D&D 5E Am I missing something about Conjure Animal

Eric Anondson said:

You zoomed right past, then quoted exactly the problem I am having. It is strong. Powerful in the way combats are a load of no fun.

Sit back while 8 giant badgers take on a handful of orcs, or 8 giant owls swarm all the bandit archers, or 8 elks charge into the fray ... basically all of the eight quantity of 1/4 CR creatures joining the party turns it into a rout. It's been a powerful game changer that sucks out fun. We have gotten the idea that 3rd level spells are a new level of power, but this has been a bit much to the point the party is getting the idea the druid could finish off most encounters herself without help from the rest... for now.

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Yep, that will be a problem with encounters that are roughly the level of the party. A single 3rd level spell, whether fireball or conjure animals, will typically make the encounter a walkover. That shouldn't be as much of a problem if the party faces several such encounters in a day, or a single deadly encounter.

When I ran PotA, my group tended to perform hit and run raids on the temples, so they would always be at full strength. The result? The temples got smart and started planning ambushes where the temple forces were consolidated and at full strength. The party simply traded multiple weaker encounters for a few very, very tough encounters. Didn't really make things easier for them, and those killer 3rd level spells were less problematic.

BTW, here is a neat set of random tables for Conjure Animals: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TAUqgYfi4gtDC6WOH41Y2JW-Wjh6NOx-Oq-D92pM4EM/

It gives a different random table for each CR type and terrain.

Eric Anondson said:

You zoomed right past, then quoted exactly the problem I am having. It is strong. Powerful in the way combats are a load of no fun.

Sit back while 8 giant badgers take on a handful of orcs, or 8 giant owls swarm all the bandit archers, or 8 elks charge into the fray ... basically all of the eight quantity of 1/4 CR creatures joining the party turns it into a rout. It's been a powerful game changer that sucks out fun. We have gotten the idea that 3rd level spells are a new level of power, but this has been a bit much to the point the party is getting the idea the druid could finish off most encounters herself without help from the rest... for now. Shr

But I think one of the early responses reminds me of the most useful, and in our case quickly forgotten by us 5e novices, Concentration. I'm almost certain we're forgetting to make the caster deal with the damage she's taking while she's conjured the beasts.

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The other thing to be aware of is that 5E has kind of a rock-paper-scissors situation going on with monster design. Swarms of monsters or PCs are hard to deal with on a single-target basis, but that's exactly where AoE (area of effect) shines. A CR 1/2 Magma Mephit's 2d6 breath weapon looks weak at first, but if it hits 5 targets on a strafing run, and then the Magma Mephit flies away to possibly do it again in a few rounds, it looks quite a bit better, especially if there are five other Magma Mephits doing the same thing.

Generally speaking, if you want to build an adventure that can challenge swarms of henchmen/conjured animals, you need one or more of:

(1) Environmental effects that inflict damage proportional to the number of creatures. Ravines that must be crossed on a narrow path (e.g. Acrobatics DC 12 to avoid 5d6 falling damage), foul air that inflicts 1d6 poison damage per ten minutes, etc.

(2) Creatures with AoE weapons.

(3) Highly-mobile creatures that choose when/where to engage. Dragons are especially good because they are #2 and #3 at the same time, plus they are generally quite stealthy. A Young White Dragon can quite quickly deplete a whole flock of Giant Owls with its breath weapon using strafing tactics, if the owls simply attack it in the air.

Downside: if the Giant Owls are being used as flying meat shields to delay the dragon while PCs deal damage with ranged weapons (especially Sharpshooter fighters/ranged), then the PCs will still come out ahead of the exchange with the Young White Dragons. Conjure Animals is indeed a very strong spell, especially if you manage to get flying animals like Giant Owls to appear. (Some DMs use random tables based on terrain, others simply honor player requests.)

Upside to the downside: the PCs are supposed to win. All you need to do as a DM is provide sufficient challenge to (1) be fun, and (2) explain why someone else hasn't already killed the dragon using similar tactics previously. If players effectively use combined arms and giant owl swarms and trained Sharpshooters to trap a dragon in a space from which it cannot flee before getting torn apart, I'd say the player earned their victory. 5E isn't an adversarial game of DM-vs-players after all--it isn't chess.

Don't forget that the summoned critters are in fact fey, which means their impact takes a big hit if you throw a low level caster (or magical item) with protection from evil and good. A higher level caster (or magic item) with divine word can basically mass banish the whole horde (the save is a charisma save).

I don't mind the 1 or 2 critter summoning, but the 4 or 8 version is annoying for DM's (or at least for me). I am pretty sure it was put in there for mass combat, but honestly it would have been better if they had just created a bunch of "mass combat" spells (requires a couple of flunkies to assist in casting).

The fact that they're fey makes it weird to me when people want to limit it by terrain.


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Xeviat said:

The fact that they're fey makes it weird to me when people want to limit it by terrain.


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I don't know, the standard model is that terrain in the feywild generally follows the terrain in the material world. So if you're in a forest, it's reasonable to say there is a "matching" fey forest that you would draw the conjured spirits from. Same for desert, mountains, underground etc.

Xeviat said:

2) By the book, the DM chooses what animals appear; the spell only requires the player to "choose one of the following options".

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Where does it state this? I don't see anything in the spell description that says that the DM determines what animals show up.


Also, the Bard in my group took this spell and I am not super happy with it either. Like previously mentioned, the turns take a LONG time since he is trying to play himself and 8 animals. I'm also not sure how to handle the "Commands" because he wants to move each animal as tactically as possible, and I'm not sure that's the intent of the spell. For instance, I believe the "Command" should be like "Attack the armored human" and the animals attack, and not "Animal 1: attack the armored human, Animal 2: move in a zig zag pattern and come around behind to flank, Animal 3: Stand over there and protect the tunnel exit, Animal 4: etc....". So suggestions on how other DM's handle this spell would be appreciated.

Also, on the flip side, its supposed to be a more fun spell since its 3rd level. I try to keep in my mind whether the Animals doing all this is on par with a Fireball. I'm not sure its the right mentality, but its what I'm going with now.

WarpedAcorn said:

Where does it state this? I don't see anything in the spell description that says that the DM determines what animals show up.

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It doesn't say explicitly, but all it offers the player is a choice of how many creatures. And in the official Sage Advice Compendium it says

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.

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WarpedAcorn said:

Where does it state this? I don't see anything in the spell description that says that the DM determines what animals show up.


Also, the Bard in my group took this spell and I am not super happy with it either. Like previously mentioned, the turns take a LONG time since he is trying to play himself and 8 animals. I'm also not sure how to handle the "Commands" because he wants to move each animal as tactically as possible, and I'm not sure that's the intent of the spell. For instance, I believe the "Command" should be like "Attack the armored human" and the animals attack, and not "Animal 1: attack the armored human, Animal 2: move in a zig zag pattern and come around behind to flank, Animal 3: Stand over there and protect the tunnel exit, Animal 4: etc....". So suggestions on how other DM's handle this spell would be appreciated.

Also, on the flip side, its supposed to be a more fun spell since its 3rd level. I try to keep in my mind whether the Animals doing all this is on par with a Fireball. I'm not sure its the right mentality, but its what I'm going with now.

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Page 13 of http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SA-Compendium.pdf. So it is RAI, and weaselly rules lawyers might notice that the wording of the conjure spells doesn't actually say the PC gets to choose the specific critter, only the category (in terms of CR) that the critter comes from.

Now my personal feeling is that I have too many other things to take care of to second guess the players unless they consistently use the same tactic over and over again (the DM has the right to be entertained too), in which case the Elemental Liberation Front (ELF) or the Free Fey Brotherhood (FFB) will show up at inconvenient times and start lecturing...I mean, educating the conjured beings into how they are being oppressed by the (hu)Man(oid).

WarpedAcorn said:

For instance, I believe the "Command" should be like "Attack the armored human" and the animals attack, and not "Animal 1: attack the armored human, Animal 2: move in a zig zag pattern and come around behind to flank, Animal 3: Stand over there and protect the tunnel exit, Animal 4: etc....". So suggestions on how other DM's handle this spell would be appreciated.

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Give him a literal 6-second time limit to give the commands. That's how long a round is.

If he keeps taking too long, use a timer on your phone and cut him off. Make the animals confused and possibly lose their action if he tries to be too complicated. It also prevents one person from monopolizing the table. We use that in our group and it keeps everyone in line.

PS - I'm the Druid in our group, so I practice what I preach.

I hate these Conjure spells simply because they bring combat to a grinding halt. Fireball is just as powerful, but it's fire-and-forget. One or two rolls and you're done.

The party encounters 20 orcs?
Cast Fireball - Bam, they're all dead.
Cast Conjure Animals - there are now eight extra actions to deal with every round. That's 8 attack rolls, plus 8 damage rolls, every -- single -- round -- until the caster loses concentration. On top of that, the battlefield is now choked with bodies.

If you put those actions in the hands of the caster, then you have one player with nine actions each round, which adds about 5 minutes to their turn. "Okay, the first elk attacks this orc. *rolls to hit* 17. Does it hit? Yes? *rolls damage* 7. Is it dead? No? Okay, the second elk attacks the same target... *rolls to hit* 15. Does it hit? Yes? *rolls damage* 5. Is it dead?" etc. etc.

So it's not necessarily that the Conjure spells are too powerful. It's just that they're really %*#@ing annoying to run at the table, because they slow combat down to a crawl. With that in mind, here's my Conjure Animals fix:


Boom. You can thank me later.