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| Spell Information | |
| Spell level : | Innate level: 1, Bard: 1, Cleric: 1, Sorcerer/Wizard: 1, Other: Yuan-ti Pureblood racial spell |
|---|---|
| School : | Necromancy |
| Descriptor(s) : | Fear, Mind-affecting |
| Components : | Verbal and Somatic |
| Range : | Short |
| Target/Area : | Single |
| Duration : | 1d4 Rounds |
| Save : | Will negates |
| Spell resistance : | Yes |
Description[]
Cause Fear makes a target with 5 hit dice, or less, more fearful resulting in a -2 penalty on attack, damage and saving throws, and forcing them to take no action other then to run away from nearby creatures. If the creature makes the spell's saving throw then this condition only lasts for 6 seconds.
Gameplay Notes[]
- This spell is generally pretty poor past anything after level 3, due to its low duration of effects and other similar spells which are much better - like Scare.
- The effects, however, are quite nice. -2 to hit, damage, and saving throws, can add up to cripple a low level monster, especially a melee-attacking one. Due to its low duration it is a spell to avoid however.
Bug Notes[]
- NW_S0_CauseFear has no mention, or effect, of 6 seconds of fear even if the save is successful. The description is very off! The script simply has no way anything is applied if the save is successful.
- If the random roll returns 1 round (=6.0 seconds) and no metamagic duration mods are applied, the duration actually must be artificially increased to 9 seconds due to the way spellcasting works in NWN2 (see True Strike spell for details), otherwise the saving throw decrease will wear off before you can cast another spell.
- Line 47: The description also doesn't say the saving throw decrease is only for will saves made against mind spells. The script specifically defines on line 47 as:
effect eSave = EffectSavingThrowDecrease(SAVING_THROW_WILL, 2, SAVING_THROW_TYPE_MIND_SPELLS);
- Line 46: It also does cause Fear, EffectFrightened() is used - meaning NW_G0_FEAR is fired on heartbeat, making them run away. This seems unintentional - perhaps copied from Scare. Or the description is wrong.
- Even if a target is immune to fear or mind-affecting spells in general, they still suffer the penalties (attack decrease etc.) if they fail the saving throw. The spell Scare suffers from exactly the same problem. This is probably due to the fact that originally the spell was supposed to work differently (no fear effect, just penalties), but was changed later on, yet the original scripting was not removed from the script. See Scare bugs section for more details.