Anyone tried to kill the beholders without the shield?

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I am curious if anyone has ever tried to take on beholders without the Shield of Balduran. I have survived a combat verses a single beholder, but I doubt I would last when you face multiple ones.

Though I do imagine that time stop would make it pretty easy.

Elder orbs could be even worse, removing magical protection, such as potions and other nice things.

 

You must be doing the cult of the unseeing eye quest? I always have a hard time. I send the shield guy ahead to draw their fire then close in with the rest on range weapons. I still hate that quest yet for some stupid reason I always do it

 

I was just curious. I had actually finished the quest when I posted this. I sent the flesh golem at the eye, with everyone out of sight. He wasted his 3 wiltings on him, and then tried to charm him, stun and all sorts of other fun things. After that I sent a solo skeleton 3 times, and finally finished him off with war bears from conjure animals. I never actually went into battle.

I hate beholders, and cringe at the thought of fighting them without the shield.

 

Yes beholders definitely rank up there with the mindflayers and vampires. Of course demons and devils go without saying

 

It is possible to take on beholders without the shield, you just need to load up on the right spells

 

Yeah, you can bait them pretty easily especially in the unsen eye lair, with its twisting passages.

If you want to go all in without the shield, you can use Spell Turing/Deflection to protect you for a while, though beholders burn through those pretty quick.
If you've burned through those, what works well is going with Spell Shield for dealing with the anti-magic rays and the usual suspects buff wise : Chaotic Commands, Free Action, Death Ward, Protection From Fire/Electricity/Magic Damage etc.

 

Beholders are a pain, though the shield and the cloak of mirroring completely trivialise them. Only the elder orbs can be problematic, as they generally will have a casting of imprisonment if you let them.

I like to do the unseeying eye quest, as the beholders are quite a lot of experience, and on the way you'll get to a part you'll need for the ring of gaxx.

 

Yeah, I did the quest once minus the Shield o' Cheese in pre-ToB days (whilst walking both ways up hill in the snow and eating gravel for breakfast cereal ). IIRC, my cunning tactical solution was a lot of hit 'n' run and Power Word: Reload.

 

That seems about right

 

Most people have probably fought the three elder orb beholders in the hell trials test for tear of bhaal

 

Yes. And I won too.

 

I have fought them, but most of the time I just bypass them nowadays, it's much faster that way.

 

Just treat beholders as you would treat ranged attackers. They're a lot less dangerous when they have to round corners to get to you, and when they do they're forced to fight you at melee range. Mid-level hard-hitting summons like fire elementals and aerial servants are also extremely effective against them, and a hasted party+summons can make short work of mid-level beholder parties (standard beholders + gauths).
Against stuff like elder orbs and matriarchs, though, you'll want to be better buffed.

And then there's the tactical stuff, like traps, strategic use of nukes, etc.

 

I generally don't find summons that useful, the death ray kills them / unsummons them instantly.

 

Would potions of magic blocking do the trick? I've never tried them, but it seems that they would.

 

I'm not 100% sure, but i would assume not - a potion of magic blocking only blocks spells up to 5th level - some of the spell effects that a beholder fires off at you with his beam are equivalent to 6th level spells.
All depends on how the game treats these effects though, if they don't actually count as spells but rather innate abilities the potion might not work at all.

EDIT : looking at a beholder in Near Infinity, here's some info you might find relevant when fighting them.

They get Freedom of Movement, as well as immunity to Being Held, Stunned, Slowed and Paralyzed as well as specific movement impeding spells such as Entangle, Web and Grease, as wellas a general immunity to any kind of movement rate bonus/debuff.
To top it all off they seem to be immune to backstabs as well.

The beholder eye rays do seem to be treated as spell effects in-game.
These effects include : Paralyze, Charm Person, Fear, Cause Serious Wounds, Flesh to Stone, Anti-Magic Ray, Domination, Slow, Death Spell and Death Ray.

Some effects like the charm and fear effects would get blocked by the potion of magic blocking, but other effects like the Death ray (a beholder unique spell similar to disintegrate) has a level of 6, so it will not be effected and kill your character just the same as always.

 

Looks like Death spell would work on them as well as their's (sp) working on you? That is of course if they meet the conditions?

 

The death spell that they use themselves doesn't seem to work on beholders. At least, none have ever gotten killed from getting it reflected back to themselves. Petrified, charmed, wounded, yes, but not from the death spell.

 

It depends on which spell you use.
To start off, the death spell does not work on monsters with more then 8 'hit dice'.
hit dice are carried over from pen and paper, and are bnasically the dice that are rolled to determine a monster's hit points, similarly to how a player character gets to roll an additional dice each time they level up to determine their hp gain for that level
A beholder counts as being lvl 11 in-game, so it has more then 8 hit dice and is unaffected by the death spell altogether.

That said, a beholder is not immune to death effects, so using other insta-kill effects shouild work - assuming it doesn't save vs death/spell that is.
Thing is, beholders have very good saving throw scores meaning they will resist most of the spells you throw at them anyway, and on top of that most spells will require you to get in the range of the beholder - getting off a spell on it while it is firing it's eye beams at you is hard enough even without the large chance of it being saved against.

If you really want to 1-hit K.O. beholders, wait until you get the greater deathblow HLA on a fighter, which kills any enemy at lvl 12 or lower with no save.
Since beholders are lvl 11 it will work wonders, though you'll still want some way to tank their eye beams while trying to land your hits.