Storm of vengeance does hardly any damage for a high level spell except for round three, and that's still not good against one big creature. If you wait those three rounds, a lot of non-boss combats will be over, and as I previously mentioned, the 3rd round ability won't work against one creature. Is this spell good at all?
So math being a thing I kind of wanted to get an over under on this spell and BOY HOWDY. I initially scoffed at this level 9 spell with such low numbers and after some study I have completely turned my opinion around on it. This spell is nutty because of 3 things. 1 the area of effect and 2 the variety and severity of the damages to not only creatures but objects (structures) as well, and 3 the range is sight, meaning you could technically use this spell with casual freedom, from anywhere without anyone knowing what you were doing. You could obliterate an entire army or city without any warning and all within perfect safety miles away.
Anyways back to the over under, to truly understand this spell a test for max proc rate but average damage. Meaning there is 1 medium creature taking median average damage within every single square of this spells target area. 360/5=72 Creatures radius. Surface area of a circle pi x 72(squared) = 16286 total creatures affected (rounded to nearest whole). Damage dealt to each creature is 11d6 averaged to 38.5. Damage dealt with lightening strikes 60d6 averaged to 210. Total 16286 x 38.5 + 210 = 627221 damage across all targets!
As a comparison doing a similar max proc rate average damage with Meteor Swarm yields 112700 total damage across all targets. Now being fair, Storm deals about 5.5 times the damage and takes 10 times the effort (10 rounds of concentration).
Something I initially forgot to mention is the actual area of the spell can be thousands of feet up in the air, meaning it's out of range of most casters ability to dispel it. Add that on to the fact that you could be very far away, it's unlikely that anyone could counter spell this either. In short this is the kind of thing you don't use on an enemy or even in an encounter, you use this to annihilate an entire region of the map, siege the castle of some horrific dark evil, or perhaps sunder an invading army who arrives on your shores bringing with them the chaos of war, a city who has been warned too many times to halt their rapid expansion and stop destroying woodlands... you decided.
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
So math being a thing I kind of wanted to get an over under on this spell and BOY HOWDY. I initially scoffed at this level 9 spell with such low numbers and after some study I have completely turned my opinion around on it. This spell is nutty because of 3 things. 1 the area of effect and 2 the variety and severity of the damages to not only creatures but objects (structures) as well, and 3 the range is sight, meaning you could technically use this spell with casual freedom, from anywhere without anyone knowing what you were doing. You could obliterate an entire army or city without any warning and all within perfect safety miles away.
Anyways back to the over under, to truly understand this spell a test for max proc rate but average damage. Meaning there is 1 medium creature taking median average damage within every single square of this spells target area. 360/5=72 Creatures radius. Surface area of a circle pi x 72(squared) = 16286 total creatures affected (rounded to nearest whole). Damage dealt to each creature is 11d6 averaged to 38.5. Damage dealt with lightening strikes 60d6 averaged to 210. Total 16286 x 38.5 + 210 = 627221 damage across all targets!
As a comparison doing a similar max proc rate average damage with Meteor Swarm yields 112700 total damage across all targets. Now being fair, Storm deals about 5.5 times the damage and takes 10 times the effort (10 rounds of concentration).
Something I initially forgot to mention is the actual area of the spell can be thousands of feet up in the air, meaning it's out of range of most casters ability to dispel it. Add that on to the fact that you could be very far away, it's unlikely that anyone could counter spell this either. In short this is the kind of thing you don't use on an enemy or even in an encounter, you use this to annihilate an entire region of the map, siege the castle of some horrific dark evil, or perhaps sunder an invading army who arrives on your shores bringing with them the chaos of war, a city who has been warned too many times to halt their rapid expansion and stop destroying woodlands... you decided.
I did read the comments. There were several arguments against that below it and the spell would still be bad in a lot of campaigns.
Honestly, it seems like a really good bad guy spell lol.
I like the idea of an evil druid casting the spell daily through a scrying crystal ball (or just a mountain far away) and the party has to hunt down the source of the perpetual deadly storm and solve it.
But i agree that as a player, in most campaigns, this spell won't come up much. But the situations where it would, its a really cool one. A cool use of it would be against a capital of an evil nation, or an enemy war camp. But I fully understand that this is extremely situational and the limited amount of 9th level druid spells makes it look even worse.
You're thinking of it in terms of combat ("one big creature").
This is not designed for combat.
This is a "I'll destroy the town in revenge" type. It damages objects as well as creatures. It will destroy buildings, wipe out armies and eradicate a population. All while you're miles away in safety, watching the town succumb to your wrath.
Let's try a different POV, you're a commoner in a simple town. You're going about your day with the others. Suddenly there's a storm, and most people in the town, with commoners averaging 6 HP each, drop dead. Within seconds, the wooden structures and buildings are melting, the few people who survived are melting, even stone is weakening, and you're just watching in horror next to your lifeless body, watching from your ghostly eyes as it becomes a puddle. More seconds and massive lightning bolts blast down - demolishing some remaining structures a an angry god smiting heathens. Buildings are even further reduced to rubble as massive hailstones obliterate things, buildings that crumble in trapping and crushing those fortune enough to have stayed inside, the sturdier guards are pounded down into the body littered streets. So many dead. The winds now pick up, freezing the remaining living into dead blocks of ice, and blowing everything around. Unrelenting chaos.
Finally the winds die down. Most of the town has been destroyed. Only the most lucky few survived. But, it seems to be over. The skies clear. For the rest of the day and all through the night the streets are cleared, the parts of the town that were spared such tragedy lend their people in the clean-up. Searches commenced to find what caused this but nobody knows. Was it a mage? Unknown.
You watch as they toil even into the morning. The light of day showcasing the pure horror still left upon the cobble. They haven't even gotten to your body yet. And the booming returns. The sky once again darkens. The storm has returned and you can do nothing but weep as the rest of the town suffers the same fate. Some managed to evacuate but oh so few. The town is history.
Oh they'll send some guards from the bigger cities. They'll try to repair. And every day the storm returns, undoing all their efforts. When a city starts to help too insistently, a storm focuses on them too. The town will just be abandoned. Deemed not worth the risk or effort.
Ah well. That will teach them for pissing off a druid.
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This spell is the reason I got out of AL campaigns entirely. At level 20, the only thing that matters is this specific encounter and this specific bad guy - there’s no over-arching impact for doing bad or good things.
This spell is amazing in an actual full world building campaign. You want to raze an entire village and face the consequences? Now you actually can! Want to destroy an entire regiment of a military force? Now you can!
But yeah - in our private, non-consequential whiteroom environments, this looks terrible. Which is inherently the reason why DnD isn’t designed for these environments.
Honestly, it seems like a really good bad guy spell lol.
I like the idea of an evil druid casting the spell daily through a scrying crystal ball (or just a mountain far away) and the party has to hunt down the source of the perpetual deadly storm and solve it.
But i agree that as a player, in most campaigns, this spell won't come up much. But the situations where it would, its a really cool one. A cool use of it would be against a capital of an evil nation, or an enemy war camp. But I fully understand that this is extremely situational and the limited amount of 9th level druid spells makes it look even worse.
I'd kind of like to see a solid list at some point of spells that wouldn't really be useful for player characters in most campaigns, but could potentially be amazing in the hands of an NPC the party has to face.
I feel like this spell is less of a "Slaying a mighty dragon" spell, and more like a "Annihilating an army of goblins and orcs" spell. It's for defending Gondor from the armies of Mordor before the reach the city, not for taking out Golem while he's attacking Frodo. This spell allows you to destroy large groups of low to medium level foes over time, but not kill a single, extremely high level one.
The 3rd round feature of summoning six bolts of lightning to strike six different creatures or objects is specifically designed to take out some of the higher level threats, such as a giant or a catapult.
I feel like this spell is less of a "Slaying a mighty dragon" spell, and more like a "Annihilating an army of goblins and orcs" spell. It's for defending Gondor from the armies of Mordor before the reach the city, not for taking out Golem while he's attacking Frodo. This spell allows you to destroy large groups of low to medium level foes over time, but not kill a single, extremely high level one.
The 3rd round feature of summoning six bolts of lightning to strike six different creatures or objects is specifically designed to take out some of the higher level threats, such as a giant or a catapult.
I just think meteor swarm does that so much better.
I feel like this spell is less of a "Slaying a mighty dragon" spell, and more like a "Annihilating an army of goblins and orcs" spell. It's for defending Gondor from the armies of Mordor before the reach the city, not for taking out Golem while he's attacking Frodo. This spell allows you to destroy large groups of low to medium level foes over time, but not kill a single, extremely high level one.
The 3rd round feature of summoning six bolts of lightning to strike six different creatures or objects is specifically designed to take out some of the higher level threats, such as a giant or a catapult.
I just think meteor swarm does that so much better.
Storm of Vengeance has 2x better coverage than Meteor Swarm.
It's a very spectacular in it's scope spell, maybe not for a single encounter but man, imagine being THE druid charged with defending your community and standing alone on the walls, proclaiming that you will "take care of this army".
Or imagine being a PC who has to kill an evil druid before he destroys a whole village or your army, before "it's too late!".
I feel like this spell is less of a "Slaying a mighty dragon" spell, and more like a "Annihilating an army of goblins and orcs" spell. It's for defending Gondor from the armies of Mordor before the reach the city, not for taking out Golem while he's attacking Frodo. This spell allows you to destroy large groups of low to medium level foes over time, but not kill a single, extremely high level one.
The 3rd round feature of summoning six bolts of lightning to strike six different creatures or objects is specifically designed to take out some of the higher level threats, such as a giant or a catapult.
I just think meteor swarm does that so much better.
Your prerogative. I just prefer the cold math of SoV being superior at this as a fact.
To each their own, I guess.
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I feel like this spell is less of a "Slaying a mighty dragon" spell, and more like a "Annihilating an army of goblins and orcs" spell. It's for defending Gondor from the armies of Mordor before the reach the city, not for taking out Golem while he's attacking Frodo. This spell allows you to destroy large groups of low to medium level foes over time, but not kill a single, extremely high level one.
The 3rd round feature of summoning six bolts of lightning to strike six different creatures or objects is specifically designed to take out some of the higher level threats, such as a giant or a catapult.
I just think meteor swarm does that so much better.
40 ft radius vs 360 ft radius.
I wonder which radius would best fit a fantasy army.
I feel like this spell is less of a "Slaying a mighty dragon" spell, and more like a "Annihilating an army of goblins and orcs" spell. It's for defending Gondor from the armies of Mordor before the reach the city, not for taking out Golem while he's attacking Frodo. This spell allows you to destroy large groups of low to medium level foes over time, but not kill a single, extremely high level one.
The 3rd round feature of summoning six bolts of lightning to strike six different creatures or objects is specifically designed to take out some of the higher level threats, such as a giant or a catapult.
I just think meteor swarm does that so much better.
40 ft radius vs 360 ft radius.
I wonder which radius would best fit a fantasy army.
To be fair, MS is 4x 40ft radius if you stack them right so 160ft total - still less than half of SoV.
Ultimately it's not like there is a choice here - Storm of Vengeance is a primarily a Druid spell while MS is a Sorcerer/Wizard.
So, have we reached a consensus? That Storm of Vengeance is good for taking out an army of foes, not a single big baddie, while spells like Meteor Swarm are better for small groups and/or large monsters?
As a DM, here's a home-brew rule you could potentially use: Multiple lightning bolts in round three CAN strike the same target, IF the target is a certain size or larger. Two bolts can strike huge targets, three can strike gargantuan ones.
Storm of Vengeance is also an incredibly cinematic spell. it's the kind of thing a player who's focused on the spectacle and imagination-show over the numbers will love this sucker, because the 360-foot radius is freaking huge and everything beneath it takes a new and exciting form of natural destruction every turn. For those with strong imaginations (or DMs with strong narration skills), it's one of the most visually (auditorily? Whatever, dopest) spells a player can cast.
Is it the sort of spell that will be super useful every day of a PC's life? Nah. But the druid looking for spectacle only needs to cast it once in a place where it does its job to be satisfied.
I don't want "Meteor Swarm, but with lightning" as the spell that captures a druid's ultimate ability to call down the wrath of nature. If you like MS, be a wizard. 9th level spells should all be different and different classes should tackle challenges in different ways.
Storm of vengeance does hardly any damage for a high level spell except for round three, and that's still not good against one big creature. If you wait those three rounds, a lot of non-boss combats will be over, and as I previously mentioned, the 3rd round ability won't work against one creature. Is this spell good at all?
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
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Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I did read the comments. There were several arguments against that below it and the spell would still be bad in a lot of campaigns.
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
Honestly, it seems like a really good bad guy spell lol.
I like the idea of an evil druid casting the spell daily through a scrying crystal ball (or just a mountain far away) and the party has to hunt down the source of the perpetual deadly storm and solve it.
But i agree that as a player, in most campaigns, this spell won't come up much. But the situations where it would, its a really cool one. A cool use of it would be against a capital of an evil nation, or an enemy war camp. But I fully understand that this is extremely situational and the limited amount of 9th level druid spells makes it look even worse.
You're thinking of it in terms of combat ("one big creature").
This is not designed for combat.
This is a "I'll destroy the town in revenge" type. It damages objects as well as creatures. It will destroy buildings, wipe out armies and eradicate a population. All while you're miles away in safety, watching the town succumb to your wrath.
Let's try a different POV, you're a commoner in a simple town. You're going about your day with the others. Suddenly there's a storm, and most people in the town, with commoners averaging 6 HP each, drop dead. Within seconds, the wooden structures and buildings are melting, the few people who survived are melting, even stone is weakening, and you're just watching in horror next to your lifeless body, watching from your ghostly eyes as it becomes a puddle. More seconds and massive lightning bolts blast down - demolishing some remaining structures a an angry god smiting heathens. Buildings are even further reduced to rubble as massive hailstones obliterate things, buildings that crumble in trapping and crushing those fortune enough to have stayed inside, the sturdier guards are pounded down into the body littered streets. So many dead. The winds now pick up, freezing the remaining living into dead blocks of ice, and blowing everything around. Unrelenting chaos.
Finally the winds die down. Most of the town has been destroyed. Only the most lucky few survived. But, it seems to be over. The skies clear. For the rest of the day and all through the night the streets are cleared, the parts of the town that were spared such tragedy lend their people in the clean-up. Searches commenced to find what caused this but nobody knows. Was it a mage? Unknown.
You watch as they toil even into the morning. The light of day showcasing the pure horror still left upon the cobble. They haven't even gotten to your body yet. And the booming returns. The sky once again darkens. The storm has returned and you can do nothing but weep as the rest of the town suffers the same fate. Some managed to evacuate but oh so few. The town is history.
Oh they'll send some guards from the bigger cities. They'll try to repair. And every day the storm returns, undoing all their efforts. When a city starts to help too insistently, a storm focuses on them too. The town will just be abandoned. Deemed not worth the risk or effort.
Ah well. That will teach them for pissing off a druid.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
This spell is the reason I got out of AL campaigns entirely. At level 20, the only thing that matters is this specific encounter and this specific bad guy - there’s no over-arching impact for doing bad or good things.
This spell is amazing in an actual full world building campaign. You want to raze an entire village and face the consequences? Now you actually can! Want to destroy an entire regiment of a military force? Now you can!
But yeah - in our private, non-consequential whiteroom environments, this looks terrible. Which is inherently the reason why DnD isn’t designed for these environments.
I'd kind of like to see a solid list at some point of spells that wouldn't really be useful for player characters in most campaigns, but could potentially be amazing in the hands of an NPC the party has to face.
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I feel like this spell is less of a "Slaying a mighty dragon" spell, and more like a "Annihilating an army of goblins and orcs" spell. It's for defending Gondor from the armies of Mordor before the reach the city, not for taking out Golem while he's attacking Frodo. This spell allows you to destroy large groups of low to medium level foes over time, but not kill a single, extremely high level one.
The 3rd round feature of summoning six bolts of lightning to strike six different creatures or objects is specifically designed to take out some of the higher level threats, such as a giant or a catapult.
Agreed. It’s great for a large scale combat with a ton of minions. It’s useless in a combat against one big opponent.
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This is NOT a PC combat spell. It is designed to kill an army, not a person.
Similarly, a ballista is not a good weapon for 3 people to use (3 actions to get a single 3d10 attack. )
I just think meteor swarm does that so much better.
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
Storm of Vengeance has 2x better coverage than Meteor Swarm.
It's a very spectacular in it's scope spell, maybe not for a single encounter but man, imagine being THE druid charged with defending your community and standing alone on the walls, proclaiming that you will "take care of this army".
Or imagine being a PC who has to kill an evil druid before he destroys a whole village or your army, before "it's too late!".
Your prerogative. I just prefer the cold math of SoV being superior at this as a fact.
To each their own, I guess.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
40 ft radius vs 360 ft radius.
I wonder which radius would best fit a fantasy army.
To be fair, MS is 4x 40ft radius if you stack them right so 160ft total - still less than half of SoV.
Ultimately it's not like there is a choice here - Storm of Vengeance is a primarily a Druid spell while MS is a Sorcerer/Wizard.
So, have we reached a consensus? That Storm of Vengeance is good for taking out an army of foes, not a single big baddie, while spells like Meteor Swarm are better for small groups and/or large monsters?
As a DM, here's a home-brew rule you could potentially use: Multiple lightning bolts in round three CAN strike the same target, IF the target is a certain size or larger. Two bolts can strike huge targets, three can strike gargantuan ones.
Side note, how do you make the preview links?
Storm of Vengeance is also an incredibly cinematic spell. it's the kind of thing a player who's focused on the spectacle and imagination-show over the numbers will love this sucker, because the 360-foot radius is freaking huge and everything beneath it takes a new and exciting form of natural destruction every turn. For those with strong imaginations (or DMs with strong narration skills), it's one of the most visually (auditorily? Whatever, dopest) spells a player can cast.
Is it the sort of spell that will be super useful every day of a PC's life? Nah. But the druid looking for spectacle only needs to cast it once in a place where it does its job to be satisfied.
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Agreed 100%. A very VERY cinematic spell.
Meteor Swarm covers 20,104 sq ft. 141x141 grid, which is about 28x28 5ft squares, for a total of 784 squares.
Storm of Vengeance covers 407,150 sq ft. 638x638 grid, which is about 128x128 5ft squares, for a total of 16,384 squares.
It’s like 20 times the area of Meteor Swarm.
SoV has a 1/7th of a mile in diameter.
These would never be used in similar situations.
I don't want "Meteor Swarm, but with lightning" as the spell that captures a druid's ultimate ability to call down the wrath of nature. If you like MS, be a wizard. 9th level spells should all be different and different classes should tackle challenges in different ways.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm