Dust Devil: The Devil You Blow

Usable By: Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard

Spell Level: 2

School: Conjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 60 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

Components: V, S, M (a pinch of dust)

Choose an unoccupied 5-foot cube of air that you can see within range. An elemental force that resembles a dust devil appears in the cube and lasts for the spell’s duration.

Any creature that ends its turn within 5 feet of the dust devil must make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes 1d8 bludgeoning damage and is pushed 10 feet away. On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage and isn’t pushed.

As a bonus action, you can move the dust devil up to 30 feet in any direction. If the dust devil moves over sand, dust, loose dirt, or small gravel, it sucks up the material and forms a 10-foot-radius cloud of debris around itself that lasts until the start of your next turn. The cloud heavily obscures its area.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 2nd.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Dust Devil has so many words. I’ve never cast, nor ever seen somebody cast, yet I remain convinced that when you put all of the stuff together this spell could be amazing. It's a bit of a damage, some forced movement, and a ten foot radius cloud you can move around that heavily obscures whatevers near it. This is a bonus action option for your low tier druids, sorcerers, and wizards. If you don’t mind it eating your concentration, this SHOULD be good. So why don’t I ever consider it? Why don’t my players?

I think it's hard to conceptualize situations where this excels. Creatures need to end their turns within range of the Dust Devil to make any saves. This can add up, and can realistically hit creatures already engaged in melee combat fairly easily. The issue then is moving them ten feet can mess up attacks of opportunity or otherwise enable the monsters to escape the initial damage. You really need to want to get the push to maximize this effect, or know you can put this on something that can’t really go anywhere else even after the push.

Heavily obscuring a twenty foot wide sphere can act functionally as a better cloud of Darkness. The issue is it doesn’t stay all too long, and requires the environment to enable the cloud to appear at all. This spell has the potential to clog up a bunch of space and create cover you can move behind from ranged threats. Dust Devil conceivably could lead a charge up against overwhelming numbers of ranged foes and majorly detract from their ability to hit everyone behind it. This feels like it COULD be amazing. If you’re in a cold, damp, lizard infested cave, this probably does nothing, and you really need it for this to be worth a 2nd level slot, and it won’t be able to do that in a lot of places.

The nail in the coffin to me, despite both effects being decent, is they work against each other. If you find a position you know enemies want to end near, you can’t really get the heavily obscuring consistently. It needs to move to create the cloud at all, and doing so can result in difficult choices about affecting your own allies or freeing up enemies to be unaffected. This spell requires a lot of thinking and work to make work, and even then still can end up just being a mediocre 1d8 bonus damage sometimes. Spiritual Weapon this is not.

At high power tables, I feel like you could maximize this spell to do some crazy stuff. Most tables aren’t that; mine certainly aren’t. At tables without intense tactical planning, I struggle to see this spell reasonably functioning. I want to see it in action badly; I want to try to crack this. I just don’t know if it's worth the effort, as I suspect at most tables it’ll just end up being clunky and awkward.

5e Spells

Dust Devil: The Devil You Blow