Fog Cloud

A point you choose within range erupts into a dense bank of fog that rolls outward, swallowing sightlines, blurring edges, and making the familiar world suddenly unreadable. What was clear a moment ago becomes guessed at, misjudged, and feared.

1st-Level Conjuration
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
Available To: Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard

You create a 20-foot-radius sphere of fog centered on a point within range. The sphere spreads around corners, and its area is heavily obscured. It lasts for the duration or until a moderate or stronger wind disperses it.

When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the fog’s radius increases by 20 feet for each slot level above 1st.

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Overview

Fog Cloud is one of the most reliable low-level spells for taking control of how a space is seen and crossed. It does not destroy or dominate—it interferes. Once sight becomes uncertain, formations loosen, pursuit falters, and even confident fighters begin to hesitate.

What gives the spell its strength is its physical presence. Fog Cloud fills space. It clings to ground, settles into corridors, spills across roads, gathers in courtyards, and hangs in the air like something almost natural—until its timing reveals otherwise. The world does not vanish, as it does under Darkness. Instead, it becomes difficult to read, slow to trust, and dangerous to move through.

That distinction matters. Darkness feels like intrusion. Fog feels like uncertainty given form. It creates hesitation rather than shock, and hesitation is often enough.

Because of that, the spell remains useful far beyond its level. As long as vision matters, Fog Cloud continues to shape encounters.

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Best Uses

Break Ranged Pressure

Archers, sentries, and hostile casters rely on clear sightlines. Fog Cloud removes that advantage immediately, forcing them to reposition or act blindly.

Cover Retreat and Escape

Drop the cloud across a road, bridge, alley, stair, or passage and pursuit becomes slower and far less certain. Even determined enemies hesitate when they cannot see where they are stepping.

Hide Movement

The spell is ideal for crossing exposed ground, slipping past guarded approaches, repositioning in combat, or masking the movement of allies, mounts, or wounded companions.

Complicate the Battlefield

Fog introduces hesitation. Enemies bunch together, misjudge distance, lose track of allies, and become unsure where threats are coming from.

Turn Terrain Into Uncertainty

A fog bank in a ravine edge, marsh path, ruined courtyard, forest trail, or battlement stair turns familiar terrain into something unreliable and potentially dangerous.

Protect Vulnerable Targets

A well-placed cloud can shield ritualists, noncombatants, or wounded allies long enough to escape or complete critical actions.

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Tactics

Cast it where sight governs action. The spell matters most when enemies need clear vision to coordinate, aim, or maintain discipline.

Exploit confined spaces. Fog in a bridge approach, corridor, gateway, stairwell, or narrow street is far more disruptive than in open ground.

Act through the fog. The spell creates uncertainty, but advantage comes from using that uncertainty—move, reposition, disengage, or isolate targets while enemies hesitate.

Be aware of symmetry. Allies suffer the same obscurity. Use the spell deliberately, not reflexively.

Scale with intent. Upcasting can turn the spell from a localized disruption into a dominant environmental condition in the immediate area.

Disrupt early. Fog is most effective before enemies establish control. Once uncertainty sets in, their plan is already failing.

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Good Combinations

Silence: Together they create a zone where enemies struggle to see, hear, and coordinate, making ambush, escape, and disruption far more effective.

Invisibility: Fog Cloud conceals group movement, while Invisibility hides individuals, making tracking and pursuit extremely difficult.

Pass without Trace: Enhances stealth-based movement through obscured terrain, allowing entire groups to move unseen through contested space.

Gust of Wind: Provides control over when and how the fog persists, creating dynamic battlefield manipulation.

Minor Illusion / Silent Image / Major Image: Fog obscures reality while illusion fills the gaps, causing enemies to misinterpret what little they think they see.

Spike Growth: Fog hides the terrain while the terrain punishes movement, turning hesitation into harm.

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DM Notes

Fog Cloud is best treated as a spell of uncertainty, not just concealment. It changes how characters move, how quickly they act, and how much they trust their surroundings.

NPCs should react naturally. Some advance cautiously. Some halt. Some attempt to circle. Others assume ambush immediately. The fog itself becomes a source of tension before any threat appears.

Reward placement. A fog bank in empty ground is useful. A fog bank across a bridge, gate approach, shrine entrance, dockside plank, or forest path is memorable.

Use it to enhance atmosphere. The spell excels in scenes of pursuit, retreat, stalking, confusion, and misidentification.

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Why This Spell Is Dangerous to the World

Fog Cloud is dangerous not because it overwhelms large areas, but because it reliably disrupts small, critical moments.

A 20-foot-radius sphere is enough to obscure:

• a gate approach
• a bridge crossing
• a checkpoint
• a wagon choke point
• a dockside exchange
• a patrol formation
• a ritual circle
• a narrow street or alley

In each of these situations, visibility is what keeps order intact. When that visibility fails, even briefly, control breaks with it.

This makes the spell valuable to smugglers, raiders, infiltrators, scouts, and ambushers—anyone who benefits from turning certainty into hesitation. A single casting can allow someone to slip past guards, break pursuit, disrupt an arrest, or escape a controlled space.

Its danger lies in repetition. Used again and again at the right moments, Fog Cloud teaches people that even familiar ground cannot always be trusted.

It does not reshape the world. It makes the world unreliable just long enough for something else to happen.

Fog Cloud

This material is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

Conjuration (Creation)

Level Druid 2, Sorcerer/Wizard 2, Water 2
Components V, S
Casting Time 1 standard action
Range Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft. level)
Effect Fog spreads in 20-ft. radius, 20 ft. high
Duration 10 min./level
Saving Throw None
Spell Resistance No

A bank of fog billows out from the point you designate. The fog obscures all sight, including Darkvision, beyond 5 feet. A creature within 5 feet has concealment (attacks have a 20% miss chance). Creatures farther away have total concealment (50% miss chance, and the attacker can’t use sight to locate the target).

A moderate wind (11+ mph) disperses the fog in 4 rounds; a strong wind (21+ mph) disperses the fog in 1 round.

The spell does not function underwater.