As posted elsewhere...

I don't think I've died to a fiend in a long, long time. Barring situations where the bard had a friend with him, slept me, sung me up, then fiended and proceeded to gang me with his friend. Or possibly situations where I'm already wounded or otherwise messed up when the bard sings it.

Then again, I sort of view resist mental as a near-prereq when fighting a bard, just because it is SO good. You can use stoneskin against a warrior, but doing so doesn't semi-nerf almost all his relevant class skills. With bards it kind of does.

I will admit that orcs are somewhat screwed by having a fixed recall point and no healer. That, and forced wimpy flee. Same for rager giants. And, honestly, someone who isn't prepared and gets slept, even by a solo bard, could potentially die if he's not sufficiently buff (or loaded with gold for heal-healing).

Some questions about fiend, though, that I've always wondered about:

1. If you get fiended when you don't have resist mental up, does it buy you anything to flee from the fiend and put it up after the fact?

2. Does the courageous edge work to mitigate the strength of fiends you'll get when someone sings it at you?

3. Does the courageous edge reduce the likelihood that the fiend will make you flee while you're fighting it, thereby juicing itself?

4. Does having high morale mitigate the strength of fiends you'll get when someone sings it at you?