I agree, as a Player/GM from the VERY beginning i see it as just another Vanilla excuse to mak D&D more like a video game. Speed up combat lessen thinking and keep it Moving to the next encounter.

As someone who has been trapped behind someone rolling for a dozen little birds on both sides of the table, this is a huge improvement for the momentum of the game. Sorry to the rest of y'all, but I'll take this any day.

Having just hit 5th on my Druid this spell change is the most abundantly obvious one that WotC are lazy.

Explain to me HOW this is NOT a useless version of Spirit Guardians with:

Slashing vs Radiant or Necrotic

Save and take nothing vs half

Doesn't follow you so the movement is poor.

Whoever designed this is a horrible person and needs to feel shame.

Really need to add at least half damage for the save to make this worth taking over the 2014.  It probably is a typo and they just forgot to add it cause this is just useless.  

I have a conjuration wizard with a staff of conjuration his mother gave him so I'm petitioning my DM for the staff be relegated to "The Old Magicks" if my character is stuck with these new variants, which to be clear makes me wanna murk my character and roll a new one.  The 2024 variant of this spell is officially, as the kids say, a$$.  Has there been any lore reason to why spells have become utter shyte now?

I am gonna keep saying this, but this spell kicks @$$. 

Compared to Spirit Guardians, yes, it does no damage on a save, but it is REMOTE CONTROLLED RANGED. Think creatively...you can Wildshape into a regular ole spider, chill in a tree, and cast this 60ft away into a group of enemies. That group of enemies now has a group of spectral spiders just tearing them apart. Crawling all around, doing AoE, and the enemies...? They can't do ANYTHING to the spectral spiders! Run away is their best option. And if they run away in a cluster, you can follow them and keep attacking them. If they spread out...oh yeah, that's what the rest of the party is there for.

But you can devestate groups of enemies without ever actually joining the battle...FOR 10 MINUTES! If you're in a dungeon setting, bar the door from the outside, crawl under the door (you're a tiny spider, remember?) cast the spell and let your spectral spiders GO TO TOWN while your enemies scream in terror and agony.

this spell is better than I thought

I don't disagree that the Summon Spells do the job better. 

Easy solve: use the old version, but the animals flee if you roll initiative. I run a homebrew version of it called "Entreat Bestial Spirits." 10 minute cast time, ritual Enchantment spell (I changed it to Enchantment, since you're not calling up specific animals but rather asking for animals of "x" type). I gave it a range of 6 miles, from within which you Entreat the creatures. If no suitable creature exists, you lose the time but not the spell slot or components and can't cast it again in that area for 24 hours. 

That way you can "summon" creatures to use as mounts, to gain information from, or for other exploratory purposes but not conflate it with proper combat spells like Summon Beast and similar. 

Fwiw, that approach works all the way down the Conjure chain.

Conjure Animals -> Entreat Bestial Spirits

Conjure Woodland Beings -> Entreat Woodland Spirits.

Conjure Minor Elementals -> Entreat Elemental Spirits.

Conjure Fey -> Entreat Fey. 

I personally like my games to have more dice rolling, so I add a Wisdom (Animal Handling or Survival) check with a variable result table. I do this same thing with minor variations for demons and evils and fey and whatnot, often including favors and payment in the bargain. But it's a different kind of dnd than a lot of people want to run.

Yeah I think the issue is people are comparing this to spirit guardians (a same level spell but unavailable to a druid plus ranger normally, albeit rangers will likely look elsewhere). If you want spirit guardians look at woodland beings. This fills a good niche for druids of a caster and ranged variant you can slap and move from. The weakness spirit guardians alongside other emanations has is you need to move in for and move (movement intensive) to use effectively. This spell has less build requirements alongside less actions needed to use and the main weakness is a lack of half on a save. To benefit from this spell you need a high casting stat, Spell DC and low Dexterity saving enemies. This is more common at higher levels to keep in mind. The buff for strength saves is niche albeit a nice guaranteed effect if in its range. Getting save boosts are normally more minor via bless or at a higher level such as 4th level or above so neat effect for this level. 

Hey I hate the new version too, but calling it weak is just plain wrong. It's a large "creature" (not technically a creature) that forces a save to creatures within 10ft of it. That effectively makes this spell a 60ft cube that you can move around and deal damage to selective targets, and at no action cost after the initial casting. And it can trigger per turn. And it can trigger from forced movement. And it can trigger when the forced movement happens within its bounds and not just from yo-yoing the creature inside and out like you would have to for spirit guardians. That's RIDICULOUS. I still don't like it and I'd rather a proper summoning spell, but "useless" it is not.

Doubtful that I'll use this as written. It should do half damage on a failed save. No damage on a failed save makes it a wasted 3rd level spell slot to cast a cantrip. 

Quote from Lumpdog2 >>

Doubtful that I'll use this as written. It should do half damage on a failed save. No damage on a failed save makes it a wasted 3rd level spell slot to cast a cantrip. 

 Have you played with it yet? Enemies very often have to make the Save twice per round so the spell does a ton of damage in practice.

They ruined my favorite Druid spell.  I get they were trying to make the spell simpler to run by DMs (summoning spells complicate combat encounters), but they removed the whole aspect of a "summoning" spell and just turned it into another movable AOE spell like moonbeam.  This spell doesn't say that a creature takes half damage on a successful save.  

However, each DM I know has a different way of handling large amounts of creatures.

So how large is the pack of animals?  You can't fit a whole pack in one 5' square.  In the old version, you put one animal in one 5x5 spot, and could summon up to 8 beasts.

Now that it's not a set number of beasts, and the beasts are actually spirits, I imagine the pack would take up a 10x10 area or more.

This is important because the spell is MUCH more effective if more enemies are around the perimeter of the pack's area.

I'm seeing the scene from the crow when the flock of birds rips through the bad guys. Seriously if this hits every enemy that comes within 10 feet of it for 10 minutes, that is a pretty awesome spell.

This spell feels wildly overpowered. If you compare to Sprit Guardians, which it has the same level & duration as:

• It does more damage than SG. (You might say that Slashing damage is more often resisted than Radiant or Necrotic, but how often do you see magical Slashing damage resistance?)
• It has effectively the same AOE, while being far more tactically useful since it's not fixed on you
• Moreover, the AOE is effectively vastly larger since it effects things while it moves. It acts like a 30' wide x 50' long lightning bolt, every round for 10 minutes. Yes Spirit Guardians moves with you, but you can't move through enemy squares, while Conjure Animals can move anywhere it wants, as long as it lands on an unoccupied square.
• and then on top of that, it also provides a Saving Throw buff, albeit a near useless one.

This spell is very powerful, though Spirit Guardians still has some advantages:

• It does half damage on successful save, while this spell does nothing on a successful save
• It uses a Wisdom saving throw, which a lot of things you want to fight are going to be worse at than this spell's Dexterity saving throw
• It deals Radiant damage, which is much less likely to be resisted than this spell's Slashing damage. (The distinction between magical and non-magical damage type resistance has largely been removed in the 2024 rules.)

I truly hate what they have done to these spells.  They have nerfed them and turned them into an area affect.  They have no animal flavour to them and destroy the fantasy of being a druid.  Every time they update the rules they nerf the druid class.  Talk about destroying the fantasy of being a druid and diluting the sandbox experience of DND. 

If you see more than 'a' creature, does the spell affect all creature(s)?  The use of the word 'a' implies one but it also says 'that you can see' meaning you could see multiple creatures.  Poorly written but how does your table see this RAI/RAW spell?

the description uses the "Large' with an upper case letter to illustrate a size of 10x10.