Technically, no. Gust of Wind's text about pushing 15 feet only applies to creatures, and that's the only push effect explicitly listed in its spell description. Flaming Sphere's sphere is not a creature. I go into a lot of detail below, but the tl;dr is that Flaming Sphere might be extinguished by Gust of Wind and if it isn't it might be moved by it, depending on how your DM interprets several things which aren't covered by the rules.
Gust of Wind has three more effects which may be relevant:
In the real world, per the Beaufort scale, 20-21 mph winds are a "fresh breeze" (leaves in trees will way) and 22-27 mph is a "strong breeze" (branches will sway), while 28-33 is a "near gale" (trees will sway and you can feel resistance when you walk against the wind).
In terms of wind resistance to movement, Warding Wind and Control Winds both manifest "strong wind" that is more powerful than DMG strong wind, and the two spells don't match each other for what their strong wind can do. This is absolutely normal for spells, but it may set precedent that spell text specifying "strong wind" is simply a reference to how the DMG only divides Wind into Nonexistent, Light, and Strong, meaning Strong can be arbitrarily strong without changing labels, and we need to use context clues for wind velocity. From the Beaufort scale, 34-40 mph winds noticeably impede progress, but Gust of Wind is even stronger in some sense, since it can push creatures. That takes roughly 67+ mph winds (real-world winds need more velocity to move heavier things, whereas Gust of Wind ignores both volume and mass of a target), which is "hurricane" strength, the maximum, on Beaufort.
Control Weather violates this precedent: like, for example, the eversmoking bottle and the smoke grenade above, it refers to "moderate wind" as well, which is between light and strong, and "gale" and "storm" (which are defined on the Beaufort scale and are weaker than hurricane) as being stronger than strong. So you can be absolutely certain we have no idea even approximately how fast Gust of Wind's wind is moving.
All wind can move objects of sufficiently low weight (see e.g. the DMG reference above to picking up sand, and you can check the English definition of wind), but complicating the issue is that we have no idea how corporeal Flaming Sphere is. It has text saying it stops when you ram a creature with it, which doesn't necessarily mean it's corporeal - it could just stop because the spell says so - and because the spell refers to barriers of a maximum height and jumps of a maximum distance, the strong implication (which is not explicit) is that the Sphere is subject to gravity. In fact, because the text on the ram doesn't explicitly discuss it, and nothing else in the spell tells us if the sphere occupies its space, we don't even know if Flaming Sphere, when ramming on a grid, stops in the grid square adjacent to a target or in the same square as the target (for example, a fire elemental can explicitly stop inside your grid square if it wants, and it's harder for a creature than an object to do that). Also, I just said it may be subject to gravity, but we have no idea what its mass and hence weight would be - for example, Flaming Sphere could be light enough to float in water or heavy enough to sink in it, and either way your DM wouldn't be violating any RAW. It could be exactly as dense as water and functionally be able to swim. We don't know.
In addition to extinguishing "open flames" due to strong wind, it also has explicit spell text doing the same: it "extinguishes candles, torches, and similar unprotected flames".
Thirdly, it "causes protected flames, such as those of lanterns, to dance wildly and has a 50 percent chance to extinguish them".
Open flames are typically defined in English to be exposed to the elements. This means Gust of Wind's interaction with protected flames is magical: it appears to, by definition, bypass total cover within its area to interfere with flames that should be protected from it. However, "protected flame" has no common English definition I can find and it certainly isn't a game term, so your DM has to define it, which will directly inform how powerfully Gust of Wind interacts with fires.
Flaming Sphere is most assuredly an "open flame", just a very large one sustained by an ongoing magic spell which is being concentrated on. Gust of Wind doesn't relent because of that, just like mundane winds don't. In a sense there are two larger questions here only your DM can answer:
How do sufficiently strong winds interact with fire spells that have a duration longer than instantaneous? Will a hurricane put out a Wall of Fire? Will a tornado douse the output of Create Bonfire? This is entirely up to your DM, but I suppose under ultra-strict raw, definitionally, all of these spells are extinguished by sufficiently strong wind. That would suggest Gust of Wind puts out Flaming Sphere without moving it.
If your DM rules that definitionally these fire spells are protected by dint of being spells, you would roll a d2 (flip a coin) once per Gust and Sphere (so flip a new coin for a new Gust on an old Sphere and also flip a new coin for a new Sphere in an old Gust) to see if the Sphere goes out.
Does Flaming Sphere, unlike all other fire in the game and the real world, behave like a heavy solid rather than a light plasma, and if so, how heavy is the solid, and how heavy a sphere can Gust of Wind push, given it manifests a "strong wind" so strong movement against it costs an extra foot of movement? Bear in mind that applying real-world physics is even less reasonable here than in other D&D cases, because real-world fires always, by definition, are consuming some sort of fuel - whatever's burning - while spell-fires do not (there is no reason at all to assume a spell-manifested fire has any flammables in it, whether solid (like flour), liquid (like oil), or gas/other plasma (like methane)). That means real-world behavior we observe due to the fuel shouldn't happen with spell-fires; for example, all spell-fires should burn underwater unless they explicitly say they don't, and they'll also all burn in hard vacuum.
Related question which may or may not be dependent on the above answer (i.e. your DM may want a different answer for the Sphere than for other fires, especially spell-fires): how resistant is a sustained spell-fire, such as Create Bonfire and Wall of Fire, to being moved by a generic in-game effect that can move things?
EDIT: I should also point out that the DMG and Ghosts of Saltmarsh contradict each other in a relevant way for assessing wind moving an object, which helps emphasize my point that looking to the rules to solve this problem is a fool's errand.
Flaming Sphere is a spell that creates - 5-foot diameter sphere of fire that comes into existence where you decide, can be moved as prescribed by the spell, and lasts the duration or until concentration ends.
Consider this - can you cast flaming sphere under water? RAW, the answer is yes. Any creature affected would have resistance to the fire damage but the sphere would still come into existence, could be rammed into creatures and can be moved.
Finally, Flaming Sphere is a magic spell that does what it says it does - so in terms of interacting with Gust of Wind, I would rule that Gust of Wind has no effect on Flaming Sphere. I would also think that is RAW.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Can a gust of wind push a flaming sphere?
The Gust of Wind spell description mentions covered vs. uncovered flames, but doesn't specifically mention magical flames.
Does anyone know of an official ruling? Has it ever come up in your game? How was it handled?
Pure RAW, Gust of Wind would have no effect on Flaming Sphere.
A Gust of Wind shouldn't extinguish a Flaming Sphere.
Technically, no. Gust of Wind's text about pushing 15 feet only applies to creatures, and that's the only push effect explicitly listed in its spell description. Flaming Sphere's sphere is not a creature. I go into a lot of detail below, but the tl;dr is that Flaming Sphere might be extinguished by Gust of Wind and if it isn't it might be moved by it, depending on how your DM interprets several things which aren't covered by the rules.
Gust of Wind has three more effects which may be relevant:
Flaming Sphere is most assuredly an "open flame", just a very large one sustained by an ongoing magic spell which is being concentrated on. Gust of Wind doesn't relent because of that, just like mundane winds don't. In a sense there are two larger questions here only your DM can answer:
EDIT: I should also point out that the DMG and Ghosts of Saltmarsh contradict each other in a relevant way for assessing wind moving an object, which helps emphasize my point that looking to the rules to solve this problem is a fool's errand.
The DMG has sailboats use a special travel pace determined by the wind (or strong water current, but what we care about is the wind).
Here's a ship statblock from Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I specifically grabbed sailing ship to explicitly match the DMG. As you can see, an explicit travel pace is listed. This is backed up by the GoS rules: per GoS, a ship's travel pace is set by the ship and is not affected by wind strength.
Normal fire needs 3 things to burn; heat, fuel and oxygen.
Magical fire doesn't.
Thanks Guys!
Flaming Sphere is a spell that creates - 5-foot diameter sphere of fire that comes into existence where you decide, can be moved as prescribed by the spell, and lasts the duration or until concentration ends.
Consider this - can you cast flaming sphere under water? RAW, the answer is yes. Any creature affected would have resistance to the fire damage but the sphere would still come into existence, could be rammed into creatures and can be moved.
Finally, Flaming Sphere is a magic spell that does what it says it does - so in terms of interacting with Gust of Wind, I would rule that Gust of Wind has no effect on Flaming Sphere. I would also think that is RAW.