In my last session, my druid PC ended combat with a real coup-de-grace by summoning 8 cows. The cows proceeded to charge the hostiles, 7 of them hit, and each dealt 3d6+4 bludgeoning damage.
Hilarity aside – and it was pretty funny, and a great use of the spell – it did get me thinking as a DM: this could seriously ruin the challenge of a lot of encounters. I looked up forum comments on the spell and saw a lot of similar observations, especially when you get to higher level summoning and can bring out more lowbies. 32 snakes or goats attacking the BBEG might not do a lot of damage individually, but you can guarantee that some of them will hit. And even if they don't, that's extra fodder on the field – unless the enemy breaks concentration on the druid PC, they've gone from a party of 4 to a party of a lot more than that as potential targets.
The short of it is, as a PC, you should always be doing this right? Because it makes the chances of your character being hit so much lower unless fighting an intelligent creature, and it makes the chances of you scoring any damage, let alone critical hits or succeeding on a concentration check disruption yourself pretty good every 1 or 2 turns. As a DM this sounds like a nightmare to respond to, though.
Cows' stat block comes from Volo's, and though the creatures are rated as CR1/4 that charge ability really makes them comparable to a Giant Goat or a similar CR1/2. I mean if all those cows had hit one enemy in their charge, that's 24d6 + 32 (as a level 3 spell, not factoring in upcasting). That's an incredible amount of damage potential given the relatively low cost to bring out the cows (level 3 spell and all).
I'm not sure how to prepare for or respond to that, really, besides giving baddies resistance to bludgeoning or having smarter enemies target the druid when they see that. Maybe that is the way I should go about it? I want my players to feel the high of ******* up my plans to murder them of course, but I also take my job seriously as a DM to create enjoyable challenges for them too. If I were a druid PC I can't see how I don't do this all the time.
There's a reason they changed those spells in 2024. There are methods of dealing with that kind of attack (for example, spirit guardians or forbiddance) but you're usually better off either just restricting the spell (say, cap it at 4 creatures summoned; higher level cast can get higher CR creatures but still has to abide by that rule) or be really nitpicky with the rules and observe that (a) the spell doesn't say the spellcaster can choose what gets summoned, and (b) the spell says CR 1/4 or lower.
I broadly agree with that general tweak: it's not that I don't want to reward my player for creative play, it's that being able to summon a ton of cows can make a fight go really long on account of all the cows + render the fight unchallenging given the sheer numbers. Plus the whole charge thing with cows. I fall on the side of DMs that say a player can decide what they summon, so long as it's reasonably something they would know about or maybe have seen.
How then have folks handled things like the RAW saying CR1/4 or lower = 8 creatures, if you're capping the summons to 4? Or is it that you just cut off that part of the spell, setting the minimum to CR1/2. No cows, but Giant Goats let you do almost the same thing with charging attacks (using d4s, instead of d6s, which reinforces my thinking that cows are overpowered for a CR1/4 animal).
How then have folks handled things like the RAW saying CR1/4 or lower = 8 creatures, if you're capping the summons to 4? Or is it that you just cut off that part of the spell, setting the minimum to CR1/2.
You just cut off that part of the spell (and if you upcast, CR 1/2 also drops off of the list). It's still optimal to summon the max number of creatures, but 4 creatures will do a lot less dragging the game to a halt and is probably closer to appropriate power for a level 3 spell (cows should probably be CR 1/2, but it's not like other CR 1/4 creatures aren't equally problematic).
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In my last session, my druid PC ended combat with a real coup-de-grace by summoning 8 cows. The cows proceeded to charge the hostiles, 7 of them hit, and each dealt 3d6+4 bludgeoning damage.
Hilarity aside – and it was pretty funny, and a great use of the spell – it did get me thinking as a DM: this could seriously ruin the challenge of a lot of encounters. I looked up forum comments on the spell and saw a lot of similar observations, especially when you get to higher level summoning and can bring out more lowbies. 32 snakes or goats attacking the BBEG might not do a lot of damage individually, but you can guarantee that some of them will hit. And even if they don't, that's extra fodder on the field – unless the enemy breaks concentration on the druid PC, they've gone from a party of 4 to a party of a lot more than that as potential targets.
The short of it is, as a PC, you should always be doing this right? Because it makes the chances of your character being hit so much lower unless fighting an intelligent creature, and it makes the chances of you scoring any damage, let alone critical hits or succeeding on a concentration check disruption yourself pretty good every 1 or 2 turns. As a DM this sounds like a nightmare to respond to, though.
Cows' stat block comes from Volo's, and though the creatures are rated as CR1/4 that charge ability really makes them comparable to a Giant Goat or a similar CR1/2. I mean if all those cows had hit one enemy in their charge, that's 24d6 + 32 (as a level 3 spell, not factoring in upcasting). That's an incredible amount of damage potential given the relatively low cost to bring out the cows (level 3 spell and all).
I'm not sure how to prepare for or respond to that, really, besides giving baddies resistance to bludgeoning or having smarter enemies target the druid when they see that. Maybe that is the way I should go about it? I want my players to feel the high of ******* up my plans to murder them of course, but I also take my job seriously as a DM to create enjoyable challenges for them too. If I were a druid PC I can't see how I don't do this all the time.
There's a reason they changed those spells in 2024. There are methods of dealing with that kind of attack (for example, spirit guardians or forbiddance) but you're usually better off either just restricting the spell (say, cap it at 4 creatures summoned; higher level cast can get higher CR creatures but still has to abide by that rule) or be really nitpicky with the rules and observe that (a) the spell doesn't say the spellcaster can choose what gets summoned, and (b) the spell says CR 1/4 or lower.
I broadly agree with that general tweak: it's not that I don't want to reward my player for creative play, it's that being able to summon a ton of cows can make a fight go really long on account of all the cows + render the fight unchallenging given the sheer numbers. Plus the whole charge thing with cows. I fall on the side of DMs that say a player can decide what they summon, so long as it's reasonably something they would know about or maybe have seen.
How then have folks handled things like the RAW saying CR1/4 or lower = 8 creatures, if you're capping the summons to 4? Or is it that you just cut off that part of the spell, setting the minimum to CR1/2. No cows, but Giant Goats let you do almost the same thing with charging attacks (using d4s, instead of d6s, which reinforces my thinking that cows are overpowered for a CR1/4 animal).
You just cut off that part of the spell (and if you upcast, CR 1/2 also drops off of the list). It's still optimal to summon the max number of creatures, but 4 creatures will do a lot less dragging the game to a halt and is probably closer to appropriate power for a level 3 spell (cows should probably be CR 1/2, but it's not like other CR 1/4 creatures aren't equally problematic).