D&D 5E summon animals

[Mistwell]

So lets take a look.....AT THE MATH!!

Lets try a CR 5 hill giant vs these 8 wolves...which is a monster probably best served with a conjure spell like this. Many CR 5 monsters have regen or resistance, so summons would be much less effective.

The wolf's proning attack is not going to be a big factor here in this "slug fest", as they get advantage from pack tactics anyway. So effectively...they just always have advantage. Lets see what happens!

Thank you for running that analysis.

Next question - how would you do this at the table? 8 wolves, all with advantage, for many rounds. You can't just toss out 16 dice because advantage works off each individual attack. So...8 dice, then re-role any that don't hit?

 

[Stalker0]

So...8 dice, then re-role any that don't hit?

If you do that, you are giving up on crit chances...as a hit could be converted into a crit with that second roll. That said if you want to speed up the spell, and reduce its damage slightly, that is one way to go.

 

[dco]

The problem is the designers keep the CR# times #of creatures the same namely 2. CR2 you get one, CR1/4 you get 8 etc. Cheaper more numerous things be they tanks or monsters will be more effective than fewer more expensive ones when this is the case within reason.

The problem is in the source, CR is only good to know the proficiency bonus of the creature.

Yeah, I don't understand why they were so strict about the whole action economy thing with the beastmaster ranger, but let spellcasters summon/animate ridiculous numbers of creatures. It's a really bizarre contradiction.

[Edit]I think they got it backwards. The beastmaster's pet is the one that should be able to act independently, while the spellcasters should be the ones that have to use their actions controlling their summoned creatures(s), IMO.

The beastmaster can also summon animals.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Since the beast companion takes an action to attack, I generally conceive of it as an alternate weapon. That you can attack with at range. For good damage. And often an additional effect like prone. And that comes with an HP total and defenses that monsters can target instead of you. And that has skills like Perception that increase the number of checks a party gets.

It'd be like if wizards got a cantrip that dealt 1d8 damage and knocked a creature prone and provided an extra 10 temp hp and advantage on Wisdom checks and imposed disadvantage on all attacks.

...not sure that the companion is powerful enough, but it's not nothin'.

That's an interesting take on it. It makes sense, and I can see that that might have been what they were going for.

My problem with it is that they are assuming that nobody is using Animal Handling, Persuasion, or gold to get themselves companions that don't require a class feature. I mean, for 200 gp you can have an elephant (which is superior to most Beastmaster companions until higher levels). You can ride that elephant and choose to allow it to act independently. You now can take all of your own actions, while having an elephant trampling and goring your foes.

If you have a Hunter and Beastmaster in the party, the Hunter could just buy/raise a nice pet of some sort, who will act independently whilst the Hunter gets their extra combat features. I'd feel rather cheated if I played a Beastmaster and realized the Hunter's companion was as good or better than mine (especially if it gets multiple attacks), and mine just stood around waiting to be commanded like a puppet (and not necessarily even getting it's full normal attack routine!) Of course, there is nothing stopping me, as a Beastmaster, from also picking up a non-class feature companion identical to my Hunter friend's. At that point you can compare the benefit of the Beastmaster's companion vs. the Hunter's features directly. Even if it turns out that the Beastmaster is just as effective in that situation (both rangers have a non-class feature companion, Beastmaster has his class-feature companion also), it feels wrong.

I mean, it seems like your special animal companion ought to be as good of a combatant as a regular trained creature, rather than turning into a brain-dead ranged weapon when you bond with him.

Maybe the DMG will mentions something about this in the section about companions. Something along the lines of, "If you choose to allow your PCs to have henchmen, trained creatures, or other companions, you should allow companions granted by class features (such as the Beastmaster's animal companion, or the Chain pact warlock's familiar) to act independently during combat. When a class feature allows the PC to grant actions or abilities to their companion, these are in addition to the creature's normal actions on its turn."

I'd really like to see something like that in there, but if Mike hasn't thought about it by now, it's probably too late. If I knew how to fit it into a tweet I'd send one, but that would be a bit hard to condense.

 

[CapnZapp]

The problem is that to most people an animal companion needs to do two things:
1) carry out commands like a trained animal, being an independent entity
2) stay alive through most combats. Not because the AC needs more power, but because the trope demands that the AC stays one and the same.

Any acceptable rules design needs to start there, and only then add other abilities to the critter, such as actually dealing damage.

I believe most of us would have far preferred a PHB which outright states that additional party members (such as animal companions, cohorts, summoned helpers etc) are inherently unbalanced in that they give the master more than his share of play time attention.

And then simply make all those choices optional.

With the end result that Rangers can only choose Beastmaster with the DMs and the rest of the group's express approval, but that the Ranger would then enjoy an animal companion that actually meets our expectations (its own action for starters, plus say +50% hp with the proviso that when the animal is down to 1/3 hp, it will disengage/flee further combat, which will increase its survivability without granting it more effective hp or stronger staying power in combat).

When it comes to summoning spells and animate dead, I actually prefer an alternate route. That is, instead of making the spells "optional" in this regard, actually nerfing them slightly. At the very least, having 8 summoned wolfs attack should require you using up your own action.

Perhaps you can have one (1) out of your summoned pack attack "for free", going up to two (2) at fifth level. With a summoner getting "extra attacks" at levels 11 and 16 much like a fighter, so a high-level summoner can have up to four wolves attack on his turn while doing something else, but needs to use up his own action to orchestrate a synchronized attack routine from larger numbers of summoned critters. And same with Necromancer, obviously.

 

[Stalker0]

The problem is that to most people an animal companion needs to do two things:
1) carry out commands like a trained animal, being an independent entity
2) stay alive through most combats. Not because the AC needs more power, but because the trope demands that the AC stays one and the same.

Any acceptable rules design needs to start there, and only then add other abilities to the critter, such as actually dealing damage.

I believe most of us would have far preferred a PHB which outright states that additional party members (such as animal companions, cohorts, summoned helpers etc) are inherently unbalanced in that they give the master more than his share of play time attention.

And then simply make all those choices optional.

With the end result that Rangers can only choose Beastmaster with the DMs and the rest of the group's express approval, but that the Ranger would then enjoy an animal companion that actually meets our expectations (its own action for starters, plus say +50% hp with the proviso that when the animal is down to 1/3 hp, it will disengage/flee further combat, which will increase its survivability without granting it more effective hp or stronger staying power in combat).

When it comes to summoning spells and animate dead, I actually prefer an alternate route. That is, instead of making the spells "optional" in this regard, actually nerfing them slightly. At the very least, having 8 summoned wolfs attack should require you using up your own action.

Perhaps you can have one (1) out of your summoned pack attack "for free", going up to two (2) at fifth level. With a summoner getting "extra attacks" at levels 11 and 16 much like a fighter, so a high-level summoner can have up to four wolves attack on his turn while doing something else, but needs to use up his own action to orchestrate a synchronized attack routine from larger numbers of summoned critters. And same with Necromancer, obviously.

I think your two points are spot on.

However, i personally have no issues if the AC is terrible in combat, as long as it can survive it.

If the animal is meant to be more on the exploration pillar and less on combAt, i think that's fine. Just ensure it will last long enough for me to get it there

 

[treebear]

If conjure (summon) animal was scored like a DM designed encounter for the PC to overcome, here are the xp. budget costs for the different options, 1 Cr2 450xp, 2 Cr1 600xp, 4 Cr1/2 800xp, and 8 Cr1/4 1000xp.

A more balanced approach using the encounter building budget xp. costs would be, 1 Cr2 450xp, 1d2 Cr1 400xp average (200xp or 600xp), 1d2+1 Cr 1/2 450xp (300xp or 600xp), and 1d2+3 Cr 1/4 average 450xp (400xp or 500xp).

 

[CapnZapp]

If conjure (summon) animal was scored like a DM designed encounter for the PC to overcome, here are the xp. budget costs for the different options, 1 Cr2 450xp, 2 Cr1 600xp, 4 Cr1/2 800xp, and 8 Cr1/4 1000xp.

A more balanced approach using the encounter building budget xp. costs would be, 1 Cr2 450xp, 1d2 Cr1 400xp average (200xp or 600xp), 1d2+1 Cr 1/2 450xp (300xp or 600xp), and 1d2+3 Cr 1/4 average 450xp (400xp or 500xp).

On a cursory glance, this seems to gel with my suggestion that lets the summoner keep all his critters, but only 1-4 can act independently (without requiring the summoner's action).

The sweetspot then would seem to be around fifth level: all druids can then have two CR 2 critters around, both acting independently.

At higher levels, the utility of low-CR critters seems to fade away, even if you conjure 32 of them: unless you sacrifice your own action, only four acts each round.

At least the nonsense of defeating fire giants with summoned bunnies disappear. Oh well.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think your two points are spot on.

However, i personally have no issues if the AC is terrible in combat, as long as it can survive it.

If the animal is meant to be more on the exploration pillar and less on combAt, i think that's fine. Just ensure it will last long enough for me to get it there

The AC remains as good or bad in combat as before. Obviously, a regular wolf can't be said to be "terrible" in combat at low levels, and nobody is suggesting we nerf the AC below what stats it would have had as a regular animal.

By giving it your level x6 hit points (an 50% increase) as well as a "break threshold" at 1/3 hp where it ceases to function like an AC (fleeing combat or cowering), you have perhaps the simplest solution to the durability problem, without granting it more combat staying power (which would translate into doing more damage).

A beast that previously had 40 hp will now have 60 hp but auto-disengage at 20. So it still has 40 hp for all practical purposes.

Well, except one - death. Since it will run away at 20 hp, its chances of surviving combat to return to its master after the encounter is over should be significantly greater. Of course, a prudent master would probably have commanded his beast to disengage already at 30 hp, to minimize the risk that a stray fireball or mean goblin manages to kill the animal before it has time to run away or hide. This mirrors how previously the animal would probably have been considered fragile at 10 hp.

 

[HJPEV]

I did some Monte Carlo simulations of expected damage for eight wolves vs. eight giant snakes. As you can see, the snakes generally have better raw damage.