D&D 5E Is Careful Fear and Shadow Sorcerer's Hound of III Omem Broken?

[Hohige]

I have never played that but it does not seem that powerful. A lot of creatures are immune to fear and those that don't can try to break sight and get another save. RAW the person subject to fear has to take the dash action unless there is nowhere to run. So if there is nowhere to run (as I would assume it would be in an arena) he can take any action, and he can always move on his own (as long as he does not move towards the sorcerer) and take bonus actions and reactions. That adds up to being able to break sight for many characters and being able to outrun the hound for others.

Also the hound only has 3hp so a reaction or bonus attack like hellish rebuke, spiritual hammer, polearm master or a battlemaster reposte that lands will take care of it pretty quickly. If it is a battle against a number of foes I would rule that people get OAs on it as well as it moves past them to go after its target.

Like I said I never played it so maybe I am missing it.

"nowhere to move"?
Well it has many sides that it can move on.
The hound has 41 hp, not 3.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I believe this spell is even stronger in a party, because careful fear affects only enemies in the middle of a frantic battle and enemies let everything they hold fall (No weapons and shields).

Also Careful Hypnotic Pattern is so amazing.

Careful or otherwise I prefer Hypnotic Pattern to Fear in actual play against multiple enemies. Reading the spells the first time I had a character hit level 5 Fear seemed a lot cooler to me, but it rarely lived up to it's potential for ongoing Fear locking of enemies in practice. More often it just created a situation where I have to go chase some enemies to keep them running while party members stay back with the ones who made the save. Careful metamagic does change the calculus a bit because it makes the positioning demands of Fear a lot less cumbersome, but I think I'd still probably find more regular use for Hypnotic Pattern.

Technically targets should not be "dropping" their shield from Fear because 5e shields are armor which require an action to equip or unequip. This implies that all shields in the system are strapped on. It's probably the most ignored rule there is though. I personally would only enforce it in a PvP situation.