Spell focus: Fear

[Hiro Quester]

I'm playing a gnome bard, aiming to focus on fear, and PrC into Dread Witch.

Dread Witch grants all kinds of fear-based goodies (most importantly, it enables your fear spells to affect creatures that are normally immune to fear).

Other goodies include Master of Terror", in which "The save DC of any spell you cast with the fear descriptor increases by 1. This bonus stacks with Spell Focus."

"Fearful Empowerment" in which 1/day you can add the "Fear" description to any spell with a visual component. So I can make an illusion that also radiates a fear effect.

The Master of Terror DC bonus stacks with Spell focus, to add +2 to the DC of fear spells. But for Spell Focus, you have to choose a school of magic. Fear spells are usually necromancy (Doom, Scare, Cause Fear, Fear).

Unfortunately, that means that when you add the "Fear" descriptor to other spells, you won't be able to use Spell Focus DC boost.


There are few good necromancy spells my bard would take that don't have the fear effect. And there are a couple of non-necromancy fear spells (Gnome Bard grants Phantasmal Killer as a bonus spell).

It would be nice to add to the DC of non-necromancy fear spells as well, and to forgo the addition to necromancy spells.

Is it possible (what's the best argument to make to the DM to allow it) to take spell focus feat in spells with a particular descriptor, rather than necromancy generally?

This would also apply if, say, a pyromancer wanted to specialize in Fire spells, rather than evocation generally. etc.

[Zanos]

Frostburn has (Greater)Cold Focus, which gives the bonus to [Cold] spells, although it actually stacks with normal spell focus. There's also Spell Focus(Evil), which does the same for [Evil] spells.

Mandatory mention that fear builds are super annoying for both other PCs and the DM. It's basically a Save or Lose build with the added irritation that what you make lose goes and tells it's friends and doesn't drop loot.

[DrMotives]

Fearsome Necromancy (Complete Mage) adds a fear effect to any necromancy spell that doesn't already have it. Gets you more mileage out Spell Focus Necromancy for a fear specialist.

[Warchon]

Not sure Fearsome Necromancy is good for a fear BUILD though. It explicitly does not stack with any other Fear effect so you'll only ever get Shaken out of it.

[Hiro Quester]

Frostburn has (Greater)Cold Focus, which gives the bonus to [Cold] spells, although it actually stacks with normal spell focus. There's also Spell Focus(Evil), which does the same for [Evil] spells.

Mandatory mention that fear builds are super annoying for both other PCs and the DM. It's basically a Save or Lose build with the added irritation that what you make lose goes and tells it's friends and doesn't drop loot.

That's a good point. I forgot about the alignment spell focuses in Complete Divine. Thanks.

I'm hoping a fear build will not be quite as annoying to the other players, if --as we do-- you also have allies who can intimidate and lock down an area (making people cower instead of run to tell their friends).

What makes this particular save or lose build annoying to DM? One of the reasons I'm playing this is because we the DM has built this as a low-magic game, in which the DM imposes limits on how many buffs you can handle (one level of spell per character levels; e.g. a 3rd level character can have one 2nd level buff spell and one 1st level buff spell active).

So figured it would be prudent to build a bard that focussed on debuffing enemies with bardic music and spells, and using SLAs for buffing (bardic music), rather than the buffer bard I would usually build.

[Afgncaap5]

Is it possible (what's the best argument to make to the DM to allow it) to take spell focus feat in spells with a particular descriptor, rather than necromancy generally?

This would also apply if, say, a pyromancer wanted to specialize in Fire spells, rather than evocation generally. etc.

I don't think it's possible by RAW, at least not by any that I know. However, it sounds like you've found a perfect opportunity to work with your DM to generate some homebrew!

Ask if your character could research a Spell Focus: Fear technique the same way one might research a spell. Alternatively, you could ask if there's a good in-universe magical tradition or mystical location or secret ritual that your character could find and employ to gain such a feat.

If the DM has more creative control over what it takes to meet the prerequisite for the feat and what the feat actually *does* then there's likely to be less fear that they're walking into some sort of homebrew-fueled OP trap.

[Saintheart]

What makes this particular save or lose build annoying to DM?

At a guess (not having had to deal with a fear-blaster in the party before) because it's pretty binary in effect and doesn't wind up killing people in interesting ways. Combat lasts about a round or so, in which the only interesting question asked is "Does everyone opposed to you fail their Will save? If so, peed-pants all round and yay, the party wins." About the only thing you can do as a DM at that point is to pump up monsters' Will saves or start giving the party's opponents rather unlikely or coincidental fear immunity (which, IIRC, Dread Witch can also blast through). On top of that, as said, it doesn't actually remove enemies from the world, either you get them all cowering and slaughter them, or they run off to tell their friends, which results in even bigger and more complicated fights further down the corridor as those frightened folks join up with their stronger friends and start dishing out what is a highly-unmatched-to-the-party encounter.