Question on attacking unconscious creatures

[Degwerks]

We ran into a situation the other day on whether or not multiple characters could attack an unconscious enemy at the same time.

I was thinking we could with everyone using a Readied action. Is there any ruling or Tweet to support this situation?

[Easy_Lee]

We ran into a situation the other day on whether or not multiple characters could attack an unconscious enemy at the same time.

I was thinking we could with everyone using a Readied action. Is there any ruling or Tweet to support this situation?

I think this falls under the surprise rules, meaning you wouldn't need to ready.

[DivisibleByZero]

An unconscious creature is probably prone and is definitely incapacitated & surprised.
Advantage on all attack rolls, and the enemy doesn't get to act in the first round.
I would personally rule that due to this particular combination of conditions, all attacks that happen while the enemy is surprised (before his initiative count) are automatically crits, as while sleeping and before they were awakened, they are essentially paralyzed as well.

edit:
If he isn't sleeping, but is unconscious for another reason, then what are automatically crits and what are regular hits would vary.
For example, if unconscious from damage, then by the book any damage auto-fails one death saving throw, and a crit makes that two fails instead of one.

[WickerNipple]

We ran into a situation the other day on whether or not multiple characters could attack an unconscious enemy at the same time.

I was thinking we could with everyone using a Readied action. Is there any ruling or Tweet to support this situation?

I suppose it depends a bit on the enemy, but in most circumstances my response would be: "Okay, it's dead. What next?"

[Easy_Lee]

An unconscious creature is probably prone and is definitely incapacitated & surprised.
Advantage on all attack rolls, and the enemy doesn't get to act in the first round.
I would personally rule that due to this particular combination of conditions, all attacks that happen while the enemy is surprised (before his initiative count) are automatically crits, as while sleeping and before they were awakened, they are essentially paralyzed as well.

I'd rule it the same way. But for a different reason. Waking up, standing, getting ready to fight, all of that requires the creature to act. A surprised creature doesn't get to act that round. So to my thinking, the effects of the unconscious status ought linger until the start of round two.

Besides, several attackers ganging up on a sleeping target is perfectly reasonable, if brutal and dishonorable. If the game failed to simulate it, that's be a shame.

[Rogerdodger557]

Go through initiative and have all players hold their action until the last player goes. Its as close as you are gonna get.

[Biggstick]

I would say that as long as the PC's discuss the action before they do it, yes. The Players simply saying something along the lines of...|

PC 1: "I attack the unconscious NPC." (From 5' away).
PC 2: "Me too." (While they're 15' away).
PC 3: "I'll attack them as well." (Says the bow wielding Ranger at 90' away).

Now if the Players were to in and out of character state that they would like to coordinate their attacks on this unconscious NPC, then I would allow all of them to get within melee range, use whatever they want, give them advantage on the attack roll, and probably allow the attack (if it hits) to count as a critical hit for every PC.

[hymer]

I was thinking we could with everyone using a Readied action.

You wouldn't get any Extra Attacks or anything requiring a Bonus Action.

[Chugger]

It was common long ago to allow players to just slit a sleep-spell-victim's throat and kill them (or tie them up - a "round" was more time in older versions of the game - maybe several a round). Sleep spell was insta-death no ST back then - for many - not all. (this made sleep pretty powerful but was overlooked cuz anything lvl 5 and up was not affected - you just leveled past the problem and so it "never needed to be solved", if that makes sense)

A sleep spell victim seems to be in a fairly heavy sleep, requiring slapping or shaking to be awakened as per rules.

In an appendix at the back of the phb it sez how unconscious targets get treated. You can look it up. And as others have pointed out, the unco victim has to be treated as surprised (more than surprised, really - but as per strict rule-adherence I guess you'd stick w/ surprised). A player would get a free round, advantage and if I'm reading the rules correctly, auto-crits. You have the option to hit to subdue the sleeping creature, knocking them out - which a reasonable person would have to think means changing a creature's status from sleeping to knocked-out and not wakeable any time soon because of temporary (?) brain damage.

What the rules don't speak to is what if you buy "manacles" (handcuffs) as per the phb and attempt to use those instead - or what if you attempt to tie up and gag the sleeping creature? I don't see rules on that, so a typical DM could to make you do an athletics and/or acrobatics check (a dc 10?) - maybe with advantage - but if you roll poorly he's going to say that you somehow woke the sleeping victim while failing to bind them. Roll for initiative. Manacles are really easy to break out of in the game, too - not sure what the rules are for trying to escape if tied up and gagged.

I think there's an awful lot of making players do dc's in the game. I'm in favor of just freaking let them put the manacles on the orc they just slept - and certainly if one does manacles while another gags the orc - the orc probably wakes but is bound and gagged and isn't going to scream or do much, in most cases. If it's an Orc Champion or some special orc - the players might get a friendly reminder admitting that I've let them off easy on normal orcs but this is a "special" orc - and maybe make them roll on that one. But not on every stinkin run of the mill goblin, orc, or flunky. Sometimes you need to just let the game flow and not roll on every little pitiful thing.

[Chugger]

You wouldn't get any Extra Attacks or anything requiring a Bonus Action.

Not criticizing you - you're right of course as per rules - but this is where the rules are silly. A round lasts six seconds. But in six seconds you can only take one whack at a heavily or magically slept creature? Well, as we've known for decades, DnD is not a reality-simulator! :smallwink:

[Tanarii]

We ran into a situation the other day on whether or not multiple characters could attack an unconscious enemy at the same time.An enemy that was naturally sleeping, or one that is unconscious? The latter is different IRL (despite commonly being used to describe sleeping). And in terms of the game condition unconscious, there's no rule that says it applies to natural sleep.


I was thinking we could with everyone using a Readied action. Is there any ruling or Tweet to support this situation?Is this situation during combat, or before?

If it's before, just roll initiative. Assume the naturally sleeping either can't use passive perception and is automatically surprised, or can but takes -5 for distracted and maybe another -5 for disadvantage. (I can't recall if the -5 for distracted is the same as disadvantage off the top of my head.) Then proceed as normal.

[Chugger]

A lot of DMs allow you to "coordinate initiative". I don't think you need to do so - i.e. attack a sleeping creature all at once - because it has to be surprised and can't do anything on the round the party attacks it (while it is sleeping). So just roll init and whack away - it can't do anything and odds are good you'll kill or subdue it. You are doing crits. Now it gets tricky if ONLY the first person hitting it gets advantage and crits, cuz after that the DM rules it is "awake now" - unable to really do anything but can sort of dodge or hold up it's arm to block or wiggle a bit - so no one else gets adv and crit - if this is the ruling at your table* then you need to fight for a simultaneous attack - or attack so fast one-after-the-other that all should have adv and crit. How many on a sleeping humanoid not near a wall or blocking feature? I would think at the very least three (probably six).

As the other person pointed out there are different forms of sleep or unconsciousness. Natural sleep, magic sleep, drugged or poisoned unconsciousness, been-hit-on-the-head unconsciousness, and fell unconscious due to massive wounds (zero hp) unconsciousness (which has different rules to deal w/ as per phb).

*This is a dumb ruling imho and I'd hold it as a "strike" against any DM who insisted on it. I do not stay with a DM who gets __ strikes against them - I find it a maddening waste of time - I'd rather play Minesweeper or watch TV than play DnD w/ a DM who makes too many inconsistent and/or just plain bad rulings (and sticks w/ em by gum - and tells me I'm being difficult and he is in charge, not me). No I'm in charge of my life and my time. I live in a big city, thank goodness, and I have transportation. I'll find a table that makes sense to me - not that is easy and where I always get what I want, no (not saying that). Just ... people don't often wake up "that fast" - and even if you can sort of sit up or hold up an arm - a party has several seconds for various people to move in and whack - and ... the above seems like an arbitrary ruling to make something difficult for the party - challenges need to come from other sources - not bending sanity to fit the DM's game sense, imho.

[JackPhoenix]

Not criticizing you - you're right of course as per rules - but this is where the rules are silly. A round lasts six seconds. But in six seconds you can only take one whack at a heavily or magically slept creature? Well, as we've known for decades, DnD is not a reality-simulator! :smallwink:

No, but it's not that you're just attacking the sleeping creature... if you ready an action, you're waiting until someone else does the same... you aren't spending that time to attack to your full capacity (remember that for the first 4 levels, you weren't able to attack more than once anyway... and many classes still can't even after that!).

[Degwerks]

More info on the attacking an unconscious enemy.

We had been putting some enemies to sleep/unconsciousness with Drow Poison crossbow bolts and another with dropping it to 0 hps to knock it unconscious.
The real question we have is, IF we encounter a big bad enemy (which we did) that we knew could take 1-2 critical hits and still be okay, we didn't want to face that guy for too long in combat, due to limited party resources and unable to rest safely. So we have a pretty beefy monster that we just knocked unconscious, we were curious on how many of us could now just get their Auto-Crits with Advantage etc... this was at the tail end of a long fight and we were wounded and without a lot of spells and couldn't rest yet.

What we didn't want to happen was having the monster wake up after 1 hit and go through the whole initiative order thing again etc... plus we didn't want the chance of getting hit again.

[Tanarii]

Okay let's get Drow Poison up for reference:
Drow poison Injury 200 gp
Drow Poison (Injury): This poison is typically made only by the drow, and only in a place far removed from sunlight. A creature subjected to this poison must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be Poisoned for 1 hour. If the saving throw fails by 5 or more, the creature is also Unconscious while Poisoned in this way. The creature wakes up if it takes damage or if another creature takes an action to shake it awake.

First of all, this causes the actual Unconscious condition. So automatic crits, etc.

Since the creature wakes up if it takes damage, the unconscious condition will automatically end as soon as it takes damage. So no more crits, although it's probably definitely prone. At which point it gets it's turn in the normal initiative order.

IMO if the DM has decided combat has 'ended' he should probably reroll initiative including the creature when you start it over again, to decide when it will get it's turn to act. And definitely not 'surprised' in this case either.