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1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.
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It's well-understood from the text that winds of certain strengths can disperse the various mist/fog spells. For example, fog cloud states the following:
Fog Cloud, CRB, pg. 285 wrote: A moderate wind (11+ mph) disperses the fog in 4 rounds; a strong wind (21+ mph) disperses the fog in 1 round. My question is, does "the fog" refer to the "fog within the area of the wind" or "the entire fog produced by the fog cloud spell"?
This came up recently in a game where a single gust of wind was being used to disperse two adjacent acid fogs. Now, gust of wind says that affects a 60-ft. line, but acid fog has a 20-ft. radius. As the GM, I ruled that the gust of wind only affected a 60-ft. line within the acid fog based on the following reasoning:
1. Acid fog is a 6th-level spell. It seems wildly imbalanced (to me at least) for a 2nd-level spell to completely thwart it.
2. There are other wind-producing spells that affect a much larger area and would cover the whole fog (e.g. Control Winds).
3. An eversmoking bottle can produce up to a 100-ft. radius of smoke, yet has essentially the same text as fog cloud for how it interacts with winds. If gust of wind affects the entire fog produced by fog could, does that mean it would also affect the enter 200-ft. diameter smoke cloud produced by an eversmoking bottle? What if gust of wind only affected a single 5-ft. square of the smoke?
4. Obscuring Mist contains language which describe how the areas of effect overlap between it and fiery spells, such as fireball, flame strike, and wall of fire. I'm inclined to believe that wind spells are expected to overlap similarly, but it uses language closer to that of fog cloud quoted above.
I searched around but did not find any definitive answers. How are others ruling this?
I think you missed the most obvious reason in your bullet points: Gust of Wind's area of effect is only a 60 foot line.
Why in the world would it effect something outside its area?
Only the fog within the area of wind. That's more of a logic thing, then expressly written, like swoosh said, how would wind affect what it isn't reaching?
A spell only does what is says it does, and it only affects the area it says it does.
Your ruling was correct.
swoosh wrote: I think you missed the most obvious reason in your bullet points: Gust of Wind's area of effect is only a 60 foot line. Sure. That was implied by the paragraph ahead of the bullets. :-)
The real confusion comes from the somewhat vague language in the Fog Cloud that I quoted. It's even more confusing if you consider the text in Obscuring Mist, which specifically calls out that "gust of wind" "disperses the fog". And then, it talks about how other spells affect just an area of the fog.
Quote: A moderate wind (11+ mph), such as from a gust of wind spell, disperses the fog in 4 rounds. A strong wind (21+ mph) disperses the fog in 1 round. A fireball, flame strike, or similar spell burns away the fog in the explosive or fiery spell's area. A wall of fire burns away the fog in the area into which it deals damage.
sounds like reasonable logic to just disperse the fog area of effect where the wind area of effect intersected it.
Obscuring mist specifies that it disperses the fog.
Fog Cloud says it disperses the fog.
It does not say, in the area of the wind it says the fog.
Now based on air flow, if you blow a tunnel of wind down through the middle of a fog that air has to come from somewhere and it usually comes from the nearby areas. So as the wind blows it pulls fog from adjacent areas with it. So if you were to shoot a line of wind down a section of fog it would not only disperse the line but would suck air from the adjacent areas as well. This could in turn pull air from areas nearby.
Furthermore, the cloud doesn't disperse on its own. Brownian motion would normally account for a dispersal but the magic keeps it connected and in the same location (barring spells like cloudkill that actually move). This would suggest that the clouds are held together and therefore more subject to wind effects because of those bonds.
Also the difference is, one set of spells are wind, and the other set of spells are fire. The text about only the area of the spell specifically calls out fire spells. So we have always played wind spells remove the entire cloud, and fire spells remove only the area.
Taenia points out why this wind affect has precedent in the "real world".
And in the game world, fire spells don't come with a shockwave, it's just heat, that magically dissipates right away as well.
Berti Blackfoot wrote: Also the difference is, one set of spells are wind, and the other set of spells are fire. The text about only the area of the spell specifically calls out fire spells. So we have always played wind spells remove the entire cloud, and fire spells remove only the area.
Taenia points out why this wind affect has precedent in the "real world".
And in the game world, fire spells don't come with a shockwave, it's just heat, that magically dissipates right away as well.
Making a real world argument for a magic effect is good evidence, but they always nag at me a bit. :-)
A couple of points to consider:
First, obscuring mist and fog cloud are different effects. Nothing in either spell references the other; it's just that the text of the spells is similar. For example, heat from fire doesn't burn away fog cloud as it does obscuring mist, which seems very much at odds with how the real world works. I have no problem considering mists and fogs together as similar effects (and I tend to think that's the intent), but the clause about burning away with fire spells is not universal among them.
Second, obscuring mist has some real problems with its text in regard to gust of wind. It states that "a moderate wind (12+ mph), such as from a gust of wind spell, disperses the fog in 4 rounds. A strong wind (21+ mph) disperses the fog in 1 round." However, the gust of wind spell says that it "creates a severe blast of air (approximately 50 mph)" and then goes on to list several effects that it has which are consistent with a sever wind.
That's a pretty large discrepancy between the RAW of these two spells! If a GM took the text of obscuring mist at face value and didn't bother looking up gust of wind, they should rule that it takes four rounds for the blast of air from gust of wind to disperse obscuring mist. After all, that's how obscuring mist says it works. To me, that seems completely in line with how the real world works. Gust of wind creates a blast of air in a 60-ft. line that lasts 1 round (6 seconds). This gets the air moving which causes the mist covering a 20-ft. radius area to disperse in 4 rounds (24 rounds).
Now, now there's the problem that the text of fog cloud says nothing about being connected to obscuring mist in any way. So, does that mean that gust of wind gets to disperse a 20-ft. radius patch of fog cloud in just 6 seconds? Using real world arguments, I have a hard time feeling good about that reading of the RAW text, so I'm inclined to see obscuring mist as a lesser version of fog cloud even though the connective text isn't there.
If I accept that the "fog" spells build upon obscuring mist, I think I need to start ruling solid fog and acid fog differently. Solid fog states that "unlike normal fog, only a severe wind (32+ mph) disperses these vapors, and it does so in 1 round". Given that, I would be comfortable with gust of wind not affecting solid fog or higher level "fog" spells at all -- which seems perfectly reasonable since gust of wind is 2nd level and solid fog is 4th level.
One area of your argument seems to be spell level. However, that is not necessarily a good focus point.
In many cases it is not the level of the spell that is critical, compare something like protection from evil vs. dominate monster. Here you have a 1st level spell that can effectively negate the effects of a 9th level spell, if for a short duration. By that logic, prot evil is too weak to work against such a powerful ability.
Furthermore, it is not uncommon for the defense of an ability to be lower level than the offensive version, since the defense has an opportunity cost not reflective of the actual spell level. If you want to have gust of wind around you either need to spend resources to have it in scroll, wand or magic item form or devote a 2nd level slot to it. Now if you know you will need it that is one situation. However, in most cases you won't know what or when you will need it you would have to either forgo having the spell or devote a resource, the slot, to it and have a spell that isn't useful in most situations.
Taenia wrote: One area of your argument seems to be spell level. However, that is not necessarily a good focus point. Fair enough, though I'm not sure my most recent post could be criticized for focusing on that point. It just happens to be the very last aside in a whole series of points. :-)
That is true.
I think the problem with these spells and counters is that they describe wind as a way of eliminating the fog, and look at gust of wind as the prime example.
Now either they think gust of wind should work or they think gust of wind works differently or they think gust of wind shouldn't work in some cases and it should be obvious when this is the case.
Unfortunately, we do not know if the change in language from spell to spell, or at least the removal of gust of wind from say fog cloud, when otherwise it seems to be the same as obscuring mist, was intentional to remove gust of wind as an option, to save word count on the spell or some other reason.
Now the inconsistencies of dispersal is a major question. Does it mean we should use the rule set for Obscuring mist for the higher level spells?
We could use a good Wind faq to illustrate how these spells interact.
Taenia wrote: We could use a good Wind faq to illustrate how these spells interact. Agreed 100%! :-)
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