Causing an enemy to flee and Opportunity Attacks

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Some Bard spells like Fear and Dissonant Whispers cause an enemy to run from you. If this breaks them out of melee with one of my allies is there any hard fast rules on when my allies get opportunity attacks?

I was even wondering if Dissonant Whispers and others that say the victim won't emter a dangerous area means he/she won't break melee as that's dangerous.

Thanks in advance.

[Captn_Flounder]

Unless it says otherwise, AoO's occurs as normal.

The second part is left up to a ruling, but I would rule fleeing an attacker is leaving a dangerous area and not leaving due to the risk of an AoO is metagaming.

[Unoriginal]

Some Bard spells like Fear and Dissonant Whispers cause an enemy to run from you. If this breaks them out of melee with one of my allies is there any hard fast rules on when my allies get opportunity attacks?

I was even wondering if Dissonant Whispers and others that say the victim won't emter a dangerous area means he/she won't break melee as that's dangerous.

Thanks in advance.

If the spell make them flee on their turn, the AoO rules work normaly. It's only effects that move the foe directly, like "push enemy 10ft", that don't trigger AoO.

It is *not* metagaming for combatants to know "if I retreat just like that, I might get hit". All combatants with half a brain would know it.

So unless the spell precise the target doesn't care about their own safety or can't use certain Actions, they'll probably Disengage.

EDIT:

Like Uzgul pointed out below, both Fear and Dissonant Whispers prevent you from using certain Actions (either by being a reaction or by forcing to Dash).


That being said, Dissonant Whishpers precises the affected creature won't walk on dangerous ground, it doesn't prevent them to do something dangerous otherwise.

[Uzgul]

Now, for both fear effects and spells like Dissonant Whisper, the enemy can simply use the Disengage action to safely retreat.
This is false.
Dissonant Whispers force to move as a reaction. So the target can't take the disengage action.
Fear (the spell) forces the target to take the dash action. So it can't take the disengage action (unless it can do so as a bonus action).

edit: Besides that, I agree with you. If the effect allows the target to still choose its actions, it should be allowed to disengage.

[RSP]

Regardless of who's turn it is, if an effect uses a character's movement, it can provoke an AoO. If it doesn't use the character's movement (like a Shove or Repelling Blast), then it doesn't provoke an AoO.