Talk:Whiteout (5e Spell)

What is the "severe distraction" you talk about as far as I know 5e doesn't have that, and it isn't in the PHB, if it is a variant rule put a link.--Avaloon (talk) 03:25, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

It's the wording used in turns 5-10 of storm of vengeance. I, myself, don't recall anything specific about what such distractions would entail, but in our games, we make players make concentration checks at disadvantage. —Fermat (talk) 14:04, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

According to page 204 of the Player's Handbook, "The DM might also decide that certain environmental phenomena, such as a wave crashing over you while you're on a storm-tossed ship, require you to succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell." I don't think it specifies anywhere what a "severe distraction" is exactly, but I think Fermat's judgement is good here.

That said, I feel the damage is a bit low now. Page 284 lists the damage of an area-of-effect 9th level spell as 14d6 (and that's not even including meteor swarm, which throws the rules out entirely with its 40d6 damage). Needless to say I thought my edit of 11d8 initial and 3d8 residual was pretty good. - Guy (talk) 14:39, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, 9th level spells are very hard to adjust damage-wise because of the disparity between the underwhelming value suggested by the DMG and meteor swarm's damage. I read your note about the damage and had actually forgotten my initial data. I thought 11d8 and 3d8/turn were my original values. I now recall that they were 18d8 and 3d8/turn instead.

Now, I looked to storm of vengeance for "guidance" and increased the area back to a 360-ft radius and decreased the total damage to 20d6 over ten turns. I have since returned the area to and to your suggested values, which, I see, stick to the DMG's suggested 14d6 value, at least for the initial damage burst. My initial values actually came from the following evaluation:

Storm of vengeance makes each creature take at most 20d6 damage over ten turns, which is ~142.86% the suggested value in the DMG. I, then, reasoned that an actual spell worthy of being 9th level, could take meteor swarm's 40d6 and increase it by the same percentage as long as the area is the same and it was also spread over ten turns. And so that gives ~45d8 damage over ten turns. I was debating between 18d8 burst damage + 3d8 damage/turn or 9d8 burst damage + 4d8 damage/turn and decided on the former.

Now that I've pondered on it, though, I think your values are much better. As mentioned, 11d8 on the first round is consistent with the DMG suggestion and 3d8/turn takes the total just below 142.86% of meteor swarm's damage (which, in itself is quite a feat), but 4d8/turn would take it way too high. Thank you so much for the input. —Fermat (talk) 03:46, 7 June 2017 (UTC)