sleep spell viable on tactician?

[happyclan]

sleep is basically impossible to use. almost anything has too many hit points other than trash which then begs to question, why not just smoke them with a cantrip?

am i missing something? is there some metamagic that makes it more viable? situations I should look for?

thanks

[Tomas Mac Mordain]

Nope, it's not good for anything aside from cancelling out a bunch of mobs you whittled down already. Aside from that, on tactician awake mobs will prioritize running up to anyone sleeping and shove them awake.

Sleep has its uses very, very early on on some goblins perhaps, but you'll have superior options to outright kill them. Use something else ;)

[happyclan]

Originally posted by Tomas Mac Mordain:

Nope, it's not good for anything aside from cancelling out a bunch of mobs you whittled down already. Aside from that, on tactician awake mobs will prioritize running up to anyone sleeping and shove them awake.

Sleep has its uses very, very early on on some goblins perhaps, but you'll have superior options to outright kill them. Use something else ;)

thanks man. early game seems like hold person, command, and I guess crown of madness aren't terrible. i haven't made it to act 2 yet but anything to keep an eye on for cc as a sorcerer?

[Tomas Mac Mordain]

Originally posted by happyclan:

Originally posted by Tomas Mac Mordain:

Nope, it's not good for anything aside from cancelling out a bunch of mobs you whittled down already. Aside from that, on tactician awake mobs will prioritize running up to anyone sleeping and shove them awake.

Sleep has its uses very, very early on on some goblins perhaps, but you'll have superior options to outright kill them. Use something else ;)

thanks man. early game seems like hold person, command, and I guess crown of madness aren't terrible. i haven't made it to act 2 yet but anything to keep an eye on for cc as a sorcerer?

You can build towards an 'OP' sorc for example like so:
- going elemental with a draconic bloodline and choosing the element to support it (classic fire is good - if you're a 'fireball' kind of guy, but all elements are OK)
- pick 'elemental adept' at some point so nobody can 'lol-resist' you
- pick gear that allows you to add your charisma modifier to either attack rolls/damage rolls for that element
- the higher you level the crazier the damage output of elemental cantrips will be
- keep shocking grasp on your sorc to get out of melee (shocked enemies can't opportunity strike you when you run away)
- of course - get your charisma as high as you can
- use metamagic for twin and quick spells
- do 'broken' stuff like dual cast haste on your melee chars, get sanctuary and go hide behind a rock to be sure concentration remains unbroken (come out and help when it's safe/advised)
- good elemental CC (deadly AOE rather) is only on higher levels (like wall of fire), but you can start effectively with cloud of daggers and the like
- usually clerics have much better CC options early on - hold person etc. is neat, but it's hard to land early on, a clerics 'command' can upcast to affect multiple enemies and it hits rather reliably - it's devastating for example to command mobs to 'flee' from you, when they are engaged in melee (they'll get struck by attacks of opportunity from your toons)

Above all: have fun!

[Moffin Bovin]

Sleep is useful in the beginning. you swap it out for a higher level spell later.

[Trehek]

There are many situations in act 1-2 where I've found Sleep to be a useful 1st level spell slot.

For example, Wyll fireballs a pack, then Gale has a turn before all enemies get theirs. Could clear by using a high spell slot or could take out one with cantrip, or just put several damaged stragglers to sleep with the low level spell slot and finish up easy next round using the whole party.

Strong dude is damaged and at 20 hp. Again, could finish off with a higher level spell, could try cantrip but either too weak to kill or at best awful odds with 65% chance to hit and need to roll good damage to kill. Or just auto-succeed by putting to sleep with 1st lv slot and letting the paladin auto-crit the sleeping enemy with the grand kill stick.

Several situations against intelligent enemies where Sleep can be used to trick enemies or shift the action economy in your favor. Put a damaged enemy or two to sleep as bait and they'll miss their turn, and have a good chance to make others miss their turns as well trying to go wake them up. This can lure enemies out of melee, provoking attacks of opportunity, may make them run through your damaging zones, could lure them into position to be insta-gibbed by falling damage, could lure distant enemies into melee range or into fireball formation... Yeah, I've had a lot of fun with that spell!

[Kaisha]

It's a worthless spell. There are a lot of crappy spells in BG3 but this has to be one of the worst.

[ImHelping]

The top uses of sleep don't exist in most videogames. Not using it on bosses because devs abuse ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ out sleep immunity on almost anything that matters. But using it to fizzle trying to railroad you into killing low HP peasants to call you a murderhobo.

Though sometimes you get insane "mostly generous, but..." GMS where they let sleep put all the bats in a cave to sleep. but still makes you roll all the individual hit checks to kill the sleeping bats. (Why do so many GMs act like the lower a creature's int the more an encounter should play like modded X-Com? even when they let you get away with bugs bunny ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on anything with 10 int or higher)

[victorvnv]

It’s a crap spell lol.
Target must be 24 go or lower and you lose an action. With which action you can at lvl 5 and above hit an enemy twice for like 40-50 damage each with proper build.

Hold person/ monster are your main crowd control spells

[dolby]

People have no clue what they are talking about sometimes you just need CC without saves...It's fine for what it is... at later levels you get sleep spells that don't need Hp to work anyway..

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by dolby:

People have no clue what they are talking about sometimes you just need CC without saves...It's fine for what it is... at later levels you get sleep spells that don't need Hp to work anyway..

Why do people thinking they are defending something keep throwing it under the bus?

"It isn't bad! Because you get spells that don't suck anyways later!"

At least you did highlight the fact it doesn't need a save throw. But that requires an enemy not immune to it/surrounded by fodder (does BG3 version of sleep still run off 'targets the lowest HP in the effect first' logic? don't recall offhand but that is often an annoying gotcha)

[lailadawn]

Originally posted by Tomas Mac Mordain:

Nope, it's not good for anything aside from cancelling out a bunch of mobs you whittled down already. Aside from that, on tactician awake mobs will prioritize running up to anyone sleeping and shove them awake.

Sleep has its uses very, very early on on some goblins perhaps, but you'll have superior options to outright kill them. Use something else ;)

Man they do this on Adventurer Mode too. The first time I saw that I was like, OooH! you little f***!! I couldn't believe they would do that. This game has good AI, at least for me. I'm learning how to play the game from them. lol They kept jumping and pushing so I do it now too. They kept throwing crap on the floor so I start throwing crap on the floor.

[fulf]

It would be useful early game (on account of having a set amount of HP it can affect, not having a saving throw, and letting you select targets instead of being an AOE with a HP roll like it should be)
But any usefulness is ruined by the fact that enemies can for some godforsaken reason use Shove (bonus action) instead of Help (full action) to wake their allies
I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love myopic homebrewing

[Ghost]

It's a level 1 spell. Sleep is always good at lower levels or on weak opponents and it can be upcast. For all the complaints about targets just being woken up, that's still wasting some movement and at least a bonus action to do that.

Originally posted by fulf:

But any usefulness is ruined by the fact that enemies can for some godforsaken reason use Shove (bonus action) instead of Help (full action) to wake their allies
I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love myopic homebrewing

Why wouldn't people wake up their allies during a combat and why wouldn't shoving someone, potentially for meters, wake someone up?

[wendigo211]

Sleep is useless, although it's been useless since 3rd edition. As soon as they put a limit on the number of HD of creatures you could put to sleep, there have been better options for a level 1 spell.

That said, I've had some benefit from Glyph of Warding (Sleep) on Tactician, since the AoE size is generous and even if the AI wakes up a sleeping NPC, it generally doesn't have enough movement after that to reach one of my characters.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Ghost:

It's a level 1 spell. Sleep is always good at lower levels or on weak opponents and it can be upcast. For all the complaints about targets just being woken up, that's still wasting some movement and at least a bonus action to do that.

Originally posted by fulf:

But any usefulness is ruined by the fact that enemies can for some godforsaken reason use Shove (bonus action) instead of Help (full action) to wake their allies
I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love myopic homebrewing

Why wouldn't people wake up their allies during a combat and why wouldn't shoving someone, potentially for meters, wake someone up?

The complaint is the cheating of the action economy.
Enemies often outnumber you so you are already fighting an uphill battle on that front, "But at least that enemy can't attack if they shove someone awake"
Except if the commentary is right, AI gets to cheat and get to still attack while also waking someone up with a bonus instead of standard.

You see it a lot in tabletop too, where GMS will get really rules lawywery on players trying to wake sleeping players to be as cumbersome and turn wasting as possible. While for enemies they will just declare shouting from a distance or the loud explosion of shatter nearby wakes them, realistically, you see.

This is kind of why scribe mage is fun on tabletop in spite of how simple the overall damage swap main gimmick is.

"I am going to cast waterfall set to fire damage on the barrels of gunpoweder the fire immune enemy is standing by. Waterfall lists that it will put out all magical fires after it deals damage. So the fighter will be able to fight without being in the middle of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ inferno"

"Uh, realistically fire should not put out fires?"

"Are you sure about that? I will write down that waterfall set to fire won't put out fires anymore and instead cause fires."

"On second thought, yes it puts out the fire."