Forums: Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells: Spells: Frightened 2 (2024)

I was looking through some first level spells and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what exactly the following meant.

Frightened 2 and Frightened 1.

Grateful for any help

Playtest Rulebook wrote:

Frightened: You’re gripped by fear and struggle to control your nerves. The frightened condition always includes a value. You take a conditional penalty equal to this value to your checks and saving throws. Unless specified otherwise, at the end of each of your turns, the value of your frightened condition decreases by 1.

Frightened 1 means the affected creature takes a -1 penalty to their checks and saving throws for a single round, and then the condition ends.

Frightened 2 means the affected creature takes a -2 penalty for a round, and then a -1 penalty for a round, and then the condition ends.

Thanks for the replies guys.

The fear spell where the opponent who failed their save only gets a -1 (frightened 1) to checks/saving throws for 1 round sounds SUPER underwhelming. Am I missing something?

Crexis wrote:

The fear spell where the opponent who failed their save only gets a -1 (frightened 1) to checks/saving throws for 1 round sounds SUPER underwhelming. Am I missing something?

Nope. Nearly all spells got a serious whack from the nerf bat.

Crexis wrote:

Thanks for the replies guys.

The fear spell where the opponent who failed their save only gets a -1 (frightened 1) to checks/saving throws for 1 round sounds SUPER underwhelming. Am I missing something?

I miss the seven stages of fear from Horror Adventures. It's hard to be whelmed by a -1 penalty to stuff for a whole 6 seconds after you've cowered in abject terror from a failed save.

Just to point something out, in the update document they updated the rules on the frightened condition " Page 322—In frightened, in the third sentence, replace “and saving throws” with “, including your DCs (such as your AC or Class DC)”."

I believe this still does lowers saves (I remember reading it somewhere in the book that Saves count as DC's, and I know for Skills such as Demoralize you make a check against the targets Will DC, but I could be wrong, the lay out of the book is confusing, and my search function on the book is currently on the frits.) So the change upgrades it to affect AC as well.

Now in defence of the spell, it a bit more useful at higher levels, depending on your party {note, while a fail save will happen occasionally enough to not rule out, and even creatures can roll a 1 for a crit fail, your more often getting the -1 out of it.) As the -1 to saves can be a stepping stone for allies to inflict more disabilitating effects (and I guess with the new rule, can turn a miss into a hit, or a hit to a crit.)

Not saying its going to be the MVP of spells at higher levels, its only bettering your odds by 5% for a round most of the time for two of your rounds actions. But for a Level 1 slot {or Level 3 if you up cast it} at higher levels, you could do worse, and occasionally that -1 can come into play {though take my opinion with a grain of salt, the brief experience I have had with the Frighten condition was with a Bard on 'Dirge of Doom' duties a while back.)

Githzilla wrote:

It always did affect AC but I think most people did not realize that so the wording was changed to make it more clear. So this does not represent a change, just clarity.

Your probably right on that, certain tereminlogy along with the layout of the book can make things like this a little confusing.