Beholder fighting five players soonish
At our table, we take turns being DM for each session. We all have characters, and all tell mini stories that slowly lead up to big ones.
I led one that was a haunted house where they met some of my BBEGs, then a friend led one that released a Lich into the world.
Each session is different and we're slowly building to our BBEGs, it's really fun.
We walk about recently how none of the session have any scare in them. We aren't afraid to die. And that's on us, not our playstyle.
So, this last session, we fought a Arbiter of Judgement. Unfortunately, the DM rolled bad and again, we weren't even close to dying. It was more of a meatsack than anything.
Anyways, eventually I'm going to run a session that leads to a Beholder at the end. It's literally my favorite creature in all of fantasy.
Going to fight it 500ft up on a tower, like Sauron's Eye from LOTR movies.
Big open area, 500ft drop, and four large objects to hide behind.
We have four consistent players, and two maybes. But one player has a follower.
The combat will be: Four players/Five Level 10 characters vs ONE Beholder.
One player has a Moonblade, and can already dish out some absurd damage at level 5. So in 5 more levels, who knows what's going to happen. (our mistake, but it's fun so it's okay)
Rogue/Wizard , Swashbuckler, Sorc, and Druid and follower is a Rune Knight.
My big question is. I get three eyebeams, all random, an anti-magic cone, and 3 legendary actions that all are one random eye beam.
That's three eye beams a turn.
Before combat starts, I was going to have them all scatter and hide if they wanted to, before I rolled inititive, that way they wouldn't just be out in the open.
When combat starts, if the Beholder goes first, I was going to have it move and find a random person in line of sight and start blasting.
I did some pretend rolls, and IF all the beams hit, one scenario I had Fear, Petrify, Petrify.
That's three people down out of five in ONE turn.
I'm not a great DM by any means, we all just play for fun and follow the rules as best we can. But this can't be right.
If the Beholder DOESNT go first, going off the base stats only, it'll die before it can move.
So I must be missing something.