SOURCE: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Rating the Benefits of Dragon Fear

Benefit #1 – 

Increase Strength, Constitution or Charisma by 1, to a max of 20

Half an ASI is a great bonus offered by many feats. A choice of three stats is more than most feats offer, and the stat spread is also excellent. Every class can use one of these.

Benefit #2 – 

Instead of dealing damage with their breath weapon, a Dragonborn with this feat can emit a 30ft radius roar. 

Creatures of their choice in that radius have to take a Wisdom save (DC 8 + Prof. + Charisma Mod) or be Frightened for 1 minute. Damage allows fresh saves. 

Frightened is a very powerful effect if you can make it stick. This ability only costs a single attack roll, hits everything in a huge radius, scales with a great stat, and lasts a long time. 

This adds up to a strong disable that can be used multiple times per day, and slots into a lot of different builds. 

Mechanics and Requirements

Understanding How It Functions

Roar of Fear

The unique benefit of the Dragon Fear feat is a new use for the Dragonborn’s breath weapon. 

Instead of using their breath weapon, a Dragonborn with this feat can instead spend a use of the ability to release an AOE fear effect. This is similar to the Frightful Presence ability of many dragons in 5e, except it might be a little bit better. Let’s break this down. 

The ability is a 30ft radius pulse, which hits every creature of the user’s choice. Creatures hit have to take a Wisdom save, with a DC-based on Charisma, or be frightened of the user for 1 minute. 

This is incredibly powerful. The radius is huge. A 30ft circle should realistically hit the vast majority of an encounter, especially if the character is comfortable stepping into the front lines. 

In terms of cost, the ability only requires a single use of the Dragonborn’s breath weapon, which scales in daily uses based on proficiency bonus, from 2 to 6 uses every day, coming back on a long rest. 

The in-combat cost is also incredibly low. The ability takes the place of a breath weapon use, which, thanks to the updated Dragonborn racial blocks in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, now only takes the place of a single attack roll. 

For martial characters, using this ability is generally much more powerful than a single attack, especially post level 5, when many classes gain access to an extra attack. Giving up one attack for a huge AOE condition, especially one as powerful as Frightened, is incredibly worthwhile. 

For spellcasters, it’s possibly better. The AOE fear takes a single action, equivalent to a single spell cast. Except this isn’t a spell, so still allows casting with a bonus action. The fear effect can hit multiple targets, and lasts a long time, but doesn’t require concentration, meaning a caster with this feat can blast out a powerful buff or debuff while also using this. 

Finally, the ability scales with Charisma. Casters like Bards and Warlocks already want to spike their Charisma, meaning this will be equally as powerful as their spells.   

One major benefit of Dragon Fear over many other fear effects is how it’s entirely friendly-fire friendly. The AOE only hits creatures of your choice, unlike big AOE spells like, um, Fear. This means a character with the feat can stand among his friends and roar to his heart’s content without ever harming a single one of his allies. 

While we’re talking about the target area, it’s also worth pointing out that a character is free to move between attack rolls when taking the attack action. This means a character using Dragon Fear can step into a position for maximum effectiveness when roaring, then move to attack their chosen target with weapons afterward, with no loss of efficiency at all. 

Finally, the Frightful Presence of a dragon states that any creature that passes its save is immune for 24 hours. Dragon Fear doesn’t say this. You can only use the ability once per turn, but nothing is stopping a character from using this every single turn, until they run out of uses, or every enemy is running away in terror. 

Key Stats

The Dragon Fear feat offers half an ASI in either Strength, Constitution, or Charisma. This is a great spread of stats that any character can use. Strength for the fighters, Con for, well, everyone, and Charisma for casters (and maybe Rogues.)

The save DC of the fear ability is linked to your Charisma bonus, meaning a character looking to max out the effectiveness of their draconic terror should boost their Charisma as high as possible. 

Ideal Characters for Dragon Fear

Top Classes

Conquest Paladin – If any class needs the ability to drop multiple, large AOE fear effects every round, it’s the Conquest Paladin. 

Almost everything in the subclass triggers off of frightened enemies. A 30ft burst that only costs a single attack roll, hits every enemy within range, and ignores your allies could not be better suited to what the subclass needs. 

This isn’t to say every Paladin can’t make great use of this feat, both mechanically and thematically. Conquest just does it better. 

Fighter – The humble Fighter might be a great class, but it tends to lack AOE effects and negative conditions. Dragon Fear provides both, in an easy to access package that also provides stats the core class wants. Any Dragonborn Fighter can surely spare one of their million slots to pick up the feat. 

Action Surge makes this feat much stronger. Other classes have to give up half of their attacking prowess in the round they use it. But the Fighter drops their AOE fear roar, then activates their double turn and absolutely eviscerates whoever was lucky enough to pass their save. 

Bard – Who loves building Charisma, has a spell list packed with disables and debuffs, and a class feature list full of bonus actions? That’s right, the Bard. 

From a mechanical perspective, Dragon Fear slots neatly into the Bard’s chassis, adding a reliable, powerful AOE disable that can be used multiple times per day into the build. As a flavor ability, this is just as cool. It makes perfect sense that a Draconic Bard should be able to speak ancient words of power that terrify everything that hears them. 

As an aside, Bards don’t tend to be feat-reliant, especially caster subclasses, meaning this can fit nicely into almost any build without affecting overall power scaling. 

Hexblade Warlock – The Hexblade builds entirely from Charisma, and generally wants to be up in the melee, swinging swords between occasionally casting a spell. 

The ability to drop a massive, scaling, AOE fear into this mix is incredibly potent, as well as thematic. The fact it scales with Charisma is perfect for the class, and as the character levels and gains more daily charges of breath weapon, it might even see more use than the Warlock’s Pact Magic spellcasting feature, which is kind of funny. 

Multiclassing Considerations

Hexblade – Yes, the Hexblade shows its face again. We’re here for a single level and one class feature; Hex Warrior. 

This feature allows any class to attack and deal damage with a one-handed weapon using their Charisma modifier, instead of Strength or Dex. This single level shifts melee classes single stat reliant, and makes building a spellsword build, for example, a melee Bard or Charisma spiking Paladin, much easier.  

Race or Subrace Choices

The only race that can take Dragon Fear is the Dragonborn. Every type of Dragonborn can make great use of the feat, as it builds on to the natural breath weapon every racial archetype has access to. 

Combos, Tactics, and Synergies

Complementary Feats

Fey Touched – Incredible synergy here. Misty Step lets the character teleport directly into the midst of the enemy, for maximum fear AOE. The second spell choice is flexible, though Silvery Barbs is the obvious choice, forcing an enemy to reroll a dice (such as the save on your Dragon Fear) as a reaction. 

Telekinetic – Aside from the utility of an invisible Mage Hand, Telekinetic lets a character shove a friend or enemy as a bonus action. So the foe that just failed their save against your fear? Push them further away, so they can no longer hit you in melee. 

Spells that Synergize

Misty Step – A bonus action teleport gets the character with this feat precisely where they need to be for maximum chaos, whether that’s directly in the middle of the enemy, or away again once they’ve roared their defiance. 

Bane – Reduce the saves of multiple enemies, all the better for AOE fearing

Spirit Guardians – Y’know what’s not fun? Disadvantage on every roll while stuck inside a constant, swirling AOE of damage and difficult terrain.  

Strategies for Maximizing Dragon Fear Effectiveness

Measure out your AOEs

A 30ft radius circle is an absolutely massive area of effect in 5e, especially for an ability that could be gained as early as level 4. 

Centered on a character, a 30ft radius circle hits 169 squares total, pushing out a maximum of 6 5ft squares in every cardinal direction. 

This is large enough that a character using this feat should never struggle to hit their targets unless the party is engaged in some serious, long distance overland ranged combats. 

Dragon Fear for melee builds

Using Dragon Fear on a character built for melee tends to be surprisingly binary. It’s more a choice of when rather than if. 

Generally, you’re going to want to pop the ability as early as possible, maybe even as the first thing your character does. Then, once you and your party know which enemies have been affected by the condition, step into combat and start dealing damage. 

Two things stand out. One, as we’ve just touched on, Dragon Fear has a huge AOE, which means a character moving to the front lines of combat should naturally hit every target without having to position it awkwardly. But remember that you can move to a position that hits everyone, pop the ability, then take any further movement your character has to put yourself into an attacking posture. 

Two, while Dragon Fear is a once-per-round ability, (unless you have access to Action Surge) nothing prevents a character from using it in every single one of their turns until every enemy is cowering in terror. Or dead. Whichever comes first. 

Dragon Fear for ranged attackers and spellcasters

On characters that might want to hang back, like archers and squishy casters, Dragon Fear is an incredibly powerful effect because of how Frightened works. 

“ A frightened target cannot willingly move closer to the source of its fear.”

This means a ranged character can step forward to hit the maximum number of enemies, blast out their AOE disable, and then stand there comfortable in the fact the enemies who fail their save are probably isolated and much less useful. 

Like any other attacking character, a character making ranged attacks is much more powerful with this feat post level 5 because they can slam the scare button, and then take an attack at any enemy that passed their saving throw. 

Spellcasters, on the other hand, might just use this as an opening gambit in any encounter with more than one or two enemies. The ability to hit several enemies with a seriously debilitating debuff, disadvantage on basically everything, and restricted movement, while ignoring allies, is as strong if not stronger than a lot of spells up to level 5. 

Leave the scared enemies ‘til last

Frightened is a powerful debuff, and Dragon Fear, importantly, doesn’t allow enemies to take repeat saves unless they take more damage. 

Communicate this to your party, because the fear of hitting certain enemies can utterly disable them. A melee monster with limited to no ranged options, isolated from your party, does nothing, and can’t break the fear until one of you chooses to hurt it. 

So wipe out the rest of the rest of the enemy, then turn on those last, trembling enemies and destroy them at your leisure. 

Final Thoughts on Dragon Fear

Despite its Dragonborn racial restriction, the Dragon Fear feat is incredibly powerful. The effect drops a massive disable in a huge AOE that’s entirely party-safe, and can be used enough times per day to be useful all the way through an adventuring career. 

The ability also costs almost nothing in terms of action economy, and is effective on every kind of character, whether that’s a warrior who wants to charge headlong at the enemy, or a mystical and mysterious caster type. 

Dragon Fear is a hit. If you’re playing a Dragonborn, there’s a serious argument for considering this feat, no matter what you’re bringing to the table.