New Spells: Sand Cloak & Sandstorm
This content can now be found at its most updated version in The Elements and Beyond, a free 246-page compendium that you can download right here, filled with 23 subclasses, 8 spellcasting feats, 134 spells, 213 spell variants, 85 monsters, 30 magic items, 4 races plus 12 new subraces each with racial feats, and even more goodies for both players and DMs!
Links: PDF | D&D Beyond: Sand Cloak, Sandstorm
“Pocket Sand!” — Dale Alvin Gribble
Art Credit: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nQyar4
If you hate sand (because its coarse, and it gets everywhere), then you’ll have a real problem with today’s previewed spells! Despite being a common theme for earth mages and desert mystics, the only published sand spell in 5th edition is wall of sand (from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything), and maybe dust devil depending on your perspective, though its mostly just a wind spell. We designed these geomancy spells to help fill that sandy void!
On to the spells! Sand Cloak is a fairly simple close-ranged spell that debilitates nearby creatures with blinding sand and dust. This one is designed to be most useful for melee casters, such as a melee ranger or a moon druid. The ability to change the size of the area is very important, as it enables the spellcaster to wade into melee range more often without having to worry about blinding their melee allies as they do. It’s also one of the rare spells that are available to sorcerers but not wizards. At a higher level, Sandstorm is a long-range large-area utility spell that combines the best parts of fog cloud and gust of wind along with some other neat sand-based effects. It disperses clouds like fog cloud, stinking cloud, or incendiary cloud, giving it a utility advantage that makes it more commonly worth preparing. It can be used to put out wide-scale fires, to block the vision of an advancing army, to lock down half of a battlefield while you and your allies fight those outside the sand, and much more that a clever spellcaster may be able to come up with. Sandstorm was designed to be simple enough to feel like whirlwind, earthquake, or tsunami — a spell that truly harnesses a massive, frightening natural disaster — while retaining enough utility and power to be worth casting even without dealing any damage. If you’re feeling silly, make sure to listen to Darude’s Sandstorm when you cast this spell.
Both of these conjuration spells are also geomancies (in other words: earth spells), which means they appear on the spell list for the new Geomancer feat, one of a handful of new spellcaster specialization feats coming in The Elements & Beyond. These feats often grant benefits to the spellcaster when they cast spells from the feat’s spell list in addition to improving those spells themselves. This enables player characters to specialize in something like earth magic without having to shoehorn a particular damage type that doesn’t fit. It also works for Druids, Sorcerers, Wizards, and even some Clerics, Rangers, and Warlocks, instead of just one subclass! Versatility in PC-builds is one of the goals of D&D Unleashed, and feat specializations help us achieve that.
Links: PDF | D&D Beyond: Sand Cloak, Sandstorm
