correct me! (December 30th, 2024, I'm dating this so they can't take my idea without crediting me, haha!)
Other 5e books describe beholders and beholder-like creatures being born out of a previous beholder's nightmares. For example, a beholder will have a bad dream about being wounded, or fighting a vampire, and upon waking up will find in its lair a blood-sucking beholder-kin, called a "death kiss", that did not exist before.
The death tyrant is to my knowledge the only example of the dreaming beholder itself transforming, but I think it would make sense for other such cases to exist.
For a beholder going all "galaxy mind", I would suggest a creature, from previous editions, called the gibbering orb. It is like a gibbering mouther except that it levitates as a vaguely spherical shape and has eye-rays like those of a beholder. It is also much more intelligent than either creature and may be able to grow indefinitely, though gibbering orbs have a habit of merging together and splitting apart without care for a conventional sense of identity.
Thank you for such constructive feedback! I was researching beholders and beholder behavior (holy cannoli) and did consider it, but how it comes into being is my question, is it possible for it to go all "galaxy mind" like this? At all? And if not, is there a fifth edition gibbering orb?
(It wont let me un-italics help)
Nevermind (I won't risk deleting the last sentence and going back to italics)
Why is the death tyrant an exception is what i wonder?
So the thing with beholders is that each individual is convinced to already be the greatest possible example of the ultimate lifeform. In the words of the Xanathar, when commenting on druids in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, "If I could turn into something else, I wouldn't. Because everything else is inferior to me". It is to the point where a beholder finds it impossible to coexist with another beholder unless they happen to be physically identical, because otherwise each beholder hates how the other beholder falls just short of perfection.
That's why I think it takes an especially traumatic nightmare for a beholder to transform. To get a death tyrant, the nightmare must have the beholder face its own mortality. To get a gibbering orb, I say it would have to be an even greater existential crisis. Like maybe the realization that the beholder's shape was never anything special, or perhaps a feeling of oneness with beholderkind at large. I don't know what could trigger such a nightmare in a beholder.
Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft has a creature called a star spawn emissary. It is a shapeshifting mass with an Intelligence score of 25, or 27 after it enters its second phase, a flight speed and, in its second phase, the ability to spit gibbering mouthers. I think that's the closest thing to a gibbering orb that 5e offers. It is only missing the eye-rays.
Not answering the specific question about beholders, but yes, the lore could exist.
At your table, the D&D canon is what you say it is. The consequences are what you want them to be. If you want beholders to be like that, they're like that.
(Though your players likely won't care. All your detailed world-building is lost upon them. The jerks.)
If my memory serves me right, I think the D&D YouTuber Pointyhat made a video about a similar idea to this. It absolutely could fit into the lore, and if you want some more details I would recommend looking at that, but it isn’t an official enemy it that’s what you’re looking for.
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Okay, I'm decently new to Dungeons and Dragons, been playing for ~2 years now and just started DM'ing so please bear with me! (:
So. Question one: Are beholders' forms tied to their mindset/mind?
The following is from the 5e Monster Manual.
"On rare occasions, a beholder's sleeping mind drifts to places beyond its normal madness, imagining a reality in which it exists beyond death. When such dreams take hold a beholder can [transform into a Death Tyrant]"
This makes me think beholders transform upon such a dream (or similar dream.)
What if a beholder became truly aware of its own mind? The mind is a wondrous thing, indeed! It is metaphysical, existing anywhere and everywhere without existing at all, in fact, it exists both inside and outside of itself, tethered to nothing!
What if a beholder realizes this?
The very thought terrifies me.Pretty cool, huh?If my logic is flawed, don't hesitate to correct me! (December 30th, 2024, I'm dating this so they can't take my idea without crediting me, haha!)
Other 5e books describe beholders and beholder-like creatures being born out of a previous beholder's nightmares. For example, a beholder will have a bad dream about being wounded, or fighting a vampire, and upon waking up will find in its lair a blood-sucking beholder-kin, called a "death kiss", that did not exist before.
The death tyrant is to my knowledge the only example of the dreaming beholder itself transforming, but I think it would make sense for other such cases to exist.
For a beholder going all "galaxy mind", I would suggest a creature, from previous editions, called the gibbering orb. It is like a gibbering mouther except that it levitates as a vaguely spherical shape and has eye-rays like those of a beholder. It is also much more intelligent than either creature and may be able to grow indefinitely, though gibbering orbs have a habit of merging together and splitting apart without care for a conventional sense of identity.
Expanded 5e Spelljammer Cosmology
Thank you for such constructive feedback! I was researching beholders and beholder behavior (holy cannoli) and did consider it, but how it comes into being is my question, is it possible for it to go all "galaxy mind" like this? At all? And if not, is there a fifth edition gibbering orb?
(It wont let me un-italics help)
Nevermind (I won't risk deleting the last sentence and going back to italics)
Why is the death tyrant an exception is what i wonder?
So the thing with beholders is that each individual is convinced to already be the greatest possible example of the ultimate lifeform. In the words of the Xanathar, when commenting on druids in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, "If I could turn into something else, I wouldn't. Because everything else is inferior to me". It is to the point where a beholder finds it impossible to coexist with another beholder unless they happen to be physically identical, because otherwise each beholder hates how the other beholder falls just short of perfection.
That's why I think it takes an especially traumatic nightmare for a beholder to transform. To get a death tyrant, the nightmare must have the beholder face its own mortality. To get a gibbering orb, I say it would have to be an even greater existential crisis. Like maybe the realization that the beholder's shape was never anything special, or perhaps a feeling of oneness with beholderkind at large. I don't know what could trigger such a nightmare in a beholder.
Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft has a creature called a star spawn emissary. It is a shapeshifting mass with an Intelligence score of 25, or 27 after it enters its second phase, a flight speed and, in its second phase, the ability to spit gibbering mouthers. I think that's the closest thing to a gibbering orb that 5e offers. It is only missing the eye-rays.
Expanded 5e Spelljammer Cosmology
Not answering the specific question about beholders, but yes, the lore could exist.
At your table, the D&D canon is what you say it is. The consequences are what you want them to be. If you want beholders to be like that, they're like that.
(Though your players likely won't care. All your detailed world-building is lost upon them. The jerks.)
If my memory serves me right, I think the D&D YouTuber Pointyhat made a video about a similar idea to this. It absolutely could fit into the lore, and if you want some more details I would recommend looking at that, but it isn’t an official enemy it that’s what you’re looking for.