I'm just going to come right out and say it: given that Animate Objects still puts up to 5 fresh units on the board, the Polymorphs, Wildform, and Shapechange all still draw from a large pool of blocks, and Animate Dead/Create Undead still let a player build up a zombie army if they're so inclined, there's no conceivable reason why they had to jump through half a dozen hoops to try and reinvent the Conjure spells as much as they did. Cutting out summoning more than 2 or 4 creatures at a time? Sure, keeps the board manageable. Reworking pixies, which were pretty much the only example anyone ever trotted out of a core statblock that was seriously disruptive. Go for it. But given that they clearly did not move to systematically remove either component of the spells from the game, it serves no purpose to not carry them forward.
I'm just going to come right out and say it: given that Animate Objects still puts up to 5 fresh units on the board, the Polymorphs, Wildform, and Shapechange all still draw from a large pool of blocks, and Animate Dead/Create Undead still let a player build up a zombie army if they're so inclined, there's no conceivable reason why they had to jump through half a dozen hoops to try and reinvent the Conjure spells as much as they did. Cutting out summoning more than 2 or 4 creatures at a time? Sure, keeps the board manageable. Reworking pixies, which were pretty much the only example anyone ever trotted out of a core statblock that was seriously disruptive. Go for it. But given that they clearly did not move to systematically remove either component of the spells from the game, it serves no purpose to not carry them forward.
1) Pixies were hardly the only disruptive example. Sure, getting 8 concentration-free Polymorphs for your entire team out of a single spell slot should have never even gotten to the pre-print stage, but even far more basic choices like 8 Elks (all Charging) or 8 Hyenas (all with Pack Tactics) could have a massive impact on a lot of fights, and that was without Shepherd Druid buffing their relevancy into even higher levels. There are entire handbooks out there containing advice on different animals/fey/etc to try for, and the players' ability to ask for all those power options is going to quickly outstrip the DM's ability to say no without getting draconian.
2) Animate Objects might still allow for multiple 'summons' but it was toned down considerably from its 2014 incarnation. You get fewer objects, they have half as much HP as before if not fewer, they can no longer fly, and use your spell attack modifier which is highly likely to be less than the old version's +8 when you get it. They also use up your bonus action instead of being free to command, making this spell much more of a tradeoff than the conjure line, and they only lasted a minute so the DM didn't have to worry about you bringing an entire zoo with you across multiple combats either. So I reject the thesis that "Animate Objects still exists, therefore we didn't need to get rid of the Conjure line in 2024" utterly.
What about the "you can still make an army of zombies equal to 3 * your 3rd-5th level slots, plus even more for higher levels or have more powerful undead instead" portion of the thesis? As you've acknowledged player can still objectively dump a bunch of extra units into combat at once with Animate Objects, and they can still carry multiple units through multiple encounters. And these were also things they could tweak in the existing spells with the update rather than reinventing the wheel, except with an octagon instead of a circle. It's not that any one spell exists, it's that close to every complaint people made about the Conjure spells still exists, and the only changes made were ones that could just as easily have been applied to the existing spells.
A spell that lasts one minute is not doing multiple encounters at most tables, "objectively" or otherwise.
As for Animate Dead - "more powerful undead?" All you ever get from it are Medium or Small skeletons and zombies. Which pretty much means you're just getting Skeletons, unless you can convince your party that a 20ft overland pace is worth your paper army that also stinks up the place. But you can buff them with Necromancer and Oathbreaker... which you now need DM permission to use in a 2024 game.
Again, I reject your thesis that these spells continuing to exist in some form means the Conjure X line was fine and should have been left alone.
A spell that lasts one minute is not doing multiple encounters at most tables, "objectively" or otherwise.
As for Animate Dead - "more powerful undead?" All you ever get from it are Medium or Small skeletons and zombies. Which pretty much means you're just getting Skeletons, unless you can convince your party that a 20ft overland pace is worth your paper army that also stinks up the place. But you can buff them with Necromancer and Oathbreaker... which you now need DM permission to use in a 2024 game.
Again, I reject your thesis that these spells continuing to exist in some form means the Conjure X line was fine and should have been left alone.
The more powerful undead were from Create Undead, which I assumed would be self-evident.
The old and new versions of the Conjure spells are functionally very different, and are the same in name only. Personally, I would have preferred it if they simply treated the new versions as entirely new spells with new names. If they have issue with multiple summons as a concept, then they can simply leave the Conjure spells behind and not update them, like how they are treating half elves and half orcs.
The old and new versions of the Conjure spells are functionally very different, and are the same in name only. Personally, I would have preferred it if they simply treated the new versions as entirely new spells with new names. If they have issue with multiple summons as a concept, then they can simply leave the Conjure spells behind and not update them, like how they are treating half elves and half orcs.
And given that they're not averse to dropping multiple creatures on the board at once, spells creating creatures that last for multiple encounters without even using concentration, or spells that let players stop and flip through monster block entries for their effects, there's pretty much no reason they couldn't have pared back the number you could summon and left the spells.
I'm guessing they kept the names to connect to the Monster Manual and modules where NPCs had those specific spell names. The whole backwards compatibility thing that was such a big part of the marketing push. This is actually the one thing I like about the backwards compatibility effort. Being able to play 2014 modules with the 2024 rules is a very nice benefit.
Zombies are faster than people. It doesn't look that way, but they can double move forever, they never get tired, never need to stop to pee or drink or eat or sleep. The only thing faster than an army of zombies is an army of skeletons.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I suspect animate dead was much more of an edge case than most of the conjure spells. They did not change the conjure spells to eliminate the issue of one player controlling a bunch of toons; they changed it so that it just doesn't come up all that often.
If you're building an undead army, good chance you've already worked it out with your dm.
And now most players (and I guess I believe most players aren't optimizing) can select the new conjure spells (either on a whim or because it fits their character) and not slow the game to a crawl. They identified a known issue and provided a creative fix. For the most part, I think they did a decent job. I've yet to play them, so we'll see. Looks like Conjure Minor Elementals is overpowered, but it's easy to bring it back in line.
A spell that lasts one minute is not doing multiple encounters at most tables, "objectively" or otherwise.
As for Animate Dead - "more powerful undead?" All you ever get from it are Medium or Small skeletons and zombies. Which pretty much means you're just getting Skeletons, unless you can convince your party that a 20ft overland pace is worth your paper army that also stinks up the place. But you can buff them with Necromancer and Oathbreaker... which you now need DM permission to use in a 2024 game.
Again, I reject your thesis that these spells continuing to exist in some form means the Conjure X line was fine and should have been left alone.
The more powerful undead were from Create Undead, which I assumed would be self-evident.
So a minimum 6th level spell, which most tables won't even see and will be pretty experienced at the game by the time they do?
The Conjure spells (especially A/WB/ME) were much more disruptive in practice. Change was needed.
They were a pain in the ass to run. What do you mean the DM has to pull out the Monster Manual and pick random monsters within a certain CR range? The new Summon <Type> spells are a lot more straightforward for everyone involved.
They were a pain in the ass to run. What do you mean the DM has to pull out the Monster Manual and pick random monsters within a certain CR range? The new Summon <Type> spells are a lot more straightforward for everyone involved.
I agree with points of view like yours.
I usually don't watch YouTube videos about D&D, but out for curiosity, I was watching this short video from Dungeon Dudes about spell nerfs & buffs. They gave the same opinion and explanation (Conjure Animals at 12:15, and Conjure Woodland Beings 15:00)
They were a pain in the ass to run. What do you mean the DM has to pull out the Monster Manual and pick random monsters within a certain CR range? The new Summon <Type> spells are a lot more straightforward for everyone involved.
I never said the spells had to be kept exactly as they were, but are you seriously going to tell me that someone using Polymorph can't stop the game for just as long while they decide what they want to turn something into? The fix there is to drop the random aspect and for the group to take maybe half an hour to an hour prepping a few picks ahead of time.
All they had to do was limit Conjure Animals to 1 or 2 beasts that the player chooses and the spell was perfectly fine. All the fun and flavor has been stripped away. This is some of the worst game design I have ever seen. I am so bummed out for D&D.
All they had to do was limit Conjure Animals to 1 or 2 beasts that the player chooses and the spell was perfectly fine. All the fun and flavor has been stripped away. This is some of the worst game design I have ever seen. I am so bummed out for D&D.
This seems like a pretty functional game design. Much of base 5e has been with the mind of keeping it simple. This screams the KISS idea, of not making it overly complicated while allowing a limited choice.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
I never said the spells had to be kept exactly as they were, but are you seriously going to tell me that someone using Polymorph can't stop the game for just as long while they decide what they want to turn something into? The fix there is to drop the random aspect and for the group to take maybe half an hour to an hour prepping a few picks ahead of time.
Yes, Polymorph has a potential book diving issue too, but the book diving aspect is only one of the problems with Conjure though. Even if you perfectly pick all your animals ahead of time and have the statblocks ready to go when you cast it, actually running it at the table when 8 of them show up on the battlefield and the caster's turn takes twice as long if not much more is still an issue. On top of which, there's a much bigger balance consideration with 8 new creatures getting attacks and blocking off enemy movement than there is with one party member becoming a gorilla or whatever.
All they had to do was limit Conjure Animals to 1 or 2 beasts that the player chooses and the spell was perfectly fine. All the fun and flavor has been stripped away. This is some of the worst game design I have ever seen. I am so bummed out for D&D.
It was never "perfectly fine" and they have the data to support that. If it was "perfectly fine" at your table, good for you, your 2014 books are still accessible.
All they had to do was limit Conjure Animals to 1 or 2 beasts that the player chooses and the spell was perfectly fine. All the fun and flavor has been stripped away. This is some of the worst game design I have ever seen. I am so bummed out for D&D.
That's fine for Conjure Animals because the PHB comes with a creature appendix and a bunch of animals. What about Conjure Woodland Creatures? Conjure Minor Elemental? How is the player going to choose? They're not expected to own a Monster Manual. Do they borrow it from the DM? Are they going to start flipping through Xanathar's and Mordenkainen's looking for fey too?
The new PHB supports summoning a swarm without making it an absolute pain in the ass to manage the way the old Conjure spells are, and still gives you the option to summon a single cool thing (which is usually what players want) with far more options than the 2014 PHB (e.g. Summon Construct, Dragon and Fiend are now on the table, Summon Celestial is 5th level instead of 7th, Summon Fey is 3rd level instead of 6th.)
EDIT: Also, everything higher than Conjure Animals was borderline unusable in the 2014 PHB anyways thanks to the 1 minute casting time.
I never said the spells had to be kept exactly as they were, but are you seriously going to tell me that someone using Polymorph can't stop the game for just as long while they decide what they want to turn something into?
Well, no, but that's mostly because the number of beasts you might actually want to turn into is an incredibly small list.
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I'm just going to come right out and say it: given that Animate Objects still puts up to 5 fresh units on the board, the Polymorphs, Wildform, and Shapechange all still draw from a large pool of blocks, and Animate Dead/Create Undead still let a player build up a zombie army if they're so inclined, there's no conceivable reason why they had to jump through half a dozen hoops to try and reinvent the Conjure spells as much as they did. Cutting out summoning more than 2 or 4 creatures at a time? Sure, keeps the board manageable. Reworking pixies, which were pretty much the only example anyone ever trotted out of a core statblock that was seriously disruptive. Go for it. But given that they clearly did not move to systematically remove either component of the spells from the game, it serves no purpose to not carry them forward.
1) Pixies were hardly the only disruptive example. Sure, getting 8 concentration-free Polymorphs for your entire team out of a single spell slot should have never even gotten to the pre-print stage, but even far more basic choices like 8 Elks (all Charging) or 8 Hyenas (all with Pack Tactics) could have a massive impact on a lot of fights, and that was without Shepherd Druid buffing their relevancy into even higher levels. There are entire handbooks out there containing advice on different animals/fey/etc to try for, and the players' ability to ask for all those power options is going to quickly outstrip the DM's ability to say no without getting draconian.
2) Animate Objects might still allow for multiple 'summons' but it was toned down considerably from its 2014 incarnation. You get fewer objects, they have half as much HP as before if not fewer, they can no longer fly, and use your spell attack modifier which is highly likely to be less than the old version's +8 when you get it. They also use up your bonus action instead of being free to command, making this spell much more of a tradeoff than the conjure line, and they only lasted a minute so the DM didn't have to worry about you bringing an entire zoo with you across multiple combats either. So I reject the thesis that "Animate Objects still exists, therefore we didn't need to get rid of the Conjure line in 2024" utterly.
What about the "you can still make an army of zombies equal to 3 * your 3rd-5th level slots, plus even more for higher levels or have more powerful undead instead" portion of the thesis? As you've acknowledged player can still objectively dump a bunch of extra units into combat at once with Animate Objects, and they can still carry multiple units through multiple encounters. And these were also things they could tweak in the existing spells with the update rather than reinventing the wheel, except with an octagon instead of a circle. It's not that any one spell exists, it's that close to every complaint people made about the Conjure spells still exists, and the only changes made were ones that could just as easily have been applied to the existing spells.
A spell that lasts one minute is not doing multiple encounters at most tables, "objectively" or otherwise.
As for Animate Dead - "more powerful undead?" All you ever get from it are Medium or Small skeletons and zombies. Which pretty much means you're just getting Skeletons, unless you can convince your party that a 20ft overland pace is worth your paper army that also stinks up the place. But you can buff them with Necromancer and Oathbreaker... which you now need DM permission to use in a 2024 game.
Again, I reject your thesis that these spells continuing to exist in some form means the Conjure X line was fine and should have been left alone.
The more powerful undead were from Create Undead, which I assumed would be self-evident.
The old and new versions of the Conjure spells are functionally very different, and are the same in name only. Personally, I would have preferred it if they simply treated the new versions as entirely new spells with new names. If they have issue with multiple summons as a concept, then they can simply leave the Conjure spells behind and not update them, like how they are treating half elves and half orcs.
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And given that they're not averse to dropping multiple creatures on the board at once, spells creating creatures that last for multiple encounters without even using concentration, or spells that let players stop and flip through monster block entries for their effects, there's pretty much no reason they couldn't have pared back the number you could summon and left the spells.
I'm guessing they kept the names to connect to the Monster Manual and modules where NPCs had those specific spell names. The whole backwards compatibility thing that was such a big part of the marketing push. This is actually the one thing I like about the backwards compatibility effort. Being able to play 2014 modules with the 2024 rules is a very nice benefit.
Zombies are faster than people. It doesn't look that way, but they can double move forever, they never get tired, never need to stop to pee or drink or eat or sleep. The only thing faster than an army of zombies is an army of skeletons.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I suspect animate dead was much more of an edge case than most of the conjure spells. They did not change the conjure spells to eliminate the issue of one player controlling a bunch of toons; they changed it so that it just doesn't come up all that often.
If you're building an undead army, good chance you've already worked it out with your dm.
And now most players (and I guess I believe most players aren't optimizing) can select the new conjure spells (either on a whim or because it fits their character) and not slow the game to a crawl. They identified a known issue and provided a creative fix. For the most part, I think they did a decent job. I've yet to play them, so we'll see. Looks like Conjure Minor Elementals is overpowered, but it's easy to bring it back in line.
(edit: changed it to Conjure Minor Elementals)
So a minimum 6th level spell, which most tables won't even see and will be pretty experienced at the game by the time they do?
The Conjure spells (especially A/WB/ME) were much more disruptive in practice. Change was needed.
They were a pain in the ass to run. What do you mean the DM has to pull out the Monster Manual and pick random monsters within a certain CR range? The new Summon <Type> spells are a lot more straightforward for everyone involved.
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I agree with points of view like yours.
I usually don't watch YouTube videos about D&D, but out for curiosity, I was watching this short video from Dungeon Dudes about spell nerfs & buffs. They gave the same opinion and explanation (Conjure Animals at 12:15, and Conjure Woodland Beings 15:00)
I never said the spells had to be kept exactly as they were, but are you seriously going to tell me that someone using Polymorph can't stop the game for just as long while they decide what they want to turn something into? The fix there is to drop the random aspect and for the group to take maybe half an hour to an hour prepping a few picks ahead of time.
As a rule of thumb, spells shouldn't come with a significant amount of homework attached.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
All they had to do was limit Conjure Animals to 1 or 2 beasts that the player chooses and the spell was perfectly fine. All the fun and flavor has been stripped away. This is some of the worst game design I have ever seen. I am so bummed out for D&D.
This seems like a pretty functional game design. Much of base 5e has been with the mind of keeping it simple. This screams the KISS idea, of not making it overly complicated while allowing a limited choice.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Yes, Polymorph has a potential book diving issue too, but the book diving aspect is only one of the problems with Conjure though. Even if you perfectly pick all your animals ahead of time and have the statblocks ready to go when you cast it, actually running it at the table when 8 of them show up on the battlefield and the caster's turn takes twice as long if not much more is still an issue. On top of which, there's a much bigger balance consideration with 8 new creatures getting attacks and blocking off enemy movement than there is with one party member becoming a gorilla or whatever.
It was never "perfectly fine" and they have the data to support that. If it was "perfectly fine" at your table, good for you, your 2014 books are still accessible.
That's fine for Conjure Animals because the PHB comes with a creature appendix and a bunch of animals. What about Conjure Woodland Creatures? Conjure Minor Elemental? How is the player going to choose? They're not expected to own a Monster Manual. Do they borrow it from the DM? Are they going to start flipping through Xanathar's and Mordenkainen's looking for fey too?
The new PHB supports summoning a swarm without making it an absolute pain in the ass to manage the way the old Conjure spells are, and still gives you the option to summon a single cool thing (which is usually what players want) with far more options than the 2014 PHB (e.g. Summon Construct, Dragon and Fiend are now on the table, Summon Celestial is 5th level instead of 7th, Summon Fey is 3rd level instead of 6th.)
EDIT: Also, everything higher than Conjure Animals was borderline unusable in the 2014 PHB anyways thanks to the 1 minute casting time.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Well, no, but that's mostly because the number of beasts you might actually want to turn into is an incredibly small list.