Because TCE actually did a very bad job, yeah they are super strong summons, but that is exactly the problem.
By giving casters those summons, you take away from martials the only thing they are good at, sustained single target damage.
Why waste a spell slot on spells like scorching ray every round, instead of summing some creatures which will outdamage any martial.
Of course summons can be countered, but I think it’s not fun for anyone, if you need to actively counter play your casters to keep the game balanced.
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.
this is also a concern. Getting 8 castings of Polymorph with one 4th level slot, or any Utility on top of combat features in one spell, when spellcasters already have it in other spells, seems a bit too much. And I think the summon spells address this somewhat as well as the UA conjure spells
Pixie should be CR 1, or possibly even CR 2. I have no idea who at WotC messed up and put them as CR 1/4. Access to 3rd and 4th level spells should automatically classify a creature as CR 1 or higher.
That said, your point is completely moot because no DM ever allows that at their table anyway.
So all/any stories about conjuring pixies that then turn the party to T-Rex’s then going invisible was just an urban legend?
If that’s the case maybe the Bag of rats exploit never happened once either?
I agree, the CR was low for them. But the CR isn’t changing so let’s up the 2024 pixie doesn’t have such powerful spells.
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.
this is also a concern. Getting 8 castings of Polymorph with one 4th level slot, or any Utility on top of combat features in one spell, when spellcasters already have it in other spells, seems a bit too much. And I think the summon spells address this somewhat as well as the UA conjure spells
Pixie should be CR 1, or possibly even CR 2. I have no idea who at WotC messed up and put them as CR 1/4. Access to 3rd and 4th level spells should automatically classify a creature as CR 1 or higher.
That said, your point is completely moot because no DM ever allows that at their table anyway.
So all/any stories about conjuring pixies that then turn the party to T-Rex’s then going invisible was just an urban legend?
If that’s the case maybe the Bag of rats exploit never happened once either?
I agree, the CR was low for them. But the CR isn’t changing so let’s up the 2024 pixie doesn’t have such powerful spells.
They are "what ifs" just like the Peasant rail gun, and the Cook & Book Heat Metal exploit or the Portable Hole full of Glyphs of Warding. Sure you technically could do it, and maybe a DM somewhere playing a super laid back game where they didn't care about game balance allowed it. But no DM is actually upset about it happening at their table because either they know what will happen and a fine with it, or they aren't fine with it and just say no [and before you say "but what if the players get upset that the DM said no" well then those players and that DM should not be playing together as they have fundamentally different expectations of the game]. It's just another "daily hate" meme of people getting angry about hypotheticals that don't actually happen in real life, or teenagers trying to show off how "smart" they are because they totally came up with that themselves they aren't just copying something someone else told them that they thought seems clever.
And, again, given that pretty much the only broken combo of effects we ever see invoked is the pixies, the obvious fix is to just rework the pixie block so it's no longer on the table, not break a bunch of good flavor and problem-solving spells down into "pretend your baseball glove is a bike and ride it to school" alleged "conjure" spells.
While the pixies were not a issue as DMs would just disallow it, the 8 wolves etc were a issue I bumped into and that isn't as easy for the DM to just say yeah not pixies too.
I've also granted that the 4-8 range of multi summons become cumbersome to run, but that's just a matter of trimming off that portion of the spell. This overhaul- particularly given how it's nearly the only area where creature blocks have been summarily cut from the game- honestly reads a lot like someone took an opportunity to push a change on their personal pet peeve where they could and there were enough other balls in the air that there wasn't time left for a larger review before it went to print.
Because TCE actually did a very bad job, yeah they are super strong summons, but that is exactly the problem.
By giving casters those summons, you take away from martials the only thing they are good at, sustained single target damage.
Why waste a spell slot on spells like scorching ray every round, instead of summing some creatures which will outdamage any martial.
Of course summons can be countered, but I think it’s not fun for anyone, if you need to actively counter play your casters to keep the game balanced.
...Seriously? If Tasha summons of all things are outdamaging your martials, your martials are the problem, not these spells. Especially late game when your martials start getting magic items and have completed their builds.
Summons are a decent fallback option against monsters that have strong saving throws, that are dangerous to fight directly, or when you're trying to conserve your resources (or all three) - but they're also fragile, subject to environmental obstacles and conditions on top of monster resistances, and concentrating on them means you're not concentrating on other things like buffs to the martials instead. For example, if my wizard has the choice between Summon Fey and Hasting the Rogue, Haste is going to win that calculation nearly every time.
Because TCE actually did a very bad job, yeah they are super strong summons, but that is exactly the problem.
By giving casters those summons, you take away from martials the only thing they are good at, sustained single target damage.
Why waste a spell slot on spells like scorching ray every round, instead of summing some creatures which will outdamage any martial.
Of course summons can be countered, but I think it’s not fun for anyone, if you need to actively counter play your casters to keep the game balanced.
...Seriously? If Tasha summons of all things are outdamaging your martials, your martials are the problem, not these spells. Especially late game when your martials start getting magic items and have completed their builds.
There is no rules to say that Tasha's summons cannot use magic items as well (aside from attunement requirements). Many of them have hands and high Intelligences. Summon Fey even cannonically is using a weapon.
As for their power level:
Level 7 Wizard can cast Summon Aberration at 4th level: Choosing Beholderkin we have 40 HP, 15 AC, Fly + Hover, 2 attacks with 150 ft range, dealing 1d8+7 damage on a hit = 15 DPR A level 7 Fighter with a longbow and the Sharpshooter + DEX ASI has: 60 HP, 17 AC, no special movement, 2 attacks with 300 ft range, dealing 1d8+5 damage on a hit & Slow = 19 DPR
Sure the Fighter is better on most measures but not a lot better. If the Wizard casts Firebolt with their action on top of the Beholderkin's turn that's another 8 DPR for 23 damage total -> which is approximately the Fighter's damage if they use a handcrossbow + Crossbow Expert (24 DPR if they take 2 feats, or 27 DPR if they take a feat + an ASI).
Or they could cast Summon Fey at 4th level for: 40 HP, 16 AC, BA teleport and Adv on 1 attack per turn, making 2 melee attacks, dealing 2d6+7 damage on a hit = 21 DPR A level 7 sword & board Fighter can shove prone then make 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+7 damage on a hit = 18 DPR, or using shortswords instead: 21 DPR or 29 DPR with that Dual Wielder feat for 4 attacks per turn or 24 DPR if they use a Greatsword + GWM
Summon Shadow Spawn does about the same damage as Summon Fey but has 50 HP, and has a 30 ft radius AoE fear effect and can have a 20ft sap effect depending on your choice.
Or there is Summon Construct if the enemy has a fear effect that is crippling your regular marshals, just conjure a construct that is completely immune to it.
Again sure the Fighter is better in everything but maneuverability, but not by much, like a 20% improvement on average.
if my wizard has the choice between Summon Fey and Hasting the Rogue, Haste is going to win that calculation nearly every time.
What? Are you crazy? The Rogue! The class build around only needing to hit once per turn, and with built-in speed up options through Cunning Action??? That is the absolute worst martial character to Hasten. They're doing only 1d6+DEX on a hit, vs a Barbarian that would be dealing 2d6+STR+2 per hit (not counting WMeries)
I've also granted that the 4-8 range of multi summons become cumbersome to run, but that's just a matter of trimming off that portion of the spell. This overhaul- particularly given how it's nearly the only area where creature blocks have been summarily cut from the game- honestly reads a lot like someone took an opportunity to push a change on their personal pet peeve where they could and there were enough other balls in the air that there wasn't time left for a larger review before it went to print.
Sure my preference would have been to correcting the conjuration spells so they still conjured animals or fey etc but were designed in a way not to bog the game down. But I am not sure that could be done easily.
I've also granted that the 4-8 range of multi summons become cumbersome to run, but that's just a matter of trimming off that portion of the spell. This overhaul- particularly given how it's nearly the only area where creature blocks have been summarily cut from the game- honestly reads a lot like someone took an opportunity to push a change on their personal pet peeve where they could and there were enough other balls in the air that there wasn't time left for a larger review before it went to print.
Sure my preference would have been to correcting the conjuration spells so they still conjured animals or fey etc but were designed in a way not to bog the game down. But I am not sure that could be done easily.
You literally just trim it down to 2 creatures max; the CRs available are already supposed to be scaled for quantity, and I've yet to see anything but pixies invoked as a truly problematic option. Maybe drop the spell a level for summoning what was the 4-of and 8-of tiers as 1-of and-2 of instead. Running two additional very low CR creatures shouldn't be a significant strain on table time.
Level 7 Wizard can cast Summon Aberration at 4th level: Choosing Beholderkin we have 40 HP, 15 AC, Fly + Hover, 2 attacks with 150 ft range, dealing 1d8+7 damage on a hit = 15 DPR A level 7 Fighter with a longbow and the Sharpshooter + DEX ASI has: 60 HP, 17 AC, no special movement, 2 attacks with 300 ft range, dealing 1d8+5 damage on a hit & Slow = 19 DPR
No fighting style? No feat (GWM)? No subclass? No bonus ASI?
What? Are you crazy? The Rogue! The class build around only needing to hit once per turn, and with built-in speed up options through Cunning Action??? That is the absolute worst martial character to Hasten.
You have got to be kidding me. Do you know how Haste works on a Rogue? You can all but guarantee two sneak attacks per round that way for the entire combat regardless of weapon. Your optimization knowledge truly baffles me.
You have got to be kidding me. Do you know how Haste works on a Rogue? You can all but guarantee two sneak attacks per round that way for the entire combat regardless of weapon. Your optimization knowledge truly baffles me.
LOL, your DM's idiocy baffles me. "Hold my action until the end of my turn" requires meta knowledge thus is not allowable in my games.
No fighting style? No feat (GWM)? No subclass? No bonus ASI?
It does use a fighting style (Archery), and Sharpshooter feat and a DEX ASI. I thought you knew how to do math, Mr. optimizer. It also includes an extra 1d8 per turn on a hit for Battlemaster maneuver.
GWM isn't a good choice for an Archer until level 8 really, since you sacrifice a +1 to hit and +1 damage, for +2-+3 damage on a hit. But it's all a bit academic since dual-wielding handcrossbows is so much better than a Longbow in terms of DPR, as I point out in the next paragraph, and is really required in order to keep up with a Wizard using Firebolt + Summon Aberration.
No, please learn to read my posts in their entirety and interpret their words. My DM bans using metaknowledge as a trigger for readied actions. Turns don't exist in the reality of the game they exist only as meta knowledge of the players, so using turn information as a trigger for a readied action is impossible because it isn't something your character can observed within the reality of the game.
From the Basic Rule Book under "Ready":
First, you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction.
"My turn ends" is not a perceivable circumstance within the reality of the game that your character exists in.
It does use a fighting style (Archery), and Sharpshooter feat and a DEX ASI. I thought you knew how to do math, Mr. optimizer.
I do. Try picking a feat that adds more than zero damage. That's how math works.
There aren't any for Longbows that don't also sacrifice your ASI. Again please read the other paragraphs I have written about XbowXpert/Handcrossbows because Longbow remains dead in terms of optimization.
There aren't any for Longbows that don't also sacrifice your ASI.
A Level 7 Fighter has the ASI to spare. Also, try comparing melee damage to summons too rather than cherry-picking the weakest style and ignoring the rest.
There aren't any for Longbows that don't also sacrifice your ASI.
A Level 7 Fighter has the ASI to spare. Also, try comparing melee damage to summons too rather than cherry-picking the weakest style and ignoring the rest.
Again please read my original post I did so, comparing Summon Fey (a melee summon) with Shield Master sword & board, Dual-Wielder two weapon fighting or GWM two-handed Fighter. I try to compare like-for-like : melee for melee and ranged for ranged, using the most obvious feat choices for each choice of play style. Only Dual-Wielder with the most generous assumption about how that works, significantly out performed a Summoned Fey. Though come to think of it, I forgot to add the Firebolt cast by the Wizard on their turn to the Summon Fey DPR...
Because TCE actually did a very bad job, yeah they are super strong summons, but that is exactly the problem.
By giving casters those summons, you take away from martials the only thing they are good at, sustained single target damage.
Why waste a spell slot on spells like scorching ray every round, instead of summing some creatures which will outdamage any martial.
Of course summons can be countered, but I think it’s not fun for anyone, if you need to actively counter play your casters to keep the game balanced.
So all/any stories about conjuring pixies that then turn the party to T-Rex’s then going invisible was just an urban legend?
If that’s the case maybe the Bag of rats exploit never happened once either?
I agree, the CR was low for them. But the CR isn’t changing so let’s up the 2024 pixie doesn’t have such powerful spells.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
They are "what ifs" just like the Peasant rail gun, and the Cook & Book Heat Metal exploit or the Portable Hole full of Glyphs of Warding. Sure you technically could do it, and maybe a DM somewhere playing a super laid back game where they didn't care about game balance allowed it. But no DM is actually upset about it happening at their table because either they know what will happen and a fine with it, or they aren't fine with it and just say no [and before you say "but what if the players get upset that the DM said no" well then those players and that DM should not be playing together as they have fundamentally different expectations of the game]. It's just another "daily hate" meme of people getting angry about hypotheticals that don't actually happen in real life, or teenagers trying to show off how "smart" they are because they totally came up with that themselves they aren't just copying something someone else told them that they thought seems clever.
And, again, given that pretty much the only broken combo of effects we ever see invoked is the pixies, the obvious fix is to just rework the pixie block so it's no longer on the table, not break a bunch of good flavor and problem-solving spells down into "pretend your baseball glove is a bike and ride it to school" alleged "conjure" spells.
While the pixies were not a issue as DMs would just disallow it, the 8 wolves etc were a issue I bumped into and that isn't as easy for the DM to just say yeah not pixies too.
I've also granted that the 4-8 range of multi summons become cumbersome to run, but that's just a matter of trimming off that portion of the spell. This overhaul- particularly given how it's nearly the only area where creature blocks have been summarily cut from the game- honestly reads a lot like someone took an opportunity to push a change on their personal pet peeve where they could and there were enough other balls in the air that there wasn't time left for a larger review before it went to print.
...Seriously? If Tasha summons of all things are outdamaging your martials, your martials are the problem, not these spells. Especially late game when your martials start getting magic items and have completed their builds.
Summons are a decent fallback option against monsters that have strong saving throws, that are dangerous to fight directly, or when you're trying to conserve your resources (or all three) - but they're also fragile, subject to environmental obstacles and conditions on top of monster resistances, and concentrating on them means you're not concentrating on other things like buffs to the martials instead. For example, if my wizard has the choice between Summon Fey and Hasting the Rogue, Haste is going to win that calculation nearly every time.
There is no rules to say that Tasha's summons cannot use magic items as well (aside from attunement requirements). Many of them have hands and high Intelligences. Summon Fey even cannonically is using a weapon.
As for their power level:
Level 7 Wizard can cast Summon Aberration at 4th level: Choosing Beholderkin we have 40 HP, 15 AC, Fly + Hover, 2 attacks with 150 ft range, dealing 1d8+7 damage on a hit = 15 DPR
A level 7 Fighter with a longbow and the Sharpshooter + DEX ASI has: 60 HP, 17 AC, no special movement, 2 attacks with 300 ft range, dealing 1d8+5 damage on a hit & Slow = 19 DPR
Sure the Fighter is better on most measures but not a lot better. If the Wizard casts Firebolt with their action on top of the Beholderkin's turn that's another 8 DPR for 23 damage total -> which is approximately the Fighter's damage if they use a handcrossbow + Crossbow Expert (24 DPR if they take 2 feats, or 27 DPR if they take a feat + an ASI).
Or they could cast Summon Fey at 4th level for: 40 HP, 16 AC, BA teleport and Adv on 1 attack per turn, making 2 melee attacks, dealing 2d6+7 damage on a hit = 21 DPR
A level 7 sword & board Fighter can shove prone then make 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+7 damage on a hit = 18 DPR, or using shortswords instead: 21 DPR or 29 DPR with that Dual Wielder feat for 4 attacks per turn or 24 DPR if they use a Greatsword + GWM
Summon Shadow Spawn does about the same damage as Summon Fey but has 50 HP, and has a 30 ft radius AoE fear effect and can have a 20ft sap effect depending on your choice.
Or there is Summon Construct if the enemy has a fear effect that is crippling your regular marshals, just conjure a construct that is completely immune to it.
Again sure the Fighter is better in everything but maneuverability, but not by much, like a 20% improvement on average.
What? Are you crazy? The Rogue! The class build around only needing to hit once per turn, and with built-in speed up options through Cunning Action??? That is the absolute worst martial character to Hasten. They're doing only 1d6+DEX on a hit, vs a Barbarian that would be dealing 2d6+STR+2 per hit (not counting WMeries)
Sure my preference would have been to correcting the conjuration spells so they still conjured animals or fey etc but were designed in a way not to bog the game down. But I am not sure that could be done easily.
You literally just trim it down to 2 creatures max; the CRs available are already supposed to be scaled for quantity, and I've yet to see anything but pixies invoked as a truly problematic option. Maybe drop the spell a level for summoning what was the 4-of and 8-of tiers as 1-of and-2 of instead. Running two additional very low CR creatures shouldn't be a significant strain on table time.
No fighting style? No feat (GWM)? No subclass? No bonus ASI?
You have got to be kidding me. Do you know how Haste works on a Rogue? You can all but guarantee two sneak attacks per round that way for the entire combat regardless of weapon. Your optimization knowledge truly baffles me.
LOL, your DM's idiocy baffles me. "Hold my action until the end of my turn" requires meta knowledge thus is not allowable in my games.
It does use a fighting style (Archery), and Sharpshooter feat and a DEX ASI. I thought you knew how to do math, Mr. optimizer. It also includes an extra 1d8 per turn on a hit for Battlemaster maneuver.
GWM isn't a good choice for an Archer until level 8 really, since you sacrifice a +1 to hit and +1 damage, for +2-+3 damage on a hit. But it's all a bit academic since dual-wielding handcrossbows is so much better than a Longbow in terms of DPR, as I point out in the next paragraph, and is really required in order to keep up with a Wizard using Firebolt + Summon Aberration.
Your DM bans the Ready action, which is right there in the books intended to be used, and mine is the idiot? Interesting.
I do. Try picking a feat that adds more than zero damage. That's how math works.
No, please learn to read my posts in their entirety and interpret their words. My DM bans using metaknowledge as a trigger for readied actions. Turns don't exist in the reality of the game they exist only as meta knowledge of the players, so using turn information as a trigger for a readied action is impossible because it isn't something your character can observed within the reality of the game.
From the Basic Rule Book under "Ready":
"My turn ends" is not a perceivable circumstance within the reality of the game that your character exists in.
There aren't any for Longbows that don't also sacrifice your ASI. Again please read the other paragraphs I have written about XbowXpert/Handcrossbows because Longbow remains dead in terms of optimization.
A Level 7 Fighter has the ASI to spare. Also, try comparing melee damage to summons too rather than cherry-picking the weakest style and ignoring the rest.
Again please read my original post I did so, comparing Summon Fey (a melee summon) with Shield Master sword & board, Dual-Wielder two weapon fighting or GWM two-handed Fighter. I try to compare like-for-like : melee for melee and ranged for ranged, using the most obvious feat choices for each choice of play style. Only Dual-Wielder with the most generous assumption about how that works, significantly out performed a Summoned Fey. Though come to think of it, I forgot to add the Firebolt cast by the Wizard on their turn to the Summon Fey DPR...