Frightened Condition 5e
by Prince Phantom
The dragon spreads its wings in an imposing display of power and majesty, the banshee shrieks through the halls of the manor, and the mere aura of the mighty fiend, all of these can inspire terror in the heart of even the most seasoned of adventurers, and they’re all represented by the Frightened condition. Here’s what it does:
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.
There’s a lot to unpack in those two bullet points. First, disadvantage on attack rolls. This is a big problem for any attack roll based character, so all martials, warlocks, and half-casters. Full casters like Wizards and Clerics may not be as effected by this, as their spellcasting allows them to focus on imposing saving throws rather than making attack rolls. Spellcasters stay winning as usual. Ability checks don’t come up as often in combat, but oftentimes you may need to make an ability check to shake off the fear, potentially making this a very sticky condition. Wrathful Smite is a perfect example of this interaction. Do keep in mind that initiative rolls are ability checks, so starting a fight while frightened is a big disadvantage. To clarify the whole “line of sight” thing, you can’t simply look away from the source of your fear, there needs to be full cover between you and it to ignore it this disadvantage.
The movement restriction is potentially an even bigger deal, as it can prevent melee builds from ever engaging the enemy to begin with. A frightened Barbarian will at best spend their turn uselessly throwing javelins, and at worst doing nothing at all. Again spellcasters stay winning, as most spells have enough range to not care about this, and staying at a distance is better for you anyway. That’s not to say that this doesn’t matter at all for ranged characters however, as the further away from the source of fear you are, the more of the battle map is now unaccessible to you. Think of it like the radius of a spell, standing 5ft away means you can move around the enemy pretty freely, but to move around an enemy even only 15ft away would require double the movement it would normally take to traverse the same distance. Anything more than that and you will have some serious trouble moving around the field, even worse if you’re in a cramped environment. Keep this in mind both as the one inflicting the condition and the one being inflicted. Frightening a creature and then moving away from it expands the circle of restriction greatly, and is generally a great strategy for keeping areas of the battlefield safe.
How many monsters are immune to the Frightened condition?
596/2624 of monsters are immune to being Frightened. That’s over 20%, and makes it one of the more largely resisted conditions in the game. Notably, 60% of celestials, 74% of constructs, 79% of oozes, and 47% of undead are immune, so I wouldn’t recommend targeting those creature types with frighten effects. This means if you want to center a build around frightening, you need to have a backup plan, otherwise in about 1/5 encounters you will be ineffective. Also, immunity becomes more common at higher CR, so expect it to be less reliable the higher level you are.
How do we inflict the Frightened condition?
Spells that Impose the Frightened Condition
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | - |
| 1st | Cause Fear, Wrathful Smite |
| 2nd | - |
| 3rd | Fear |
| 4th | Phantasmal Killer |
| 5th | - |
| 6th | Eyebite |
| 7th | Symbol |
| 8th | Antipathy/Sympathy, Illusory Dragon |
| 9th | Weird |
This is a pretty expansive list when compared to other conditions, and thankfully includes some excellent options (and also Phantasmal Killer and Weird, just ignore those). Cause Fear is a decent option to automatically win an encounter against a single melee enemy, but Wrathful Smite is even better if you can get it on your sheet. It’s the rare exception where a smite spell is actually great, thanks to the aforementioned stickiness. Fear is the real star here, a spell that sits firmly in the upper echelons of the fantastic options at 3rd level spellcasting. It’s every bit as good as heavy hitters like Fireball and Hypnotic Pattern, and I highly recommend you give it a shot on your next adventure. Eyebite is mediocre, and Symbol has much more potent options than the fear effect, but surprisingly, it’s 8th level of all levels that delivers. Antipathy/Sympathy, specifically the antipathy side, is fantastic if you know what kinds of creatures you’ll be facing within the next 10 days, acting as a concentration free debuff whenever you come across that creature type. Illusory Dragon is a house of a spell for a number of reasons, and the fear effect is definitely one of those reasons.
Class Abilities:
Artificer Replicate Magic Item Infusion: Pipes of Haunting
Berserker Barbarian Intimidating Presence
Spirits Bard Tale of the Phantom
Whispers Bard Words of Terror
Battle Master Fighter Maneuver: Menacing Attack
Ascendant Dragon Monk Aspect of the Wyrm
Long Death Monk Hour of Reaping
Conquest Paladin Channel Divinity: Conquering Presence
Oathbreaker Paladin Channel Divinity: Dreadful Aspect
Fey Wanderer Ranger Beguiling Twist
Archfey Warlock Fey Presence and Dark Delirium
Undead Warlock Form of Dread
I’m pretty sure this is the most expansive list of class abilities out of all the conditions. Nearly every class has an option of some kind, many have multiple options. There are some really powerful options here too. Undead Warlock’s Form of Dread is just begging to be built around, Fey Wanderer’s Beguiling Twist has many ways to make it broken in half, and the Artificer’s ability to make their own Pipes of Haunting should not be overlooked, that magic item is as good as, if not better than, the Fear spell.
Racial Abilities:
Leonin Daunting Roar
Dragonborn Dragon Fear (Racial Feat)
While the Leonin is a very underpowered race, its frightening roar does at least give it an interesting niche. The real winner here is the Dragonborn’s racial feat; Dragon Fear. This feat used to suck when Dragonborn had to use their whole action to use their breath weapon, but now that they only have to replace one attack of the attack action, this feat allows us to mix the fear effect into our round of attacks, and the results are genuinely devastating. I highly recommend trying one of the new Dragonborn from Fizban’s if you want to play a fear-based character.
Synergies with the Frightened condition:
Conquest Paladin Aura of Conquest
Fey Wanderer Beguiling Twist
We have two very powerful and very different abilities here. Aura of Conquest adds onto the movement restrictions imposed by the condition, completely immobilizing any frightened creature within 10ft of us automatically. This promotes using a reach weapon to force our enemies into an awkward position where they both cannot run away, and can’t attack us. It also allows our spellcasting allies to put damaging AoEs under the enemy, forcing them to sit in it as they are too afraid to even move.
Beguiling Twist, on the other hand, provides more opportunities to impose the condition. Whenever we or another creature (friend or foe) succeed on a save versus a fear or charm effect, we can use our reaction to force a different creature to make a save or be frightened or charmed. On its own, this will come up occasionally, but this feature functions at its best when we are consistently imposing saving throws ourselves.
The best way to take advantage of both of these features is through a one level Undead Warlock multiclass to pick up Form of Dread. That feature lets us impose a saving throw once per turn when we hit with an attack, allowing us to threaten the condition every turn with no resource cost. It even scales with our proficiency bonus, which is unaffected by multiclassing, making this a super easy build to optimize the frightened condition.
How to resist the Frightened condition:
Racial Abilities:
Halfling Brave (all subraces)
Githzerai Mental Discipline
Locathah Leviathan Will
Kobold Defiance
Kender Fearless
Loxodon Serenity
Each of these provide advantage to save against the condition, though the Kender actually stands out for once with it’s ability to automatically succeed once per day, in much the same way as a monster’s legendary resistance works.
Class Abilities:
Berserker Barbarian Mindless Rage (immunity while raging)
Twilight Cleric Channel Divinity: Twilight Sanctuary
Monk Stillness of Mind
Paladin Aura of Courage (Immunity)
Aberrant Mind Sorcerer Psychic Defenses
Undead Warlock Form of Dread (immunity while active)
Spells:
Plenty of options here as well, with even a few options for immunity sprinkled in for good measure. Many of the features listed here remove the condition after it has already been applied, but that’s normally sufficient, as many monster’s frighten abilities only work once on a creature.
In Summary:
The frightened condition can be used to great effect by both monster and player, is a great concept to build around, and there are plenty of ways to resist it if necessary. It’s yet another in a long list of reasons for why melee combat is suboptimal, and for why spellcasters are superior at all levels of play. Keep all this in mind next time your DM decides to run a Halloween one-shot.
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