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So Anathema is something that should have a meaningful effect on your character and the concepts and beliefs that shape these characters. All of the Anathema from the other orders are pretty good at this. However Storm Order is much less effective.
"Creating unnatural weather patterns that could be damaging to the local environment (such as by using a 9th-level control weather ritual) is anathema to your order."
This is very open to interpretation of your DM/GM as a first issue. Sooner or later that'll cause issues somewhere.
Second this doesn't matter for your character until at earliest level 9 and that is assuming that you count 'Control Water' as weather. I don't. After that at 15th level you can learn 'Punishing Winds' which makes a tiny area of massive winds which it might count... maybe?
Then the biggest one here is this thing. Storm Druid actually says, "Never, ever, cast the most powerful and only real storm spell in the book. Casting 'Storm of Vengeance' in any location that is not a city is Anathema to you.
As a side note I realise you can be involved as a side participant in a control weather ritual prior to being good enough to lead it yourself and still do something Anathema to your order. However Storm Order as it stands doesn't effect you until high teir 3 90% of the time. Besides that when it does effect you its very much a question of what does the DM/GM think it means and which spells trigger it?
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So Anathema is something that should have a meaningful effect on your character and the concepts and beliefs that shape these characters. All of the Anathema from the other orders are pretty good at this. However Storm Order is much less effective.
"Creating unnatural weather patterns that could be damaging to the local environment (such as by using a 9th-level control weather ritual) is anathema to your order."
This is very open to interpretation of your DM/GM as a first issue. Sooner or later that'll cause issues somewhere.
Second this doesn't matter for your character until at earliest level 9 and that is assuming that you count 'Control Water' as weather. I don't. After that at 15th level you can learn 'Punishing Winds' which makes a tiny area of massive winds which it might count... maybe?
Then the biggest one here is this thing. Storm Druid actually says, "Never, ever, cast the most powerful and only real storm spell in the book. Casting 'Storm of Vengeance' in any location that is not a city is Anathema to you.
As a side note I realise you can be involved as a side participant in a control weather ritual prior to being good enough to lead it yourself and still do something Anathema to your order. However Storm Order as it stands doesn't effect you until high teir 3 90% of the time. Besides that when it does effect you its very much a question of what does the DM/GM think it means and which spells trigger it?
Personally, I would have thought the anathema would have been the opposite...anything that prevents you from experiencing the weather in a personal way in anathema, meaning tents, awnings, pavilions, maybe hooded cloaks... even perhaps enclosed amphitheatres...
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I figure the Anathema for the various orders basically serve to ask the player to be responsible with the power that they are granted through the order.
For storm druids it's not "do not cast big powerful spells that bring down powerful weather or natural disasters on something you want to mess up" it's "choose your targets with care and avoid using such force that will permanently damage the environment you are in."
So like if you're in the desert, conjuring earthquakes are fine and sandstorms are great, but torrential rainfall might be a poor choice. A hurricane to wipe out a fleet of ships in the shackles? Fine. A blizzard or "drying up the ocean"? Anathema.
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I like to think of it as a fix it once your done kind of thing. Oh you made it rain in the desert well you better set it back to normal when your done.
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I figure the Anathema for the various orders basically serve to ask the player to be responsible with the power that they are granted through the order.
For storm druids it's not "do not cast big powerful spells that bring down powerful weather or natural disasters on something you want to mess up" it's "choose your targets with care and avoid using such force that will permanently damage the environment you are in."
So like if you're in the desert, conjuring earthquakes are fine and sandstorms are great, but torrential rainfall might be a poor choice. A hurricane to wipe out a fleet of ships in the shackles? Fine. A blizzard or "drying up the ocean"? Anathema.
Yes but they made it specifically tied to weather not other natural effects. So earthquake is fine anywhere you want. Also why would an earthquake be fine in a desert and worse elsewhere? More than a few major earthquake zones are not in deserts.
Besides that though a large part of the issue is that it means nothing until at least 15th level as is and then it still says "Don't ever cast the only actual storm spell in the book." If you lose your powers for using storm stuff that damages the environment you can't use Storm of Vengeance. Acid Rain (3d8 damage worth), Hail Stones (3d10 damage worth), 10 bolts of lightning... Ya, the only storm that is castable in the book is Anathema to the Storm Druid.
All the Anathema says is
Creating unnatural weather patterns that could be damaging to the local environment (such as by using a 9th-level control weather ritual) is anathema to your order.
So it doesn't proscribe any spell, provided you ensure that the weather isn't especially unnatural (so a hurricane in places where hurricanes happen, is fine) and that it doesn't damage the local environment beyond what a normal weather event might do anyway.
I would consider most uses of anything called "Acid Rain" to be anathema to a storm druid though, but "Hail Stones" should be fine anywhere thunderstorms occur.
If they had said climate patterns it probably would of been a lot easier to deal with.
One could probably argue that a one-off tornado is not a "pattern" exactly...
Yeah Even a thunder storm cropping up doesn't make a pattern unless you made a pattern of it.
It does seem like the druid anathemas, for the most part, are hard to break without trying to. Like the easiest one is probably Animal, since you could just go around kicking puppies but that's a deliberate choice and unlikely to come up a lot. Wild seems genuinely difficult to break, since you have to be "fully domesticated", and the Leaf druid anathema seems unlikely to come up much (since when was the last time anybody destroyed plants for no good reason in one of your games?).
So if the Storm Druid one rarely comes up, that's in keeping with the others.
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Yes but again there is only one storm spell and acid rain IS one of the effects.
Control Weather is a ritual that takes a day to complete. Sure, using that to terrible effect makes sense to me. There is no 'Tornado' spell. There is no 'Hurricane' spell. No monsoon, no, thunderstorm, no powerful rains, no sunny day, nothing.
There IS Storm of Vengeance that causes hail, acid rain, and lightning strikes. So you can perform a day long ritual OR use the only actual storm spell in the game. Wait, no you can't you lose your powers. Storm Druid has no storm. Maybe they can be called lightning druids but that isn't as thematic.
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It does seem like the druid anathemas, for the most part, are hard to break without trying to. Like the easiest one is probably Animal, since you could just go around kicking puppies but that's a deliberate choice and unlikely to come up a lot. Wild seems genuinely difficult to break, since you have to be "fully domesticated", and the Leaf druid anathema seems unlikely to come up much (since when was the last time anybody destroyed plants for no good reason in one of your games?).
So if the Storm Druid one rarely comes up, that's in keeping with the others.
The plant one says you can't cast fireball in any forested or plains environment.
Animal is harder to break but it still effects you from level 1.
As for Wild, almost every adventurer is fully domesticated. It'll change how you RP the character significantly so long as that's a thing in your group.
Yes but again there is only one storm spell and acid rain IS one of the effects.
Control Weather is a ritual that takes a day to complete. Sure, using that to terrible effect makes sense to me. There is no 'Tornado' spell. There is no 'Hurricane' spell. No monsoon, no, thunderstorm, no powerful rains, no sunny day, nothing.
There IS Storm of Vengeance that causes hail, acid rain, and lightning strikes. So you can perform a day long ritual OR use the only actual storm spell in the game. Wait, no you can't you lose your powers. Storm Druid has no storm. Maybe they can be called lightning druids but that isn't as thematic.
Yeah for the play test but they will probably have more of the old spells in the final product. They need a version of strom of venagnce for the strom druids however that doesn't do the acid rain.
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Yeah for the play test but they will probably have more of the old spells in the final product. They need a version of strom of venagnce for the strom druids however that doesn't do the acid rain.Yes but again there is only one storm spell and acid rain IS one of the effects.
Control Weather is a ritual that takes a day to complete. Sure, using that to terrible effect makes sense to me. There is no 'Tornado' spell. There is no 'Hurricane' spell. No monsoon, no, thunderstorm, no powerful rains, no sunny day, nothing.
There IS Storm of Vengeance that causes hail, acid rain, and lightning strikes. So you can perform a day long ritual OR use the only actual storm spell in the game. Wait, no you can't you lose your powers. Storm Druid has no storm. Maybe they can be called lightning druids but that isn't as thematic.
They need to change Storm Druid Anathema so that it doesn't force them to ignore Storm spells. Also in a way that effects you from early on rather than the end of a campaign.
Wait I'm having trouble with that one because of the typo. So your interpretation of the anathema is that they can't use storm spells? and what do you mean with that second part?
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Sorry, think that was autocorrect.
There is one spell in the whole book that is big enough to have a lasting impact on an area. Storm of Vengeance.
Control Water (5th level and not weather)
Punishing Winds (8th level, 30 ft radius, not big enough to effect a region and therefore not Anathema)
Storm of Vengeance (9th level and definitely Anathema)
Control Weather (8th RITUAL with a 1 day cast)
Is there any spell across ALL books they've ever printed that would cause a lasting WEATHER effect big enough to be anathema besides Control Weather and Storm of Vengeance?
Anathema should give me some concept of how to play my character and what they believe. Animal druid venerates animals, leaf druid venerates pants, wild druid venerates the untamed places of the world, storm druid venerates not having the wrong type of storms in the wrong area?
Well changing climate does have some pretty rough effects for its denezins so I feel you are understating it a bit. As far as the spells go that is interesting that they aparently don't have the option of violating their anathema (I suppose if you did control weather in one region all the time or what have you you could make some sort of permanent change.)
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Well the Anathema is just damaging the local environment. But I don't feel that a 30ft radius is not enough to "damage the local environment."
The ritual Control Weather probably can if you pull in unnatural weather. But that is the only one that competes with Storm of Vengeance. So you have nothing that can trigger your Anathema until at least 15th level.
In addition to that its very reliant on DM/GM interpretation of what is going to be both unnatural and damaging... Unless you are actually using the only weather/storm spell in the game.
The fact that casting Storm of Vengeance is Anathema to a Storm Druid is... insane. If you are the storm why can't you actually use it. I can cast Volcanic Eruption and Earthquake without consequence. But the Storm spell? Nope, lose your powers.
Your spell check is hilarious btw.