D&D 5E summon animals

[Horwath]

Sorry, Ive forgotten the spell name that summons beasts (3rd level, druid).

Here's my question: if I use the spell to summon 8 wolves (3rd level slot as wolves are 1/4 CR) isn't that going to utterly hose many powerful things? If the target has no area attacks, those wolves are going to hit a lot (advantage), probably knock the target prone (advantage again, doesn't matter much but makes it hard to run away).

Against a single baddy without an area attack, I think the wolves are likely to kill a CR5 or lower creature. And might really mess up others (I think a 9th level fighter would have a hard time fighting 8 wolves. A 9th level rogue would just die I believe).

I've not run any numbers (and don't have the book here) but I'd love to hear what others think. Seems powerful. I know monsters got something of a boost from the playtest. I'm wondering if they should have 't dialed this spell back when they did that...

Well, you forgot that there is more actions in combat than just standing there and bashing at eachother.

A rogue would just disengage+dash as 1st possible action.

Then he would look for some choke point anything to reduce the number of wolves he has to attack to a minimum. If you are in a corner then you have only 3 spots available to be attacked from. In a narrow choke there is only 1.

9th level fighter could have heavy armor master feat. That reduces wolves average damage by 43% (7->4).

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Don't forget that summoned monsters' attacks don't count as magical unless it says so in the monster's stat block, so all 8 wolves could do against a werewolf is knock it prone, and the poisonous snake can't even do that (I suppose they could they could act as meat shields if the werewolf didn't just charge past them on the way to the druid or ranger).