In AD&D, Control weather is a 7th level cleric spell and a 6th level mage spell that provides a loose organization of weather types with very little exact detail about what any of these conditions will produce. It was difficult running the spell back in the 1980s, without the sort of gritty information that is presently available on the internet.
It is particularly annoying in phrases when we're told, "obviously," that the spell must meet appropriate climatic conditions, as though we are either supposed to believe the only sort of conditions the players will every meet will be those that occur in Wisconsin, or that we are blessed with perfect knowledge of what storm conditions are possible in conditions like the African Sahel, the Brazilian Caatinga or the Yunnan Rainforest. In 1978, when the Players Handbook was published. It's surprising there isn't a note beneath that reading,
* Watch National Geographic, stupid.
In 5th Edition, the spell is described as an 8th-level transmutation. The duration of the spell is drastically curtailed (from an average of 26 hours to 8), the range is much expanded and the casting time remains unchanged. Note, please, that I charge the caster only three rounds; I don't see how more makes the spell more powerful, except that it is clearly designed not to be used in a battle. In other words, the very powerful spell should not help 3rd level druids from casting call lightning or enabling any other caster to produce a spell based on the weather conditions. Gah.
If at all possible, I want to produce rules related to things like spells that precisely detail what the spell will do. Control weather has been one of the hardest spells I've had to rewrite. I'm tremendously pleased that I'm beginning to master mediawiki's layout sufficiently that this spell can look a lot better than it did, when I edited the page six months ago.
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