Sleep Spell?

[Uthanar]

I know that there is a sleep spell listed in 5E book under Mental Attack. I don't know about the rest of you, but representing a Sleep Spell as an attack against the persons STUN seems kinda bass ackwards to me.

 

I was wondering what other ways people have dealt with this problem. I could see a Transform taking Sleep spell, or maybe even an Entangle. Just figured I would ask and see what folks had already done.

 

Thanks much.

 

Uthanar

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

I don't know about the rest of you, but representing a Sleep Spell as an attack against the persons STUN seems kinda bass ackwards to me.

 

I was wondering what other ways people have dealt with this problem. I could see a Transform taking Sleep spell, or maybe even an Entangle.

 

So, an attack against STUN is odd but making it against BODY or STR is fine?

 

STUN in the game does represent whether a character is conscious or not - so it is appropriate.

 

I have considered a transform based on EGO or PRE rather than BODY though....

 

Doc

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

SpellName like Sleep Spells

 

I also do it vs STUN. It's the easiest way to make someone unconscious and the game effects for how an unconscious person interacts are already well defined for having no STUN so its easier to piggyback it.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Here's an alternative to the Ego Attack method suggested in 5er.

 

19 Sleep: Mind Control 10d6 (Human class of minds), Telepathic (+1/4), Explosion (see notes; +1/2) (87 Active Points); OAF Expendable (Easy to obtain new Focus; -1), Mandatory Effect EGO +20 (Must Always Achieve [Particular Effect]; -3/4), Requires A Skill Roll (-1/2), Set Effect (Sleep; -1/2), Does Not Provide Mental Awareness (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4)

[Notes: Use description from http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/Sleep.htm changing Hit Dice to mental strength (EGO).] - END=9

[CTaylor]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Stun drain, mind control, transform, entangle, NND blast, and ego attack all do it pretty well, depending on the effect you want. Let's put it this way: sleep is a lot more powerful than D&D seems to think and Hero more accurately represents it.

[JmOz]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

I actualy do it as a drain END (Continous, Uncontroled, etc...)

[austenandrews]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

I've done it both as Transform and as Mind Control.

[Uthanar]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Hey guys, thanks for all the replies.

 

Doc Democracy - The reason that I think it is a bit weird to be attacking someone's STUN to put them to sleep is because it works in a synergistic fashion to just beating them up in general. I think part of the problem is in my initial post and some unwritten assumptions that I have there (and more are to come down the line as I reply to other folks).

 

I'm wondering about a spell that puts someone to sleep, not a spell that renders them unconscious and unable to be easily awoken. Certainly, if you beat the crud out of their stun they will no longer be conscious (one of the desired effects) but my understanding is they won't be able to be awoken by someone. I hope that makes more sense on why I would feel that it is a bit odd to be attacking someone's STUN value directly.

 

Killer Shrike - Thanks for the insight, I can agree that it does work easily since Unconscious is a well defined game mechanic. Sleep is dealt with in 2 places, the Lightsleep Talent (discussing how one would wake up) and on the DCV chart discussing the effects of being asleep on your DCV. Not saying sleep gets equal treatment to unconscious, or that it should, just noting where I found references in my 5E book.

 

Thanks also for the link of spells that you have worked up. The suppress provides an interesting take on that and I could see some spells using suppress to achieve their desired effect for a sleep spell.

 

Hyper-Man - That would certainly seem to make more sense to me as a way of representing the classic DnD sleep spell within the Hero system. I hadn't thought of it being a Mind Control suggestion, but I think that works very nicely and agrees more with the way I was looking at the spell.

 

CTaylor - I agree, Sleep in low levels of DnD is a killer spell that opens a lot of "morality" issues depending on your group. It is the first Save or Die spell that the game supports, and probably is way to low of a level. I certainly don't think that putting someone to sleep should be an easy thing to do, and perhaps would be harder given that what I seem to be looking for is actual sleep rather than unconsciousness. Thanks for your thoughts in providing some additional ideas of your own.

 

JmOz - That works pretty nicely as well I think. I can see people being out of END and still under the effects of that spell burning their STUN to keep going and stay awake. From my understanding of the way it would work, the Drain is in a similar vein as a Sleep spell, but doesn't have all the bells and whistles in the right places for a straight sleep effect. From my understanding the "sleep" portion would be represented by them running out of STUN to burn as END, correct?

 

Thanks again for the replies all.

 

Uthanar

[Manic Typist]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

If a player was determined to push a character to keep going for days without sleep...

 

What would you do to hold him accountable, and ultimately what would you use to determine his ability to stay awake?

 

Whatever your answer is....I say you start there. See how you can invoke that for your purposes.

[Maur]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Sleep might seem like a vastly powerful spell, but it really isn't once you get up a few levels. In 3/3.5 it has 0 effect on creatures above 4HD. So it's really just a way to get around weak mooks in the end.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Sleep might seem like a vastly powerful spell' date=' but it really isn't once you get up a few levels. In 3/3.5 it has 0 effect on creatures above 4HD. So it's really just a way to get around weak mooks in the end.[/quote']

 

The trick is figuring out how to translate Hit Dice into HERO terms.

 

Is it BODY and/or STUN?

These seems more like a base translation of Hit POINTS but not really Hit DICE.

 

I believe Hit Dice are best translated into HERO via a combination of increasing Characteristics, Skills, Talents and Powers gained via XP.

There is no single 1 to 1 translation available.

 

In the case of translating Hit Dice based effects like the Sleep spell, a GM needs to consider how he wants to encourage players to spend XP. If the spell is just handled as a defacto NND Stun attack (Ego Attack, NND, Drain or Suppress) it encourages increasing STUN over all else. If you make it a Transform it encourages more BODY, Mind Control -> EGO, etc... .

 

I think EGO (via Mind Control) is as good a choice as any since it also acts as defensive PRE (if higher than that characteristic). If the target of a Sleep spell doesn't actually need to sleep (like Elves with Life Support vs. Sleeping) they would get a bonus to the Mind Control Difficulty check. GM's could later reward characters that have encountered the effect at least once with Limited Mental Defense (only vs. Sleep).

 

Transform would be my second choice mainly due to the 'all or nothing' quality of the spell. The biggest drawback being that more experienced characters only have 2 defenses available (more BODY or Power Defense).

 

Another option would be to take the Based On CON Limitation (-1) with Mind Control. I would still allow Life Support and the other options mentioned in the vs. EGO version above to help defend against the effect.

[CTaylor]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

I don't know about the rest of you, but representing a Sleep Spell as an attack against the persons STUN seems kinda bass ackwards to me.

 

That's because you aren't thinking from special effect to mechanic, you're doing the opposite. Stun isn't pain, it's simply a numeric measurement of consciousness. If you reduce someone's consciousness to zero, what happens to them? We've had a pretty good discussion of the difference between being knocked out and going to sleep on the boards here before - it was very interesting and informative - but in game terms, there's no tangible difference.

 

In 3/3.5 it has 0 effect on creatures above 4HD. So it's really just a way to get around weak mooks in the end

 

Yeah but when you get the spell you never see anything 4HD. That makes it overpowered at first and worthless after a while - lousy design.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

The trick is figuring out how to translate Hit Dice into HERO terms.

 

Is it BODY and/or STUN?

These seems more like a base translation of Hit POINTS but not really Hit DICE.

 

Yeah, there is a big disconnect between Hit Points and BODY / STUN. I actually toiled over multiple ways to do it years ago, some quite arcane. I think theres at least one thread where I discussed several approaches back in...um...2003 or 4. May have been on the old boards.

 

Anyway, in the end I settled on a simple approach because the overhead and complexity just wasn't worth the marginal return on investment of a more "exact" conversion:

 

BODY = (Hit Points/15) +10 {use HERO System Rounding}

STUN = as figured, and modified if desired.

 

Works out very well in practice.

[CTaylor]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Yeah, the problem is hit points also includes dodge, luck, armor, and other elements. Because the D&D system uses an absolute hit/miss armor class system, absorption and such was always handled in hit points. That kind of confuses matters somewhat.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Something said in another thread brought this one to mind...

 

Sleep might work well as a Stun Suppress. Fairly cheap, hard to defend against, and allows for instant recovery at "wake up"

 

for a major sleep spell, you could even do it as Uncontrolled, 0 END and have the required "off switch" for uncontrolled be "Someone wakes them up"

 

or "A kiss from royalty"

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Something said in another thread brought this one to mind...

 

Sleep might work well as a Stun Suppress. Fairly cheap, hard to defend against, and allows for instant recovery at "wake up"

 

for a major sleep spell, you could even do it as Uncontrolled, 0 END and have the required "off switch" for uncontrolled be "Someone wakes them up"

 

or "A kiss from royalty"

 

Accomplishing the effect is the easy part.

Suppress is one of many methods that work fine.

 

Deciding on a defense in HERO that equates to having "4 Hit Dice" is the hard part.

[Uthanar]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

One thing to remember is that the Hit Die discussion is a separate issue from the Sleep spell itself. Certainly I like reading it, but by no means am I looking for the DnD Wizard spell Sleep from 3.X edition.

 

Now, if others are wondering about that I'm all for reading interesting thoughts about it, just wanted to make sure everyone realized that it was different than what I was looking for.

 

Have a good day all, thanks for the thoughts.

 

Uthanar

[CTaylor]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Suppress is a useful effect, but it has to be maintained constantly and shuts off completely (as in, they have full stun and END when it ends) like it never was there when you end the power effect. That can be an interesting way of simulating an effect, but it probably isn't what he's looking for in terms of sleep.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Deciding on a defense in HERO that equates to having "4 Hit Dice" is the hard part.

 

If you are determined to follow that exact route then hit dice are essentially a representation of experience.

 

Some monsters are so fearsome because they have instincts that build in experience, others are raised in environments such that when you meet them they are likely to be more experienced.

 

Choose a number of experience points as the defence, or a set number of points higher than the base character of the campaign. It is metagamey but it is a measure there to be used.

 

 

Doc

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

I made the assumption that Uthanar was basing his objection to the 5er suggested method based on a sfx preconception on what a "sleep spell" should do. As far as I am aware, D&D has the most widely known version of a "sleep spell" so I thought he was going for a translation from that system to HERO.

 

He has since stated that this was not the case which is cool.

 

In that case I have to agree with the earlier consensus that STUN is the actually the best measurement of consciousness due to any type of physical effect. I would consider Ego Attack to be a type of physical attack to the brain.

 

I think AmadanNaBriona's Uncontrolled 0 End Suppress with a set duration and wakeup procedure is the most ellegant solution using STUN as the measuring stick. I might add a Limitation: Only to Knockout. If the roll is not enough to Knockout the target it has no effect.

 

The only potential drawback to this approach is that it is equally effective vs. a 75 or 275 point character if they don't have enough STUN or Power Defense.

 

This thread is a very good example of the confusion that can occur when attempting to build an effect in HERO without first having a clear understanding of the desired special effect first.

 

[tarragon]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

I think AmadanNaBriona's Uncontrolled 0 End Suppress with a set duration and wakeup procedure is the most ellegant solution using STUN as the measuring stick. I might add a Limitation: Only to Knockout. If the roll is not enough to Knockout the target it has no effect.

 

For me the suppress has the same problem that all STUN based sleep effects have. It doesn't make sense that someone who is in the middle of a fight and all hopped up on adrenaline is easier to make fall asleep.

 

Basing a sleep spell on STUN means that it is hard to make the guard who is at the end of long boring guard shift fall asleep. It's easier to make that same guard fall asleep if he's just been sucker punched so he's is down a bit of STUN.

 

I like the mind control version better because the levels of effect allow for this kind of distinction.

• At the end of a long guard shift you might be inclined to fall asleep.
  
• Just woke up in the morning leaves you pretty awake and not inclined
  
• In the middle of a fight for your life you are violently opposed to falling asleep.
  

[Markdoc]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Sleep might seem like a vastly powerful spell' date=' but it really isn't once you get up a few levels. In 3/3.5 it has 0 effect on creatures above 4HD. So it's really just a way to get around weak mooks in the end.[/quote']

 

Yeah, in D&D sleep was one of those "must have" spells for a low level mage, but essentially useless for a higher level mage.

 

In Hero, there's not that dichotomy. I use three different approaches. One is the Ego Attack approach, which essentially makes someone "exhausted/groggy" so that they can neither stay awake, no matter how much they want to, nor wake up easily. It could be thought of as a "pass out" spell rather than natural sleep, and which is closest to the D&D version (after all if you "sleep" people in combat, they topple over and stay sleeping through the impact with the ground and as the battle rages around them.

 

The second is mind control, as already outlined (though I normally use about 6d6). This is not really intended to be a combat spell - people are likely to be violently opposed to going to sleep in the middle of a fight - but something you use (for example) on a sentry in the middle of the night, who might already want to take a nap. This simply leads to normal sleep and the person can wake up normally.

 

The third version is a STUN drain with extended rate of return (usually an hour) and two big limitations: first "Works against original STUN total, -1/2)" which means that physical harm doesn't add and also "Drain cancelled if target "woken", -2". That's a big limitation, because it greatly reduces the effect of the power: loud noises, rough handling, etc completely wipe out its effects, and when the person wakes up (ie: gets into positive STUN again) all their drained STUN suddenly returns: they are not limited to regaining 5 per hour. It looks like:

Drain STUN 2d6, +32 maximum, Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per Hour; +1) (72 Active Points); cancelled if woken (-2), works against total STUN (-1/2), 20 real points.

 

That last one might be what you want: it'd take while to put a big target to sleep, but once they are asleep, they'll stay that way for hours unless woken

 

cheers, Mark

[Uthanar]

Re: Sleep Spell?

 

Thanks for all the thoughts. I like the restricted Drain set up by Markdoc as well as the Mind Control outlined by Hyper-Man. Both of those I think give a lot of the flavor of "sleep" with appropriate limitations.

Uthanar