Quote Originally Posted by Satori01 View Post
Dream is useful for a PC. A Familiar can be chosen to be the messenger, freeing up the PC.

Do people just read the texts of spells without imagining what the spell effect would be like?

Not being able to go back to sleep after a nightmare is not uncommon.

Now imagine you are trapped in a nightmare not generated by your own mind, but by an enemy trying to hurt you. You can’t wake up, you are trapped. You also remember the nightmare perfectly upon waking.

Also folks there is this:
On a failed save, echoes of the phantasmal monstrosity spawn a nightmare that lasts the duration of the target’s sleep and prevents the target from gaining any benefit from that rest. In addition, when the target wakes up, it takes 3d6 psychic damage.

So the night before a gladiatorial duel against the evil Emperor Commodus, you cast Dream and disrupt his sleep. The duel is set for dawn, and can not be delayed without forfeiture, which is a loss of Face/Prestige.

Commodus, for these reasons CAN NOT just go back to sleep, and push back the duel start time.

Commodus probably has a level of Exhaustion as well.
Now, imagine, (if you can), doing this for a week.

Not sleeping is lethal to humans folks, in real life.

I’m sorry, but if causing your foe to spend 16 hours of a 24 hour day trying to sleep, instead of trying to be an effective foe, is worthless in you game; then your games are quite different from the games I play in.

Those games also sound dull, lifeless and boring AF.
I've been thinking this. There's also the fact that NPCs aren't aware of the existence of long rests, and may not even know that Dream is a spell or it has been cast on them.
How many times have you woken up in the morning, to find yourself exhausted by a nightmare, and then just... go back to sleep? Like sure, you might fall back to sleep for maybe up to an hour, but people actually do things. They don't exist in a vacuum, they have jobs and children and commitments and religions and bowling clubs (bowling in the mornng may be the reason why they're being tormented by a spellcaster)