D&D 5E Sanctuary useless?

[Kalshane]

My Paladin (OoD) has used it a couple times when one of his allies has taken a beating and are likely to be dropped before their turn comes back up again.

 

[Alexander Julian]

Grappling is a special attack

 

[Satyrn]

It's handy defensively. If the enemies are targeting the squishy (low AC, low HP), this forces them to do something else. Tryin' ta be clever and taking out the healer can also be thwarted.

Oh. And you could cast it on the fighter with the Protection fighting style, so that you force the enemy to attack the guy beside him, at which point the fighter imposes disadvantage.

 

[BluejayJunior]

Rogue with Sentinel and Sanctuary standing next to a fighter. The enemy can try to attack the rogue, but if it fails the saving throw, it would have to attack the fighter. Or it could just choose to attack the fighter and not worry about it.
Once the enemy attacks the fighter, Sentinel activates and lets the Rogue use his OA to hit the enemy with sneak attack.

Somewhat situational and I'm not sure it's the best use of the spell, but it could work.

 

[CapnZapp]

The spell can protect someone who might be low on HP. Attacking a less wounded target can be helpful. The warded character can also heal or cast a buff spell. It is a 1st level spell, so the effects are not going to be terribly powerful.

The spell's roleplay dimension can't be ignored.

By that I mean that in any real world, saving your own ass is kind of important.

But D&D is a group game. Making yourself difficult to target is indeed essentially useless if the monsters just go on hitting on your team ally, just as the OP has discovered.

So to understand the spell, you need to remember it's supposed to be used by individuals, not party members.

 

[Motorskills]

My Paladin uses it all the time, fantastic spell.

 

[FrogReaver]

In the right situation it may be much better than a heal.

 

[Volund]

My cleric uses Sanctuary quite often whenever he's concentrating on a buff like Bless or Holy Aura. Turn one: cast buff. Turn two: Dodge action and Sanctuary bonus action. In a 10 or 15 ft wide corridor, he has used Sanctuary + Dodge to completely deny passage to a group of large enemy creatures (the movement rules don't let a hostile creature move through your space unless they are 2 sizes larger or smaller, PHB 191), while the ranged attackers and spellcasters behind him did their work.

It's a 1st level spell, bonus action to cast, and doesn't require concentration - a good spell when you look at what resources it uses compared to what it achieves in the right situation. I cast this on myself or somebody else almost every session I play my cleric.

 

[David Mauro]

as a melee war cleric, sword and board for example, you could cast Sanctuary on yourself before dashing at a group of archers, making the odds of them landing an attack on you as you dash towards them slimmer. Once you get yourself up close, come out of Sanctuary and start hacking away at squishies. It's also very good with one on one encounters, for example, an arena, gladiator-type of encounter.

 

[Blue]

But D&D is a group game. Making yourself difficult to target is indeed essentially useless if the monsters just go on hitting on your team ally, just as the OP has discovered.

With the same information I get the opposite result. The way I look at it: D&D is a team game. Sanctuary is a great spell to make sure the right teammates get attacked.

* If there are two likely targets, it can make monsters go after the one with better defenses, be it AC, Resistance, etc.

* If one teammate is damaged badly, it can encourage damage to other teammates so there isn't a potental loss of action by having them drop.

* If one teammate is undamaged, it's use on others can encourage monsters to attack that one. Enough damage to kill one PC will not impair fighting ability at all when spread across two PCs.

* Because of the large amount of self healing out of combat, it's conserves spell/potion and other in-combat healing if damage is spread across several PCs, and which Sanctuary can encourage.

For these, even a single round before they go again can cause foes to change targets, and would need to suck OAs to change back. As a bonus action low level spell, it can often be cast with little cost.

It also has some straightforward uses.

* If you only have one character standing up fallen PCs you can make sure they don't drop.

* Foes without casters may not recognize the spell and need to waste an attack to understand what is going on.

But really, if you were solo it is partial action denial on yourself, so it's only because D&D is a team game that it has so many excellent uses.