You conjure a spirit from the Upper Planes, which manifests as a pillar of light in a 10-foot-radius, 40-foot-high Cylinder centered on a point within range. For each creature you can see in the Cylinder, choose which of these lights shines on it:
Healing Light. The target regains Hit Points equal to 4d12 plus your spellcasting ability modifier.
Searing Light. The target makes a Dexterity saving throw, taking 6d12 Radiant damage on a failed save or half as much damage on a successful one.
Until the spell ends, Bright Light fills the Cylinder, and when you move on your turn, you can also move the Cylinder up to 30 feet.
Whenever the Cylinder moves into the space of a creature you can see and whenever a creature you can see enters the Cylinder or ends its turn there, you can bathe it in one of the lights. A creature can be affected by this spell only once per turn.
Using a Higher-Level Spell Slot. The healing and damage increase by 1d12 for each spell slot level above 7.
This spell is amazingly powerful, honestly I doubt my DM will allow it, but if he did, I use my 8th and 9th level spell slot.
Even for just the healing it's good. You can heal some one with in their turn and your own for an average of 32 points each time and you can probably do this for your whole party for 64 points each per round.
Tired of the keeping people at 1Hp and yoyoing them back from the brink? Well now every one can always be at full HP!
Also if you think a enemy may have this spell for the love of God Pack chill touch and spirit shroud otherwise You may as well just stare each other turn until the concentration ends or the duration
Just like Conjure Animals, this spell rework removes the ability to play as a summoner.
This is not a Conjuration spell, this is an Evocation spell in disguise.
My favorite Cleric spell: conjure cylinder that doesn't even pretend to be in the shape of a creature!
I would limit the healing portion to only work on the same creature once per casting of the spell, but buff it so it also does 6d12. it's a bit broken as it stands right now. Same as the conjure minor elemental spell.
A cylinder is unimaginative. It feels like a video game where the model doesn't render, just its glow effect. I must say I'm not a fan of the Conjure spells. In trying to remove summonable stat blocks, they've ruined the whole fantasy of summoner characters. But 'Summon Cylinder' has got to be the lamest thing, regardless of the utility of the spell. Might as well just create 'summon hit points' or 'banish hit points' and dispense with the fantasy aspect altogether.
I don't see the purpose of this spell when we got Summon Celestial two levels earlier. But for people who are complaining about the lack of creature that is *conjured*, why don't you just say that the celestial you summoned is just in the cylinder of light?
It wouldn't be that hard to run by most DMs, so why not?
I can understand y'alls pain though, it sucks what they did to this spell.
"It's just a cylinder now! How lame!"
Dude, it's table top RPG where you, as a group, get to decide what happens, not a video game. If you want the spell to appear as Gabriel from ULTRAKILL you can just ask the DM and they would say yes, unless they are a jerk.
Further more, if you are complaining about not actually being able to summon a creature, both spells allowed you to create an object that damages near by things that don't require an action or bonus action to activate. Not only that, but this might actually be a little stronger than the old one.
Is this spell just totally broken now? Aoe spell which you can move onto people, which heals friends 4d12 and damages enemies 6d12... every turn?!?
Holy cylinder batman.
Also, I'd totally choose what I want the celestial spirit to look like and ask my DM if the celestial can manifests *in* a pillar of light, rather than *as* a pillar of light. Doesn't change anything about how the spell works, just gives it some flavour. I've never played with a DM who would say no to that request, it is a game, and it's about having fun, and giving it meaningless flavour that doesn't actually change anything just adds to the fun.
I mean, if the pillar of light didn't persist, you'd be right, but the spirit chooses to appear as a pillar of light and it remains for the duration, etc. Just because it doesn't look like an angel or whatever doesn't mean you aren't summoning anything.
My Light Domain Cleric will enjoy the revamp to this spell :D
Heck, when my wizard levels up to 17, he'll probably cast this with Wish every day. So much damage, so much healing.
Love this! Can do more than just spirit guardians
summon celestial isn't even close in terms of sheer power. the "summoned" celestial might stay in play for 1 or 2 rounds in a major battle. And it can't heal/deal the amount of damage that the "conjured" one can. the fact that you can conjure it, use its effects, then move yourself 5', then move this thing another 30', affecting everything in sight w/in the cylinder...it's not even close. My DM is a RAW guy, but he hates this spell and I think he may end up banning. Until he does though, sucks for enemies in my sight!
So, my low-end estimate is twenty-six thousand hit points worth of healing over ten minutes. Have a massive number of wounded (an entire army in really bad shape, for example?) Set them up in small groups of ten (you should easily be able to fit ten medium creatures in a 10 ft radius circle, even without laying wounded on top of each other). Cast our spell. The average healing of 4d12 is 26. 26x10 creatures = 260hp per round. 260x10 rounds = 2600hp per minute. 2600x10 = 26000hp over ten minutes. (Whoops! I forgot to add the spell ability modifier. That makes 31000 hit points, I think?)
All of this is of course just theory crafting (and incredibly unlikely) but shows how indifferent design could be abused if you had a DM that let you do so. So, fixes? As a DM you could limit the spell to one minute duration and heal only one or two creatures per round. You could also restrict the spell to work in combat only (which seemed to have been the origional assumption, after all.) It's up to us to alter abuseable spells to work at our tables.
But now imagine that you have a massive living thing with literally thousands of hit points. A "world tree" perhaps with a city of elves living in its branches, a mile or more in height. And an evil cleric that could cause (at minimum, without upcasting) 3900 hit points of damage to it in ten minutes.
Yikes...
But that to me seems a good way of turning an abuseable spell into a really interesting campaign idea. Have fun everyone!
I love this spell's design so much. In our campaign i flavoured it as that my cleric conjures the spirit of his deceased lover who then shines his light upon the party members he chooses.
There are so many concentration spells, that deal damage over time, i'm delighted to see a spell that finally causes healing over time.
Being a lvl 17 life domain cleric increases its potency massively.
However it is quite the cost with 7th lvl. I understand that people may perceive it as really powerful, but we played with this spell quite some time and tried various comps.
- Any cleric picking this spell dishes out some solid healing if needed
- Same goes for any bard, especially if they wish for a simulacrum that concentrates on beacon of hope
- Same goes for any divine soul sorcerer doing the same
So far it felt nice casting it! but so far it didn't really break an encounter because there is counterplay to it
- Enemies which move a lot and therefore divide the party make it harder to get the full potential of the spell
- Enemy spell casters with dispel magic can dispel this effect
- Being a dex save often causes this spell to deal "only" half damage, which isn't too great of a loss since half damage is still amazing. this makes this spell a really nice pick for clerics, but sorcerer and bards may have better use for a 7th lvl slot keeping their spell list in mind.
One amazing part was using divine intervention, to use the wish spell for a 8th lvl glyph of warding, creating a spell glyph containing this spell. But this makes this effect stationary. Giving opportunities while simultaneously limiting its use.
I see why most people may deem it as too strong but i can only recommend to try it first. it really isn't too bad.
Furthermore, we finally have a spell that excells at an inferior play style and that is healing. And id rather have spells like this allowing me to keep people alive and STANDING rather than playing stand up bingo with the recently downed.
And i somewhat understand the critique that it "doesn't conjure anything". But honestly, it does. it conjures a spirit from the upper planes providing a service, and how that spirit looks and acts is down to our fantasy. And i very much prefer such control over it than having to "conjure" a set stat block
Best way to balance this would be to force the cleric to chose if the spell does a damaging effect or a healing one. So you cannot both damage and heal creatures within the same area, it doesn't really make sense since its the same cylinder and same light doing it. Kinda salty about this spell as a DM.
We've tinkered with this a bit in our campaign. My daughter's Divine Soul Sorcerer calls this her flaming angel of doom-healing. It manifests as the spirit of her angelic ancestor (rather than a boring cylinder of light) who lashes out with holy fire against her enemies and cleansing flame for her allies.
We discussed it with the DM, and he took SirAron's suggestion from earlier in this thread, so the flaming angel of doom-healing can only heal each person once per casting, but the healing is 6d12 + modifier, to match the 6d12 damage.
Still an epic spell, and has saved our party on several occasions already even in it's nerfed form, but it is pretty epic each time it gets used.
I really like the idea of using it un-nerfed in an army situation though, just send this thing roving over the battle of the black gates, and watch your enemies burn and your friends fight with renewed vigor!
compare this to power word heal which can heal 8400 hp if you're a life cleric with your estimate of 31000
Coincidentally the deity of my religion takes the form of a giant cosmic cylinder that emits radiant energy. Technically the deity is a sentient rod of plutonium...