Arelith

Fear immunity has over time become more common. I find that permanent immunities shuts down playstyles and prefer designs where counters are possible.

Would it be worth making some of these either (1) +fear bonus saves rather than outright immunities, or (2) an ability, that could be breached, with several casts per day - against character abilities at least.

What do you think?

Current immunities:
Paladin
Blackguard
Cavalier
Vigilante
Liberator
Warlock (star pact)
Invoker (hemomancer)
Weapon (can be used be any class!)
Beyond these, there are easy ways to get large save boosts that are not on the breach list (remove fear / lionheart, aura of glory)

I don't mind the immunity so much as I don't like the fact that it's hidden information.

Fear is really annoying. There are lots of fear auras in this game. I really hate them and when I play a character without a source of fear immunity that can roll 1 against them sometimes I really feel my poor decision to play a character without a source of fear immunity. Remove fear doesnt seem to remove lingering effects of fear auras and neither does restoration last I checked.

Also you forgot Star pact warlock.

AstralUniverse wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 10:46 am

Fear is really annoying. There are lots of fear auras in this game. I really hate them and when I play a character without a source of fear immunity that can roll 1 against them sometimes I really feel my poor decision to play a character without a source of fear immunity. Remove fear doesnt seem to remove lingering effects of fear auras and neither does restoration last I checked.

Also you forgot Star pact warlock.

I think it's worth distinguishing between PvE fears and character abilities. I'm not averse to fear immunity for PvE - and for PvE fear auras, one can use lesser mind blank, which (almost) everyone has access to.

Good point re: star pact warlocks, added!

Quidix wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 11:33 am

I think it's worth distinguishing between PvE fears and character abilities.

... why?

I was glad to see poison immunity go. Hopefully fear immunity is removed for similar reasons.

I, for one, am glad there's so many fear immunities now... though, if all fears became varying Malus effects, instead of STUNS or TERRIFIES... it'd be fine with their removal.

I don't like it when I nat 1 a save, and then can't play the game for 20 minutes, because I get fear CC'd, and ganked by mobs and then can't even clear a malus, with Remove Fear on Myself.

AstralUniverse wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 11:47 am

Quidix wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 11:33 am

I think it's worth distinguishing between PvE fears and character abilities.

... why?

Non-spell character fears are shorter and less punishing that PvE fears (compare a 3min dragon fear giving -10 on everything vs a knight's 10 rounds for -4 that is a standard action). Spell fears can be brutal, but are very difficult to land given saves meta.

Beyond that, dragon fears can be avoided with mind blank.

It would be better if Fear (not Fright) wasn't outright loss of total control, but rather something like partial loss of control.

Using 5e as the inspiration, being unable to move closer to the source of your fear would still let you run away or use ranged attacks/spells. Although a heavy malus (like disadvantage) would need to remain, one greater than Fright's.

We also should consider making Fear vision-based. So if you remain out of sight of the source of your fear longer than 9 seconds, the effect is reduced to Fright only (or something similar). It makes sense though that you'd need to keep line of sight with your target to keep them under Fear.

It might be too complicated to code though.

It's been a while since I played a Wizard, but as I recall, fear immunity also provides immunity to the spells Phantasmal Killer and Weird. If you can't be subjected to the spell's initial fear effect, you therefore aren't subjected to the following fortitude save-or-die.

Notably, these are also death spells that ignore death ward, so mind blank and fear immunity are the only ways to be totally safe from it. At least, that's how they used to work. Not sure if that's still the case.

Anyways, they were my favorite spells as a Shadow Mage, so they're the first thing I think about when considering the new abundance of fear immunity. Admittedly I have yet to wholly consider whether or not it's ultimately a good thing.

fear is probably the most frustrating mechanic on arelith at the moment. you're either protected before you get hit, or else you get a big middle finger to your face, up your orifices, and digging in your ears. clarity won't remove it, mind blank won't remove it, nothing works except, specifically one low level spell. if you're leveling and someone else doesn't have that specific spell? f#ck you. oh, you have it? too bad, f#ck you. oh you had clarity? too bad, f#ck you. hey, look at all these things that should work to remove it! kiss my Snuggybear, f#ck you.
oh, and it's going to linger. several minutes of "screw it, let's go make a sandwich because there's nothing i can do. look at me run across the map and aggro everything else. wheee."
arelith's changes to fear have made it worse and make even less sense by restricting the remedies to _ONLY remove fear, and I wish there was something else that could be done.
anyways, it's nice that there are options to become immune. there should be more. every character with a stat over 3 should be immune to fear, for quality of life. until it's removed, then we can consider removing the immunities (but should probably leave them anyways)

One source of it that should really go is Peridan. Blanket immunities shouldn’t be on items. Instead it could have a +5 vs fear.

Regarding that FOIG weapon. Maybe just slap an UMD 50 requirement on it? It does hurt a lot when some people probably have invested a lot in items with immunities, maybe even runed and 5%ed them, only to have them turn into rubbish. Would be cool to find some middle-ground.

Edit: Fun idea. Replace immunity on items with a property that works similar to Slippery Mind - instead of being immune, you get to reroll your save vs. X if you fail the first time. This makes the item still a fine strategy to protect against nat 1s if your saves are already sufficiently high, but you get a lot less out of it if your saves are low. Sacrificing an important gearslot to reduce your chance of failure from, say, 50% to 25% or so, is probably something a lot of people will think about twice before committing. This property could be called, I don't know, Resilience? Would love to see that, actually.

I think some classes should have fear immunity, for instance paladin and maaaaybe hemomancer just because it makes sense for those classes. Though honestly I'd prefer if full fledged immunity was offered as an optional feat rather than a free bonus.

I must add, I often wondered why Specialist Necromancers and Palemasters do not get Fear Immunity, given how it's their daily business to create what is among the most scary things in the DnDverse. Or why Palemaster does not get at least partial immunity to poison and disease.

The majority of characters still have to put up with it.

It might be better to change the worst offending fear effects (eg change duration of running way from 2-3 minutes to 5 rounds; tone down the Fright Aura to -6), and / or remove them in low-mid dungeon content. At that point, changes to the fear immunities could be more readily considered. I personally like the thought of the Fear Immunity being replaced by a reroll like slippery mind.

I agree with the ideas that fear immunity is too widespread and that fear (as well as many other save or suck abilities) last way too long.

Being outright immune to fear is logical and fluffy for paladins. Improving saves versus fear for the party makes sense with bards, knights and so on. But we shouldn't be in a situation where a large chunk of the server is immune to this kind of play style.

A few characters back I played as a guy named Valgaroth Hinflayer who fought with two scepters of tyranny. The two or three times that I fought another player and the enemy rolled a one for their save were truly epic.

It felt like a freak occurrence, totally hilarious. Was it fair? Not really. But it was far from imbalanced by D&D standards. I took a hit build-wise by taking weapons with only a +3 enchantment and no keen or additional bonus damage. Wizards who take actual fear spells take a hit build wise by walking around with wet garbage HP and no ability to physically hit things. I say let these sorts of characters have their fun.

However, as someone who's done some work with a fear build I know all too well that the ability should probably last about ten seconds or less. It's no fun for the opponent waddling around in circles for a full minute, and it doesn't feel like a real win if you're chasing a guy whose slow movements glitch away your sneak attack damage for over a minute trying to chip away his HP.

Dreams wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:28 pm

One source of it that should really go is Peridan. Blanket immunities shouldn’t be on items. Instead it could have a +5 vs fear.

It's a very rare gear unlike the encircle scale that provides poison immunity.

Generally I think fear immunity is fine.

Star pact doesn't get any elemental spells as pact spells or blasts so it is focused into mind effecting and kind of makes sense.

Paladin and it's counter part blackguard im fine with having it.

Hemomancer gets it for 20 levels which isn't much of a sacrifice as caster but they don't get mind blank or clarity so I assume it's for QoL reasons, plus new classes always tend to be over tuned give it six months and they tend to get knocked down a few notches.

Same for liberator and vigilante I expect them to lose it or that the levels needed increase a lot to limit the builds wanting to access it.

Helsing wrote: Mon Apr 17, 2023 2:25 am

Dreams wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:28 pm

One source of it that should really go is Peridan. Blanket immunities shouldn’t be on items. Instead it could have a +5 vs fear.

It's a very rare gear unlike the encircle scale that provides poison immunity.

Not really. I have one on almost all of my characters. Their value changes over time and when they’re cheap I’ll buy them to 5% keen on them and then rune for more stuff. Ridiculously powerful!

Dreams wrote: Mon Apr 17, 2023 11:26 am

Helsing wrote: Mon Apr 17, 2023 2:25 am

Dreams wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:28 pm

One source of it that should really go is Peridan. Blanket immunities shouldn’t be on items. Instead it could have a +5 vs fear.

It's a very rare gear unlike the encircle scale that provides poison immunity.

Not really. I have one on almost all of my characters. Their value changes over time and when they’re cheap I’ll buy them to 5% keen on them and then rune for more stuff. Ridiculously powerful!

I have played like 10+ characters, and only found one, you must be extremely lucky.

Fear immunity should go the way of poison immunity.

Ork wrote: Mon Apr 17, 2023 6:51 pm

Fear immunity should go the way of poison immunity.

I would echo the same.
If limitation doesn't stop it, i truly think Fear Aura deserves more love.

I think until fear effects that can sometimes last minutes per level that stun your character for the duration, or fear effects that can cause you to lose up to 10 AB and AC and cause significantly harsh ASF are reduced in duration or severity that the very many prevalent sources of fear immunity are a good thing.

Especially since there are PC fear effects that bypass fear immunity.