Magic Missile Storm

Image by Daniel Denova. Used with permission.

"Starting the confrontation alone, he singlehandedly charged the mutant and orcs with nothing but his bare hands. As soon as they were within magic missile's range he unleashed a flurry of magical energy missiles. In the space of a few seconds, dozens of magic missiles flew from his fingertips: cutting down waves of orcs with incredible speed."

— "Magic Missile Stormer (3.5e Optimized Character Build)," D&D Wiki

Squishy Wizards enjoy Spam Attacks too. For many spellcasters, their version is likely to be manifested in a Magic Missile Storm. This attack sends out a swarm of magical projectiles, likely in the form of glowing energy orbs or pointed arrow-like shapes. These projectiles will probably leave colored trails in the air as they move, spreading out to weave and turn through the air before converging and impacting the opponent in rapid succession, bombarding them with arcane fury.

A subtrope of Homing Projectile.

Compare Beam Spam, Roboteching and Macross Missile Massacre, as an example could be this trope and one of them as well. Not to be confused with Projectile Spell, which refers to spells behaving like line-of-sight projectiles that can be dodged.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fairy Tail: Sting's White Dragon Slayer Magic spell "Holy Ray" takes the form of a barrage of white homing beams of magic.
• Most of the cures in HeartCatch Pretty Cure! use a Forte Wave as their standard Finishing Move, which fires a large energy blast in the shape of a flower bud. The one exception is Cure Sunshine, whose Gold Forte Burst launches dozens of sunflowers instead.
• Several spells in Lyrical Nanoha. These types of shooting spells are some of the easiest and fastest to cast for a mage, and could be used as suppression fire as well as direct attacks. These spells often come with alternate versions that change the amount of energy bullets and/or the way they are fired at the enemy. In particular, if the name of the spell is followed by something like Phalanx Shift or Genocide Shift, you should be ready to block or dodge like hell as you will be faced with a veritable wall of energy projectiles. Examples of these include Nanoha's Divine/Axel Shooter (homing energy spheres whose every movement Nanoha could control), Fate's Photon/Plasma Lancer (arrow-shaped bolts of energy with limited homing capabilities. Comes in several variations and could be combined into an energy lance), Teana's Cross Fire Shoot (controllable energy spheres like Nanoha's, but could alternatively be fired as a Beam Spam instead), and Vivio's Sonic Shooter (Controllable energy orbs like her Nanoha-mama.)
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi one of the most basic and common offensive spells is Sagitta Magica (Magical Arrows). They come in a variety of elemental types with different properties, and almost every mage is seen using the spell at one point. Near the end of the manga Negi fires off a volley of 1,001 light Sagitta at Fate, who notes that while Sagitta Magica is a low-end spell Negi has scaled it up so much that it's essentially the same as an anti-army spell.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Arceus's Judgment attack is portrayed as one of these in Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life, with numerous projectiles fired into the sky that then rain down like meteors and cause a comparable amount of destruction.
  • Swift is generally depicted as a homing barrage of star-shaped projectiles made of Pure Energy.
• Slayers: The spells Burst Rondo (weak) and Rune Flare (strong) do this.

Fan Works

• The Night Unfurls: A Call Beyond is one of Kyril's non-melee weapons. It unleashes a small star that explodes into streaks of light that bombard anything in their vicinity, true to the game it is featured in. It is used in Chapter 20 of the original version to make a gap in a fortress wall, which allows Kyril and his company to infiltrate the Leaping Lizard stronghold. Chapter 6 of the remastered version ends with Kyril using it to insta-kill Vault and his men. Not only is this an "Oh Crap!" moment for the ones on the receiving end, but it is also one for Olga as well — even an experienced Black Magic user like her has never seen such a powerful spell before. That is the day she realised the power gap between the two has never been more apparent than before.

Films — Live-Action

• In the climax of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a group of twenty or so wizard policemen end up simultaneously blasting offensive spells at a single target. The combined force of the spells is enough to obliterate a sentient storm of dark magic; however, trying the same thing on the magical terrorist Grindelwald fails because he's skilled enough to block each of their spells with individual Shield Charms.

Literature

• In The Black Magician Trilogy, Sonea, a prodigiously strong mage and the only non-aristocrat in Wizarding School, is challenged to a Wizard Duel by a bratty classmate. Although she could easily overwhelm him by raw force, she opts to use an elaborate, highly technically challenging Magic Missile Storm as her finishing move, to demonstrate that she's both Strong and Skilled.
• In The Wheel of Time, "Arrows of Fire" is a rare spell to fire off hair-thin filaments, each of which can punch a sizable hole in its target, carry through to a One-Hit Polykill, and instantly flicker over to a new set of targets. Rand can manage a hundred filaments at a time, which utterly devastates an attacking Trolloc army.

Live-Action TV

• Kamen Rider Den-O has the Boistous Shot, Climax Form's Gun Form-based 'Charge And Up' finisher is this.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Magic missile and assorted stronger spells bearing the name "Missile Storm" in some manner are the Trope Namers, and are often depicted as this trope in video games. For so basic a spell (it can be learned by 1st level arcane spellcasters) magic missile is an extremely versatile weapon (due in large part to being incapable of missing, but also because it does force damage which is effective against incorporeal beings), and there's a number of builds that are designed around maximizing its potential.
    • Flavor Text from the D&D Wiki article for one of them, Magic Missile Stormer, provides the page quote.
  • The Wand of Magic Missiles is an item that lets the user fire up to ten such missiles once per day, but using the last one has a possibility of misfiring and destroying the wand.
  • The high-level spell Meteor Swarm does much the same as Magic Missile, but targets a huge area.
  • 5th edition's version of the eldritch blast cantrip can shoot up to four projectiles at once, each of which is less accurate but more powerful than those of magic missile.
• In Pathfinder, magic missile is Boring, but Practical. It doesn't do much damage, but it never misses, it's available from level 1, and it deals force damage that few monsters have resistance against. With the right feats and a high enough level, a caster can fire fifteen in a single round, with extra feats extending the range, increasing the damage, letting the missiles turn corners, or even ignore rolling damage altogether and just deal the maximum possible amount.

Video Games

• While the Baldur's Gate games don't have any dedicated Magic Missile Storm spells aside from the basic Magic Missile (which lets you fire 5 at once if your level's high enough,) from 2 onwards there are certain spells you can exploit to bury your opponent in Magic Missiles, including Sequencer spells (allowing you to cast more than one spell at once,) Time Stop (pretty self-explanatory) and Improved Alacrity (removes the delay between spell castings, allowing you to cast a spell immediately after another spell. And since Magic Missile's casting time is near-instantaneous...)
  • The Infinity Engine used for Baldur's Gate can actually handle literally eleven magic missiles being fired from a single spell, but the only way to see it is to install a Game Mod that actually uses this capability.
  • Baldur's Gate III has multiple spells like this from Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.
• Bloodborne
  • The "A Call Beyond" spell, which bombs an area with magic missiles. It's actually treated as an off-hand weapon (represented by a small, etherial creature that looks like a sea slug), since the game uses Enchanted Device Magic.
  • At enough Insight, certain enemies, such as the Hemwick Witches, have a lantern covered in eyeballs that lets them spam Call Beyond.
  • Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos is the source of the spell, and she casts it in salvos of 3.
• Crescent Pale Mist: Yunou's Rowanveld PM is essentially a variation of this. When Pale Mist is around her, pressing Special (or Down, Down+Special) will unleash a storm of magical swords against her foes.
• Several of these are found in the Souls series. Both Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 2 have them in the form of the various Soulmass spells, along with the Pursuers in the original (changed to Affinity in the sequel). The sequel adds a number of these spells, including Soul Shower and Dark Hail.
• Dawn of War: the Chaos Sorcerer's Doombolt.
• Diablo III: The Wizard's Arcane Torrent skill fires small pinkish/purple filaments at a targeted location, bombarding any enemies in the vicinity.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition has the Missile Barrage spell which fires twelve magic missiles at a time that correspond to the caster's staff element. With certain weapons, the amount of missiles fired doubles to 24, and with each individual projectile being able to crit, dealing high damage and potentially triggering Masterwork effects in the process, this entry-level spell becomes downright devastating when set up right. It also cools down fast, has amazing synergies with most Prestige Classes and can be switched between single target and fire-and-forget area bombardment modes, making it one of the most powerful and most versatile spells in any mage's repertoire.
• Dragon's Dogma has the Magick Cannon spell, which summons a magical orb that when struck, launches a single homing magic missile at an enemy. Its upgraded version, Great Cannon, fires three of the same magic missiles per hit. The Mystic Knight class has multiple multi-hit skills; one of them, Full Moon Slash, hits the cannon five times. And the player can summon multiple cannons, potentially launching approximately thirty magic missiles per second.
• In Dust: An Elysian Tail, it's possible to do this by having Fidget fire a couple of magic projectiles, then use Dust Storm to give them more energy and home in on every enemy on the screen.
• Elden Ring also has this in the form of "Pest Threads", an incantation used primarily by the Kindred of Rot; the player can also purchase and use this incantation.
• Fairy Bloom Freesia has two of these magical attacks, that can be rapidly cast the create the effect:
  • The Swallow attack, where, from Freesia's back, comes a "a magical blast that splits into multiple homing bullets."
  • The Peacock attack, where a large and small orb of blue light accelerate forwards from Freesia, a distance, then home in on enemies, turning around, if necessary. But, both orbs move together, and are treated as a single hitbox.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The recurring spells Matra Magic and Holy are frequently depicted in this manner franchise-wide.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Alexander's Divine Judgment is depicted in this manner. Kuja's Ultima combines this trope with Death from Above.
  • Final Fantasy X: The Holy spell manifests in a similar manner as Divine Judgement.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Ashe's Heaven's Wrath and Penelo's Evanescence and Intercession.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Alexander returns with this, as the summon for Hope, the game's resident Squishy Wizard. Hope's Limit Break attack, Final Resort, is also this.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: The Red Mage's level-3 Limit Break attack, Vermillion Scourge, creates a large magic sigil on the target area where a barrage of magical bolts are fired, creating a mighty explosion. The Summoner’s level 3 Limit Break, Teraflare, has them channel the power of Bahamut to bombard a large area with exploding magical projectiles.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy: This is Ultimecia's entire fighting style, particularly with Knight's Blade and Knight's Arrow. The Cloud of Darkness does this for some of her attacks which are otherwise Projectile Spells. For single attacks, there's Zidane's Scoop Art and Solution IX, Garland's Blaze, Squall's Fire Barret, and Yuna's charged Impulse. Holy and Ultima used by various characters are also present.
• The "Chaser" spell from Ginormo Sword makes you fire out a huge amount of homing magic projectiles. It's pretty much the best spell in the game.
• Golden Sun has several summons that take this form: Mercury hits the enemy with blasts of water, Atalanta with hundreds of magic arrows, and Boreas with huge chunks of ice.
• In Grim Dawn, the Arcanist's Panetti's Replicating Missile skill. Once this baby fires up, it will multiply on impact and flood the screen with magic projectiles.
• Artesia from Heroes of Newerth is a hero built entirely around spamming magic missiles. Her main ability is a long-range, semi-homing magic projectile with a low cooldown, she has a passive which fires smaller magic bolts at enemies with each spellcast, her second ability reduces the cooldown of her missiles while firing bolts around her, and her ultimate summons a beacon which copies her spellcasts.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Series-wide there's the Ragnarok attack, which fires a storm of energy beams that converge on enemies.
  • Kingdom Hearts II:
    • Sora's Wisdom Form shoots out flurries of homing magic shots from his Keyblade.
    • Xemnas shoots his Ethereal Blades as projectiles, sometimes from his hand and sometimes creating a line of them in the air that fire at once. In his final attack, he shoots literally thousands of these projectiles at the protagonists, who have to spend a solid 30 seconds doing nothing but blocking incoming blasts from all directions in order to survive.
    • Xigbar can do this with his magic bullets.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: There are generally three types of Shotlocks — fire several projectiles in waves, fire a barrage continuously, or perform dash attacks. Many of the former two categories fit this trope.
  • In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Young Xehanort can fire projectiles in this manner.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Ganondorf does this as a Desperation Attack.
• Mass Effect does this with some biotic attacks from the second installment on.
• Once you reach a certain point in NEO: The World Ends with You, you gain access to the ultimate form of your Limit Break called the Killer Remix, which can only be activated by reaching 300% Groove and involves Rindo and his allies teleporting above the arena before bombarding everything on the field with an utterly destructive storm of psychic blasts.
• Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 escalate the standard D&D magic missile spell with two spells titled Isaac's missile storm, an Area of Effect spell that rains Roboteching magical projectiles across an eight-meter radius. It's not great against multiple targets, but if there are more missiles than targets, they'll converge, meaning it's extremely effective against a single target.. For a not quite so literally "magic missile" version there is also Flame Arrow'', which may confuse some players because the 3E Standard Reference Document has the pen-and-paper version as an enchantment to be applied to projectiles, rather than its NWN implementation as a barrage of fireballs.
• NieR has two of Grimoire Weiss's spells, "Dark Blast" and "Dark Lance". Dark Blast rapidly fires small, individually weak projectiles, and unleashes a small swarm of homing projectiles when charged. Dark Lance fires larger and stronger projectiles, and when charged, creates multiple projectiles that are launched in quick succession. Various enemies are also capable of unleashing barrages of magical projectiles that would feel at home in a Bullet Hell shooter.
• In Pillars of Eternity Minoletta was an expert at this as most of her spells involve a barrage of magic missiles. This culminates in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire where her final spell, appropriately called Minoletta's Missile Salvo, is a magical M3 (M4?) concentrated in a small area.
• The Dark Magician class in Rappelz gets a spell called "Darkness Arrow" that is more accurately described as a Macross Missile Massacre of shadow-element magic.
• Ragnarok Online mages can use the Soul Strike spell to this effect, firing up to five spirit projectiles at once.
• In Sakura Wars (2019), Claris's Limit Break attack, "Arbitre D'enfer", casts a swarm of magical bolts upon multiple enemies — or in the case of bosses, concentrates magical bolts on them.
• Sorcerors Maze, a 90s Breakout clone for the PlayStation have a power-up that splits your ball into a hundred balls, filling the entire screen with projectiles destroying everything onscreen. This particular power-up can insta-clear any level within seconds, but sadly you're not allowed access to it during boss segments.
• While the Fireball spell in the Tales games normally fires three projectiles, Rita Mordio can fire as many as ten if she uses it often enough.
• Terraria has a weapon called the Crystal Storm, which can fire magic crystal shards at a rate of 8.5 a second.
• Touhou Project is a fantasy-themed Bullet Hell series. This trope is basically the premise.
  • Even amongst Touhou, special mention has to go to series deuteragonist Marisa Kirisame, whose entire arsenal is either this or somewhere on the line between Kamehame Hadouken and Wave-Motion Gun. One of her shot types is even called "Magic Missile", though unlike most examples of this trope, Marisa's attacks exclusively fly straight, as, by her own admission, she focuses on power and flashiness above all else.
• Undertale: This is the most common way that bosses try to kill you. Special mentions go to Flowey, who in his very first appearance, fires an inescapable ring of bullets at you, and Undyne the Undying, who can have 40+ magic spears on screen at the same time.
• Warcraft III has the Goblin Tinker's Cluster Rockets, magical missiles that bombard an area and stun all units inside (and is often modified to make it a more literal magical barrage).
• Quite a few spells in Ernothian trilogy of Might and Magic is like this. There are spells like Meteor Shower or Starburst that summon magical meteors or stars in the sky to rain down on your enemies, Shrapmetal that shoots multiple heated metal chunks in front of you, Sparks, that do the same but with sparks, the list goes on...
• In Crescent Pale Mist, Yunou's primary means of dealing damage is using her Rowanveld PM by using the Pale Mist wisp expelled from enemies after striking them with her sword, or expelling her own Pale Mist reserves by pressing Down, Down + Special or performed immediately by double tapping Triangle while holding on the second press.

Web Comic

• The Gamer: Han Jee-Han's main attack was, for a long time, spamming mana arrows. Due to his insanely high mana regeneration, he could keep it going on forever.
• The Great Wizard Transcendent Mikhail could fire multiple magic missiles and alter the paths at once with his experience.
• In Tower of God, the simplest way to attack with Shinsu seems to be to create a Bang, a glowing sphere (and basic unit) of Shinsu, and hurl it at your enemy. Those who can control multiple Bang can make a Magic Missile Storm by launching several.

Web Video

• Critical Role: Scanlan possesses a Wand of Magic Missile that can release up to nine missiles in one blast.

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