Overall, I like the direction they’re going with the conjure spells. However, the new Conjure Animals seems kind of redundant as it is basically Call Lightning. It also might be a bit too powerful when considering how easy it is to get advantage on attack rolls. Conjure Fey feels just incredibly weak in comparison: It consumes your BA, does less damage if both are cast at lvl 6 (3d12 vs 5d10) and it’s only single target damage.
Instead of turning all the conjure spells into pure combat spells, maybe some of them should become pure utility without combat application.
A lot of the spells are redundant, conjure elemental is very similar to evards. Minor elemental to spirit shroud, animals to call lightning, Woodland beings is just spirit guardians for the ranger/druid it would be easier to just add a couple classes to spirit guardians.(though i think spirit guardians could be toned down a bit) Fey, is just spiritual weapon/mordenkines sword(man sword looks even worse now). Celestial is the only one that feels unique.
That isn't really bad in itself, there is tons of overlap with existing spells as is. But while I think something needed to be done with these conjure spells I would hope for more unique ideas.
My biggest issue is with Conjure Animal, as it doesn't seem like it really feels like you're summoning animals and grouping all sorts of summoned beasts into a single effect feels weird. It loses massive amounts of utility, which admittedly is the point, and just becomes a fairly generic spell effect that poorly represents the theme of conjuring beasts to aid you.
What if it had multiple possible effects depending on the style of beast you're conjuring? Some spells have multiple-choice effects already, and this feels like a good spell to do that for.
Swarms of insects, rodents, bats, birds, etc. could function more or less how it does already as written. An AoE you drop and move around.
Conjuring a pack of beasts like wolves or raptors could be more like Phantasmal Force. You designate a target and the pack relentlessly attacks and harries that target no matter where they are standing. Offer a STR save per turn or be knocked prone by the spirit beasts. Throw in the ribbon feature of the caster being able to track the pursued target even if they try to hide. Spell could end if the target gets so many feet away from the caster or breaks their concentration.
A third use, to add back a little bit of the utility being lost from the spell, could be to conjure steeds for the party that can carry them at a movement speed of 60 feet for a duration. Maybe if upcast as a level 5 spell you get 80ft of fly speed instead.
With these three effects I'd be pretty content with the spell. It'd be especially thematic on a ranger. Conjuring a spectral wolf pack to hunt down and slow the enemy's escape while you chase them down would be fun, I think.
I knew before I even looked in this thread that there would be some people who are upset about no longer being able to summon several critters to make combat, especially in pen and paper, more of a hassle than it needs to be.
Are the Conjure spells in this playtest perfect? Of course not. But it has been a constant that any significant change, no matter the intent or how much it might improve quality of life, will be vehemently opposed by someone.
I haven't done a count in the thread but .... Most of the players (here) in support of the old version don't give a crap about summoning a hoard in combat or the broken damage. its the utility and functionality they care about.
with the new options a lot of non combat gameplay options become "dm may I go find X-animal?" "how Do I X (dig tunnels, cross X terrain, cause distractions, etc) "
with the new options a lot of non combat gameplay options become "dm may I go find X-animal?" "how Do I X (dig tunnels, cross X terrain, cause distractions, etc) "
...And the old ones weren't? With CA, you could ask to conjure a bunch of Dire Moles to dig a tunnel or whatever, but it was still "DM may I" to see if that was actually what you got. Since you're asking DM may I anyway, you may as well ask if your Beast of the Land can do that (you choose its shape, after all), and stick with the less disruptive hour-long spell.
Also - causing a distraction is the Help action, which any creature (including Summon Beast) can do.
I knew before I even looked in this thread that there would be some people who are upset about no longer being able to summon several critters to make combat, especially in pen and paper, more of a hassle than it needs to be.
Are the Conjure spells in this playtest perfect? Of course not. But it has been a constant that any significant change, no matter the intent or how much it might improve quality of life, will be vehemently opposed by someone.
I haven't done a count in the thread but .... Most of the players (here) in support of the old version don't give a crap about summoning a hoard in combat or the broken damage. its the utility and functionality they care about.
with the new options a lot of non combat gameplay options become "dm may I go find X-animal?" "how Do I X (dig tunnels, cross X terrain, cause distractions, etc) "
you're probably right. but I wouldn't turn down a poll.
...and I wouldn't mind if one of the questions was "how do you feel about having a character in the party with a 'sonic screwdriver' solution to every problem: bad/ambivalent/good/good-(and-it's-me)"
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
with the new options a lot of non combat gameplay options become "dm may I go find X-animal?" "how Do I X (dig tunnels, cross X terrain, cause distractions, etc) "
...And the old ones weren't? With CA, you could ask to conjure a bunch of Dire Moles to dig a tunnel or whatever, but it was still "DM may I" to see if that was actually what you got. Since you're asking DM may I anyway, you may as well ask if your Beast of the Land can do that (you choose its shape, after all), and stick with the less disruptive hour-long spell.
Also - causing a distraction is the Help action, which any creature (including Summon Beast) can do.
I never had a problem with the old Spells and getting dm permission. I even played with dms who always picked and still had fun because every creature has something to make it special and useful.
However, these changes are about fixing the game. I want fixes not WotC removing interesting play. the unique traits of creatures are what make them creatures and not just skins.
It seems great to me. They nerfed some broken ass spells and replaced with something that's power-level appropriate. If you want a single creature, use the summon spells. If you want to have a gaggle of creatures that cause effects use the conjure spells. I could see an argument to add a "summon swarm" to the arsenal, but that's about it.
The old spells were so broken AND bogged down gameplay. Good move.
I knew before I even looked in this thread that there would be some people who are upset about no longer being able to summon several critters to make combat, especially in pen and paper, more of a hassle than it needs to be.
Are the Conjure spells in this playtest perfect? Of course not. But it has been a constant that any significant change, no matter the intent or how much it might improve quality of life, will be vehemently opposed by someone.
Funny, not a single person in this thread is arguing in favour of summoning a massive number of creatures in combat.
There are people like me who miss the creativity and interesting out-of-combat uses of the Conjure spells, or the few CR1 or CR2 creatures with interesting abilities for summoning in combat.
I knew before I even looked in this thread that there would be some people who are upset about no longer being able to summon several critters to make combat, especially in pen and paper, more of a hassle than it needs to be.
Are the Conjure spells in this playtest perfect? Of course not. But it has been a constant that any significant change, no matter the intent or how much it might improve quality of life, will be vehemently opposed by someone.
Funny, not a single person in this thread is arguing in favour of summoning a massive number of creatures in combat.
There are people like me who miss the creativity and interesting out-of-combat uses of the Conjure spells, or the few CR1 or CR2 creatures with interesting abilities for summoning in combat.
Multi-summon spells not only add more things in the combat for both players and DMs to keep track of, and can drag turns out longer, but they (especially 2014 Conjure Animals) also make casters more powerful than they otherwise would be. And not to mention, as is, they rely on either player or DM looking up stat blocks to have on hand.
There is a cost to that open-ended flexibility that you and others who want these spells to remain have either never experienced yourselves or choose to ignore. And frankly, WoTC overhauling all these spells is a good indication that enough people wanted these spells to not exist as they are for WoTC to even make the effort. At the same time, we know we're getting the Tasha's summon spells in the 2024 PHB, so making Conjure Animals 2.0 summon multiple beast stat blocks or even just one would still make it the overall better option than Summon Beast.
I never really buy this argument. OMG you have to look up a statblock? Yeah so what? every fullcaster I have played with wasted 3-5 minutes on their turn looking up the mechanics of each of their dozen different spells, but you don't see me going around arguing that fullcasters should only be allowed to have 5 spells known / prepared because having lots of spells available bogs down combat because players have too many choices.
The only players who summon 8 things in combat are the ones with macros to take those turns effectively because I know this might be a massive shocker here : being the player rolling 8 identical piddly little attacks is not fun either. So most players summon a small number of more interesting creature like : 2 giant octopi, 1 giant constrictor snake, 2 giant eagles, or 2 giant toads. Rather than a mass of boring cannon fodder.
And FYI: I have experienced these spells before, I have played a Moon Druid that uses Conjure Animals all the time for the past 2 years. I've also DMed for 2 different Shepherd Druids who use Conjuration in basically every fight.
Really the biggest problem is that the new "Conjure" spells don't actually feel like you're truly conjuring anything; I've seen people say they like the flavor in the idea that you're summoning spirits or whatever to produce an effect, but you could literally already do that both expressly by spell descriptions and simply by describing other spells in that context. So we haven't actually "gained" anything we didn't already have on that front.
And, frankly, the complaints that the basic concept puts too much onus on a DM to facilitate are just depressing. If the DM wishes to actively dictate what is summoned then they can make a shortlist ahead of time; picking a few stat blocks for the single summons ahead of time is the work of maybe a half hour, nor should running a single additional creature during an encounter seriously increase their workload. If they're giving the player discretion over what is summoned, then they can just ask the player to pick out a few blocks ahead of time and possibly take the half hour to review and greenlight them if they want. D&DB is already set up so that players can save the blocks for quick reference on a character sheet, so we literally have it easier than ever before for players to run off of blocks from another book. Frankly, if any of this seems like it's too much for you as a DM, I think if nothing else you need to be very upfront with your group that you aren't interested in spending any out of session time making a spell or feature work.
To be clear, I'm talking about single summons; I understand why dropping 4+ additional creatures on the table is a bookkeeping hassle more people might not want to deal with, but the 5th level and higher Conjure spells are only marginally more work to run than Tasha's, and that's all in prep work. There is literally no reason why other pet options are valid but they aren't.
Really the biggest problem is that the new "Conjure" spells don't actually feel like you're truly conjuring anything; I've seen people say they like the flavor in the idea that you're summoning spirits or whatever to produce an effect, but you could literally already do that both expressly by spell descriptions and simply by describing other spells in that context. So we haven't actually "gained" anything we didn't already have on that front.
And, frankly, the complaints that the basic concept puts too much onus on a DM to facilitate are just depressing. If the DM wishes to actively dictate what is summoned then they can make a shortlist ahead of time; picking a few stat blocks for the single summons ahead of time is the work of maybe a half hour, nor should running a single additional creature during an encounter seriously increase their workload. If they're giving the player discretion over what is summoned, then they can just ask the player to pick out a few blocks ahead of time and possibly take the half hour to review and greenlight them if they want. D&DB is already set up so that players can save the blocks for quick reference on a character sheet, so we literally have it easier than ever before for players to run off of blocks from another book. Frankly, if any of this seems like it's too much for you as a DM, I think if nothing else you need to be very upfront with your group that you aren't interested in spending any out of session time making a spell or feature work.
To be clear, I'm talking about single summons; I understand why dropping 4+ additional creatures on the table is a bookkeeping hassle more people might not want to deal with, but the 5th level and higher Conjure spells are only marginally more work to run than Tasha's, and that's all in prep work. There is literally no reason why other pet options are valid but they aren't.
I was never talking about the single-summon spells either. I've never had an issue with those, EXCEPT Conjure Celestial.
That spell definitely needed a rework, because it had the issue of having only a handful of celestial stat blocks (really, arguably only one, the couatl) that were worth the 7th-level slot.
That's not a case of reworking the spell, that's just a case of expanding the creature type a bit; they've already talked about doing that for some of the under-represented creature types, so that might be addressed already.
... However, these changes are about fixing the game. I want fixes not WotC removing interesting play. the unique traits of creatures are what make them creatures and not just skins.
And herein lies the problem. "The unique traits of creatures" is what causes endless issues and consternation. They did it for Wild Shape, they did it for the Beastmaster Ranger, they did it for the old Conjure spells - there has never once been a good use of "dig through the Monster Manual and figure out what you feel like making the DM cope with." For every instance of "I summon eight dire pigmoles to dig a tunnel to Narnia and help us bypass an obstacle in a cool druid-y way!" there's ten thousand instances of "I summon eight velociraptors and insist the DM track each and every one individually while I take my 10+ actions every turn!"
You want the "interesting play"? Use the old spell. It's not going anywhere. But there's a reason the 2014-style Conjure spells are among the most widely banned pieces of core content in 2014 5e. They are awful, and their potential to be used for Evil vastly outweighs any niche "interesting" gameplay they might, once in a great while, provide.
The only way anyone is going to tolerate the 2014-style spells is if you give them a one-minute cast time, minimum. I'd honestly prefer ten. Do a "Call to Nature" style spell that summons beasts from the area over the course of ten to sixty minutes, spell dependent, to aid the druid. The beasts flee if initiative is rolled. You do something like that, create a "Conjure" spell that fundamentally cannot be used in or for combat? Then sure. We'll see. But the instant-cast versions with the pixies and the raptors and all the rest of that memish nonsense need to go.
As is, the spell limits you to celestials of CR 4 or lower and only goes up to CR 5 at 9th level, while other single-summon Conjure spells start out at CR 5 or 6 and scale up from there.
Point, forgot about that; granted, we might just be stuck with it at this juncture. The spellcasting utility you can already get off of the current options is pretty significant; accelerating access/reducing the cost for some of that might be a bit much.
The utility that could be provided by beasts is greatly overrated; other than combat, it's mostly for burrowing and getting running, flying, or swimming mounts.
The CR limits on celestials are probably assuming that they'll provide useful utility powers.
If that's the case, that was a poor assumption on the devs' part to make, because I can only count on one hand the number of celestials in the CR 4 or 5 range ever released in 5e's lifespan with utility that justified the Cleric not using something else instead.
There weren't many Celestials released period. And regardless the existence of 2 or 3 extremely good options does heavily skew the situation. At the time of printing you could either summon a flying spellcaster who gives you three very good 5th level casts (and bypassing the GP cost on two of them) or at 9th level a Legendary creature with unlimited self-healing. Then the Hollyphant came with the free Raise Dead and errorless Teleport, just to ensure that 5 CR for Celestials really punches above its weight class.
The utility that could be provided by beasts is greatly overrated; other than combat, it's mostly for burrowing and getting running, flying, or swimming mounts.
I wonder how much of a solution a "Conjure Mounts" type spell with a list of a few approrpriate options obviously not suited as damage dealers in combat would be for providing multi-summon utility without nuking combat speed? Maybe save flying for an upcast, depending on the spell level.
The utility that could be provided by beasts is greatly overrated; other than combat, it's mostly for burrowing and getting running, flying, or swimming mounts.
The only way anyone is going to tolerate the 2014-style spells is if you give them a one-minute cast time, minimum. I'd honestly prefer ten. Do a "Call to Nature" style spell that summons beasts from the area over the course of ten to sixty minutes, spell dependent, to aid the druid. The beasts flee if initiative is rolled. You do something like that, create a "Conjure" spell that fundamentally cannot be used in or for combat? Then sure. We'll see. But the instant-cast versions with the pixies and the raptors and all the rest of that memish nonsense need to go.
This bears repeating. If what people really want is the ability to summon a bunch of horses (or seahorses, or pegasi etc) for that arguably cool moment of getting the party from point A to point B overland in style... let's just make a new spell specifically for that then, and make it impossible to cast in combat, and make the gaggle of mounts flee from a fight etc.
I wonder how much of a solution a "Conjure Mounts" type spell with a list of a few approrpriate options obviously not suited as damage dealers in combat would be for providing multi-summon utility without nuking combat speed? Maybe save flying for an upcast, depending on the spell level.
I think it would be a lot less disruptive to make a Group Mount spell like this than it would be to bring 2014 CA back.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Overall, I like the direction they’re going with the conjure spells. However, the new Conjure Animals seems kind of redundant as it is basically Call Lightning. It also might be a bit too powerful when considering how easy it is to get advantage on attack rolls. Conjure Fey feels just incredibly weak in comparison: It consumes your BA, does less damage if both are cast at lvl 6 (3d12 vs 5d10) and it’s only single target damage.
Instead of turning all the conjure spells into pure combat spells, maybe some of them should become pure utility without combat application.
A lot of the spells are redundant, conjure elemental is very similar to evards. Minor elemental to spirit shroud, animals to call lightning, Woodland beings is just spirit guardians for the ranger/druid it would be easier to just add a couple classes to spirit guardians.(though i think spirit guardians could be toned down a bit) Fey, is just spiritual weapon/mordenkines sword(man sword looks even worse now). Celestial is the only one that feels unique.
That isn't really bad in itself, there is tons of overlap with existing spells as is. But while I think something needed to be done with these conjure spells I would hope for more unique ideas.
My biggest issue is with Conjure Animal, as it doesn't seem like it really feels like you're summoning animals and grouping all sorts of summoned beasts into a single effect feels weird. It loses massive amounts of utility, which admittedly is the point, and just becomes a fairly generic spell effect that poorly represents the theme of conjuring beasts to aid you.
What if it had multiple possible effects depending on the style of beast you're conjuring? Some spells have multiple-choice effects already, and this feels like a good spell to do that for.
Swarms of insects, rodents, bats, birds, etc. could function more or less how it does already as written. An AoE you drop and move around.
Conjuring a pack of beasts like wolves or raptors could be more like Phantasmal Force. You designate a target and the pack relentlessly attacks and harries that target no matter where they are standing. Offer a STR save per turn or be knocked prone by the spirit beasts. Throw in the ribbon feature of the caster being able to track the pursued target even if they try to hide. Spell could end if the target gets so many feet away from the caster or breaks their concentration.
A third use, to add back a little bit of the utility being lost from the spell, could be to conjure steeds for the party that can carry them at a movement speed of 60 feet for a duration. Maybe if upcast as a level 5 spell you get 80ft of fly speed instead.
With these three effects I'd be pretty content with the spell. It'd be especially thematic on a ranger. Conjuring a spectral wolf pack to hunt down and slow the enemy's escape while you chase them down would be fun, I think.
Seems more like summon aura.
I haven't done a count in the thread but .... Most of the players (here) in support of the old version don't give a crap about summoning a hoard in combat or the broken damage. its the utility and functionality they care about.
with the new options a lot of non combat gameplay options become "dm may I go find X-animal?" "how Do I X (dig tunnels, cross X terrain, cause distractions, etc) "
...And the old ones weren't? With CA, you could ask to conjure a bunch of Dire Moles to dig a tunnel or whatever, but it was still "DM may I" to see if that was actually what you got. Since you're asking DM may I anyway, you may as well ask if your Beast of the Land can do that (you choose its shape, after all), and stick with the less disruptive hour-long spell.
Also - causing a distraction is the Help action, which any creature (including Summon Beast) can do.
you're probably right. but I wouldn't turn down a poll.
...and I wouldn't mind if one of the questions was "how do you feel about having a character in the party with a 'sonic screwdriver' solution to every problem: bad/ambivalent/good/good-(and-it's-me)"
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
I never had a problem with the old Spells and getting dm permission. I even played with dms who always picked and still had fun because every creature has something to make it special and useful.
However, these changes are about fixing the game. I want fixes not WotC removing interesting play. the unique traits of creatures are what make them creatures and not just skins.
It seems great to me. They nerfed some broken ass spells and replaced with something that's power-level appropriate. If you want a single creature, use the summon spells. If you want to have a gaggle of creatures that cause effects use the conjure spells. I could see an argument to add a "summon swarm" to the arsenal, but that's about it.
The old spells were so broken AND bogged down gameplay. Good move.
Funny, not a single person in this thread is arguing in favour of summoning a massive number of creatures in combat.
There are people like me who miss the creativity and interesting out-of-combat uses of the Conjure spells, or the few CR1 or CR2 creatures with interesting abilities for summoning in combat.
I never really buy this argument. OMG you have to look up a statblock? Yeah so what? every fullcaster I have played with wasted 3-5 minutes on their turn looking up the mechanics of each of their dozen different spells, but you don't see me going around arguing that fullcasters should only be allowed to have 5 spells known / prepared because having lots of spells available bogs down combat because players have too many choices.
The only players who summon 8 things in combat are the ones with macros to take those turns effectively because I know this might be a massive shocker here : being the player rolling 8 identical piddly little attacks is not fun either. So most players summon a small number of more interesting creature like : 2 giant octopi, 1 giant constrictor snake, 2 giant eagles, or 2 giant toads. Rather than a mass of boring cannon fodder.
And FYI: I have experienced these spells before, I have played a Moon Druid that uses Conjure Animals all the time for the past 2 years. I've also DMed for 2 different Shepherd Druids who use Conjuration in basically every fight.
Really the biggest problem is that the new "Conjure" spells don't actually feel like you're truly conjuring anything; I've seen people say they like the flavor in the idea that you're summoning spirits or whatever to produce an effect, but you could literally already do that both expressly by spell descriptions and simply by describing other spells in that context. So we haven't actually "gained" anything we didn't already have on that front.
And, frankly, the complaints that the basic concept puts too much onus on a DM to facilitate are just depressing. If the DM wishes to actively dictate what is summoned then they can make a shortlist ahead of time; picking a few stat blocks for the single summons ahead of time is the work of maybe a half hour, nor should running a single additional creature during an encounter seriously increase their workload. If they're giving the player discretion over what is summoned, then they can just ask the player to pick out a few blocks ahead of time and possibly take the half hour to review and greenlight them if they want. D&DB is already set up so that players can save the blocks for quick reference on a character sheet, so we literally have it easier than ever before for players to run off of blocks from another book. Frankly, if any of this seems like it's too much for you as a DM, I think if nothing else you need to be very upfront with your group that you aren't interested in spending any out of session time making a spell or feature work.
To be clear, I'm talking about single summons; I understand why dropping 4+ additional creatures on the table is a bookkeeping hassle more people might not want to deal with, but the 5th level and higher Conjure spells are only marginally more work to run than Tasha's, and that's all in prep work. There is literally no reason why other pet options are valid but they aren't.
That's not a case of reworking the spell, that's just a case of expanding the creature type a bit; they've already talked about doing that for some of the under-represented creature types, so that might be addressed already.
The CR limits on celestials are probably assuming that they'll provide useful utility powers.
And herein lies the problem. "The unique traits of creatures" is what causes endless issues and consternation. They did it for Wild Shape, they did it for the Beastmaster Ranger, they did it for the old Conjure spells - there has never once been a good use of "dig through the Monster Manual and figure out what you feel like making the DM cope with." For every instance of "I summon eight dire pigmoles to dig a tunnel to Narnia and help us bypass an obstacle in a cool druid-y way!" there's ten thousand instances of "I summon eight velociraptors and insist the DM track each and every one individually while I take my 10+ actions every turn!"
You want the "interesting play"? Use the old spell. It's not going anywhere. But there's a reason the 2014-style Conjure spells are among the most widely banned pieces of core content in 2014 5e. They are awful, and their potential to be used for Evil vastly outweighs any niche "interesting" gameplay they might, once in a great while, provide.
The only way anyone is going to tolerate the 2014-style spells is if you give them a one-minute cast time, minimum. I'd honestly prefer ten. Do a "Call to Nature" style spell that summons beasts from the area over the course of ten to sixty minutes, spell dependent, to aid the druid. The beasts flee if initiative is rolled. You do something like that, create a "Conjure" spell that fundamentally cannot be used in or for combat? Then sure. We'll see. But the instant-cast versions with the pixies and the raptors and all the rest of that memish nonsense need to go.
Please do not contact or message me.
Point, forgot about that; granted, we might just be stuck with it at this juncture. The spellcasting utility you can already get off of the current options is pretty significant; accelerating access/reducing the cost for some of that might be a bit much.
The utility that could be provided by beasts is greatly overrated; other than combat, it's mostly for burrowing and getting running, flying, or swimming mounts.
There weren't many Celestials released period. And regardless the existence of 2 or 3 extremely good options does heavily skew the situation. At the time of printing you could either summon a flying spellcaster who gives you three very good 5th level casts (and bypassing the GP cost on two of them) or at 9th level a Legendary creature with unlimited self-healing. Then the Hollyphant came with the free Raise Dead and errorless Teleport, just to ensure that 5 CR for Celestials really punches above its weight class.
I wonder how much of a solution a "Conjure Mounts" type spell with a list of a few approrpriate options obviously not suited as damage dealers in combat would be for providing multi-summon utility without nuking combat speed? Maybe save flying for an upcast, depending on the spell level.
This bears repeating. If what people really want is the ability to summon a bunch of horses (or seahorses, or pegasi etc) for that arguably cool moment of getting the party from point A to point B overland in style... let's just make a new spell specifically for that then, and make it impossible to cast in combat, and make the gaggle of mounts flee from a fight etc.
I think it would be a lot less disruptive to make a Group Mount spell like this than it would be to bring 2014 CA back.