Regardless of the patron, which do you think is the stronger ability?
Fey Presence
Starting at 1st level, your patron bestows upon you the ability to project the beguiling and fearsome presence of the fey. As an action, you can cause each creature in a 10-foot cube originating from you to make a Wisdom saving throw against your warlock spell save DC. The creatures that fail their saving throws are all charmed or frightened by you (your choice) until the end of your next turn.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Form of Dread
At 1st level, you manifest an aspect of your patron’s dreadful power. As a bonus action, you transform for 1 minute. You gain the following benefits while transformed:
You gain temporary hit points equal to 1d10 + your warlock level.
Once during each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an attack, you can force it to make a Wisdom saving throw, and if the saving throw fails, the target is frightened of you until the end of your next turn.
You are immune to the frightened condition.
You can transform a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Overall I'd say form of dread, their are circumstances where fey presence will shine but I think dread will shine more often. It will frighten more people over the battle on average or the same guy multiple times and it gets temp hit points and immunity to fear, and fear is somewhat common. I mean its possible the enemy is coming at you in a phalanx or something and fey presence steals the show, but you probably get 2 people with it, and unless the fight is short you are getting that with dread.The charm effect option is a boost but one turn of charm isn't that huge as its only you they can't attack.
And that is before level 6 where form of dread gets a boost.
I'd say it depends how you want the character to play personally; in a pure white-room with no constraints form of dread is just generally better, but I'm a fan of Fey Presence as an escape ability for a more ranged oriented character.
The fact that it can leave creatures charmed means they can't attack you at all when you move away (whereas a frightened creature can still make an attack of opportunity at disadvantage), it's also decent as an out of combat ability though it only gives you at most a 12 second window, sometimes that can be enough (e.g- carriage chase; jump to the enemy carriage, frighten, then misty step back), and can be fun to mess with NPCs in social encounters.
The number of uses and reset is going to depend a lot on your campaign and how many short rests you can usually expect; personally I'm expecting a few of the warlock once per short rest abilities are going to become proficiency times per long rest in a future update, and my groups have been house-ruling them to function this way in most cases.
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How frequently do you short rest? I think that's going to affect the answer quite a bit.
I do think Fey Presence gets sold a little short here. Being able to do both Charmed and Frightened is pretty useful and gives it some noncombat utility, plus Presence has a potential nova advantage. If you're surrounded or move into a group of enemies, you can inflict a pretty nasty debuff on potentially several enemies at once, and being able to mess with three enemies in one round is often times much more useful than being able to mess with a fourth enemy on round four.
Scaling is an issue though. At level 1 you only need two short rests to get more casts of Fey Presence in a day, but at later levels Form of Dread turns into something you can use pretty much every fight.
I'll say this much for Fey Presence: when you're in a Black Dragon's lair and you get dragged into a pool of acid, and the dragon won't let go of you, and the DM won't let you use Dimension Door because you can't speak when you're immersed in acid, and all your other teleports need line of sight but you're blinded, and you fail your Athletics check to swim away... Fey Presence just might save your life. True story!
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Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
I'll say this much for Fey Presence: when you're in a Black Dragon's lair and you get dragged into a pool of acid, and the dragon won't let go of you, and the DM won't let you use Dimension Door because you can't speak when you're immersed in acid, and all your other teleports need line of sight but you're blinded, and you fail your Athletics check to swim away... Fey Presence just might save your life. True story!
I mean, so would Form of Dread to be fair. It would even protect you from their Frightful Presence ability. :P
Form of Dread wouldn't have saved me, though. Frightening the dragon would not have prevented the dragon from attacking me; it would have been at disadvantage (which would have simply negated its advantage due to blindsight v. me being blinded) and most likely still hitting me with its claw/claw/bite combo and killing me the following round.
Fey Presence, on the other hand, allowed me to Charm the dragon, preventing it from attacking for one round, and allowing me to escape. (I got away from it with enough movement left to climb out of the acid pool.)
In this respect (preventing attacks v. inflicting disadvantage) the Charmed condition is actually superior to Frightened, which is why I prefer Fey Presence.
form you get multiple uses of in the same fight. Can apply it every turn, picking and choosing targets. If it fails, you still hit them with an attack. And it combines well with eldritch invocations.
the flexibility and on demand cc is just insane.
Fey presence may be better in very rare situations you need an aoe fear, but even then there are spells for that which are better
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Regardless of the patron, which do you think is the stronger ability?
Fey Presence
Starting at 1st level, your patron bestows upon you the ability to project the beguiling and fearsome presence of the fey. As an action, you can cause each creature in a 10-foot cube originating from you to make a Wisdom saving throw against your warlock spell save DC. The creatures that fail their saving throws are all charmed or frightened by you (your choice) until the end of your next turn.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Form of Dread
At 1st level, you manifest an aspect of your patron’s dreadful power. As a bonus action, you transform for 1 minute. You gain the following benefits while transformed:
You gain temporary hit points equal to 1d10 + your warlock level.
Once during each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an attack, you can force it to make a Wisdom saving throw, and if the saving throw fails, the target is frightened of you until the end of your next turn.
You are immune to the frightened condition.
You can transform a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Overall I'd say form of dread, their are circumstances where fey presence will shine but I think dread will shine more often. It will frighten more people over the battle on average or the same guy multiple times and it gets temp hit points and immunity to fear, and fear is somewhat common. I mean its possible the enemy is coming at you in a phalanx or something and fey presence steals the show, but you probably get 2 people with it, and unless the fight is short you are getting that with dread.The charm effect option is a boost but one turn of charm isn't that huge as its only you they can't attack.
And that is before level 6 where form of dread gets a boost.
I'd say it depends how you want the character to play personally; in a pure white-room with no constraints form of dread is just generally better, but I'm a fan of Fey Presence as an escape ability for a more ranged oriented character.
The fact that it can leave creatures charmed means they can't attack you at all when you move away (whereas a frightened creature can still make an attack of opportunity at disadvantage), it's also decent as an out of combat ability though it only gives you at most a 12 second window, sometimes that can be enough (e.g- carriage chase; jump to the enemy carriage, frighten, then misty step back), and can be fun to mess with NPCs in social encounters.
The number of uses and reset is going to depend a lot on your campaign and how many short rests you can usually expect; personally I'm expecting a few of the warlock once per short rest abilities are going to become proficiency times per long rest in a future update, and my groups have been house-ruling them to function this way in most cases.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
How frequently do you short rest? I think that's going to affect the answer quite a bit.
I do think Fey Presence gets sold a little short here. Being able to do both Charmed and Frightened is pretty useful and gives it some noncombat utility, plus Presence has a potential nova advantage. If you're surrounded or move into a group of enemies, you can inflict a pretty nasty debuff on potentially several enemies at once, and being able to mess with three enemies in one round is often times much more useful than being able to mess with a fourth enemy on round four.
Scaling is an issue though. At level 1 you only need two short rests to get more casts of Fey Presence in a day, but at later levels Form of Dread turns into something you can use pretty much every fight.
I'll say this much for Fey Presence: when you're in a Black Dragon's lair and you get dragged into a pool of acid, and the dragon won't let go of you, and the DM won't let you use Dimension Door because you can't speak when you're immersed in acid, and all your other teleports need line of sight but you're blinded, and you fail your Athletics check to swim away... Fey Presence just might save your life. True story!
Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
Form of Dread is an awesome ability on anyone using attacks (including spell attacks).
It is often worth the dip for a martial just to get it.
Fey presence is far more situational and it can only be used one turn per short rest, FOD gets used turn after turn for a whole minute.
That is before you even consider the temp hit points.
Form of Dread wouldn't have saved me, though. Frightening the dragon would not have prevented the dragon from attacking me; it would have been at disadvantage (which would have simply negated its advantage due to blindsight v. me being blinded) and most likely still hitting me with its claw/claw/bite combo and killing me the following round.
Fey Presence, on the other hand, allowed me to Charm the dragon, preventing it from attacking for one round, and allowing me to escape. (I got away from it with enough movement left to climb out of the acid pool.)
In this respect (preventing attacks v. inflicting disadvantage) the Charmed condition is actually superior to Frightened, which is why I prefer Fey Presence.
Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
Form of dread. All day.
form you get multiple uses of in the same fight. Can apply it every turn, picking and choosing targets. If it fails, you still hit them with an attack. And it combines well with eldritch invocations.
the flexibility and on demand cc is just insane.
Fey presence may be better in very rare situations you need an aoe fear, but even then there are spells for that which are better