D&D 5E Sanctuary useless?

[Iry]

Adds a bit of tension if some, lot or all of the actual actions taken are "unknown" so you are guessing what is really going on. Maybe one of those pros was a failed attack or maybe that was a healing word he bellowed or maybe it upped its defense so much that I get disadvantage but not in any way that I get a clue about it until I make an attack.

Yeah. If they fail their checks to figure out what a strange new enemy is doing, they have to make a best guess from the way I describe it (blade flickering with hungry crimson light, skin glossing over with shades of grey while flecks of stone crumble off, a nearby ally groaning miserably as he begins to pick himself up off the floor, three great whirlwind swings drawing the wind in its wake and sucking the air from your lungs, etc).

 

[Schan122]

My party and I ran into a situation where a clay golem was guarding a room we needed to dig through. I have a Goliath devotion paladin and I built him to grapple.
So I grapple the golem and use my bonus action to shove him down (shield master feat). Next turn, still have him prone and grappled so I cast sanctuary. 6 rounds, it failed to break grapple and lost its attacks trying to get me.

I love grappling and sanctuary, can completely shut down the big fighter

 

[Arvok]

Cast it on a familiar, then have the familiar use the help action to give your primary damage-dealer advantage on his attack rolls. Against a low-wisdom enemy (or several) it keeps the 1 hp familiar from being squished and it can do a whole lot more than a familiar normally does in combat.

 

[NotAYakk]

The exact same is true without Sentinel.

No. With Sanctuary:

it gives the enemy a choice, take an OA, waste an action to disengage, or possibly waste an action attacking the protected target.

without:

it gives the enemy a choice, take an OA, waste an action to disengage, or attack the adjacent target.

those are not the exact same.

Sanctuary can "force" the OA/disengage when the adjacent monster would rather not.

The total penalty is eating an OA before beating on the now unprotected target, unless you rule sanctuary-redirected attacks as wasted (in whixh case it can be better in a few cases).

 

[Coroc]

....
Another option would be to grapple an enemy creature and then cast Sanctuary with your free hand. On subsequent rounds you could Dodge while maintaining your grip, which isn't an attack and so does not break Sanctuary. That could be effective against a Medium/Large melee monster like an Efreeti,

Ouch, grappling a fire elemental? Sounds like david carradine in Kung Fu when he got his dragon branding tattoos.

 

[Windrunner]

I thought the same way until a friend proved me wrong last year. We were both mounted Paladins on a field with a LARGE number of low-level undead enemies. We each cast it on ourselves and then rode the field virtually impervious to AoO. Of course, the skeletons and zombies chased us, and we lead them into the traps and areas of concentrated artillery fire before ignoring them completely to go after the leaders. We also would charge the commanders, smite them, cast Sanctuary as a bonus action at the end of our attack, and then next round, ride away.

Game mechanic: We were Tier III paladins (I think level 12?), and the average skeleton / zombie needed a 20 on the die for the Wisdom save AND a 20 on the die to hit our AC.

Huge undead army and not one reached the castle wall. DM spent hours on his "Battle of Winterfall" scenario, and we "broke it, spanked it, and sent it home without dinner..."