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I'm adding the new enemies for the robberies... I have several design of "evil floating eye". The one above looks a bit similar to the AD&D Beholder, which I know it's copyrighted. I am unsure though if it's TOO SIMILAR, or would be OK?

I have two other variants without the "tentacles", so it won't be a problem anyway, but was wondering

If you ever heard of the Spelljammer campaign setting, you know there are MANY races/variants of beholders, but if I remember correctly ALL of them come equipped with a fanged mouth.

I dare to say your mouthless floating orb is safe, especially if you add wings and a nonmagical attack mode (crashing headlong against pesky thieves sounds fine).

Yes that's what I'm hoping for, no mouth It's more a floating eye than a monster with a giant eye. For now I'll keep it, even if I have to remove it later won't be a big deal anyway (it's just an enemy variant of the other two).

Beholders are interesting creatures for certain.

Though one of my favourite depictions ,or encounters, were this one from Baldur's Gate 2



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A pretty clever beholder (d'uh ...it's a floating brain?) , but still -very- clear on not letting you see what is in the chest it's guarding, obviously a contract it takes very seriously.



As for your question? I think it's fine honestly. It's not the first time we've seen floating eye monsters in other settings ,yet what might raise some questions here, are the eyestalks. To be honest I think this one enemy will easily float under the radar (pun intended).

It certainly -looks- quite beholder-ish, and I'm no expert on rights and stuff

D&D was hardly the first publisher to create a floating eye monster. Jack, as long as you don't call it a Beholder you'll be fine.



BTW, D&D blatantly ripped off Tolkien's hobbits and ents and renamed them halflings and treants to get around his copyrights.

OK good. I think it was safe too, but you never know, so I thought to ask around first

You should be okay. Other video game devs have made similar monsters without serious repercussions.



Some Final Fantasy games, Dragon's Crown, Dragon's Dogma, and Castlevania are a couple of games that featured some form of a floating eye monster. None of the them face serious repercussions.

WoW got away with this:



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