Magic scope and scale

[Greenfield]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to snark you, Arrowhawk. There was a 20 minute difference between my post and yours, so I naturally figured that you'd had a chance to read mine. (Check the time stamps on our posts and you'll see.)

I also thought you'd realize that "Slay Army" and "Raze Town" were euphemisms, particularly in the context I used them in. (To be honest, I'm surprised that you thought that even WOTC would be silly enough to give a spell that name). And I don't know if you have the Sandstorm book either. You didn't mention it in your list of research sources.

The per-round damage is miniscule, not close to being enough to bypass the hardness of stone, so it won't actually take down fortifications. Said fortifications being hit by flying debris, such as the trees it says the winds can uproot, well, that may be another story. At a minimum, you'll need a new paint job. On the plus side, you won't have to clean your gutters this season.

The inability to find your way out of the storm, the inability to control your movements in the storm, and the sheer duration of the storm make it an empowered mass nuclear overkill spell. Oh, and neither DR nor SR apply, so I honestly don't know of much that can survive it. (Trolls won't, since it includes suffocation.) Something with sufficient Fast Heal might, depending on how you handle the actual storm damage.

Oh, right, I forgot to mention that. The 1100 dice of damage I listed is only from the sand blasting. There's a whole 'nother set of damage associated with simply being in a 175 mile per hour windstorm. Damage from being battered and blown about, damage from suffocation due to being buried in drifts of sand and debris. Lots of good stuff. You have to look in the DMG under Weather Effects to get the whole picture.

Seriously, this thing puts tactical nukes to shame.

I think I'm going to ask our group to cast a collective Dispel BS on it. Either that or, as the only character in the group who can actually cast it, I just won't.

 

[xigbar]

While it's neat that a Wizard can blast armies, it can also, later on, Shapechange in to something that kills them quickly enough without being hit by a swarm of first level nobodies, of gate in something like a Dream Larva to kill them all basically instantly.

 

[Arrowhawk]

Rather than disallow the spell, why not assume the spell exists and have that change the way war is fought in this part of the world? That's much harder to do, but might make the game more interesting...or not.

I knew Raze Town was symbolic, but given a spell called Time Stop, I figured there just might be some Slay Army spell in some obscure source book. There's a whole bunch of books for which haven't even looked at the ToC.

 

[Greenfield]

As a correction, while the spell only lists four wind categories, the actual Wind Effects section of the SRD/DMG lists seven. Light and Moderate appear to be place keepers, with no effect or penalty of any kind noted.

Also, if you direct the winds into a rotational structure, anyone who gets "blown away" gets sucked up and tossed around for 1D10 rounds, taking 6D6 per round of general battering damage before being flung out of the whirlwind.

So on average they'll only take 33 dice of damage from the wind effects, and will only take the 1100 if they somehow make their Fort save (DC 30) and fail to get blown clear.

Oh, and to be clear, while Sandstorm is a 6th level spell that can destroy an army, the Druidic spell that it's based on, Control Winds, is only 5th level and has pretty much the same effects, minus the extra dice of damage per round and the visual obscurement. (You only get those if you're doing it someplace where there's a lot of sand for it to incorporate in the storm.)

So you can slaughter thousands and lay waste to entire cities at 9th level instead of having to wait until 11th!

 

[Jackinthegreen]

It's a way to make the Tarrasque cry at 11th level. Something about that makes me wonder what the designers were high on when they wrote Sandstorm (the book, or the spell)