Sleep Spell - waking up when hit.

Ligg

Hi,
Sleep is probably the most powerful spell in BG1. It's a bit good for level 1 as you can permanently knock out x number of enemies and beat them while they nap. I seem to be drawing from IWD a lot - but in that game any enemy that was struck woke up. This makes sense. It also means you have to use some kind of targeting tactics so as not to wake up all your enemies at once.
Thanks.

Demivrgvs

We already did that to Sleep within Spell Revisions, and considering BGEE is including ToBEx they can easily do the same. That being said I'm not sure it's amongst their priorities, or if they can tweak spells at all (it's not clear how much they can tweak things that were not broken).

SpaceInvader

It has already been fixed, or so they said.

Mortianna

I always thought it made more sense for the spell to knock them out for the duration of the spell. Since those affected by the spell are helpless, you should be able to do a "coup de grâce" that kills them with one blow (fatal stab wound, decapitation, or blow to the back of the head). Since it's not possible in BG game mechanics, the permanent unconsciousness seemed to compensate for it by allowing the party to waylay on sleeping enemies.

Ligg

Mortianna, you have a point. Perhaps an automatic critical hit would be a compromise. But it's not that important to involve that level of attention.

Tanthalas

If BG had some of the 3E feats where you can sacrifice "THAC0" for increased damage, you could have something like that, but it doesn't, so yeah.

Dee

You do get significant bonuses to your attacks when the target is unconscious, though.

fighter_mage_thief

I think it really depends on how deep a slumber the spell sends monsters into. It's true that normally when we are sleeping, if someone stabs us, we will immediately wake up. But consider the sleep under medical sedation, where the patient can sleep through an entire surgical operation, wake up and not recall any of it.

Xavioria

I think it should be measured into a degree of the power of the caster. A level 1 sleep spell IMO would only keep them asleep untill asaulted, but like a level 8, you could get a few hits in before it wore off, thereby kind of giving everyone some shot with the spell, as well as making it better as you grow in levels beyond just duration.

LadyRhian

Even if it just sent them to sleep at level 1, you should be able to decapitate them or strike at their neck and kill them more or less instantly.

Ligg

LadyRhian said:

Even if it just sent them to sleep at level 1, you should be able to decapitate them or strike at their neck and kill them more or less instantly.

This is likely but not always guaranteed. Back in the days when people got beheaded the person who put their head on the block always asked the executer to do a good job. It could take several chops and death wasn't always on the first one.

LadyRhian

@Ligg Okay. stab them in the eye, then. At the very least, with a blunt weapon, you can hit them hard enough to knock them out even deeper and then finish them off some other way. In short, a sleep spell is a way to kill people more easily.

Ligg

LadyRhian said:

@Ligg Okay. stab them in the eye, then. At the very least, with a blunt weapon, you can hit them hard enough to knock them out even deeper and then finish them off some other way. In short, a sleep spell is a way to kill people more easily.

But what if your dagger got stuck in their eye socket? And while you were trying to pull it out, what if your wooden club became host to a small family of squirrels?! Factoring in all the possibiliies gets tricky.
Having not spent much time in the real wilderness I'm not in a position to say this things couldn't happen.
But, in essence, you're correct. An instant kill for sleeping targets would be the most likely - with perhaps a 5% chance of the target waking up.

elminster

Having thought it over I kind of feel like you get enough right now as it is. I mean like aosaw said you do get bonuses to attacking a sleeping creature, and generally the creatures you are going to be effective against with this spell are not powerful to begin with. If you hit and fail to kill them, they should wake up.

Xavioria

@Ligg I thought that only happened if the blade had gotten dull... this was a serious issue during the French revolution where the Guillotines were seeing so much use that their blades had gotten very dull and several chops were required to chop off the heads as opposed to just one. An adventurer would be a very poor adventurer if his/her blade got dull because it is their responsibility to hone their weapons.

LadyRhian

@Ligg Then you get the strongest member of your party to pick up the biggest rock they can, and drop it on their heads from a height of 3-4 feet- no more problems with weapons, and if the rock breaks, you find another. Heads go "squish!"