I am interested in a part-time focus on summons and am looking for sources on the damage of creatures that can be summoned through wizard spells by CR, including summon greater demon, conjure elemental, the various Tasha's summoning spells, etc. I am excluding gate and any conjuration spells that do not summon creatures (e.g., animate objects). Can anyone point me to a spreadsheet or other summary with this information? Barring this, does anyone have recommendations for summoned creatures that do a lot of damage.
I don't have anything for organized spreadsheets, but I can share my experience.
The two main summoning spells that I've used are Summon Undead and Summon Shadowspawn. They are streamlined enough that I can quickly roll my attacks, move it around, then end my turn.
The undead is a bit better in my opinion because of the ghost - 40 ft. fly speed, go through walls, lots of condition immunities, common damage immunities, deals necrotic damage, and can fear enemies. Summon it to act as a guardian, preventing anyone from getting past it as a fear-inducing specter, is great. I was able to get it on a druid so I don't have any class features that directly support it, but even still I get a ton of mileage out of it. I especially like the flavor, as I'm directly drawing on our fallen enemies to rise and fight for a time.
The shadowspawn is one I haven't used as much recently, but is still great. The despair one is my favorite because there is a plethora of features and powers that can reduce the movement of an enemy, such as the Fathomless Warlock's Tentacle of the Deep or Ray of Frost. Combining one cantrip with this spell lets you reduce a creature's movement by 30 feet, crippling many humanoid enemies. The shadowspawn also gets more hp than normal, giving it more staying power. I don't see the Fury or Fear as being super useful since if you are trying to use the summon to fear enemies, then that stops one round of attacks which I value more, and the creature has poor stealth capabilities anyway, so I wouldn't use it for that to begin with. Plus, you get to use d12 dice for damage, which as a wizard you almost never get.
I haven't had a chance to play with any of the other tasha summons, but I can say that I'm not very interested in the Summon Elemental or Summon Fey spells. They just don't seem to have enough damage or extra features to make it worth using. I'd love to use Summon Aberration, I just haven't had a chance.
Keep in mind that the new summons won't have as many hit points as a true player character, so you can expect them to stay alive for about three rounds depending on how threatening they are to the enemy. However, every hit that a summon takes is one avoided to you or your allies, so you can almost consider them as mobile healing/damage reduction spells in addition to damage. A 3rd level Cure Wounds will heal 3d8+mod hit points, while a 3rd level shadowspawn has 35 hit points worth of attacks that it can absorb. Take that, Clerics!
For the older summoning spells, I'd love to take a crack at Infernal Calling but I'd not use it in many combat scenarios, instead I'd use it in a diabolic deal, role-play scenario. Combined with Planar Binding I could see it being worth using. The demon summons seem fun on paper, but it's only one bad roll away from turning against you, again I'd not use it without preparation. For the Elementals I've tried to use the minor version with my druid to converse with intelligent creatures like Azer, but apparently they don't like being pulled from their home planes to be bound to your will (who'd have thought?). I have used Conjure Elemental from the item [Tooltip Not Found] to get a Fire Elemental, and let me tell you they change the flow of combat real fast. Even though they are in the same boat as the fiends, I still feel like it may be worth using. Just train yourself to resolve all the effects on it's turn very quickly.
I know you mentioned only summoning, but as a quick aside Animate Dead may be fun from a roleplay perspective, but it definitely isn't worth having in combat. The zombies are only good for meat shields for a hit or two, and by the time you can have several at once, they will be taking damage that their undead fortitude just can't handle. The skeletons are even squishier, and - bounded accuracy be damned - their potential damage output isn't worth it from a table fun perspective. If you ever want to go the evil overlord route, maybe talk to your dm about saying 'hey, can I just say that my fortress of evilness is guarded by these guys? I'm going to be adventuring with the party anyway, I don't want them to come with me.'
Thanks for the detailed response. I did some basic math (not including hit chance or criticals), and in terms of Tasha's summons, I think fey > shadowspawn = elemental > aberration > undead. Absolute differences are not particularly large (28 possible damage for fey vs. 27 for shadowspawn/elemental vs. 21 for ghoul using a 4th level slot), but percentage differences would be. For summon greater demon, standouts appear to include the draegloth, chasme, and barlgura.
Keep in mind that for the fey, only 1d6 on each attack is force, and by default the rest is non-magical. As you get higher in level more creatures are resistant or immune to non-magical bludgeoning, piercing or slashing damage, reducing the effectiveness of these attacks. Same for the elemental and some of the aberration and undead. But none of them are by definition bad choices, so assuming you can play around with a couple you'll figure out what works best for you and your group, regardless of optimization.
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I am interested in a part-time focus on summons and am looking for sources on the damage of creatures that can be summoned through wizard spells by CR, including summon greater demon, conjure elemental, the various Tasha's summoning spells, etc. I am excluding gate and any conjuration spells that do not summon creatures (e.g., animate objects). Can anyone point me to a spreadsheet or other summary with this information? Barring this, does anyone have recommendations for summoned creatures that do a lot of damage.
I don't have anything for organized spreadsheets, but I can share my experience.
The two main summoning spells that I've used are Summon Undead and Summon Shadowspawn. They are streamlined enough that I can quickly roll my attacks, move it around, then end my turn.
I haven't had a chance to play with any of the other tasha summons, but I can say that I'm not very interested in the Summon Elemental or Summon Fey spells. They just don't seem to have enough damage or extra features to make it worth using. I'd love to use Summon Aberration, I just haven't had a chance.
Keep in mind that the new summons won't have as many hit points as a true player character, so you can expect them to stay alive for about three rounds depending on how threatening they are to the enemy. However, every hit that a summon takes is one avoided to you or your allies, so you can almost consider them as mobile healing/damage reduction spells in addition to damage. A 3rd level Cure Wounds will heal 3d8+mod hit points, while a 3rd level shadowspawn has 35 hit points worth of attacks that it can absorb. Take that, Clerics!
For the older summoning spells, I'd love to take a crack at Infernal Calling but I'd not use it in many combat scenarios, instead I'd use it in a diabolic deal, role-play scenario. Combined with Planar Binding I could see it being worth using. The demon summons seem fun on paper, but it's only one bad roll away from turning against you, again I'd not use it without preparation. For the Elementals I've tried to use the minor version with my druid to converse with intelligent creatures like Azer, but apparently they don't like being pulled from their home planes to be bound to your will (who'd have thought?). I have used Conjure Elemental from the item [Tooltip Not Found] to get a Fire Elemental, and let me tell you they change the flow of combat real fast. Even though they are in the same boat as the fiends, I still feel like it may be worth using. Just train yourself to resolve all the effects on it's turn very quickly.
I know you mentioned only summoning, but as a quick aside Animate Dead may be fun from a roleplay perspective, but it definitely isn't worth having in combat. The zombies are only good for meat shields for a hit or two, and by the time you can have several at once, they will be taking damage that their undead fortitude just can't handle. The skeletons are even squishier, and - bounded accuracy be damned - their potential damage output isn't worth it from a table fun perspective. If you ever want to go the evil overlord route, maybe talk to your dm about saying 'hey, can I just say that my fortress of evilness is guarded by these guys? I'm going to be adventuring with the party anyway, I don't want them to come with me.'
Thanks for the detailed response. I did some basic math (not including hit chance or criticals), and in terms of Tasha's summons, I think fey > shadowspawn = elemental > aberration > undead. Absolute differences are not particularly large (28 possible damage for fey vs. 27 for shadowspawn/elemental vs. 21 for ghoul using a 4th level slot), but percentage differences would be. For summon greater demon, standouts appear to include the draegloth, chasme, and barlgura.
Keep in mind that for the fey, only 1d6 on each attack is force, and by default the rest is non-magical. As you get higher in level more creatures are resistant or immune to non-magical bludgeoning, piercing or slashing damage, reducing the effectiveness of these attacks. Same for the elemental and some of the aberration and undead. But none of them are by definition bad choices, so assuming you can play around with a couple you'll figure out what works best for you and your group, regardless of optimization.