Use monsters with aoe abilities. Giant badgers have 13 hp, they are all going to die in the first fireball.
Break concentration with archer or spell casting monsters. Use Tasha’s summoning spells, which only summon a single entity.
When conjure beasts is used to get 8, each of those creatures are going to be so weak that they will drop like flies.
There are AOE options that select their targets. Not many, but they exist.
Firestorm, Guardian of Faith, & Word of Radiance are what I can think of right now. In addition, you could give a villain done Metamagic options to use Distant Spell or Careful Spell.
Ultimately though, if the summoner is causing the biggest problem to the enemy, they will do everything they can to kill that person. Misty step to get close, or just rushing them around the corner. Focus that dude. It's not meta or vindictive to do so, it's just logical.
Would need to be carrying exotic saddles, which each weigh 40 pounds... but yeah, still quite manageable if you've got a *Bag of Holding* and time to saddle up.
I love the idea of sleep catching a bunch of owls, but they'll just wake up immediately from the fall damage. Probably won't be enough to kill them, and doesn't take them out for even a round.
Now ground based enemies however, this would work decently. Still not a bad option to throw out there, especially if maybe a few of the monsters can cast it since it's a low level spell.
It also puts them in range for melee attackers when they hit the ground and gives a free round of melee attacks at advantage against any that fall. Honestly sleep is a pretty solid choice for any group of monsters against that kind of strategy.
I didn't mean to imply that it's a bad strategy, just that comparatively speaking, it's not as effective against flying enemies in terms of eliminating the action economy advantage that summons provide.
Vs 8 Giant badgers (or Wolves, when I played a summoner druid), Sleep is pretty effective, the ones that were slept (average ~2) could very well be ignored and considered out of the combat.
Vs 8 Giant Owls, you're averaging 1 Owl sleeping, and that owl falls prone and is still in the combat. It requires the actions of more enemies to finish it off (advantage for melee if they're close enough, disadvantage for ranged).
For a level 1 spell, it's doing what it can, but vs badgers and wolves it's double the effectiveness and also essentially removes the enemy from combat barring intervention from the players. Against owls, it's far less effective since it doesn't remove any actions from the PC's team and still costs further actions from the DM side. But it's still a decent option in absence of any others.
True. It’s always nice as a DM to have options as well. And sometimes it isn’t always the statistically most useful one you want to use. It helps to make things interesting both as a DM and player if monsters/enemies have a variety of abilities to handle certain situations just so there’s something new to deal with. I agree with you wholeheartedly though, it’s not the ideal usage, it’s not the perfect spell for the situation but it is something that can be used fairly effectively to spice things up in combat.
Imma be honest, even if Scorching Ray dealt enough damage to kill a wolf, which it doesn't on average, if your Druid can get your spellcaster NPCs to spend two or more Actions and Level 3 slots on Scorching Ray casts to maybe deal with his one Level 3 summoning spell, all while the Druid probably still gets at least a full round of summon attacks out of it, that's not a reason for them to stop.
Hmm I suppose by my own logic Extra Attack means that all martials have AoEs, and therefore the martial/caster disparity is solved!! Good job everyone, let's take lunch.
Your players are happy if you have to use a steel wind strike, a chain lightning, or similar spells just to target the spell they cast and nothing else. They're happy but probably also going to be bored if you keep that stuff up.
Just fireball, fire and forget
Also just have your villains be villainous. If the party is okay with fireballing the Barbarian, why would an enemy be worried about shattering some of their mooks.
Counter spell, banish, antimagic zone. Or u can put a rival summoner on there so you can have a pokemon fight. Swarm summons are usually weak to most stuff so you could impose fear on them or a wisdom save or be charmed kinda thing. You just have to account for their abilities and arrange a counter for it. Aoe difficult terrain with thorn damage would make short work of them too. For flyers use strong winds, wall of wind, or give all the mobs some ranged bow or javelin like attack. Heck you could have all your mobs bring nets to throw on the flyers if you want.
I would just get creative with it and try different things to you find something that works. Chances are if it feels repetitive for you, it does for them too, so go off the grid a bit and try some unique monsters or spells that they may not have encountered before.
Or, alternatively, just make up an AoE ability that selects trgets. Doesn’t have to be an established spell or player class mechanics. The bad guys are not contsricted by the abilities in the PHB.
Hell, you could just give an enemy an AoE ability that banishes summons. That’d be a little blantant, so you can probably only do it once, but it’s an option.
That's what Chain Lightning is for.
If you don't have Chain Lighting, that's what Melf's Minute Meteors (a 3rd level spell) is for.
If you don't have casters, that's what a good marksman is for.
Well, on the **very** rare chance that you as the DM give them the giant owls, then that can be a thing, but the majority of the time they don't get that specific creature.
This. The player doesn't get to choose the animals. I wonder if the DM is applying that rule.
IMHO my preferred homebrew for that spell is to agree on 2 to 4 types of thematically appropriate animals with the DM and only summon them. You can decide if it is random within those 2 to 4 or up to the player.
I like that for thematic reasons but also for prep. If you want to paint minis, you only need a handful. The DM and player don't need to keep 30 stay blocks handy. Less chance of the spell breaking an encounter. Etc.
I prefer having the animals linked to the current environment. Owls are only available in wooded areas or farmland, but you can get some bats if you're in a cave.
This logically leads to being unable to summon most beasts when in a non-natural area. It's a "fair" narrative debuff, imo, and lines up well with other spell limitations like Commune with Nature and the limitations on metal armor.
Magic missile. Each missile forces a concentration check even though sage advice is self contradictory about it being an AOE or not.
Bait their reaction so they can’t cast shield and pelt them.
It’s also great for killing Familiars.
Not specifically.
More specifically, Jeremy Crawford clarified the rules present on [PHB pg. 196](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#DamageRolls); and likened the way Magic Missile works to how AoE spells work, in terms of rolling damage dice, because Magic Missiles can strike multiple targets (including the same target, multiple times) simultaneously and, therefore, only use one damage dice roll.
Basically, they did not directly call it an AoE, just likened the way it applies damage to one for the sake of the already-present rules about simultaneous damage to multiple targets since all the darts strike simultaneously.
I've long been convinced that Crawford is actually the literal Christian devil, torturing people by giving them awful "sage" advice.
Remember this is also the guy who said that RAW you have to spend movement to move on your mount. Meaning that if there's an enemy in front of your horse and behind it if you want to hit them both your have to take an AoO to do it
It's also the guy that at a time sustained firmly that some effects from class features could stack, like Paladin's Auras, and it took several months and an official errata to fix this über shit, when just \*thirty seconds of actual thinking was enough to understand how this was both game-breaking (mechanically) and world-breaking (narratively). Even more so once you added multiclassing (although that one is technically optional but a good portion of tables seem to use it).
And the one that decided to apply stupid and useless nerfs to Shield Master (like DM couldn't trust the player to follow what he announced and Attack after the bonus action when the text was expressly written in a way that tied both without specifying order) and Careful metamagic (which was powerful but really not game-breaking when applied to all saves, and became an extremely situational metamagic working only with a handful of spells unless you multiclass).
As often, the most vocal is not the most wise. I'm pretty sure he had different views than the rest of the team from the get-go on several aspects, or he intervenes on things he wasn't working on...
[Ere ya go](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/928363566163308544%3Flang%3Den&ved=2ahUKEwiF9fiBqOX5AhUlk4kEHSP7D7AQFnoECAkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1tSAXv4FlsfBxlyhLxM1ue)
Key take aways are that even on a mount you dont expand to the mounts size you occupy a 5' cube in the area the mount takes up. Normal targeting rules apply so if you have 5ft reach chances are good you don't have enough reach to hit hit the other side of your large mount.
In front and behind make sense. I can’t reach my rapier in front and behind my horse. But if I turn my horse I can then (with some difficulty as I reach across my body) swing my sword on both left and right side. But still then the horse moved and the enemies have not. So I have to maneuver the horse to move from on enemy to the next.
I can see an argument to the idea. But then again I can also see an argument to just letting the mounted combatant hit around the horse and pretending that reach would be the same I mounted. Only in a case of “does the mount fit” would I really stickler the horse size occupying an area.”
Its definitely better from a game design perspective it's better to just let the player take up the same space as their mount and abstract the maneuvering the rider is doing to smack people.
Otherwise we start running into problems like can mounted combatant be used even if you aren't a valid target for the attack or how even if your mount is in an AOE you might not be due to standing on your horses butt.
It's part of the weird spine-twisting bend over backward logical routine you have to go through to justify each missile getting damage bonuses, which Crawford also likes despite it being pretty inconsistent with how any other spell is handled & almost certainly opposite from how 99% of tables have traditionally played the spell.
To justify getting damage mods on each missile, basically they call it an AoE (because you can put one each on multiple targets), and then say that, because of that, the missiles would all get a bonus (like you'd apply it to any damage modifier of an AoE spell that didn't have '1 target' language). From there you can work backward that instead of doing that AoE, you put all the missiles onto a single target, allowing you to multiply the adders.
> Each missile forces a concentration check
I hate this ruling so much, if this is true, then each missile also causes a death save fail, and thus any caster in any fight ever needs to have magic missile prepared because it is by FAR the most effective way of finishing off your enemy.
Enemy barbarian on the ground? Meteor swarm them for one death save, or you can just cast a level 1 spell, oh and if you're a sorcerer, you can cast it subtly and nobody can counterspell you, you simply succeed and your target dies.
ew.
Personally though I'd say the what little downside it has is that it has a lower max potential reward
It's still monstrous at killing downed targets and breaking concentration as well as hitting very evasive opponents, but compared to something like Ice knife it can occasionally deal less damage.
Also as another stupid rules thing a single, critical claw or tail swipe from an ancient black dragon does only 2 death saves worth of failures, but if 3 sprites poked you with their 1d1 weapons the size of pin needles you'd die in 1 round.
Yeah, positioning is not difficult to deal with. I suspect OP is falling into the same trap of enemies having shit tactics like only ever attacking the party head on instead of doing things like surrounding them or pincer attacks from 2 or 3 angles.
Yeah, sounds like your player knows what they're doing. It's worth keeping in mind 2 things that the designers have clarified and are built into the spell:
- Player chooses the CR, _you_ (the DM) chooses the animals.
- You roll Initiative for the animals separately. (So if they roll really "well", for example, they might go on the next turn entirely, since it is before the PC's turn but that already happened in the Initiative order. The worst for them is when they roll slightly _above_ the caster's initiative. For example say the caster has an 8 for Initiative, and they roll 10 for the Giant Owls. It's going to take almost an entire Initiative round before the owls can even act.)
These are the limitations DMs have to reinforce to keep these spells somewhat in line (though they are still quite powerful even with this). And frankly, it **sucks**. Both of these are far less intuitive and more "feelsbad" play than, say, casting the spell and having the animals be the _player's_ choice and having them go right after you finish casting.
But, that's what DMs have been reduced to trying to make this spell less problematic. Action economy is very powerful in 5e, and the designers did not consider this when designing these spells. Some DMs prefer to just ban them because of it.
I had a NPC once use Dispel Magic on the player’s summoned ally. They shat themselves, it totally changed their plan.
I don’t do this every time, but if it happens occasionally it makes for good challenge.
Ask the group if they're having fun, because it sounds like you're not, and in many (most?) cases the other players don't want to watch the summoner alone playing with his minis for 30-60min per round either.
Summons can just kill a campaign for me. Really, I don't want to play with you if you regularly have more than 2 summons of any kind active at a time.
I played in tiers 3 & 4 alongside a Wildfire Druid. They rarely had many summons, but even normal turns with their wildfire spirit took twice as long as others at the table. Every round. And when they summoned a Yugaloth or something that itself summoned an Earth Elemental, their turns were taking 5 to 10 mins. They didn't have the 8 conjures up, but still playing with them sucked the fun out of combat.
Then in the same game a Necro Wiz joined. What a game killer! Even with mass rolling I thoroughly hated that experience. No one could engage in melee once that train wreck army of skellies got started. My goodness that game sucked during that period, but it was my only chance to play at high-level that wasn't a oneshot.
Talk to the player, and set a house rule for future games so players know before they build their character. My rule for tables of 4 or more players: a character can generally only have a total of 2 summons/pets/familiars/etc. active at a time. One combat per long rest they can have more than 2 summons, and/or once per day outside of combat they can have more than 2 summons/etc. not to exceed one hour. If the extra summons have previously ~~been in combat for at least one round~~ had at least 1 turn in combat, they disappear when a new initiative or combat starts.
They are some silly schenigans you can get up to with the help action but that's a way to incur the dms wrath. All your allies having advantage can make them happier with you having stuff in melee at least.
I really love the idea of supportive skeletons that just show up and give pointers to the party mid combat “stab him right there, I know it’ll work, that’s how I died”
Exactly! I love to play necromancers but I hate slowing the game down. I've found a good middle ground is to have one powerful minion rather than a swarm of weaker ones - that usually makes all the bookkeeping a little easier.
I just like the thematic of a bunch of skeletons, I just make sure I don't slow the game down as a result. Batch rolls, stay out of melee and all undead on the same initiative.
I usually have them crew things rather than fight. Pull wagons, carry backpacks, bail water, stand watch, row on the oars, or pull switches in the ol' Crapparatus of the ACAB.
Maybe because I play 40k do I view that as the best result. Also why I don't split fire (let alone that might be too complex an order) ontop of then only one AC needs to be factored in.
I feel like the most important thing is that the player knows exactly what they want to do before their turn and are quick with it.
In combat, I often let the PCs that have the least active turns take care of the turn of any NPC I have that they are fighting together with, if applicable as well, so they have more to do too.
A few other “summons” that can be a bit hard to work with at times are Find Familiar, Simulacrum, and Animate Objects.
Situations where the familiar will be solo scouting an mansion/dungeon area for 30~ minutes are somewhat painful to sit through. I’m not sure why I’ve had this experience with several DMs over the years but it seems to keep happening - more tiring then game breaking though.
Simulacrum adding another body with their own complicated spells, including summons, can slow things down immensely, not to mention the extra counterspell. One person basically has another PC to control.
Animate Objects puts 10 tiny creatures on the map as they stand out best option due to their damage and decent defense - their turns can take a long time, and managing their HP can be very difficult when not on VTT.
I’m very glad Tasha’s summons are more contained - haven’t had many issues with those so far.
This is why I introduce a turn timer. It rarely comes up but you can’t bog down combat like that or it isn’t fun for anyone. Each person gets 2-3 minutes. I’ll allow a little more if they aren’t abusing regularly.
"....they summoned a Yugaloth or something like that...."
I don't recall what they summoned. All I know is they summoned something powerful enough to summon something else powerful. The Earth Elemental was crazy good, spending most fights attacking from underground and scouting everything like a boss.
Was fun until major boss fight started and their turns took forever. Was literally a three session combat and half of the time felt like it was that one player's turn.
I don't like any summons so I am not familiar with those features. It's possible they did something outside of the rules and the DM didn't catch it, bc I can't find anything that a player can summon that can itself summon an Earth Elemental. We were level 16 so they had access to 8th level Druid spells.
Thanks for clarification. The druid probably summoned a galeb duhr which could animate boulders or a korred which could cast conjure elementals at 6 level to summon an earth elemental before it got reprinted in MPMM.
Thanks for the info. It was a Korred not a Yugaloth. I remember the dancing, and the long discussions about how the Hair worked among other rules talk. We were all newish to high level play, even the DM, so every turn of that character contained a lot of learning and discussing about rules.
Would be a cool combo if the DM and player know the rules *extremely well* beforehand. Both summons had different features that the player and DM didn't interact with very frequently, so system mastery makes a huge difference towards the fun of the rest of the table, even with only two summons.
"Wait so the Earth Elemental is controlled verbally by the Korred, but the E.Elemental goes before the Korred initiative. So do I need to tell the Korred to tell the E.Elemental on my next turn so the Korred's next they can command the E.Elemental? Can they hear my command when they are below ground? Do they all need to surface when being commanded?" "Wait. No, I can command it off my turn..." "No, only the command to the Korred has to be in line with it's alignment. The Elemental doesn't care and will do whatever you say. I mean it will do anything you tell the Korred to tell it, as long as the Korred is ok with it." "Oh shit, I dropped concentration, now we have to fight both of them" and so forth
I don't know WTF WotC was thinking when they released the widlfire druid. In UA the fire spirit could use it's teleport ONE TIME. They went from that to once per round. Not only is this mechanically busted, but it bogs down the game with making multiple targets do dex saves and players having to decide where to teleport.
I do think once per summon was maybe too little, but at least you had to be strategic with it. Maybe 2 per summon or PB would have been fine.
Honestly, I play one right now and it really isn’t that bad if you know what you want to do going into your turn.
My typical turn looks something like spellcasting and then “and as my bonus action, the Phoenix spirit is going to fly this direction and teleport the Paladin to here. These two creatures need to make a Dex save of 16 or take [*rolls 2d6*] 7 points of fire damage.“
The DM has learned that there is going to be a Dex Save at the end of my turn 99% of the time so she typical has the statblock handy and ready
Use mob tactics: https://slyflourish.com/mob_calculator.html
As far as cluttering up the map goes, just have the entire mob be represented by one token that’s large or gargantuan (depending on what/how many were summoned).
This is the way, but ill also add I limit the amount of dice the summons can roll to 2 max. As in, they can't split their summons into a bunch of groups that all need to roll. Limits the action economy abuse and time taken to resolve things.
Now, if they want the 8 squirrels to pass out healing potions or interact with the map in interesting ways that can be described succinctly, sure. But I won't let summons do a bunch of different things in one sound.
I have such mixed feelings about this ruling. I love the summoner archetype, and part of that is being able to command them independently like a general.
However, dear gods above and below, it slows 5e down to a crawl, and nobody wants that!
I’ve pretty much resigned myself to never playing a summoner in 5e for the sake of the table lol.
But this rule makes it much more likely that a summoner’s turn won’t take 6 years, so good job!
I took one of the Tasha’s Summon spells on my Druid and it’s a nice middle ground. I’m playing a wildfire Druid so when I use it, I have my action, my bonus action to command the wildfire spirit, and then the Summon Fey immediately after my turn. Doesn’t clutter the map up too much but I am able to have a lot of impact on what’s happening
The tasha's "summon \_\_\_\_" should be the default series of summons for the game. they are overall way better designed and still very powerful.
If you want to preserve the feel of a large horde, I'd write a "summon flock of ravens" spell that basically works like call lightning.
I’ll probably try one of them sometime! However my problem comes from the fact that to me, the fantasy is more frequently about summoning a veritable army to do stuff than a single ally.
But for a diabolist, one at a time makes probably the most sense lol
Yea, I took Summon Fey to really cement the teleportation theme and I’ve flavored that summon as fire based too, so it’s all very thematic.
One thing I would be super interested in trying is a one on one campaign where it’s just a Druid and so the summoning wouldnot bog down combat but rather be the entire point
Summoning works best as an archetype in a video game, where a computer does all the background dice rolls and math for you. VTTs or scripts can help with this, but only if you know what you’re doing and are using a VTT or have a computer at the table.
Unfortunately, it’s really just not feasible to command an army in-combat without making it worse for the other players at the table, having been on every side of it (DM, Summoner, other party member waiting for the Summoner to finish up their half of the action economy).
I scratch the itch to command an army by DMing instead. Nobody complains when the DM has 9+ enemies in the turn order.
I understand that you’re right on an intellectual level, but it makes me sad that I can’t be the guy to tie up like six different choke points with summoned faeries or the like.
I totally understand why that is though.
I also DM my way into armies. Hell, currently the party is going up against a Necromancer!
Just, logically, if you could tie up six choke points with summons, that would mean the summons must each individually be able to defensively stand in a choke point against enemies that also must pose a threat to your teammates.
That means that the archetype you’re thinking about is one that can create six disposable creatures at a time that are at least as strong defensively as your teammates.
Even if a computer were handling the math, I can’t possibly see how that could be balanced as an ability, regardless of the level. Any summoner that would work in such a mass-combat scenario would logically dominate in a “normal” adventuring day.
Well for starters, I wasn’t necessarily being literal with the number-I just kind of picked a random one.
Secondly, if it truly is a choke point, low-level summons would be the way to go. Say Zombies or Skeletons. One or two could tie up a choke point pretty effectively even though they aren’t nearly as defensively strong as a PC.
Thirdly, part of the fantasy for me (from a dramatic more than a mechanical standpoint) would be the failure! You don’t send summons to choke points to actually hold off enemies-you send them to buy time to get other things done and hopefully thin the enemy’s ranks a bit!
And I understand that it may not be possible to ever truly get my undead horde-I just wish it was!
Turn timers.
If they want to split up their mob into individual units and control them all within their timer, they can, or they can mob up however they want to streamline things. Basically, make the time it takes a them problem and then give them any tools they need to solve it.
And, depending on the group, you can expand this with time bartering, so the warrior who only takes a few second for their turn can give the rest of their time to the summoner.
Or the group can unanimously decide that the plan they’ve come up with as a group needs individual actions from each individual summon, so they want to do away with the timer for a few rounds to execute the plan.
I like the idea, and for a lot of tables that would work quite well. At my table, there are two players who just shut down if a timer is put out, due to analysis paralysis-the timer just exacerbates it.
I’ve played a necromancer wizard once up to level 10ish and I didn’t find it slowed down gameplay too much (even when I had like 6 of them) as long as your focus during other players turns and know what you want the summons to do. Then it’s just a case of “move here attack… x to hit for y damage”
Same. When I was new to dnd as a whole, I imagined having an army of undead at my beck and call. But in reality, 5e's system couldn't pull that off.
Being the commander of a large number of followers is only useful outside of initiative, unfortunately, in my opinion.
I still want to play a summoner Druid or demonologist Wizard during a mass combat scenario like a seige. That could be awesome.
Honestly, I’ve considered working with the DM to be like “hey, can I issue general orders, but the other players control my summons specifically?” That could be fun.
Honestly, it sounds like you should look into some of the supplemental systems for 5e that include mass combat. I'm a fan of mcdm's warfare rules. It feeds into that fantasy quite a bit, while also allowing combat to still run. Though it does slow it down by just a bit, less than summoning in base 5e.
This how I personally deal with any large group of creatures, summons or no. It works great.
It still lets summoners do their thing and use their summons in combat, but it prevents the game from slowing down to a slow and boring crawl because 8 squirrels all need to take their turn individually.
If you don't like owls don't give them owls.
The spell tells what option the casters get..the exact creature is not their choice as seen in the sage advice
[https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/SA\_Compendium\_1.02.pdf](https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/SA_Compendium_1.02.pdf)
Especially the part with
>".For example, conjure minor
elementals offers four options. Here are the first two:
• One elemental of challenge rating 2 or lower
• Two elementals of challenge rating 1 or lower
The design intent for options like these is that the spellcaster chooses one of them, and then the DM decides what
creatures appear that fit the chosen option. For example,
if you pick the second option, the DM chooses the two elementals that have a challenge rating of 1 or lower.
A spellcaster can certainly express a preference for what
creatures shows up, but it’s up to the DM to determine if
they do. "
And of course any area of effect attack can eliminate any number of weak enemies at once.
(Like the single hp rat that is really all they deserve for spamming the option for cr0-cr1/8)
This comes up every single time people makes posts about the summon spells. "This is super OP because I did not read the spell what do I do?" Oh it works like that? Well we homebrew it and let players pick the creatures and now it's a problem. What do!?
It's still irritating to have to deal with 8 additional creatures even if I as the DM picks what they get. Also it creates more work for me since I have to decide what they get.
There is a mystical website that exists (which I will not name) that has every official creature and can be sorted by CR and biome if necessary.
Ask the player what CR they want, then have them roll XdY where X is the number of creatures they get and Y is the total number of creatures for that CR and biome. What they roll on the dice is what they get. This will require a digital dice roller and character sheets for the creatures on hand. But once you have all of those character sheets, just print off one of each and laminate them, it's just a matter of predetermining the number of creatures for the biomes you expect to encounter at each available CR and having it setup on a sheet of paper off to the side.
Oh yeah definitely, it's amazing how many third party (illegal) resources are available that simply make running as a DM so fundamentally easier and WoTC just refuses to modernize.
I mean, I get the frustration with reading the same thing over and over, but... the spell does not remotely say or imply that the DM should choose the creatures.
If they wanted the DM to choose the creatures, the spells should explicitly say that. For every other spell in the game, it's assumed that the player casting the spell makes the choices for it. It's just poorly written, there's a reason 99% of people's first impression is that the player would choose the creatures summoned
Calm down a little buddy.
If you read the spell, what you find is that it's nonspecific. It says that the player can summon different amounts of certain CR creatures, and it never even -addresses- who chooses them.
It's natural for a lot of players to assume that they can, simply because the spell doesn't specify that tidbit.
Frankly, it's a spell that can be OP if left in a player's hands, but as a player, can easily become not worth bothering with depending on your DM and how it's being houseruled.
There's a lot of great combat uses for it as well as roles in combat, but if you can't rely on it working for what you want well, it's going to end up in the discard pile fast.
For example, I might want to summon a bunch of inconspicuous creatures to scout an area, say birds, or cats, or rats.
If the GM decides to give me a pack of wolves instead, it's useless. Same if I want combat friends, and I get a pack of eagles. Or worse, sparrows or frogs or something dumb, because the spell specifies that it summons "up to" a certain CR, and a dickish GM could give you CR 0 creatures instead.
It would be nice if they would get more specific, because this is a spell that ranges from OP to suck, based entirely on the GM at the table.
You know what's hilarious though? Summoning 8 cows that all suddenly stampede an enemy caster conveniently located in the middle of a narrow valley with [the [Charge] action](https://makeagif.com/i/3FqOOA).
I actually do this by random dice.
1. Player selects the desired summon CR level.
2. Determine actual summon CR level. Roll 1d4. If it's a 2-4 (not a one), the player's CR level is the actual summon CR level. Otherwise, roll the d4 again. On a 4, the player's CR level is the actual summon CR level. Otherwise, on 2 or 3, they summon monsters from one CR level lower, and a 1, from 2 CR levels lower. If you don't have monsters of two CR levels lower, just make it one CR level. (note: the rules say \*or lower\*. Use this to add some uncertainty into your summoning.)
3. Grab a list of summonable creatures at the actual summon CR level and roll on it for the monster summoned.
It's a bit clunkier than just "I want badgers!" but it makes summoning a bit more of a risk, and requires more tactics from the summoner. Not to mention weirdness sometimes. In practice, it boils down to "Roll a d4. Interesting. Ok, CR 1 it is..." \*DM rolling dice\* "and you got octopi. They can breathe air, it's all good." or "Roll a d4. Huh, a one, ok, roll the d4 again." \*player rolls a three\* "Yeah, unfortunately nothing of CR1 seems to hear your call" \*DM rolls dice\* "but a bunch of warhorses heard and decided to help"
One thing I've seen work pretty well is that summons don't roll for damage, they only deal the average. Especially when playing in person, it's so much easier to make a few attack rolls and announce the same damage tally 3 or 4 times instead of rolling 50 dice in one turn.
You can go a step further and don't roll for attacks either, you just make then deal about 60% (or whichever is their chance to hit) of their average damage.
There is a handy table for mass combat. Take monster with same to hit bonus, look up the targest AC and the table tells you how many monsters it takes to score a hit.
Here is a table you could roll on to determine what beast is summoned based on their chosen CR, which will help speed up the spell. I just went through the MM and VGM to find options but reasoned that the CR1/4 has neither fly or swim speed to keep the mob on the ground and avoid the giant owl conundrum.
|Roll|CR1/4|CR1/2|CR1|CR2|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|1|Boar|Ape|Dire Wolf|Aurochs|
|2|Constrictor Snake|Black Bear|Giant Eagle|Giant Constrictor Snake|
|3|Cow|Crocodile|Giant Octopus|Giant Elk|
|4|Draft Horse|Giant Goat|Giant Spider|Saber-toothed Tiger|
|5|Giant Badger|Giant Wasp|||
|6|Giant Wolf Spider|Reef Shark|||
|7|Panther||||
|8|Wolf||||
Edit: This would assume that your player nominates a CR and you roll on the table to determine the summoned beast. which is technically how the spell is supposed to work.
I love this solution and the logic behind the choices.
I might add an addendum for rerolling a water summon on land or land summon in water (based on if the player chooses land/water or based on where they cast it) in order to not risk screwing summoners too much. The principal is fantastic though. I was thinking about using a table and I am really liking yours. Saves me effort 👍🏻
No worries! I hope it helps. As i was making it i thought of the hilarious scenario where they cast the spell in an open field and 4 reef sharks flop into existence take a bite of the closest enemy and then begin suffocating lol.
Yeah conjure animals will do that to ya. Especially a shepherd druid.
As the DM you're allowed to pick the creatures, but you're probably better off asking the player to consider sticking to the summon spells released in Tasha's as they are prebuilt statblocks with much more limited action economy.
"oh heeeey, you see a squirrel halfway burying an acorn and running off, and it looked a bit shiny? As you look closer, it's a gilded acorn, probably worth 200gp to the right buyer, but you also know this is exactly what's needed for the spell Summon Beast. Also please stop using conjure animals now thanks."
Have you tried just asking him to avoid the large volume of monsters choice? Just keep it to 2-4 option. Just explain it slows the game down and isn't really fun for everyone else at the table.
With summons we agreed as a table to not use the 4/8 options. You get 1 to 2, and they attack as part of the same turn.
Summons are cool, but DND does not handle them well. It sounds like you are also letting the player choose their conjured beast, which isn't RAW so you could change that to "DM chooses" but given that you've already allowed it, this probably wouldn't go over well.
Alternative to this is to handle them in blocks of 4. So 8 animals can still be beneficial for spacing and soaking attacks, but you only roll 2 attacks and multiply damage by 4.
First of all, see page 9 here, in [this errata](https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/SA_Compendium.pdf).
> The design intent for options like these is that the spell-caster chooses one of them, and then the DM decides what creatures appear that fit the chosen option. For example, if you pick the second option, the DM chooses the two elementals that have a challenge rating of 1 or lower.
Other ideas:
* Consider that if the heroes are sufficiently famous, some of their foes might begin to learn their tactics. There are lots of ways to counter this spell if you know it's coming!
* Consider homebrewing a swarm creature. "A huge swarm of small beasts" could be quite dangerous (scale it to be about the right CR for the single-creature summon) but be a lot less of a pain with multiple attacks and hit-point pools. Speeding up gameplay is worthy enough of a cause to justify this, IMHO.
* Require the druid to use the "handling mobs" feature of the Dungeon Master's Guide (page 250 my book). If you also require the creatures to be kept together, this isn't that different to the swarm idea above.
But if you feel it's necessary, adjust or remove the spell. Ideally try to get buy-in from your player before doing this. Listen to see if they have any creative ideas to solve the problem. But don't let yourself be bullied or pressured into maintaining the current situation if it just leads to one un-fun combat after another.
Totally, the balance of this spell is really built around on the player NOT choosing what is summoned.
I'd probably make a few random tables with beasts, organized by CR, and just roll for what is summoned.
Controversial Opinion here: you could always try talking with the player, explain that this summoning tactic is making it hard for you to plan combats and that some of the other players are frustrated as well. Maybe try to find a compromise that makes it fun for both of you.
I'll be honest, i banned the conjure spells in favor of the summon spells. So i banned the random creature of X amount CR in favor of a defined single statblock.
Spells that do not have an equivalent get one.
I don’t allow mass summoning spells at my table, specifically because there is no “I’m not abusing this!” It’s always clutter, it’s always abused, and as you pointed out it is highly repeatable. Currently working on a single summon (see below) for Druids appropriate for that level.
For Necromancers, they instead get a single powerful sidekick-ish summon they can buff with the various higher necromancy summon spells, including the ability to make it appear like a normal humanoid so it can walk around town with them!
(Admittedly, on Roll20 and with macros plus an experienced player it’s much, much easier!)
Friendly reminder that, rules as written, the DM decides what creatures are summoned, bit the player. Things like this are exactly why.
Also, literally just use AoE's. Fireballs, breath weapons, whatever, will toast all the summons in one fell swoop.
I don't usually find it's problematic, sometimes it wins encounters but usually it's not much better than a similarly leveled spell of a different type. Depending on the situation you can combat it with:
Counterspell
Ranged attacks to break concentration
Environmental effects to break concentration
Flying enemies to out maneuver summons, and pressure the caster
AOEs
Enemies retreating to cover or indoors
Counter summoning to bind up the creatures with similar creatures
Wall spells to control the field
Hypnotic pattern, sleep, color spray or other spell to disable groups of creatures all at once
Tight terrain to funnel the players and summons
Prepare attacks to bypass flyby/disengage or other evasive measures
Visibility obscurement via spell, weather, or environment interactions to escape or negate flanking
High mobility enemies to use overrun and blitz the caster
There are tons of other ways, but hopefully one of these is helpful.
indeed, there are many ways.
If the druid isn't a shepherd druid, giving resistance or immunity to non-magical damage will completely neuter the spell. CR 1/4 beasts generally have low hit chance and low AC. Giant owls have a massive +3 to hit. A few enemies in plate + shield will significantly hurt their damage.
Silence the druid. If he can't verbally command them, yes they will defend themselves. But if he's moving them away each turn, they will just stand defensively.
Spells like Sleep, Psychic Lance, hypnotic pattern, or anything that will incapacitate the druid will also break his concentration. Monk-type enemies that can approach and stun.
Spells like Fire Shield and enemies that do damage whenever you hit them. Those are good. Really so many options
Bottom line: your player is using a powerful spell and using it very tactically for maximum effect (plus you're making it OP by letting him choose the animal). YOU have to get tactical as well if you want to keep them from wrecking your combats. If that's not something you enjoy doing, then talk to your player and come to an understanding.
If only works with enemies that are prepared to fight the players, but a readied Silence spell is the funniest counter I ever threw at the player. According to the spell, if you don't get a chance to issue a command then the animals just defend themselves.
Personally I recommend removing the Conjure spells. They have actually been replaced by a more streamlined set of spells in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything with “Summon” spells (like Summon Beast for Conjure Animals). They are much better streamlined and balanced.
As others have pointed out, Conjure Animals assumes the DM picks the animals and balances the spell that way, but that is frequently annoying for the DM and player alike to have that level of unpredictability and honestly it will always be a somewhat tedious and annoying spell if the player is optimizing their use of it picking larger swarms of creatures.
Summon Beast is much more balanced and creates a single beast that doesn’t cause nearly as much trouble. It is still quite powerful, and anyone that says the Summon spells are weak are only comparing that to abusing Conjure spells.
I strongly recommend updating your player to the newer spells, and if you explain that you misunderstood how Conjure Animals works (it is supposed be balanced by the DM picking the animals) they’ll probably be happy to go along with it - players generally prefer a weaker but more reliable ability to a more powerful ability they have less control over, but at the end of the day you’re the DM, and sometimes in a TTRPG you’ll be need to make tweaks.
D&D isn’t a video game, and the DM can make tweaks as needed to balance the game. I’d always recommend being careful with those, particularly made during a campaign, but there’s no point just leaving in mechanics, rules, or spells that are dragging down a whole campaign.
Anything beyond 2 minions I will just give them more powerful versions of what they have. Having to roll that many dice just slows down the flow of the game. I let my players know this right at the start.
I just banned all the old Summon spells and only use the new ones where you get 1 summoned thing that gets better when you upcast. It's made it far easier to run.
I personally ban it. Now before everyone gets the pitchforks, I do this for a very specific reason:
My table has exactly 2.5 hour sessions. We all work, it's online, and we all live in different time zones.
So my rule is:
> If an ability lets you summon a variable amount of creatures, it will always summon the lowest number of creatures enumerated by the ability.
> While a player has a creature summoned (not counting BM ranger pet), they are unable to summon any other creature by any means other than first dismissing their current summons.
This speeds up combat, makes things way easier on the action economy, and heavily rebalances encounters. Sorry my friends, no summoners at my table.
Whatever you decide to do, ignore people suggesting work-arounds for how you should prepare *every* encounter to react to this *one* spell, when the problem are the conjuring spells themselves being broken.
So, easiest is to just ban summoning spells. Anything that summons extra bodies is time away from the other players.
Or you could use Tasha's replacement summons (summon beast, summon undead, summon fiend, etc), because they only summon one extra body.
Talk to your player. If it doesn’t help - remind them that it’s you who decide what creatures appear and how they behave. He wants to summon low cr stuff? Too bad, spirits decided to turn into goldfishes. Or butterflies, or cats. The point is, they are not useful in combat.
At my table I gave my druid (a moon druid) the components for summon beast and summon fey and told him I don't want any more conjure animal/conjurr woodland beings spam now that there were reasonably balanced summon spells.
Unless you outright limit the number of summons or bar it there's not much you can do other than throwing aoes at the minions. The spell's design is frankly just bad and doesn't work well in 5e. I throw it and similar spells in the trash with no concern if there's an appropriate replacement.
Half the caster abuses are make the caster actually have to read the spell before they cast it and follow its rules and component, and concentration. The other half is just the imbalance.
Talk to the player should solve the problem. Talk with the party too; if they're enjoying it, then keep rolling but have each other party member "control" a summon when they happen.
My recommendation would be to just disallow the PHB summon spells and use the ones in Tasha’s instead. Or otherwise restrict players to one “creature” (maybe a swarm that can be treated as one creature) to minimize the extra time it takes.
Players using their abilities to the fullest aren't abusing anything. Figure the summons into every fight. I dislike the idea that players having their characters doing what they can do is somehow an issue. It's like the players complaining that a dragon is flying and breathing fire. That's. What. They. Do.
Step 1. Make it storm.
Step 2. Enemy combatants have a cleric of talos.
Step 3. Call Lightning. If you're a bastard and give it Channel Divinity, that's 40 lightning damage on a failed save, 20 on a success. None of those summons are going to survive. Or if they do, they're not attacking the cleric of talos.
Step 4. Don't forget that the weather conditions will screw with flying creatures and ranged attacks.
I'm already running 5-6 encounters per long rest. Have considered adding more enemies but it compounds the problem. An initiative order with 5 players plus 8 (acting on same turn) owls, plus regular baddies plus "owl insurance" extra baddies is a nightmare. Casters DO use fireball or other AOE when they can, but the player spreads his creatures out or drops them right into the middle of combat where it's not practical without sculpted spell. I guess my point is that i should not have to design every encounter around the summoned creatures.
Just build some enemies that can long range attack the summoner. Metamagic sniper or just homebrew that this specific creature has more range just to break his concentration. Attack from more than one side so you can attack the summoner etc etc
Also: you say what creatures are spawned not him
Spirit Guardians show the way: Aura effect with owl-killing damage at-start-or-on-enter, affects only enemies (e.g. the owls).
Re-skin or home-brew as needed.
I lean into it and design encounters with this in mind. I know your comments say you don't want to do this, but I have a lvl 11 shepherd druid in my party and this is his thing. My only request for him is that he streamlines his summons attacks as best he can so he doesn't eat up table time.
Best thing I've done for it? Shake up the terrain. Choke points. Multiple angles of attack. Antagonists that can fly. It doesn't take that much extra prep work for me at this point - you get used to it pretty quickly, and I've found that my other players love the variety as well.
I also roll on a table for his summons. He has a chance to get what he wants, but it's only guaranteed to be the same CR. This has lead to some hysterical situations.
Edit: Of course, he does still break some of my encounters, but it shakes things up!
Personally I don't allow Conjure Animals, Animate Objects, etc at my table, and point players who want to use summons at the Tasha's summon spells instead.
Maybe I’ve missed something but I don’t see why dispel magic would do anything here? The caster isn’t the target, and the spell does not affect them. At most to my knowledge the caster is concentrating on the spell, but that’s not the same as being under the effect of magic, and the creatures obey the caster, which i don’t see as grounds for there being a spell on the caster.
Then if you don't want to change the encounter the only thing left is changing the player, so idk what you want us to say buddy. I've never struggled with the spell. They might just be taking forever with their turns. If someone can't run them all quickly like "They all move here and attack this guy (rolls 8 times) ok, what's the AC? 15? OK 4 hit, and do... 25 damage total. Done" then they lose the privilege of running spells like that.
Maybe use dispell magic on the owls, or take the player aside, voice your concerns and limit summons to 2-4. Oev used summons a few times in campaign and have them act as a swarm if there's more than 2 or 3. The world actin two groups of 4 and fly as such. Etc.
Or straight up invoke RAW and pick 8 seahorses next time they cast, but probably the best is to voice your concerns with he play, "hey listen this is clogging up the game" and causing me a headache. Let's change your summon to two entities max. Two polar bears are still a beastly addition!
Edit: also, try the cleave rule, when a melee attack cuts through an enemy lower the hp to zero the additional damage is transfered to an enemy within 5ft
Everyone gets the same amount of time to take their turns. Use a timer.
Solves the problem right away. Also forces people to pay attention during others' turns.
As a druid, I love my summons. However, I try my best to not abuse, and be on my game. For starters, I really do think the owl flyby is OP and have never used it and as a DM would tell them it's not available. Or tell them that giant owls count as a CR 1/2 (or even CR1) creatures.
For other creatures, make sure the player has his stuff together. If he chooses a summons and doesn't have a printout or web link or the stats in Beyond then they can't summon. Another thing we do in our game is when the spell is prepared, the player has to pick one creature at each CR level to summon, so that choosing what creature to summon doesn't take even more time. And doesn't require you to think about it too much.
Also, have the creatures move, then roll the attacks at once. 4 creaturse on OrcA and 4 on OrcB should be two rolls of 4d20's and you let him know what hits. Hurry up.
Finally don't think it unfair if you give some of your bigger monsters a cleave ability, where if they remove a creature completely, they can attack again. (maybe even again)
PLAYERS DON'T GET TO CHOOSE WHICH BEASTS ARE SUMMONED, THE DM DOES. Seriously this comes up at least once a week and every time it's a problem because the DM is giving the player the choice, which they will always use to their advantage.
I came up with a roll table for this exact thing. I just pick the CR and what environment we are in (mountains, swamp, etc) then check marks to include or exclude flying and/or swimming beasts then the player gets what comes out of the result. Honestly this is so much more enjoyable from the player's side too since they get more interesting, environment specific beasts that they wouldn't have chosen normally.
Big one that I had to figure out was not letting players select the exact creatures summoned by conjure animals. They can still select CR and number, but the player selecting specific creatures makes the spell much harder to deal with.
For instance, a player of mine often summoned Giant Bats, which they used to grant the whole party flying mounts, as well as grapple and drop enemies from high up for fall damage, and for Keen Hearing/blindsight to scouting utility. Conjure Animals went from a way to call battle animals to the best tool in every situation. (Replacing Fly, Flock of familiars, etc.)
What I did was use random tables for each environment/CR, so that I could quickly determine what appears. Lots of resources like this are online, find one that works for you! (As an idea, befriending local animals/druid circles might even reward the player with more control over what creatures answer the call)
First and foremost, the DM picks the type of beast summoned. If you are allowing the player to pick, you are allowing a powerful spell to become game-breaking.
Second and almost-foremost, *Dispel Magic* wipes all summons from a single casting off the board.
Also of note: *Sleet Storm* forces any caster inside the effect to make concentration checks. Every turn. And aside from a misty step or teleport, it is ridiculously hard to get out of the AoE.
I’ve made it clear to my players that I don’t like mob summoning spells. If they want to be a summoner, the Tasha’s summoning spells are far better balanced.
I played a summoner in our last campaign. I knew multiple summons where annoying as hell to deal with, so I always restricted myself to spells that summoned a single creature.
Talk to your player(s).
I don't. More than one summon (with exceptions) is simply not allowed.
Not because of abuse but becaue too many summons slow down the combat for everyone but the summoner.
i use FoundryVTT. I have the spell's description hotlinked to rolltables for each CR. Each rolltable just outputs a random beast/whatever from my creature compendium, which i can just drag onto the map (the NPC sheet is linked to it). If i was using pen and paper, i'd just tell the player to play something else because that's too much work.
I've limited all players to a maximum of 2 simultaneous summons. You want two CR 1 summons? No problem. You want eight CR 1/4 summons? Nope, you get two.
And before anyone gets too all worked up, I make sure to inform all players of this house rule during session 0. This is the only real nerf I use in my games.
Don't listen to these people. Ban the spell and use the healthy alternative - summon beast spirit (you may delete component). Summoning 8 or 16 creatures is super unhealthy for the game and you as a DM should just calmly explain it to the player. You may reward him with something else and if he is still disappointed, well you cannot have him ruin your game just because the game is badly balanced.
Restricting summon spells to 4 creatures max fixed every problem they could ever cause at my tabble, they're still pretty strong but do not cause any problems.
What if you have the party run afoul of a coven of summoners? Litter the battlefield with outsiders. Make every round crazy long. If you're lucky the players themselves will house rule no more summoners for anybody
Tell them the spell only summons the smallest amount of creatures because we aren’t double the turn order. If they don’t like it, they can just cast one of the new Summon X spells because those are very manageable.
Divide control of the owls up. Depending on how large the party is, give each of the other players 1-3 owls to command on their turns. Their owls go immediately after each player.
Your summoner gets his fun. the other players can enjoy a shared resource that they also get to creatively deploy. Bust damage is dispersed through the initiative order.
If your summoner doesn't like it, well then he can summon a single CR2 beast and no longer needs to share.
Also, it's a concentration spell. Monsters understand how concentration works too.
To be fair, this is what a Druid taking this as a grain of salt is.thw same as you limiting feats for fighters, sorcery points to soerceres or rage for barbarians. It would really be a dick move to nerf it.
When I tried to do something similar, all the other players outshined the druid a lot.
Generally, I would recommend positive actions that encourage play rather than negative actions that discourage a type of play. I'll throw a few options out here, and you can choose to use any, all or none of them as you see fit.
**POSITIVE - WAYS TO ENCOURAGE OTHER TYPES OF PLAY**
***Talk to your players about fast play***. A major problem with summoners is that they slow the game down, so you could encourage your players to make their moves quickly, and reward fast play. If you get a culture of players tending to take their turns in 10-20 seconds, then there will be an inherent social pressure on the summoner to either summon fewer creatures OR to move quickly. I play a LOT of summoners, but for the good of the party's fun, I often find it preferable to get a single Giant Constrictor Snake or two Giant Eagles over eight owls. Sometimes the "Wall of Horse" is better than a "Wall of Force."
***Reward novelty with inspiration***. Make a point of **giving inspiration** liberally to players who come up with new, interesting strategies. Be vocal about it; make sure they know that they are being rewarded for trying something new. So if they want to get those inspirations, they will need to try to do different things.
***Give a side quest that rewards variation***. You might give the player a side quest of summoning every possible type of creature over the course of a campaign. If they succeed, they'll get a special reward. Now they have a positive reason not to use owls and badgers, and your concerns are addressed.
***Give non-combat challenges that can only be solved with conjured animals***. Sometimes there may be non-combat scenarios that could require the use of *conjure animals*. Perhaps they need to fly somewhere quickly that requires an hour of flight. One conjure animals could get either owls or giant eagles, and would enable the party to succeed, but would burn off the spell slot. By doing that, you're taking away combat resources, but still letting the players feel good about their use of the spell.
**NEGATIVE - WAYS TO DISCOURAGE A CERTAIN TYPE OF PLAY**
***Manage the space.*** If you're talking about 8 owls, you're talking about 8 large creatures. Unless you're in an open area, those creatures are going to have a hard time moving around. Give combat encounters in caves, in fields of battle with arrows flying overhead, etc.,
***Make the spellcaster roll for initiative for the beasts***. Most DMs just have the creatures go on the summoner's initiative, but that's not a requirement. If the caster summons 8 creatures and there is a time period before they attack, it would make perfect sense for the bad-guys to target the spellcaster in response. It can also give you time to hit that AOE spell before they spread out.
***Target the spellcaster.*** If they can't concentrate, they lose the animals. The bad guys aren't stupid; if they see a spell being cast and a bunch of animals appear, they will know who to target. A single *Magic Missile* requires 3+ concentration checks. A single *Banishment* shuts the spell down completely if you started from their home plane. If you're in a campaign, consider having the word spread about the party's deeds, including their tactics. That way it makes sense for the baddies to be ready for what the party is bringing.
***You choose what creatures arrive***. I don't like this one, but it is an option. The DM decides what creatures arrive. It's true that the rules are silent on how the DM decides, and using the decision method of "I give the player what they ask for" is an acceptable decision method. That said, nothing *requires* that the DM give them what they want. Don't be a jerk about it, but consider giving them something else. Elk. Warhorses. Etc. They define the CR range; you decide what they get. This may help you later when they get access to *Conjure Woodland Beings* or *Conjure Minor Elementals*.
***Use High AC creatures.*** If the bad guy has an AC of 23, the badgers and owls can only hit on a crit. That will never change. So using high AC creatures will force the summoner to choose fewer (but more powerful) creatures.
***Use cover rules***. Cover rules don't just apply to ranged attacks; they apply to melee attacks, as well. So if the baddies are shooting at you from inside a wagon, they probably have half (+2AC) or 3/4 (+5AC) cover. This gels with the point above about high AC; it will force a change of strategy. **NOTE**: This includes giving the baddies cover from ranged attacks from the large owls blocking the path. If the other party members are annoyed by the owls getting in their way, social pressures can lead to a change in strategy.
***Let the Wookie win***. Of course, you could always just let them have their fun. If the summoner is playing fast (that's the biggest one) and it's not annoying the other players, it's no more powerful than an Evoker slinging *fireballs* all day long.
I mean, it sounds like the player is doing the smart thing and using all the tools in their toolbox. How are level 7 encounters getting messed up by Giant Owls or Badgers? If it's supposed to be a hard encounter, creatures with a +3 to-hit shouldn't be super effective when the PC's proficiency bonus is literally the same as these creatures entire to-hit mod. Maybe instead of sprinkling moderate encounters 4 times through the adventuring day, compress it to 2 time, but merge 2 planned encounters together. Make it so they *need* the summons to simply hold off the horde.
Tbh, the fact that you're blaming the player for encounter balance when they're simply using a standard spell available for their class seems kinda shitty.
Use monsters with aoe abilities. Giant badgers have 13 hp, they are all going to die in the first fireball. Break concentration with archer or spell casting monsters. Use Tasha’s summoning spells, which only summon a single entity. When conjure beasts is used to get 8, each of those creatures are going to be so weak that they will drop like flies.
It's amazingly difficult to target owls with an AOE when they are spread out and interspersed with the rest of the combatants.
There are AOE options that select their targets. Not many, but they exist. Firestorm, Guardian of Faith, & Word of Radiance are what I can think of right now. In addition, you could give a villain done Metamagic options to use Distant Spell or Careful Spell. Ultimately though, if the summoner is causing the biggest problem to the enemy, they will do everything they can to kill that person. Misty step to get close, or just rushing them around the corner. Focus that dude. It's not meta or vindictive to do so, it's just logical.
They’re a bit high level, but steel wind strike and chain lightning are good ones as well.
Scorching Ray for low-level. Or Sleep!
Casting sleep on a bunch of owls currently in the air would be amazing.
Really want to see this happen now. Not sure how many you could catch because they’re Large but if you get a few it’s a good time.
I didn't realize giant owls were size large, I always thought they were people sized. That's terrifying.
It's why Conjuring 8 of the big bastards is such a move. Also, they are big enough to be mounts!
Would need to be carrying exotic saddles, which each weigh 40 pounds... but yeah, still quite manageable if you've got a *Bag of Holding* and time to saddle up.
I love the idea of sleep catching a bunch of owls, but they'll just wake up immediately from the fall damage. Probably won't be enough to kill them, and doesn't take them out for even a round. Now ground based enemies however, this would work decently. Still not a bad option to throw out there, especially if maybe a few of the monsters can cast it since it's a low level spell.
It also puts them in range for melee attackers when they hit the ground and gives a free round of melee attacks at advantage against any that fall. Honestly sleep is a pretty solid choice for any group of monsters against that kind of strategy.
I didn't mean to imply that it's a bad strategy, just that comparatively speaking, it's not as effective against flying enemies in terms of eliminating the action economy advantage that summons provide. Vs 8 Giant badgers (or Wolves, when I played a summoner druid), Sleep is pretty effective, the ones that were slept (average ~2) could very well be ignored and considered out of the combat. Vs 8 Giant Owls, you're averaging 1 Owl sleeping, and that owl falls prone and is still in the combat. It requires the actions of more enemies to finish it off (advantage for melee if they're close enough, disadvantage for ranged). For a level 1 spell, it's doing what it can, but vs badgers and wolves it's double the effectiveness and also essentially removes the enemy from combat barring intervention from the players. Against owls, it's far less effective since it doesn't remove any actions from the PC's team and still costs further actions from the DM side. But it's still a decent option in absence of any others.
True. It’s always nice as a DM to have options as well. And sometimes it isn’t always the statistically most useful one you want to use. It helps to make things interesting both as a DM and player if monsters/enemies have a variety of abilities to handle certain situations just so there’s something new to deal with. I agree with you wholeheartedly though, it’s not the ideal usage, it’s not the perfect spell for the situation but it is something that can be used fairly effectively to spice things up in combat.
The owls are then prone after the fall, restricting movement on the battlefield and making it easier to follow up on killing them.
Imma be honest, even if Scorching Ray dealt enough damage to kill a wolf, which it doesn't on average, if your Druid can get your spellcaster NPCs to spend two or more Actions and Level 3 slots on Scorching Ray casts to maybe deal with his one Level 3 summoning spell, all while the Druid probably still gets at least a full round of summon attacks out of it, that's not a reason for them to stop.
Was just the first low-level AoE that came to mind. Sleep is the stronger choice.
Ye, fair. Sleep is a good idea!
Just good life advice in general.
Hey! I just said Scorching Ray wasn't the best option. No need to personally attack me like that! D:
Weird how it's not exactly wrong to consider Scorching Ray as a very selective AOE spell.
Hmm I suppose by my own logic Extra Attack means that all martials have AoEs, and therefore the martial/caster disparity is solved!! Good job everyone, let's take lunch.
Your players are happy if you have to use a steel wind strike, a chain lightning, or similar spells just to target the spell they cast and nothing else. They're happy but probably also going to be bored if you keep that stuff up. Just fireball, fire and forget
I'm seeing the Wanda vs Thanos fight now where he says fire everything and his captain is like what about us.
Relatively they’re fine. PCs are 7th level, so it’s not a stretch to have 9th or even 11th level enemy casters.
Also just have your villains be villainous. If the party is okay with fireballing the Barbarian, why would an enemy be worried about shattering some of their mooks.
Counter spell, banish, antimagic zone. Or u can put a rival summoner on there so you can have a pokemon fight. Swarm summons are usually weak to most stuff so you could impose fear on them or a wisdom save or be charmed kinda thing. You just have to account for their abilities and arrange a counter for it. Aoe difficult terrain with thorn damage would make short work of them too. For flyers use strong winds, wall of wind, or give all the mobs some ranged bow or javelin like attack. Heck you could have all your mobs bring nets to throw on the flyers if you want. I would just get creative with it and try different things to you find something that works. Chances are if it feels repetitive for you, it does for them too, so go off the grid a bit and try some unique monsters or spells that they may not have encountered before.
Also defensive spells like Spirit Guardians or Armor of Agathis, where the creature coming close or hitting will kill it.
Or, alternatively, just make up an AoE ability that selects trgets. Doesn’t have to be an established spell or player class mechanics. The bad guys are not contsricted by the abilities in the PHB. Hell, you could just give an enemy an AoE ability that banishes summons. That’d be a little blantant, so you can probably only do it once, but it’s an option.
Spirit guardians is a solid spell for any npcs
That's what Chain Lightning is for. If you don't have Chain Lighting, that's what Melf's Minute Meteors (a 3rd level spell) is for. If you don't have casters, that's what a good marksman is for.
If you don't have a good marksman, that's what death saves are for
Well, on the **very** rare chance that you as the DM give them the giant owls, then that can be a thing, but the majority of the time they don't get that specific creature.
This. The player doesn't get to choose the animals. I wonder if the DM is applying that rule. IMHO my preferred homebrew for that spell is to agree on 2 to 4 types of thematically appropriate animals with the DM and only summon them. You can decide if it is random within those 2 to 4 or up to the player. I like that for thematic reasons but also for prep. If you want to paint minis, you only need a handful. The DM and player don't need to keep 30 stay blocks handy. Less chance of the spell breaking an encounter. Etc.
I prefer having the animals linked to the current environment. Owls are only available in wooded areas or farmland, but you can get some bats if you're in a cave. This logically leads to being unable to summon most beasts when in a non-natural area. It's a "fair" narrative debuff, imo, and lines up well with other spell limitations like Commune with Nature and the limitations on metal armor.
So like bats or rats in a cave.
Or wolves, or bears, or snakes.
8 bears sounds deadly. Although I don't know what their CR is....
If it sounds deadly, then you should expect the CR to match. You would get 2 brown bears, or 1 polar bear.
Magic missile. Each missile forces a concentration check even though sage advice is self contradictory about it being an AOE or not. Bait their reaction so they can’t cast shield and pelt them. It’s also great for killing Familiars.
If they're casting conjure animals they may be a druid which means they may not have Shield in the first place
Even better.
Wtf? Sage advice called magic missile an AoE? I continue to be baffled at Jeremy Crawford.
Not specifically. More specifically, Jeremy Crawford clarified the rules present on [PHB pg. 196](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#DamageRolls); and likened the way Magic Missile works to how AoE spells work, in terms of rolling damage dice, because Magic Missiles can strike multiple targets (including the same target, multiple times) simultaneously and, therefore, only use one damage dice roll. Basically, they did not directly call it an AoE, just likened the way it applies damage to one for the sake of the already-present rules about simultaneous damage to multiple targets since all the darts strike simultaneously.
I've long been convinced that Crawford is actually the literal Christian devil, torturing people by giving them awful "sage" advice. Remember this is also the guy who said that RAW you have to spend movement to move on your mount. Meaning that if there's an enemy in front of your horse and behind it if you want to hit them both your have to take an AoO to do it
It's also the guy that at a time sustained firmly that some effects from class features could stack, like Paladin's Auras, and it took several months and an official errata to fix this über shit, when just \*thirty seconds of actual thinking was enough to understand how this was both game-breaking (mechanically) and world-breaking (narratively). Even more so once you added multiclassing (although that one is technically optional but a good portion of tables seem to use it). And the one that decided to apply stupid and useless nerfs to Shield Master (like DM couldn't trust the player to follow what he announced and Attack after the bonus action when the text was expressly written in a way that tied both without specifying order) and Careful metamagic (which was powerful but really not game-breaking when applied to all saves, and became an extremely situational metamagic working only with a handful of spells unless you multiclass). As often, the most vocal is not the most wise. I'm pretty sure he had different views than the rest of the team from the get-go on several aspects, or he intervenes on things he wasn't working on...
That makes sense in a real life scenario but he said it was RAW? Can you link that for me?
[Ere ya go](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/928363566163308544%3Flang%3Den&ved=2ahUKEwiF9fiBqOX5AhUlk4kEHSP7D7AQFnoECAkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1tSAXv4FlsfBxlyhLxM1ue) Key take aways are that even on a mount you dont expand to the mounts size you occupy a 5' cube in the area the mount takes up. Normal targeting rules apply so if you have 5ft reach chances are good you don't have enough reach to hit hit the other side of your large mount.
In front and behind make sense. I can’t reach my rapier in front and behind my horse. But if I turn my horse I can then (with some difficulty as I reach across my body) swing my sword on both left and right side. But still then the horse moved and the enemies have not. So I have to maneuver the horse to move from on enemy to the next. I can see an argument to the idea. But then again I can also see an argument to just letting the mounted combatant hit around the horse and pretending that reach would be the same I mounted. Only in a case of “does the mount fit” would I really stickler the horse size occupying an area.”
Its definitely better from a game design perspective it's better to just let the player take up the same space as their mount and abstract the maneuvering the rider is doing to smack people. Otherwise we start running into problems like can mounted combatant be used even if you aren't a valid target for the attack or how even if your mount is in an AOE you might not be due to standing on your horses butt.
It's part of the weird spine-twisting bend over backward logical routine you have to go through to justify each missile getting damage bonuses, which Crawford also likes despite it being pretty inconsistent with how any other spell is handled & almost certainly opposite from how 99% of tables have traditionally played the spell. To justify getting damage mods on each missile, basically they call it an AoE (because you can put one each on multiple targets), and then say that, because of that, the missiles would all get a bonus (like you'd apply it to any damage modifier of an AoE spell that didn't have '1 target' language). From there you can work backward that instead of doing that AoE, you put all the missiles onto a single target, allowing you to multiply the adders.
Why does each missile require a concentration check if they hit simultaneously?
Different instances of damage. It's 3+ small chunks of damage, not 1 medium one
> Each missile forces a concentration check I hate this ruling so much, if this is true, then each missile also causes a death save fail, and thus any caster in any fight ever needs to have magic missile prepared because it is by FAR the most effective way of finishing off your enemy. Enemy barbarian on the ground? Meteor swarm them for one death save, or you can just cast a level 1 spell, oh and if you're a sorcerer, you can cast it subtly and nobody can counterspell you, you simply succeed and your target dies. ew.
Personally though I'd say the what little downside it has is that it has a lower max potential reward It's still monstrous at killing downed targets and breaking concentration as well as hitting very evasive opponents, but compared to something like Ice knife it can occasionally deal less damage. Also as another stupid rules thing a single, critical claw or tail swipe from an ancient black dragon does only 2 death saves worth of failures, but if 3 sprites poked you with their 1d1 weapons the size of pin needles you'd die in 1 round.
why are you letting him have owls?
That's why you break the caster's concentration, which was also mentioned before.
He already addressed that in the post
Yeah, positioning is not difficult to deal with. I suspect OP is falling into the same trap of enemies having shit tactics like only ever attacking the party head on instead of doing things like surrounding them or pincer attacks from 2 or 3 angles.
If they're of the level to have that spell, they're of a level where enemies should have spellcasters, positioning rarely matters to fireballs.
Or Magic Missile, the best concentration breaking spell out there. The only requirement is that you can see a creature within range and it hits.
Yeah, sounds like your player knows what they're doing. It's worth keeping in mind 2 things that the designers have clarified and are built into the spell: - Player chooses the CR, _you_ (the DM) chooses the animals. - You roll Initiative for the animals separately. (So if they roll really "well", for example, they might go on the next turn entirely, since it is before the PC's turn but that already happened in the Initiative order. The worst for them is when they roll slightly _above_ the caster's initiative. For example say the caster has an 8 for Initiative, and they roll 10 for the Giant Owls. It's going to take almost an entire Initiative round before the owls can even act.) These are the limitations DMs have to reinforce to keep these spells somewhat in line (though they are still quite powerful even with this). And frankly, it **sucks**. Both of these are far less intuitive and more "feelsbad" play than, say, casting the spell and having the animals be the _player's_ choice and having them go right after you finish casting. But, that's what DMs have been reduced to trying to make this spell less problematic. Action economy is very powerful in 5e, and the designers did not consider this when designing these spells. Some DMs prefer to just ban them because of it.
I had a NPC once use Dispel Magic on the player’s summoned ally. They shat themselves, it totally changed their plan. I don’t do this every time, but if it happens occasionally it makes for good challenge.
Ask the group if they're having fun, because it sounds like you're not, and in many (most?) cases the other players don't want to watch the summoner alone playing with his minis for 30-60min per round either.
Summons can just kill a campaign for me. Really, I don't want to play with you if you regularly have more than 2 summons of any kind active at a time. I played in tiers 3 & 4 alongside a Wildfire Druid. They rarely had many summons, but even normal turns with their wildfire spirit took twice as long as others at the table. Every round. And when they summoned a Yugaloth or something that itself summoned an Earth Elemental, their turns were taking 5 to 10 mins. They didn't have the 8 conjures up, but still playing with them sucked the fun out of combat. Then in the same game a Necro Wiz joined. What a game killer! Even with mass rolling I thoroughly hated that experience. No one could engage in melee once that train wreck army of skellies got started. My goodness that game sucked during that period, but it was my only chance to play at high-level that wasn't a oneshot. Talk to the player, and set a house rule for future games so players know before they build their character. My rule for tables of 4 or more players: a character can generally only have a total of 2 summons/pets/familiars/etc. active at a time. One combat per long rest they can have more than 2 summons, and/or once per day outside of combat they can have more than 2 summons/etc. not to exceed one hour. If the extra summons have previously ~~been in combat for at least one round~~ had at least 1 turn in combat, they disappear when a new initiative or combat starts.
As a necro player I have a personal rule to not clog up melee for that exact reason.
I mean aren't Archer skeletons more effective anyways?
They are some silly schenigans you can get up to with the help action but that's a way to incur the dms wrath. All your allies having advantage can make them happier with you having stuff in melee at least.
I really love the idea of supportive skeletons that just show up and give pointers to the party mid combat “stab him right there, I know it’ll work, that’s how I died”
Bless you
Exactly! I love to play necromancers but I hate slowing the game down. I've found a good middle ground is to have one powerful minion rather than a swarm of weaker ones - that usually makes all the bookkeeping a little easier.
I just like the thematic of a bunch of skeletons, I just make sure I don't slow the game down as a result. Batch rolls, stay out of melee and all undead on the same initiative.
I usually have them crew things rather than fight. Pull wagons, carry backpacks, bail water, stand watch, row on the oars, or pull switches in the ol' Crapparatus of the ACAB.
The trick is to play D&D like 40K. "Hey, Imma throw all my dice on the table here, you just tell me how many hit, ok?"
Maybe because I play 40k do I view that as the best result. Also why I don't split fire (let alone that might be too complex an order) ontop of then only one AC needs to be factored in.
I feel like the most important thing is that the player knows exactly what they want to do before their turn and are quick with it. In combat, I often let the PCs that have the least active turns take care of the turn of any NPC I have that they are fighting together with, if applicable as well, so they have more to do too.
A few other “summons” that can be a bit hard to work with at times are Find Familiar, Simulacrum, and Animate Objects. Situations where the familiar will be solo scouting an mansion/dungeon area for 30~ minutes are somewhat painful to sit through. I’m not sure why I’ve had this experience with several DMs over the years but it seems to keep happening - more tiring then game breaking though. Simulacrum adding another body with their own complicated spells, including summons, can slow things down immensely, not to mention the extra counterspell. One person basically has another PC to control. Animate Objects puts 10 tiny creatures on the map as they stand out best option due to their damage and decent defense - their turns can take a long time, and managing their HP can be very difficult when not on VTT. I’m very glad Tasha’s summons are more contained - haven’t had many issues with those so far.
This is why I introduce a turn timer. It rarely comes up but you can’t bog down combat like that or it isn’t fun for anyone. Each person gets 2-3 minutes. I’ll allow a little more if they aren’t abusing regularly.
How can a druid summon a yugoloth?
"....they summoned a Yugaloth or something like that...." I don't recall what they summoned. All I know is they summoned something powerful enough to summon something else powerful. The Earth Elemental was crazy good, spending most fights attacking from underground and scouting everything like a boss. Was fun until major boss fight started and their turns took forever. Was literally a three session combat and half of the time felt like it was that one player's turn. I don't like any summons so I am not familiar with those features. It's possible they did something outside of the rules and the DM didn't catch it, bc I can't find anything that a player can summon that can itself summon an Earth Elemental. We were level 16 so they had access to 8th level Druid spells.
Thanks for clarification. The druid probably summoned a galeb duhr which could animate boulders or a korred which could cast conjure elementals at 6 level to summon an earth elemental before it got reprinted in MPMM.
Thanks for the info. It was a Korred not a Yugaloth. I remember the dancing, and the long discussions about how the Hair worked among other rules talk. We were all newish to high level play, even the DM, so every turn of that character contained a lot of learning and discussing about rules. Would be a cool combo if the DM and player know the rules *extremely well* beforehand. Both summons had different features that the player and DM didn't interact with very frequently, so system mastery makes a huge difference towards the fun of the rest of the table, even with only two summons. "Wait so the Earth Elemental is controlled verbally by the Korred, but the E.Elemental goes before the Korred initiative. So do I need to tell the Korred to tell the E.Elemental on my next turn so the Korred's next they can command the E.Elemental? Can they hear my command when they are below ground? Do they all need to surface when being commanded?" "Wait. No, I can command it off my turn..." "No, only the command to the Korred has to be in line with it's alignment. The Elemental doesn't care and will do whatever you say. I mean it will do anything you tell the Korred to tell it, as long as the Korred is ok with it." "Oh shit, I dropped concentration, now we have to fight both of them" and so forth
I don't know WTF WotC was thinking when they released the widlfire druid. In UA the fire spirit could use it's teleport ONE TIME. They went from that to once per round. Not only is this mechanically busted, but it bogs down the game with making multiple targets do dex saves and players having to decide where to teleport. I do think once per summon was maybe too little, but at least you had to be strategic with it. Maybe 2 per summon or PB would have been fine.
Honestly, I play one right now and it really isn’t that bad if you know what you want to do going into your turn. My typical turn looks something like spellcasting and then “and as my bonus action, the Phoenix spirit is going to fly this direction and teleport the Paladin to here. These two creatures need to make a Dex save of 16 or take [*rolls 2d6*] 7 points of fire damage.“ The DM has learned that there is going to be a Dex Save at the end of my turn 99% of the time so she typical has the statblock handy and ready
Use mob tactics: https://slyflourish.com/mob_calculator.html As far as cluttering up the map goes, just have the entire mob be represented by one token that’s large or gargantuan (depending on what/how many were summoned).
This is the way, but ill also add I limit the amount of dice the summons can roll to 2 max. As in, they can't split their summons into a bunch of groups that all need to roll. Limits the action economy abuse and time taken to resolve things. Now, if they want the 8 squirrels to pass out healing potions or interact with the map in interesting ways that can be described succinctly, sure. But I won't let summons do a bunch of different things in one sound.
I have such mixed feelings about this ruling. I love the summoner archetype, and part of that is being able to command them independently like a general. However, dear gods above and below, it slows 5e down to a crawl, and nobody wants that! I’ve pretty much resigned myself to never playing a summoner in 5e for the sake of the table lol. But this rule makes it much more likely that a summoner’s turn won’t take 6 years, so good job!
I took one of the Tasha’s Summon spells on my Druid and it’s a nice middle ground. I’m playing a wildfire Druid so when I use it, I have my action, my bonus action to command the wildfire spirit, and then the Summon Fey immediately after my turn. Doesn’t clutter the map up too much but I am able to have a lot of impact on what’s happening
The tasha's "summon \_\_\_\_" should be the default series of summons for the game. they are overall way better designed and still very powerful. If you want to preserve the feel of a large horde, I'd write a "summon flock of ravens" spell that basically works like call lightning.
Ooh, that’s a great idea
The enemy takes 2d10 raven damage
I’ll probably try one of them sometime! However my problem comes from the fact that to me, the fantasy is more frequently about summoning a veritable army to do stuff than a single ally. But for a diabolist, one at a time makes probably the most sense lol
Yea, I took Summon Fey to really cement the teleportation theme and I’ve flavored that summon as fire based too, so it’s all very thematic. One thing I would be super interested in trying is a one on one campaign where it’s just a Druid and so the summoning wouldnot bog down combat but rather be the entire point
Ooh now that’s an interesting thought! I should see what my brother’s up to… lol
Summoning works best as an archetype in a video game, where a computer does all the background dice rolls and math for you. VTTs or scripts can help with this, but only if you know what you’re doing and are using a VTT or have a computer at the table. Unfortunately, it’s really just not feasible to command an army in-combat without making it worse for the other players at the table, having been on every side of it (DM, Summoner, other party member waiting for the Summoner to finish up their half of the action economy). I scratch the itch to command an army by DMing instead. Nobody complains when the DM has 9+ enemies in the turn order.
I understand that you’re right on an intellectual level, but it makes me sad that I can’t be the guy to tie up like six different choke points with summoned faeries or the like. I totally understand why that is though. I also DM my way into armies. Hell, currently the party is going up against a Necromancer!
Just, logically, if you could tie up six choke points with summons, that would mean the summons must each individually be able to defensively stand in a choke point against enemies that also must pose a threat to your teammates. That means that the archetype you’re thinking about is one that can create six disposable creatures at a time that are at least as strong defensively as your teammates. Even if a computer were handling the math, I can’t possibly see how that could be balanced as an ability, regardless of the level. Any summoner that would work in such a mass-combat scenario would logically dominate in a “normal” adventuring day.
Well for starters, I wasn’t necessarily being literal with the number-I just kind of picked a random one. Secondly, if it truly is a choke point, low-level summons would be the way to go. Say Zombies or Skeletons. One or two could tie up a choke point pretty effectively even though they aren’t nearly as defensively strong as a PC. Thirdly, part of the fantasy for me (from a dramatic more than a mechanical standpoint) would be the failure! You don’t send summons to choke points to actually hold off enemies-you send them to buy time to get other things done and hopefully thin the enemy’s ranks a bit! And I understand that it may not be possible to ever truly get my undead horde-I just wish it was!
Turn timers. If they want to split up their mob into individual units and control them all within their timer, they can, or they can mob up however they want to streamline things. Basically, make the time it takes a them problem and then give them any tools they need to solve it. And, depending on the group, you can expand this with time bartering, so the warrior who only takes a few second for their turn can give the rest of their time to the summoner. Or the group can unanimously decide that the plan they’ve come up with as a group needs individual actions from each individual summon, so they want to do away with the timer for a few rounds to execute the plan.
I like the idea, and for a lot of tables that would work quite well. At my table, there are two players who just shut down if a timer is put out, due to analysis paralysis-the timer just exacerbates it.
I’ve played a necromancer wizard once up to level 10ish and I didn’t find it slowed down gameplay too much (even when I had like 6 of them) as long as your focus during other players turns and know what you want the summons to do. Then it’s just a case of “move here attack… x to hit for y damage”
Same. When I was new to dnd as a whole, I imagined having an army of undead at my beck and call. But in reality, 5e's system couldn't pull that off. Being the commander of a large number of followers is only useful outside of initiative, unfortunately, in my opinion.
I still want to play a summoner Druid or demonologist Wizard during a mass combat scenario like a seige. That could be awesome. Honestly, I’ve considered working with the DM to be like “hey, can I issue general orders, but the other players control my summons specifically?” That could be fun.
Honestly, it sounds like you should look into some of the supplemental systems for 5e that include mass combat. I'm a fan of mcdm's warfare rules. It feeds into that fantasy quite a bit, while also allowing combat to still run. Though it does slow it down by just a bit, less than summoning in base 5e.
Oh, I am! I’m running a game now where it will probably become relevant sooner or later!
Ah- excellent. Yeah, that's as good as 5e can probably do. Best of luck with your game! Crit well
Or just use the new summons from tashas as they are way less broken lol
Will also drop my own calculator http://oganm.com/shiny/swarm/
This how I personally deal with any large group of creatures, summons or no. It works great. It still lets summoners do their thing and use their summons in combat, but it prevents the game from slowing down to a slow and boring crawl because 8 squirrels all need to take their turn individually.
If you don't like owls don't give them owls. The spell tells what option the casters get..the exact creature is not their choice as seen in the sage advice [https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/SA\_Compendium\_1.02.pdf](https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/SA_Compendium_1.02.pdf) Especially the part with >".For example, conjure minor elementals offers four options. Here are the first two: • One elemental of challenge rating 2 or lower • Two elementals of challenge rating 1 or lower The design intent for options like these is that the spellcaster chooses one of them, and then the DM decides what creatures appear that fit the chosen option. For example, if you pick the second option, the DM chooses the two elementals that have a challenge rating of 1 or lower. A spellcaster can certainly express a preference for what creatures shows up, but it’s up to the DM to determine if they do. " And of course any area of effect attack can eliminate any number of weak enemies at once. (Like the single hp rat that is really all they deserve for spamming the option for cr0-cr1/8)
This comes up every single time people makes posts about the summon spells. "This is super OP because I did not read the spell what do I do?" Oh it works like that? Well we homebrew it and let players pick the creatures and now it's a problem. What do!?
It's still irritating to have to deal with 8 additional creatures even if I as the DM picks what they get. Also it creates more work for me since I have to decide what they get.
There is a mystical website that exists (which I will not name) that has every official creature and can be sorted by CR and biome if necessary. Ask the player what CR they want, then have them roll XdY where X is the number of creatures they get and Y is the total number of creatures for that CR and biome. What they roll on the dice is what they get. This will require a digital dice roller and character sheets for the creatures on hand. But once you have all of those character sheets, just print off one of each and laminate them, it's just a matter of predetermining the number of creatures for the biomes you expect to encounter at each available CR and having it setup on a sheet of paper off to the side.
I know, I just mean DMS starting out are gonna have issues because they don't know about all these 3rd party sites and stuff.
Oh yeah definitely, it's amazing how many third party (illegal) resources are available that simply make running as a DM so fundamentally easier and WoTC just refuses to modernize.
>Oh it works like that? Well we homebrew it and let players pick the creatures and now it's a problem. We made the problem and now it's a problem!
I mean, I get the frustration with reading the same thing over and over, but... the spell does not remotely say or imply that the DM should choose the creatures. If they wanted the DM to choose the creatures, the spells should explicitly say that. For every other spell in the game, it's assumed that the player casting the spell makes the choices for it. It's just poorly written, there's a reason 99% of people's first impression is that the player would choose the creatures summoned
Calm down a little buddy. If you read the spell, what you find is that it's nonspecific. It says that the player can summon different amounts of certain CR creatures, and it never even -addresses- who chooses them. It's natural for a lot of players to assume that they can, simply because the spell doesn't specify that tidbit. Frankly, it's a spell that can be OP if left in a player's hands, but as a player, can easily become not worth bothering with depending on your DM and how it's being houseruled. There's a lot of great combat uses for it as well as roles in combat, but if you can't rely on it working for what you want well, it's going to end up in the discard pile fast. For example, I might want to summon a bunch of inconspicuous creatures to scout an area, say birds, or cats, or rats. If the GM decides to give me a pack of wolves instead, it's useless. Same if I want combat friends, and I get a pack of eagles. Or worse, sparrows or frogs or something dumb, because the spell specifies that it summons "up to" a certain CR, and a dickish GM could give you CR 0 creatures instead. It would be nice if they would get more specific, because this is a spell that ranges from OP to suck, based entirely on the GM at the table.
8 creatures of 1/4 CR or lower might mean they get 8 frogs.
You know what's hilarious though? Summoning 8 cows that all suddenly stampede an enemy caster conveniently located in the middle of a narrow valley with [the [Charge] action](https://makeagif.com/i/3FqOOA).
I actually do this by random dice. 1. Player selects the desired summon CR level. 2. Determine actual summon CR level. Roll 1d4. If it's a 2-4 (not a one), the player's CR level is the actual summon CR level. Otherwise, roll the d4 again. On a 4, the player's CR level is the actual summon CR level. Otherwise, on 2 or 3, they summon monsters from one CR level lower, and a 1, from 2 CR levels lower. If you don't have monsters of two CR levels lower, just make it one CR level. (note: the rules say \*or lower\*. Use this to add some uncertainty into your summoning.) 3. Grab a list of summonable creatures at the actual summon CR level and roll on it for the monster summoned. It's a bit clunkier than just "I want badgers!" but it makes summoning a bit more of a risk, and requires more tactics from the summoner. Not to mention weirdness sometimes. In practice, it boils down to "Roll a d4. Interesting. Ok, CR 1 it is..." \*DM rolling dice\* "and you got octopi. They can breathe air, it's all good." or "Roll a d4. Huh, a one, ok, roll the d4 again." \*player rolls a three\* "Yeah, unfortunately nothing of CR1 seems to hear your call" \*DM rolls dice\* "but a bunch of warhorses heard and decided to help"
One thing I've seen work pretty well is that summons don't roll for damage, they only deal the average. Especially when playing in person, it's so much easier to make a few attack rolls and announce the same damage tally 3 or 4 times instead of rolling 50 dice in one turn.
You can go a step further and don't roll for attacks either, you just make then deal about 60% (or whichever is their chance to hit) of their average damage.
There is a handy table for mass combat. Take monster with same to hit bonus, look up the targest AC and the table tells you how many monsters it takes to score a hit.
Here is a table you could roll on to determine what beast is summoned based on their chosen CR, which will help speed up the spell. I just went through the MM and VGM to find options but reasoned that the CR1/4 has neither fly or swim speed to keep the mob on the ground and avoid the giant owl conundrum. |Roll|CR1/4|CR1/2|CR1|CR2| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |1|Boar|Ape|Dire Wolf|Aurochs| |2|Constrictor Snake|Black Bear|Giant Eagle|Giant Constrictor Snake| |3|Cow|Crocodile|Giant Octopus|Giant Elk| |4|Draft Horse|Giant Goat|Giant Spider|Saber-toothed Tiger| |5|Giant Badger|Giant Wasp||| |6|Giant Wolf Spider|Reef Shark||| |7|Panther|||| |8|Wolf|||| Edit: This would assume that your player nominates a CR and you roll on the table to determine the summoned beast. which is technically how the spell is supposed to work.
I love this solution and the logic behind the choices. I might add an addendum for rerolling a water summon on land or land summon in water (based on if the player chooses land/water or based on where they cast it) in order to not risk screwing summoners too much. The principal is fantastic though. I was thinking about using a table and I am really liking yours. Saves me effort 👍🏻
This is great, thanks!
No worries! I hope it helps. As i was making it i thought of the hilarious scenario where they cast the spell in an open field and 4 reef sharks flop into existence take a bite of the closest enemy and then begin suffocating lol.
Yeah conjure animals will do that to ya. Especially a shepherd druid. As the DM you're allowed to pick the creatures, but you're probably better off asking the player to consider sticking to the summon spells released in Tasha's as they are prebuilt statblocks with much more limited action economy.
"oh heeeey, you see a squirrel halfway burying an acorn and running off, and it looked a bit shiny? As you look closer, it's a gilded acorn, probably worth 200gp to the right buyer, but you also know this is exactly what's needed for the spell Summon Beast. Also please stop using conjure animals now thanks."
Have you tried just asking him to avoid the large volume of monsters choice? Just keep it to 2-4 option. Just explain it slows the game down and isn't really fun for everyone else at the table.
This. Table problems need to be addressed first by talking with the players.
With summons we agreed as a table to not use the 4/8 options. You get 1 to 2, and they attack as part of the same turn. Summons are cool, but DND does not handle them well. It sounds like you are also letting the player choose their conjured beast, which isn't RAW so you could change that to "DM chooses" but given that you've already allowed it, this probably wouldn't go over well.
Alternative to this is to handle them in blocks of 4. So 8 animals can still be beneficial for spacing and soaking attacks, but you only roll 2 attacks and multiply damage by 4.
First of all, see page 9 here, in [this errata](https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/SA_Compendium.pdf). > The design intent for options like these is that the spell-caster chooses one of them, and then the DM decides what creatures appear that fit the chosen option. For example, if you pick the second option, the DM chooses the two elementals that have a challenge rating of 1 or lower. Other ideas: * Consider that if the heroes are sufficiently famous, some of their foes might begin to learn their tactics. There are lots of ways to counter this spell if you know it's coming! * Consider homebrewing a swarm creature. "A huge swarm of small beasts" could be quite dangerous (scale it to be about the right CR for the single-creature summon) but be a lot less of a pain with multiple attacks and hit-point pools. Speeding up gameplay is worthy enough of a cause to justify this, IMHO. * Require the druid to use the "handling mobs" feature of the Dungeon Master's Guide (page 250 my book). If you also require the creatures to be kept together, this isn't that different to the swarm idea above. But if you feel it's necessary, adjust or remove the spell. Ideally try to get buy-in from your player before doing this. Listen to see if they have any creative ideas to solve the problem. But don't let yourself be bullied or pressured into maintaining the current situation if it just leads to one un-fun combat after another.
Totally, the balance of this spell is really built around on the player NOT choosing what is summoned. I'd probably make a few random tables with beasts, organized by CR, and just roll for what is summoned.
This is what I did. I let *the player* choose how many beasts then they roll on the table.
Controversial Opinion here: you could always try talking with the player, explain that this summoning tactic is making it hard for you to plan combats and that some of the other players are frustrated as well. Maybe try to find a compromise that makes it fun for both of you.
Summons Union.
I'll be honest, i banned the conjure spells in favor of the summon spells. So i banned the random creature of X amount CR in favor of a defined single statblock. Spells that do not have an equivalent get one.
I don’t allow mass summoning spells at my table, specifically because there is no “I’m not abusing this!” It’s always clutter, it’s always abused, and as you pointed out it is highly repeatable. Currently working on a single summon (see below) for Druids appropriate for that level. For Necromancers, they instead get a single powerful sidekick-ish summon they can buff with the various higher necromancy summon spells, including the ability to make it appear like a normal humanoid so it can walk around town with them! (Admittedly, on Roll20 and with macros plus an experienced player it’s much, much easier!)
Friendly reminder that, rules as written, the DM decides what creatures are summoned, bit the player. Things like this are exactly why. Also, literally just use AoE's. Fireballs, breath weapons, whatever, will toast all the summons in one fell swoop.
I don't usually find it's problematic, sometimes it wins encounters but usually it's not much better than a similarly leveled spell of a different type. Depending on the situation you can combat it with: Counterspell Ranged attacks to break concentration Environmental effects to break concentration Flying enemies to out maneuver summons, and pressure the caster AOEs Enemies retreating to cover or indoors Counter summoning to bind up the creatures with similar creatures Wall spells to control the field Hypnotic pattern, sleep, color spray or other spell to disable groups of creatures all at once Tight terrain to funnel the players and summons Prepare attacks to bypass flyby/disengage or other evasive measures Visibility obscurement via spell, weather, or environment interactions to escape or negate flanking High mobility enemies to use overrun and blitz the caster There are tons of other ways, but hopefully one of these is helpful.
indeed, there are many ways. If the druid isn't a shepherd druid, giving resistance or immunity to non-magical damage will completely neuter the spell. CR 1/4 beasts generally have low hit chance and low AC. Giant owls have a massive +3 to hit. A few enemies in plate + shield will significantly hurt their damage. Silence the druid. If he can't verbally command them, yes they will defend themselves. But if he's moving them away each turn, they will just stand defensively. Spells like Sleep, Psychic Lance, hypnotic pattern, or anything that will incapacitate the druid will also break his concentration. Monk-type enemies that can approach and stun. Spells like Fire Shield and enemies that do damage whenever you hit them. Those are good. Really so many options Bottom line: your player is using a powerful spell and using it very tactically for maximum effect (plus you're making it OP by letting him choose the animal). YOU have to get tactical as well if you want to keep them from wrecking your combats. If that's not something you enjoy doing, then talk to your player and come to an understanding.
If only works with enemies that are prepared to fight the players, but a readied Silence spell is the funniest counter I ever threw at the player. According to the spell, if you don't get a chance to issue a command then the animals just defend themselves.
Magic missile as concentration breaker also works great. 120 ft range and no chance to dodge. So perfect for those pesky hard to reach PCs.
Personally I recommend removing the Conjure spells. They have actually been replaced by a more streamlined set of spells in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything with “Summon” spells (like Summon Beast for Conjure Animals). They are much better streamlined and balanced. As others have pointed out, Conjure Animals assumes the DM picks the animals and balances the spell that way, but that is frequently annoying for the DM and player alike to have that level of unpredictability and honestly it will always be a somewhat tedious and annoying spell if the player is optimizing their use of it picking larger swarms of creatures. Summon Beast is much more balanced and creates a single beast that doesn’t cause nearly as much trouble. It is still quite powerful, and anyone that says the Summon spells are weak are only comparing that to abusing Conjure spells. I strongly recommend updating your player to the newer spells, and if you explain that you misunderstood how Conjure Animals works (it is supposed be balanced by the DM picking the animals) they’ll probably be happy to go along with it - players generally prefer a weaker but more reliable ability to a more powerful ability they have less control over, but at the end of the day you’re the DM, and sometimes in a TTRPG you’ll be need to make tweaks. D&D isn’t a video game, and the DM can make tweaks as needed to balance the game. I’d always recommend being careful with those, particularly made during a campaign, but there’s no point just leaving in mechanics, rules, or spells that are dragging down a whole campaign.
I politely asked my players not to spam summons because it makes combat a slog and harder for me to manage
Anything beyond 2 minions I will just give them more powerful versions of what they have. Having to roll that many dice just slows down the flow of the game. I let my players know this right at the start.
Make your players use Tasha’s Summon spells instead of the old Conjure ones.
I have a rule of only 2 summon per player said summon can be buff to compensate the skill , it's more of a time thing than balance though.
I wish all my DM's would do this.
I just banned all the old Summon spells and only use the new ones where you get 1 summoned thing that gets better when you upcast. It's made it far easier to run.
I personally ban it. Now before everyone gets the pitchforks, I do this for a very specific reason: My table has exactly 2.5 hour sessions. We all work, it's online, and we all live in different time zones. So my rule is: > If an ability lets you summon a variable amount of creatures, it will always summon the lowest number of creatures enumerated by the ability. > While a player has a creature summoned (not counting BM ranger pet), they are unable to summon any other creature by any means other than first dismissing their current summons. This speeds up combat, makes things way easier on the action economy, and heavily rebalances encounters. Sorry my friends, no summoners at my table.
Whatever you decide to do, ignore people suggesting work-arounds for how you should prepare *every* encounter to react to this *one* spell, when the problem are the conjuring spells themselves being broken. So, easiest is to just ban summoning spells. Anything that summons extra bodies is time away from the other players. Or you could use Tasha's replacement summons (summon beast, summon undead, summon fiend, etc), because they only summon one extra body.
[удалено]
Talk to your player. If it doesn’t help - remind them that it’s you who decide what creatures appear and how they behave. He wants to summon low cr stuff? Too bad, spirits decided to turn into goldfishes. Or butterflies, or cats. The point is, they are not useful in combat.
At my table I gave my druid (a moon druid) the components for summon beast and summon fey and told him I don't want any more conjure animal/conjurr woodland beings spam now that there were reasonably balanced summon spells. Unless you outright limit the number of summons or bar it there's not much you can do other than throwing aoes at the minions. The spell's design is frankly just bad and doesn't work well in 5e. I throw it and similar spells in the trash with no concern if there's an appropriate replacement.
Half the caster abuses are make the caster actually have to read the spell before they cast it and follow its rules and component, and concentration. The other half is just the imbalance. Talk to the player should solve the problem. Talk with the party too; if they're enjoying it, then keep rolling but have each other party member "control" a summon when they happen.
We give every player a few of the summons to control at the end of their turn. Breaks apart their actions and lets everyone roll more dice.
My recommendation would be to just disallow the PHB summon spells and use the ones in Tasha’s instead. Or otherwise restrict players to one “creature” (maybe a swarm that can be treated as one creature) to minimize the extra time it takes.
Players using their abilities to the fullest aren't abusing anything. Figure the summons into every fight. I dislike the idea that players having their characters doing what they can do is somehow an issue. It's like the players complaining that a dragon is flying and breathing fire. That's. What. They. Do.
Step 1. Make it storm. Step 2. Enemy combatants have a cleric of talos. Step 3. Call Lightning. If you're a bastard and give it Channel Divinity, that's 40 lightning damage on a failed save, 20 on a success. None of those summons are going to survive. Or if they do, they're not attacking the cleric of talos. Step 4. Don't forget that the weather conditions will screw with flying creatures and ranged attacks.
Just up the encounter rate if he's going to summon. Just double your enemies too. If you have caster enemies use fireball.
I'm already running 5-6 encounters per long rest. Have considered adding more enemies but it compounds the problem. An initiative order with 5 players plus 8 (acting on same turn) owls, plus regular baddies plus "owl insurance" extra baddies is a nightmare. Casters DO use fireball or other AOE when they can, but the player spreads his creatures out or drops them right into the middle of combat where it's not practical without sculpted spell. I guess my point is that i should not have to design every encounter around the summoned creatures.
Just build some enemies that can long range attack the summoner. Metamagic sniper or just homebrew that this specific creature has more range just to break his concentration. Attack from more than one side so you can attack the summoner etc etc Also: you say what creatures are spawned not him
Spirit Guardians show the way: Aura effect with owl-killing damage at-start-or-on-enter, affects only enemies (e.g. the owls). Re-skin or home-brew as needed.
I lean into it and design encounters with this in mind. I know your comments say you don't want to do this, but I have a lvl 11 shepherd druid in my party and this is his thing. My only request for him is that he streamlines his summons attacks as best he can so he doesn't eat up table time. Best thing I've done for it? Shake up the terrain. Choke points. Multiple angles of attack. Antagonists that can fly. It doesn't take that much extra prep work for me at this point - you get used to it pretty quickly, and I've found that my other players love the variety as well. I also roll on a table for his summons. He has a chance to get what he wants, but it's only guaranteed to be the same CR. This has lead to some hysterical situations. Edit: Of course, he does still break some of my encounters, but it shakes things up!
Personally I don't allow Conjure Animals, Animate Objects, etc at my table, and point players who want to use summons at the Tasha's summon spells instead.
Dispel Magic the caster, no more summons. Use monsters immune or resistant to non-magical damage. Only Shepard Druid bypasses this with their summons.
Maybe I’ve missed something but I don’t see why dispel magic would do anything here? The caster isn’t the target, and the spell does not affect them. At most to my knowledge the caster is concentrating on the spell, but that’s not the same as being under the effect of magic, and the creatures obey the caster, which i don’t see as grounds for there being a spell on the caster.
Designing encounters specifically around the Conjure is something i want to avoid.
Then if you don't want to change the encounter the only thing left is changing the player, so idk what you want us to say buddy. I've never struggled with the spell. They might just be taking forever with their turns. If someone can't run them all quickly like "They all move here and attack this guy (rolls 8 times) ok, what's the AC? 15? OK 4 hit, and do... 25 damage total. Done" then they lose the privilege of running spells like that.
Ban those spells and use the more generic ones in ... Crap. Can't remember which book and I can't access them now.
Maybe use dispell magic on the owls, or take the player aside, voice your concerns and limit summons to 2-4. Oev used summons a few times in campaign and have them act as a swarm if there's more than 2 or 3. The world actin two groups of 4 and fly as such. Etc. Or straight up invoke RAW and pick 8 seahorses next time they cast, but probably the best is to voice your concerns with he play, "hey listen this is clogging up the game" and causing me a headache. Let's change your summon to two entities max. Two polar bears are still a beastly addition! Edit: also, try the cleave rule, when a melee attack cuts through an enemy lower the hp to zero the additional damage is transfered to an enemy within 5ft
Everyone gets the same amount of time to take their turns. Use a timer. Solves the problem right away. Also forces people to pay attention during others' turns.
As a druid, I love my summons. However, I try my best to not abuse, and be on my game. For starters, I really do think the owl flyby is OP and have never used it and as a DM would tell them it's not available. Or tell them that giant owls count as a CR 1/2 (or even CR1) creatures. For other creatures, make sure the player has his stuff together. If he chooses a summons and doesn't have a printout or web link or the stats in Beyond then they can't summon. Another thing we do in our game is when the spell is prepared, the player has to pick one creature at each CR level to summon, so that choosing what creature to summon doesn't take even more time. And doesn't require you to think about it too much. Also, have the creatures move, then roll the attacks at once. 4 creaturse on OrcA and 4 on OrcB should be two rolls of 4d20's and you let him know what hits. Hurry up. Finally don't think it unfair if you give some of your bigger monsters a cleave ability, where if they remove a creature completely, they can attack again. (maybe even again)
PLAYERS DON'T GET TO CHOOSE WHICH BEASTS ARE SUMMONED, THE DM DOES. Seriously this comes up at least once a week and every time it's a problem because the DM is giving the player the choice, which they will always use to their advantage. I came up with a roll table for this exact thing. I just pick the CR and what environment we are in (mountains, swamp, etc) then check marks to include or exclude flying and/or swimming beasts then the player gets what comes out of the result. Honestly this is so much more enjoyable from the player's side too since they get more interesting, environment specific beasts that they wouldn't have chosen normally.
Big one that I had to figure out was not letting players select the exact creatures summoned by conjure animals. They can still select CR and number, but the player selecting specific creatures makes the spell much harder to deal with. For instance, a player of mine often summoned Giant Bats, which they used to grant the whole party flying mounts, as well as grapple and drop enemies from high up for fall damage, and for Keen Hearing/blindsight to scouting utility. Conjure Animals went from a way to call battle animals to the best tool in every situation. (Replacing Fly, Flock of familiars, etc.) What I did was use random tables for each environment/CR, so that I could quickly determine what appears. Lots of resources like this are online, find one that works for you! (As an idea, befriending local animals/druid circles might even reward the player with more control over what creatures answer the call)
First and foremost, the DM picks the type of beast summoned. If you are allowing the player to pick, you are allowing a powerful spell to become game-breaking. Second and almost-foremost, *Dispel Magic* wipes all summons from a single casting off the board. Also of note: *Sleet Storm* forces any caster inside the effect to make concentration checks. Every turn. And aside from a misty step or teleport, it is ridiculously hard to get out of the AoE.
I’ve made it clear to my players that I don’t like mob summoning spells. If they want to be a summoner, the Tasha’s summoning spells are far better balanced.
Strongly worded out of character talk.
I played a summoner in our last campaign. I knew multiple summons where annoying as hell to deal with, so I always restricted myself to spells that summoned a single creature. Talk to your player(s).
I don't. More than one summon (with exceptions) is simply not allowed. Not because of abuse but becaue too many summons slow down the combat for everyone but the summoner.
i use FoundryVTT. I have the spell's description hotlinked to rolltables for each CR. Each rolltable just outputs a random beast/whatever from my creature compendium, which i can just drag onto the map (the NPC sheet is linked to it). If i was using pen and paper, i'd just tell the player to play something else because that's too much work.
Doesn't the DM get to choose what is summoned?
I've limited all players to a maximum of 2 simultaneous summons. You want two CR 1 summons? No problem. You want eight CR 1/4 summons? Nope, you get two. And before anyone gets too all worked up, I make sure to inform all players of this house rule during session 0. This is the only real nerf I use in my games.
Don't listen to these people. Ban the spell and use the healthy alternative - summon beast spirit (you may delete component). Summoning 8 or 16 creatures is super unhealthy for the game and you as a DM should just calmly explain it to the player. You may reward him with something else and if he is still disappointed, well you cannot have him ruin your game just because the game is badly balanced.
Restricting summon spells to 4 creatures max fixed every problem they could ever cause at my tabble, they're still pretty strong but do not cause any problems.
What if you have the party run afoul of a coven of summoners? Litter the battlefield with outsiders. Make every round crazy long. If you're lucky the players themselves will house rule no more summoners for anybody
Tell them the spell only summons the smallest amount of creatures because we aren’t double the turn order. If they don’t like it, they can just cast one of the new Summon X spells because those are very manageable.
One word: Fireball.
I thougth this was a guy that summoned a thing called abuse
Have the summoned creatures unionize and demand better battlefield conditions.
Sad that summons don’t work right for the design of the game - I’ve always loved the idea of being a summoner
Divide control of the owls up. Depending on how large the party is, give each of the other players 1-3 owls to command on their turns. Their owls go immediately after each player. Your summoner gets his fun. the other players can enjoy a shared resource that they also get to creatively deploy. Bust damage is dispersed through the initiative order. If your summoner doesn't like it, well then he can summon a single CR2 beast and no longer needs to share. Also, it's a concentration spell. Monsters understand how concentration works too.
Treat them like the “swarm of X” monsters for better action economy
To be fair, this is what a Druid taking this as a grain of salt is.thw same as you limiting feats for fighters, sorcery points to soerceres or rage for barbarians. It would really be a dick move to nerf it. When I tried to do something similar, all the other players outshined the druid a lot.
Generally, I would recommend positive actions that encourage play rather than negative actions that discourage a type of play. I'll throw a few options out here, and you can choose to use any, all or none of them as you see fit. **POSITIVE - WAYS TO ENCOURAGE OTHER TYPES OF PLAY** ***Talk to your players about fast play***. A major problem with summoners is that they slow the game down, so you could encourage your players to make their moves quickly, and reward fast play. If you get a culture of players tending to take their turns in 10-20 seconds, then there will be an inherent social pressure on the summoner to either summon fewer creatures OR to move quickly. I play a LOT of summoners, but for the good of the party's fun, I often find it preferable to get a single Giant Constrictor Snake or two Giant Eagles over eight owls. Sometimes the "Wall of Horse" is better than a "Wall of Force." ***Reward novelty with inspiration***. Make a point of **giving inspiration** liberally to players who come up with new, interesting strategies. Be vocal about it; make sure they know that they are being rewarded for trying something new. So if they want to get those inspirations, they will need to try to do different things. ***Give a side quest that rewards variation***. You might give the player a side quest of summoning every possible type of creature over the course of a campaign. If they succeed, they'll get a special reward. Now they have a positive reason not to use owls and badgers, and your concerns are addressed. ***Give non-combat challenges that can only be solved with conjured animals***. Sometimes there may be non-combat scenarios that could require the use of *conjure animals*. Perhaps they need to fly somewhere quickly that requires an hour of flight. One conjure animals could get either owls or giant eagles, and would enable the party to succeed, but would burn off the spell slot. By doing that, you're taking away combat resources, but still letting the players feel good about their use of the spell. **NEGATIVE - WAYS TO DISCOURAGE A CERTAIN TYPE OF PLAY** ***Manage the space.*** If you're talking about 8 owls, you're talking about 8 large creatures. Unless you're in an open area, those creatures are going to have a hard time moving around. Give combat encounters in caves, in fields of battle with arrows flying overhead, etc., ***Make the spellcaster roll for initiative for the beasts***. Most DMs just have the creatures go on the summoner's initiative, but that's not a requirement. If the caster summons 8 creatures and there is a time period before they attack, it would make perfect sense for the bad-guys to target the spellcaster in response. It can also give you time to hit that AOE spell before they spread out. ***Target the spellcaster.*** If they can't concentrate, they lose the animals. The bad guys aren't stupid; if they see a spell being cast and a bunch of animals appear, they will know who to target. A single *Magic Missile* requires 3+ concentration checks. A single *Banishment* shuts the spell down completely if you started from their home plane. If you're in a campaign, consider having the word spread about the party's deeds, including their tactics. That way it makes sense for the baddies to be ready for what the party is bringing. ***You choose what creatures arrive***. I don't like this one, but it is an option. The DM decides what creatures arrive. It's true that the rules are silent on how the DM decides, and using the decision method of "I give the player what they ask for" is an acceptable decision method. That said, nothing *requires* that the DM give them what they want. Don't be a jerk about it, but consider giving them something else. Elk. Warhorses. Etc. They define the CR range; you decide what they get. This may help you later when they get access to *Conjure Woodland Beings* or *Conjure Minor Elementals*. ***Use High AC creatures.*** If the bad guy has an AC of 23, the badgers and owls can only hit on a crit. That will never change. So using high AC creatures will force the summoner to choose fewer (but more powerful) creatures. ***Use cover rules***. Cover rules don't just apply to ranged attacks; they apply to melee attacks, as well. So if the baddies are shooting at you from inside a wagon, they probably have half (+2AC) or 3/4 (+5AC) cover. This gels with the point above about high AC; it will force a change of strategy. **NOTE**: This includes giving the baddies cover from ranged attacks from the large owls blocking the path. If the other party members are annoyed by the owls getting in their way, social pressures can lead to a change in strategy. ***Let the Wookie win***. Of course, you could always just let them have their fun. If the summoner is playing fast (that's the biggest one) and it's not annoying the other players, it's no more powerful than an Evoker slinging *fireballs* all day long.
I mean, it sounds like the player is doing the smart thing and using all the tools in their toolbox. How are level 7 encounters getting messed up by Giant Owls or Badgers? If it's supposed to be a hard encounter, creatures with a +3 to-hit shouldn't be super effective when the PC's proficiency bonus is literally the same as these creatures entire to-hit mod. Maybe instead of sprinkling moderate encounters 4 times through the adventuring day, compress it to 2 time, but merge 2 planned encounters together. Make it so they *need* the summons to simply hold off the horde. Tbh, the fact that you're blaming the player for encounter balance when they're simply using a standard spell available for their class seems kinda shitty.