Anyone use Sleep much at mid levels?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

In a party I play in we've had two situations where groups of commoners became problematic. Our Wizard got into it with some and darned near Fireballed the whole bar until I Counterspelled it. Then we had a similar situation thanks to the party Rogue.

A party I DM for also also went a little greedy on a very patient Lawful Evil NPC with a knack for good PR and ended up on the town guard's wrong side. Sleep could have been very useful at laying down a couple.

Do these things not come up in other campaigns? Do other spells like Fear or Mass Suggestion replace Sleep? When playing I am pretty spell slot stingy though lol.

[Expired]

In a party I play in we've had two situations where groups of commoners became problematic. Our Wizard got into it with some and darned near Fireballed the whole bar until I Counterspelled it. Then we had a similar situation thanks to the party Rogue.

A party I DM for also also went a little greedy on a very patient Lawful Evil NPC with a knack for good PR and ended up on the town guard's wrong side. Sleep could have been very useful at laying down a couple.

Do these things not come up in other campaigns? Do other spells like Fear or Mass Suggestion replace Sleep? When playing I am pretty spell slot stingy though lol.
Sleep is very effective at lowest tier of play (Tier 1), but because it is based off of the creature's current hit points (which increase disproportionately with each increase in level), it is much less useful.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Sleep is very effective at lowest tier of play (Tier 1), but because it is based off of the creature's current hit points (which increase disproportionately with each increase in level), it is much less useful.

Agreed. I notice it would be handy in situations where things got out of control, not intended encounters.

For planned encounters I sometimes annoy my players by giving the bad guy some semi-pointless minions. Sometimes the PC's get distracted killing glorified rats instead of the suggested targets so to say. Then it might be handy but that's a once every four session thing.

FWIW, I can see Sleep being ridiculously useful as a combo to help the "edgy Rogue" steal minor objects they should not need to steal.

[stoutstien]

I tend to always use a mix of different CRs throughout the game so up cast sleep is a valid option.

The built-in smart targeting helps.

[Nagog]

Sleep is indeed a really great spell, particularly considering there isn't any save against it, it's entirely in your court. The downsides of that mechanic are pretty wide though. For example:
1. It's essentially pseudo-damage. Depending on your DM, if you want to take somebody out non-lethally, most times you can bring them to 0 HP and use Spare the Dying on them.
2. It scales horribly. Past Tier 1, even upcasting it doesn't tend to get the job done, and you've wasted a slot and action to no effect.
3. It targets the lowest HP in the area first. Meaning if you're against a BBEG and they have minions, the minions will soak up most, if not all, of the effect and the BBEG is left unfazed.

However, Sleep does have it's merits. For example:
1. Perfect anti-Barbarian tool. Since it isn't technically damage, resistances are avoided. Zealots in particular have the ability to continue fighting after passing 0hp until their rage ends, which at level 20, could conceivably never end. Sleep would instantly kill them, as it would end their rage with no save, and since they're at 0 HP, they're targeted first and doesn't drainanything from your spell's effectiveness.
2. For a first level spell, it deals a lot of pseudo-damage. Lots of dice involved.
3. In swarms of low HP enemies, it can be used to great effect. While the Fighter only has 2 attacks, there are 6 enemies. They only have 2 hp each, but they can only target 2 per attack action. Sleep shuts down all of them, done and done.

Overall it's a really great spell to have, but even upcast, it scales out very quickly.

[HappyDaze]

Sleep is very effective at lowest tier of play (Tier 1), but because it is based off of the creature's current hit points (which increase disproportionately with each increase in level), it is much less useful.

Less useful than damage-dealing spells? You can always use it as a fight-ender after beating down the hit points.

[SLOTHRPG95]

To a certain extent it can be used to separate wheat from chaff in a mixed-CR group. You don't necessarily know which of the orcs are just regular warriors, and which is the chieftain, deserving of focus fire/smites/etc. But at mid- or high-level play, I find it most useful in non-combat scenarios, or to avoid combat from breaking out. Unless you're going full-on murderhobo, sometimes you want to take out friendlies without harming them. And no, the village mayor isn't going to think that beating him and half the council unconscious with a sword is "non-violent." Sure, it's better than having them running up and about while Dominated by the demon cultists, but wouldn't it be great if there was a spell to just knock 'em out harmlessly?

[Ogre Mage]

I generally lose sleep at the beginning of Tier 2. Once third level spells are available, there are too many spells better than sleep I would rather have prepared. I find hypnotic pattern much more effective.

[Eldariel]

I generally only prepare it for a city slog when I'm expecting more social sorts of things where I might need a tool for pacifying large number of weak people simply and peacefully. This is the beauty of a Wizard though, you get to prepare spells for the circumstances and when you aren't expecting a big fight (or an environment, where big AOE is suitable), you can afford to skimp on certain spells and this gives you extra slots to prepare stuff. It only takes a long rest before heading out to switch to your preferred loadout.

[Samayu]

I figured Sleep was most often good for only one creature in the targeted area, so I never took it. Until one time I thought I'd give it a shot. No creatures went down. I forget if I rolled badly or they were stronger than I expected, but it doesn't matter - I never took it again.

[SociopathFriend]

In a party I play in we've had two situations where groups of commoners became problematic. Our Wizard got into it with some and darned near Fireballed the whole bar until I Counterspelled it. Then we had a similar situation thanks to the party Rogue.

A party I DM for also also went a little greedy on a very patient Lawful Evil NPC with a knack for good PR and ended up on the town guard's wrong side. Sleep could have been very useful at laying down a couple.

Do these things not come up in other campaigns? Do other spells like Fear or Mass Suggestion replace Sleep? When playing I am pretty spell slot stingy though lol.

First things first:

Do these things not come up in other campaigns?

I can not convey how much I can vouch this does indeed happen without resorting to cursing which will be censored. As such I will merely use a great deal more words than necessary to attempt to stress that these things come up in other campaigns.
It's quite often you have "that player" who always does annoying stuff to mess with the party or DM "because it's in-character" despite the obvious fact the player made that character because they WANTED to do that.


That said to more relevant matters:

Do other spells like Fear or Mass Suggestion replace Sleep?
They certainly can fulfill a similar role mechanically though I personally would argue Sleep is the most "non-combative" spell of the three you listed.
Fear is pretty literally putting the magical fright into people to make them afraid of you to the point where they MUST run away as fast as humanly possible. I can't speak for anyone else but that absolutely does not put me in a favorable mindset to the person who used it on me.
Mass Suggestion depending on how you fluff it COULD be far less severe than Fear. It COULD also be far worse. There's a massive difference between, "Stand down and wait for us to sort this out" and, "Lay down on your face and don't move or speak until I say you can".
Sleep however it about as harmless of a debuff as you can give someone and still debuff them. You aren't portraying the worst fear someone has and you aren't controlling them and making them commit acts against their will.

But in terms of mechanical effectiveness? Yes they'll surpass Sleep and frankly with ease if you use them all as opener debuffs.
Fear is 3rd level
Mass Suggestion is 6th
Sleep is 1st

At 3rd level Sleep offers you 9d8 hp worth of creatures. At 6th it's 13d8 worth of hp. On average that's 36 and 52 hp.
By the time Fear rolls around and definitely by the time Mass Suggestion rolls around- your average enemy is quite likely to have enough hp to eat a Sleep spell on their own.
A Troll has, on average, 84 hp. You could roll all 8s on the 3rd level Sleep and not put even one down if it's at full hp.

If you manage to get quite a few enemies at low hp but not quite dead? That's the scenario where Sleep and Color Spray shine because they simply snipe out the low-hp targets and remove them from combat temporarily. No Save. Just a raw hp check.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

I've found that the spell improved sleep, or as my Sorcerer likes to call it in his native tongue "fireball", does a much better job at putting creatures to sleep.

[HappyDaze]

I've found that the spell improved sleep, or as my Sorcerer likes to call it in his native tongue "fireball", does a much better job at putting creatures to sleep.

At least against PCs, most damaging effects in 5e amount to little more than putting them to sleep for 6 seconds.

[Battlebooze]

The Sleep spell is also a great way to deal with moon Druids and their seemingly endless hit points. Get their current shape low on hit points, then put them to sleep.

[JackPhoenix]

Depending on your DM, if you want to take somebody out non-lethally, most times you can bring them to 0 HP and use Spare the Dying on them.

There's bit of a difference between putting an angry mob or a tavern brawl to sleep peacefully, and beating them unconscious and hoping they won't die in the process anyway, especially if you use Fireball or other means.

[Gungor]

Wizards prepare the spells that they think they might need. If you're in a campaign where you frequently encounter many low-CR creatures and/or many creatures that you don't want to handle with violence, then you should get in the habit of preparing sleep.

In the OP's examples, if I were in the party I would probably prepare sleep if I knew I was going to be in town and one of my party members tended to start barroom brawls. Or start trouble with city guards.

So while sleep is not generally useful for an "average" tier-2 (and up) encounter, it is certainly situationally useful. And part of being a wizard is understanding (or predicting) the situations you are going to be in, and preparing appropriate spells accordingly.

[Lunali]

Sleep is good when you have enemies that would be easy to kill that you don't want to kill. I like to have it on hand whenever I'm in town in case the DM presents a combat with moral difficulty instead of mechanical.

[Chronos]

The problem with beating a monster down and then using Sleep as a finisher is that you don't know precisely how many HP they have, nor what you're going to roll on the Sleep spell. If the monster has 21 HP left, and you roll a 5d8 Sleep to finish it off, but only get 20 on your roll, it does nothing at all. On the other hand, if you had instead used a spell that does 5d8 real damage, you still wouldn't finish it off completely, but you'd get it down to where the next anything would be guaranteed to. Sure, if the monster only has 10 or 12 HP, the Sleep spell will be much more reliable, but then, at that point, a lot of things would be reliable... and you probably can't tell the difference between a monster at 12 and one at 21. And if all you want is "a decent chance of taking out the monster", you might as well use Tasha's, which doesn't even require you to beat them down first.

[HappyDaze]

The problem with beating a monster down and then using Sleep as a finisher is that you don't know precisely how many HP they have

Maybe, maybe not. Monster HP is not necessarily secret information.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I've found that the spell improved sleep, or as my Sorcerer likes to call it in his native tongue "fireball", does a much better job at putting creatures to sleep.
Here's the funny thing, on average a 8d6 fireball deals 28 damage. A 3rd level sleep spell is 9d8 which on average will roll 40.(average on a d8 is 4.5)

My wizard still prepared the sleep spell even after fireball available, First the DM often used large numbers of weak enemies so there was someone to use it on and second as shown above the roll on sleep is going to be much higher. We have this enemy he's weaken but so is the party, there's a chance when he acts that he could kill a PC. I estimate that fireball might kill him if I roll high and he fails the saving throw. But in that situation sleep will certainly work. Giving the party a minute regroup gather round and make readied attacks so we all hit at once.
Or it doesn't even need to be a 3rd level slot first or second might to the job. Attack rolls can miss, enemies can make saving throws. Sleep has no save. If you have two arcane casters you can have a situation where the first casts fireball with a 3rd level slot and the second casts sleep with a 1st level slot. At 5th level mooks who survive fireball probably won't have the HP left to resist sleep.

Sleep at mid levels is a manner of timing and tracking damage, (it also helps if your DM gives you clues about how hurt something is say calling them bloodied at half hp).you use it to effectively finish off a weaken enemy denying him his last action using a 1st or 2nd level slot.

But once my wizard had 4th level spells available my expanded options left sleep pretty much in the dust unless I had some-kind of foreknowledge to what we were doing that day that would make sleep useful.(taking someone alive, children possessed by evil spirits,).


The problem with beating a monster down and then using Sleep as a finisher is that you don't know precisely how many HP they have, nor what you're going to roll on the Sleep spell. If the monster has 21 HP left, and you roll a 5d8 Sleep to finish it off, but only get 20 on your roll, it does nothing at all. On the other hand, if you had instead used a spell that does 5d8 real damage, you still wouldn't finish it off completely, but you'd get it down to where the next anything would be guaranteed to. Sure, if the monster only has 10 or 12 HP, the Sleep spell will be much more reliable, but then, at that point, a lot of things would be reliable... and you probably can't tell the difference between a monster at 12 and one at 21. And if all you want is "a decent chance of taking out the monster", you might as well use Tasha's, which doesn't even require you to beat them down first.
What if you miss? what if the monster makes its save? sleep has no save and if he was prone to fail to resist something like Tasha's I'd have started the encounter with that spell.

[Catullus64]

The problem with beating a monster down and then using Sleep as a finisher is that you don't know precisely how many HP they have, nor what you're going to roll on the Sleep spell. If the monster has 21 HP left, and you roll a 5d8 Sleep to finish it off, but only get 20 on your roll, it does nothing at all. On the other hand, if you had instead used a spell that does 5d8 real damage, you still wouldn't finish it off completely, but you'd get it down to where the next anything would be guaranteed to. Sure, if the monster only has 10 or 12 HP, the Sleep spell will be much more reliable, but then, at that point, a lot of things would be reliable... and you probably can't tell the difference between a monster at 12 and one at 21. And if all you want is "a decent chance of taking out the monster", you might as well use Tasha's, which doesn't even require you to beat them down first.

Point the first: No 1st-Level spell does 5d8 points of real damage.

Point the second: A DM who is presenting the fight well will often drop hints as to a monster's relative HP, to help inform tactical decisions like this. At my table, for instance, it's considered perfectly acceptable to ask how injured a monster looks, and to receive a useful answer. If you've been paying attention to roughly how much damage your group has dealt to that monster, you should be able to make a reasonably informed guess as to whether Sleep is viable here.

Point the third (not a response to Chronos): I feel like "Sleep is nearly useless past low levels" is an example of how certain truisms about the game mechanics get repeated so often, that we all very quickly accept them as correct. Before looking over this thread, I unquestioningly bought into the idea of Sleep as something you use to dominate at low level, before swapping it out at level 5 or so. Lesson learned: be skeptical of the received opinion about what's good and bad. Have you tried playing Four Elements monk lately? It's really fun, even after they nerfed Water Whip.

[Eldariel]

I've used Sleep successfully on a Bulezau (CR3) for about 20 HP, which certainly is better than anything any other level 1 spell could've done at the point (we were fighting two of them without magic weapons in a party of five level 3 characters). So I can confirm it's useful against higher HP enemies too. Sadly it takes a lot of guessing to make it work and you'll certainly "miss" some HP anyways but I find it can be quite worth knowing, especially vs. magic resistance and such. Of course, the primary issue is you don't know your dice so you don't know when you should be casting it (and it can be wasted) even if you know enemy HP, when using it against a single target. A poor roll on Magic Missile still does damage but a poor roll on Sleep does nothing.

[HappyDaze]

A poor roll on Magic Missile still does damage but a poor roll on Sleep does nothing.

So it's much like many spells that allow a save then, even if the mechanical way of getting there is different.

[Eldariel]

So it's much like many spells that allow a save then, even if the mechanical way of getting there is different.
In a sense, yes, though the probability curve is way different and the target number is far less obvious (in that you can mostly predict, what enemy has good or bad save for any given score but given that HP is variable, predicting remaining HP is much harder).

[Man_Over_Game]

Here's the funny thing, on average a 8d6 fireball deals 28 damage. A 3rd level sleep spell is 9d8 which on average will roll 40.(average on a d8 is 4.5)

Well, kinda.

Fireball, with a roughly 40% miss chance, deals 25 damage. Assuming a 40% miss chance for Sleep, that's a total of 39 damage across all targets.

If Fireball hits two creatures, that's 25 damage each.

If Sleep hits two creatures, they can have 19 HP each.

And Fireball is much more likely to hit 2+ creatures than Sleep with its 8x8 size.

A level 3 Sleep is really only worthwhile against "kill to win" encounters if you're targeting a single creature, and casting a level 3 spell to defeat a single 43 HP target could be done more efficiently than with either Sleep or Fireball. If Sleep only has one niche in a combat encounter, then you're much better off finding another spell to fit that niche.

It's a fine spell if you need to incapacitate several very weak targets, but that means that Sleep effectively becomes an RP spell as soon as you reach Tier 2. Still useful, but not in the way you'd expect.

[HappyDaze]

predicting remaining HP is much harder

That depends on whether you randomly determine hit points or just use the average value. If the latter, it can be really easy if you know what you're fighting and keep track of the damage you've inflicted.

[Witty Username]

Sleep has two(ish) limiting factors that make it problematic past level 3 ish. The first is the HP pool which limits the types of creature the spell can effect as well as the number of creatures it can effect, while the second is its area of effect. Compare Tasha's hideous laughter which can effect virtually any one creature and the higher level spell Hypnotic Pattern which is only limited by the 30ft cube effect. Both of these require failed saves to be effective but sleep may not be able to affect some challenges at all. The biggest thing is that the encounters that sleep can effect are much less threatening as PC's increase in level. A bar fight with a commoner is only so threatening to a 5th level PC, even the wizard.

[Chaos Jackal]

Comparing Sleep's 9d8 at 3rd level with Fireball's 8d6 isn't really an accurate comparison. Yes, Sleep has no save, but it's also not area damage. It's single target with spillover.

It's so effective early because it's essentially an unavoidable 22.5 damage nuke splitting damage in a Magic Missile manner (which also can't miss) while dealing more than twice the damage. It also does the targeting automatically rather than manually. It will take out one or two of the mooks, leaving the "boss" without its action economy advantage, or turning a tough fight against multiple weaker enemies into a much easier fight against half as many.

It's so effective early because its power relevant to other spells of this level is so high (as showcased in Magic Missile's case, or, if you want an area attack, Burning Hands). More than twice the "damage", by default.

It's not as effective later on because that ratio becomes much smaller. A Fireball deals 28 damage with a save, but it is actually an area attack rather than jumping from target to target with whatever remains. Sleep's 9d8 is 40.5. It's less than 1.5 times stronger (compared to the earlier 2+) and won't really have as much impact in a larger fight. If you fight a "boss" along with its three or four mooks, Fireball will possibly kill or severely dent most of them, while Sleep will most likely take out just one.

More importantly, at earlier levels there just aren't any spells with the potential to take out half an encounter, but that's not true once you hit level 5. Spells like Fear and Hypnotic Pattern show up then, and they steal the show. Yes, they offer a save, but it's not repeatable, and monsters at this time in the game, especially mooks, rarely have decent Wisdom saves. Unless the caster's DC sucks, we're typically talking of at least a 60% chance of success, usually more. If you fight the aforementioned "boss" with its three or four friends, a Hypnotic Pattern will, on average, take out three of them. Sleep at 3rd will take out one. Two if they're really weak mooks.

Is Sleep useless at higher levels? No, of course not. It can still be used as a capture tool, it can get those two annoying drunks off your back, it can put the single guard at the village prison out of commission without any fuss, it can throw off the hapless guys that your annoying rogue stole from.

And if you're a wizard, you might find yourself preparing it once in a while. But if you're a Charisma caster, it will rarely prove so useful as to justify taking up one of your few spells known. A wizard can afford to keep around a bunch of niche spells, just in case, but there's very few games where you won't have five, or later ten, spells as a sorcerer or bard that you'll be casting a lot more often.

[MrStabby]

I just dont find sleep worth it as you level up.

I wont deny that it has its niche. But when you hit level 5 and get great control spells the niche for sleep gets a lot narrower. You cover some of its use with other spells. Also at lower levels you can learn a greater fraction of your spells on the list. There is less competition for space.

The cost of the spell slot is occasionally worth it. The cost of the spell known/prepared almost never is.

[Vogie]

I've seen our Redemption Paladin use it more than any other caster, likely because they get it for free. Favorite examples:

If we can't sneak up on the guard(s), he'll burn an upcast slot to knock 'em out then tie them up.
Targeting the steeds of carriages, knights and, once, a mounted flying enemy. Good grief that last one was funny.

[loki_ragnarock]

At tier 1, it's a round one spell.

At tier 2, it can be an effective round two spell.

At tier 3, it can be an effective round three spell.

But as most combats don't last to round three, you can see where the value starts to go down. If you don't have a DM who gives you an indication of how damaged creatures are, it's significantly less useful.

That said, if you tilt your head to the side and think you can end things this turn after the paladin threw down a full round of nova, why not?

[HappyDaze]

But as most combats don't last to round three

Fake News!

[loki_ragnarock]

Fake News!

Personal anecdote based, to be clear. But I'd also argue that the use of "most" does leave room for outliers.

[Chronos]

Most players don't know the exact HP totals of all the default monsters at all, most don't have it memorized (and seriously, does your DM let you thumb through the Monster Manual in the middle of combat?), even if you do have an eidetic memory for these things, metagaming like that should be discouraged, and a lot of enemies can't be metagamed at all. For an encounter consisting of one guy in plate armor with a sword, one guy in robes with a wand, and one guy in leather with a dagger, how many HP does each have?

Granted, a DM will usually give a rough estimate of how hurt enemies are. But for CR 5+ enemies, 20 or 10 HP will both usually be described as "He's in pretty bad shape, but still standing", or something along those lines.

[Sigreid]

I do. While it's not much use against main even monsters, it can still be a wonderful, low cost solution to support staff as it were.

[Segev]

I'm seriously thinking of putting it on a Wizard Apprentice who's hanging out with some Red Wizards and their minions as something he does to try to help clean up if the party tanks are wearing down.