Sleep spell re-usable?

[Ethica]

yeah Tolilen, good point, cause I would hate for my dragon to be put to sleep cause it failed a sleep spell (though it's mind points are quite high) and then be killed instantly.

[Daedalus]

I play a Hero must attack a sleeping monster on their turn, as usual. As the spell says the monster cannot move, attack, or defend, a Hero needs to roll (a) skull(s) to automatically cause (a) body point(s) of damage. If the monster has multiple body points, it will take multiple skulls- try to slay a rock-hard Gargoyle while it is sleeping, and you might only find it angry when it wakes up. This approach keeps the spell power more balanced with the damage potential of the other spells, and doesn't require additional interpretation beyond what is printed on the card.

[ken]

We noticed that the sleep spell does not have a "The spell is then discarded" line at the end, has anyone noticed this? Does it mean you could use it over and over?

The English, European version of this spell is rather ambiguous. It states
"This spell will put one monster or player to sleep. He may try to defend himself by rolling one die per Mind Point. If he rolls a shield he is unaffected. Once asleep he may not defend if attacked. He will awake if he rolls a 6 at the start of his turn, or if attacked".
So, if asleep he may not defend, but if attacked he awakes? The mind boggles. We crossed out "or if attacked "
I see the US version is much clearer.

[Ethica]

I think he should also awake if another monster is in the room because they would shout to him and wake him up.

[el_flesh]

When you're asleep, you're pretty dam defenseless. This is why we have guard dogs/alarms, and why some of us have trained to sleep lightly when it is required.
If you review sleep, (the actual phenomenon) you will find it is an alteration of brainwaves, with parts of the brain (especially conscious) shutting down. So the spell should be forcing the brain into this pattern - the strength of the spell makes it more forced, and for the strongest of magix even a wound would fail to wake the afflicted - who might be perfectly aware he's asleep, but cannot wake up!
You could require the enemy roll a # of dice = to his mind points - he must get shields equal to the difference in his mind points and the caster's to wake up ONCE he sustains a wound!

just to break through the natural armor.

I would make the distinction between natural armor as in a Dragon or Stone Garg vs worn armor, like on a Chaos kNight. You come across a sleeping kNight; what luck - all you have to do is quietly and slowwwly fit the point of your blade in the eye slot and then a hard sudden thrust - piercing the eyeball, going thru to the back of the socket, piercing that thin wall of bone and right into the brain behind it.

Of course, you can think of different skill rolls to manage this; I would do # dice = mind points (in terms of finesse, the wizard should be alot better at this type of instant kill than the ax swinging powerhouses. After all, he has spent years dissecting and removing amphibian parts - two arms, two legs, one liver, one crawdad - we're all set). You can decide what fraction they need to achieve; be it 50% (skulls) 33.3% (shields) or 16.7% (black).
Like for most creatures that can sleep (mummies, skels have no brain; but the rest do) you can make it so only fail is rolling black! When you get to something like a gargoyle you can say that you can do double damage to it for black but only regular damage on a skull and unable on shields - the finesse stab simply wouldn't apply because he is stone all over. As for the dragon - stabbing its eye can only make it blind; it carries its brain higher on the head and would need the perfect angle of entry into the eye socket area to hit a small offset target like that. I would make it only an instant kill if the player can roll DOUBLE or even triple blacks. But it should do significant damage otherwise, too.

While every animal has a critical weak spot, not every chaos creature does...

[sadkitchen]

I play a Hero must attack a sleeping monster on their turn, as usual. As the spell says the monster cannot move, attack, or defend, a Hero needs to roll (a) skull(s) to automatically cause (a) body point(s) of damage. If the monster has multiple body points, it will take multiple skulls- try to slay a rock-hard Gargoyle while it is sleeping, and you might only find it angry when it wakes up. This approach keeps the spell power more balanced with the damage potential of the other spells, and doesn't require additional interpretation beyond what is printed on the card.

This is how we play as well. We also don't let the monster (or hero) wake up just because it took damage (the cards don't say anything about it so it doesn't happen). I like to think that the spell should have been named coma and not sleep.

Just my .

-SadKitchen

[Ethica]

I'm going to use the rule that the hero will automatically inflict a number of body points damage on the sleeping monster equal to the number of dice they would roll in attack, if the monster is so hard that this doesn't kill them then they are awake from then on. This for the most part preserves the usefulness of the sleep spell my players have come to expect, but also protects my harder bosses from instant death.

[sadkitchen]

Sounds good. Maybe make them roll if there are other non sleeping monsters in the room, but get the insta'skulls only if all monsters are dead, sleeping, or incapacitated in some other way. I would assume that it would be difficult to find the softest spot on a Gargoyle while having to sidestep that annoying goblin's short sword. And instead of auto waking having them roll to wake up again. I may change how my sleep spell works from now on all these awesome ideas.

Any thought on making the wake up roll an Mind Point an apposed roll? Something like;
When you cast this spell roll a number of combat dice equal to your mind points. Note the number rolled. The target can attempt to wake immediately, at the beginning of each of his turns, and after each time it takes damage. To do so the target rolls a number of combat dice equal to his mind points. For each black shield rolled reduce the noted number by one. Once the noted number is at or below zero the spell breaks and the target awakes.

I like using combat dice instead of red dice as there are more of them. Though I am sure that it doesn't really matter.

-SadKitchen

[Zenithfleet]

Coming in to this discussion a bit late here...

I use the EU rules mostly, and I always interpreted the Sleep spell to mean that the monster doesn't get to roll any dice in defence, but if he survives, he wakes up.

So you basically get one free attack, but you still have to roll to see if you get any skulls. You might fumble it and just clonk him upside the ear, so he wakes up mad.

[Ethica]

But if you roll no skulls does that count as a miss and the monster doesn't wake up.

Should other monsters be allowed to wake up the sleeping monster?