Spell Spotlight is a series where we do a deep dive into some of Dungeons & Dragons’ most interesting, useful, and complex spells. With the 2024 Player’s Handbook spells are seeing some key changes and additions, and today, we’re brewing a tempest in a teapot with the brand-new spell Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance. Thunder and Radiant damage converge in a storm system ready to batter your enemies and disrupt their magic-casting plans.

Head down the cellar or secure yourself to a strong pipe because Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance is rolling in!

• What Does Jallarzi's Storm of Radiance Do?
• Who Can Cast Jallarzi's Storm of Radiance?
• Why We Love Jallarzi's Storm of Radiance
• Feats To Benefit from Jallarzi's Storm of Radiance

What Does Jallarzi's Storm of Radiance Do?

Artist: JOSEPH WESTON

Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance is a level 5 Evocation spell. It requires Concentration and has a duration of 1 minute. When you cast it, you create the titular storm, a 10-foot-radius, 40-foot-high Cylinder centered on a point you can see within 120 feet.

What happens to a creature in the storm? Well, creatures within this spell’s area of effect have the Blinded and Deafened conditions, and they can’t cast spells with a Verbal component. They’re basically the people huddling in the pool during that scene in Twisters.

Each creature inside the storm when it appears makes a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, they take 2d10 Radiant damage and 2d10 Thunder damage, or half as much on a successful one. A creature also makes this save when it enters the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or ends its turn there. A creature only makes this save once per turn.

Who Can Cast Jallarzi's Storm of Radiance?

Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance is a new spell found in the Wizard and Warlock spell lists. This pairing is thematically fitting because the spell’s creator, Jallarzi Sallavarian, is a member of the Greyhawk’s powerful council of mages known as the Circle of Eight.

A spell bearing her name that unleashes Radiant damage in addition to Thunder damage is nicely in line with a Warlock pulling her power from a Celestial source while still welding it with enough of her own skill to stand alongside the most powerful Wizards of her plane.

A Not-So-Secret Storm

Because this spell is on the Wizard spell list, Bards can access it when they pick up the Magical Secrets feature at level 10. This feature has also been updated to allow Bard to choose from the Bard, Wizard, Cleric, or Druid spell lists when picking spells every time their number of prepared spells increases.

The spells they choose from other spell lists count as Bard spells for them. In addition, whenever they replace a prepared Bard spell, they can replace it with a spell from those lists.

This gives Bards a lot more flexibility with the spells they pick up, so you have enough leeway to mix and match damage-dealing options, like Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance, with utility options.

Why We Love Jallarzi's Storm of Radiance

Artist: JULIA METZGER

Spells that combine two damage types, such as Thunder and Radiant, are always a fun addition to your repertoire of spells. Not only do they give you a little variety in your damage rolls, but it also means that if a creature has Resistance to one of the damage types, you can still do full damage for the other damage type!

This Storm Shakes the Rafters

As a spell with a Cylinder area of effect, Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance is part of a group of spells that have a height larger than their width. This makes it a particularly good spell to have if you’ll be facing off against monsters with a Fly Speed. As a 40-foot-high Cylinder, Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance could help protect you from attackers before they can swoop down to melee range.

Debuffs, Please!

What’s also very cool about Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance is how it functions as a debuff spell in addition to dealing a pretty hefty amount of damage. While creatures inside the storm can avoid half the spell’s damage by succeeding on their saving thows, the Blinded and Deafened conditions and the inability to cast spells with a Verbal component applies automatically to any creature within the area of effect. A spell that can be used to deal damage while simultaneously messing with your foe’s plans is sure to become a favorite in your lineup.

Excellent Group Dynamics

Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance is also a great spell for encouraging your party to strategize as a collective force. When your enemies are Blinded, your allies have Advantage on attack rolls against them, and they have Disadvantage on their attack rolls. Since Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance doesn’t block affected creatures from view for those outside the storm, your enemies caught in the storm will be like fish in a barrel for your allies to pepper them with ranged attacks (you don’t want your party members going into the storm and becoming Blinded, after all.)

Are your enemies beginning to work their way out of your storm? No problem, just get your more martial-inclined allies to chuck them back in! The new Push mastery property excels in this situation, as will more magical effects, like the Thunderwave spell. Remember, the damage from the storm is triggered once per turn, not once per round. Just when a creature thinks it can escape your storm, your Fighter can push it back in on their turn and deal additional damage!

Storms Rock

Finally, another reason why we love this spell is it just sounds awesome? Storm-based magic naturally evokes mental imagery since most of us have seen at least one storm that was so intense it seemed like wrathful magic. Picturing a cyclone of destructive magic focused within a 10-foot by 40-foot Cylinder seems so powerful and exciting.

Feats To Benefit from Jallarzi's Storm of Radiance

There are a few feat choices you can make to add a little boost when you cast Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance. Here are some suggestions we’ve come up with to help you ride the storm.

War Caster

Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance is a Concentration spell, so taking the War Caster feat will give you Advantage on Constitution saving throws you’ll make to maintain your Concentration. This could be especially useful for a Warlock using Concentration spells since you’ll want to preserve your limited number of spell slots. Plus, you can increase your Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma ability by 1 with this feat.

Resilient

If you already have Advantage on saving throws to maintain Concentration due to another feature, such as the Warlock’s Eldritch Mind invocation, you could choose the Resilient feat as another way to bolster your Concentration’s resiliency. Resilient allows you to select an ability in which you lack saving throw proficiency. You gain saving throw proficiency with the chosen ability. You can also increase that chosen ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20. Neither Warlocks, Wizards, nor Bards get saving throw proficiency in Constitution naturally, so this makes it easier to pass those saving throws to maintain Concentration!

This also makes it easier to foil enemy casters who try to Counterspell your Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance. This is because an enemy that casts Counterspell will now force you to make a Constitution saving throw against their spellcasting ability to continue casting the spell. Previously, the enemy made an ability check using their spellcasting ability to try to disrupt your spell.

Elemental Adept

Elemental Adept is another feat that will boost your spell’s effectiveness and also allow you to increase your Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma ability by 1. This feat allows you to select a damage type from Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder and ignore Resistance to damage of that chosen type with spells you cast. You can also treat any 1s on the damage dice as a 2 for spells you cast from that chosen damage type. For Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance, you’d want to select Thunder damage, as Radiant isn’t available. We’d recommend taking some other Thunder damage spells to get the most out of this particular feat.

And the Thunder Rolls

A lot of thought and care went into the spell rules for the 2024 Player’s Handbook, including streamlining and enhancing classic spells and giving you more bang for your spell slot buck. With brand new spells like Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance, players can unleash havoc in all new ways while also paying homage to a figure from the vast lore of the D&D Multiverse. There’s a lot to cheer about in Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance, as long as you don't find yourself in the middle of its catastrophic Cylinder.

Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.