Air Elemental Whirlwinds Volume?

[MacMathan]

The MM3.5 indicates that a number of creatures can be sucked up into an Air Elementals Whirlwind as it volume allows. It says cone can be from 10-50 feet tall and be 30 feet wide at the top. How many, lets say medium size, creatures would you allow to be contained?

 

[jgsugden]

The MM3.5 indicates that a number of creatures can be sucked up into an Air Elementals Whirlwind as it volume allows. It says cone can be from 10-50 feet tall and be 30 feet wide at the top. How many, lets say medium size, creatures would you allow to be contained?

A lot.

At 50' tall and 30' wide at the top (and 10' wide at the bottom), I'd say that roughly 350 creatures could be in the whirlwind by volume (that is a rough estimate, but it should be pretty close to the actual number if you did some placement on a 3d grid system).

I fugured this as follows: About 70 in the top 5' of the cone and about 1 in the bottom 5' of the cone. Then I took the average of those two and multiplied it by the 10 levels of 5' height increments.

For balance purposes, I'd limit it to a much smaller amount. Using these rules, an elemental swarm spell could pick up an entire village and carry it off ...

 

[jgsugden]

Hmmmm ... with a double move, the elemental could travel 200' in a round. That would be 40 creatures per round that it could pick up. If they were lined up, it could do a run and grab 80 creatures per round.

And I just noticed that Elder elementals get to have cones 60' in height, so they could hold another 150 or so medium size creatures ... yeesh. 500 targets, with the ability to toss them out for free after it kills them to make room for more?

A DR 10/- creature with 200 hps and AC 27 that can capture/kill 30+ low hit dice creatures per round (90+? of them will fail both saves if their reflex save is +8 or below)? I never realized how deadly these things are in mass combat situations. A single elder air elemental could destory an entire army in a few rounds.

Yeesh. Elemental swarm (air) suddenly became my favorite mass war spell. 8 or so elementals destroying an entire region in a matter of hours ...

 

[anon]

Has there been any official word on how many creatures can be picked up? Basing it on volume seems overly complex and powerful.

Also, since it appears that the creatures are caughtin the whirlwind, dos that mean that they are floating in the air? If so, does anything stop the air elemental from using its 100 movement to go straight up vertically, and then release all captives for much falling damage?

 

[Tonguez]

Yeesh. Elemental swarm (air) suddenly became my favorite mass war spell. 8 or so elementals destroying an entire region in a matter of hours ...

Yep this is the reason I absolutely love High level Druids as commanders of armies - Entangle the enemy and hit them with simultaneous Air Elemental Swarms and a Storm of Vegeance