Fear Itself: a guide to the Dread

Hello, Playgrounders!

A little while back, I decided to do some research into DSP's Dread class, since a player of mine was playing one. This proved to be much more difficult than I thought it would be, since as it turned out there were no guides to it on the Internet as far as I could find. This, of course, would not do.

The time is now to correct this deficiency. The Dread class is cool and flavorful, and potentially quite powerful if built well and played right. They have some truly remarkable abilities that are pretty much unique to them, and can be effectively built in nearly as many ways as the much newer Path of War classes. What I have written isn't quite complete (though it should be in the next couple of weeks), but it represents about a year and a half of play and research. If you know something I don't seem to have put up, or have any major nuggets of info you think I need, please do not hesitate to put it up either here or on the document.

The guide can be found HERE

Seems like a good guide so far. I'm surprised you rank Conceal Thoughts so low, it's a free +10 Bluff that stacks with everything, it's amazing especially on a Charisma based class. Also unlike something like Glibness, you can suppress your manifestations to activate it in the middle of a social situation without anyone knowing, though it basically lasts forever anyway.

I look forward to a discussion of broken dreams style. Always seems to require dips and other hoop jumping to make work in anything like a timely fashion.

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Originally Posted by Eldaran

Seems like a good guide so far. I'm surprised you rank Conceal Thoughts so low, it's a free +10 Bluff that stacks with everything, it's amazing especially on a Charisma based class. Also unlike something like Glibness, you can suppress your manifestations to activate it in the middle of a social situation without anyone knowing, though it basically lasts forever anyway.

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Looking back over it, I'll likely upgrade it to at least yellow. I was thinking it was only good on opposed checks, forgetting that Bluff is basically always an opposed check except in some really corner cases.

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Originally Posted by stack

I look forward to a discussion of broken dreams style. Always seems to require dips and other hoop jumping to make work in anything like a timely fashion.

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Long story short: Devastating Touch deals, at best and at level 20, 1d6+33 damage. This is with the feat to increase it by your Cha, and assuming you have 36 Cha. Broken Dreams Style adds that much to your attacks, but since you can already deliver Terrors via melee attacks it isn't doing anything significant.

Good start. Glad to see a Dread Guide from you Psybomb!

The thing I like to do is to dip one level monk and combine flurry with broken dreams style. Big fan of that build and works very well with the right investment. Also one of the few ways melee dread works really well. Obviously str/dex becomes the more important stat then.

There is also this archetype for monk which replaces stunning fist with the panache pool of the duelist and it's still keyed off charisma. A must have for everyone willing to dip. Only problem is you lack decent ac but that can be solved by inertial armor or taking sohei monk.

I'm working my way through the feats now, and upon cracking open my copy of UP I noticed that the pfsrd is missing quite a few, including several that REALLY help a Dread out. Fear's Reach, for example. Also found a couple of Powers that changed places, in one case a really solid level-1 turned out to actually be a Talent (which just made me giggle on the inside).

Same place let me find the actual Racial AFCB for both the Core and Psionic races, so I can update those soonish.

Thank you for the build ideas, and especially for pointing me at Broken Dreams Style. Once I found the follow-up feats to that, my opinion of the series got MUCH higher. Looking at building a Dread VMC Monk, using the archetype that subs Wis, to see if I can make it work. Not sure if I can afford the feat investment, though, since it'll need eight of its 10-11 just for VMC with the Style path. Could just do it the old-fashioned way and dip 1-2 levels of Monk, preferably the UnMonk or the MoMF, but still. Thing about it is that we want the level-11 abilities from Dread ASAP, since that doubles the pummel you can put out.

Quick question: On the feats, I'm thinking of pulling the Metapsionic Feats into a separate section. Any thoughts on this?

EDIT: Also forgot, I'm about to add the LotN Powers in as well. Just need to get through Feats first.

Yeah I suggest doing a different section for metapsionic feats since not every Dread would want to have those (depends on your playstyle of course). If you find one you think is mandatory you can always give a pointer in a feat introduction of sorts.

Also @ Fear's Reach: Yeah it's a really, really solid feat for castery Dreads to the point of basically being a feat tax.

Just finished writing up the Psionic Feats section (good LORD that took a while), next on the list is getting feats from other sources.

Also put up the Akashic races, once I realized that the Akashic feats dealing with Psionics are actually pretty good for the Dread.

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One more note. Dreads are very feat-hungry, they don’t get that great a variety of bonus feats to support fighting styles in most cases. Added to this, you will typically have anywhere from 3-5

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What does this line mean? 3-5 fighting styles? It's phrased kind of strange.

Under Nightmare Veil you say it's not explicitly written anywhere that Frightened/Panicked creatures are Shaken as well, but the SRD (and Bestiary) says otherwise.

I'd probably rate Expanded Knowledge sky blue on any psionic character, there's just too many amazing powers from other lists that I don't end up taking it a couple times.

Overchannel should probably be at least blue for caster Dreads, it just allows you to do so much more, especially if you need to nova.

The coloring on Penetrating Fear throws me off. Maybe just make it bigger or throw some asterisks around it or something.

I'm surprised Terror Mastery isn't rated just as high as Penetrating Fear, it basically doubles your effectiveness in builds that are oriented around terrors (which seems like many). I don't see how it wouldn't be mandatory.

Hustle Power is probably on par with Persistent Power, not massively better. Although Hustle gives you more variety, it's a lot more expensive since you're paying PP costs twice, and probably already using your move action to regain focus. Persistent is just so cheap for what it does, and you really only need to get the power to stick once before you take someone out of the fight completely.

Thank you for the catches, Eldaran. I'll take them one by one.

The confusing sentence came from me being interrupted by lunch mid-thought. Guess I never quite got back to it.

Thanks for the link on Nightmare Veil!

Expanded Knowledge, I rated like that since not everyone will want to take it. Still an excellent pick for many.

I agree with Overchannel, will recolor to reflect shortly.

Sorry for the confusion on my highlight colors, I'll see if other means of doing so will work better.

Terror Mastery... yeah, should definitely have colored that Sky Blue. I was just put off by the prereqs.

Hustle Power, though, I will keep there. Thing about it isn't just for going pure nova, it lets you do things like activate both a Power and an attack of some kind (often backed by a Terror). The Nova benefit is just an extra bonus.

I'm making the corrections now, if you see anything else bring it up! This has been a big help.

Just posting here because I'm building myself some Dreads. In your guide you reference wanting to use a Scythe against cowering enemies, why is that? As far as I can tell Cowering only imposes a -2 to their defenses and denies them their DEX bonus. Was there an errata or something I'm missing?

Thanks.

Cowering means helpless, which means coup de Grace autocrit.

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Originally Posted by Keledrath

Cowering means helpless, which means coup de Grace autocrit.

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Do you have a rules quote for that? Because the Core Rulebook says: no actions, -2 to AC and denied Dex Bonus.

Agreed, cowering isn't a helpless condition. You're "paralyzed" by fear to the extent to of the listed penalties, but you're not completely incapable of movement like the other helpless conditions.

Dastardly Finish feat let's you coup de grace cowering foes, but it's tough to qualify for and makes it clear that cowering is not normally helpless, nor is stunned.

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Prerequisite: Sneak attack +5d6.

Benefit: You can deliver a coup de grace to cowering or stunned targets.

Normal: You can only coup de grace helpless targets.

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Alright, looks like I have some correcting to do. Thanks for the catch.

Assuming it's OK to add this to the guide to the guides?

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Originally Posted by Novawurmson

Assuming it's OK to add this to the guide to the guides?

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You betcha. Consider this open permission to add any guide of mine to the master doc.

I've been looking into making a Dread. This guide has been pretty helpful. However, I have a question.

First one is about Fear's Reach. That one wasn't in the SRD, so I didn't even know it existed until I saw this guide, so I bought UP. It looks like a really nice feat for what I was going for (namely a Dromite that uses Devastating Touch a lot), but I also saw it has a prerequisite, Psionic Shot, which itself requires Point-Blank Shot. So if I were to go this route, it'd take me all the way until level 5 before I can use Devastating Touch properly. Any advice on how to start a build featuring Fear's Reach that doesn't make me feel useless during the early game? I was thinking about maybe just starting the way I originally intended, with Weapon Finesse, but then it'd take me until level 7 to get Fear's Reach and the Weapon Finesse might not be that useful any more once I do.

Something else I noticed is that you rated Unearthly Terror higher than Demoralise. I was wondering why, because at low levels they are basically the same thing except for that Demoralise targets every enemy within range, instead of only 1, and lasts 10 times as long. It didn't seem to me like the augments for Unearthly Terror at higher levels justified rating it superior (especially if gained as a 0th-level power, because then the DC is also 1 lower, right?).
But then I noticed that Demoralise lacks a [Fear] descriptor, and ofc the Dread has tons of bonuses specifically for stuff that does have that descriptor. This probably does make Unearthly Terror better. It isn't mentioned in the guide though.
Also, I still think Demoralise would work well even at higher levels when facing a group of enemies. Simply use it at the start of combat, surely it will affect some of them, and its lengthy duration means it'll probably stick around. Then you can use augmented Unearthly Terrors for a guaranteed Shaken on enemies already Shaken for a guaranteed Frightened.
I haven't actually played the Dread yet though, so this is all theory-crafting (also I'm kinda noob). What are your thoughts?

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but there's an error regarding Epidermal Fissure: the bonuses can only go up to +6. (Source) This probably decreases its rating a fair amount.

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Originally Posted by pi4t

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but there's an error regarding Epidermal Fissure: the bonuses can only go up to +6. (Source) This probably decreases its rating a fair amount.

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It will, yes. Really need to go back through and get more stuff into the guide and repair errata discrepencies, life is just Really Crazy right now.