What level would a weaponised version of Vortex Warp be?

Question

In a campaign I recently misread the wording in the Vortex Warp spell, and was fighting a mounted knight. I used the spell to whip the horse out from under him and have it appear 90ft in the air above him.

Mechanically this was 9d6 damage to both the horse (when it landed) and the rider (when it landed on his now prone form).

I then realised that the spell only allows you to teleport creatures onto a surface, so it got me thinking what level the spell would be if it could teleport creatures anywhere, such as in the air.

My thinking:

• 2nd level: This is the original spell, so it has to be higher
• 3rd level: Adding a bit of damage to a 2nd level spell should bump it up a level, and a well placed fireball will do a lot more damage so why would it be higher?
• 4th level: 9d6 damage is about on par with blight (which really highlights how poor blight is). Also as it becomes a single target version of scatter (with less range) it needs to be less than level 6 and I think 2 levels less makes sense
• 5th level: Blight is single target and this new spell has battlefield control elements and can potentially hurt 2 targets

The new spell:

Name goes here

x-Level Conjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 90 feet

Components: V, S

Duration: Instantaneous

You magically twist space around another creature you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (the target can choose to fail), or the target is teleported to an unoccupied space of your choice that you can see within range (this can be on the ground or in the air).

Answer 1

This should be a level 6 spell

9d6 is an expected 31.5 damage, Blight's 8d8 is slightly higher at 36 expected damage, but probably still the best comparator for single target damage. So level 4 is our baseline.

The qeustion is how valuable the utility of teleporting around friends and foes alike is on top of the damage. I think it is quite valuable:

• Allows you to get your fighters right next to their casters in the back
• Allows you to teleport yourself out of danger
• Allows you to teleport them not only 90 feet up, but also above a deep chasm, doing potentially 20d6 damage (70 points), or into a pool of lava for 18d10 (99 points). Granted, such environmental features are not always available.
• Allows you to potentially knock down two creatures (by dropping one on the other). Note that according to the optional rules in Tasha's, the fall damage is divided evently between them, not fully applied to both.
• If you are above the target (e.g. you are flying), you can target somone 90 feet below you and send them up 90 feet above, letting them drop 180 feet for 18d6 (63 points) of damage. This is not that hard a situation to engineer, so I would think one should rather use a level appropriate to this damage, than to 90 feet. Because someone with an Aarakocra is going to pick this. This amount of damage would put it closer to level 6 (like Disintegrate, 75 points expected on a failed save).

Scatter at level 6 can affect up to five creatures, but it cannot do any of the damage shenanigans, as the target space needs to be on the ground or on the floor (not even a liquid).

I would at least put this at level 5, but I'd more likely stack both its original levels on top of the baseline level 4 damage, and put it at level 6, similar in potential damage to Disintegrate, and similar in other great utility.

One maybe even could argue that is should be level 7, if one thinks the utility aspects here are more valuable than those of disintegrate, but they are very different in nature and thus hard to compare, and this needs special circumstances which Disintegrate does not, so I think it would be too high at 7.