D&D 5E How powerful can Summons be?

[Xeviat]

Hi friends.

How powerful can/should summons be? We've seen various interpretations of summoning spells in the last 20 years or so. 3E had tables of preassigned monsters, and you could easily summon multiples. 4E had mostly single summons that consumed your actions to control. 5E, with its tighter CR rules, has CR levels for the summons, but they otherwise run independently.

What is a summon? What does it do? Well, a summon is, at its simplest, a damage spell that's stretched out over a few rounds. So if a fireball does 8d6 damage to 2 targets, or +56 in total, a 3rd level summon can't do more than that over however many rounds it should be out for. Right?

But there's more than that. A summon is an extra body. Every hit a summon takes is a hit your players don't take. If that summon isn't killed before combat is over, all damage dealt to them is wasted. If the summon is killed, then it's damage dealing ability is gone as well, but again, those were attacks that your party got to avoid.

A summon is also an extra body in the playing field. They limit opponent movements, though merely taking up space and also threatening opportunity attacks.

So, how good can a summon be? How have 5E's summons hit that mark? Honestly, I haven't seen them used in my game, and they're so complicated that I have no desire to white room them, even though I'm more than happy to white room analyze more simple things. I could eyeball a summon's potential damage over 3 rounds compared to an equivalent level spell, but that doesn't capture all that a summon is. They're a damage spell, they're like temporary HP, and they're like battlefield control.

What do you think?

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I play a wizard and the group is now 8th level. At 8th level I learned the spell Conjure Minor Elementals (for story reasons it fit, we are in Blingdenstone and a couple of side quests involved helping the deep gnomes re-establish their practice of summoning earth elementals so my wizard took interest). The way we handle the spell is the way that was given in Sage Advice. I pick the level and number mode from the spell and then he picks the specific elementals that show up based on what makes sense. Being in the underdark I've so far gotten only earth related beings. It rocks (sorry, couldn't help myself). So far I've only used the spell for combat purposes only once (although it should be noted that the creatures do have some out of combat uses such as scouting and I've even used them as a liason to parley with wild elementals).

In the one combat I was quite pleased with the performance. I chose to summon 4 creatures of CR 1/2 and the DM gave me a pack of dust mephits. The encounter was against some basilisks and I commanded my companions to go forth and attack the vile creatures. After the first round of actions by my sandy hit squad 3 basilisks were rendered blind. After that the little guys attacked with their tiny punches which didn't do a lot, but hey it's something. They also took a couple bite attack for us and handled it quite well being immune to the poison damage component of the basilisk's bite.

I realize that this is kinda the ideal scenario. Mephits have more utility than most available creatures with their breath and their spellcasting. But I will continue to use summons because they really do seem to add a lot of battlefield control just by being bodies that take up space.

 

[Yunru]

Summons are the best, especially if you go for quantity over CR. Due to the mostly single target nature of opponents, a swarm of CR 1/8 creatures hold up a lot better than a single CR 2 creature, and controls the battlefield better due to sheer numbers and the inability to move through an hostile creature's space.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

I don't think you can use damage as a determining factor when talking about summoned creatures. Like you mentioned, there are a lot of other factors such as having an extra actor on the battlefield, not to mention any special features that a summoned creature brings with it.

Honestly, in 5E, I haven't seen a lot of Summon spells. I could see a character based around summoning monsters to fight for him (no Pokemon jokes) being a fun type of class to play, but I don't see it being super viable in 5E. In fact when I was looking at Wizard schools recently I wondered why someone would pick a Conjurer when I didn't see much of anything they could conjure. I think 5E moved away from a Summoner-style character because they are so hard to manage and gauge power, and for the reason you already mentioned.

The example I always like to bring up as a gross abuse of Summoning is the old Baldur's Gate computer game. In that case, which followed 2nd Edition rules, you could send waves and waves of summoned monsters at enemies and just overwhelm them. It made low level Summon Monster spells WAY overpowered...unless you had enemies with massive AoE's.

 

[Yunru]

The Druid is the conjuring class rather than the Wizard, is probably why.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

The Druid is the conjuring class rather than the Wizard, is probably why.

And that doesn't come online until you are a 3rd level caster. =(


EDIT: Meant until you're a caster with 3rd level slots. Damn my Friday-Brain! Its mashed-potatoes!

 

[aco175]

I would think that they should be less damage than straight spells since they can add other abilities to the encounter, such as flanking and taking damage from the PCs. The utility of summoned monsters is like having less damage on spells that also do something like blind, daze, or paralyze.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In my experience, having run a game from 1-20, once the Conjurer had an Earth Elemental, it was like having an extra fighter in the party. Granted, it was like a level 8 fighter who couldn't use magic equipment, but it was still much more of a force multiplier than I was expecting. Bounded Accuracy goes a long way.

 

[LordEntrails]

I have found that summoning elementals is definitely force multiplier when my party summons them against me. As you noted, even if I kill them, that's 50 or 100 hit points that is effectively absorbed by one spell instead of one of the characters. Plus it's dealing damage and helping to control the battlefield while all this is going on.

I haven't compared them to other spells of the same level, but they are very effective when used by my players against me.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In fact when I was looking at Wizard schools recently I wondered why someone would pick a Conjurer when I didn't see much of anything they could conjure.

I'm really only taking it for my character because I think Minor Conjuration is incredibly cool.