Is Sleep overrated?

[Frogreaver]

Is the sleep spell overrated? I mean we know its only useful early tier 1, but even then is it actually as good as people make it out to be?

The only creatures it appears particularly effective on are some of the CR 1/4 ones. Even then there's a risk that the enemies just shake each other awake.

CR 1/2 creatures tend to have hp values that make it risky. For example a Black Bear and many other CR 1/2 creatures have 19 hp. That's a 77.7% chance of working - which is good but that's still a 22.3% chance of doing nothing with one of your extremely limited low level slots. If your going to use a slot on such a creature a magic missile is probably better, while it won't kill it outright, it will set up your party to be able to easily. Now if you have an encylopedic knowledge of enemies the spell improves a bit vs CR 1/2 creatures but if not then there's a good chance you attempt to use it vs an enemy that will have more hp than you roll to sleep.

In short, sleep is only particularly useful vs cr 1/4 creatures and even with the 7 hp ones like goblins you almost certainly get 2, and maybe a third. But there's also alot of cr 1/4 creatures with 11 hp. While you have a 99% chance of sleeping 1 11hp enemy, you only have a 57.5% chance of sleeping 2 such enemies. Note, a magic missile has a 50% chance to outright kill an 11 hp enemy and a 98.4% chance to outright kill a 7hp enemy. And even if it doesn't outright kill one of these enemes it all but guarantees the next hit will.

In short, it takes encounters against CR 1/4 or less creatures before sleep clearly outperforms magic missile and even then you need encolopedic knowledge of creature CR or hp as well as knowing you are facing creatures that your DM won't just have wake each other up.

Thus IMO sleep is mostly overrated.

[Atranen]

It depends how long that character will be at a low level. Magic missile is good to have later on, while sleep is not. So if I'm only playing a character at low levels for a session or two, I'll skip it. But if they'll be there a while, it's a great pick; there will be enough encounters with those CR 1/4 monsters to make it worth it.

Also, forcing them to spend an action waking someone up is still a very good result imo.

[Segev]

It upcasts well, too.

[Frogreaver]

It depends how long that character will be at a low level. Magic missile is good to have later on, while sleep is not. So if I'm only playing a character at low levels for a session or two, I'll skip it. But if they'll be there a while, it's a great pick; there will be enough encounters with those CR 1/4 monsters to make it worth it.

My argument is that even if you were always at level 1-2, that sleep isn't a particularly strong spell without many META-game assumptions baked in.


Also, forcing them to spend an action waking someone up is still a very good result imo.

I mean it's not an outright 'you did nothing' result, but it's not really good either.

[Segev]

My argument is that even if you were always at level 1-2, that sleep isn't a particularly strong spell without many META-game assumptions baked in.



I mean it's not an outright 'you did nothing' result, but it's not really good either.

What are those metagame assumptions?

I find sleep to be good when dealing with action deficit being to the enemies' advantage, though you may need to upcast if you're higher level.

[Frogreaver]

It upcasts well, too.

Maybe, I mean compared to a spell like web or shatter, I don't think it's a particularly good spell to use a level 2 slot on.

[Segev]

Maybe, I mean compared to a spell like web or shatter, I don't think it's a particularly good spell to use a level 2 slot on.

Maybe not. It does have higher "damage" than fireball, and doesn't do collateral damage, and also focus-fires its damage as efficiently as possible, taking out the weakest things in the area first. If you're confident that your allies have more hp individually than any of the individual enemies, it also has pseudo-IFF. Actual damage spells are better if you can't overcome even one critter's hp, but sleep can be a good finisher for a bunch of things weakened, but not killed, by fireball.

[ericgrau]

Bear in mind the average 1st level encounter is a few CR 1/4 creatures. A few CR 1/2s is for level 3. Sometimes you fight a lone creature, not always. It also augments well and you can use it against creatures that are already damaged. It also has value in capturing and interrogating, as well as mercy for the sake of law, friendship or even simply because many wrongdoings don't deserve death.

I find it really sus to argue that 22.5 isn't much more than 10.5 even after you need to do some estimates for how much the enemy is hurt. Probably you need to overshoot by around 7 HP and that much gets wasted, making it more like 15.5 vs 10.5. And 7 takes some pretty bad judgement. With practice you might try to weaken multiple mediocre foes and then sleep to boost your odds and reduce the average waste a little; as the average waste would be around half the remaining (not max) HP of 1 creature. And even if it can't affect a high HP foe, it's not wasted if there's a lower HP foe next to him. It automatically affects the lowest HP first which is a big help to anti-waste and avoiding friendly fire. For a thorough analysis I think you need to consider what players might guess especially after doing multiple 1st level fights against weaker creatures, and then deciding to hit damaged foes or augmenting to boost their odds. And then at different levels.

I had a character who used it very well for a while. Then it played a secondary role mainly finishing off stronger foes very well when augmented. Then tertiary for only when we really wanted to keep a foe alive and a melee attack was difficult. Then around the time when it was tertiary and I got a level up, I ditched it in favor of a better spell. It was very rare for a foe to wake up another foe. I don't remember if it ever happened even once. Most had no way to know it was a good idea or possible, and those that knew couldn't spare the action. Especially since it would usually be a stronger foe rescuing a wounded weak foe, making it a net gain for us if he did. And often sleep ended the fight or moving to wake someone was impossible.

I think at first it was a little OP and when it switched to the secondary role it was a fairly balanced spell. Once it hit the tertiary role it was still useful but it wasn't really worth having compared to other options. It was on its way out as soon as I could get something better.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I mean it's not an outright 'you did nothing' result, but it's not really good either.

Trading one action for one action isn't good, no. But that's also pretty close to a worst-case result: one thing goes to sleep next to something that can shake it awake without worrying about any potential consequences for using its action in that way and doesn't need to move to get there. It's also something that's only available to intelligent enemies. Wolves aren't shaking each other awake.

I think you're jumping, unjustifiably, from 'there are situations where this spell isn't optimal' straight to 'this spell is not good'. A 77% chance to end a level 1 encounter with a bear immediately is really pretty good. I completely disagree with your statement that it's only useful against low hp CR 1/4 creatures. It's very good against, say, goblins or kobolds. Knocking multiple potentially ranged adversaries out is great. So is getting rid of one chunkier enemy. That's an advantage of sleep, not a disadvantage.

[Amnestic]

It's nice against (bonus action or multi-target) yo-yo healing.

[DarknessEternal]

Who's rating it higher than garbage tier?

[Witty Username]

How many goblins are you expecting to take out with sleep? 2, maybe 3.
How many goblins are you expecting to take out with chomatic orb. 0, 1 if your lucky.

Maybe your expectations of 1st level spells are too high.

[Gignere]

Definitely not overrated in tier 1. I’ve used it to totally shutdown encounters. It may only work on 2 out of the 4 goblins/giant rats/kobolds but that also means the rest of your team only needs 1 round to end it, instead of slogging it and potentially getting dropped.

Also even at level 4 there are encounters with mixed CRs like 2-3 lower CRs supporting a big CR and being able to knock out 2 potentially 3 lower level CRs with no chance of effecting the level 4 characters is strategically awesome.

Hell in one encounter by using it to knock enemies first weakened we ended up gaining a crucial ally that would not have been possible if we were murder hoboing everything.

It’s a great spell at tier 1, rapidly dropping down to an average spell at tier 2 and pretty useless by end of tier 2 and early tier 3.

Since it doesn’t cost concentration you can combo it with web to totally shut down two different groups of enemies. Trapping 4 in web and later knocking out another 2 enemies, meant a deadly+ encounter became a cake walk.

[Damon_Tor]

It's nice in situations where you are facing very weak creatures that you explicitly do not want to harm. You want to steal something, there are a bunch of commoners standing around, and you don't want to maim anybody, sleep might be your best option.

In a white-room combat scenario, yeah, it's not likely to be useful, but in the context of an actual story your character is taking part in, the ability to make a bunch of regular guys fall asleep is pretty freaking great.

[Frogreaver]

How many goblins are you expecting to take out with sleep? 2, maybe 3.
How many goblins are you expecting to take out with chomatic orb. 0, 1 if your lucky.

Maybe your expectations of 1st level spells are too high.

2-3 till the wake each other up...

Why chromatic orb when magic missile is the more taken spell and is virtually guaranteed to take out a single goblin?

[Segev]

Sleep might substitute for upcast charm person to magic your way past a pair of guards. They may not even realize something went wrong other than that they dozed off!

[InvisibleBison]

2-3 till the wake each other up...

Assuming that their allies are able to wake them.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Assuming that their allies are able to wake them.

Also, at level 1, trading one sleep for four actions (two goblins fall asleep, the other two use their actions to wake them up) is a pretty major advantage. For starters, your party ought to have a pretty good chance to drop one of the goblins before it can wake something, which gets the party basically two free rounds against low-HP-low-AC creatures. That should be a free win. Trading one wizard action for multiple enemy NPC actions is a win for the party, not a loss.

[Eldariel]

Let's see a couple of cases:
1. You have a small group of enemies (2-3) or individual stronger enemy. You cast Sleep on them. They're all asleep. Nobody to wake them up. You then gang up around them, everyone readies an action to attack after their turn and then you have two actions each to finish said enemy off after stripping them of their weapons and such in case they do wake up.

2. You have multiple separate groups of enemies. You can Sleep one of them and the others are unlikely to be able to reach the other to wake them up in one round. They're either wasting two+ rounds for the whole opposition (if your party casts a second Sleep, they might all just be down too making this case #1) or effectively removing the hit enemies from the fight. Either is a fantastic trade.

3. You have a single group of enemies in sufficiently close quarters to wake each other up and you fail to get them all. In this case, the party can still finish off or make moving cost OAs for the stragglers (and the enemies have to know that they can indeed wake their allies up, which is not a given for all enemies). Or the (multiple, by definition) enemies waste an entire turn waking each other up giving all your teammates essentially a free action, which is also pretty good.


And yeah, then there are all the nonlethal aspects to the spell too. Honestly, the spell is just really good early on. In PvP it's almost broken because of how low PC HP is typically. Even with maximized HD, many level 5 characters can be dropped from full HP with level 3 Sleep and losing Concentration, eating crits to the face, etc. is devastating (which of course raises the stakes of Sleep-immune classes; there's a lot to be said about effects without saves). It's less good against monsters because their HP scales faster but the low level especially Humanoid monsters are extremely vulnerable to it.

[Frogreaver]

Trading one action for one action isn't good, no. But that's also pretty close to a worst-case result: one thing goes to sleep next to something that can shake it awake without worrying about any potential consequences for using its action in that way and doesn't need to move to get there. It's also something that's only available to intelligent enemies. Wolves aren't shaking each other awake.

I think you're jumping, unjustifiably, from 'there are situations where this spell isn't optimal' straight to 'this spell is not good'. A 77% chance to end a level 1 encounter with a bear immediately is really pretty good. I completely disagree with your statement that it's only useful against low hp CR 1/4 creatures. It's very good against, say, goblins or kobolds. Knocking multiple potentially ranged adversaries out is great. So is getting rid of one chunkier enemy. That's an advantage of sleep, not a disadvantage.

Or MM and have nearly a 100% chance of ending the bear during the first round. With a little luck on initiative or early attacks it may even die before it gets an attack off. Why take the 23% chance of doing nothing when you don't have to?


Let's see a couple of cases:
1. You have a small group of enemies (2-3) or individual stronger enemy. You cast Sleep on them. They're all asleep. Nobody to wake them up. You then gang up around them, everyone readies an action to attack after their turn and then you have two actions each to finish said enemy off after stripping them of their weapons and such in case they do wake up.

2. You have multiple separate groups of enemies. You can Sleep one of them and the others are unlikely to be able to reach the other to wake them up in one round. They're either wasting two+ rounds for the whole opposition (if your party casts a second Sleep, they might all just be down too making this case #1) or effectively removing the hit enemies from the fight. Either is a fantastic trade.

3. You have a single group of enemies in sufficiently close quarters to wake each other up and you fail to get them all. In this case, the party can still finish off or make moving cost OAs for the stragglers (and the enemies have to know that they can indeed wake their allies up, which is not a given for all enemies). Or the (multiple, by definition) enemies waste an entire turn waking each other up giving all your teammates essentially a free action, which is also pretty good.


And yeah, then there are all the nonlethal aspects to the spell too. Honestly, the spell is just really good early on. In PvP it's almost broken because of how low PC HP is typically. Even with maximized HD, many level 5 characters can be dropped from full HP with level 3 Sleep and losing Concentration, eating crits to the face, etc. is devastating (which of course raises the stakes of Sleep-immune classes; there's a lot to be said about effects without saves). It's less good against monsters because their HP scales faster but the low level especially Humanoid monsters are extremely vulnerable to it.

Note: claiming sleep is overrated doesn't mean there is NEVER a use case for it. I pointed a few out in my OP.


Also, at level 1, trading one sleep for four actions (two goblins fall asleep, the other two use their actions to wake them up) is a pretty major advantage. For starters, your party ought to have a pretty good chance to drop one of the goblins before it can wake something, which gets the party basically two free rounds against low-HP-low-AC creatures. That should be a free win. Trading one wizard action for multiple enemy NPC actions is a win for the party, not a loss.

Or 2 actions if the goblins play it smart and have the higher initiative goblins wake up the lower initiative ones. Just magic missiling a goblin likely saves more actions (or at least just as many).

[Atranen]

My argument is that even if you were always at level 1-2, that sleep isn't a particularly strong spell without many META-game assumptions baked in.

Ah. Then I disagree. For a level 1-2 campaign, it would be at the very top of my list. High success rate, good strength at 5d8, and a powerful effect.

[stoutstien]

Honestly I wish more spells were designed like sleep. extremely impactful but tend to lack total flexibility for universal applicability. Got a handful of goblins? Amazing. Got a single elf? Welp better your adjust approach.

[Frogreaver]

Honestly I wish more spells were designed like sleep. extremely impactful but tend to lack total flexibility for universal applicability. Got a handful of goblins? Amazing. Got a single elf? Welp better your adjust approach.

It's only 'amazing' against a group of goblins if you bake in assumptions like the goblins won't wake each other up. You'll most likely hit 2-3 goblins with it. There's a fairly small chance you hit 4 (assuming average hp goblins).

If you hit 2 and they wake each other up then it might just be 2 actions removed. A magic missile that insta kills a single goblin accomplishes the same or more.

[Snails]

Definitely not overrated in Tier1.

It is a bit situational, but in a party with a lot of AoE dealers, I have seen the Bard get impressive results with this spell in Tier 2 and Tier 3. For example, sometimes there are 2 or 3 or 4 enemies teetering because they are the lucky ones who made their Dex save against Fireball. Upcast Sleep and the combat is over.

[stoutstien]

It's only 'amazing' against a group of goblins if you bake in assumptions like the goblins won't wake each other up. You'll most likely hit 2-3 goblins with it. There's a fairly small chance you hit 4 (assuming average hp goblins).

If you hit 2 and they wake each other up then it might just be 2 actions removed. A magic missile that insta kills a single goblin accomplishes the same or more.

That kinda supports my point as MM is just a turn-key solution to anything that doesn't have force resistance or a hard counter in the form of a spell.

Sleep is good because it's a relatively party safe non lethal nuke that will likely at least cut the overall challenge in half, if not automatically pass it. If there was a different spell that just proned enemies in a similar fashion it would be a good spell which sleep has as a "free" rider.

It has a good chance to completely dissolve any sense of morale a group has and unless the DM is completely disregarding any in-world factors, such as taking advantage of initiative to make sure they have minimal effects from a spell or making even the lowest goblin unshakable in the face of overwhelming odds, its an amazing spell.

There's also not a lot of options if the party is facing NPCs they want to stop without just turning everybody into body parts. It's a common troupe to have the "possessed" village or other forms of involuntary aggression.

It's a good spell because it has a niche and supports players engaging in the world passed HP and AC. Every other rating is a completely pointless factor because the DM can adjust or run things differently. You can't do the same thing for magic missile without just having a bunch of gotcha mechanics that are equally unfun.

[InvisibleBison]

It's only 'amazing' against a group of goblins if you bake in assumptions like the goblins won't wake each other up.

It's true that evaluating sleep based only on its best-case scenario will present an overly-optimistic assessment of its capabilities. But you're evaluating it based only on its worst-case scenario, and are thus getting an overly-pessimistic assessment of its capabilities. For example, you consistently assume that whatever goblins aren't put to sleep will be able to immediately wake those that are put to sleep, without any PCs having a chance to act beforehand and without the goblins being forced to take opportunity attacks to get to their comrades. While this may sometimes be the case, often it won't be, and assuming that it always will is leading you to underestimate the utility of sleep.

[Frogreaver]

It's true that evaluating sleep based only on its best-case scenario will present an overly-optimistic assessment of its capabilities. But you're evaluating it based only on its worst-case scenario, and are thus getting an overly-pessimistic assessment of its capabilities. For example, you consistently assume that whatever goblins aren't put to sleep will be able to immediately wake those that are put to sleep, without any PCs having a chance to act beforehand and without the goblins being forced to take opportunity attacks to get to their comrades. While this may sometimes be the case, often it won't be, and assuming that it always will is leading you to underestimate the utility of sleep.

So your saying it's overrated, just not by as much as I claim?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Or MM and have nearly a 100% chance of ending the bear during the first round. With a little luck on initiative or early attacks it may even die before it gets an attack off. Why take the 23% chance of doing nothing when you don't have to?

Let's assume Ftr/Clr/Wiz/Rog, with no subclass features that matter or crits (if crits change the math then we're talking about a high-roll situation anyway). The Ftr has 14 Dex and 16 Str, and the Rog has 17 Dex and 12 Str. No LOS issues, everyone's in range, party acts first. Fighter hits on 7+ for 1d8+2, or 6.5 average, or an average DPR against a black bear of 4.5. The rogue hits on a 6+ for 1d6+3, or 5 ADPR. The Clr casts sacred flame for 1d8, and the bear succeeds on the Dex save with a 13+; the average damage is 3.6. So our three-man average per-round damage is 13.1. To convert this into a one-round kill, the wizard needs to contribute 6 damage. Magic missile does that. But in this situation you're probably not casting sleep anyway. Sleep exists to do two things: render enemies helpless, and twist the action economy in the party's favor. In a 4-v-1 situation, action economy is already wildly in the party's favor, and the actions a bear can take are not so scary that you need to shift it further.



Or 2 actions if the goblins play it smart and have the higher initiative goblins wake up the lower initiative ones. Just magic missiling a goblin likely saves more actions (or at least just as many).

If the DM is playing with individual enemy initiative and coincidentally sleep always affects the low-initiative goblins who are standing next to unaffected high-initiative goblins, I'd say that's less about whether sleep is good about more about whether your DM is putting his thumb on the scale.

Magic missile kills one goblin on average rolls. It saves more actions if your party isn't able to finish a combat against at that point three CR 1/4 creatures in three rounds, which should be pretty easy to do.

[Witty Username]

2-3 till the wake each other up...

Why chromatic orb when magic missile is the more taken spell and is virtually guaranteed to take out a single goblin?

Why use magic missile when sleep is virtually garruneteed to take out 2 goblins, and likely to take out more if they waste actions waking up goblins.

[InvisibleBison]

So your saying it's overrated, just not by as much as I claim?

I don't know if it's overrated, because I haven't seen a lot of people talking about it one way or another (mostly because I haven't been paying much attention to online discussions of 5e). I do think you are undervaluing it, though.

[JNAProductions]

Or MM and have nearly a 100% chance of ending the bear during the first round. With a little luck on initiative or early attacks it may even die before it gets an attack off. Why take the 23% chance of doing nothing when you don't have to?

A 19 HP bear cannot be killed by a Magic Missile as a first level spell. Max damage is 15.
If you cast it from a 2nd level slot, you have a 2% chance of killing the bear.

A Sleep spell from a first level slot has a 78% chance, as you mentioned earlier, of knocking the bear out.
As a 2nd level spell, it has a greater than 98% chance.

[Frogreaver]

Let's assume Ftr/Clr/Wiz/Rog, with no subclass features that matter or crits (if crits change the math then we're talking about a high-roll situation anyway). The Ftr has 14 Dex and 16 Str, and the Rog has 17 Dex and 12 Str. No LOS issues, everyone's in range, party acts first. Fighter hits on 7+ for 1d8+2, or 6.5 average, or an average DPR against a black bear of 4.5. The rogue hits on a 6+ for 1d6+3, or 5 ADPR. The Clr casts sacred flame for 1d8, and the bear succeeds on the Dex save with a 13+; the average damage is 3.6. So our three-man average per-round damage is 13.1. To convert this into a one-round kill, the wizard needs to contribute 6 damage. Magic missile at level 1 tops out at 5 damage. Using your action to cast it here is a bad idea. You've spent resources to turn a 2-round kill into a 2-round kill. You've technically done something, but what you did doesn't matter. Just cast fire bolt or whatever damage cantrip you have, or throw a rock. Fire bolt at least gives you a damage roll to turn this into a 1-round kill!

In this situation you're probably not casting sleep anyway. Sleep exists to do two things: render enemies helpless, and twist the action economy in the party's favor. In a 4-v-1 situation, action economy is already wildly in the party's favor, and the actions a bear can take are not so scary that you need to shift it further.

MM at level 1 does 3d4+3 damage total. Minimum is 6 damage. Max is 15. Average is 10.5


A 19 HP bear cannot be killed by a Magic Missile as a first level spell. Max damage is 15.


I never said MM would kill it. I said it would die in the first round because of MM and the rest of the party. Like seriously?


I don't know if it's overrated, because I haven't seen a lot of people talking about it one way or another (mostly because I haven't been paying much attention to online discussions of 5e). I do think you are undervaluing it, though.

And everyone else responding to me isn't overvaluing it by only focusing on the best cases? :confused:

Your here now in this conversation - let's hear your thoughts on this.

[Frogreaver]

I don't know if it's overrated, because I haven't seen a lot of people talking about it one way or another (mostly because I haven't been paying much attention to online discussions of 5e). I do think you are undervaluing it, though.

And everyone else responding to me isn't overvaluing it by only focusing on the best cases? :confused:

Your here now in this conversation - let's hear your thoughts on this.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

MM at level 1 does 3d4+3 damage total. Minimum is 6 damage. Max is 15. Average is 10.5


Yes, see my edit. This is a situation where magic missile actually is superior to sleep. On the other hand, it's not a situation where most players would bother casting. One CR 1/2 bear against a full-resource party? Come on. You're going to cast a cantrip and save your spells for situations that aren't completely trivial.


Definitely not overrated in Tier1.

It is a bit situational, but in a party with a lot of AoE dealers, I have seen the Bard get impressive results with this spell in Tier 2 and Tier 3. For example, sometimes there are 2 or 3 or 4 enemies teetering because they are the lucky ones who made their Dex save against Fireball. Upcast Sleep and the combat is over.

This is a really important point too. What sleep is competing against varies from class to class, and the level of commitment varies too.

[Frogreaver]

Yes, see my edit. This is a situation where magic missile actually is superior to sleep. On the other hand, it's not a situation where most players would bother casting. One CR 1/2 bear against a full-resource party? Come on. You're going to cast a cantrip and save your spells for situations that aren't completely trivial.

How about 2 black bears?

[JNAProductions]

I never said MM would kill it. I said it would die in the first round because of MM and the rest of the party. Like seriously?

Magic Missile does 10.5 damage on average.
A Firebolt with 16 Int does 4.4 damage on average. A Light Crossbow with 16 Dex does 5.85. 14 Dex drops that to 4.775.

Depending on the exact build, you're somewhere between 180% and 240% of your resource-free damage by casting Magic Missile. That's nice... But will it end the encounter even one turn sooner?

As compared to Sleep, which has a good chance of outright winning the encounter on the spot.

[Eldariel]

Or 2 actions if the goblins play it smart and have the higher initiative goblins wake up the lower initiative ones. Just magic missiling a goblin likely saves more actions (or at least just as many).

Just Sleep the higher Initiative Goblins.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

How about 2 black bears?

Then they perform pretty similarly with magic missile coming out slightly ahead because black bears have a particular hp value relative to the adpr of this hypothetical party that makes it possible with high rolls for the third missile to kill the second bear and only one creature ever being affected by sleep.

How about four 7-hp kobolds with shortbows behind a light barricade on a road? Sleep gets you two full rounds of no incoming attacks. Magic missile kills one, but the other three are still shooting.


Magic Missile does 10.5 damage on average.
A Firebolt with 16 Int does 4.4 damage on average. A Light Crossbow with 16 Dex does 5.85. 14 Dex drops that to 4.775.

Depending on the exact build, you're somewhere between 180% and 240% of your resource-free damage by casting Magic Missile. That's nice... But will it end the encounter even one turn sooner?

As compared to Sleep, which has a good chance of outright winning the encounter on the spot.

The 16-dex light crossbow, assuming everything's average, is 0.125 damage off ending the encounter before the bear acts. Magic missile always will. So you're basically one person rounding up on their average away from the crossbow having similar performance.

Edit: one thing I forgot is the potential for the wizard to have a familiar, and for that familiar to give the rogue advantage leading to a sneak attack. That would raise the average dpr of the rogue enough that resource-free damage from the wizard becomes more attractive.

[Unoriginal]

To establish if something is overrated, we first must establish how it is rated.

OP, would you mind explaining further what ranking is given to Sleep, by your observation?

[Amnestic]

Sleep is a "damaging" spell with some potential-but-limited out of combat applications (due to not being able to really gauge HP totals of guards at a glance). So what spells is it being rated against and vying for a position? Well it's a bard/wiz/sorc spell, so a combination of these depending on your class:-

Burning Hands
Catapult
Chaos Bolt
Chromatic Orb
Colour Spray
Earth Tremor
Frost Fingers
Ice Knife
Magic Missile
Tasha's Caustic Brew
Thunderwave
Witch Bolt

If you're ranking sleep on what to grab, where do you place it? A lot of these spells have redundancy (Burning Hands vs. Frost Fingers vs. Ice Knife vs. Thunderwave are all pretty similar effects - not identical, but applied in similar situations), so even if some spells are rated "higher" on their own, they don't necessarily warrant all grabbing over Sleep.

Sorcs and Bards probably can't afford single target + multi-target + Sleep + utility spells, but if you're a wizard (who has 8 1st level spells known by 2nd level) I expect Sleep will end up on there as your third "damage" pick, after Magic Missile + an AoE.

I probably wouldn't grab it as one of my 5 1st level spells as bard usually, and very rarely choose it as one of my 3 sorcerer spells.

[Pex]

In my experience very much so. Players want to cast it as their first or second spell of the combat thinking it an autowin when it's not. At 1st or 2nd level play, sure it helps a lot, but once 3rd level is reach please stop casting it as your first spell! I don't care what level spell slot. It's a finishing move spell, not an opener.

[Kane0]

If you're a parent there is no such thing as overrating sleep.

Oh wait, you mean the spell. Yeah its a good spell, but its situational even if you have enough dice to compete with the enemy HP (which doesnt last long). Plenty of stuff doesnt sleep to begin with, positioning is a factor, any damage or a quick-thinking friend wakes them up again so its more of a delay tactic than an encounter ender.

Its great at avoiding unnecessary fights in the first place, like putting a lookout to sleep to guarantee everyone can slip by unnoticed. Its also very good for collecting prisoners, especially at the tail end of combat where the enemy has taken hits and you as a mage dont want to close to melee to deal nonlethal damage with a stick.

[Theodoxus]

It seems everyone is talking about sleep being cast first in the round. That's never how I use it. In a four man party, if the Wizard wins initiative, I hold my action until the last party member goes. Then, say you're facing a squad of goblins, each other PC targets a different goblin. If you're lucky, they're taking out the goblin they're targeting, if not, they're massively reducing the amount of HP the sleep spell needs to take out that foe.

Once the PCs go, the Wizard is now casting a sleep spell on weakened foes; and presumably all the PCs have higher HP values than the enemies, so casting it into the crowd is a no brainer.

Casting it in this manner is even better on a higher HP single target foe, like a bear or ogre. The party tries to whittle the beasties down as much as possible, and the Wizard casts sleep if they think the enemy has fewer HP than the lowest HP PC in the area; against an ogre, it might take two rounds. But once slept, I think everyone agrees that ganging up with melee attacks is optimal. First guy gets auto-crit on a hit (with advantage); the rest are attacking with advantage on the proned critter until it can get up on its turn. That pretty much should one shot anything even in the 20+ range that the sleep spell could conceivably affect on a decent roll.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

If you're ranking sleep on what to grab, where do you place it? A lot of these spells have redundancy (Burning Hands vs. Frost Fingers vs. Ice Knife vs. Thunderwave are all pretty similar effects - not identical, but applied in similar situations), so even if some spells are rated "higher" on their own, they don't necessarily warrant all grabbing over Sleep.

Sorcs and Bards probably can't afford single target + multi-target + Sleep + utility spells, but if you're a wizard (who has 8 1st level spells known by 2nd level) I expect Sleep will end up on there as your third "damage" pick, after Magic Missile + an AoE.

I probably wouldn't grab it as one of my 5 1st level spells as bard usually, and very rarely choose it as one of my 3 sorcerer spells.

It probably doesn't ever end on my bard or sorcerer spell list, but it usually starts there. I know it doesn't scale well, but that's fine; I'm probably doing to replace it somewhere between level 3 and 5, depending on the style of the campaign. Sleep is one of the best level 1 solutions to multiple enemies with ranged weapons, a situation that can threaten character deaths with focus fire. Other than a DM being nice with silent image, you don't have many other options. Yeah, it's just one situation, but in my experience it's the scariest one.

Ultimately, party composition is going to make a big difference here. It's much less likely for a bard to have room for sleep past level 1 if they're filling the arcane caster role in the party. Having a wizard or Book of Ancient Secrets tome warlock means you don't have to pick up useful rituals like identify, detect magic or unseen servant.

[Segev]

I particularly like it as a swap-in on an aberrant mind's psychic spells.

[Thunderous Mojo]

And everyone else responding to me isn't overvaluing it by only focusing on the best cases? :confused:

No.

Simply put, the focus of the discussion has not been trained on only ‘best cases’.

The conversation has remained primarily fixated on the spell’s use against humanoids, that can wake each other up.

Imagine Sleep was being used against Giant Rats or Stirges. In either case I do not believe a Stirge or Giant Rat is waking up their sleeping fellows.

[Kane0]

That's never how I use it. In a four man party, if the Wizard wins initiative, I hold my action until the last party member goes. Then, say you're facing a squad of goblins, each other PC targets a different goblin.

You mean readying? Stock 5e rules dont have a delay turn.

[Theodoxus]

You mean readying? Stock 5e rules dont have a delay turn.

Yes "I ready Sleep until after [3rd player in initiative order] attacks their target." Then I just hope I don't get targeted with an attack that might make me lose concentration on the Sleep spell.

[da newt]

Meh - y'all are busy arguing over split hairs. Sleep is a good low level spell - great in some situations, useless in others, somewhere in between often. It can end a combat, or cost team bad guys a few actions / turns, or can cost them a whole bunch of turns, or have zero effect. I don't think anyone can honestly argue against it as a useful tool to have in your kit during tier 1.

Did I win the interweb argument and be named king of D&D? I should find something better to do with my time ...

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Meh - y'all are busy arguing over split hairs. Sleep is a good low level spell - great in some situations, useless in others, somewhere in between often. It can end a combat, or cost team bad guys a few actions / turns, or can cost them a whole bunch of turns, or have zero effect. I don't think anyone can honestly argue against it as a useful tool to have in your kit during tier 1.

Did I win the interweb argument and be named king of D&D? I should find something better to do with my time ...

With this great, productive post, you did win the argument. Well done, king.

[Leon]

Overated no, used within its limited scope yes and falls off rapidly there after.

Never used it personally just observations from seeing it used to varying degree's to the point where it was cast no more.

[CapnWildefyr]

Yes "I ready Sleep until after [3rd player in initiative order] attacks their target." Then I just hope I don't get targeted with an attack that might make me lose concentration on the Sleep spell.

No concentration required.



The conversation has remained primarily fixated on the spell’s use against humanoids, that can wake each other up.


Just an aside -- the spell just makes you fall unconscious. DM discretion here, but the way I think of it, it doesn't make you yawn, pull out a blankie and teddy bear, and lay down for a nap, so why would goblins et al spend an action waking up their comrades? (Unless they first spend an action to see if they're dead or not.) I wouldn't always assume they would immediately think "my comrades got hit by a sleep spell," I figure they'd be thinking "I wonder if after I kill those adventurers, I can steal Grok's stuff before Grug gets there first?" Not all foes would react that way of course, but many would.

[Frogreaver]

No.

Simply put, the focus of the discussion has not been trained on only ‘best cases’.

The conversation has remained primarily fixated on the spell’s use against humanoids, that can wake each other up.

Imagine Sleep was being used against Giant Rats or Stirges. In either case I do not believe a Stirge or Giant Rat is waking up their sleeping fellows.

Sure, then imagine it used against Camels or Giant Crabs!


It seems everyone is talking about sleep being cast first in the round. That's never how I use it. In a four man party, if the Wizard wins initiative, I hold my action until the last party member goes. Then, say you're facing a squad of goblins, each other PC targets a different goblin. If you're lucky, they're taking out the goblin they're targeting, if not, they're massively reducing the amount of HP the sleep spell needs to take out that foe.

Once the PCs go, the Wizard is now casting a sleep spell on weakened foes; and presumably all the PCs have higher HP values than the enemies, so casting it into the crowd is a no brainer.

Casting it in this manner is even better on a higher HP single target foe, like a bear or ogre. The party tries to whittle the beasties down as much as possible, and the Wizard casts sleep if they think the enemy has fewer HP than the lowest HP PC in the area; against an ogre, it might take two rounds. But once slept, I think everyone agrees that ganging up with melee attacks is optimal. First guy gets auto-crit on a hit (with advantage); the rest are attacking with advantage on the proned critter until it can get up on its turn. That pretty much should one shot anything even in the 20+ range that the sleep spell could conceivably affect on a decent roll.

In theory that's a fine tactic, in practice it requires a near perfect knowledge of current enemy hp to reliably pull off without wasting the slot on an enemy having too much hp remaining. I don't think that's an assumption that should be made.


To establish if something is overrated, we first must establish how it is rated.

OP, would you mind explaining further what ranking is given to Sleep, by your observation?

Good questions. It's usually rated as one of the best spells for a caster with access to it to take for level 1 and 2 and becomes very campaign dependent by level 3 - but probably not outright useless. It has a few out of combat uses - but given the duration is likely a poor tool for most scenarios. I'd speculate it's rating stems primarily from it's potential upside without consideration for how often those situations will occur.

I would rate it as a very situational spell with high upside in the right circumstances in the right campaign with the right DM, but in practice players will generally be bad at identifying the right circumstances to use it in and thus when they do it will often do nothing or at best sleep 1 enemy (unless you assume they know the monster manual - which shouldn't be a spell rating assumption, IMO). Players also never factor in the enemy's ability to shake each other awake due to the spell - further highlighting it's situational nature and overratedness.


Sleep is a "damaging" spell with some potential-but-limited out of combat applications (due to not being able to really gauge HP totals of guards at a glance). So what spells is it being rated against and vying for a position? Well it's a bard/wiz/sorc spell, so a combination of these depending on your class:-

Burning Hands
Catapult
Chaos Bolt
Chromatic Orb
Colour Spray
Earth Tremor
Frost Fingers
Ice Knife
Magic Missile
Tasha's Caustic Brew
Thunderwave
Witch Bolt

If you're ranking sleep on what to grab, where do you place it? A lot of these spells have redundancy (Burning Hands vs. Frost Fingers vs. Ice Knife vs. Thunderwave are all pretty similar effects - not identical, but applied in similar situations), so even if some spells are rated "higher" on their own, they don't necessarily warrant all grabbing over Sleep.

Sorcs and Bards probably can't afford single target + multi-target + Sleep + utility spells, but if you're a wizard (who has 8 1st level spells known by 2nd level) I expect Sleep will end up on there as your third "damage" pick, after Magic Missile + an AoE.

I probably wouldn't grab it as one of my 5 1st level spells as bard usually, and very rarely choose it as one of my 3 sorcerer spells.

Even a level 2 wizard that can prepare 5 spells (assuming 16 int).

Shield, Mage Armor, Absorb Element, Silvery Barbs are all spells I would pick to prepare first. That leaves 1 spell to prepare and sleep is such a situational one I would find it hard to justify preparing over something that is solid in most situations. At level 1 it's even harder to justify sleep with 4 spells prepared.

[JNAProductions]

So, at level 2, you would only prepare one spell that does anything other than futz with probability or boost your defense?

[Frogreaver]

So, at level 2, you would only prepare one spell that does anything other than futz with probability or boost your defense?

My other 3 spells known are probably rituals. So yes?

What would you prepare for your 5 spells by level 2?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

It doesn't require knowledge of enemy HP any more than using magic missile does. It's fully in-character knowledge to know that weakened enemies are more susceptible to sleep.


Sure, then imagine it used against Camels or Giant Crabs!

Imagine it being used in a scenario that you aren't twisting to the point of ridiculousness! What if it only hits the creatures that haven't acted yet who are standing next to other creatures who haven't acted yet and don't have line of sight to the party so they can specifically wake the affected creatures up (because they act first in initiative) then the affected creatures, which do have line of sight to the party, get to act as though nothing had happened? That's a totally normal circumstance, right?

Meanwhile you're bringing up absorb elements as a must-prepare at level 2. It interacts with five CR 1/4-1/2 creatures out of the total of everything that's been published. Those creatures are the steam mephit, the ice mephit and the magma mephit; the gray ooze, which has to hit the wizard despite having a 10' movement range; and the magmin. Only three of those creatures have a way to do their elemental damage from range, and all of them are immune to the attacking aspect of absorb elements. The CR 1/4 acolyte, by the by, isn't bothered; its only damage spell is sacred flame, which does radiant damage and ignores absorb elements. I am struggling to think of a reason why absorb elements would be an every-day must-prepare.

[Pex]

My other 3 spells known are probably rituals. So yes?

What would you prepare for your 5 spells by level 2?

Damage Cantrips are nice and not useless for this level, but rolling that 1, 2, or 3 for damage is a major feels bad and not significant. Even a 7 hit point goblin you don't want to get a second turn. Only doing Cantrip attacks can be boring. Some first level spells are potent at this level of play.

Absorb Elements can wait until level 5. That's when Fireball comes into play. Even if bad guys aren't using it specifically it's time to put on the big boy pants of elemental damage.

Shield and Mage Armor are nice, but you have so few spell slots. If you want to be a glorified archer with attack Cantrips, fine, but hide behind total cover works just as well and let your spell slots do things.

Silvery Barbs is always effective, so fine here.

Other spells:

Magic Missile is reliable damage, significant at this level.

Grease is good crowd control.

Silent Image for out of combat shenanigans and even in combat such as pretend you cast Wall of Stone. Your DM isn't metagaming against you, right?

Tasha's Hideous Laughter can take a bad guy out of the fight for a bit.

Thunderwave when you're surrounded.

Turtling yourself and snipe with Cantrips is a strategy. It's not ineffective, but when the warriors are doing their job you need not be so paranoid. They'll appreciate you taking out some of the enemy quick to relieve the pressure. Certainly attack with Cantrips against the mook fight to conserve your spell slots, but when a Lieutenant or Boss fight happens attack don't ping.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Sure, then imagine it used against Camels or Giant Crabs!.

The discussion has considered this. Sometimes Sleep works brilliantly, sometimes the spell only has moderate success, and sometimes Sleep is absolutely ineffectual.
Multiple posters have said exactly this.

Which means, that the Sleep spell is not being overrated.

[Bosh]

It seems everyone is talking about sleep being cast first in the round. That's never how I use it. In a four man party, if the Wizard wins initiative, I hold my action until the last party member goes. Then, say you're facing a squad of goblins, each other PC targets a different goblin. If you're lucky, they're taking out the goblin they're targeting, if not, they're massively reducing the amount of HP the sleep spell needs to take out that foe.

Once the PCs go, the Wizard is now casting a sleep spell on weakened foes; and presumably all the PCs have higher HP values than the enemies, so casting it into the crowd is a no brainer.

Casting it in this manner is even better on a higher HP single target foe, like a bear or ogre. The party tries to whittle the beasties down as much as possible, and the Wizard casts sleep if they think the enemy has fewer HP than the lowest HP PC in the area; against an ogre, it might take two rounds. But once slept, I think everyone agrees that ganging up with melee attacks is optimal. First guy gets auto-crit on a hit (with advantage); the rest are attacking with advantage on the proned critter until it can get up on its turn. That pretty much should one shot anything even in the 20+ range that the sleep spell could conceivably affect on a decent roll.


Yeah, a lot of analysis of Sleep tends to assume that it's being cast on fresh opponents, which is a dumb thing to use Sleep for (aside from very low HP monsters). It's great for mopping up after a fireball or making sure that very low HP monsters go down. Also pure gold for keeping commoners out of your hair.

If anything I think Sleep is underrated as a lot of people think it's utterly useless after you gain a level or two while it still maintains a niche niche.

[Witty Username]

My other 3 spells known are probably rituals. So yes?

What would you prepare for your 5 spells by level 2?

Well, I would prepare:
Sleep or thunderwave
Shield
Mage armor
Magic missle or grease
Tasha's hideous laughter

If I have armor,
Drop mage armor, probably swap in grease.

Then again, spell lists rarely survive contact with the enemy.
My current wizard is a diviner, disruptive illusionist type. I have one damage spell (ray of frost), and I can get away with that because of a bunch of higher damage allies and a wand of magic missle.

[SharkForce]

One thing I would add:

A lot of discussion seems to focus on how sleep loses usefulness after you're fighting more challenging enemies.

However, this ignores an important point. In my experience, the most dangerous time in a character's life is level 1. You are much more likely to have a bit of bad luck cause everything to go disastrously wrong at level 1, and the moment you hit level 2 you start needing more and more bad luck to kill off the character.

So yes, by the time you're fighting multiple CR 1/2 or CR 1 creatures, it has lost a lot of its value (it still retains the niche uses). But at the riskiest part of the campaign, sleep is a powerful spell that punches well above its weight and can turn tough fights into easy fights and un-winnable fights into a chance to win or at least escape alive.

Simply put, for the increased potential of getting your character through the roughest patch of the game, sleep *should* be highly rated. So what if it isn't amazing at level 20 or even level 2. It has already done its job. Sleep greatly increases the chances that you will live long enough for it to become less useful.

[Hytheter]

Or 2 actions if the goblins play it smart and have the higher initiative goblins wake up the lower initiative ones. Just magic missiling a goblin likely saves more actions (or at least just as many).

Technically they should go on the same initiative, but it seems that rule is often neglected...


No concentration required.

Using the ready action for a spell - any spell - does in fact require concentration.

[diplomancer]

Technically they should go on the same initiative, but it seems that rule is often neglected...

Which makes it worse. But I'm on the side that believes DMs shouldn't overuse the trick of "a shakes b shakes c, shakes..." and having the last one attack, even though the rules do allow for that. Not only is it unfun, it breaks verisimilitude. Combat turns are supposed to put order into the chaos of everyone doing things at once in a six-second time span; doing things that are necessarily sequential like this kinda breaks that, specially if we're talking about creatures on the same initiative.

[Segev]

Which makes it worse. But I'm on the side that believes DMs shouldn't overuse the trick of "a shakes b shakes c, shakes..." and having the last one attack, even though the rules do allow for that. Not only is it unfun, it breaks verisimilitude. Combat turns are supposed to put order into the chaos of everyone doing things at once in a six-second time span; doing things that are necessarily sequential like this kinda breaks that, specially if we're talking about creatures on the same initiative.

If A, B, and C are shaking goblins awake and only D attacks, you've negated 3 creatures' actions for 1 first level spell slot. I don't think that's "breaking verisimilitude" nor do I think it's unfun; you've denied three creatures their turns, effectively, in return for your turn! And if the goblins don't go right after you, the party may well dogpile A. (Though maybe there are un-labeled goblins in sufficient number that A is the leftover one. Even so, you still denied 3 creatures' actions!)

[SharkForce]

If A, B, and C are shaking goblins awake and only D attacks, you've negated 3 creatures' actions for 1 first level spell slot. I don't think that's "breaking verisimilitude" nor do I think it's unfun; you've denied three creatures their turns, effectively, in return for your turn! And if the goblins don't go right after you, the party may well dogpile A. (Though maybe there are un-labeled goblins in sufficient number that A is the leftover one. Even so, you still denied 3 creatures' actions!)

Sure, you denied 3 creature's actions arguably, but logically it should've denied more (goblin A wakes up goblin B, who doesn't act because of the sleep spell, then next round goblin A and B wake up C and D, and only on round 3 would the goblins attack, presuming of course that something hasn't prevented the entire sequence by then).

In other words, it feels extremely strange that the goblins, who should be spending at least some non-zero amount of time sleeping, are being woken up "before they act" such that the amount they spend sleeping is not even costing them a single turn. After all, they didn't actually lose their action... they just spent it in a specific way. That's fine and all, it certainly doesn't make the spell a terrible spell or anything, but it *really* makes it stand out that this is all turn-based, which is not ideal in its own way.

Of course, it feels equally out of place when the players do it, and I doubt there's too many people complaining about that.

Still, it would probably feel a lot less obviously turn-based if, say, the sleeping target woke up at the *end* of their turn as opposed to it being instant full alertness (not that the spell necessarily needs a boost in power, mind you... I do prefer the bits of the game that make it really obvious that we're playing a game don't show up, but it is a bit of a problem that doing so makes a spell that is already quite good even better).

[nickl_2000]

I adore it for low levels, but once you get past about level 4.... well this states it pretty well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4pqqzFWedc&ab_channel=mlkcrtnmdl

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

If anything I think Sleep is underrated as a lot of people think it's utterly useless after you gain a level or two while it still maintains a niche niche.



Simply put, for the increased potential of getting your character through the roughest patch of the game, sleep *should* be highly rated. So what if it isn't amazing at level 20 or even level 2. It has already done its job. Sleep greatly increases the chances that you will live long enough for it to become less useful.

I am mostly coming at this from the perspective of bards, because that's what most of my playtime has been with (sorcerers generally have the same issue though). Sleep has some niches after the first few levels, but for spontaneous casters those niches aren't enough to justify keeping it around as a spell known, especially if you also have to know non-combat rituals. You only get to swap one spell per level, so IMO you need to take the chance to ditch sleep while you can. Wizards don't have that limitation, obviously, and the niche out-of-combat uses of sleep might become more attractive as first-level slots become less impactful.

[ericgrau]

I adore it for low levels, but once you get past about level 4.... well this states it pretty well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4pqqzFWedc&ab_channel=mlkcrtnmdl

I think in the campaign I am in it was uber through level 3 but iirc I didn't ditch it until around level 7 or 8. Finishing off heavily damaged foes reliably with a low or mid level spell slot was really handy, and as a sorcerer I preferred to swap out other spells first. It helped now and then that I'm an elf, though less often than I thought it would. But yeah from 4-6 it was getting progressively worse.

[Eldariel]

I've gotten good mileage out of it on level 3; used it against Bulezau twice from level 1 slot, and against a horde of Goblins one of which had a Wand of Magic Missiles too. Which was nice to spare my level 2 slots for bigger enemies (as a Diviner, I was able to leverage Suggestion and Levitate to a good degree there). Bulezau were a bit tricky but after we'd killed one, we knew that one it's Bloodied, it's pretty close to Sleep point (we fought three simultaneously). I've used it on 4-5 too (one was against a human caster of some sort with Hypnotic Pattern; we were able to take him nonlethally fairly easily thanks to the spell). But once we got to level 5, it became increasingly less necessary as I had enough gas even for the longer days on my slots and could spare my level 1 slots purely for defenses (this was pre-Silvery Barbs, which of course changes that equation further in the favour of leaving your level 1 spells for your CC).

[Willie the Duck]

In my experience, the most dangerous time in a character's life is level 1.

I definitely think the spell is designed around being really useful at level 1. Also I think it is designed for a specific type of encounter. The swarm of kobolds or rats* where the level 1 PCs can't kill them fast enough not to be subject to many, many attacks. If the wizard takes out 2-4 enemies for a round -- or more, since many of the non-sapient tool-users (and some of them) are unlikely to wake their buddies as their next action -- that's a large number of attacks the party isn't facing while they deal with the other half of the enemies present. In this scenario, the question becomes does sleep sufficiently outperform using the 1st level slot for a cure spell after not using sleep and facing all the enemies at once.
*That may not even be the primary threat of the day, even for level one characters.

[diplomancer]

If A, B, and C are shaking goblins awake and only D attacks, you've negated 3 creatures' actions for 1 first level spell slot. I don't think that's "breaking verisimilitude" nor do I think it's unfun; you've denied three creatures their turns, effectively, in return for your turn! And if the goblins don't go right after you, the party may well dogpile A. (Though maybe there are un-labeled goblins in sufficient number that A is the leftover one. Even so, you still denied 3 creatures' actions!)

Well, both of the arguments I've made are clearly subjective; if you disagree with my subjective opinions, that's fine.

[Gignere]

Seems to me the OP is saying sleep is overrated because if you don’t take into account of tactical considerations of combat it’s not very useful.

However this is true of all spells though, even his oft quoted magic missile, it would suck too if you decide to split the missiles up and hit each of the goblins, instead of focusing on one so if you consider sub optimal play MM is much weaker than sleep.

He keeps repeating the line you have to meta knowledge the hps but you need to do that for MM too, because if you don’t meta take into account of the creatures hps MM you might think splitting the missiles is a good use of it to soften up the enemies not considering that enemies hit just as hard at 1 hps as they do at full hps.

On the other hand I’ve used MM and split it 2 missiles on 1 target and the 3rd 1 on another guaranteeing 2 kills instead of 1 because I took into account of 1 having been hit by another PC. So MM was amazing there.

You have to rate spells based on optimal play and tactical considerations because the char op guides assume that you are trying to maximize your play. Can’t assume people are using the spell poorly, because players can use wish to double his dong, and because it’s not a sanction use rolls and forever loses wish. Yeah wish would be a pretty bad spell pick too now.

[JNAProductions]

Seems to me the OP is saying sleep is overrated because if you don’t take into account of tactical considerations of combat it’s not very useful.

However this is true of all spells though, even his oft quoted magic missile, it would suck too if you decide to split the missiles up and hit each of the goblins, instead of focusing on one so if you consider sub optimal play MM is much weaker than sleep.

He keeps repeating the line you have to meta knowledge the hps but you need to do that for MM too, because if you don’t meta take into account of the creatures hps MM you might think splitting the missiles is a good use of it to soften up the enemies not considering that enemies hit just as hard at 1 hps as they do at full hps.

On the other hand I’ve used MM and split it 2 missiles on 1 target and the 3rd 1 on another guaranteeing 2 kills instead of 1 because I took into account of 1 having been hit by another PC. So MM was amazing there.

You have to rate spells based on optimal play and tactical considerations because the char op guides assume that you are trying to maximize your play. Can’t assume people are using the spell poorly, because players can use wish to double his dong, and because it’s not a sanction use rolls and forever loses wish. Yeah wish would be a pretty bad spell pick too now.

I wouldn't say you have to consider perfect play, but you should generally consider a spell or ability is used competently. If you assume incompetence, then nothing is good.

[Chronos]

The 77% chance of downing a bear assumes that the wizard is acting first, which she probably isn't. She's probably got around a 1 in 4 chance of acting first, or less than that if party members have better Dex. And if one ally has hit the bear already and now it's the wizard's turn, Sleep is almost guaranteed to end it.

And that's a pretty bad case for Sleep. Not the absolute worst case, but a single beefy enemy is exactly what it's not designed for... and even in that case it's not designed for, it still has an excellent chance of winning outright.

If you really want the best case scenario, don't look at goblins. Look at stirges. My arcane trickster once won initiative against a dozen stirges. Whelp, there goes that encounter.

[Gignere]

The 77% chance of downing a bear assumes that the wizard is acting first, which she probably isn't. She's probably got around a 1 in 4 chance of acting first, or less than that if party members have better Dex. And if one ally has hit the bear already and now it's the wizard's turn, Sleep is almost guaranteed to end it.

And that's a pretty bad case for Sleep. Not the absolute worst case, but a single beefy enemy is exactly what it's not designed for... and even in that case it's not designed for, it still has an excellent chance of winning outright.

If you really want the best case scenario, don't look at goblins. Look at stirges. My arcane trickster once won initiative against a dozen stirges. Whelp, there goes that encounter.

At level 3 I had an encounter of 3 Derros, my AT went second and the damage on the first Derro was enough for me to put all 3 to sleep. Ended the encounter and DM said if we killed even one of them there would have been many more derros jumping into the fight.

[Frogreaver]

I wouldn't say you have to consider perfect play, but you should generally consider a spell or ability is used competently. If you assume incompetence, then nothing is good.

I agree with this. Assuming a bunch of metagame knowledge is not assuming competence though - it's assuming metagame knowledge.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I agree with this. Assuming a bunch of metagame knowledge is not assuming competence though - it's assuming metagame knowledge.

Sleep being more effective against targets with fewer hit points isn't metagame knowledge. It's in the text of the spell.

[Gignere]

Sleep being more effective against targets with fewer hit points isn't metagame knowledge. It's in the text of the spell.

Him knowing that MM will take out a single goblin for sure is not metagaming but the player knowing that sleep can take 2-3 goblins out is. /s

Everyone metagames to a certain degree, I’d even argue a pure non metagame D&D game doesn’t exist. Even actors in movies need to act with some degree of meta because otherwise it be going crazy and not acting.

For a wizard that has great intelligence why wouldn’t they know sleep is particularly effective on goblins, stirges, giant rats, and kobolds? To me this isn’t even a level of metagaming that is unacceptable because it is highly plausible in game.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

For a wizard that has great intelligence why wouldn’t they know sleep is particularly effective on goblins, stirges, giant rats, and kobolds? To me this isn’t even a level of metagaming that is unacceptable because it is highly plausible in game.

That's not metagaming at all. Metagaming would be something like "bears have 19 hp using the published stat block. I have a 78% chance for sleep to take effect, but if I delay my action until the bear takes 5 damage, my chance of success increase to 96%." And frankly, even that's borderline; a character capable of casting sleep should be aware that its effect scales inversely with enemy strength.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

It's nice in situations where you are facing very weak creatures that you explicitly do not want to harm. You want to steal something, there are a bunch of commoners standing around, and you don't want to maim anybody, sleep might be your best option.

In a white-room combat scenario, yeah, it's not likely to be useful, but in the context of an actual story your character is taking part in, the ability to make a bunch of regular guys fall asleep is pretty freaking great.

This is often how we've ended up using the spell, taking prisoners or bypassing guards, sometimes after inflicting a little damage. The fact is that without a little meta-gaming or DM knowledge about how many hp might be left you're often left guessing about whether the spell will do anything though. The argument that 'damage now is better than damage later' works against this spell; you're often better waiting a round to cast it while the party softens up and/ or removes a few enemies that might just wake the others.

In more combat situations when I compare to something like burning hands or thunderwave, I'm more confident that those other spells will actually do something in more situations. Creatures are very unlikely to be immune to those blasty 1st level spells where undead are a pretty common staple of level 1 and 2 play. Unlike Sleep it's better to cast blast spells in round 1, and even if I don't do enough damage to kill anything, the martials will have a much easier time finishing off enemies if they're softened up.

It isn't that Sleep is bad; I tend to think it doesn't work out to be the 'I win' button as much as is assumed by some.

[Gignere]

This is often how we've ended up using the spell, taking prisoners or bypassing guards, sometimes after inflicting a little damage. The fact is that without a little meta-gaming or DM knowledge about how many hp might be left you're often left guessing about whether the spell will do anything though. The argument that 'damage now is better than damage later' works against this spell; you're often better waiting a round to cast it while the party softens up and/ or removes a few enemies that might just wake the others.

In more combat situations when I compare to something like burning hands or thunderwave, I'm more confident that those other spells will actually do something in more situations. Creatures are very unlikely to be immune to those blasty 1st level spells where undead are a pretty common staple of level 1 and 2 play. Unlike Sleep it's better to cast blast spells in round 1, and even if I don't do enough damage to kill anything, the martials will have a much easier time finishing off enemies if they're softened up.

It isn't that Sleep is bad; I tend to think it doesn't work out to be the 'I win' button as much as is assumed by some.

What blast spell are you casting? There is only 2 choice, 3 if you count ice knife. 1 of them (burning hands) gets you close to the enemy, the other 1 requires you to be in melee range (Thunderwave). Both things you probably don’t want to do as a caster at level 1.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

What blast spell are you casting? There is only 2 choice, 3 if you count ice knife. 1 of them (burning hands) gets you close to the enemy, the other 1 requires you to be in melee range (Thunderwave). Both things you probably don’t want to do as a caster at level 1.

If you have sleep as a level 1 sorcerer, chances are decent I think that you don't have burning hands or ice knife. You might have thunderwave as an oh-shirt button. Bards, of course, only get thunderwave as a blasting option, though the addition of color spray gives them a competing AE control option.

[Sigreid]

It can be a great follow up to a fireball that knocks their HP down to the right level for sleep to finish them off. it's also great if you don't actually want to kill or harm an opponent for some reason. Say it's a town guard and you're not a sociopath in game. Or alternately, if you are a sociopath in game and want to ruin a guard's life by having him get caught sleeping on the job.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

What blast spell are you casting? There is only 2 choice, 3 if you count ice knife. 1 of them (burning hands) gets you close to the enemy, the other 1 requires you to be in melee range (Thunderwave). Both things you probably don’t want to do as a caster at level 1.

Agreed you might not want to be in melee, but those things aren't always (often?) in player control. I don't really agree with 'logic' that says Spell X is bad because you're likely casting it where you don't want to be; that happens. I remember getting jumped by a bunch of undead in the Death House and rolled well with my Dragon Sorc with burning hands. I think I killed 3 outright and wounded 1 or 2 others. Glad I had that spell. I used Thunderwave a while ago in late tier 1/ early tier 2 when I got grappled by one baddie and had a couple of buddies around. In neither case would Sleep have done anything.

I'm not really arguing Sleep is bad; I just think it's somewhat more situational that it's made out to be. To me it's strength is in easy/ moderate encounters where the goal is stealth as opposed to a big fire fight.

[Witty Username]

Which makes it worse. But I'm on the side that believes DMs shouldn't overuse the trick of "a shakes b shakes c, shakes..." and having the last one attack, even though the rules do allow for that. Not only is it unfun, it breaks verisimilitude. Combat turns are supposed to put order into the chaos of everyone doing things at once in a six-second time span; doing things that are necessarily sequential like this kinda breaks that, specially if we're talking about creatures on the same initiative.

I usually run it as monsters that share initiative have to move and act simultaneously, (mostly because ain't nobody got time for the alternative). the idea that one can shake another awake then the other can go breaks the idea of shared initiative for me.

So how I would do, if you say have four goblins, two are asleep, goblins turn, the two awake goblins wake the sleeping goblins, end turn.
--
recall that we are comparing this to damage spells, which, even magic missile, which all have the capacity to not effect a combat at all, due to how damage works. a spell that can rob a turn from an entire group of enemies is going to always be better than a spell that's best case is removing a single enemy from combat.

There is a reason a lot of blasting builds recommend thunderwave at early levels for similar reasons. Sleep is a similar idea, but without a saving throw and better range, in exchange that it only works at the low level group fights (common tier 1 occurrences).


It can be a great follow up to a fireball that knocks their HP down to the right level for sleep to finish them off. it's also great if you don't actually want to kill or harm an opponent for some reason. Say it's a town guard and you're not a sociopath in game. Or alternately, if you are a sociopath in game and want to ruin a guard's life by having him get caught sleeping on the job.
Fair, but at least for me, I am a more hypnotic pattern and sleet storm kinda wizard, and I personally find Tasha's hideous laughter is usually more effective for disabling threats at that level.
Not sure if better or worse though, so much as difference in combat doctrine.

[Zuras]

I’m at a bit of a loss as to who is over-rating Sleep. I don’t think anyone thinks it’s amazingly game-breaking in all situations, but as 5e 1st level spells go it’s quite solid. It’s encounter-ending about a third of the time, useful another third, but *can* be totally useless.

The important thing to note is that the times it shines are the situations you’re most likely to get a low-level party TPKed—lots of weak enemies. I can’t think of a time where I’ve killed multiple low level PCs as a DM with a single high CR monster they were *intended* to fight in 5e, but plenty of times the dice go badly against bunches of rats, kobolds or goblins.

If Absorb Elements, Shield and Silvery Barbs are doing serious work for you at 2nd level, you’re playing a very odd game of D&D. Those are all very good spells once you’re higher level and cramming additional actions into a round (by using your reaction to nullify an enemy action) is an effective use of a spell slot. At 2nd level Shield is burning 1/3 of your long rest resources for one round of improved AC. If that’s a good use of a full caster’s resources, you’re seeing different encounters from the official low level adventures I own.

Sleep could definitely be over-rated, but that would be purely a matter of your table having no interest in super low level play and rushing through levels 1&2. If you’re playing full-on zero to hero 5e, as opposed to “skip to the good part” 5e, it’s awesome. If not, then sure, it might be a waste of a spell pick, especially for Wizards, who have more spells to choose from and don’t get to swap them out later (which seems to be where this argument is coming from, given the spell list comparisons).

[Eldariel]

Fair, but at least for me, I am a more hypnotic pattern and sleet storm kinda wizard, and I personally find Tasha's hideous laughter is usually more effective for disabling threats at that level.
Not sure if better or worse though, so much as difference in combat doctrine.

One big thing to remember is that Sleep has no Concentration so you can certainly Hypnotic Pattern and Sleep just fine; Hideous Laughter, not so much.

[Zuras]

In more combat situations when I compare to something like burning hands or thunderwave, I'm more confident that those other spells will actually do something in more situations. Creatures are very unlikely to be immune to those blasty 1st level spells where undead are a pretty common staple of level 1 and 2 play. Unlike Sleep it's better to cast blast spells in round 1, and even if I don't do enough damage to kill anything, the martials will have a much easier time finishing off enemies if they're softened up.

It isn't that Sleep is bad; I tend to think it doesn't work out to be the 'I win' button as much as is assumed by some.

In my experience Thunderwave and Burning Hands at 1st and 2nd level mostly seem to tempt wizards and sorcerers into making poor tactical choices to get a worthwhile number of targets into the area. As far as being ineffective against undead, sure, but why is that a consideration? It’s not like Thunderwave or Burning Hands are great against zombies either—other classes like clerics have much better tools in their toolkit for fighting undead.

Normally it’s far more interesting to have a mix of situationally useful spells than only ones that are always mediocre. Magic Missile is fine, but if it’s always your first choice for how to use your limited slots, you’re leaving a lot of power on the table.

[Jophiel]

Just an aside -- the spell just makes you fall unconscious. DM discretion here, but the way I think of it, it doesn't make you yawn, pull out a blankie and teddy bear, and lay down for a nap, so why would goblins et al spend an action waking up their comrades? (Unless they first spend an action to see if they're dead or not.)

That's a good point. If I'm running into combat and three of my companions just drop to the ground, I'm mostly likely to either fight for survival or flee, depending on circumstances. Stopping to see if my co-fighter is dead or napping or fully unconscious is likely a distant third. There might be circumstances where I'd "know" he's likely just asleep and can be awakened or maybe the fight is going well so I can afford to check his condition or it's my best friend and I value checking on his survival over staying alive myself, etc. But I don't know if "Goblin A shakes Goblin B awake" should be the default assumption.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I’m at a bit of a loss as to who is over-rating Sleep. I don’t think anyone thinks it’s amazingly game-breaking in all situations, but as 5e 1st level spells go it’s quite solid. It’s encounter-ending about a third of the time, useful another third, but *can* be totally useless.

The important thing to note is that the times it shines are the situations you’re most likely to get a low-level party TPKed—lots of weak enemies. I can’t think of a time where I’ve killed multiple low level PCs as a DM with a single high CR monster they were *intended* to fight in 5e, but plenty of times the dice go badly against bunches of rats, kobolds or goblins.

If Absorb Elements, Shield and Silvery Barbs are doing serious work for you at 2nd level, you’re playing a very odd game of D&D. Those are all very good spells once you’re higher level and cramming additional actions into a round (by using your reaction to nullify an enemy action) is an effective use of a spell slot. At 2nd level Shield is burning 1/3 of your long rest resources for one round of improved AC. If that’s a good use of a full caster’s resources, you’re seeing different encounters from the official low level adventures I own.

Sleep could definitely be over-rated, but that would be purely a matter of your table having no interest in super low level play and rushing through levels 1&2. If you’re playing full-on zero to hero 5e, as opposed to “skip to the good part” 5e, it’s awesome. If not, then sure, it might be a waste of a spell pick, especially for Wizards, who have more spells to choose from and don’t get to swap them out later (which seems to be where this argument is coming from, given the spell list comparisons).

I guess the overrating from my point of view is from a couple of claims. When I hear things like: it's good because more 'damage' now than later, that doesn't jive with my experience. It's often better later on in a fight, which diminishes it's impact. The second big one is a certain amount of metagaming (which may or may not be accurate) required to assess how impactful the spell will actually be. If your guestimation is off the spell may do nothing; in fact it may stand no chance of doing anything. The published stat blocks are based on average hp for generic monsters, and goblins may not even be standard goblins. Heck we've had a couple of cases where the spell has been cast against undead that haven't looked like undead.

I think it's a solid spell, just some of the claims seem to overstate how broadly this can be used. And in the first couple of levels you only have a couple of spells, so they need to have broad application.

[Sigreid]

I usually run it as monsters that share initiative have to move and act simultaneously, (mostly because ain't nobody got time for the alternative). the idea that one can shake another awake then the other can go breaks the idea of shared initiative for me.

So how I would do, if you say have four goblins, two are asleep, goblins turn, the two awake goblins wake the sleeping goblins, end turn.
--
recall that we are comparing this to damage spells, which, even magic missile, which all have the capacity to not effect a combat at all, due to how damage works. a spell that can rob a turn from an entire group of enemies is going to always be better than a spell that's best case is removing a single enemy from combat.

There is a reason a lot of blasting builds recommend thunderwave at early levels for similar reasons. Sleep is a similar idea, but without a saving throw and better range, in exchange that it only works at the low level group fights (common tier 1 occurrences).


Fair, but at least for me, I am a more hypnotic pattern and sleet storm kinda wizard, and I personally find Tasha's hideous laughter is usually more effective for disabling threats at that level.
Not sure if better or worse though, so much as difference in combat doctrine.

But, to potentially finish the fight with 4+ mobs that survived a fireball at the cost of 1 measly first level slot?

[Frogreaver]

But, to potentially finish the fight with 4+ mobs that survived a fireball at the cost of 1 measly first level slot?

It's not just about proposing a situation where sleep could be great with 100% situation details, you also need to justify either how you would have those details as a player or how you would have arrived at the decision to use sleep based on things you do know. That's a hard hurdle to climb IMO.

There is a large opportunity cost to using sleep without perfect knowledge of enemy hp. Without that knowledge it has a large chance of being used in moments where it will have no impact, nor even a chance of having an impact, wasting both a slot and an action. This means unless you have knowledge of enemy hp you're not going to even attempt this tactic because you are generally going to get it wrong much more often than right. Thus, the only time this strategy makes sense is when you know the enemy hp - which is something that can be learned in game to an extent. If you face enough of similar enemies you probably can deduce their likely hp, but that's a huge caveat on the usefulness of this proposed tactic, making it's nicheness even more obvious than it alraedy was.


I guess the overrating from my point of view is from a couple of claims. When I hear things like: it's good because more 'damage' now than later, that doesn't jive with my experience. It's often better later on in a fight, which diminishes it's impact. The second big one is a certain amount of metagaming (which may or may not be accurate) required to assess how impactful the spell will actually be. If your guestimation is off the spell may do nothing; in fact it may stand no chance of doing anything. The published stat blocks are based on average hp for generic monsters, and goblins may not even be standard goblins. Heck we've had a couple of cases where the spell has been cast against undead that haven't looked like undead.

I think it's a solid spell, just some of the claims seem to overstate how broadly this can be used. And in the first couple of levels you only have a couple of spells, so they need to have broad application.

This is my perspective as well, though you said it much better than I.

[Witty Username]

One big thing to remember is that Sleep has no Concentration so you can certainly Hypnotic Pattern and Sleep just fine; Hideous Laughter, not so much.

That is what grease is for,
well kinda, my thoughts is more that hypnotic pattern is for groups, laughter is for single enemies, sleep doesn't really work at those levels for me most enemies are too big or too numerous for it. Grease is an option to cause some chaos, but I generally consider casting multiple spells a fight to be a sign stuff has gone wrong.
Cleanup after a fireball is an option, but I tend to not take fireball (and when I do, I tend to take thunderwave in the spot sleep would be, since it has a similar function but is more in line with blaster).
--
Creature type identification was mentioned, from a verisimilitude standpoint, I feel undead, constructs and elves (the ones most likely immune to sleep) to be either well known in the case of elves or easy to identify in comparison to other creatures (made of bones, smells like rot, is only a suit of armor). I feel like sleep is more likely to fail do to the HP limit, which is pretty generous for 1st level threats, by 3rd level not so much.

Thunderwave is the obvious comparison here, it has some gains against skeletons and zombies, but more things have easy answers to it, like say goblins or kobolds are unlikely to deliberately come in range. and the damage is not great, a save for half is easily survivable. Its real gain is shelf life as damage and knock prone is always something, that being said, Its usually fine for 1st level, and says usable for builds that care about blasting.

The consensus is that sleep is good for the first few levels and not much later, baring some corner cases. That seems like the spell isn't overrated. It may be less effective at particular tables, but that is true of almost every spell.

[Willie the Duck]

I’m at a bit of a loss as to who is over-rating Sleep. I don’t think anyone thinks it’s amazingly game-breaking in all situations, but as 5e 1st level spells go it’s quite solid. It’s encounter-ending about a third of the time, useful another third, but *can* be totally useless.

Agreed. I'm not exactly hearing its' high praises sung from the rooftops much. At most, I tend to hear 'hey, sleep is actually useful again!' from people who grew up with it taking out 4-16 orcs or 2-8 hobgoblins (genuinely close to a low-level encounter-win-button at low levels). Otherwise, it generally seems like people treat it like one of the messy-middle spells which have uses, and you take if you think the situations where it shines will come up frequently.

[trtl]

I once cast 6 sleep spells in a level 1 session.

(first we were breaking out of jail, and I used both spell slots to put guards to sleep. Next day we were helping to defend a small village against the same bandits that captured us, the DM let me teach two magic dabblers one spell, so I taught them both sleep and we wiped out half the bandit army on the first round, fun times).

Obviously mileage may vary, but it's pretty clearly the numerically best "blast" spell at levels 1 and 2. Whether or not it's worth it to have a spell in your spellbook that you will never prepare again past level 4-5 depends on how long you expect to be low leveled, and how tough the encounters the DM sends your way are going to be.

[Zuras]

The consensus is that sleep is good for the first few levels and not much later, barring some corner cases. That seems like the spell isn't overrated. It may be less effective at particular tables, but that is true of almost every spell.

This is how the players I’ve played with see it. Who is playing with people who consider it some sort of miracle spell? I don’t doubt they’re out there, but in my experience those are the sort of players who don’t properly rate anything, and will over-rate whatever spell they’ve seen perform amazingly at the table recently.

Frogreaver argues that many players expect Sleep will accomplish far more than it does in practice. I certainly agree with that, but that’s true even for obviously top tier spells like Fireball, Spirit Guardians and Conjure Animals. I regularly run into wizards who think Shield will make them invulnerable and then wonder why the party can’t take a long rest after their first medium encounter, too. In the typical spell guide on the forum, however, Sleep is simply rated as a top tier spell in comparison to the other spells you can pick up at first level, usually with a warning that it falls off at higher levels and is quite weak by tier 2. That seems broadly correct to me, as Sleep has been an absolutely stellar spell for both of the campaigns where the PCs spent multiple sessions at below 3rd level (Dragon Heist and Wild Beyond the Witchlight) and otherwise solid but quickly obsolete.

Are we arguing that the consensus is somewhere else? I don’t have enough data to know if the last five people in Frogreaver’s kitchen overrate it or not. I also think it’s impossible to have an accurate conversation when we’re talking about the rating of a spell outside of a particular class. Sleep has far less competition on the Bard list than the Wizard list.

Sleep is almost never a bad choice for one of your first four bard spells. Some players might overrate it and delay swapping it out longer than they should, though. For a Wizard, however, it might not be a good choice, depending on how long your campaign will stay at low levels.

Of the first level spells in the game, though, it’s one of the most likely to deliver spectacular results on occasion, which would make it more prone to overrating than something consistent like Magic Missile, but I don’t think anyone’s rating it like Wall of Force or Simulacrum.

[Thunderous Mojo]

It's not just about proposing a situation where sleep could be great with 100% situation details, you also need to justify either how you would have those details as a player or how you would have arrived at the decision to use sleep based on things you do know. That's a hard hurdle to climb IMO.


Your own example with Magic Missile was premised off the player being aware that a goblin likely has 7 Hit Points.

The truest test of abilities and spells would be a game in which the players were unaware of how many Hit Points they have, (Hit point Total is Re-rolled each session by the DM, whom keeps track), players are also unaware of creatures AC, and the DM rolls and keeps track of damage, and players rely upon descriptions alone, to decide their actions.

(Note, Korvin Starmast has played in this sort of game).

This style of game would certainly undercut the ‘metagaming’ that takes place with the -5/+10 Feats.

In real life, it only takes one or two times for a brand new player to realize that using the Sleep Spell on Round 1 of a combat, is not the best way to use it.
This is not metagaming…it is learning.

[Frogreaver]

Your own example with Magic Missile was premised off the player being aware that a goblin likely has 7 Hit Points.

The truest test of abilities and spells would be a game in which the players were unaware of how many Hit Points they have, (Hit point Total is Re-rolled each session by the DM, whom keeps track), players are also unaware of creatures AC, and the DM rolls and keeps track of damage, and players rely upon descriptions alone, to decide their actions.

(Note, Korvin Starmast has played in this sort of game).

This style of game would certainly undercut the ‘metagaming’ that takes place with the -5/+10 Feats.

In real life, it only takes one or two times for a brand new player to realize that using the Sleep Spell on Round 1 of a combat, is not the best way to use it.
This is not metagaming…it is learning.

As you just noted - sleep is often bad to use round 1 of an encounter and so you need to justify why you used it in this particular encounter at the start. Magic missile in most circumstances is best to use at the start of an encounter. Thus I don’t need to justify using it in this particular encounter at the start as that’s it’s normal usage.

[Gignere]

As you just noted - sleep is often bad to use round 1 of an encounter and so you need to justify why you used it in this particular encounter at the start. Magic missile in most circumstances is best to use at the start of an encounter. Thus I don’t need to justify using it in this particular encounter at the start as that’s it’s normal usage.

No at levels 1-3 sleep as a first round cast is fantastic hell even at level 4 we had success with sleep as an opener because mixed CR encounters do happen quite often in 5e.

Unless you’re fighting undeads or constructs at levels 1-3 sleep as an opener is not a bad move for most encounters. Probably not with a boss fight though but magic missile as an opener is pretty damn weak. Especially if you’re fighting a bunch of low CR enemies. I will definitely not open with MM if there were more than 2 goblins at level 1.

I would cast sleep. MM is great after your team softens up a bunch of low CR critters and you can basically guarantee kill or have a high chance of doing so by splitting the missiles on different targets. However in this situation sleep serves pretty much the same purpose.

Against a higher CR creature I can see opening with MM. However, at all levels of play there are certainly more groups of lower CR encounters than there are high CR single targets encounters at least in my experience.

[Theodoxus]

There is a large opportunity cost to using sleep without perfect knowledge of enemy hp. Without that knowledge it has a large chance of being used in moments where it will have no impact, nor even a chance of having an impact, wasting both a slot and an action. This means unless you have knowledge of enemy hp you're not going to even attempt this tactic because you are generally going to get it wrong much more often than right. Thus, the only time this strategy makes sense is when you know the enemy hp - which is something that can be learned in game to an extent. If you face enough of similar enemies you probably can deduce their likely hp, but that's a huge caveat on the usefulness of this proposed tactic, making it's nicheness even more obvious than it already was.


I understand the sentiment, but I don't quite agree. If you're lucky enough to fireball a small crowd of 5 or 6 HD creatures, a 3rd level fireball won't often take them all out, but will soften them up considerably. Say your party of 4 5th level characters are facing a group of 7 4 HD creatures. The party wizard casts fireball, and rolls poorly, dealing 20 on a failed Dex save. It doesn't kill any of the critters, so the party is still outnumbered 7:4; in 5E, number superiority is king, so the party is probably in trouble. The other party members focus fire, hoping to eliminate one or two targets. Team monster goes and puts some hurt on the party. The wizard goes again, opting to go with sleep, as they don't want to blow their remaining 3rd level spell. On a good roll, sleep will drop 1 or 2 of these burnt critters. Lets say the party only managed to drop one the previous round, sleep takes out two more. Now the party is only facing 4 crispy critters, and action economy swiftly moves to their advantage, and they mop up the conscious creatures in a couple of rounds and then assassinate the rest in the remaining 8 rounds of sleepiness.

I don't think I've ever seen sleep be an all or nothing deal. Knocking down the number of active opponents is still a good thing.

[Frogreaver]

I understand the sentiment, but I don't quite agree. If you're lucky enough to fireball a small crowd of 5 or 6 HD creatures, a 3rd level fireball won't often take them all out, but will soften them up considerably. Say your party of 4 5th level characters are facing a group of 7 4 HD creatures. The party wizard casts fireball, and rolls poorly, dealing 20 on a failed Dex save. It doesn't kill any of the critters, so the party is still outnumbered 7:4; in 5E, number superiority is king, so the party is probably in trouble. The other party members focus fire, hoping to eliminate one or two targets. Team monster goes and puts some hurt on the party. The wizard goes again, opting to go with sleep, as they don't want to blow their remaining 3rd level spell. On a good roll, sleep will drop 1 or 2 of these burnt critters. Lets say the party only managed to drop one the previous round, sleep takes out two more. Now the party is only facing 4 crispy critters, and action economy swiftly moves to their advantage, and they mop up the conscious creatures in a couple of rounds and then assassinate the rest in the remaining 8 rounds of sleepiness.

I don't think I've ever seen sleep be an all or nothing deal. Knocking down the number of active opponents is still a good thing.

Now we are back to the wizard meta game knowing the hp of enemies. Every attempted counterpoint comes back to that and it’s a fundamentally bad assumption.

[Theodoxus]

Now we are back to the wizard meta game knowing the hp of enemies. Every attempted counterpoint comes back to that and it’s a fundamentally bad assumption.

How? I'm a 5th level adventurer. I've been murderhoboing for 5 levels now. I've seen goblins, orcs, firehawks, bandits, an owlbear. I've seen my friend Jaquin the fighter decapitate things with a single swing and larger tougher things take a few hewn chops with his axe. I've seen my other friend Sabre the rogue backstab things, and I've seen Boris the dwarven cleric fix things right back up from near dead.

I'm a wizard, I'm bloody brilliant. I'm observant. I've only been practicing with a fireball for a couple of days now, but I've been using shatter for a while. I know what things look like when they're hurt, they're bloodied, or on deaths door.

Just because functionally, something with 1 HP is just as functional in combat as something with 100 HP, doesn't mean they LOOK the same.

As a player, I frequently ask "how does so and so look?" Friend or foe, doesn't matter. The DM should be willing to say "Well, they're a little scraped up, but still defiant in the face of your power." or "Now that you take a beat to look, you realize they're on the verge of breaking morale and dashing away, or possibly dying."

You don't need to know specific numbers; but tossing a fireball into a group of creatures that then survive the volley, and then make it through focused fire from your team mates are pretty strong. OTOH, if after your fireball, each party member drops another, you can pretty safely assume that your sleep spell will be quite effective. YMMV.

[trtl]

Everything is metagaming if you squint hard enough.

Knowing that weakend creatures have more trouble shrugging of a sleep spell is a pretty reasonable in-game explanation for out-of-game knowledge.

[Frogreaver]

Everything is metagaming if you squint hard enough.

Knowing that weakend creatures have more trouble shrugging of a sleep spell is a pretty reasonable in-game explanation for out-of-game knowledge.

I’m not making that argument though. You’ve taken my position and changed it into something even I don’t agree with.

I’m not arguing that knowing sleep affects weakened creatures easier than non-weakened ones is metagaming. I think that’s a fair in game observation.

I’m arguing that using sleep on enemies just because they have been weakened to some arbitrary degree is a bad tactic unless one assumes you know their actual hp because being weakened some arbitrary degree doesn’t necessitate that sleep works on a given creature. In fact, most the time weakening an enemy by a given degree isn’t actually going to change whether sleep works.

[JNAProductions]

I’m not making that argument though. You’ve taken my position and changed it into something even I don’t agree with.

I’m not arguing that knowing sleep affects weakened creatures easier than non-weakened ones is metagaming. I think that’s a fair in game observation.

I’m arguing that using sleep on enemies just because they have been weakened to some arbitrary degree is a bad tactic unless one assumes you know their actual hp because being weakened some arbitrary degree doesn’t necessitate that sleep works on a given creature.

And Magic Missile won't one-shot a creature until it's at 2-5 HP per missile. Plus, it won't do anything at all to a mage with Shield.

[Frogreaver]

And Magic Missile won't one-shot a creature until it's at 2-5 HP per missile. Plus, it won't do anything at all to a mage with Shield.

Of course, but why does this matter?

[trtl]

I still honestly don't understand what you're trying to say, maybe giving you a different example will help? Is it metagaming if a paladin chooses not to use smite against a wounded creature?

[Frogreaver]

I still honestly don't understand what you're trying to say, maybe giving you a different example will help? Is it metagaming if a paladin chooses not to use smite against a wounded creature?

That is not metagaming. Note that the decision to smite wasn’t based on the creatures exact hp value and the Paladin very well could have been wrong and smiting would have killed the creature and not smiting would not.

The sleep examples being given are not like this. They all assume sleep is only ever used when it will work, even though the player would need to know hp values for this to happen.

[Theodoxus]

I still honestly don't understand what you're trying to say, maybe giving you a different example will help? Is it metagaming if a paladin chooses not to use smite against a wounded creature?

As a corollary, is it metagaming to for a character to know of and be worried about wasted damage? If John the player of Jaquin assumes a goblin has 7 HP, and he saw Sabre roll a 5 to damage it, should John blow action surge if his misses with his first attack? Jaquin, in universe might, not knowing how hurt the goblin actually is, or how much damage it might inflict... but John has to make some calculus - it's a game, not live combat in Sudan.


The sleep examples being given are not like this. They all assume sleep is only ever used when it will work, even though the player would need to know hp values for this to happen.

That's not at all what I've ever said. 1) there's no guaranteed amount of HP you'll affect, it's possible to get 8 or 10 points total, so it's possible you'll never affect anything. 2) Even with a decent roll, you might only be affecting 1 or 2 creatures. However, taking out a few (even 1) creatures from the middle of a fight can be quite handy and ends the encounter faster with less trauma to the adventuring party. That has always been my point when using it on weakened creatures. It's generally not an 'i Win' button, but more of an "I've lessened the number of things actively trying to kill us, with a spare 1st level spell".

[Frogreaver]

As a corollary, is it metagaming to for a character to know of and be worried about wasted damage? If John the player of Jaquin assumes a goblin has 7 HP, and he saw Sabre roll a 5 to damage it, should John blow action surge if his misses with his first attack? Jaquin, in universe might, not knowing how hurt the goblin actually is, or how much damage it might inflict... but John has to make some calculus - it's a game, not live combat in Sudan.

IMO, it’s not about wasted damage, it’s about using the ‘resource’. An in universe PC would have some concerns about using abilities up in situations such that the same goal might be achieved without.

Nor do I have any problem with decision making in general - and even playing such that you know all enemy statblocks isn’t a problem if that’s what your table wants to do, but it is a problem dragging that assumption into optimization discussions. IMO.

[trtl]

That is not metagaming. Note that the decision to smite wasn’t based on the creatures exact hp value and the Paladin very well could have been wrong and smiting would have killed the creature and not smiting would not.

The sleep examples being given are not like this. They all assume sleep is only ever used when it will work, even though the player would need to know hp values for this to happen.

But deciding not to smite IS based on knowing HP (at least roughly, but the same can be said for sleep) values. If the DM tells me "the goblins looks like they are barely standing" and I'm a paladin, then I don't smite, if he says the same thing and I'm a wizard, I cast sleep.

In my eyes these two situations are functionally the same and I'm have trouble seeing where you are finding a difference.

[Snails]

I’m arguing that using sleep on enemies just because they have been weakened to some arbitrary degree is a bad tactic unless one assumes you know their actual hp because being weakened some arbitrary degree doesn’t necessitate that sleep works on a given creature. In fact, most the time weakening an enemy by a given degree isn’t actually going to change whether sleep works.

Really?

DM: "The Fireball catches 7 gnolls. 3 scream and die. 3 are more nimble and are badly wounded. The gnoll captain grimaces from the painful flames, but looks angry."

Is it "metagaming" for the DM to add color to his description so that the player might perceive those gnoll soldiers who died as the ones who failed their save and the ones who lived are those that made their save? Is it "metagaming" for the Bard's player to recognize that if these 6 gnoll soldiers started at similar HP, now is a good time to upcast Sleep and then dogpile the captain?

Is it "metagaming" to understand that Magic Missile is only a mediocre alternative to Sleep here, because a wounded gnoll might survive 2 missiles so there is not an obvious efficient distribution? Should a Good Player uncompromisingly "not metagame" and either spread his Magic Missiles around evenly or put them all on one target?

[Frogreaver]

But deciding not to smite IS based on knowing HP (at least roughly, but the same can be said for sleep) values.

No. One can choose to smite at the start of an encounter without knowing enemy hp and most likely that smite added value (there are a very few circumstances where it won't). It may have increased your chance of a 1 hit kill from X% to 100%, it may have just further decreased the enemies hp, but regardless, if you use it like this you don't need to know enemy hp and it will have an effect.


If the DM tells me "the goblins looks like they are barely standing" and I'm a paladin, then I don't smite, if he says the same thing and I'm a wizard, I cast sleep.

DM colour triggering you to think now would be a good time is great! That's not metagaming and something i'm very much for, but it's not something that can be relied on. It's very table dependent.


In my eyes these two situations are functionally the same and I'm have trouble seeing where you are finding a difference.

Then please listen to me when I explain why they aren't.


Really?

DM: "The Fireball catches 7 gnolls. 3 scream and die. 3 are more nimble and are badly wounded. The gnoll captain grimaces from the painful flames, but looks angry."

As just noted, I'm all good with the DM providing colour that provides information you can make use of.


Is it "metagaming" for the DM to add color to his description so that the player might perceive those gnoll soldiers who died as the ones who failed their save and the ones who lived are those that made their save? Is it "metagaming" for the Bard's player to recognize that if these 6 gnoll soldiers started at similar HP, now is a good time to upcast Sleep and then dogpile the captain?

No to both. At least people are finally starting to get past the metagaming aspect and provide situations (albeit much more niche) where you can estimate enemy hp well enough to choose a good moment to use sleep.


Is it "metagaming" to understand that Magic Missile is only a mediocre alternative to Sleep here, because a wounded gnoll might survive 2 missiles so there is not an obvious efficient distribution? Should a Good Player uncompromisingly "not metagame" and either spread his Magic Missiles around evenly or put them all on one target?

In that particular niche situation, sleep is slightly better. Providing a carefully calibrated scenario to show it's sometimes better is pointless - that's already a concession. Sleep is sometimes better, it's just the situations where it is going to be and you as the player will be aware of it being are so low that it's not actually a counter to the point I'm making - that it's not as good as claimed by most.

[trtl]

Alright, I'm throwing in the towel, as I must be too dense to understand what you're trying to say.

At any rate, I'll continue to use sleep at lower levels, because it's one of my favorite spells.

[Sigreid]

It's not just about proposing a situation where sleep could be great with 100% situation details, you also need to justify either how you would have those details as a player or how you would have arrived at the decision to use sleep based on things you do know. That's a hard hurdle to climb IMO.



Simple, I'd guess based on what happened to the other opponents. Look, I'm not claiming it's the ultimate spell that belongs in everyone's spell list or prepped spells. I just don't think it's over rated.

[SharkForce]

I’m not making that argument though. You’ve taken my position and changed it into something even I don’t agree with.

I’m not arguing that knowing sleep affects weakened creatures easier than non-weakened ones is metagaming. I think that’s a fair in game observation.

I’m arguing that using sleep on enemies just because they have been weakened to some arbitrary degree is a bad tactic unless one assumes you know their actual hp because being weakened some arbitrary degree doesn’t necessitate that sleep works on a given creature. In fact, most the time weakening an enemy by a given degree isn’t actually going to change whether sleep works.

It is an observable property of sleep that enemies with less ability to withstand damage, including both enemies that are naturally vulnerable and enemies that have been weakened by taking damage, are more susceptible to the spell.

If this is a brand-new, recently-discovered spell in your campaign setting, then sure it is metagaming to know that the spell works better after the target has been weakened to some arbitrary degree. If it is just a standard spell that has been used by various spellcasters for decades, centuries, or even millennia, then it is perfectly reasonable to assume that people know sleep works better on enemies with low HP (though naturally they wouldn't *call* it low HP). If a player sees a bunch of badly-wounded gnolls and recognizes that sleep is more likely to be effective, I don't see how that is metagaming. I mean, I guess if you actually *tell* them the precise number of hit points the gnolls each have left, maybe, but... if you don't want your players to metagame with that information, don't *tell* them that information. You can even give random or semi-random HP values to the gnolls if you really want (I mean, if in your D&D universe, every single gnoll is exactly as hard to kill as every other gnoll, that's hardly the *player's* fault now is it? I can understand not wanting to model each gnoll having slightly different damage or initiative or saving throws, but you *already* have to track their HP individually).

[Frogreaver]

It is an observable property of sleep that enemies with less ability to withstand damage, including both enemies that are naturally vulnerable and enemies that have been weakened by taking damage, are more susceptible to the spell.

I don't dispute this, nor do I refer to this as metagaming.


If this is a brand-new, recently-discovered spell in your campaign setting, then sure it is metagaming to know that the spell works better after the target has been weakened to some arbitrary degree. If it is just a standard spell that has been used by various spellcasters for decades, centuries, or even millennia, then it is perfectly reasonable to assume that people know sleep works better on enemies with low HP (though naturally they wouldn't *call* it low HP). If a player sees a bunch of badly-wounded gnolls and recognizes that sleep is more likely to be effective, I don't see how that is metagaming.

As I've repeatedly said now, I have no problem with the concept that for a given enemy, the more injured it is the more likely sleep will effect it. It's the notion that being injured alone doesn't reveal that sleep even has a chance of doing anything. That's still a major hurdle and maybe an example will help.

Let's make up a new enemy. Like call it a Ghokanab. The DM describes a bunch of them as badly wounded, having obvious wounds from what you can only assume was a previous encounter that day. You go for sleep. It does nothing because unknown to you, Ghokanab's have 100 hp and the badly injured ones the DM describes have 30 remaining.

That's the hurdle that choosing to use sleep faces. For every group of injured Gnolls it might work well on, there's 10x other encounters with badly injured creatures that it might not even work on at all - and without metagaming you have no idea which particular scenario you are in.

[GooeyChewie]

Simple, I'd guess based on what happened to the other opponents. Look, I'm not claiming it's the ultimate spell that belongs in everyone's spell list or prepped spells. I just don't think it's over rated.

I think the question then is, how is Sleep rated? I got the impression that it was generally rated as being an ultimate spell that belongs in everyone's spell list or prepped spells, at least at low levels. So while I agree with you that it isn't that ultimate spell, in my mind the fact that it isn't that powerful means it is overrated.

[InvisibleBison]

That's the hurdle that choosing to use sleep faces. For every group of injured Gnolls it might work well on, there's 10x other encounters with badly injured creatures that it might not even work on at all - and without metagaming you have no idea which particular scenario you are in.

This is not quite correct. It's true that you can't know whether or not it's a good idea to use sleep against a given group of enemies without having some familiarity with how tough they are, but it's not true that the only way to gain that familiarity is through metagaming. Your character could have faced them before, either earlier in the game or in their backstory, or they could have simply learned about how tough they are through listening to stories about adventurers or reading books of monster lore or various other in-character methods.

[Theodoxus]

I think the question then is, how is Sleep rated? I got the impression that it was generally rated as being an ultimate spell that belongs in everyone's spell list or prepped spells, at least at low levels. So while I agree with you that it isn't that ultimate spell, in my mind the fact that it isn't that powerful means it is overrated.

To be completely honest, I've only used sleep when playing Solasta. It's great on goblins. It's great on veterans or orcs who just ate a fireball. I enjoy using it with warlocks, since you can pretty much short rest nearly anywhere... In a regular table top game, I've seen it used to modest effect in AL, but never in a standard game. Then again, I've only ever seen arcanists played in AL, outside of the occasional warlock. So... I've never had a sense that it was OP or even P.

Now that I think about it, the first time I ever used sleep was in the old Pool of Radiance CRP... though 2Es version of sleep was quite a bit different, but one shotting sleeping foes has always been fun.

[JNAProductions]

I think the question then is, how is Sleep rated? I got the impression that it was generally rated as being an ultimate spell that belongs in everyone's spell list or prepped spells, at least at low levels. So while I agree with you that it isn't that ultimate spell, in my mind the fact that it isn't that powerful means it is overrated.

I always got the message that “Sleep is a great tool in T1 that falls off by the time T2 rolls around.”

Whether or not it’s worth taking is dependent on how long and how dangerous your T1 is, and how easily you can find new spells or swap it out.

[Frogreaver]

I think the question then is, how is Sleep rated? I got the impression that it was generally rated as being an ultimate spell that belongs in everyone's spell list or prepped spells, at least at low levels. So while I agree with you that it isn't that ultimate spell, in my mind the fact that it isn't that powerful means it is overrated.

Exactly this!

[Thunderous Mojo]

I think the question then is, how is Sleep rated? I got the impression that it was generally rated as being an ultimate spell that belongs in everyone's spell list or prepped spells, at least at low levels. So while I agree with you that it isn't that ultimate spell, in my mind the fact that it isn't that powerful means it is overrated.

Is there a Rotten Tomatoes website that aggregates spell reviews?

This website for example doesn’t even rank Sleep in there top twenty 1st level spells. https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-useful-1st-level-spells/

This website also does rank the Sleep spell as a top 5 spell:
https://mythcreants.com/blog/the-five-best-1st-level-spells-of-dd-5e/

This website ranks Sleep as ‘Fantastic’ along with other spells.
https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/wizard/spells/

The reason why rpgbot finds Sleep to be ‘Fantastic’:
“ At an average of 22.5 hp worth of creatures, you won’t be able to affect many creatures while they’re at full hit points, but you can wait to wear down their hit points before finishing them off with Sleep. Sleep notably doesn’t require a saving throw, making it a powerful and reliable way to incapacitate enemies with relatively few hit points even at high levels.”

All in All, the ‘Overrated’ component of this conversation strikes me as a giant Strawman, and Clickbait.

It might possibly be the most overrated Strawman eveeerrrr.🃏
(Meant in the spirit of playfulness: evaluating the merits and demerits of the Sleep spell is useful, and fun)

[Frogreaver]

Is there a Rotten Tomatoes website that aggregates spell reviews?

This website for example doesn’t even rank Sleep in there top twenty 1st level spells. https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-useful-1st-level-spells/

This website also does rank the Sleep spell as a top 5 spell:
https://mythcreants.com/blog/the-five-best-1st-level-spells-of-dd-5e/

This website ranks Sleep as ‘Fantastic’ along with other spells.
https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/wizard/spells/

The reason why rpgbot finds Sleep to be ‘Fantastic’:
“ At an average of 22.5 hp worth of creatures, you won’t be able to affect many creatures while they’re at full hit points, but you can wait to wear down their hit points before finishing them off with Sleep. Sleep notably doesn’t require a saving throw, making it a powerful and reliable way to incapacitate enemies with relatively few hit points even at high levels.”

All in All, the ‘Overrated’ component of this conversation strikes me as a giant Strawman, and Clickbait.

It might possibly be the most overrated Strawman eveeerrrr.🃏
(Meant in the spirit of playfulness: evaluating the merits and demerits of the Sleep spell is useful, and fun)

You are quoting sources that aren't even talking about sleep in T1...

[SharkForce]

I don't dispute this, nor do I refer to this as metagaming.



As I've repeatedly said now, I have no problem with the concept that for a given enemy, the more injured it is the more likely sleep will effect it. It's the notion that being injured alone doesn't reveal that sleep even has a chance of doing anything. That's still a major hurdle and maybe an example will help.

Let's make up a new enemy. Like call it a Ghokanab. The DM describes a bunch of them as badly wounded, having obvious wounds from what you can only assume was a previous encounter that day. You go for sleep. It does nothing because unknown to you, Ghokanab's have 100 hp and the badly injured ones the DM describes have 30 remaining.

That's the hurdle that choosing to use sleep faces. For every group of injured Gnolls it might work well on, there's 10x other encounters with badly injured creatures that it might not even work on at all - and without metagaming you have no idea which particular scenario you are in.

If you're actually seeing a lot of praise for the spell at high levels, then yeah, I guess in that case it's overrated for the people you're hearing that from.

In my experience, 95% of the praise for sleep revolves around use at the very low levels, then the occasional niche use for non-lethal combat magic and such... something you might prepare for a special occasion or just because you're walking around a city and you feel that killing dozens of people with a cone of cold *might* not make the local authorities too happy with you, even if you can technically claim self-defence.

The only high-level spellcaster I might expect to actually choose to keep sleep around is if your warlock gets it from their patron... and then it's mainly because with up to 15 spells known and only a few spell slots, at some point it makes more sense to grab something that is high on your list of niche spells than to grab whatever is 13th-place on your general-purpose spells.

[Thunderous Mojo]

You are quoting sources that aren't even talking about sleep in T1...

It is the first 3 options from a Google search. One is a list of what the author considers the most useful 1st level spells…Sleep is not included.

The other is RPG.net’s ranking of Wizard spells.

The last is someone’s list of the five best 1st level spells…again Sleep is not on it.

If you really and truly would rather prefer to discuss the claim of Sleep being overrated, (as opposed to just talking about Sleep itself)….it would probably make sense, for you Frogreaver, to first establish that a preponderance of opinion considers Sleep to be S Tier.

I think it might have been possible that such an opinion might have existed at 5E’s release. I would imagine spells that have been published after the PHB might have altered spell ranking lists.

[rel]

I rate sleep higher than magic missile. But I'm probably biased, since I don't generally take damage dealing spells. My default first level wizard combat spells are grease, silent image, and sleep. And my cantrips would be mage hand, minor image, and prestidigitation.

[SharkForce]

I rate sleep higher than magic missile. But I'm probably biased, since I don't generally take damage dealing spells. My default first level wizard combat spells are grease, silent image, and sleep. And my cantrips would be mage hand, minor image, and prestidigitation.

To be honest, I find it slightly amusing that magic missile is being proposed as the superior option to sleep because eventually monsters have so many HP that sleep will typically do nothing.

From my perspective, by the time sleep really starts falling off, magic missile has started falling off too. Oh, there's maybe a few more levels to go, but HP values get so inflated in 5e compared to my 2nd AD&D group that I play in that the 10.5 average damage from magic missile may still be arguably worth the spell slot, but isn't particularly worth the action spent.

I mean, sure, I get it, ultra-reliable damage, that's nice... but a fairly straightforward damage build at level 5 can pretty reliably dish out around 10.5 or more average damage per round *without* needing a spell slot. And I don't just mean polearm master builds, either. Something as simple as a TWF rogue with no feats can probably pull it off (2 attacks per round, figure around 60% hit rate for the 1d6 + 2d6 +4 damage plus around 85% to land the 3d6 sneak attack damage is *substantially* higher, in the mid-high teens if I'm not mistaken). Or a fairly basic eldritch blast warlock with agonizing blast and hex (60% hit rate is around 15.6 damage). Or a barbarian with a greatsword (11 average damage, 2 attacks per round, figure they hit around 60% of the time and pretend crits don't exist, that's 13.2 even if they don't take advantage on their attack). At level 1-3, the reliable hit does mean it is at least likely to out-perform *most* damage builds (I think the TWF rogue *still* does more on average but is admittedly not ranged), but not exactly by a large margin. Certainly not for someone spending what counts as a major resource at level 1.

Meanwhile, a quick scan of CR 4-5 monsters suggests that HP tends to range from as low as mid 70s to mid 120s. And sure, we can compare groups of smaller monsters since a single large creature is hardly the only way to fill out a level 5 encounter, but at that point if you're facing half a dozen CR 1 monsters they're still going to total well over 100 HP combined.

So really, *Magic Missile* is the option people present for better scaling while starting off strong? Really? I mean, if you can convince your GM that evocation wizard and hexblade multiclass stunt works in their games, sure, but by default, in my opinion, I would not be holding up magic missile as the gold standard of a spell that scales. At least, not since the time 3rd edition came out and HP values went through the roof.

I'd much rather have sleep at low levels than magic missile, and at high levels, I probably don't really want either of them (but if you *forced* me to pick one of them, it would probably still be sleep because I think the niche of a non-lethal hard CC spell that works on low-HP targets without concentration is more likely to come up than for me to have an urgent need to deal a tiny amount of very reliable damage).

Sure, you might be fighting undead, and then sleep isn't useful at all. But 2/day finishing off a half-destroyed skeleton is not exactly awe-inspiring either.

[Theodoxus]

Yeah, I think the better comparison is color spray. Though I suspect the 1 round duration is considered more detrimental.

[Segev]

Yeah, I think the better comparison is color spray. Though I suspect the 1 round duration is considered more detrimental.

Color spray is complete garbage because it inflicts an inferior condition at a worse range and with an abysmal duration. I can think of very few scenarios where somebody who has sleep prepared/known would think, "Man, color spray would be the better option to cast here." Most of those scenarios involve undead, which are immune to sleep per the spell itself, and even then, I think I'd rather have sword burst and use that than have or cast color spray.

[Frogreaver]

It is the first 3 options from a Google search. One is a list of what the author considers the most useful 1st level spells…Sleep is not included.

The other is RPG.net’s ranking of Wizard spells.

The last is someone’s list of the five best 1st level spells…again Sleep is not on it.

If you really and truly would rather prefer to discuss the claim of Sleep being overrated, (as opposed to just talking about Sleep itself)….it would probably make sense, for you Frogreaver, to first establish that a preponderance of opinion considers Sleep to be S Tier.

I think it might have been possible that such an opinion might have existed at 5E’s release. I would imagine spells that have been published after the PHB might have altered spell ranking lists.

You realize that rating sleep in the context of the whole game will get different answers than rating it in the context of tier 1 only, right?

[JNAProductions]

Frogreaver, I still think the burden is on you to show that it's rated insanely well.

Perhaps it would help if you gave it a rating? As I've said earlier, I rate it as "Great for T1, falls off by T2 into niche status."
With obvious caveats like "If you're in an undead-focused campaign, it's not good even in T1 due to immunities."

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

You realize that eating sleep in the context of the whole game will get different answers than rating it in the context of tier 1 only, right?

Probably. But two of the three classes that get it on their spell list can swap it out whenever they level up. Sure, it's a bad spell in tier 2. If taking sleep meant it was on your list in tier 2, that might mean something. But that's only true for wizards, and they can expand their list with scrolls anyway.

[Frogreaver]

Frogreaver, I still think the burden is on you to show that it's rated insanely well.

Okay, but I don't feel I have any such burden.

I will go grab some low hanging fruit though. Quotes being added below. I've added all I plan to.


I think the question then is, how is Sleep rated? I got the impression that it was generally rated as being an ultimate spell that belongs in everyone's spell list or prepped spells, at least at low levels. So while I agree with you that it isn't that ultimate spell, in my mind the fact that it isn't that powerful means it is overrated.


Casters only get 2 slots a long rest at level 1, with the exception of Warlock which gets 1 per short rest.

Sleep is good for ending encounters, but that's 2 encounters. And good damage dealers are still needed to close the fight.


Definitely not overrated in tier 1. I’ve used it to totally shutdown encounters. It may only work on 2 out of the 4 goblins/giant rats/kobolds but that also means the rest of your team only needs 1 round to end it, instead of slogging it and potentially getting dropped.

Also even at level 4 there are encounters with mixed CRs like 2-3 lower CRs supporting a big CR and being able to knock out 2 potentially 3 lower level CRs with no chance of effecting the level 4 characters is strategically awesome.

Hell in one encounter by using it to knock enemies first weakened we ended up gaining a crucial ally that would not have been possible if we were murder hoboing everything.

It’s a great spell at tier 1, rapidly dropping down to an average spell at tier 2 and pretty useless by end of tier 2 and early tier 3.


Meanwhile, level 1 Sleep is level 1 Sleep but the enemies you face on Tier 1 will typically have far lower HP than those on higher level making the spell disproportionately efficient: you average 22,5 HP with the spell and can get 11+ with a 99+% probability. Meaning you get about four times the effect of an average martial turn from a caster casting Sleep (if you're fighting Goblins for instance, you'll get an average of 3 Goblins downed while a martial is about 40-60% to kill one). Of course, this depends from enemy to enemy; Entangle, Thunderwave, etc. are still good but not usually as good as Sleep.

However, that's not only four times the effect. Removing enemies from battle earlier reduces enemy actions meaning the party is targeted by fewer enemy actions and thus is less likely to be injured. You can also hit hidden enemies at no penalties, and your action has no meaningful fail chance (the probability of rolling low enough to not get even one target is comparable to missing a target with AC lower than your hit bonus at advantage). Therefore, every encounter where you can cast the spell you'll win easily compared to what you'd have to go through if you didn't have any resources to blow.




Perhaps it would help if you gave it a rating? As I've said earlier, I rate it as "Great for T1, falls off by T2 into niche status."
With obvious caveats like "If you're in an undead-focused campaign, it's not good even in T1 due to immunities."

IMO. T1 it's average. Outside T1 it's garbage. There's consensus for it outside T1. But as you can see, the general consensus is that it's great for T1.

The kinds of t1 spells one might use a slot on in t1 that I'd rate as great are ones like healing word, entangle, silvery barbs. Just for reference, I'd rate MM, Burning Hands, Thunderwave, Guiding Bolt and Inflict Wounds as average as well.

[Witty Username]

I still don't get why people rate silvery barbs so high, it is a ok take on the shield spell or a reroll on a save.

At low tier it is resource intensive, at high tier it is less likely to be effective at all, especially in comparison to an absorb elements or shield.

[stoutstien]

I still don't get why people rate silvery barbs so high, it is a ok take on the shield spell or a reroll on a save.

At low tier it is resource intensive, at high tier it is less likely to be effective at all, especially in comparison to an absorb elements or shield.

Depending on table makeup, stacking dice manipulation becomes the last form of progress and silvery barb is available to classes that don't necessarily have access to either or both of the other level one reaction options.

That itself doesn't make it a bad spell. it's just annoying, time consuming, and disjointed.

[Frogreaver]

I still don't get why people rate silvery barbs so high, it is a ok take on the shield spell or a reroll on a save.

At low tier it is resource intensive, at high tier it is less likely to be effective at all, especially in comparison to an absorb elements or shield.

For T1 -
The best case for silvery barbs is turning a would be crit into a miss. That's significant, especially at low levels.
The next best case is using silvery barbs on an ally that's most likely going to be downed on the next hit. Force the reroll, ally has a good chance of staying up.

Obviously, you grant advantage too, which given T1 enemy hp, this makes an enemy that much more likely to be downed.

[SharkForce]

I still don't get why people rate silvery barbs so high, it is a ok take on the shield spell or a reroll on a save.

At low tier it is resource intensive, at high tier it is less likely to be effective at all, especially in comparison to an absorb elements or shield.

To me, silvery barbs is like the opposite of sleep in scaling. At level 1, it's probably not worth it outside of a few niche cases.

At higher levels, turning an enemy's successful saving throw into a failed saving throw is trading a level 1 spell slot and your reaction for a second chance at making a level 9 spell land, which is frankly way too good from my perspective (which is why in my games, silvery barbs doesn't work on enemy saving throws, but that's a whole different discussion that I'm quite sure has been done to death elsewhere).

Anyways, if sleep is *average* at low levels, then I'd say well over 90% of level 1 spells must be rated as a giant steaming pile of rotting raw sewage, which in my opinion makes it highly questionable to call sleep 'average'. An 'average' spell shouldn't be so near the top... it would be like if the average student is on the honour roll, you'd have to question whether the honour roll is anything particularly impressive if mediocrity is enough to put you there.

[Witty Username]

For T1 -
The best case for silvery barbs is turning a would be crit into a miss. That's significant, especially at low levels.
The next best case is using silvery barbs on an ally that's most likely going to be downed on the next hit. Force the reroll, ally has a good chance of staying up.

Obviously, you grant advantage too, which given T1 enemy hp, this makes an enemy that much more likely to be downed.
It could also turn a hit into another hit, and will only amount to 1 attack in the defensive direction.
If I wanted to spend a spell to prevent an attack, why not chomatic orb or magic missle?
Both have advantages over silvery barbs in terms of damage prevention.

Barbs is not very reliable and the upside it limited in scope.

I would rate burning hands higher than it personally.

[Gignere]

Okay, but I don't feel I have any such burden.

I will go grab some low hanging fruit though. Quotes being added below. I've added all I plan to.













IMO. T1 it's average. Outside T1 it's garbage. There's consensus for it outside T1. But as you can see, the general consensus is that it's great for T1.

The kinds of t1 spells one might use a slot on in t1 that I'd rate as great are ones like healing word, entangle, silvery barbs. Just for reference, I'd rate MM, Burning Hands, Thunderwave, Guiding Bolt and Inflict Wounds as average as well.

The 3 spells you rated highly 2 of them aren’t even on the wizards spell list. Spells aren’t usually rated against spells your class can’t take. At level 1 why wouldn’t it be a great pick because even nabbing silvery barbs you still have 5 more picks to choose from and that’s assuming your DM allows Silvery Barb. (One of the most banned spells) I think we are having a misunderstanding of your rating, most rating is given the opportunity costs which spells would be great to pick up. Since a wizard can’t select entangle nor healing word these spells shouldn’t even be compared to sleep.

All the spells that you list as average also scales poorly and would be just as bad if not worse than sleep so why would they be average? When you say sleep is hot garbage at t2.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

The 3 spells you rated highly 2 of them aren’t even on the wizards spell list. Spells aren’t usually rated against spells your class can’t take. At level 1 why wouldn’t it be a great pick because even nabbing silvery barbs you still have 5 more picks to choose from and that’s assuming your DM allows Silvery Barb. (One of the most banned spells) I think we are having a misunderstanding of your rating, most rating is given the opportunity costs which spells would be great to pick up. Since a wizard can’t select entangle nor healing word these spells shouldn’t even be compared to sleep.

All the spells that you list as average also scales poorly and would be just as bad if not worse than sleep so why would they be average? When you say sleep is hot garbage at t2.

Healing word is on the bard list, though.

[Frogreaver]

The 3 spells you rated highly 2 of them aren’t even on the wizards spell list. Spells aren’t usually rated against spells your class can’t take. At level 1 why wouldn’t it be a great pick because even nabbing silvery barbs you still have 5 more picks to choose from and that’s assuming your DM allows Silvery Barb. (One of the most banned spells) I think we are having a misunderstanding of your rating, most rating is given the opportunity costs which spells would be great to pick up. Since a wizard can’t select entangle nor healing word these spells shouldn’t even be compared to sleep.

All the spells that you list as average also scales poorly and would be just as bad if not worse than sleep so why would they be average? When you say sleep is hot garbage at t2.

Why are you ignoring the other wizard spells I did rate?

[Witty Username]

Why are you ignoring the other wizard spells I did rate?



All the spells that you list as average also scales poorly and would be just as bad if not worse than sleep so why would they be average? When you say sleep is hot garbage at t2.

I think they covered that, all the other wizard spells you listed are in average, and so was mentioned.

[Snails]

I still don't get why people rate silvery barbs so high, it is a ok take on the shield spell or a reroll on a save.

At low tier it is resource intensive, at high tier it is less likely to be effective at all, especially in comparison to an absorb elements or shield.

Silvery Barbs is interesting but not notably powerful at low levels, because it is resource intensive relative to meat and potatoes spells like Shield and Absorb Elements.

But it scales incredibly well when used offensively. If the Wizard casts Banishment or Disintegrate, and the target Saves, this is another bite at the apple. Basically you gain the equivalent of "Action + high level spell slot" for the cost of "Reaction + 1st level slot". This is so efficient in terms of Action Economy and resources expenditure at upper levels, that Silvery Barbs would still be attractive for some PCs if it were a 3rd level spell.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Silvery Barbs is interesting but not notably powerful at low levels, because it is resource intensive relative to meat and potatoes spells like Shield and Absorb Elements.


Shield and Absorb Elements have a target of Self, where as Silvery Barbs can be used to help others, which in play, seems a major boon.

As a DM, I have been extremely impressed at how impactful Silvery Barbs has been on a 3rd level Arcane Trickster.

It reminds me of Longshot, from the X-Men, where the Trickster just casually contols probability.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Shield and Absorb Elements have a target of Self, where as Silvery Barbs can be used to help others, which in play, seems a major boon.

As a DM, I have been extremely impressed at how impactful Silvery Barbs has been on a 3rd level Arcane Trickster.

It reminds me of Longshot, from the X-Men, where the Trickster just casually contols probability.

Do you think that's because the Arcane Trickster has other non-spell class features available?

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Silvery Barbs is interesting but not notably powerful at low levels, because it is resource intensive relative to meat and potatoes spells like Shield and Absorb Elements.

But it scales incredibly well when used offensively. If the Wizard casts Banishment or Disintegrate, and the target Saves, this is another bite at the apple. Basically you gain the equivalent of "Action + high level spell slot" for the cost of "Reaction + 1st level slot". This is so efficient in terms of Action Economy and resources expenditure at upper levels, that Silvery Barbs would still be attractive for some PCs if it were a 3rd level spell.

I'm a little confused at some of the spells brought up here as comparison to Sleep as low level options. Silvery Barbs for single target save or suck spells is roughly as good as the spell it essentially replicates. For spells that impact multiple creatures it's worse. So a level 1 slot that replicates a level 1 slot doesn't seem that good. I suppose if you roll open getting rid of a crit might save a character from insta-death at level 1 or 2 but that'd be situational. Shield, which has been brought up here, is vastly inferior to Mage Armor (+5 for a round vs +3 for likely the entire adventuring day).

The only common exception I can think of where these spells would be good is if the norm is 1 encounter per day at a table at level 1 and 2.

If SB and Shield are the measuring stick at early tier 1, then yeah, Sleep is a world beater.

[Witty Username]

Barbs trades resources for time, at high levels it is essentially sneaking in a 1st level spell along with a higher one, the effect in the moment is greater but the cost is higher.

The primary wrinkle is scope. Some spells are single target but AoE spells become more commonplace. Barbs to stick a banishment isnt quite the same as sticking a single enemy caught in a hypnotic pattern.

But there is also the effectiveness of save effects. There is contention about this but legendary resistance can cause alot of wasted resources trying to reroll saves that don't matter. And things like wall spells and such have no saves required. And like most save effects, barbs is a single target effect that if the target makes their saving throw, it does nothing. Generally speaking that is a problematic thing to rely on, but can be worth it if the upside is high. Again, banishment yes, pattern, eh, not alot when its one target.

Silvery barbs is ok, use it if you have alot of save effects, don't take it over shield, and don't expect it to do alot when you cast it.

[SharkForce]

Barbs trades resources for time, at high levels it is essentially sneaking in a 1st level spell along with a higher one, the effect in the moment is greater but the cost is higher.

The primary wrinkle is scope. Some spells are single target but AoE spells become more commonplace. Barbs to stick a banishment isnt quite the same as sticking a single enemy caught in a hypnotic pattern.

But there is also the effectiveness of save effects. There is contention about this but legendary resistance can cause alot of wasted resources trying to reroll saves that don't matter. And things like wall spells and such have no saves required. And like most save effects, barbs is a single target effect that if the target makes their saving throw, it does nothing. Generally speaking that is a problematic thing to rely on, but can be worth it if the upside is high. Again, banishment yes, pattern, eh, not alot when its one target.

Silvery barbs is ok, use it if you have alot of save effects, don't take it over shield, and don't expect it to do alot when you cast it.

Some single-target effects would become a lot more valuable if they were more reliable.

And even area of effect spells backed by silvery barbs can become far more potent. A crowd control spell that will typically work 3/4 of the time thrown on a group of 4 enemies can become almost reliable in controlling 4 targets. If more than one person in the group has the spell, that can scale upwards. Additionally, it isn't limited to when the spell is cast, so you can use it to make a spell last for a lot longer than normal.

I'm certainly not going to suggest it's a standout spell for a level 1 character. At level 1, you have only a few spells per day and you don't have the high level effects to get value out of. Furthermore, your save DC is relatively low, so even if they have to make the save a second time it won't make your AoE crowd controlling effects reliable.

But at high levels, especially if you have one (or more) magic items to boost your save DC, it can be much more impressive. You're more likely to land crowd control on most of a group, your level 1 spells are no longer a major resource cost, and the potency of your high level spells and abilities is much greater than the potency of level 1 spells.

So, if you're looking at the spell at tier 1, then yeah, silvery barbs isn't much to look at. It's decent enough (disadvantage for an enemy on one thing and advantage for an ally on another thing is hardly earth-shaking, but it isn't terrible), but at higher levels it becomes a *very* strong spell. You could lower the rating of the spell because low-level play is more common than high level play though, I suppose.

(on the other hand, if you're rating spells based on the prevalence of low-level play, I would argue that is another reason to bump sleep up a few notches. I don't know if it is the absolute best level 1 spell or not, but I still say it is very near the top. It is *certainly* well above average, in any event).

[5eNeedsDarksun]

So we played some level 1 last night (beginning of SKT), and the Bard (at my suggestion) took Sleep as one of his spells. Mixed results, but I will say it did something every time it was cast.
First time he hit a group of bandits, which was my own encounter as they were travelling to Nightstone. Only ended up taking out 1 of the 5, as the area included a hostage, which burned up 5 of the 23 hp he rolled.
One other time it was quite effective, taking out 2 goblins, and leaving a single worg for the rest of the party to deal with.
Can't fully remember the 3rd, but I think he got a couple of goblins as well.

MVP spell of the day had to be Healing Word, which saved the Paly. Paly had been downed in an encounter with 2 worgs and one of them was just going to run away with the body for later consumption before he got up and finished it.

Can't say Sleep 'dominated' an any encounter, save the 3rd, which probably could have been dealt with using resourceless tactics (though using the slot might have saved someone taking a crossbow bolt). I will say it made a pretty good Swiss Army Knife though and the range did help vs other options. The Artificer had Caustic Brew, which was more inconsistent, as the goblins were making saves almost 1/2 the time.