I noticed in latest 8 the conjure elemental spells, doesn’t actually summon an elemental, just an area affect. It was like that for conjure woodland spirits too, so are we gonna lose things like that?
I thought TCE did a great job with summoning spells and i don’t see why we can’t keep those. Was there a problem with them I never saw in my games?
apparently one UA8 sidebar mentions that tasha's summons will (likely) be in the revised PHB so summoning will go on. however, summoning for utility ormultitudes seems to be phased out. sorta. there's still the entirely not-discouraged narrative use of spells and rule of cool. also, backwards compatibility which means the old conjure spells don't actually go away if you really must have them.
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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!
It appears that the TCE summons will be what summons are moving forward. One creature only, with abilities listed in the spell, and not a spell list of their own.
I know that in older editions, my characters would often use summons to access additional spells. Why use a curative as a druid when summoning multiple unicorns grants more HP healed with the same spell slot? To say nothing of some summoned creatures having stuff not even on your class spell list.
Tasha’s will be the new summons and they said they were not getting rid of any PHB spells (so simulacrum will still be around, hopefully toned down) but spells like the summons will be added. So they had to do something with the Conjure spells. Part think was for balance, some conjures more powerful than others (or too many slowing play) and I’ve avoided some conjures on my Druid because of the “if you lose concentration they become hostile to you for the full spell duration”
"Not getting rid of" is a generous spin if the UA is indicative of their intent. We'll see what the final product looks like. I grant that dropping 4+ extra units on the board is something a table might reasonably find more tedious than it's worth, but I think it's overkill to pull summoning actual creatures altogether. Most of the creatures from the monster manual that were eligible for PHB summons are also in the Basic Rules, so literally anyone can find and print a copy of the sheet for physical play or have it up for reference for digital. Assuming one person in the group has access to the internet and a printer, it's maybe half an hour's worth of work to find some eligible options and run them off, costing at most whatever the local library charges for their printer. There is prep work, but it's not particularly daunting for the DM to either pick a handful of options for the player or tell the player they get X options and to have the sheets ready.
I dunno, it's not the end of the world if they stop supporting it going forward, but it's a blow to the RP experience imo if there's no official spells for this kind of summoning.
“Not get rid of spell’s name” might have been a better description, I guess.
I think Tasha’s summons do a good job of keeping the summoner feel while maintaining balance and future proofing against monsters that get added becoming default picks for the current conjure spells.
I didn’t get to playtest the UA conjures but they seem pretty good, even if they don’t quite fit the fantasy. But that’s what the summon spells are for now
I didn’t get to playtest the UA conjures but they seem pretty good, even if they don’t quite fit the fantasy. But that’s what the summon spells are for now
I did, and they're as you'd expect. They hit the mechanical notes well.
If I had my hands on the last-minute 2024 pre-prints, I'd just drop in a few more summon spells to create single stat blocks for summoned swarms. That would bridge some of the gap between power fantasy and mechanical tractability, I think.
I wonder if part of the change is to get rid of shenanigans like summoning a small army of pixies with polymorph. Or the occasional stack of elephants over an enemy’s head, or a blue whale or what have you. And they are trying to at least minimize forcing players to flip through monster books. And it’s always been a little confusing about if the player or DM gets to pick what is summoned (just judging by the number of threads on the topic). So, I guess, an amorphous blob of damage fixes most of those problems.
Power-wise the new conjure spells are fine, they are just so boring. I have many vivid memories of interesting and unique uses and risks of the conjure spells - e.g. just last week, the druid summoned a pack of ice mephits before the party kicked open the dungeon door but then rolled really bad initiative so an AoE from the enemies in round 1 was 2 damage away from creating a chain reaction right next to the party - but I doubt I'll ever remember the new ones. In fact I know I won't, because one of my tables swapped to Tasha's Summon spells a year ago and I can't tell you a single memorable story about it since then.
Power-wise the new conjure spells are fine, they are just so boring. I have many vivid memories of interesting and unique uses and risks of the conjure spells - e.g. just last week, the druid summoned a pack of ice mephits before the party kicked open the dungeon door but then rolled really bad initiative so an AoE from the enemies in round 1 was 2 damage away from creating a chain reaction right next to the party - but I doubt I'll ever remember the new ones. In fact I know I won't, because one of my tables swapped to Tasha's Summon spells a year ago and I can't tell you a single memorable story about it since then.
It's really not an easy circle to square. On the one hand, what you don't remember is the drag of waiting for the druid to presumably work out the optimal choice of what to summon, and that the DM would have been doing everybody a favor by knocking a swarm out of initiative in an AOE attack. On another hand, if the new spells play out in a boring way, there's probably something that the DM and player can do to reflavor them better. On yet a third hand, I agree with you that the spells could use a bit more customization. There's a wide range between choosing among three options in a spell description and the 2500+ official monsters floating around.
a summoner is just so different from all the other class roles that it stands out. honestly, i hope they bring back multi-creature summoning in a later book. PHB for the solid stuff, next Tashas for the next step up.
...maybe alongside a witchcraft class? please?
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!
Regarding the taking a bunch of time picking an optimal summon part, that’s something you fix on the table end with the DM telling the player to have a list of 4 or so options ready ahead of time. As I previously said, there’s enough applicable blocks under Basic Rules that it’s not hard to make physical copies if you need them. Ideally they’d codify it as a part of the spell like they did with Wildshape, but regardless it only takes a bit of communication and forethought to make bringing the blocks up about as manageable as using Tasha’s stuff or subclass pets.
Power-wise the new conjure spells are fine, they are just so boring. I have many vivid memories of interesting and unique uses and risks of the conjure spells - e.g. just last week, the druid summoned a pack of ice mephits before the party kicked open the dungeon door but then rolled really bad initiative so an AoE from the enemies in round 1 was 2 damage away from creating a chain reaction right next to the party - but I doubt I'll ever remember the new ones. In fact I know I won't, because one of my tables swapped to Tasha's Summon spells a year ago and I can't tell you a single memorable story about it since then.
It's really not an easy circle to square. On the one hand, what you don't remember is the drag of waiting for the druid to presumably work out the optimal choice of what to summon, and that the DM would have been doing everybody a favor by knocking a swarm out of initiative in an AOE attack. On another hand, if the new spells play out in a boring way, there's probably something that the DM and player can do to reflavor them better. On yet a third hand, I agree with you that the spells could use a bit more customization. There's a wide range between choosing among three options in a spell description and the 2500+ official monsters floating around.
What? The druid gets a maximum 1 minute to decide what to summon otherwise I pick for them, and they get whatever token I happen to have quick to hand. Having played a couple few druids there are maybe 10 beasts - wolf, war horse, brown bear, dire wolf, giant owl, giant eagle, plesiosaur, hunter shark, giant octopus, giant spider, giant badger - and maybe 4 fey - dryad, quickling, alseid, naiad that are worth summoning. Honestly, usually our wizard takes longer with their turn than the druid because the druid prepares ahead of time, while the wizard gets flustered and can't remember what half their spells do.
Flavor isn't the problem, I can reflavour anything as anything. The boring-ness comes from the lack of utility. The new conjure spells and the tasha's summon spells aren't a tool to creatively solve problems they are pure-combat spells.
Power-wise the new conjure spells are fine, they are just so boring. I have many vivid memories of interesting and unique uses and risks of the conjure spells - e.g. just last week, the druid summoned a pack of ice mephits before the party kicked open the dungeon door but then rolled really bad initiative so an AoE from the enemies in round 1 was 2 damage away from creating a chain reaction right next to the party - but I doubt I'll ever remember the new ones. In fact I know I won't, because one of my tables swapped to Tasha's Summon spells a year ago and I can't tell you a single memorable story about it since then.
It's really not an easy circle to square. On the one hand, what you don't remember is the drag of waiting for the druid to presumably work out the optimal choice of what to summon, and that the DM would have been doing everybody a favor by knocking a swarm out of initiative in an AOE attack. On another hand, if the new spells play out in a boring way, there's probably something that the DM and player can do to reflavor them better. On yet a third hand, I agree with you that the spells could use a bit more customization. There's a wide range between choosing among three options in a spell description and the 2500+ official monsters floating around.
What? The druid gets a maximum 1 minute to decide what to summon otherwise I pick for them, and they get whatever token I happen to have quick to hand. Having played a couple few druids there are maybe 10 beasts - wolf, war horse, brown bear, dire wolf, giant owl, giant eagle, plesiosaur, hunter shark, giant octopus, giant spider, giant badger - and maybe 4 fey - dryad, quickling, alseid, naiad that are worth summoning. Honestly, usually our wizard takes longer with their turn than the druid because the druid prepares ahead of time, while the wizard gets flustered and can't remember what half their spells do.
Flavor isn't the problem, I can reflavour anything as anything. The boring-ness comes from the lack of utility. The new conjure spells and the tasha's summon spells aren't a tool to creatively solve problems they are pure-combat spells.
I guess I was using the royal "you" a little liberally there. I didn't literally mean your game, as I have no idea what your games look like.
Regarding the taking a bunch of time picking an optimal summon part, that’s something you fix on the table end with the DM telling the player to have a list of 4 or so options ready ahead of time. As I previously said, there’s enough applicable blocks under Basic Rules that it’s not hard to make physical copies if you need them. Ideally they’d codify it as a part of the spell like they did with Wildshape, but regardless it only takes a bit of communication and forethought to make bringing the blocks up about as manageable as using Tasha’s stuff or subclass pets.
^This.^ If there was that much bog then that’s the DM’s fault for not addressing it as an issue. You don’t get all night deciding what to summon. You get at most 5 minutes and if you don’t decide you stand there locked in indecision and loose your turn this round and if you don’t have it figured out when your next turn starts you only get 3 minutes before you get skipped again. Keep it moving.
Flavor isn't the problem, I can reflavour anything as anything. The boring-ness comes from the lack of utility. The new conjure spells and the tasha's summon spells aren't a tool to creatively solve problems they are pure-combat spells.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. The new ones are crap but I expected them to offer us crap so I’m not terribly disappointed. The Tasha summons aren’t entirely combat oriented though. They definitely geared for combat performance over utility for sure but they can still be useful outside of combat too depending on how creative you get. I do think there are two main problems with them though. Their M components are really nipickily specific and very expensive so it makes it hard to get them if you level up in a dungeon or something. That and since they are so heavily geared toward combat they only last for any hour and ones you can get the most utility out of are all to be too high level to rely on them a lot of times. The fiend and the celestial and the dragon one from Fizban’s can all be used for creative problem solving but they all 5th and 6th level which makes them prohibitive unless you can be really sure you can get an hour’s worth of use from them. If they were a little weaker but lasted at least 3 or 4 hours and weighed in at at least one level lower then they would be more utilitarian though.
Regarding the taking a bunch of time picking an optimal summon part, that’s something you fix on the table end with the DM telling the player to have a list of 4 or so options ready ahead of time. As I previously said, there’s enough applicable blocks under Basic Rules that it’s not hard to make physical copies if you need them. Ideally they’d codify it as a part of the spell like they did with Wildshape, but regardless it only takes a bit of communication and forethought to make bringing the blocks up about as manageable as using Tasha’s stuff or subclass pets.
^This.^ If there was that much bog then that’s the DM’s fault for not addressing it as an issue. You don’t get all night deciding what to summon. You get at most 5 minutes and if you don’t decide you stand there locked in indecision and loose your turn this round and if you don’t have it figured out when your next turn starts you only get 3 minutes before you get skipped again. Keep it moving.
Yeah I mean, I think we've discussed this before, but I like it when spells work properly off the shelf, without having the DM need to implement new rules.
Flavor isn't the problem, I can reflavour anything as anything. The boring-ness comes from the lack of utility. The new conjure spells and the tasha's summon spells aren't a tool to creatively solve problems they are pure-combat spells.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. The new ones are crap but I expected them to offer us crap so I’m not terribly disappointed. The Tasha summons aren’t entirely combat oriented though. They definitely geared for combat performance over utility for sure but they can still be useful outside of combat too depending on how creative you get. I do think there are two main problems with them though. Their M components are really nipickily specific and very expensive so it makes it hard to get them if you level up in a dungeon or something. That and since they are so heavily geared toward combat they only last for any hour and ones you can get the most utility out of are all to be too high level to rely on them a lot of times. The fiend and the celestial and the dragon one from Fizban’s can all be used for creative problem solving but they all 5th and 6th level which makes them prohibitive unless you can be really sure you can get an hour’s worth of use from them. If they were a little weaker but lasted at least 3 or 4 hours and weighed in at at least one level lower then they would be more utilitarian though.
I think I'm a bit biased against the "make it more utilitarian" position because spellcasters already have the most utilitarian options in the game. But I'm not really willing to make a big fuss about it.
Regarding the taking a bunch of time picking an optimal summon part, that’s something you fix on the table end with the DM telling the player to have a list of 4 or so options ready ahead of time. As I previously said, there’s enough applicable blocks under Basic Rules that it’s not hard to make physical copies if you need them. Ideally they’d codify it as a part of the spell like they did with Wildshape, but regardless it only takes a bit of communication and forethought to make bringing the blocks up about as manageable as using Tasha’s stuff or subclass pets.
^This.^ If there was that much bog then that’s the DM’s fault for not addressing it as an issue. You don’t get all night deciding what to summon. You get at most 5 minutes and if you don’t decide you stand there locked in indecision and loose your turn this round and if you don’t have it figured out when your next turn starts you only get 3 minutes before you get skipped again. Keep it moving.
I have experience with 2 players that used summons heavily, both back in 3.5/ Pathfinder 1. One was the GMs girlfriend, and she embodied everything wrong with the trope. No preparation for anything, especially summons, always wanting to run odd and play solo, but never doing that on a night for herself, as a player I'm glad they broke up. The other was me, and I had pre-written stat blocks for what I figured I would summon the most, especially as I was playing a character using an archetype that boosted summons, and had feats that did so as well. I considered having those stat blocks was a requirement to play such a character, although I was told after the first major combat to play something else.
I -really- hate the word "utility." In RPGs, it means everything that isn't directly dealing damage or directly granting HP or THP. Granting advantages or bonuses so someone else deals better damage? Utility. Carrying luggage? Utility. Distraction with shiny lights? Utility. Buffs and debuffs so you do more damage or need to heal less? Utility. Battlefield control is considered to be utility by many.
Its such a broad word that encompasses so, so much that its functionally useless as a term. It can be in combat, out of combat exploration, social, crafting, etc. Anything and everything as long as it doesn't touch hit points directly.
I -really- hate the word "utility." In RPGs, it means everything that isn't directly dealing damage or directly granting HP or THP. Granting advantages or bonuses so someone else deals better damage? Utility. Carrying luggage? Utility. Distraction with shiny lights? Utility. Buffs and debuffs so you do more damage or need to heal less? Utility. Battlefield control is considered to be utility by many.
Its such a broad word that encompasses so, so much that its functionally useless as a term. It can be in combat, out of combat exploration, social, crafting, etc. Anything and everything as long as it doesn't touch hit points directly.
I mean it is supposed to represent broadness. See the first definition under the adjective listing here, for instance.
I find that words lose their meaning when they mean different things to different people. I think most people in an RPG setting have a similar defiinition of utility.
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I noticed in latest 8 the conjure elemental spells, doesn’t actually summon an elemental, just an area affect. It was like that for conjure woodland spirits too, so are we gonna lose things like that?
I thought TCE did a great job with summoning spells and i don’t see why we can’t keep those. Was there a problem with them I never saw in my games?
id love to hear any thoughts!
apparently one UA8 sidebar mentions that tasha's summons will (likely) be in the revised PHB so summoning will go on. however, summoning for utility or multitudes seems to be phased out. sorta. there's still the entirely not-discouraged narrative use of spells and rule of cool. also, backwards compatibility which means the old conjure spells don't actually go away if you really must have them.
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!
It appears that the TCE summons will be what summons are moving forward. One creature only, with abilities listed in the spell, and not a spell list of their own.
I know that in older editions, my characters would often use summons to access additional spells. Why use a curative as a druid when summoning multiple unicorns grants more HP healed with the same spell slot? To say nothing of some summoned creatures having stuff not even on your class spell list.
Tasha’s will be the new summons and they said they were not getting rid of any PHB spells (so simulacrum will still be around, hopefully toned down) but spells like the summons will be added. So they had to do something with the Conjure spells. Part think was for balance, some conjures more powerful than others (or too many slowing play) and I’ve avoided some conjures on my Druid because of the “if you lose concentration they become hostile to you for the full spell duration”
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
"Not getting rid of" is a generous spin if the UA is indicative of their intent. We'll see what the final product looks like. I grant that dropping 4+ extra units on the board is something a table might reasonably find more tedious than it's worth, but I think it's overkill to pull summoning actual creatures altogether. Most of the creatures from the monster manual that were eligible for PHB summons are also in the Basic Rules, so literally anyone can find and print a copy of the sheet for physical play or have it up for reference for digital. Assuming one person in the group has access to the internet and a printer, it's maybe half an hour's worth of work to find some eligible options and run them off, costing at most whatever the local library charges for their printer. There is prep work, but it's not particularly daunting for the DM to either pick a handful of options for the player or tell the player they get X options and to have the sheets ready.
I dunno, it's not the end of the world if they stop supporting it going forward, but it's a blow to the RP experience imo if there's no official spells for this kind of summoning.
“Not get rid of spell’s name” might have been a better description, I guess.
I think Tasha’s summons do a good job of keeping the summoner feel while maintaining balance and future proofing against monsters that get added becoming default picks for the current conjure spells.
I didn’t get to playtest the UA conjures but they seem pretty good, even if they don’t quite fit the fantasy. But that’s what the summon spells are for now
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I did, and they're as you'd expect. They hit the mechanical notes well.
If I had my hands on the last-minute 2024 pre-prints, I'd just drop in a few more summon spells to create single stat blocks for summoned swarms. That would bridge some of the gap between power fantasy and mechanical tractability, I think.
I wonder if part of the change is to get rid of shenanigans like summoning a small army of pixies with polymorph. Or the occasional stack of elephants over an enemy’s head, or a blue whale or what have you. And they are trying to at least minimize forcing players to flip through monster books. And it’s always been a little confusing about if the player or DM gets to pick what is summoned (just judging by the number of threads on the topic). So, I guess, an amorphous blob of damage fixes most of those problems.
Power-wise the new conjure spells are fine, they are just so boring. I have many vivid memories of interesting and unique uses and risks of the conjure spells - e.g. just last week, the druid summoned a pack of ice mephits before the party kicked open the dungeon door but then rolled really bad initiative so an AoE from the enemies in round 1 was 2 damage away from creating a chain reaction right next to the party - but I doubt I'll ever remember the new ones. In fact I know I won't, because one of my tables swapped to Tasha's Summon spells a year ago and I can't tell you a single memorable story about it since then.
It's really not an easy circle to square. On the one hand, what you don't remember is the drag of waiting for the druid to presumably work out the optimal choice of what to summon, and that the DM would have been doing everybody a favor by knocking a swarm out of initiative in an AOE attack. On another hand, if the new spells play out in a boring way, there's probably something that the DM and player can do to reflavor them better. On yet a third hand, I agree with you that the spells could use a bit more customization. There's a wide range between choosing among three options in a spell description and the 2500+ official monsters floating around.
a summoner is just so different from all the other class roles that it stands out. honestly, i hope they bring back multi-creature summoning in a later book. PHB for the solid stuff, next Tashas for the next step up.
...maybe alongside a witchcraft class? please?
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!
Regarding the taking a bunch of time picking an optimal summon part, that’s something you fix on the table end with the DM telling the player to have a list of 4 or so options ready ahead of time. As I previously said, there’s enough applicable blocks under Basic Rules that it’s not hard to make physical copies if you need them. Ideally they’d codify it as a part of the spell like they did with Wildshape, but regardless it only takes a bit of communication and forethought to make bringing the blocks up about as manageable as using Tasha’s stuff or subclass pets.
What? The druid gets a maximum 1 minute to decide what to summon otherwise I pick for them, and they get whatever token I happen to have quick to hand. Having played a couple few druids there are maybe 10 beasts - wolf, war horse, brown bear, dire wolf, giant owl, giant eagle, plesiosaur, hunter shark, giant octopus, giant spider, giant badger - and maybe 4 fey - dryad, quickling, alseid, naiad that are worth summoning. Honestly, usually our wizard takes longer with their turn than the druid because the druid prepares ahead of time, while the wizard gets flustered and can't remember what half their spells do.
Flavor isn't the problem, I can reflavour anything as anything. The boring-ness comes from the lack of utility. The new conjure spells and the tasha's summon spells aren't a tool to creatively solve problems they are pure-combat spells.
I guess I was using the royal "you" a little liberally there. I didn't literally mean your game, as I have no idea what your games look like.
But now I think we're violently agreeing, so.
^This.^ If there was that much bog then that’s the DM’s fault for not addressing it as an issue. You don’t get all night deciding what to summon. You get at most 5 minutes and if you don’t decide you stand there locked in indecision and loose your turn this round and if you don’t have it figured out when your next turn starts you only get 3 minutes before you get skipped again. Keep it moving.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. The new ones are crap but I expected them to offer us crap so I’m not terribly disappointed. The Tasha summons aren’t entirely combat oriented though. They definitely geared for combat performance over utility for sure but they can still be useful outside of combat too depending on how creative you get. I do think there are two main problems with them though. Their M components are really nipickily specific and very expensive so it makes it hard to get them if you level up in a dungeon or something. That and since they are so heavily geared toward combat they only last for any hour and ones you can get the most utility out of are all to be too high level to rely on them a lot of times. The fiend and the celestial and the dragon one from Fizban’s can all be used for creative problem solving but they all 5th and 6th level which makes them prohibitive unless you can be really sure you can get an hour’s worth of use from them. If they were a little weaker but lasted at least 3 or 4 hours and weighed in at at least one level lower then they would be more utilitarian though.
Yeah I mean, I think we've discussed this before, but I like it when spells work properly off the shelf, without having the DM need to implement new rules.
I think I'm a bit biased against the "make it more utilitarian" position because spellcasters already have the most utilitarian options in the game. But I'm not really willing to make a big fuss about it.
I have experience with 2 players that used summons heavily, both back in 3.5/ Pathfinder 1. One was the GMs girlfriend, and she embodied everything wrong with the trope. No preparation for anything, especially summons, always wanting to run odd and play solo, but never doing that on a night for herself, as a player I'm glad they broke up. The other was me, and I had pre-written stat blocks for what I figured I would summon the most, especially as I was playing a character using an archetype that boosted summons, and had feats that did so as well. I considered having those stat blocks was a requirement to play such a character, although I was told after the first major combat to play something else.
Incoming Rant:
I -really- hate the word "utility." In RPGs, it means everything that isn't directly dealing damage or directly granting HP or THP. Granting advantages or bonuses so someone else deals better damage? Utility. Carrying luggage? Utility. Distraction with shiny lights? Utility. Buffs and debuffs so you do more damage or need to heal less? Utility. Battlefield control is considered to be utility by many.
Its such a broad word that encompasses so, so much that its functionally useless as a term. It can be in combat, out of combat exploration, social, crafting, etc. Anything and everything as long as it doesn't touch hit points directly.
I mean it is supposed to represent broadness. See the first definition under the adjective listing here, for instance.
I find that words lose their meaning when they mean different things to different people. I think most people in an RPG setting have a similar defiinition of utility.