Frost, damp, or dripping inside the attic

No. Frost forms when warm moist air from the living space meets cold sheathing. It is an air-leakage and ventilation problem, and when it melts during a thaw it drips and looks exactly like a leak.

Almost certainly because the soffit intake is inadequate or blocked. A ridge vent is the exhaust half of a system; without open intake at the eaves it draws air from the heated house below, importing the moisture you are trying to remove.

Usually a poor first move. In an unsealed attic it pulls conditioned air out of the house, and combined with a ridge vent it can short-circuit the ventilation path. Seal and balance first.

Outside the building, through a dedicated duct with a proper termination — not into the attic and not into the soffit, where the moist air is drawn straight back in through the intake vents.

It may be, and identifying and remediating it is not a roofing question. What is a roofing and building question is the moisture that allowed it, because remediation without fixing the source only resets the clock.

Not on its own, and it can make it worse if it blocks the soffit intake at the eaves. Air sealing addresses far more heat and moisture transfer than added depth does. Seal, keep the eave air path open with baffles, then insulate.

It depends on the assembly. A properly designed unvented spray-foam attic is a fundamentally different system without traditional soffit-to-ridge ventilation, and frost there points to a different set of causes than in a vented attic — worth having assessed by someone familiar with the specific assembly type.

It can modestly reduce the moisture available to leak into the attic, but it does not address the air leakage paths that carry moisture up there in the first place. Air sealing the ceiling plane is the higher-value intervention.

It can occur in either. Older homes often have more air leakage paths from decades of penetrations and less consistent original air sealing; newer homes can still have it if insulation was installed without proper baffles or if bath fans were never correctly terminated outside.

It can, if it is not used correctly — pulling humid house air through the attic space rather than exhausting it directly outside can add moisture to the attic rather than removing it. Confirm how the specific fan is ducted and vented before assuming it helps.

The frost itself is a cold-weather phenomenon since it requires freezing temperatures on the sheathing, but the underlying moisture and air-leakage problem is present year-round — it just shows up as condensation or dampness rather than frost in warmer months.

A visual check on a cold morning is reasonable for a comfortable homeowner to do — look for frost or dark staining on the sheathing. Diagnosing the specific leak paths and designing the air-sealing and ventilation fix is more reliably done by someone experienced with the work.