Beholder Rays

[Ook]

I've noticed the unfortunate tendency of beholders to target a single person in a crowd and blast them with six save rays in one round. While certainly very effective it doesn't really strike me as intended behavior that beholders are able to target every ray they have on one person all at once.

It would feel a lot more fair if the rays were spread out over the crowd of people if there are multiple targets available.

[Stranger]

[hide="Misleading Information"]During my recent visit to Chabzash, they were being randomly distributed among every enemy in range. Someone correct me if I'm wrong; I don't know what the AI looks like.

"Random" can pile on the hurt, however. It's not unheard of for a scythe-wielding NPC to critically hit and more than once.

...and if none of your friends are in targeting range...[/hide]

[Black-Forest]

Likewise it'd be nice if Saves vs. Death applied to the Beholder rays. Last I heard from someone who died to one, their +4 vs. death belt didn't work when hit with a Beholder's fort save or die.

[Kotenku]

It'd really be nice if beholder rays were somehow re-worked entirely, because it's long been an issue that they are buggy as hell.

[Paha]

They work as made in engine as far as I know. Not something we can easily change as it's probably quite bit hardcoded.

They are special attacks that target a small area and may hit one to three enemies, are touch attack based and will have dc 15 on any saving throw, and as they are not magic or such, they are not treated as something where saving throws vs. something will work against.

They are immensively dangerous. There is no easy immunity against the death ray either.

[Damien]

The death rays definitely need a change tbh, adding in vs death would be great. It is also near to never true that the rays split between 1-3 targets and the big problem with touch attacks is they are affected by lag. I've already died multiple times in the past to beholders standing there while I hit them then suddenly gunning off 12 rays in a single round. There is also another bug where sometimes beholders shoot two of those unblockable magic damage rays in one round, with ray doing a max 60 damage iirc.

[John Doe]

Check out the nwn wikia and search for Beholders, there is an elaborate article on the way the beholder special attack functions.

[Knight Of Pentacles]

Their rays are magical.  The beholder absorbs ambient magic from an area and projects it outward.  Hence the dead magic zones.

[Gippy]

Beholder attacks are touch attacks.

Beholder attacks take into effect spellcraft & saves vs spells.

I say this in that both those methods allow for various counters to beholders.

Move along! They are the great roulette wheels of the forgotten realms.

[Mass Transit]

Not -all- beholder attacks are touch attacks, The ones listed here are not touch attacks, which are the ones this thread was made about. Additionally, not every type of ray takes into account spellcraft/spell saves. That being said, if there was a way to remove or fix the fear ray, which is broken and uses the wounding ray, it would be nice as beholders already dish out a ton of damage.

[Paha]

"Each ray uses a ranged touch attack to see if it hits. All saving throws have a DC of 15."

[Mass Transit]

These are rolls that I have never witnessed in the only means I have, the combat log.

[Disco]

Beholders are DANGEROUS. but it is defenatly possibly to kill them. Yes it hurts when all the rays hit you.
But do we really want to make them LESS dangerous? In that case we could also make drow sentry commanders crit less, or make orog warlords without insane ac, or.... The list is long.
The best part about fighting beholders is the thrill of knowing that you may be dead the next time it looks at you.

[Ook]

Beholders are DANGEROUS. but it is defenatly possibly to kill them. Yes it hurts when all the rays hit you.
But do we really want to make them LESS dangerous? In that case we could also make drow sentry commanders crit less, or make orog warlords without insane ac, or.... The list is long.
The best part about fighting beholders is the thrill of knowing that you may be dead the next time it looks at you.

Well, all it does right now is encourage people not to fight them unless they have enough saves to be completely immune.

Where if you could mitigate some of the risk by staying in a crowd so you only had to make one save in a round as opposed to six then it might encourage more people to try their luck. Nobody's saying anything about removing the save or die attacks.

[Disco]

I see your point Ook. But I kinda like that most people avoide the beholders like the plague. They SHOULD be feared.