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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hawk Diesel" data-source="post: 7873710" data-attributes="member: 59848">From my perspective, its not just about mechanics. 5e was purposely made to use natural language and give the DM wide latitude in their ruling. Just because the spell doesn't specifically mention that submersion in water will awaken a spelling person, that doesn't mean a reasonable person couldn't make that judgement based on the examples provided in the spell that do cause a sleeping person to awaken.If you want to prevent these issues, then that is what hold person is for, which is a second level spell. Which is another argument against allowing sleep to work in this way. It is not meant to incapacitate a person. It only causes them to fall asleep, it doesn't force a person to stay asleep. Whereas hold person, a second level spell, prevents a person from taking any actions at all and forces them to remain incapacitated.Sleep is not meant to be a combat spell. It is meant to be a utility spell to knock out a guard to sneak past them or force some enemies to sleep to give you an opportunity to escape.I brought all these things up to demonstrate that if an unconscious person is hit with an attack, they automatically fail two death saving throws, because they took damage and attacks against them are automatically escalated to a critical. And even a creature with 1,000 hit points immediately drops to zero if they begin to suffocate.In my mind an unconscious person is still alive, and thus needs to breath. Being submerged in water, even if it does not directly do damage with the mechanics of 5e, does present an additional hazard that a reasonable DM would consider in their adjudication. Personally, I think either having disadvantage on Death Saves OR automatic failure as long as the unconscious character is submerged are both reasonable rulings (especially since choking in water results in immediately going to 0 hit points, regardless of how many hit points you started with). You may disagree with them, which is fine, but there is nothing unreasonable about the rulings I presented based on my interpretation of the RAW (Rules as Written), RAI (Rules as Intended), and RAF (Rules as Fun).</blockquote>

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