Stinking Cloud: He Who Smelt It Felt It
Usable By: Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard
Spell Level: 3
School: Conjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 90 feet
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Components: V, S, M (a rotten egg or several skunk cabbage leaves)
You create a 20-foot-radius sphere of yellow, nauseating gas centered on a point within range. The cloud spreads around corners, and its area is heavily obscured. The cloud lingers in the air for the duration.
Each creature that is completely within the cloud at the start of its turn must make a Constitution saving throw against poison. On a failed save, the creature spends its action that turn retching and reeling. Creatures that don’t need to breathe or are immune to poison automatically succeed on this saving throw.
-A moderate wind (at least 10 miles per hour) disperses the cloud after 4 rounds. A strong wind (at least 20 miles per hour) disperses it after 1 round.
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Some 3rd level spells I read and go “this should be pretty good; why haven’t I ever seen it cast?” The answer, in most cases, is a little known spell called Fireball. I think Stinking Cloud is a perfect example of this; a perfectly reasonable spell, with perfectly reasonable text and an effect that is generally solid seemingly uncastable when contending with the likes of an 8d6 damaging sphere of death that hits the exact same area.
Save or die eating enemy actions typically are excellent; Stinking Cloud offers you a tool to eat multiple enemy actions all at once. At its best, this can get a whole squad of gnolls retching and writhing while you and your companions promptly stomp their hyena faces into the pavement. But wait, why bother with that when a Fireball promptly skips the retching faces and gets us straight to the stomping one?
Creatures in large quantities typically are balanced out by having smaller amounts of hitpoints, often making them fodder ready to get destroyed by some area damaging effect. The tools you’d consider to incapacitate them struggle to get used when one of the most ubiquitous tools in the game handles them in a cleaner, more effective manner. After all, dead creatures don’t take actions, thus death is the ultimate save or die.
If you’re a bard or otherwise tired of Fireball, I do think there is some merit to Stinking Cloud. Some environments won’t allow for it at all, as a windy day can disperse it naturally, but there will be some fights where you’ll disable three creatures actions over a turn or two and that will be majorly impactful. If you’re just looking for an effective area control tool, though, and don’t really care how it controls it, may I suggest death, the greatest control tool of them all, via Fireball instead?
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