No saving throw against sleep?!

[JesterX]

There is no saving throw against the sleep spell?

Is this an error or is it desired?

[Fwiffo86]

By design. Targets total HP. So if you have say 28 hp to spend, and you have three creatures with 12 hp each, you can only get two of them.

[hawklost]

Not only that, but you get the ones with the lowest HP first (meaning usually the ones that are going to die soon anyway).

Look at creatures of CR2 or higher and you will see that this spell is almost useless then.

Even something like a Dire Wolf (CR1) is effectively immune to it until it takes enough damage (which you do not know how much it has, how much it has taken or how well your roll will be)

[Person_Man]

Also, you actually have to take an Action to kill your targets, and though you do temporarily get Advantage, there is no Coup de Grace in 5E, so their death is not assured.

Having said that, in some instances it is uber potent. Its just not the auto-win button many people make it out to be.

[CyberThread]

Another advatage is it makes a great capturing spell.


With it based on hp instead of anything else, wack someone a few times, then cast sleep, and youcanpretty much bind them. So it has great uses in high levels when we have no subdual damage type.

[Anubis Dread]

Yeah Sleep in this edition is nuts, but not super nuts. It's effectively a mini-fireball that's non-lethal than more than it is an I-win button. Although even that isn't entirely accurate with how it works.

[Snails]

The designers are purposefully creating spells that are excellent in the second half of the fight, even at the costs of them sometimes being nearly useless during the first half. Note that Sleep is still useful when you so happen to meet weakling mooks, which will happen more often at higher levels in a world of flat math.

They want to get away from the dynamic of casting the Save Versus Doom spell being hyper-optimal in Round 1. While their effort in 5e may be incomplete or imperfect, the idea makes sense.

[hawklost]

Another advatage is it makes a great capturing spell.


With it based on hp instead of anything else, wack someone a few times, then cast sleep, and youcanpretty much bind them. So it has great uses in high levels when we have no subdual damage type.

Any Melee creature can knock someone out with the final blow. Sure, it doesn't work great for ranged or magic, but you can still subdue the enemy quite easily without using Subduel damage.



Knocking a Creature Out
Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe,
rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker
reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack,
the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker
can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt.
The creature falls unconscious and is stable.

[Slipperychicken]

Don't forget all the creatures which are immune to sleep. Like constructs, undead, and elves.

But yeah, the "automatically affects target with X or fewer hit points" thing seems to be a way to pad out encounter lengths and make the damage-dealing muggles useful.

Also, IIRC, there's no such thing as nonlethal in PHB. You just choose whether you kill people or KO them. I don't like that rule, since getting beaten into unconsciousness is quite dangerous and can lead to fatality even when the attacker doesn't intend to kill his target.

[hawklost]

Its not exactly "effects creatures with X HP or less". Its more "It has X HP to effect, compare X to the lowest HP creature in the area (Y) and if X > Y then Y goes to sleep. Now check Y2 (next lowest HP) against (X-Y) HP and see if Y2 goes to sleep, repeat until Yz has too much HP to be effected"

[Slipperychicken]

Its not exactly "effects creatures with X HP or less". Its more "It has X HP to effect, compare X to the lowest HP creature in the area (Y) and if X > Y then Y goes to sleep. Now check Y2 (next lowest HP) against (X-Y) HP and see if Y2 goes to sleep, repeat until Yz has too much HP to be effected"

I appreciate the logic, but I know how sleep works. I was referring to the general phenomenon of spells which have restrictions based on targets' hit points, but I didn't want to copy-paste the whole spell description.

[Corinath]

Don't forget all the creatures which are immune to sleep. Like constructs, undead, and elves.

But yeah, the "automatically affects target with X or fewer hit points" thing seems to be a way to pad out encounter lengths and make the damage-dealing muggles useful.

Also, IIRC, there's no such thing as nonlethal in PHB. You just choose whether you kill people or KO them. I don't like that rule, since getting beaten into unconsciousness is quite dangerous and can lead to fatality even when the attacker doesn't intend to kill his target.

Verisimilitude.

Unfortunately what you're talking about is true. In real life, being knocked unconscious, even for a short amount of time, can have absolutely serious side effects, and the line between being fine and being permanently damaged is incredibly thin.

However, it's a bit of a story-telling trope in culture that we're able to knock people out with no negative reactions. Movies do it constantly. Books do it constantly. It's just something that's sort of ingrained into a great deal of story telling culture. DnD is, at it's core, a platform for story telling.

Additionally Hit Points are an abstract concept. I actually loved how Vitality and Wounds were interpreted as alternative DnD rules, and as core rules for SWRPG D20. I've always tended to view HP as an abstract number meaning "An individual's capability to fight and stave off mortal wounds." When viewed this way, you could consider, alternatively, that Hit Point loss leads to a certain level of exhaustion (not the same kind that the books talk about though, although, yes) that makes someone getting hilt bashed in the button of someones jaw an inevitability on the next attack.

Anyway. Abstract things are abstract. Thought I'd add that.

[BW022]

While not having a saving throw does make it fairly powerful... it isn't that bad.

For 5d8 hit points, you are averaging 22hp. That might be four goblins, two wolves, or maybe one bugbear. You then affect 30hp (3rd-level using a 2nd-level slot), 38hp (5th-level using a 3rd-level slot), etc. It should be clear that in most encounters at your levels you are likely to face numbers considerably higher than this. You'll put a few creatures asleep and their friends will typically wake them up on their action. Standing and grabbing your weapon is only a minor movement penalty and does not provoke. In most combats, at best, a few PCs will get some attacks some creatures with advantage... and some others will waste their turns waking the rest.

Other first level spells might be far more effective... thunderwave or burning hands could easily have killed a half dozen goblins at 1st-level, and fireball would have likely killed or seriously injured virtually every bugbear in the same area.

Certainly sleep is useful in some situations. Towards the end of the fight when folks are low on hit point, taking out low-level guards, taking one or two folks prisoner towards the end of the fight, buying time against masses, etc.

They likely removed the save simply because of the time and complexity necessary to handle the spell. Tracking hit points and saves is annoying.