Beholder Summons

[The Mentalist]

I have nothing better to do than call people names.

[PlayaCharacter]

Remember when the Dunwarren Defensive Device got nerfed because it had charges of level 10 Confusion on it? Yeah.

[Pentaxius]

It should be a strong theme. But -

On the NWN wiki, under beholder ray, it stats :

A beholder is able to shoot a variety of rays at opponents. Each of these rays may be used at the same time, and they do not necessarily all target the same creature. (Each individual ray targets only one creature, but different rays can target different creatures.) Each ray uses a ranged touch attack to see if it hits. All saving throws have a DC of 15.

As I understand it, the Rays of the scripted beholder can all hit the same target in one single round? If this is the case, then... well - that's insanely powerful.

For the sake of the argument, consider the following

Adventurer A has +9 Fortitude/Will, and must save against four consecutive rays at a DC 15. The probability of succeeding one save is .75. The probability of failing at least one roll is 0.68 This is equivalent to a single ray with a DC of 24.

[Howlando]

If PCs are getting by six rays at once, that's obviously not right.

If a loot item that summons one of these more powerful summons drops so commonly, that's obviously not right.

The theme was really intended to be for beholder-focused concepts, with only the lower level summons being available through loot.

No further discussion required...

[Howlando]

So as a little follow up, I've researched this issue and this is what I've discovered -

Shortly before the end of EFU:M, the Beholder theme was improved slightly. The Enslaved Beholder was not given death rays, however it was given bioware beholder AI which I thought would just make it be more clever in fight - making it retreat and such.

However, it seems that by giving it this variable it also sneakily received unlimited beholder rays (!?).

This was a definite bug and obviously not in any way balanced, and I'm very sorry that it apparently had such a big impact in a significant PvP event. That said I don't blame a player for summoning the monster and not realizing that it was so broken.

[Dredi]

Those scripted beholders you have to kill within the first 2 rounds of combat or they fuck your shit?