Silly idea I think but it intrigues me.  This is my first character so am learning much as I go along.

Will be level five after this Fridays game.  I get to choose new spells and was thinking Summon Beast for my Drakewarden ranger.

I could have a drake and a summoned beast and be controlling both at the same time.  At level 5 after summoning the beast, I would have two attack actions with my long bow from range, verbally command the beast to attack and use my bonus action to command the drake to attack.  I can also summon the beast up to 90 feet away which gives interesting options on placement at the start of battle.

My character in our group of 6 is primarily range attack along with support.  I could use the beast and drake to block escapes or aid whomever is taking the most damage.  

Has anyone played this as a spell option?  Thoughts?

thanks

It’s effective and quite good, but you need to worry with some things.

First and foremost, your Concentration. Since you spend a full action to cast Summon Beast, if you lose concentration, you wasted a slot and an action. That’s terrible. If you manage to summon your beast before combat, then it’s the best scenario. It’s not a coincidence that most of the offense spells from Rangers usually requires bonus action to cast (Hunters Mark, Ensnaring Strike, Hail of Thorns, Zephyr Strike)

Summon Beast relies on your WIS, so at least a score of 16 is needed to make it competitive. Different from Drakewarden who keys off your proficiency bonus. So if you WIS 12 or 14, your summon will not be so effective.

Remember that you have awesome spells at level 5, like Pass Without Trace, that is also good to improve your Drakewarden stealth.

I wouldn't usually recommend both because it gets complicated and I think you will have alot of bonus action interference. I am 90% sure you can't have both act.

Pass without  a trace is arguably one of the best spells. And there are other good options too. ( beast sense, spikegrowth and more depending on your build.)

On a separate note having more than one pet on the field increases chances the party/table will get easily annoyed by your build. It may be fine but it may not be. Talk to your dm at least before hand. 

One spell that people usually doesn’t pay attention at level 5 is Silence. Different from Clerics (Spirit Guardians) and Bards (Hypnotic Pattern), you don’t have so much fierce competition for your concentration slot, so you can cast Silence without worries and shut down enemy spellcasters without impacting your offense effectiveness, since you are a full martial Ranger plenty of attacking capabilities.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I will discuss the options with the DM on Friday and see what he thinks.  Will also share with the rest of the table and see their thoughts.  I am good about having my actions ready when my turn comes up and usually take less time to perform them than the other players.

I might try this just for level 5 and see how it goes.  I can change again once level 6 is reached.  I have been looking at silence and pass without trace.  4 spells are so limiting and the choice is difficult to make. 

The best two overall spells for 5th level Rangers are Pass Without a Trace and Enhance Ability. For combat, Silence has already been mentioned. Spike growth can be useful but it seems to be hard to pull of in a great way.

Spiked growth is a useful area control spell at low levels but looses its value against higher HP enemies (avg dam = 16 HP max - 4 5’ blocks across diameter x 2d4 damage(4HP). But silence and pass w/o trace hold their value far longer. The problem with a 5e ranger is they know so few spells. You might talk to your DM about rebuilding yours as 1D&D UA ranger that gets prepared spells not known.

I truly loved One D&D concept of Rangers being prepared spellcasters. This would make the class hold their own fiercely against overpowered Paladins.

One of my DMs is letting us test some of these new suggestions and I must confess this made my me feel even more versatile. I was able to prepare nice to have spells that never went to my list like Cure Wounds, Jump, Lesser Restoration and Locate Object.

Follow up on the spell choice of summon beast.  This is how our campaign ended Friday night.

Our party - 2 rangers, 2 warlocks, paladin, barbarian and a monk plus the drake that is summoned to me always while exploring.  We were sent to stop a mage who was raising demons.   We were 120 feet from the mage who was 50 feet up on a cliff and a couple greater death demons blocked our path.  I summoned beast and called a giant owl.  We pulled a "vox machina" and I used the owl to carry the monk over the battle to the mage.  The monk and owl were able to stop him - eventually - from summoning demons.  The first two demons hit us hard, but the drake took all of one attack, died, but prevented one of the warlocks from being hit.  After the first two demons were defeated the mage summoned 2 more, then two turns later a couple more demons.  Not sure action wise that was legit, but that's how the DM ran it.   I summoned the drake again and placed it behind a demon so we could get flanking advantage.   We took a lot of damage, a couple characters went to zero health, but were able to survive, barely.

It was fun, and we got laughs out of the owl flying someone to another spot for the battle.  I like the combination of the drake and summon beast.  My turn took a little longer, but I think people didn't mind too much since it involved some of them in the actions and gained us advantage.

Just thought I would share.

Great context. Indeed optional flanking rules adds a lot of value for pets / “minionmancy” spells. You don’t even need to summon wolves when you get Conjure Animals, just summon Giant Badgers who attack twice. It will be insane.