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Frightened: Characters who are frightened are shaken, and in addition they flee from the source of their fear as quickly as they can. They can choose the paths of their flight. Other than that stipulation, once they are out of sight (or hearing) of the source of their fear, they can act as they want. If the duration of their fear continues, however, characters can be forced to flee if the source of their fear presents itself again. Characters unable to flee can fight (though they are still shaken).
Does this mean that a character can only fight back if unable to move from their location, or does it mean they are able to fight back if they know they have no way to escape their pursuer.
As an example if the victim is stuck in a 20 by 20 room with no exit, and no way to teleport out are they allowed to fight back?
My opinion is yes, but I would like for this to be FAQ'd.
It doesn't say "unable to leave their space". It says "unable to flee". It seems pretty clear cut to me; if flight isn't an option you must fight, though at a penalty because "aaahhhh I'm gonna die aahhhh" tends to make people lose focus.
One could argue how flexible "unable to flee" is. Would a creature who, upon fleeing, realizes that their pursuer is just faster than them and will catch up eventually be able to turn around and fight due to the lack of real alternatives?
I think that being slower means you can still flee, but I get your point, and I would also like to know how restrictive it is meant to be.
For now I may base it on the intelligence or wisdom of the monster, but an official answer would be nice.
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I can't imagine that anyone would argue that frightened makes you run in circles in a room. Well, that's not entire true, I can imagine a certain few on this board, who shall remain nameless, to make that argument, but I digress.
Just because it illustrates the point a bit better, how about we use a 30ftx5ft enclosed space instead. We have two people, lets call them A and B. A and B stand in the middle of the hallway, then they start fighting and A becomes frightened with respects to B. Now we break it into rounds.
Round 1:
A's turn: Withdraw action to move 10ft backwards, to the end of the hallway. End turn.
B's turn: Charge A and kick him in the shins.
Round 2:
A's turn: Make acrobatics check to move through B's square and run to the other end of the hallway.
B's turn: Charge A and kick him in the shins.
Repeat round 2 as needed.
That is quite frankly stupid, and IMO neither the RAI nor RAW of the frightened condition, although as mentioned I am certain that there will be -some- that would argue that it is.
As for my own opinion, I believe that if a frightened creature realizes it has no options for escape, then it may fight back. This could be trapped in a 30x5 hallway or trapped in a 20x20 box.
FAQ'd as requested.
-Nearyn
As much as it pains me to disagree with you Nearyn (pains me greatly! :P), you seem to ascribe a great clarity of thought to people who are experiencing mortal terror.
First the room, 20ft by 20ft. When you are frightened, you main motivation becomes stay as far away from other person as possible. If that means moving from square to square to keep one step ahead of him (and you have the option), that is what you will do.
If there are no safe squares where you are not threatened by your foe (maybe your enemy is huge or something), then you fight back, because you are cornered.
Imagine in the horror movie scenario, when the maniac with the machete is chasing the heroine around the room, does she suddenly decide to fight back if she has 10ft (10 measly feet!) to back up into? Much the same here.
Now on the corridor, you have constructed quite the strawman there, as once you have backed into the end of the corridor, you are trapped. You can try to escape, and there I would agree with Wraithstrike that it would depend on the character (nimble ones would probably choose the acrobatics), but in that case I would say that it is reasonable to fight.
prototype00
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As much as it pains me to disagree with you Nearyn (pains me greatly! :P)
That made my day :D
you seem to ascribe a great clarity of thought to people who are experiencing mortal terror.
I guess it would appear so, but when we look at the conditions that have to do with fright, we only have 3 representations of fear. We have shaken, frightened and panicked.
Shaken means your knees feel a smidge like jelly and you'd probably rather not be fighting what you're about to fight, but you have the option to man up and do it anyway.
Frightened means you're out of there. Exit stage left. But if you're trapped with no way of escape, no chance, no reason for the GM to say 'okay, well let's look at the chase rules', then you know so, and there is nothing to do. You have to fight for your life, and how you do it, be it in the corner or in the middle of the 20ft cube, is up to you.
If you're panicked then no bit of rationale is left, mortal terror, as you so correctly describe it. You're leaving, in whatever direction is AWAY from whatever panicked you. Into the corner?! Sure! And if you see no opening you do not fight back, you curl into a ball and you beg and cry and scream.
Now on the corridor, you have constructed quite the strawman there, as once you have backed into the end of the corridor, you are trapped. You can try to escape, and there I would agree with Wraithstrike that it would depend on the character (nimble ones would probably choose the acrobatics), but in that case I would say that it is reasonable to fight.
Then the question becomes, when do we do go from "By RAW you can still run through his square", to "By RAW you can still run through his square, but I don't care"?
As far as I can see, going by my reading you can skip that part, because the frightened person never has to back himself into the corner of an inescapeable room.
Now you say "But Nearyn, you handsome gent! Then a Panicked creature will always run through the square of the one who threatens it in your hallway situation, making the scene into a Benny Hill sketch!". No my dear friends no! Because panic explicitly states, as opposed to frightened, that the creature stops running once cornered and starts cowering. You run until cornered then stop. Whereas frightened tells us no such thing. Just that it may fight if it is incapable of fleeing. By fleeing I assume they mean fleeing. That is: escape their current predicament, or at least make a realistic and valiant effort at doing so.
I'll put together another strawman for you.
Trapped in a 30x30 box, against a frightening creature that only has 5ft movement speed. If you have standard 30ft movement, you can run circles around that creature until you drop dead from exhaustion, but that's the problem isn't it? I'd argue that you can run circles around it if you want to, but you may also pick up that iron bar over there and attempt to beat the snot of out the slowmoving horror, as long as you cannot escape the 30ft box. Once someone opens the locked iron door in the room, the you're out of there before you can say "run action".
-Nearyn
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From a story standpoint, it isnt much fun for a player to tell him that he must run in circles in the 20x20 cage he is in. I can totally understand telling the player that his character runs to the opposite end of the cage, if they do not roleplay it themselves, I would have them make a wisdom check to either try to continue evasion/yell for help or to have the realization that there is no escape and the only choice is to fight.
I think just about anything in rl in the mammal bird teptile or octopus family) can grasp no exit (provided it is not clear glass). Anything in pf with at least a 3 int is smarter than anything on earth except humans (for this example well ignore that some rl animals are probably smarter than 2 int)
Basically if it has 3 int or higher can instantly grasp there is no escape from a 20 x 20 room.
The part about fear and the run requirement that's confusing is this.
Is fear blindly running away with no thpught to yoir wellbeing or is it alright I'm afraid what steps to take to get me out alive.
In the caae of the pit fiend if option a b c and d see I'm dieing in round 2 and option d lets him live so he can easily retreat in round 2 and live is he allowed option d.
The assumption on my part is a pit fiend has the same grasp of military and combat awareness as most of ezrths grestest generals combined with an intillect that can possibly tell steven hawkings where he has gotten it wrong.
Ie he's a genius that can grasp this whole situation identify what his choices ate and make the best decision that fear lets him make.
Personally I think as long as what he is doing is to let him get away anything is fair game. I think also acrually trapping the feared person gives him more options.
Ie a feares person must run a feares person with his foot in a leg trap cam fight. He is not forced to pry the leg trap open while being attacked.
How about this one? A charging monstrosity is using Ride By Attack and is frightened just before he can deliver his attack by a readied action. What does mr RBA do?
Uh, technically, you could go through the wall. It is just slower. But you could do it.
If you can't do it quickly and efficiently, you have no escape. If you do not think you can outrun our outmaneuver the enemy, you have no escape.
I can't out swim a shark, if I am in the water without a boat or land nearby, I have no escape. It doesn't matter that the entire ocean is open to me.
If there is a coral reef and the shark is large, I may have a means of escape.
It is always situational. But if there is no obvious escape, I would rule you can stand and fight.
I was not aware of the option to fight back until recently so this changes my games a little if I go with the trapped room = fight idea. However the option will be used by NPC's and PC's so I want to be consistent with whatever I finally decide.
I see being able to flee and being able to ensure escape as two very different things. In a mentally fragile state you may hopelessly try to get away from an inevitable death, and perhaps that extra time even exposes other possibilities for survival, making a seemingly inevitable death not inevitable.
I don't think the flee has to make perfect logical sense at the time, it just has to buy time. Once actually cornered, or the target works up the nerve to only be shaken, then they stand their ground. I see no caveat stating that if the frightened target makes a calculated assessment of the situation and decides that the probability of long term success in evading the frightening source seems extremely unlikely, then just treat the frightened creature as shaken.
I had a person once claim that a frightened creature is effectively cornered and can fight if fleeing would mean the frightened individual would draw an attack of opportunity. That game there was zero difference between a frightened and shaken individual mechanically.
Both sides of the argument have merit, so hopefully we get an answer. :)
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I think there's a bit of confusion, even on my part, on what allows you to fight. For instance, it says "unable to flee". It doesn't say unable to escape. The only time escape is mentioned is when abilities are involved, if your only means of escape is to use an ability, not only are you limited to fleeing but now you -must- also use that ability in the process.
Flee doesn't mean escape. Google defines flee as "run away from a place or situation of danger." In this sense, as long as you can still run away from a foe, you can flee, even if escape is not possible. Hence, you'd flee. An important distinction here is the phrase "run away from". So, here's how I'd rule on the frightened condition.
First, is there an escape only available through special abilities? If yes, character or NPC -must- use said ability to escape.
If there's no such escape, can the character run away from the source of it's fear by fleeing directly away from it? If yes, the character must flee (character can still choose the path of fleeing, it's just that they must flee).
If not (like said character is in a corner, or cannot travel any further away from said creature by directly moving away), then the character may decide it's actions. This applies even if said source of fear is preoccupied with something else.
EDIT: The character at this point could even charge said source of fear, but the next round (if it is still frightened), it would flee again.
Both sides of the argument have merit, so hopefully we get an answer. :)
Your diplomacy is pleasant. :P
In all honesty, I only see merit in one side of the argument. I think those arguing for a loose interpretation of what it means to "not be able to flee from the source" as trying to squeeze a donkey through the eye of a needle to achieve the end result of neutering a status effect.
I have found there is a decent population within the pathfinder community that really don't like negative status effects. I really enjoy debuffers; those are my favorite characters, and as such I have had similar discussions about several other effects many times. Since most people win battles by cumulative damage, they can view it as underhanded when seeing people win battles by other means.
Perhaps I am painting with some broad strokes concerning some people in this discussion, but I think this characterization is not completely off base.
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Like I was trying to say before, you can pretty much always flee. Unless you don't have a weapon that can overcome the hardness of an object, you can go through it.
Does that mean that when you are underground in a room with no doors and you are frightened that you must dig your way out since that would be you fleeing? Stone only has a hardness of 8. There are like 30 weapons in the CRB that can do that much damage in one round, with the help of 12 or higher strength. Would you make someone dig out rather than fight?
Of course not.
Swimming away from the shark without a swim speed is the same type of thing.
The "not rational" argument can easily be flipped as well. The character is "not rational" enough to know that there is a way out, so he fights.
If there isn't an obvious way, I strongly advocate for fighting. It is a combat game. Not an exercise in the mental capacity of those in a "frightened" state of mind.
-snip-
Frightened means you're out of there. Exit stage left. But if you're trapped with no way of escape, no chance, no reason for the GM to say 'okay, well let's look at the chase rules', then you know so, and there is nothing to do. You have to fight for your life, and how you do it, be it in the corner or in the middle of the 20ft cube, is up to you.
Chase rules are an optional set of rules, if you are invoking the need for them to justify an a set of rules in the core rule book, I would say you are pretty far off base.
-snip-
Trapped in a 30x30 box, against a frightening creature that only has 5ft movement speed. If you have standard 30ft movement, you can run circles around that creature until you drop dead from exhaustion, but that's the problem isn't it? I'd argue that you can run circles around it if you want to, but you may also pick up that iron bar over there and attempt to beat the snot of out the slowmoving horror, as long as you cannot escape the 30ft box. Once someone opens the locked iron door in the room, the you're out of there before you can say "run action".Nearyn you handsome gent, I would agree with you that eventually after running away from the slow horror you could attack him. There are actually even rules for it, it is the duration of the frightened condition. Until then, it is a no go.
Do you think the situation changes if your box gets larger? 100ft by 100 ft? 5000ft by 5000ft? an entire plane of existance?
What if you are supposed to be fleeing from a source, perhaps hiding in a closet while your friends are killing the horror? You can't get out of the closet and any further away, but your friends might kill it for you. What if your friends aren't there yet, but they might be soon and you can't get out of this area? What if you just hope that your friends will be? What if you just hope anyone will be?
You can't rationalize away fear because of where you fall on some spectrum of possible successes and still claim that you have the condition. If you can flee from the source, you should flee from the source, regardless of how you weigh the cost benefit analysis of that action in the long term.
Like I was trying to say before, you can pretty much always flee. Unless you don't have a weapon that can overcome the hardness of an object, you can go through it.
Does that mean that when you are underground in a room with no doors and you are frightened that you must dig your way out since that would be you fleeing? Stone only has a hardness of 8. There are like 30 weapons in the CRB that can do that much damage in one round, with the help of 12 or higher strength. Would you make someone dig out rather than fight?
Of course not.
Swimming away from the shark without a swim speed is the same type of thing.
The "not rational" argument can easily be flipped as well. The character is "not rational" enough to know that there is a way out, so he fights.
If there isn't an obvious way, I strongly advocate for fighting. It is a combat game. Not an exercise in the mental capacity of those in a "frightened" state of mind.
Attempting to dig a hole is not fleeing. You are not actually making any distance between yourself and the target of your fear, instead you are attempting to make a long term plan that may eventually lead to fleeing.
When you swim away from a shark, you are actively putting distance between yourself and it, therefore "fleeing."
EDIT: Your "not rational counter-argument" holds no water. The entire point of fear is to reduce a creatures willingness to fight, not increase it. By your logic, my out of spells sorcerer who is normally too chicken to come into combat anyway would suddenly rush into the middle of combat when frightened because the BBEG is engaged with his friends beside in the only doorway.
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How is it not fleeing? It is exactly the same thing at a slower rate. That is my point. The rate matters. Make it a material with a hardess of 0, like a thin wood door, only there are a hundred in a row. As it is a standard action to open, you can only open 1 per round.
If the source of fear can match, double, triple, quadruple etc. your movement, then you are not putting any distance between you and it.
Rate of escape matters. It is not meant to be reverse kiteing.
My "not rational" argument does not work. It shouldn't. It was only to show that "rational" or "not rational" can be switched to rationalize the outcome. Neither work.
This is only about what counts as the ability to flee. I state that if you can't leave at a rate that keeps the creature from attacking you, you can't flee.
Because, again, it is not meant to be reverse kiteing.
How is it not fleeing? It is exactly the same thing at a slower rate. That is my point. The rate matters. Make it a material with a hardess of 0, like a thin wood door, only there are a hundred in a row. As it is a standard action to open, you can only open 1 per round.
If the source of fear can match, double, triple, quadruple etc. your movement, then you are not putting any distance between you and it.
Rate of escape matters. It is not meant to be reverse kiteing.
My "not rational" argument does not work. It shouldn't. It was only to show that "rational" or "not rational" can be switched to rationalize the outcome. Neither work.
This is only about what counts as the ability to flee. I state that if you can't leave at a rate that keeps the creature from attacking you, you can't flee.
Because, again, it is not meant to be reverse kiteing.
Since Pathfinder is broken up into nice little turns for us, we can see very neatly what is actually fleeing and what is preparing to flee. If the character opens a door, hasn't moved, sees another door in his face, he doesn't have to open a second door, he can instead choose to take another route that would actually be fleeing this turn. If he chose to keep opening doors, I don't know that I would stop him unless there seemed to be some metagaming behind his intent. I wouldn't say he must continue to open doors if such an action is not currently an act of fleeing. If he were to say "I opened one door, opening another isn't fleeing and I can't go anywhere else, can I attack with my standard action?" I would say "sure."
There is no caveat that says, "flee from your source unless it has a faster movement rate than you do." In the real world where things happen simultaneously you are only attempting to put distance between you and it, but in the game that distance actually happens, even if it is only until the other thing's turn.
And if the frightening creature chooses to pursue, then I don't see a problem with "reverse kiting." I don't think it odd that something that thinks it will die runs for its life, even if there is little to no hope.
I have seen people (one person that convinced another) of this sort of loose interpretation of "can't flee" and it was ridiculous. I have a character that induces fear a lot and it was a wretched game playing with these guys in a PFS scenario. In about 4 or 5 frightens, there was not a single time in that entire game a character acted any different than if they were shaken. Actually, it was less effective for me to make them frightened than shaken, because the duration of the former is so much shorter for me.
EDIT: I am still rather confused by your logic on this "not rational" thing. Let me see if I follow you. You can create a situation where the target is "not rational" and that situation is deeply flawed from a mechanical and obvious intent point of view, therefore another argument where a target is acting irrationally under an entirely different set of mechanical restrictions that seem more in line with the described intent must be inherently flawed?
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Just to reinforce the idea.
1. Fleeing is different from escaping.
2. Frightened doesn't mention you can fight if you can't escape. It says that you can fight if you can't flee.
Therefore, your ability to escape has nothing to do with your ability to flee. Hence, if a shark is chasing you and you have no hope of escape, but you can still flee you are required to flee and not fight back.
There is no game definition of flee or escape.
Does that mean I can only fight if I can't use the Escape Artist skill to flee?
I can yell at someone without yelling. I can cry foul without crying.
Flee:
run away: to run away from something
disappear quickly: to pass or disappear quickly
So, according to Bing if I can't run, pass or disappear, I am not fleeing. I can't do any of those things while swimming.
That is the point. To flee, in this context, is only a subjective term, much as "yelling" at someone or "crying" foul.
I still stand by the idea that if there is no efficient or plausible way to escape, one can stay and fight.
As to the rational/not rational argument, my point is, rationalizing anything in-game has no point. All in-character thematic and rationalization attempts are useless when discussing rules as they can all be flipped to the opposite side.
We can debate what we (players) feel constitutes fleeing, to no end, with neither side winning, but that debate is valid.
Debating why a character acts in such a way is of no consequence to the discussion in any way, shape or form.
A character that is not-rational is capable of making a good decision. He is just as likely to make a good decision as a bad one as no weight is given to the rationality of making either one.
It sounds like you are trying to distort a word to the point you can claim it has no meaning so you can then claim you can't rule out this other meaning that no one thinks it truly has.
And while irrational decisions can work out for the best, I think it would be a far stretch to claim they are equally likely of turning out as well as rational decisions.
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There is no game definition of flee or escape.
True, but that can be said about 80-90% of the words used in Pathfinder. They expect us to use common sense, and maybe even a dictionary if there's a disagreement.
Flee:
run away: to run away from something
disappear quickly: to pass or disappear quicklySo, according to Bing if I can't run, pass or disappear, I am not fleeing. I can't do any of those things while swimming.
Fortunatly for us, run IS one of the terms defined, and yes, you can use the run action while swimming :P.
But honestly, running away from someone doesn't mean you have to use feet. When the circumstance permits, it is entirely OK to say that the snake ran away from it's predator. Snakes don't have legs...
I am not interested in watering down the frightened condition. I am also not interested in making it overpowered by forcing someone with no chance of escape to take purely detrimental actions that have no chance of working.
All of my previous examples are based on the notion that the combat is one-to-one. I would agree that if the cause of the fear effect is busy fighting something else then the target of the fear would conceivably have a chance to flee.
But as a player/GM, I am not willing to turn frightened into an automatic kill through reverse kiteing.
Both sides of the argument have merit, so hopefully we get an answer. :)Your diplomacy is pleasant. :P
In all honesty, I only see merit in one side of the argument. I think those arguing for a loose interpretation of what it means to "not be able to flee from the source" as trying to squeeze a donkey through the eye of a needle to achieve the end result of neutering a status effect.
I have found there is a decent population within the pathfinder community that really don't like negative status effects. I really enjoy debuffers; those are my favorite characters, and as such I have had similar discussions about several other effects many times. Since most people win battles by cumulative damage, they can view it as underhanded when seeing people win battles by other means.
Perhaps I am painting with some broad strokes concerning some people in this discussion, but I think this characterization is not completely off base.
I like debuffs myself, but the rules are not written as well as they could be so I would like to know how tightly they were written, or at least how exact Paizo is going to interpret them in this case. I am fine with either decision. :)
I do agree that the point of this condition is to make you not fight back, but that clause at the end without any examples opens the ability up for debate.
There not too many conditions in PF/3.5 where you are frightened, and yet can not flee, and not too many enemies will put you into a situation where you can fight back because that negate the purpose of trying to frighten you.
I kinda wish the clause was not there, but it is.
I think fear is 'i want to get away' but still rational. it looks like if you have it assumed to be irrational there are very few cases where it cant keep running, even though it cannot get away.
It seems to me, a creature under fear can decide options a b c d e will get me killed so i'll choose f to fight.
Otherwise, there wont be alot of different between paniced and feared.. Panic is pretty clearly in the lost all rational thought need to get away.
But it seems to me at least intilligent creatures can recognize they cannot flee and turn to fight. which is what fear indicates.
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Difference between panic and feared is that panic never attacks, frightened can.
Stuck or Cornered (cannot move farther away from the target without going closer to it first) are good examples.
A creature undergoing the panic condition would cower whenever a creature under the frightened condition would be allowed to attack. If your paniked creature would flee still, then so should your frightened creature.
...and the panicked creature drops everything it is holding.
There is still a big difference between panicked and frightened with a literal interpretation of frightened. In a clustered battlefield, due to lots of people, terrain effects, or indoor fighting, (or according to some, an equal to or greater than movement speed of the scary thing) the loose reading of "can't flee" turns frightened into shaken.
Difference between panic and feared is that panic never attacks, frightened can.
Stuck or Cornered (cannot move farther away from the target without going closer to it first) are good examples.
A creature undergoing the panic condition would cower whenever a creature under the frightened condition would be allowed to attack. If your paniked creature would flee still, then so should your frightened creature.
yes, but good chunk of this discussion has pointed out that If a creature is expected to keep fleeing even when there is a 100% chance of death the next round that 'can fight back' becomes moot.
Basically, is a frightened creature incapable of rational thought. Or can it make decisions to keep intself alive while it tries to get away.
Difference between panic and feared is that panic never attacks, frightened can.
Stuck or Cornered (cannot move farther away from the target without going closer to it first) are good examples.
A creature undergoing the panic condition would cower whenever a creature under the frightened condition would be allowed to attack. If your paniked creature would flee still, then so should your frightened creature.
yes, but good chunk of this discussion has pointed out that If a creature is expected to keep fleeing even when there is a 100% chance of death the next round that 'can fight back' becomes moot.
Basically, is a frightened creature incapable of rational thought. Or can it make decisions to keep intself alive while it tries to get away.
The can fight back kicks in "if unable to flee" not "if it looks like it would yield negative results to flee." It is not moot, it just isn't as big a loophole as some would like to drive a truck through.
The problem is, it seems that conditions where a creature is 'unable to flee' are much harder to come by. In the origonal premis with the pit fiend, the op implied because it could in theory make a str 30 check to... move 10 feet it had options to flee.
And it seems to me, unable to escape and unable to flee are rationally the same thing.
I don't subscribe to the idea that being able to maybe do something that allows one to flee is the same as being able to flee. But even if I did, that would invalidate the fight clause, not open the door to using it more often.
How so?
If option A is flee and Die
Opttion B is run around in circles then die
Option C is, Do something which incapacitates my enemy. (in the origonal example the pit fiend could do something which made him 110% safe from his opponent) this then allows me to flee
Frightend says "....A frightened creature can use special abilities, including spells, to flee; indeed, the creature must use such means if they are the only way to escape."
It seems to me C falls under thaat. A and B do not let him escape.
ultimately with no game defined definition of escape its sildly subject to opinion.
I didn't like the language of my last post when I typed it. I was trying to write during commercials while watching a show with my wife and had been thinking about it since I wrote it.
I don't subscribe to the idea that taking a non-fleeing action that may then
allow the action of fleeing is the same as being able to flee. But even if I did, that would invalidate the fight clause, not open the door to using it more often.
I also don't subscribe to the idea that if the act of fleeing may lead to death, you are unable to flee.
Even under the old language, the overall point still stands. The clause is crushed, not left open to run wild.
Except, the purpose of frightened is to escape not flee. you cant escape if your dead... maybe im too fixated on that concept.
If you look up fear it describes the frightened condition as one of three tiers of fear.
Frightened: Characters who are frightened are shaken, and in addition they flee from the source of their fear as quickly as they can. They can choose the paths of their flight. Other than that stipulation, once they are out of sight (or hearing) of the source of their fear, they can act as they want. If the duration of their fear continues, however, characters can be forced to flee if the source of their fear presents itself again. Characters unable to flee can fight (though they are still shaken).
You will notice the word escape is not even present under the fear chain definition.
If you look up the frightened condition on its own, there is ever so slightly different language.
A frightened creature flees from the source of its fear as best it can. If unable to flee, it may fight. A frightened creature takes a –2 penalty on all attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. A frightened creature can use special abilities, including spells, to flee; indeed, the creature must use such means if they are the only way to escape.
Frightened is like shaken, except that the creature must flee if possible. Panicked is a more extreme state of fear.
They do use the word "escape" once here, but it is severely de-emphasized in context of the paragraph. Flee is their go to word repeatedly, and it almost looks like they threw in the one use of escape just to avoid the overuse of a word that admittedly does not have a special in-game definition.
And once again, having a good chance of causing death is not the same thing as not being able to do something.
The way I run it is this:
If the character _thinks_ that it has at least a _slim chance_ of escaping, they must flee.
If fleeing would be completely useless and the character realizes it, they can fight.
So for the examples mentioned above:
- Stuck in a sealed room - you can fight.
- Stuck in the ocean with sharks - you can fight.
- Stuck in the ocean with a ship 60 ft away - you flee.
That's how we run it at least. It works.
When it comes to the RAW, I think it's too vague to be able to come up with a definite solution by breaking it apart. I think it's meant to be a bit vague.
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The problem is, it seems that conditions where a creature is 'unable to flee' are much harder to come by. In the origonal premis with the pit fiend, the op implied because it could in theory make a str 30 check to... move 10 feet it had options to flee.
And it seems to me, unable to escape and unable to flee are rationally the same thing.
I never said that...
My argument was that the appropriate response of the Pit Fiend was to cast Greater Dispel Magic, and then teleport out. In essence, I was arguing that the Pit Fiend would not cast AMF. This was under the idea that there was a means of escape (the only means being to teleport out), and so the Pit Fiend was required to take that route (plan to teleport out).
That may or may not be right thinking back, but that was my argument.
I had some time on my hands at work today, so I made a quick break down of spell efficacy for spells that induce frightened compared to other similar level save or suck, control-type spells.
Of course the numeric system I gave was pretty subjective, and unweighted by category (I think weighting it would further hurt the frightening spells) but it can visually give a quick representation of about what power level Frightened is already not operating at without being gimped through a loose reading of "not able to flee."
I figure these two spells are the most common ways a PC will produce the effect. I know a rogue (notoriously underpowered class) archetype can do with an ability and an antipaladin can do it about level 7, but spells are the easiest point of comparison for power.
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Charm Person isn't quite that good - it only works on humanoids and doesn't work well in combat. Also, Sleep has a 1 round casting time, which is a pain.
The way I run it is this:
If the character _thinks_ that it has at least a _slim chance_ of escaping, they must flee.If fleeing would be completely useless and the character realizes it, they can fight.
So for the examples mentioned above:
- Stuck in a sealed room - you can fight.
- Stuck in the ocean with sharks - you can fight.
- Stuck in the ocean with a ship 60 ft away - you flee.That's how we run it at least. It works.
When it comes to the RAW, I think it's too vague to be able to come up with a definite solution by breaking it apart. I think it's meant to be a bit vague.
Agreed. This looks like an area where the devs expect GM interpretation and common sense.
Cannot flee is not the same thing as "cannot flee painlessly." A creature may be forced to take attacks of opportunity, run across caltrops, suffer parting fire, or jump out of a second-story window if that is the best route of escape available. They may be require to move away from a faster creature if there is some apparent shelter or sanctuary. They are not forced to jump off a 100-story building, attempt to swim through acid or lava, run in circles in a 20-by-20 room, or indefinitely run away from a faster opponent with no end in sight.
While true there are a couple more limits I overlooked when typing that up, I think it is still abundantly clear that other level equivalent spells are more effective than the only two that can produce frightened. Granted charm needs to happen before creatures get threatened to avoid a penalty and sleep takes a little longer, but they have other benefits which include probably taking a person or persons out of combat permanently, or even adding to your numbers.
This point can not only be seen by the comparison chart, but also by the number of people that run them. I have never seen another person cast Scare or Cause Fear, but many that use these other spells. They don't need to be neutered any more in the name of so-called "common sense."
Why does it call for interpretation? Because you don't like the literal? I would agree with your adjudication in the last paragraph until the run in circles example. For that one and everything after, I would say they do have to flee until the duration of frightened runs out; the effect calls for it quite literally.
It is not odd for a low level save or suck to cause you to take a few rounds of hits (or one lethal one) without being able to fight back. This one gives you the benefit over some others of at least being able to attempt to get away from the thing that is hitting you. Chances are, by the time the character could make an in-character assessment of whether or not it was likely hopeless (a broken, supposed loophole that really has no business in this discussion in my opinion) to flee, the frightened condition has likely worn off.