Well with the OP's examples, you could make it work i think. What you would need to avoid griefing though would be;

Only usable when the mentioned condition is applied to friendly target. AKA, you can whack them with your axe only when they are under the influence of sleep debuff.

And an Accept dialog/icon meaning the reciver has the ability to accept or deny the whack. If accepted the player recived axe to head and wakes up. If denied the players head must have swayed out of the way due to a rather vicious snore spasum.

I think it would be workable if both, or atleast the latter was implimented.

If for no other reason then the previous posters are bloodthirsty animals....animals i tells ya!