D&D 5E Spells that turned out to be a lot more powerful than you thought

[KarinsDad]

I rarely think to pound the summoner if a fighter and theif are double teaming me...

If the fighter, thief, and 4 wolves are pounding me, I'd try to get a Dex saving throw damaging spell on that summoner. You bet!

 

[Fanaelialae]

Just like the title says. Which spells turned out to be a lot more effective or powerful than you thought before seeing them in actual play?

Conjure Animals: The most powerful 3rd level spell, especially when dealing with multiple foes. 8 wolves can be summoned, each with pack tactics and the ability to knock creatures prone. Last night we came upon 15 or so bullywugs and giant toads, and that spell turned it into a very easy encounter. The wolves charged in with surprise (the didn't see us) and we flanked around and hit them from the other side. Between how much damage the wolves ended up doing, and the damage they were taking that otherwise would have went to us, this spell is OP.

Given that you were able to cast the spell before the fight began and had surprise, I wouldn't judge the spell based on this scenario. Not that I'm saying you're wrong, just that this particular case had too many other contributing factors to serve as a fair metric. The druid in my campaign recently hit 5th level, so I'll be interested to see how Conjure Animals works out in my game.

Darkness: Particularly when paired with a warlock's devil sight. Cast darkness on the F/W and let him just wade into the courtyard, wrecking havoc

This is definitely a nasty combo. Way of Shadow Monk / Warlock is another effective approach.

I used this against my players a while back (9th level warlock with darkness and devil's sight) and while there were other factors in that fight as well, the fight ended a razor's edge from a TPK.

Suggestion: Long duration, and only one save. Not a new save every round. Half our party fell to this ability.

Suggestion is pretty effective, but since it's a concentration spell there are usually ways to deal with it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Suggestion is pretty effective, but since it's a concentration spell there are usually ways to deal with it.

One of them being that the caster can only use it against one foe. So per PC (or NPC), it's one foe (temporarily) removed at best. The OP had several PCs taken out with it which means that several NPCs cast it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The conjuration spells have a weakness though. Concentration. Every group of PCs (or semi-intelligent NPCs) should always focus fire on a caster concentrating on a Conjure spell. Strong, but it makes the caster a primary target of counterattacks. A single Fireball can do as much damage as a pack of wolves, especially a pack of wolves that can sometimes be counterspelled with a single attack (and in fact, can be counterspelled even before the conjured wolves initiative comes up, making the spell totally useless sometimes). Spells are often overpowerful or not based on situation. A lightning bolt in a long narrow corridor can wreck havoc on dozens of foes.

No doubt that this is a powerful encounter ending spell in some circumstances, especially one where the caster casts the spell before combat even starts (and might hide behind total cover for the encounter duration). But the weakness makes it not OP. Other third level spells can get similar results.

Given that you were able to cast the spell before the fight began and had surprise, I wouldn't judge the spell based on this scenario. Not that I'm saying you're wrong, just that this particular case had too many other contributing factors to serve as a fair metric. The druid in my campaign recently hit 5th level, so I'll be interested to see how Conjure Animals works out in my game.
.

If you're going to use a spell like conjure animals, you typically make sure you can't be a target yourself. Or at least that seems common sense to me. In this scenario, it was in a swamp. I simply stayed roughly 60ft away hiding behind a tree. Surprise really wouldn't have made much difference in the overall point. For example, even if we didn't detect them first, all would have to do it put the wolves in between me and them, and with the rest of the party there along with the wolves, the bullywugs wouldn't be able to do much to me in order to get a concentration check to begin with. In this case, since I was hiding behind the tree, they didn't even know I was there. They were busy holding off wolves and the party

Also, I would caution against simply trying to compare straight damage output of the wolves with another spell. Conjure animals with those wolves has multiple effects, all of which are very important:

8 attacks, all with advantage (pack tactics), each doing 2d4+2 damage (potential 16d4+16 damage)
8 attempts to knock prone a target
Soak up to 88hp of damage that would otherwise be targeted at the party

And it can do all this for multiple rounds.

Even if you lose concentration after the first round, I don't see any other 3rd level spell that comes close to doing all of the above.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If you're going to use a spell like conjure animals, you typically make sure you can't be a target yourself. Or at least that seems common sense to me. In this scenario, it was in a swamp. I simply stayed roughly 60ft away hiding behind a tree. Surprise really wouldn't have made much difference in the overall point. For example, even if we didn't detect them first, all would have to do it put the wolves in between me and them, and with the rest of the party there along with the wolves, the bullywugs wouldn't be able to do much to me in order to get a concentration check to begin with. In this case, since I was hiding behind the tree, they didn't even know I was there. They were busy holding off wolves and the party

Also, I would caution against simply trying to compare straight damage output of the wolves with another spell. Conjure animals with those wolves has multiple effects, all of which are very important:

8 attacks, all with advantage (pack tactics), each doing 2d4+2 damage (potential 16d4+16 damage)
8 attempts to knock prone a target
Soak up to 88hp of damage that would otherwise be targeted at the party

And it can do all this for multiple rounds.

Even if you lose concentration after the first round, I don't see any other 3rd level spell that comes close to doing all of the above.

Bullywugs only have 11 hp. Even with slightly below average damage, a wizard could have wiped out all of the bullwugs with a fireball before initiative was even rolled.

Also, don't underestimate the advantage of surprise. The DMG recommends downgrading the encounter difficulty one step when PCs have surprise. If you hadn't had the element of surprise, you wouldn't have been hiding behind that tree. If the bullywugs won initiative, they could have entered melee with you before your turn even came up. At that point maintaining concentration would have become an issue. Even if they didn't have initiative, they have a jump ability, meaning that they could have leaped over your front line to reach you.

On top of that, if they'd had a sorcerer with them capable of casting Fireball, your wolves would have likely gone up in smoke, in addition to probably damaging your front line.

I agree that it's a good spell. Definitely not cut and dry on it being too powerful though.

 

[Psikerlord#]

If you're going to use a spell like conjure animals, you typically make sure you can't be a target yourself. Or at least that seems common sense to me. In this scenario, it was in a swamp. I simply stayed roughly 60ft away hiding behind a tree. Surprise really wouldn't have made much difference in the overall point. For example, even if we didn't detect them first, all would have to do it put the wolves in between me and them, and with the rest of the party there along with the wolves, the bullywugs wouldn't be able to do much to me in order to get a concentration check to begin with. In this case, since I was hiding behind the tree, they didn't even know I was there. They were busy holding off wolves and the party

Also, I would caution against simply trying to compare straight damage output of the wolves with another spell. Conjure animals with those wolves has multiple effects, all of which are very important:

8 attacks, all with advantage (pack tactics), each doing 2d4+2 damage (potential 16d4+16 damage)
8 attempts to knock prone a target
Soak up to 88hp of damage that would otherwise be targeted at the party

And it can do all this for multiple rounds.

Even if you lose concentration after the first round, I don't see any other 3rd level spell that comes close to doing all of the above.

Yeah it's interesting, the druid summoning spells are kinda like the old summoning monster type I, II etc. The devs took those spells away from arcane casters, but kept them for druids.... and the old balance issues are still there.

I guess the trick is concentration, or perhaps dispelling such monsters. Can you use dispel magic on a summon spell, or does that only work on 1 of the 8 wolves?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Bullywugs only have 11 hp. Even with slightly below average damage, a wizard could have wiped out all of the bullwugs with a fireball before initiative was even rolled.
.

Um....no. The bullywugs were not all in a the same tiny radius of a fireball. There were about 20 monsters in total, and they were all spread about. As you would expect in a swamp. Only about a half dozen would have been caught in a fireball at most.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Um....no. The bullywugs were not all in a the same tiny radius of a fireball. There were about 20 monsters in total, and they were all spread about. As you would expect in a swamp. Only about a half dozen would have been caught in a fireball at most.

Wow, that's pretty spread out. A fireball has a 40 foot diameter and covers an area of 1,256 square feet.

Seems like a pretty easy encounter from the get go. You had surprise and given how spread out they were, it would take 2 or 3 rounds before all of the enemies could have even engaged the party. (Because the rest would need to take Dash actions to reach you.)

However, even if you only took out 6 of 15 enemies with that fireball, that's 40% of the encounter eliminated from the get go. That by itself would make the encounter much easier.

EDIT:
Sorry, I had to step out and was reading your reply on my phone, so I missed the part about there being 20 monsters. (I was going off of your opening post which said there were about 15 of them.)

Even so, 6 of 20 is 30% which still isn't terrible (about 1/3 of the encounter), and should make the encounter significantly more manageable.

Also, in my experience, it's pretty rare that you face 20 enemies but can only get 6 in a fireball. As I said above, that's really spread out, which means that they'll be coming at you in waves, meaning that the entire encounter will be easier as a result. For this scenario, I'd probably wait til after the enemy moves to fireball. They'll be streaming in towards you meaning that they'll likely group up. You can just ask the front-liners to hang back and use ranged weapons or ready actions, so that you can fireball. Given that it'll likely take out 50% or more of the enemies once they group up a little, it should be well worth their while.

 

[DaveDash]

Hold Person at higher levels is the "I win" spell against humanoids.

Sunbeam has turned out to be very powerful.

Moonbeam on a cliff fight.

Spiritual Weapon.

Bless.

Holy Aura against undead.

Shield spell when you have 1st level slots to burn.

Counterspell by an Abjurer or Bard.

Banishment against things from another plane.

Wind Walk.

Leomunds Tiny Hut.

Foresight on a Sharpshooter Fighter.

In the hands of a Beholder: Disintegrate against the Fighter Sharpshooters only bow.

 

[KarinsDad]

8 attacks, all with advantage (pack tactics), each doing 2d4+2 damage (potential 16d4+16 damage)
8 attempts to knock prone a target
Soak up to 88hp of damage that would otherwise be targeted at the party

Not necessarily all of the attacks have advantage unless the DM moves all of the wolves first, then does all of the attacks. And theoretically, not all of the attacks can target the same foe. In some scenarios (like corridors), maybe only a few wolves can attack a given target. There have been hundreds of encounters over the years in our games where not all melee PCs or NPCs could get in and attack. A doorway, a front line, something can easily prevent the wolves from all attacking.

The Spiritual Guardians spell mentioned earlier might take out most or all of the wolves with a single spell and might still be around for damage later on (and can be cast from the ground). It all depends on what you are sending the wolves against and the terrain/environment.

An area effect attack might take out some or all of wolves before the wolves' initiative even comes up. If such a spell catches some PCs, the spell was not just used to take out the 88 hit points of the wolves.

Granted, this is a powerful 3rd level spell in many cases, but Fireball easily does as much damage in some circumstances due to the ease in which foes can take out the wolves (or in some cases, the caster). The wolves will typically not wipe out foes in a single round. Fireball might.

This is also a bit of a corner case due to the fact that wolves are easily at the very top of the CR 1/4 level, a bit stronger than their CR indicates. A CR 1/4 Goblin is nowhere near as powerful as a Wolf. Wolves, especially in groups, are nearly the equivalent of the same number of CR 1/2 Orcs (the wolves do 6.265 DPR with pack attacks, the orcs do 6.3 DPR, but the Orcs can waste a lot of damage/turns by often needing to hit an 11 hit point wolf twice for an average of 18 points of damage in order to kill it, so this tends to balance out the extra 4 hit points that the Orcs have). It's not so much that the spell Conjure Animals itself is so powerful, it's that it is more powerful conjuring the most powerful of the weakest animals.