D&D 5E Conjure Woodland Beings - Where is the "DM chooses the monster" clause?

The Crimson Binome · Sep 3, 2020

Paul Farquhar said:
Remember, when the spell was first published the Monster Manual was not out. So the choice of creature is limited to what the DM has stat blocks for.

The DM has stats for any creature they can imagine. That's part of what it means to be the DM.

Swarmkeeper · Sep 3, 2020

Stormdale said:
Alas a jerk player is going to be jerk player with summoning spells too and as a DM I have the right to prevent that from happening. I don't want to see 8 giant owls spammed and slow down play and prevent everyone else having fun so here is how it works at my table.

Better solution: don't play with jerks. Jerks can make most anything bad. And the existence of jerks is not truly a valid indicator that some game mechanic is flawed.

Stormdale said:
1. I have random tables of summonable monsters for each CR and the player may summon.
2. I also have removed the CR 1/4 option and have a single table for CR 1/4-1/2 which are run more like swarms than single monsters and summons 2 such creature swarms/packs, so you will be 2 packs of wolves rather than 4 individual wolves.
3. The player tells me, based on terrain, what they would like to summon and we 50/50 die roll to see if they get what they want (we are considering changing this to an ability check instead)
4. If they fail on this check we roll on my D8 random monster table to see what appears.

We've recently had a running joke in the game about summoned giant octopus in fresh water and how long they'll live.

Most amusing summon in recent weeks was a wyvern had grabbed one of the pcs and was flying off to its lair with him, the druid summoned 2 gaint eagles to arrive on either side of the wyvern to try to head it off at the pass so to speak only to see 2 summoned worgs fal to thier deaths. Magc is a fickle beast- but summon spells are IMO the mosyt troublesome spells in the game as written so I've come up with a "fix" that works for us.

Everyone is on board and having fun with the rules overlay at your table. Sounds good to me.

Stormdale said:
The summon spells are amongst the most poorly thought out spells at lower level for their impact on play."The DM decides what creatures appears" being in the spell description would have cleared the matter up so much easier but alas we have what we have.

Stormdale

Yeah, that clarifying language would have been nice.

Swarmkeeper · Sep 3, 2020

Undrave said:
Pretty sure the Sheppard Druid is meant to be the Summoner subclass. It gets its own special spirit summon and it has class features that boosts conjured creatures (granting them more HP and magical weapons). It's not an outright 'Summoner' named subclass, but a lot of its features depend on you summoning something.

Sure. Like I said, it comes close.

Undrave said:
And by Archetype I meant in general. People want to play the cool monster summoner because they can call the right creature at the right moment. No one likes to waste a spell slot on a creature that falls to their death or some shenanigans.

I've played a Shepard Druid before. I had no expectation that it meant I could "call the right creature at the right moment" - as that's not how the Conjure X spells are worded.

The players at @Stormdale's table might take issue with your claim of "No one".

They seem to have fun with those things happening (see the post right above yours).

Mistwell · Sep 3, 2020

Ancalagon said:
My biggest concern with this spell is how it can slow down the game by introducing a small horde of new combatants...

I agree. When I took them as a druid, I would make sure all my summoned creatures attacked the same target, or two targets with equal numbers of summoned creatures on each. I'd roll initiative for all of them at once or just have them go after my turn. And I'd roll all attack rolls at once. I even once pre-rolled damage dice and wrote the results on a piece of paper so that when I rolled all attacks at once I could just announce damage quickly without rolling it in the moment. Those things all helped a lot, but it's a lot of tweaks to speed things up.

MarkB · Sep 3, 2020

Mistwell said:
I agree. When I took them as a druid, I would make sure all my summoned creatures attacked the same target, or two targets with equal numbers of summoned creatures on each. I'd roll initiative for all of them at once or just have them go after my turn. And I'd roll all attack rolls at once. I even once pre-rolled damage dice and wrote the results on a piece of paper so that when I rolled all attacks at once I could just announce damage quickly without rolling it in the moment. Those things all helped a lot, but it's a lot of tweaks to speed things up.

Same here, the time I ran a character with Animate Objects. It helps a lot to just use the average damage values from the creature's stat block.

Undrave · Sep 3, 2020

DM Dave1 said:
I've played a Shepard Druid before. I had no expectation that it meant I could "call the right creature at the right moment" - as that's not how the Conjure X spells are worded.

Personally, I find that a weakness of the Conjure spells to begin with. Even with the Shepperd Druid, people still want a Summoner class. It usually comes up every once in a while, so even with the support of that class it's not an archetype people feel has been properly fulfilled. I think the new spells that give you only one creature with a specific stat block that you can specifically pick are superior summon spells.

DM Dave1 said:
The players at @Stormdale's table might take issue with your claim of "No one". They seem to have fun with those things happening (see the post right above yours).

I guess they do... Personally, there is no mechanic in a game I despise more than 'Randomly lose your turn'. It's not even a case of 'I rolled to low so my attack missed', it's just 'sorry, you don't get to even try!' because 'LOLRANDOM!'. Augh.

Tonguez · Sep 3, 2020

D&D is a conversation between Players and DM, if the spell doesnt give an exact menu to choose from, you default to the conversation and ask the DM. if the DM is a jerk then get better friends

Shiroiken · Sep 3, 2020

Reminder: Sage Advice is not gospel, but simple suggestions on how a DM might interpret things based on RAW, RAI, and RAF. The wording of the spells is such that either reading could be interpreted, and RAI is that the DM chooses. My interpretation is that if the player was supposed to select the creature(s), it would have actually said "the player chooses a (beast/elemental/demon/whatever) creature, and a number of them appear based on the CR as follows:"

On the other hand, I like getting PC input on the decision, because I want to know what they're looking for. If they specifically need something that flies, I'll try to give them a flier. If they want a brute, I'll give them a brute. If they want something to slip in somewhere unnoticed, I'll try to give them that. The main reason I don't always give them what they want, is because I may not have it conveniently available (we play on Roll20, and I don't have everything programed in).

Swarmkeeper · Sep 3, 2020

Undrave said:
Personally, I find that a weakness of the Conjure spells to begin with. Even with the Shepperd Druid, people still want a Summoner class. It usually comes up every once in a while, so even with the support of that class it's not an archetype people feel has been properly fulfilled.

Fair enough. Differing expectations naturally can lead to differing satisfaction levels.

Undrave said:
I think the new spells that give you only one creature with a specific stat block that you can specifically pick are superior summon spells.

I'm guessing we'll see those in the new book (Tasha's) this fall. Looking forward to it!

Undrave said:
I guess they do... Personally, there is no mechanic in a game I despise more than 'Randomly lose your turn'. It's not even a case of 'I rolled to low so my attack missed', it's just 'sorry, you don't get to even try!' because 'LOLRANDOM!'. Augh.

I'm with you on that - 'Randomly lose your turn' is not part of our games, either.

FreeTheSlaves · Sep 4, 2020

Regarding the horde slowing play:

1) use average damage and
2) use that mob attack optional rule from the DMG, you know, that one where you compare att to ac and say '1 of these 5 hit, and I'll roll the remaining 3.'

And yeah, as mentioned, don't split them up on the battlefield.

D&D 5E Conjure Woodland Beings - Where is the "DM chooses the monster" clause?

The Crimson Binome

Hero

Swarmkeeper

Hero

Swarmkeeper

Hero

Mistwell

Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)

MarkB

Legend

Undrave

Legend

Tonguez

A suffusion of yellow

Shiroiken

Legend

Swarmkeeper

Hero

FreeTheSlaves

Adventurer

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