D&D 5E Effect of Sleep in swarms of monsters.

[sirgaric]

Hello,

Is there any official clarification on the effect of a Sleep spell in a swarm type monster? If we follow the rules to the letter, they would all be affected or none of them would be, depending on the remaining HP of the swarm. It just doesn't seem right to me.

Cheers,

Jorge

 

[Boarstorm]

I haven't seen anything official. I don't think it would be out of line to treat the number rolled on the sleep spell as "damage" in this case. Just say that many (or whatever percent that was of the whole) fell asleep.

So if the swarm has 30 hp, the wizard casts sleep and rolls a 15, then treat it as 15 points of damage to the swarm, but describe it as half the swarm dropped into slumber.

Of course, that's not official at all.

 

[the Jester]

Swarms are treated as a single composite creature, so you've got it right. There isn't anything that indicates sleep works differently on them.

If it makes it easier to swallow, think of it as either putting enough of the swarm to sleep to disperse it, or not; and if not, the sleepers are awoken quickly by their fellows in the swarm.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

A "sleeping" swarm may be rationalized as only having just enough individuals sleeping so as to compromise combat effectiveness. Similarly a swarm that is unaffected might be reasoned to have some individuals sleeping, but enough still awake as to maintain attack strength. As GM, I MIGHT be tempted to take hit points from the swarm before other enemies (considering the individual insects/rats/whatever to likely have fewer individual hit points than other foes), but to count a partially sleeping swarm as having reduced numbers while partly asleep as per the swarm rules.

 

[the Jester]

I haven't seen anything official. I don't think it would be out of line to treat the number rolled on the sleep spell as "damage" in this case. Just say that many (or whatever percent that was of the whole) fell asleep.

So if the swarm has 30 hp, the wizard casts sleep and rolls a 15, then treat it as 15 points of damage to the swarm, but describe it as half the swarm dropped into slumber.

Of course, that's not official at all.

Just to weigh in on this suggestion- IMHO sleep is already one of the most powerful 1st level spells. I absolutely wouldn't do anything to turn its power level up. YMMV, obviously.

 

[Boarstorm]

Just to weigh in on this suggestion- IMHO sleep is already one of the most powerful 1st level spells. I absolutely wouldn't do anything to turn its power level up. YMMV, obviously.

In my experience, the power of the sleep spell has been vastly overstated. It's similar to the Moon Druid issue -- at level 2, it's a definite noticeable problem. By level 5, it's pretty much a non-issue.

Of course, this is all just one table's anecdotal evidence. The wider community may have had more trouble with it than we have, and my opinion is open to change based on further experience.

ETA:
To explain our experiences a little bit more:
Sleep runs in to 2 problems.
1) Monster HP advances leaps and bounds more than "2d8" per spell level. When the average critter has 178 hit points, knowing when to cast sleep becomes more and more of an issue.
2) Player damage is insane. Most of the time the "window" when sleep would be effective is bypassed because the great weapon wielding fighter with Extra Attacks (2) just did 120 damage and splattered both critters you were fighting anyway.

The end result is that you're facing a moving target that is likely to be dead before you've "drawn a bead" on it.

 

[cpendlet]

For a side note: insects do actually sleep. I was not sure so I did a google search (a couple independent studies done in 2000 demonstrated that they do sleep: http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/our-modern-plagues/do-insects-sleep).

 

[sirgaric]

Thanks for the tips.

I had in fact considered the idea of reducing the swarm's HP, but I think I will solve it having the swarm act as reduced numbers until the start of the caster's next turn. This of course in case the Sleep spell doesn't affect the whole swarm.

Cheers,

Jorge

 

[Tormyr]

Thanks for the tips.

I had in fact considered the idea of reducing the swarm's HP, but I think I will solve it having the swarm act as reduced numbers until the start of the caster's next turn. This of course in case the Sleep spell doesn't affect the whole swarm.

Cheers,

Jorge

What happens if the swarm wants to move before the caster's next turn? I can think of a few ways of handling sleep.

1. Swarm as single creature: Sleep either works or it doesn't. Treat the swarm as a single creature of that hp for determining the effects of sleep and who gets affected.
2. Swarm as lots of groups of creatures of 1 hp each: A number of 1 hp groups of creatures equal to the sleep spell are affected first before other creatures.

In the case of #2 and the roll is less than the swarm's hp, you have to decide what to do with the swarm. I can think of a few options.
1. The activity of the swarm (essentially crawling all over each other) instantly wakes the rest of the swarm up at the start of its turn.
2. The activity of the swarm wakes up groups of creatures equal to the non asleep groups (20 hp swarm, 15 hp asleep, 5 hp awake, 10 hp awake at start of turn).
3. Swarm splits into asleep and awake swarms.

Myself, I would go with number 1 up top and treat it like another creature. D&D is not a simulation where everything has to perfectly match what you experience in real life, The normal rules are usually good enough. That said, any of the other solutions would probably also be good enough, they just require more work and bookkeeping (although not too much).

Have fun squishing the bugs!

 

[Boarstorm]

As an aside on swarms: Last game, I actually got to utter the sentence, "Well, mechanically, this counts as 44 swarms of poisonous snakes."

Oddly enough, they chose not to try and clear the Indiana Jones-esque snake pit.