D&D 5E Conjurer Confusion

Morlaf · May 17, 2017

Conjurers confuse me. They should SUMMON. Instead they call it Create <jobly>. But the Create Animal does not appear the wizard spell list.
but page 116 of the PHB: “DURABLE SUMMONS: Starting at 14th leveI, any creature that you summon or create with a conjuration spell has 30 temporary hit points.”
Where are the Conjurer's summonable monsters please ?!?!?!?!

Lanliss · May 17, 2017

They get Familiars through Find Familiar, Conjure Minor Elementals at 7th level, Conjure elemental at 9th level, and Create Undead at 10th level. Sounds like a good number of monsters to me.

Fanaelialae · May 17, 2017

The conjurer gets conjure minor elementals and conjure elemental. With the planar binding spell, they can extend the duration of a summon up to a year and a day.

Morlaf · May 17, 2017

""A familiar can't attack, but it can take other actions as normal."" So +30 temporary HP are not much use.
as for the rest I see your point. So we are in agreement that until I reach level 14 I cannot really cast any conjuring/summoning type spells to bring me allies to help in combat?

Lanliss · May 17, 2017

Morlaf said:
""A familiar can't attack, but it can take other actions as normal."" So +30 temporary HP are not much use.
as for the rest I see your point. So we are in agreement that until I reach level 14 I cannot really cast any conjuring/summoning type spells to bring me allies to help in combat?

Familiar can cast your spells that have a range of "Touch", allowing you to play support. It can also be used for scouting. Both of those leave your familiar very open to being killed, since most familiar forms have about 5-10 HP. The 30 temps will help a lot on that front.

Also, no. I just listed off a bunch of spells that have nothing to do with the Familiar spell. Conjure Minor elementals, at 7th level, summons creatures to fight for you. The level 14 ability just makes those summons tougher to kill, it doesn't add any summons to your list for you.

Lastly, Warlock can get the ability to make Attack Familiars, but aside from that only Druid gets to conjure creatures for battle earlier than Wizard. Wizard also has the most spells of this sort, and the most spread out over several levels.

MechaTarrasque · May 17, 2017

One of the UA articles (https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/07_UA_That_Old_Black_Magic.pdf) has demon summoning spells available to wizards and sorcerers. If your DM is good with them, your conjurer will have more options (conjure lesser demons is a 3rd level spell). They are riskier than the standard conjure spells (as they should be, you are summoning demons after all): some you can't control, but they can't attack you as long as you stay in a circle of blood (or anything like a magic circle), and the others involve an increasing charisma check each round (fail and you lose control, however your base is the value of the material components [in gp]/20, so if you are willing to spend a lot you should be safe...for a while).

MechaTarrasque · May 17, 2017

In 4e, they went strongly for the idea that different classes summoned different things, and that has largely carried on in 5e: wizards/mystics mostly do elementals, druids/rangers do animals/fey (the animals are really fey), clerics get celestials (and can get celestials, fiends, fey, and elementals via planar ally), and warlocks can get elementals and fey/beasts. Crossover subclasses (like the theurge and the divine/favored soul) can increase the number of conjure spells, but since most of them involve concentration (except planar ally and some of the demon spells I mentioned in my last post), you are pretty much only going to use one at a time.

CapnZapp · May 17, 2017

MechaTarrasque said:
In 4e, they went strongly for the idea that different classes summoned different things, and that has largely carried on in 5e: wizards/mystics mostly do elementals, druids/rangers do animals/fey (the animals are really fey), clerics get celestials (and can get celestials, fiends, fey, and elementals via planar ally), and warlocks can get elementals and fey/beasts. Crossover subclasses (like the theurge and the divine/favored soul) can increase the number of conjure spells, but since most of them involve concentration (except planar ally and some of the demon spells I mentioned in my last post), you are pretty much only going to use one at a time.

But what isn't apparent, and is the cause for this thread, is that most of these casters don't actually gain any mainstream conjuring options until mid- to high levels.

In other words, everybody thinking a "Conjurer" could start conjurin' from the lowest levels, will be disappointed.

MechaTarrasque · May 17, 2017

CapnZapp said:
But what isn't apparent, and is the cause for this thread, is that most of these casters don't actually gain any mainstream conjuring options until mid- to high levels.

In other words, everybody thinking a "Conjurer" could start conjurin' from the lowest levels, will be disappointed.

It is probably why the subclass is called conjuration school instead of summoning school. You can conjure stuff at low levels, but you have to wait to level 5 (if your DM allows UA material) to conjure critters. Personally I would be good with more high risk/high reward summoning at lower levels (a 1st level caster should have at least a 50% chance of getting eaten by whatever he/she summons, that is why they call it apprentice levels), so I am hoping that the Old Black Magic UA is a sign of the direction of future spells.

CapnZapp · May 17, 2017

MechaTarrasque said:
It is probably why the subclass is called conjuration school instead of summoning school. You can conjure stuff at low levels, but you have to wait to level 5 (if your DM allows UA material) to conjure critters. Personally I would be good with more high risk/high reward summoning at lower levels (a 1st level caster should have at least a 50% chance of getting eaten by whatever he/she summons, that is why they call it apprentice levels), so I am hoping that the Old Black Magic UA is a sign of the direction of future spells.

A lot of words, but you basically agree with me when I say Conjurers conjure jack skit until mid to high levels, right?