It is depicted as a floating orb of flesh with a large mouth, single central eye, and many smaller eyestalks on top with powerful magical abilities.

[1]: 39–41  Beholders are one of the few classic Dungeons & Dragons monsters that Wizards of the Coast claims as Product Identity and as such was not released under its Open Game License.

[7] Second edition supplements to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, especially those of the Spelljammer campaign setting, added further details about these classic creatures' societies and culture.

[12] Based on Tom Wham's depiction in the first edition Monster Manual, TSR artist Keith Parkinson characterized its popular appearance with plate-like armored scales and arthropod-like eyestalks.

Jeff Grubb cites Keith Parkinson's artwork as the inspiration for the beholder-kin created for the Spelljammer campaign setting.

[23] Volo's Guide to Monsters (2016) provides more detail on beholder culture and contains stats for the death kiss, gauth and gazer beholder-kin.

[25] A beholder is an aberration comprising a floating spheroid body with a large fanged mouth and single eye on the front and many flexible eyestalks on the top.

Many variant beholder species exist, such as "observers", "spectators", "eyes of the deep", "elder orbs", "hive mothers", and "death tyrants".

They will sometimes take members of other, non-beholder races as slaves; however, they will engage in a violent intra-species war with others of their kind who differ even slightly in appearance.

Beholder communities in the Underdark often, when provoked, wage war on any and all nearby settlements, finding the most resistance from the drow and illithids.

However, one thing prevents them from being the most dangerous faction in wildspace: the beholders are engaged in a xenophobic civil war of genetic purity.

[31] Lone beholders in wildspace are often refugees who have survived an attack that exterminated the rest of their nest or are outcasts who were expelled for having some form of mutation.

These ships are powered and navigated by the "orbus" (plural "orbii") race of beholders, who are stunted, albino, and very weak in combat.

[32] In the Eberron campaign setting, beholders served as living artillery during the Daelkyr incursion, using the terrible power of their eyes to shatter whole goblin armies.

Others claim the beholders are the eyes of Xoriat itself—that while they serve the daelkyr, they are conduits to a power even greater and more terrible than the shapers of flesh.

[34] The powerful eyes of observers are the equivalent of a true seeing spell, except that the monster can't determine alignment by sight.

Observers enjoy experimenting with telepathic attacks against nonpsionic creatures and take a fiendish pleasure in permanently wrecking a foolish opponent's psyche.

Their eye can have one of the six following powers (although some come in pairs of effects): Remove Fear, Scare, and Rage, Cure Moderate Wounds, Dispel Magic, Tongues, Minor Image, Resist Energy.

Its spherical body resembles that of the dreaded beholder, but the "eyestalks" of this creature are bloodsucking tentacles, its "eyes" are hook-toothed orifices.

The 10 tentacles largely retract into the body when not needed, resembling eyestalks, but can lash out to a full 20-foot stretch with blinding speed.

The powers of their 13 eyes are as follows: (all magical effects are cast at 14th level) Cone of Cold, Dispel Magic, Paralysis, Chain Lightning, Telekinesis 250 lb weight, Emotion, Mass Charm, Domination, Mass Suggestion, Major Creation, Spell Turning, Serten's Spell Immunity, Temporal Stasis.

A reviewer for Arcane magazine described the beholder: "11 eyes, paranoid, xenophobic, having a taste for live animals and being deadly with magic.

The authors described the true beholder as an iconic creature of the game, "What could be more fantastic than a giant floating eyeball with little eye stalks sticking out, all of which shoot magic rays?"

Of the gauth, the authors say "its ability to inflict a bewildering variety of damage on a party of heroes is unparalleled... until they fight a true beholder, that is.

"[40] The Envoyer magazine called the beholder a terrible beast, properly shown as such in the 3rd edition Monster Manual, in contrast to earlier depictions where it rather looked like "a cuddly rosy ball with too many eyes".

[41] Richard W. Forest commented in "The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters" that the beholder was designed to counter magic-using characters while being a formidable opponent for a whole party due to its versatility.

[42] The beholder was considered one of the "game's signature monsters" by Philip J. Clements,[43] while Backstab reviewer Philippe Tessier called it a "classic of D&D".

[44] Witwer et al. considered the beholder "iconic", "the brand's signature beast" and "one of the most feared and fearsome monsters of the game".