undead immune to fear / dragon roar ?

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Lim
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undead immune to fear / dragon roar ?

Postby Lim » Sun Feb 20, 2005 12:42 pm

Does anyone know if undead are supposed to be immune to dragon roar / fear / etc?
Zen
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Postby Zen » Sun Feb 20, 2005 5:10 pm

Well I don't have my books with me atm, but from memory... no. Liches are not immune to fear and other mind effecting spells in D&D. They might as well be, because most of them have tremendous will saves, but that doesn't equate to immunity. Lesser undead, such as zombies should be immune to fear and other mind effecting spells by virture of their mindless nature.

-Llandrien
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Llaaldara
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Postby Llaaldara » Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:09 pm

Lim.

All undead should be immune to the 'fear' spell.

As per the Fear spell entry in 2nd Ed Players Handbook:
"Undead and creatures that successfully roll their saving throw vs. the spell are not affected."

The fear spell is a Illusion/Phantasm, which effectively is a mind-affecting spell. All undead are immune to such spells/abilities, including lichs, which are indeed undead. (For more detailed information on how D&D handles Lichs, please read my posts in the following thread, as I have reported the specifics from the books for players here. http://www.torilmud.dyndns.org/phpBB2/v ... hp?t=14318


As for Dragon Fear, that's debatable. The entry in the 2nd Edition Monster Manual has this snippet:
"All creatures with Hit Dice equal to or greater than those of the dragon are immune to the fear effect."

But lemme do a little summarizing. 2nd Ed Dragon fear has two effects. A fear effect (which means a -2 penalty to hit and damage), and a panic effect (which means you flee for a certain duration directly away from the dragon). Certain things like: Trained war mounts, organized military units aren't panic'd, but they still can suffer from the fear effects.


In 3rd Edition it's referred to as a dragon's Frightful Presence. Where I'll sum up, if you fail your save vs it, you flee for a while. If you make it, you're immune to it for one full day. If you have the same Hit Dice (level) as the dragon or greater, you are immune to it.


Now back to my earlier point. I mentioned that undead being immune to Dragon Fear was.. debatable. I say this because it doesn't list specifically within the dragon fear/frightful presence entries that undead are immune to it, but under undead immunities it does list that undead are immune to mind-affecting spells/abilities. Dragon fear is an ability of the dragon, since they don't cast it. Therefore, it is logical to assume that undead, of all types, should effectively be immune to it as well. This includes player lichs, and their raised/commanded minions.

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