Vhailor's Helm - cheesiest item ever?

Cloudkill/Death Fog seems to work on Beholders for me. I scout them with an invisibile character, move out of site, fire away with area effect spells and they are done for.

 

I have to agree with this.

Methods of defeating Beholders:
Shield of Balduran - Cheesy
Spell Shield - Cheesy (Should absorb X spells, actually absorbs any and all beholder rays without limit IIRC)
Cloak of Mirroring - Cheesy
Moving in and out of invisibility taking one shot/sending out one spell before disappearing again - Cheesy
Area of effect spells from outside of visual range - Cheesy

There is no legitimate way to buff your party up to stand a chance against beholders, versus one or two of them you can just batter them but that is pretty much it. More than a handful and you will lose people to disintegrate which means no resurrecting them which is silly when cast as beholders cast.

You can disable them via spells such as Web, which I guess is a viable tactic but at the same time, the damage they can do if they make a save is ridiculous. Web can be seen as cheesy given its low level plus saving throw penalty. And most importantly if this is the only fair tactic other than just hoping and charging then I think it is fair to say they are overpowered and cheesy meaning cheesy tactics are fair game, especially when soloing a warrior or for that matter, anyone without the Web spell.

 

Try this : http://www.shsforums.net/topic/43975-vecna/page__view__findpost__p__474022

 

How is that cheesy? You scout them while concealed, then blow a few long distance spells their way once you are out of their sight. Nothing breaking any type of game rule there my friend... Depends on your party type is all. I usually have 3 arcane casters in my party, this makes that type of tactic a bit easier. With some aspects of certain mods like SCSII, they come charging out when you do that, which I have installed. I will usually have several Summons in front of my party after I cast the AoE spells just in case my barrage didn't do the job.

 

Yeah, they come charging out. Anything damage over time should get a single tick of damage on them and they should come straight for you afterwards a single fireball =/= dead beholder, it equals angry swarm of beholders and you've got the same problem and I doubt five summons will do much versus the swarm of beholders given that they have instant cast Death spells for dealing with summoned creatures.

 

Well that's because you don't cast just one fireball. Cheesy AoE spells would be like casting Cloudkill from off-screen, and then having dumb beholders stand there and take it. But there's nothing that says you can't cast more than one fireball simultaneously. Cast at least two, or, if you have a party like Blades with three arcane casters, blast three of them out. Any survivors will typically be weakened enough that they can be killed fairly quickly.

 

Yep. As they charge out, it's missle fire time while the summons eat the Beholder's wrath. Work's great until you have to fight the Big Momma beholder in the Unseeing Eye quest. That fight is one of my favorites. I summon everything I can and then keep summoning as well. My party fights from a distance. Holy Smites, Magic Missles, Flame Arrows, Lightning Bolts, Unicorn Lance and every other long distance damage I can come up with. Magical Returning Throwing axes like Azuredge help as well. So does a nice backstab once the summons are committed.

 

Wait I did not know they allowed you to BS a beholder! I thought since they lack a human anatomy they could not be BS.

 

I didn't think beholders could be backstabbed either, not only because of the odd anatomy, but also because those eye stalks can be pointed in any direction. Makes it hard to catch someone on their blindside.

 

I recently tried to backstab a gauth (kind of like a beholder) in a game with a club (the Blackblood +3) and got a "backstab failed" message. It didn't say "weapon not suitable for backstab" like it normally does. Does that mean the gauth isn't "backstabbable"?

 

All beholder-kin should be immune to backstabs IIRC.

 

I very rarely see that message, the last time was when I tried backstabbing a dragon (Firkraag, I think).

 

Which also, by the rules, should be immune to backstab since they do not have a human anatomy (except when polymorphed into a human form of course).

 

You can backstab any humanoid I think. Goblins, orcs, ogres etc. Dragons are just too big for your blade to reach any vital bodypart.

As for beholderkin - who knows? Maybe they do have a vulnerable body part that a thief would know about.

 

I think if you manage to poke anyone in the eye when they don't expect it is going to be pretty damn effective

 

The term "Backstab" should not be taken at face value. That is why they changed it to "Sneak Attack" in 3E.

And yes, I have backstabbed a Beholder. Now, whether or not that is a change from a mod, I don't know, as I have a heavily modded game for years now, so I don't remeber what vanilla SoA allowed for.

 

My memory on what you could/should be able to backstab is a little fuzzy, but I do remember that the target had to be roughly humanoid in size, and have an identifiable back. The size issue is obvious - for example in PnP D&D, you could NOT backstab a giant unless you were on a high ledge or something, as you couldn't reach his back. Similarly, other big things like dragons couldn't be backstabbed. Not having an identifiable back also seems pretty straight forward - you can't backstab a mustard jelly for example.

 

Regarding 2nd edition rules as that is what was used as the basis of the BG series, you can backstab anything that has vital spots. Not just humanoids. Dragon Magazine(the official TSR mag) clarified this point many times. So obviously, you could backstab an Elf and not a Mustard Jelly. But Ogres, Giants and Dragons have vital spots and could be backstabbed. It all depends on what version/update/appendix/or particular release you are ussing and what time frame that particular rule covered compared to the edition that was released at the time. It basically became whatever house rule your particular gaming group preferred, as the different rulebooks changed Core rules all of the time. TSR was very inconsistent in that regard.

But for me, I thought it was always easy to determine. Backstab was a sneak attack from a stealthy Rogue type. It didn't necessarily mean you were attacking him in the back. It was just a surprise attack. The damage modifier was to represent the extra damage the surprise value gave the attacker.