Unconscious or Asleep?

[carrdrivesyou]

So, my elven wizard was targeted by a monster ability that "renders the target unconscious" on a failed wisdom saving throw. Am I wrong to say that an elf would be immune to this effect due to the Elven Ancestry racial trait? What is the difference between "Unconscious" and "Asleep?"

In my mind, they are the same condition. If I were to be knocked out due to damage, it would make more sense, but this just seems particularly awkward.

[Dark.Revenant]

Which monster? Is it described as dreaming or sleep? If it's not, then no, your race does nothing to help you.

[PhantomSoul]

You expect to be Unconscious when you sleep, but Unconscious can happen in other ways -- including this ability, inferring from the lack of you saying it causes sleep! :)

(If it tells you it puts the target to sleep, that would be different, but you can think of "sleep"/"asleep" as being a special buzzword for this.)

[carrdrivesyou]

I think it's a homebrew monster, but this is solid reasoning.

[Zhorn]

Fey Ancestry would supply the details needed were this an official monster, but being a homebrew means we don't have enough details to be sure.

As covered above, sleep is a subset of unconscious, but one can be unconscious without being asleep.
Likewise magical sleep is a subset of sleep, but not all sleep is magical.

Being an elf makes you immune to magically induced sleep, but being you called this a monster ability and not a spell means we don't know if it's magical.
For example: if you were fainting from fear, overloaded sensory effects, or a psionic assault, then all of those could be ruled as non-magical.

If the whole of your reasoning is "I'm immune to magical sleep therefor I'm immune to the unconscious condition" then I'd have to disagree with any assertions of it being solid reasoning, as it is just ignoring a lot of details.

[False God]

There's a bit of lore that gets skipped over about the whole "elves are immune to sleep" element. Elves don't "sleep", that is, they don't enter an autonomic state of rest where their conscious mind shuts down and processes the days events and allows the body to recuperate. Instead elves enter a willful meditative trance where their mind wanders to a special "other realm", and their physical brain and body do the normal processes any other sleeping creature would do. They are NOT unconscious during this process, their mind is just quite literally somewhere else.

So elves don't "sleep". They quite literally don't have the function to do so.

However, since elves still have physical brains which are presumably connected to their bodies in a similar fashion to other organic humanoids, their mental functions can be interrupted in a similar manner.

So elves can still be knocked unconscious.

[Greywander]

I'm pretty sure elves are capable of sleeping, they just don't need to when they can trance instead. IIRC, what I've heard is that when trancing, elves relive the memories of their ancestors, and by contrast the chaotic nature of dreams seems terrifying to them.

[Amnestic]

Mordekainen's Tome of Foes specifies that yes, elves can choose to sleep.


Elves can sleep and dream just like any human, but almost all surface elves avoid doing so. Dreams, as humans know them, are strange and confusing to elves. Unlike the actual memories of one's primal soul, present life, or past lives, dreams are uncontrolled products of the subconscious, and perhaps the subconscious minds of those past lives or primal souls as well. An elf who dreams must always wonder whose mind these thoughts first arose from, and why. Priests of Sehanine Moon bow are an exception: they sleep and dream to receive signs from their god, and elves consult such priests to interpret their own dreams.

Obviously this might be different depending on your setting, but if the 'standard' lore is in use for elves, then they can sleep.

While Sleep=Unconscious is generally true I can see the reasoning behind having an effect force Unconscious instead of Sleep - getting bopped over the head with a sap might cause the Unconscious condition, but you're not going to wake up by being shoved because of it (as you would from being put to sleep).

[Oerlaf]

Remember that magic can't put elves to sleep. If it is a nonmagical effect, it can put an elf to sleep. There is one monster with nonmagical sleep in Tales of the Yawning Portal.

[Mastikator]

The elves's fey ancestry protects against being magically put to sleep. If the monster's ability magically puts a creature to sleep then the elves are immune to it. Asleep and unconscious are not the same condition and if elves are supposed to be immune to being unconscious then it would say so. (however, unconsciousness is an effect of sleeping)

Elves are immune to the sleep spell, the sleep effect of eyebite, the sleep ray of the beholder. Elves are not immune to the unconsciousness effect of being at 0 hit points and making death saving throws because being at 0 hp does not put you to sleep.

If the monster's ability uses the word "sleep" or "asleep" anywhere then elves should be immune. Otherwise not. For example a poison that makes you unconscious if you fail the save would work on elves. Drow in particular are known for putting elves to sleep using Drow Poison.

Also being reduced to 0 hit points makes you unconscious, elves are not immune to that.

[Amnestic]

If the monster's ability uses the word "sleep" or "asleep" anywhere then elves should be immune.

This is not necessarily the case - a dragon's breath has been noted as being nonmagical, which means elves would be vulnerable to a brass dragon's Sleep Breath, same as anyone else (Warforged are the same). Your DM might rule otherwise of course, but SAC is pretty clear on it.

[JackPhoenix]

Remember that magic can't put elves to sleep. If it is a nonmagical effect, it can put an elf to sleep. There is one monster with nonmagical sleep in Tales of the Yawning Portal.

Drow poison is another, more common way to induce non-magic sleep (well, it's not explicitly sleep, just unconsciousness, but it allows the same "damage or shaken awake" clause as Sleep spell).