Sleep
INT spell (Level I Mind)
The caster tosses a pinch of sand in the air while uttering the incantation and gesturing toward a point of focus (POF) up to FAR distance away. One D8 is cast per POWER level, and the results are tallied, an amount of magical spell EFFORT (after any caster bonus is included) equal to the number of hit points affected among the group of target creatures, which includes ANY living creature within NEAR range of the caster’s designated POF. Starting with the target creature with the lowest current HP (and the closest to the POF in case of equally low HP), that creatures remaining HP are deducted from the current spell EFFORT; if the remaining spell EFFORT is positive or zero (not negative), the target creature loses consciousness and falls soundly asleep for one minute (10 rounds), and the spell’s effect targets the creature with the next lowest current HP, confusing until the spell EFFORT is either insufficient or exhausted. Sleeping creatures slumber until the spell duration is up, they suffer damage, or an ally expends an action on their turn to shake/slap a sleeper back to a conscious state; actual current hit points remain the same for sleeping creatures. Full-blooded elves, undead, and certain other types of creatures are immune to the effects of the Sleep spell (GM’s discretion).
Notes:
- This is a port of the classic first-level magic-user staple from Holmes Basic and Moldvay/Cook BX D&D. It makes a mage magical instead of being a poorly armored arcane archer. Sometimes simple spells have deceptively complex ramifications, so please read on…
- I prefer to tally the die rolls BEFORE I apply the PC’s MAGIC EFFORT bonus; otherwise a starting Mage with a min/max build gets over a heart and a half in bonuses (+16 points) when casting this spell at full POWER—all on top of an average die roll of 18 points. You might dig that, but I think over
on an average cast is a bit much. - Under ME MAGIC EFFORT (convert D8 to D10), this spell really becomes dangerous—particularly for solitary creatures (including both monsters and PCs) who have no nearby ally—because the average EFFORT roll for this spell at full power exceeds (even before any MAGIC EFFORT bonus is applied). That means half the time, this spell will just “turn the lights off” on most characters and many monsters in the game—for a full minute!—at the cost of just 4 HP to the caster; RAW, there was no saving throw for the original spell that inspired this ICRPG version. It just works. And every Mage in the game can potentially get access to it. This mechanic (sequential hit point susceptibility within an area of effect) has been a unique feature of—and something of an issue with—the spell for nearly a half-century, so I chose to leave it alone in this faithful conversion to preserve the classic flavor of the magic. However, this can create some uncanny levels of jeopardy for both the player characters and the foes they face. If you’re comfortable with that amount of entropy in your game—where your devious and deadly big bad might have an Achilles’ heel if some two-bit (two-copper?) sorcerer’s apprentice sneaks up on him while he’s alone plotting world domination, then just roll with it. It can make things just as tough for the players. The main downside is that it can short-circuit a lot of dramatic encounters you might have planned if you don’t carefully consider the possible permutations and all the dice math of this pretty nonstandard spell effect. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…
- Conversely, you could consider adding simple INT, CON, or CHA saving throw for target creatures within range of the point of focus on this Sleep spell. The save doesn’t half to completely negate the effects of the spell; it can simply halve the EFFORT; then lone one-heart creatures get dropped at least 50% of the time, but two-heart creatures have more of a fighting chance, and anything with or more are statistically safe from the spell’s effect.
- Why elves get to be immune to this spell makes no sense to me. Including things like ghoul paralysis immunity (which, unlike Sleep, has a lore hook to explain the reason why it exists), D&D in BX and earlier versions really gave elves (and elf PCs) some pretty unfair (and undeserved) advantages—likely inspired by some of the details in Tolkien—and many still persist in 5e. Again, like the no-save feature, I left this wrinkle in the spell description above to preserve the original flavor, but it would undoubtedly be the first practical revision I’d make to these spell mechanics. At least make elves save against the sleep EFFORT if everyone else gets no save at all. Honestly. Because…elves.
- As for other creatures, undead (especially incorporeal undead), constructs, and most nonhumanoid aberrations should probably be completely immune. Maybe oozes too. Anything that either doesn’t really have a brain or has a brain so radically different from or superior to a human brain that it has no “light switch.”
- I’ve never understood (in game) why very loud noises don’t interrupt magically-induced slumber if it is truly actual “sleep,” but apparently they don’t, and sleepers can sleep through an Arcane Bomb explosion as long as they don’t take damage. In meta, the sounds of clashing swords and blood-curdling screams would obviously water down this spell’s value completely if they disturbed the effects of this spell, but I feel like they should have called it “Faint” instead, just for the sake of accuracy.
- Peruse the unseen pages of the Lockwood Grimoire.