You summon fey creatures that appear in unoccupied spaces that you can see within range. Choose one of the following options for what appears:
- One fey creature of challenge rating 2 or lower
- Two fey creatures of challenge rating 1 or lower
- Four fey creatures of challenge rating 1/2 or lower
- Eight fey creatures of challenge rating 1/4 or lower
A summoned creature disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or when the spell ends.
The summoned creatures are friendly to you and your companions. Roll initiative for the summoned creatures as a group, which have their own turns. They obey any verbal commands that you issue to them (no action required by you). If you don't issue any commands to them, they defend themselves from hostile creatures, but otherwise take no actions.
The GM has the creatures' statistics. You can see some sample creatures below.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using certain higher-level spell slots, you choose one of the summoning options above, and more creatures appear: twice as many with a 6th-level slot and three times as many with an 8th-level slot.
Sample Creatures
CR | Creature |
1/4 | Blink Dog, Sprite |
1/2 | Satyr |
1 | Dryad |
2 | Sea Hag |
* - (one holly berry per creature summoned)
If your dm lets you choose the creatures summoned, then witchlight gives a unique option.
Brigganocks can use an action to do 1 hours worth of work. Hence 8 of these suckers could do all kinds of unique shenanigans.
Alright, I see a lot of people talking about DM choosing their summons. Where does it say they choose? Cause I can't find it.
Unfortunately, since the wording is CR 1 or lower, you could wind up with less powerful creatures depending on how your DM rules it. Definitely useful to check in beforehand! It also seems like mixing and matching is possible, so you could end up with one Dryad and one Quickling or some other combination. That said, this is an amazing strategy that (imo) most good DMs would love to make work!
It's not mentioned in the text of the spell itself, but it was clarified by Jeremy Crawford in WOTC's Sage Advice column and compendium:
For me, I love this spell as a player, however because of the broken combo of Pixie casting Fly and Polymorph into T-Rex's for the entire party, as a DM I actually limit the Pixie's Spells to simply not include Polymorph on this plane. I explain it to my players that it is sort of summoning sickness coming from the Fey to the Material Plane and they lose the 4th level spell slot (i.e. Polymorph). 8 Pixies are still plenty annoying enough without that spell, and I see Greater Invisibility as a Innate Race Feature, so they can keep that.
As for selection of the creatures; I allow my players to tell me what they hope for, and then roll a percentile to see if they get what they wanted. Depending on the CR of the creature, the Percentage gets tougher as the CR gets higher. If not, I use a random table so it's a surprise for us all, LOL!
https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/SA_Compendium.pdf
however i whole heartedly disagree. you mean to tell me if im in a fire fight and cast summon elemental the DM can summon some fire elemental that deal 0 dmg to these fire immune creatures. as a DM i read that the choice is given to the player the spell is written to allow other fey to exist beyond the writers knowledge or monsters available at printing.
as a DM you rule that the creatures summoned must exist within the setting, to summon something specifically the player should have some type of knowledge lore or other interaction, cant summon something your not aware of the existence of, however the player could also saw IDC im just casting this spell calling for aid from whatever answers and the DM could place whatever they wanted in,
by the arguments presented by Crawford and sage advice you would get completely random creatures not all of the summoned creatures of the chosen category would be the same, this would further complicate the DM's job not only are their 4 players but now 8 different cr 1/4 beings on top of the monsters etc... just no. LET the PLAYER decide. additionally pixies are not broken its a dc 12 and only 1 use/day. it's not permanent. they start at a new initiative so they may not even act before they're blown away. if you want to fix pixies raise their CR.
Concerning the 8 pixies = 4 flying T. Rexes. Personally I love the idea of it. But. For Polymorph, the limitation is that the polymorphed creature can be equal to or lower than the caster's CR. And T. Rex is much more. How does this get worked around for this busted, but awesome, battlefield event?
Thanks.
P. S. Even though I felt guilty trying this, the DM pointed the CR issue out, and I wouldn't have argued either way. But it did look epic!
Hahaha, same
It's the target's CR, not the caster's. So the pixies can polymorph the party as long as the party is over lvl 8 (which they will be soon if they're casting 4th level spells).
Imagine 24 blink dogs all attacking a monster, that sounds a bit overpowered
this is the reason that i hate that everyone says "tHE pLAyER DoEsnT GeT To ChooSE wHat AniMaLS tHEy SumMon"
https://www.reddit.com/r/powergamermunchkin/comments/10zvrb0/entirely_raw_if_you_rule_that_the_player_cannot/
also, just because jeremy crawford says that a ruling is one way or the other, if it is not in an official sage advice column or erratta, it does not matter what he says. his rulings are not official unless in a sage advice column.
It is quite literally in the 2021 Sage Advice Compendium that the player chooses the CR and the DM chooses the actual creatures summoned.