🐲 Monster Spotlight: The Beholder (2024 Update)

By Charlie Stayton, Behind the Die

Few creatures are as iconic — or terrifying — as the Beholder. With its gaping maw, eyestalks of arcane doom, and reality-warping paranoia, this aberration has haunted dungeons and dreams since 1975. But in the 2024 revision of Dungeons & Dragons, our many-eyed menace has received some meaningful changes that subtly reshape how Dungeon Masters can wield it in play. Let’s take a look under the eyestalks.

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A Legacy with a New Lens

The Beholder isn’t just a monster — it’s an encounter. It's one of those rare creatures where the battlefield is the monster. Flying, observing everything at once, shutting down magic with its central eye, and firing off a different death-ray each turn? Classic.

But Wizards of the Coast has refined the Beholder’s toolkit in the 2024 Monster Manual to better align with modern encounter pacing and narrative play. These changes don’t make it weaker — they make it more dynamic, and that’s good news for us DMs.

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What’s New in 2024

Here are the biggest updates to the Beholder's stat block:

🎲 Action-Oriented Design

The new Beholder now follows the action-oriented encounter format, much like the 2021 “Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons” style. That means:

• Legendary Actions and Lair Actions are more integrated and flavorful.

• New abilities reflect narrative behaviors rather than just tactical randomness.

This includes thematic options like:

• Paranoid Pulse – The Beholder creates illusory duplicates of itself to confound foes.

• Disintegration Ray (Empowered) – Now scales more threateningly at high tiers of play.

• Focused Eye – Lets the Beholder suppress an area of magic or focus on one specific magical effect, not just a cone of negation.

🧠 Tactical Intelligence

The updated text emphasizes that Beholders are not just floating death-orbs — they're tactical geniuses. The stat block now includes suggested tactics for different rounds of combat, from opening with a Fear Ray to finishing off fleeing foes with a Telekinetic slam.

You’re encouraged to play the Beholder like a villain who thinks it’s the smartest creature in the world — because it probably is. DMs can lean into that arrogance for roleplay and encounter flow.

🔥 More Streamlined Eyestalk Use

One of the trickier parts of Beholder combat has always been managing the 10 eyestalks. In the 2024 version, there's now an elegant mechanic that allows the DM to select or roll fewer rays per round, balanced for encounter pacing — and the effects are often heightened or refined.

This not only helps with ease of play, but also reinforces the narrative: the Beholder isn’t just randomly zapping — it’s choosing who to disintegrate.

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How This Helps You as a DM

As a Dungeon Master, the 2024 Beholder is a gift. It plays faster, hits harder when it matters, and offers stronger storytelling tools. Whether you’re planning a climactic underdark showdown or a one-shot with a tyrannical eye tyrant, this monster now supports both fast, fluid combat and dramatic villain moments.

Want to make your Beholder memorable? Use its new illusions to trick the party. Let it retreat mid-battle, only to attack from behind with renewed paranoia. Have it demand the players solve a logic puzzle under threat of petrification. Lean into its madness, its ego, its twisted idea of “perfection.”

This is a villain that should be unforgettable — and now, it’s easier than ever to make it so.

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👁️ Final Thoughts

The 2024 updates to the Beholder aren't just balance tweaks — they're storytelling upgrades. They reinforce the creature’s lore, give it more tactical weight, and make it a more satisfying boss monster for both DMs and players.

If you’ve never used a Beholder before, this is the version to try. And if you have? This one's more cunning. More cinematic. And just a little bit crueler.

Stay weird, DMs.