This might have been covered but I did not find it in my searches.
This happened in my last game night. The enemy wizard cast sleep and knocked out the party wizard (fair play since he does that all the time). The party wizard stated that he trained his bat to wake him in this situation.
So, my questions, is this possible? Would the bat know the difference between a sleep spell and normal sleeping? Or every time the players wizard goes to bed would the bat keep waking him up?
And last question since the bat is a creature of the night would it function during the day or have a disadvantage?
A bat has int 2 (not good at remembering) but wis 12 (better at things like insight and perception than many party members).
The wizard has not presumably so much got out a bedroll and settled down for the evening as collapsed in a combat situation. There's plenty of ways that a wizard could attempt to make this work.
I wouldn’t allow him to say he’d been doing it in the past. If he had been saying when the party stops for a long rest, even once or twice, or if he once said he’s going to do it regularly, then ok. But retcon training, no. Also, was the bat far away? If it was near the wizard, it would have been caught in the spell and would also be asleep. With 1hp, the bat would be the first to sleep.
But that doesn’t answer the question. Assuming there actually had been training going on, and the bat was far enough away that it was awake, I’d allow it. On the bar’s action, of course.
The bat stat block doesn’t say it has problems during the day, so it doesn’t. You can always house rule it otherwise. But I’d be hesitant to nerf a spell effect like that. After all, it isn’t actually a bat, it’s a spirit in the shape of a bat.
If the wizard player actually notified the DM ahead of time that he wants to train his bat to attempt to wake him up if he ever collapses unconscious in combat, I think this is completely reasonable. But then, I would also expect the bat to fly to the wizard and attempt this whenever the wizard suddenly collapses unconscious, even if it wasn't from the sleep spell.
If the wizard player randomly pulled this idea out of thin air in the middle of combat without ever mentioning it to the DM before, I'm probably not giving it to them.
Edit: As far as recognizing the sleep spell in particular, XGTE puts that at a DC 16 Arcana check. Bats have -4 int, so even with training they'd need a natural 20 to be able to successfully recognize a sleep spell.
Low INT creatures are not capable of discerning normal sleep against a specific condition. That alone would disallow this. Second; has the player been stating this training in play? Don't allow players to make stuff up on the fly.
The character might have trained its familiar bat to wake him when asleep in such situation, but that doesn't mean it will recognize it and act accordingly when the situation arise for real. Nor that it would know automatically the difference between normal and magical sleep. It's low intelligence after all. The DM would have to determine if it's even possible, and if so, what check if any would be necessary for it to correctly assess the situation and repond to it.
At my table, the wizard would have more chance to be successfully awakened by another party member.
I agree with everyone else. No way would I let the wizard’s player get away with that unless they’d told me that they were working with their familiar and training it prior to that combat.
I would let the player roll to see if his bat wakes him up the next time his wizard is put to sleep or hit by Hypnotic Pattern though.
Above all else, this situation requires a roll. I would go with either an Animal Handling (Wis) check by the Wizard to see if that treating did in fact happen and was successful in this case, or an Investigation (Int) check by the bat to remember or work out what to do here. Either one, set the DC at a level that reflects how hard you think this should be or how imaginative the solution was in your eyes - somewhere in the range of 8 to 16 or so sounds reasonable to me. Then the dice reveal the truth.
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This might have been covered but I did not find it in my searches.
This happened in my last game night. The enemy wizard cast sleep and knocked out the party wizard (fair play since he does that all the time). The party wizard stated that he trained his bat to wake him in this situation.
So, my questions, is this possible? Would the bat know the difference between a sleep spell and normal sleeping? Or every time the players wizard goes to bed would the bat keep waking him up?
And last question since the bat is a creature of the night would it function during the day or have a disadvantage?
Thanks All!
A bat has int 2 (not good at remembering) but wis 12 (better at things like insight and perception than many party members).
The wizard has not presumably so much got out a bedroll and settled down for the evening as collapsed in a combat situation. There's plenty of ways that a wizard could attempt to make this work.
I wouldn’t allow him to say he’d been doing it in the past. If he had been saying when the party stops for a long rest, even once or twice, or if he once said he’s going to do it regularly, then ok. But retcon training, no. Also, was the bat far away? If it was near the wizard, it would have been caught in the spell and would also be asleep. With 1hp, the bat would be the first to sleep.
But that doesn’t answer the question. Assuming there actually had been training going on, and the bat was far enough away that it was awake, I’d allow it. On the bar’s action, of course.
The bat stat block doesn’t say it has problems during the day, so it doesn’t. You can always house rule it otherwise. But I’d be hesitant to nerf a spell effect like that. After all, it isn’t actually a bat, it’s a spirit in the shape of a bat.
The bat should function fine in the day.
If the wizard player actually notified the DM ahead of time that he wants to train his bat to attempt to wake him up if he ever collapses unconscious in combat, I think this is completely reasonable. But then, I would also expect the bat to fly to the wizard and attempt this whenever the wizard suddenly collapses unconscious, even if it wasn't from the sleep spell.
If the wizard player randomly pulled this idea out of thin air in the middle of combat without ever mentioning it to the DM before, I'm probably not giving it to them.
Edit: As far as recognizing the sleep spell in particular, XGTE puts that at a DC 16 Arcana check. Bats have -4 int, so even with training they'd need a natural 20 to be able to successfully recognize a sleep spell.
Low INT creatures are not capable of discerning normal sleep against a specific condition. That alone would disallow this. Second; has the player been stating this training in play? Don't allow players to make stuff up on the fly.
The character might have trained its familiar bat to wake him when asleep in such situation, but that doesn't mean it will recognize it and act accordingly when the situation arise for real. Nor that it would know automatically the difference between normal and magical sleep. It's low intelligence after all. The DM would have to determine if it's even possible, and if so, what check if any would be necessary for it to correctly assess the situation and repond to it.
At my table, the wizard would have more chance to be successfully awakened by another party member.
I agree with everyone else. No way would I let the wizard’s player get away with that unless they’d told me that they were working with their familiar and training it prior to that combat.
I would let the player roll to see if his bat wakes him up the next time his wizard is put to sleep or hit by Hypnotic Pattern though.
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Above all else, this situation requires a roll. I would go with either an Animal Handling (Wis) check by the Wizard to see if that treating did in fact happen and was successful in this case, or an Investigation (Int) check by the bat to remember or work out what to do here. Either one, set the DC at a level that reflects how hard you think this should be or how imaginative the solution was in your eyes - somewhere in the range of 8 to 16 or so sounds reasonable to me. Then the dice reveal the truth.