evilbob
Adventurer
Of all the 5.0 spells, Sleep is the only one I can't stand. I hated the old "turn undead" mechanic back in 3.5 and time hasn't improved it much. In my mind, it stalls the game with extra math and relies too much on knowing the exact HP value of monsters, which is oddly immersion-breaking compared to nearly everything else (Power Word spells notwithstanding). At least now you know how many dice you should use immediately and rolling for Sleep is like rolling for Fireball.
Of course, replicating the spell while keeping it as similar as possible is difficult. One key feature is that it only works against the weakest opponents first. That's pretty huge, because it doesn't allow you to sleep the boss while you beat on the minions. No other spell targets that way. It also targets a random number of creatures (including zero), and they don't get a save. It works best on creatures that are hurt badly. Finally, it scales fairly well (from what we can tell from the Starter Set monsters), although 5d8 averages to 22.5, which isn't much: you really use this against dinky or injured monsters, and while there is a chance it could hit something big, it could also do nothing. So how do you replicate as much of this as possible without making the spell even more complex than it is now?
One idea is to keep the basic information the same - duration, range, area, and that it targets creatures in ascending order of current HP (this is slightly less immersion-breaking to me than knowing exact totals) - but instead of rolling dice to count HP, the spell affects 1d3-1 creatures. Preparing the spell in a higher slot does nothing.
In effect, preparing Sleep in a higher spell slot only changes the strength of the monster it can affect. It technically also changes the number of monsters that can be affected, but in practical use it probably won't (large battles against lots of dinky monsters excepted). 1d4-1 ends up being fairly weak against dinky monsters but very strong against powerful monsters - potentially much stronger than the original spell, since you're not sacrificing a higher-level spell slot to get that strength. A first-level spell taking out a CR 20 monster is just too much.
You could have +1 target per spell slot level. But at higher levels it guarantees at least one or more targets are affected, which makes the above problem far worse.
So how do you weaken it against stronger monsters? You could add a Wisdom save. On a fail they sleep, but on a save they get their movement reduced by 10 feet until the duration is over or they take damage. If you want to preserve some of the idea that weaker monsters are more susceptible to the spell, you could also add that fleeing creatures get disadvantage on their saves.
Adding a Wisdom save adds complexity, but I like also adding the idea that the spell always does SOMETHING (unless your targeting roll is poor). The overall strength of the spell is lower since you have a chance to have nothing affected, and they could save. But you're still creating a first-level save-or-die vs. a single high-level monster.
So then you're back to HP as a limiter on what the spell can do. (There is no such thing as "monster level" and CR is even more immersion-breaking than HP as a quantifier, so they're out.) Instead of a save, you could limit the spell to only affecting monsters whose current HP is 10 or less. A scant few normally do, but once again this should work best on injured monsters. Then you could bring back the idea of scaling by saying each spell slot level adds 5 (or 10 - I'm not sure how the HP scaling works yet) to the maximum HP affected. However, this gets us almost all the way back to the thing I didn't like in the first place - knowing exact HP totals for monsters. It's better because you don't know the HP down to the number, but it's close. And it also removes the chance that it could work REALLY well and down something that was at full HP or actually dangerous.
So does anyone else have ideas? I doubt anyone cares that much,
but other suggestions are welcome. So far my current houserule looks to be this: Sleep affects 1d3-1 creatures (ordered by lowest HP) whose current HP is 10 or less; +5 HP for each spell slot level. It's not much better but at least it doesn't require extra subtracting or knowing exact monster HP totals, even if it gives up some of the potential oomph of the spell.
Of course, replicating the spell while keeping it as similar as possible is difficult. One key feature is that it only works against the weakest opponents first. That's pretty huge, because it doesn't allow you to sleep the boss while you beat on the minions. No other spell targets that way. It also targets a random number of creatures (including zero), and they don't get a save. It works best on creatures that are hurt badly. Finally, it scales fairly well (from what we can tell from the Starter Set monsters), although 5d8 averages to 22.5, which isn't much: you really use this against dinky or injured monsters, and while there is a chance it could hit something big, it could also do nothing. So how do you replicate as much of this as possible without making the spell even more complex than it is now?
One idea is to keep the basic information the same - duration, range, area, and that it targets creatures in ascending order of current HP (this is slightly less immersion-breaking to me than knowing exact totals) - but instead of rolling dice to count HP, the spell affects 1d3-1 creatures. Preparing the spell in a higher slot does nothing.
In effect, preparing Sleep in a higher spell slot only changes the strength of the monster it can affect. It technically also changes the number of monsters that can be affected, but in practical use it probably won't (large battles against lots of dinky monsters excepted). 1d4-1 ends up being fairly weak against dinky monsters but very strong against powerful monsters - potentially much stronger than the original spell, since you're not sacrificing a higher-level spell slot to get that strength. A first-level spell taking out a CR 20 monster is just too much.
You could have +1 target per spell slot level. But at higher levels it guarantees at least one or more targets are affected, which makes the above problem far worse.
So how do you weaken it against stronger monsters? You could add a Wisdom save. On a fail they sleep, but on a save they get their movement reduced by 10 feet until the duration is over or they take damage. If you want to preserve some of the idea that weaker monsters are more susceptible to the spell, you could also add that fleeing creatures get disadvantage on their saves.
Adding a Wisdom save adds complexity, but I like also adding the idea that the spell always does SOMETHING (unless your targeting roll is poor). The overall strength of the spell is lower since you have a chance to have nothing affected, and they could save. But you're still creating a first-level save-or-die vs. a single high-level monster.
So then you're back to HP as a limiter on what the spell can do. (There is no such thing as "monster level" and CR is even more immersion-breaking than HP as a quantifier, so they're out.) Instead of a save, you could limit the spell to only affecting monsters whose current HP is 10 or less. A scant few normally do, but once again this should work best on injured monsters. Then you could bring back the idea of scaling by saying each spell slot level adds 5 (or 10 - I'm not sure how the HP scaling works yet) to the maximum HP affected. However, this gets us almost all the way back to the thing I didn't like in the first place - knowing exact HP totals for monsters. It's better because you don't know the HP down to the number, but it's close. And it also removes the chance that it could work REALLY well and down something that was at full HP or actually dangerous.
So does anyone else have ideas? I doubt anyone cares that much,
but other suggestions are welcome. So far my current houserule looks to be this: Sleep affects 1d3-1 creatures (ordered by lowest HP) whose current HP is 10 or less; +5 HP for each spell slot level. It's not much better but at least it doesn't require extra subtracting or knowing exact monster HP totals, even if it gives up some of the potential oomph of the spell.
