Sleeping is a status condition in ADOM. While it is essentially identical to paralysis in terms of debilitating the PC, it can be received in a few situations and typically from weak monsters.
Effects on the PC[]
Sleeping PCs are unable to take any action and thus cannot even affect the situation they are in, especially if it reaches life-threatening proportions. Luckily, this is almost never the case — only a handful of monsters in the game use sleep-inducing attacks. The PC should normally be wary of such monsters only in the presence of a greater threat.
Note that sleep doesn't confer any direct effects on the PC's primary attributes, such as DV. Therefore, if the PC's defensive capabilities are sufficient, a single instance of sleep induced by a successful attack will likely end before the next hit allowing the player to take some action. Humorously, it was possible to continue performing such actions as reading a spellbook after falling asleep in versions prior to 1.2.0.
Finally, sleep can lead to a very specific instant death if the PC suffers a sickness fit and "chokes on his/her own vomit while asleep" (the exact death message).
If the PC has intrinsic sleep resistance (or is wearing an item granting this power), (s)he is in fact completely unable to fall asleep. There is no standard non-artifact item granting sleep resistance in ADOM, although it is possible to receive the intrinsic from pools.
Causes[]
- Monster attacks: Homunculi can induce sleep by successfully hitting the PC.
- Monster abilities: Harpies and werejackals are able to sing a song that can put the PC to sleep. In practice, these monsters use the ability rarely and the PC has a chance to resist the effect even without intrinsics (possibly based on Mana or Willpower score).
- Eating monsters: Eating homunculi and cooshoos' corpses will cause the PC to fall asleep. Harpies and werejackals, on the other hand, mute and sicken the PC correspondingly.
Cures/Treatment[]
There is no cure for sleep once the PC falls into this state — the player will have to wait for it to wear off.
Effects on monsters[]
The PC cannot put other monsters to sleep as there are no wands, potions or spells to confer this status condition. However, sleep-inducing attacks of creatures listed above work on other monsters with the exact same effect as on the PC — sleeping monsters will not be able to perform any action and are open to any attacks. The messages "The -foo- suddenly falls asleep!" and "The -foo- wakes up!" will be generated to indicate the effect. Generating homunculi and cooshoos companions using a scroll of familiar summoning will allow the PC to use sleep against hostiles to some extent. Note that all sleep-inducing monsters are somewhat weak and practically useless against more powerful creatures. A number of monsters are also resistant to sleeping attacks. Mist elves of all classes are able to use white necromancy to create homunculi which will automatically scale themselves to the PC's level increasing their potential.