I almost caused a TPK in a big fight right now by dropping ice storm on top of my team. Everyone still took massive damage, and it killed Shadowheart’s divine guardian which she had just casted. Read your spells carefully before assuming it’s safe to cast them on top of your party!
Scultp spell does protect your party. I did it multiple times, even with ice storm.
BUT it only protect one ally per level of the spell. So ice storm would not protect the divine guardian if the whole group is around it. And then maybe the guardian was triggered against the group?
Another thing that will not work is the meta magic careful spell, because it only makes allies succeed the saving through.
The sculpt spells description says that your party automatically passes their saving throws, but ice storm still does half damage on successful save. It also says “and take no damage from them”, so maybe you’re right and the divine guardian attacked us since I attacked it? I’m not quite sure. I should have checked the combat log.
I think the ally limit that’s in the 5e tabletop rules isn’t implemented in the game. I just cast a Fireball on the whole party after summoning four ghouls and no one took damage.
Yeah, the half-damage-on-save with careful spell is mainly useful if you have a rogue with Evasion (takes no damage in those conditions).