Steel Wind Strike: Stick and Move
Spell Level: 5
School: Conjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Duration: Instantaneous
Components: S, M (a melee weapon worth at least 1 sp)
You flourish the weapon used in the casting and then vanish to strike like the wind. Choose up to five creatures you can see within range. Make a melee spell attack against each target. On a hit, a target takes 6d10 force damage.
You can then teleport to an unoccupied space you can see within 5 feet of one of the targets you hit or missed.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
With a flourish of steel and a brief blinding flash, the warrior crosses the band of enemies, dropping them all in a single graceful motion. This is the fantasy of Steel Wind Strike, and for wizards, it succeeds on that fantasy. For rangers? Whelp… I’ve got some unfortunate news.
For some reason, they designed Steel Wind Strike as both a wizard and ranger spell. As opposed to letting rangers make a regular weapon attack with the weapon they chose, they have to make a melee spell attack with the weapon instead. Adding a +1 or +2 wisdom to hit instead of the +5 or higher Dex or Str is a huge bummer. Wizards, the class that definitely didn’t need what is more often than not a damage swapped up-cast Fireball, use this spell perfectly well. You probably don’t NEED it, as again, Fireball is doing the same damage up-cast, but on them you get to make the attacks with your Int. The stat you tend to care about the most.
On top of that, because wizards get the spell at 9th level while rangers have to wait until fifteenth level to get it, the damage is clearly weighted to work in 9th level encounters. If you, the ranger, finally get to do the thing you watched your wizard do with a sword eight levels ago, how excited can you reasonably be?
This then lands as a spell you’ll probably take on a bladesinger for flavor reasons, or on your high level ranger as a cool flourish. It won’t be anywhere near as powerful as what the full caster characters are doing by this point, which you know, is a real bummer. Had this just been a ranger spell and been given more room to be used as a ranger only 17th level feature, at least it could have a bit better numbers or make weapon attacks in addition to the 6d10 damage. As written, this is another perfectly fine damage option for wizards, and a sad reminder that rangers are half casters and how massive a disparity there is between 5th and 9th level spells.
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