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There are multiple ways to affect wind speed: natural phenomena, psionics, magic, even certain feats can produce minor wind effects....
Do any of the various effects that adjust wind speed stack, and if so which ones?
The situation is that the player is trying to increase the wind speed as high as possible.
Your question is a bit weird in it's formulation.
First, D&D 3.5 doesn't really use wind speed, it instead uses levels of wind strength, of which there are 7 (from "Light" to "Tornado"), and each level has assigned a range of wind speeds (from 0-10 mph for Light, to 175-300mph for Tornado).
Certain niche spells and effects do use wind speed in it's calculations, like Air Walk (where the wind blows the air walker 5 feet for each 5 miles per hour of wind speed), or when a ship is Driven by strong winds (making it move downwind at a speed in feet per round equal to twice the wind speed in miles per hour).
I'm guessing the player trying to increase the wind speed as high as possible is doing it because of one of these niche cases.
Most of the effects that affect wind speed don't really increase wind speed, they just increase the wind strength, which has a maximum at level 7 (tornado), which would cap wind speed at 300mph.
This can be achieved easily with a single casting of Control Winds, for example, as it raises the wind strength by 1 for every 3 caster levels.
If you wanted to break the 300mph barrier, your options are greatly reduced. As far as I know you would have 2 options:
If you want quick and simple, the level 5 spell Control Winds is the easiest rubric.
Wind Direction
You may choose one of four basic wind patterns to function over the spell’s area.
- A downdraft blows from the center outward in equal strength in all directions.
- An updraft blows from the outer edges in toward the center in equal strength from all directions, veering upward before impinging on the eye in the center.
- A rotation causes the winds to circle the center in clockwise or counterclockwise fashion.
- A blast simply causes the winds to blow in one direction across the entire area from one side to the other.
Wind Strength
For every three caster levels, you can increase or decrease wind strength by one level. Each round on your turn, a creature in the wind must make a Fortitude save or suffer the effect of being in the windy area.
Strong winds (21+ mph) make sailing difficult.
A severe wind (31+ mph) causes minor ship and building damage.
A windstorm (51+ mph) drives most flying creatures from the skies, uproots small trees, knocks down light wooden structures, tears off roofs, and endangers ships.
Hurricane force winds (75+ mph) destroy wooden buildings, sometimes uproot even large trees, and cause most ships to founder.
A tornado (175+ mph) destroys all nonfortified buildings and often uproots large trees.
There isn't an easy way to chart this out, but if you want a more nuanced suggestion, then try this: Consider the size of the wind when it hits the sail, the size of the sail, and the average of the highest wind speed over that surface.
For example, if you treat the ship like a Huge creature, with a properly sized sail thus (arguably) having an area of 3x6 squares. A standard "Gust of Wind" spell (level 2 Evoc) would have no affect because it doesn't do anything to Large creatures or bigger. Perhaps if two instances of the spell are cast, you can treat it as moving a Medium creature, thus 1d6x5'/turn. And that would be generous, but because sails are designed to work this way and you won't have to factor in the size of the base ship - just the sail. So a sail that doesn't match the ship's size would be a modifier to how quickly it can approach that speed.
Again, it's definitely not RAW, but if you really want to get crunchy with wind mechanics, it's a start.
