Can Call Lighting be Enhanced by Aggressive Thundercloud?

[KingGramJohnson]

Hello. I had a situation come up in my game this past week, and I wasn't sure what kind of ruling to give it. So I figured I'd get advice here.

Can the Call Lightning spell be enhanced by the Aggressive Thundercloud spell?

Call Lighting says:

"If you are outdoors and in a stormy area - a rain shower, clouds and wind, hot and cloudy conditions, or even a tornado (including a whirlwind formed by a djinni or an air elemental of at least Large size) - each bolt deals 3d10 points of electricity damage instead of 3d6."

The Druid was trying to use Call Lighting on the same space as the Thundercloud was on. So would it have the 3d10 due to the situation, or still be 3d6?

At the time I told him that it would work, but I was going to look it up for a future ruling on the subject.

Thanks in advance for the help!

[GM Rednal]

Let's see... Aggressive Thundercloud specifically states that it creates a storm cloud. It's a small cloud, admittedly, but it's still a storm cloud.

By a literal reading of the text, you (i.e. the caster) need to be in the stormy area to get the bonus, and your opponent doesn't need to be there. By the strictest interpretation that I can see, the answer would thus be "no".

However, I would have made the same ruling you did and called it a "yes" anyway. XD Using an existing storm to improve Call Lightning does seem to be in line with the spirit of enhancing the spell, after all, even if the storm is tiny. Call Lightning doesn't say it requires a storm of X miles across in order to be enhanced - it just needs a storm.

[wraithstrike]

Thundercloud only covers a 5 foot area. I am reading the call lightning spell as accounting for actual storms that the druid would be in, and where the lightning of call lightning would come from.

To me the combo does not work.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

A 5 foot cloud does not a stormy area make.

[KingGramJohnson]

Awesome! Thank you very much, everyone! This helps a lot.

[Byakko]

Based on the bit about the djinni/large air elemental, I'd probably require any artificial storm to be of equivalent size to what they can produce:

djinni's whirlwind: 10–50 ft. tall
large air elemental's whirlwind: 10–40 ft.
medium air elemental's whirlwind: 10-30 ft.

As a medium air elemental is unable to produce a large enough stormy area, this implies that the whirlwind probably needs to be at least 40' tall to be effective.

Quote:

A whirlwind’s width at its peak is always equal to half of its height

A 40' tall whirlwind has a base of 5' and a peak of 20'.

A cone's volume is:
(h/3)*pi*r^2
= (40/3)*3.14*20^2 = 16750 cubic feet
- (10/3)*3.14*5^2 = 260 for the un-included 5' base cone
Total: about 15.5k cubic feet

A typical gargantuan creature takes up around 20'*20'*48'= 19k cubic feet.

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I probably made a math area somewhere there.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that a storm area should probably be larger than a Huge sized creature and somewhere around 15k cubic feet minimum. An Aggressive Thundercloud is a 5-ft.-diameter sphere which is similar to a medium creature and is 314 cubic feet, and thus isn't large enough to meet the implied stormy volume required by the spell.

"Math is fun."