Is Adult dragons' Frightful presence ****?

[HoboKnight]

So, I've been running an encounter vs my party the other day and I had Adult Blue use Frightful presence. One of party casters failed hard and was running away from the dragon for 10 rounds. Fun all around. Except for - it seemed, I misread the rules. Frightful presence says:


Frightful Presence. Each creature of the dragon's choice that is within 120 ft. of the dragon and aware of it must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature's saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to the dragon's Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours.

And Frightened condition is:


Frightened

A frightened creature has disadvantage on Ability Checks and Attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight.
The creature can’t willingly move closer to the source of its fear.


So. Smaug comes out, roars, frightens melee classes, which are unable to move toward him and are attacking him with disadvantage - while casters are spamming their spells all day every day no problemo in this case? Is this underpowered? What is the point of this effect anyway?

[LudicSavant]

What is the point of this effect anyway?

Wrecking martial characters, mostly.

[JonBeowulf]

Spell Attack Roles will still be disadvantaged but spells with saves won't be.. but adult dragons are pretty good resisting those anyway.

[Jerrykhor]

Its a bit ****, yes, but its not the only thing an adult dragon has. The breath weapon still wrecks PCs, Legendary actions and Legendary saves, etc.

Having a Bard in the party makes this a non-factor though. Countercharm is boss.

[HappyDaze]

Anyone that fails the save still gets to try again turn after turn, so it's likely that everyone will snap out of it within a few turns, especially with the right buffs.

[Matticusrex]

90% of monster effects **** on martials a lot more than casters. Its just the nature of d&d.

[Chronos]

A dragon's frightful presence isn't a major part of its arsenal. It's a freebie effect, that's tossed in automatically on top of whatever else it's doing. And yes, it screws over martials more than spellcasters, but then, most spellcasters have good Wis saves anyway, so they were less likely to be effected by it.

Don't ask the question "is this one ability unfair to martials?". Ask, "Is the dragon as a whole unfair to martials?". And the answer to that seems to be that dragons are equally unfair to everyone. By comparison, martials don't care at all about legendary resistance, and nobody likes getting hit by a breath weapon (except maybe evasive rogues).

[Chronic]

There is also the armorer handbook: equipment upgrade and rune magic system for 5e, available on DM guild. Allow the players to upgrade and customize their weapons. Way more options for weapons without straying far from the power level of the actual weapons. You can actually use both the normal system and the new one at the same time.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

90% of monster effects **** on martials a lot more than casters. Its just the nature of d&d.

And people call hax anytime you try to change it.

[Chronos]

Chronic, was that meant as a reply to a different thread?

[stoutstien]

I always figured the frightening presence is why the PCs are needed and the kingdom of whatnot doesn't just take an army to drive the dragon off.

[CheddarChampion]

AFB but an adult dragon is huge right?
A huge creature fits within a 15' cube.
IIRC Smaug is much larger (so more frightening) than that...?

[Segev]

What are the conditions for applying Frightful Presence? Does 5e retain the clause about being frightened while frightened upgrading it to panic? (Is panic still a thing?) If failing the save three times (once when it applies, once when your turn comes around so you stay Frightened, and once on the dragon's next turn when its Frightful Presence goes off again) makes you break and flee, that might be quite worthwhile.

While martials tend to have weaker wisdom saves than casters, that's not universal, and paladins in particular have bonuses vs. fear effects (like this one), so it's not entirely slanted. Perhaps Frightened should give the source of the effect Advantage on saves from effects generated by Frightened creatures, though. That honestly seems like an oversight.

[Waterdeep Merch]

What, you think squishy casters with low HP and bargain bin AC are protected against the surprisingly fast, flying hate-lizard because they won't be frightened when it decides to turn them into a chew toy?

Maybe if your DM has the dragon sit on the floor acting like it's an ogre or something, ignoring obvious glass cannons (not an uncommon scenario, sadly). But a dragon's kit can annihilate a caster in the same time it's inconveniencing the fighter.

Let's not forget that all adult dragons also have really good saves and legendary resistance to deal with said casters attempts to not be deli ham.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

What, you think squishy casters with low HP and bargain bin AC are protected against the surprisingly fast, flying hate-lizard because they won't be frightened when it decides to turn them into a chew toy?

Maybe if your DM has the dragon sit on the floor acting like it's an ogre or something, ignoring obvious glass cannons (not an uncommon scenario, sadly). But a dragon's kit can annihilate a caster in the same time it's inconveniencing the fighter.

Let's not forget that all adult dragons also have really good saves and legendary resistance to deal with said casters attempts to not be deli ham.


Well, Sorcerers and wizards have Blur, so those attacks are gonna be at disadvantage if the caster is smart. A Sorcerer can quickly force the dragon to use legendary saves (Heighten spell) so that they can get to the good stuff.

Clerics are beefcakes and have a buttload of offensive and defensive options.

Warlocks and Druids depend on the build but both have relatively popular options that don't require attack rolls.

+++

More martials need to have immunity to fear or advantage on checks against fear.

[stoutstien]

Well, Sorcerers and wizards have Blur, so those attacks are gonna be at disadvantage if the caster is smart. A Sorcerer can quickly force the dragon to use legendary saves (Heighten spell) so that they can get to the good stuff.

Clerics are beefcakes and have a buttload of offensive and defensive options.

Warlocks and Druids depend on the build but both have relatively popular options that don't require attack rolls.

+++

More martials need to have immunity to fear or advantage on checks against fear.

Blur is useless vs most dragons (truesight/ blindsight) same for mirror image.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Also, most clerics cap out at medium armor and shields for 19 AC (barring magic items or spells). The weakest adult dragon, white, has a +11, hitting them on average twice a round. Three times average if it uses both the tail and wing attack legendary actions, which it ought to. With the miss chance (but ignoring crit chances, despite them being pretty likely to occur at least once in three rounds), it's averaging about 49 damage, and could easily end up double or more. A level 13 cleric with a 14 Constitution (a common total) has 88 health at level 13 (the white dragon's CR), average.

It might kill the cloth wearers faster, but it's not going to take a dragon an especially long time to kill a cleric. One round if the dragon gets lucky. And that's without using it's breath weapon.

[Lupine]

What, you think squishy casters with low HP and bargain bin AC are protected against the surprisingly fast, flying hate-lizard because they won't be frightened when it decides to turn them into a chew toy?

Maybe if your DM has the dragon sit on the floor acting like it's an ogre or something, ignoring obvious glass cannons (not an uncommon scenario, sadly). But a dragon's kit can annihilate a caster in the same time it's inconveniencing the fighter.

Let's not forget that all adult dragons also have really good saves and legendary resistance to deal with said casters attempts to not be deli ham.
This. Totally this. Most casters work under the assumption that they will be safe in the back. Dragons should shatter that assumption. In a dragon fight, the only people who should feel safe are fools.

In fact, most adult dragons have high AC (AC 19 on all chromatic but white, I think). lets assume characters are optimized, So they'll have +5 in their combat tribute, and a +5 from proficiency, so a +10 to hit. Even with that, they still are little better than a 50/50 to hit. And even if they do, the dragon has an average HP of 200. It can tank more than a few hits from mister axe-man, with his greataxe. But wait, The axeman has disadvantage due to frightful presence. Good luck hitting the beast now, mister.

But Madam Squishy in the back, who can deal an average of 62, 28, 28 damage in three rounds? That's something the dragon needs to take care of. now. The dragon will try to kill the casters quickly, and then will start strafing the tanks, until they're down too.

That's the purpose of Frightful presence. It sucks for martials, but it really exists so the dragon can safely ignore them, and attack the casters. When you consider how low HP the casters have, this feature is much, much worse for the caster, as it allows the dragon to focus them without having to think about the martials.


AFB but an adult dragon is huge right?
A huge creature fits within a 15' cube.
IIRC Smaug is much larger (so more frightening) than that...?

Don't forget that a dragon is likely curls around when in combat so that it can attack with its tail.

[deljzc]

I would think it would be very hard to "kite" a dragon considering it has the ability to move around the battlefield using its legendary action wing attack. Most of the time that can be 40' of movement at the end of every players' turn, correct?

Doesn't that pretty much allow it to always be in a place to threaten anyone trying to maintain 120'+ away from it?

Am I missing something?

[MaxWilson]

AFB but an adult dragon is huge right?
A huge creature fits within a 15' cube.
IIRC Smaug is much larger (so more frightening) than that...?

Even better: in 5E Huge creatures can fit in Large spaces, so you can cram an adult dragon into a 10' x 10' cubicle barely big enough for Smaug's head.

[Tawmis]

So, I've been running an encounter vs my party the other day and I had Adult Blue use Frightful presence. One of party casters failed hard and was running away from the dragon for 10 rounds. Fun all around. Except for - it seemed, I misread the rules. Frightful presence says:



And Frightened condition is:



So. Smaug comes out, roars, frightens melee classes, which are unable to move toward him and are attacking him with disadvantage - while casters are spamming their spells all day every day no problemo in this case? Is this underpowered? What is the point of this effect anyway?

Well, keep in mind - Spells may require a "to hit" - which would place those spells at Disadvantage during attack rolls.
Magic Missile would just hit, requires not hit.
But other spells that do require the caster to perform a spell attack - then that's at Disadvantage.

[Brutalitops]

Its a bit ****, yes, but its not the only thing an adult dragon has. The breath weapon still wrecks PCs, Legendary actions and Legendary saves, etc.

Having a Bard in the party makes this a non-factor though. Countercharm is boss.


No countercharm sucks. In general it has no affect unless your using your action so it cannot help creatures already charmed or frightened. Couple that with the fact that it costs your action for a niche affect


You want an example of countercharm look at critical role. Their is a bard in that show scanlan, probably one of the most famous dnd bards. He used countercharm once. In 115 episodes he uses it once. And it was terrible.

An ability so useless you can go 600 hours of play without ever using it means its a terrible ability.


It should either be a reaction or end charm and frightened affects.