A frightened creature is forced to flee from the source of its fear and takes a -2 penalty to all saving throws.
The most common reasons for fear are the spells Cause Fear, Scare and Fear.
- Note that sleeping creatures cannot be frightened. Penalties like the saving throw decrease do not apply as long as the affected creature is sleeping. In order to apply the penalties, the creature must be awakened by taking damage (one point damage will suffice). As soon as the creature awakens, the Frightened penalties kick in automatically.
- Bug: Frightened creatures will run away from invisible creatures as well, even if they don't have the True Seeing effect on them (a similar bug exists with the Confused state, where confused creatures will attack invisible creatures). This can be extremely annoying, if there are many allies in the area, because enemies will run away all the time, eventually turn around the corners, resulting in loss of LOS and consequent spell failure. Frightened behaviour is controlled through the script nw_g0_fear and can be fixed by defining the "object to run away from" as follows:
object oTarget = GetNearestCreature(CREATURE_TYPE_REPUTATION, REPUTATION_TYPE_ENEMY, OBJECT_SELF, 1, CREATURE_TYPE_PERCEPTION, PERCEPTION_SEEN, CREATURE_TYPE_IS_ALIVE, TRUE);
//object oTarget = GetNearestSeenEnemy(); //same as above
This simplifies the script overall, making any further enemy checks unnecessary.
- Bug: Frightened creatures are only supposed to run away while the distance between closest enemy and self is <5. However, the Obsidian scripters forgot to change the default range for the ActionMoveAwayFromObject action(which is 40.0 units), so the enemies will run too far. This can be remedied by fixing the script nw_g0_fear.nss:
object oTarget = GetNearestSeenEnemy();
...//original code
ActionMoveAwayFromObject(oTarget, TRUE,5.0f); //stop running if distance between closest enemy and self>=5 units
- Bug: Frightened creatures sometimes still perform Attacks of Opportunity, so it is not recommended to disable Defensive Casting Mode when spellcasting close to frightened creatures.