Trepidation & pk range peeps

I wasn't sure about this, so I thought I'd bring it up. You can use trepidation on people outside of your pk range, newbies even. However, if you use it on someone in your pk range and they are sleeping it initiates combat. Maybe it is a lot more potent against people in your pk range. If not, it seems strange that such an aggressive power can be used on newbies, so I thought it may be a mistake that it initiates combat against sleeping victims.