More seriously, the spell is unfixable. Designers must have been thinking about 3.5, where AC and attack bonuses scaled more-or-less with level. In that system, the spell would reasonably approach uselessness as attacks failed to land. Sure, there would also be work-arounds to majorly boost to hit chance, but at least the player would have to seek them out instead of stumbling into a broken build by accident.
I am never allowing both a shepherd druid and a twilight cleric in the same party. I think I would legit cry if two people brought this combo to my table.
@@demiurge2763 aww. Maybe allow the Druid to be a centaur and also combo the other build Colby did with the rider and mount with that? Have the Druid be the centaur so concentration can almost never be broken. 🤣
My table plays conjure animals this way: When you first take the spell, you pick three animals for each CR, and the DM picks the other three. Create a simple chart. Every time you cast it, you let the DM know what CR you summon and he rolls a d6 to determine the animals. This gives it some variety and fun but without just being overpowered or useless.
Let's add a bit of reward to the player... Top 6 creatures for each. Each upcaast threshold gives a +1. This means that at higher levels, they're likelier to get the better options.
Totally agree with you about capstone abilities. They should be iconic and encourage that specialisation in your class have something awesome to aim for.
Every time you mention the Kobold roar, I imagine a cat meow sound effect The Kobold charges into the frey, leading a frenzied stampede of animals. It raises its staff, takes a deep breath, and from the top of its lungs,- "Mrow"
I played a Shepherd Druid, I had an arrangement with DM. I wouldn't try to overpower / clog the combat encounters he let me choose and they went on my turn. I mostly summoned CR 1 or 2 beasts. They were heartier and I used unicorn spirit as she was healing and summoned focused. Was so much fun, nice bad ass healing spec.
Colby: "we could get Booming Blade and use it with Shillelagh, but we're probably not going into melee because we can't wear metal armor." Also Colby: "we're taking a feat to learn Inflict Wounds."
This is funny but in his defence he did say the focus was around nova damage not a melee build. And that spell is great for emergency nova damage up close
I don't think he was thinking this, but you can burn one Wild Shape to for Find Familiar (Tasha's "Wild Companion" optional rule for druids), then use that familiar to deliver Inflict Wounds as a touch spell while you're safely away from the melee.
I feel a simple solution to conjure animals could be to just break up the spell into conjure "specific animal" and have them all do the same thing but you pick the spell and only get to pick from a more balanced set of choices. [Example: Conjure Wolves 2nd level spell - summon 4 wolves to the battlefield. Add 2 additional wolves for each spell level above 2nd ]
Today I needed to hear "welcome home, you belong here". Thanks Colby. Additionally, I find as a DM that spells like Conjure Animals and the like are great for what I call "RP Combat". An example I recently ran for my players was a full scale war. The players (two players only mind you) were thrust into the middle of a war for territory. There were several hundred combatants on each side, and so for the players to have any sway in the fight they were encouraged to think outside the box. Big, splashy spells that don't normally work in dungeons were called upon, spells like Conjure Animals. Initiative decided whose turn it was to make a tactical decision, but one on one combat rarely occurred. We also utilized the royal game of Ur to decide on how the players moved across the battlefield. All in all it really worked to simulate a huge war. Cheers!
Jeremy Crawford noted in Sage Advice that the DM picks what is summoned and specifically if the player wants pixies it is up to the DM to allow or deny.
@Professor Thinker I like that :). As if you are stood there saying “come to me pixies of the forest” and 1) there are no pixies nearby and 2) all the fey who hear you think ‘that isn’t me then’ and carry on with their day 🙃
@Professor Thinker Do you announce that rule before the game starts? If you forget, do you give them a warning? I know AL is faster and looser with rules than PFS, but in general house rules don't fly there.
I think a fun way to do it would be the same way I handle player requests for other spells. If you want to change a spell affect, you roll Arcana for it. DC set by the DM based on what your trying to change. If you give players a shot at affecting the way their magic works by understanding magic, they appreciate it a lot more and can't complain if they don't get the result they were trying for.
@Professor Thinker You're house ruling an effect on the conjuration spell. The spell states (using Conjure Animals as an example): "You summon fey spirits that take the form of beasts and appear in unoccupied spaces that you can see within range. Choose one of the following options for what appears:" and goes on to list four options. None of those options are "0 CR X creatures" as you are handing the player. The clarification provided in the Sage Advice Compendium states: "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." You're welcome to house rule that, but there is no "zero options arrive" scenario in the RAW as you claim. You say claim this is "being a decent player" but it sounds vicious and vindictive. Maybe we have a more cooperative player base where I'm at. If you tried this at my FLGS you'd wind up on the GM no-fly list. You came into this thread with "I have a rule..." And I think you opened with the truth there. This isn't RAW, this isn't "Sage Advice Clarification" this is a house rule. Your rule. That said, have fun with the game and I hope your style allows your players to do the same. Colby asks us to be kind and good at the close of this video. I'd ask the same. Assume ignorance on the part of the player, take a chance to let them know the expectation for the spell and move on with play.
Even if it's combat-warpingly powerful, I really appreciate the videos on more straightforward "builds" like this that don't rely on anything complicated, contentious, or circumstantial. Keep up the great content!
I love the scene. A little kobold waves his hands and summons a herd of bison like creatures, runs 10 ft from an enemy and says "f@ck this guy" (probably in druidic to code the message) to the bison bois. Then they say "you got it boss" and absolutely obliterate them.
I played the Shepard Druid on a full campaign and safe to say I just turned it into a Konosuba episode everytime just from Conjure Animals (because I roll Giant Toads most of the time and most bosses would die when they get eaten by them)
Love the new pbxpd! I liken it to Colville's "doublydoo". This proves that the channel is coming into it's own identity. Well done as always Colby. Also, I think you might have set a record on the preamble. I love my preambles!!!
Perhaps we should start looking at other non-damage ways of using this spell. I mean a flock of owls can fly around giving the whole party advantage on all of thier attacks, or a wall of large elk could provide battlefield control, etc.
The animals can all take the help or grapple actions, it's a very potent use of the spell when the animals can't actually deal damage due to the enemy creature having nonmagical bps resistance or immunity
@@oathboundhero1782 I play a Moon druid in one of my campaigns and I regularly use Giant Owls to fly the party around, or carry someone out of harm's way in combat. Giant Octopi are fantastic battlefield control via grappling and restraining enemies. The Giant Constrictor Snake is also excellent for dragon fights to keep the dragon on the ground. I've also summoned horses with it to enable the party to escape from a bad situation.
Thank you. I love this class. One house rule I use for any conjure spells is I give players the choice, but they can’t choose the same thing twice in a row. This way they can’t just spam their favorite.
fantastic build! something of note, whilst your singing of toss a coin to your witcher song was great, the sudden volume change at the end had me rushing to turn down my speakers as it is currently 4 am whilst watching this lol
- Shepherd druid + Life cleric + (any) moon sickle = super healer - For one minute all friends in the unicorn totem's aura gain a bonus from healing spells with another bonus from only one level in life cleric. - You will hit 20s and 30s in healing. Keeps summons up longer as well. (Edit) corrections
I have to say thank you for making these videos! I genuinely love the amount of thought and care you put into these. Their inviting and creative essence makes me want to play more dnd as well as make art.
My table’s solution for conjure animals: roll on a table to determine the animal summoned. Adjust the roll statistics for favorite animals (e.g. 10 possible animals predetermined before session. 3 of them are favored [chosen by player before session]. A D100 roll with a 56% chance to summon 1 of 7 regular animals (8%each) and 44% chance of a favored animal (15%,15%,14%). Semi-fair.
Conjure animals: alternate mechanic for spell level scaling - spell lvl 3: standard cr of spell. - spell level 5: all cr levels go up by 1 cr rating, quantity stays the same. Eg. 1 cr2 -> 1 cr3 2 cr1 -> 2 cr2 4 cr1/2 -> 4 cr1 8 cr1/4 -> 8 cr1/2 - Spell lvl 7 1 cr1 -> 1 cr4 2 cr1 -> 2 cr3 4 cr1/2 -> 4 cr2 8 cr1/4 -> 8 cr1 - spell lvl 9 1 cr2 -> 1 cr5 2 cr1 -> 2 cr4 4 cr1/2 -> 4 cr3 8 cr1/8 -> 8 cr2 Potentially also broken, but it changes from overwhelming numbers to stronger allied beasts as the spell lvl increases; which I feel aligns with the parties levels at this stage of the game. Popped into my head after watching this vid, so feel free to say how t ballace this properly.
That's a great fix, Conjure Fey already kind of shows this type of progression but annoyingly is 1 minute casting time (Why are all the good druid conjuration spells that aren't a swarm of creatures 1 minute casting time!!!).
I'm playing a Shepherd Druid in my campaign and I had to talk to my DM about not doing these kinds of shenanigans 🤣 He was so worried I was gonna curb stomp everything and he didnt want to shut down my character, thankfully I'm not an optimizer and wolves are the way I will go but this build is beautiful
Jaskier. Have nothing against Dandylion but I was 13 when I discovered the books. For me you can be both as I simply love to listen to you while working. You have incredible voice sir. Have a wondefull day.
I'm a bit surprised you didn't multiclass here. Summon spells don't need spell attack rolls or save DCs, so being a little MAD isn't a problem. 10 levels of Conjuration Wizard would notably give benign transposition which refreshes "whenever you finish a long rest or cast a conjuration spell of 1st level or higher." All those summons means plenty of willing targets to trade places with. The multiclass would also give focused conjuration and no longer need to worry about damage breaking our concentration on conjuration spells. All that being said, I prefer single class characters more often than not anyway so I'm happy to see it here 👍 Love the videos, thanks for your hard work
As a fix for conjure animals. Maybe say that only double your proficiency animals turn up at the start of each round. Making the damage ramp slowly. While also allowing the enemy to keep the numbers down. Maybe this is a better idea for a villain...
Since it's the action economy that makes this spell broken, the easiest way to fix it is to take away the options of CR 1/4 or 1/2 and thus to summon lots of beasts. Alternatively, you could make it so that those CR's simply cannot attack, leading to a more utility, tank or support based option. To summon 4 creatures with a fifth level spellslot is still powerful, but it isn't broken imo.
I have a beast master Ranger who has a two level dip in Shepherd Druid. Great combination with the ability to talk with all beasts. My favorite use of conjure animals, was to conjure 8 Giant Owls. They would swoop in and use their flyby ability to grab player characters with their talons and fly them out of dangerous melee situations with no opportunity attacks.
That was fun. Aren't druids awesome! Our solution was just to remove the higher quantities of summoned creatures in the base spell (i.e. no 4 beasts or 8 beasts option). You can still double with upcasting but this limits the crazy. This also keeps the druid from taking so much time at the table from the other players. I suppose you could also give it a material component (50gp per summoned?) or some downside like if you lose concentration they all turn on you. Removing the higher quantities seemes the most practical way to limit without affecting the spell overall. I have the feeling that in play-testing this spell they only summoned 1 or 2 creatures and never examined the action economy impact of summoning so many creatures. Thanks for doing these videos!
Great build but there's one significant piece of the shepherd that's been left out. Conjure elemental and conjure fey plus planar binding lets you keep some pretty powerful boosted fey/elementals (korred, frost salamander, hags the regular elementals etc.) potentially forever. And they get the all the usual shepherd bonuses, the extra health gets crazy with higher hit die summons (e.g. frost salamander gets 32 extra hp). This is all while still having conjure animals running since planar binding removes the concentration requirement. Keep on having fun everyone :)
Man, I would love to play this as gruff, just past his prime, middle aged cowboy, looking forward to living his best life running a ranch. However, his plans are put on hold when he receives a message from the town sheriff, calling him to action. The cowboy gathers his herd and sets off to quash whatever threat is disrupting his would be peaceful retirement. I might flavor it with a level dip into Peace or Life Cleric.
One combo I stumbled on to was Conjure Animals and Crusader's Mantle. I rolled up a War Cleric and they get Crusader's Mantle, normally a paladin spell. I used it because we had an Arcane Archer and a Champion Fighter plus we were higher level, like 12-13ish. So adding in 1d4 extra damage for each of their 3 attacks did significant damage. What I didn't think of at the time was the Beast Master Ranger, who the DM allowed to summon panthers. So at higher levels that added in like 6d4 extra damage for the two fighters but then that is an extra 8d4 for the panthers. Then if they knocked the target prone that could be another 8d4 because the panthers could do a follow up follow up bite if the creature is prone. There were times that the panthers would chew through a Fire Giant just by knocking it on its but and chomping. That was so fun.
It’s definitely interesting seeing the numbers to show how unfair this spell can be compared to other sustained damage options. Great work as always, even if this isn’t your preferred play style. Would love to see a Dreams Druid in a build sometime! I feel that’s it’s a very underrated subclass, I’m intrigued to see where your brain could take it!
A good solution for conjure animals to keep a single player from gobbling up huge amounts of time each round in combat that I employ is to split up the conjured animals among the players. In my experience having 2-4 mini packs of raptors running around under multiple peoples control will give the players much more versatility and fun in the experience than one player just having a huge number of turns to take. As a druid player if room is constricted I would typically summon a pair of cr 1 or a single cr 2 creature, but those times when you can just be like "And you get three raptors, and you get three raptors, and you get the raptors" to all the other players at the table is more likely to elicit gleeful hoots than groans. Just be the Oprah of raptors and wolves!
A little idea on how to handle those conjure spells, since you really don't want to give the player a free choice, but you also don't want to just choose for them, so have them make suggestions of what they wanna summon instead: 1st as a homework they have to compile a list of the stat sheets of all the creatures they might wanna summon 2nd agree with them on a worst case failed summon, I'd suggest defaulting to a cat (CR 0 if I'm not mistaken) 3rd when they cast conjure animals, choose 4 more creatures of the chosen CR, or as close as possible, but only from animals that would makes sense to life in the current environment and since there's other players, have them each pick one of those four instead of you, as long as you (the DM) still get at least one pick (should work out perfectly with a party of 4 players) 4th assign each creature a number from 1 to 6, with 6 being the creature that the conjure spell casting player choose and 1 being the cat (or other preferably CR 0 fail creature) 5th roll a d6 to see what's summoned that way the player has to prepare the stat sheets, the other players get involved and instead of being the super mean DM, you made it into a fun and flavorful (4 in 6 are local creatures, giving the role play potential of not being summoned at all and adds variety based on location) minigame maybe switch it up, also while I'd wanna stay rules as written and only take CR of the category and lower, you could also add an option to fail upwards at times, that's something I thought of that for when there's not so many options at a single CR, but then probably use a d12 to keep the ratio of 1 in 6 (the thing that player wants is probably as op as the higher CR creature)
The only multiclassing I can think of that would increase damage without sacrificing spell slot progression is peace cleric to use emboldening bond on the conjured animals attack rolls, but it would be pretty small.
An idea to control the chaos of conjure animal. Summoned Swarms: Similar summoned creatures become swarms when a summoner controls 4 or more of them. Swarms are large groups of monsters merged into a single entity. A character may control a number of swarms equal to their proficiency bonus.
When creatures join into a swarm, they retain their statistics except: Creature Size. Hit Points. Strength ability score. Damage Resistances. Damage Vulnerability. Damage taken from sources effecting an area, such as a fireball spell. Condition Immunities. Swarm Trait. Overwhelming Power. The swarm can make one additional attack. Attack. The amount of damage dice rolled is doubled.
I have a homebrew for conjure animals. When you summon few creatures you can choose. If you summon the 8 or 4 option they are all from a random type in the table (the table is a d8 and have 4 options picked by the player and 4 options picked by me)
I think it's funny that you felt the need to cap your primary stat even though you acknowledged it was unnecessary. Capping Constitution might have actually been a better use of ASIs if you really felt the need to cap something. If you wanted to be practical, you could add some feats to give yourself proficiency and advantage in Concentration checks, but I'd probably have taken the chance to take all the feats I wish I could take on other characters but just couldn't afford to be frivolous with. Loved that you picked Chef at the end.
I would always rule as the DM that a character can conjure any animal they gain a lot of knowledge about. So if you put in the roll play for dome time before gaining the spell your good👍
Colby, I love your work this time as much as every time and I appreciate the fact you took this one on especially with your misgivings about Conjure Animals. That said I’d like to highlight what you said in your final thoughts (or at least what I got out of it). The right way to play a summoner is working in concert with your DM for party support and story enhancement. Deep Rothe are good but I’d argue that getting them all to fit and maneuver is highly situational. I love the summons that provide utility to the group like Giant Owls, or even Chwingas and pulling out the DPS options when the group needs it. Additionally, there is a unique element of gameplay here that you don’t get many other paces in selecting the right summons and strategy to employ. I could see the DM allowing pixies in the situation of the party about to wipe on an over calibrated boss fight for example. Again, none of my post is intended as a criticism. I just want to point out that IF played correctly this type of build can be a value add to everyone and harder to play than constantly laying down one type of beast. Thank you for what you do and the value you bring to the D&D community.
R37 was an attempt to tap into the mystical druidic powers that have, up until now eluded the Warforged of Eberron. Previous attempts resulted in wonderfully crafted beings that, because of their metallic bodies were unable to tap into the natural magicks of the druidic realm. With R37, an undetected imperfection of amethyst spread throughout the metallic frame of the Warforged seemed to be sufficient enough to allow this iteration to overcome the flaws of his 36 predecessors. There was, however an unexpected side effect of creating R37, it had an unnatural obsession with summoning life. It seemed as though it was trying to find a way to fill a void within itself, appreciating that it lacked the beating heart that it recognized in the creatures it summoned. These days R37 can be found wandering the countryside, surrounded by an ever growing herd of elk. Conservationists have expressed alarm at the herds ability to strip a field of grass in mere minutes and steps are being taken to shut R37 down, though it's insatiable love of life may make it feel threatened if the herd is threatened. Only time will tell. Also, signed up for channel membership because Colby is awesome!
Great timing, Colby! Just starting to play two Lvl 10 Druid Twin Sister Halflings. One is a Shepherd Druid (by choice), the other a Circle of the Land (not by choice). I've created several macros in Roll20 to help move along combat. Looking forward to seeing all these animals bowl over the bad guys. I've always wondered what I would do after summoning the animals - like transform to an eagle and fly away or just dodge - so you've helped me with that.
Can confirm: life cleric dip took our D&D game, broke the plot’s metaphorical back over its divine knee, and the player built him to have the best healing output ever seen while also giving him the most OP passive perception possible. We’re talking a 35+ passive perception. Morgan the Awakener got to the point that the DM couldn’t do anything to make his passive perception work mechanically other than giving him true sight. Morgan saw each individual ant as it marched along the side of the road while also seeing the 5 baby birds in their nest 78 feet away while also sensing that 25 gnolls were trying to ambush us 60 feet ahead while he sent swarms of crows to preemptively strike. He also got a nasty habit of awakening (and later evolving) animals to the point the DM decided that it was Morgan that created all of the disparate beats races including making new branches of the already existing ones. All of a sudden Faerun’s Tabaxi, Minotaur, Centaur, etc. populations exploded with new indigenous members while also being the origins of Loxodons, shifters, Tri-kreen, et. al. Of course the first time he used the spell were on two giant beetles in the Underdark and proceeded to give one of them a MASSIVE god complex that resulted in its demise.
I played a Shepherd druid on a Westmarches server for a good while - got to level 7 before retiring him. The format of such a server is that you play a continual character through a series of one-shots, continuous storylines or repeatable games. I retired him not because of DMs nerfing my character, but primarily because you just never knew exactly how DMs would nerf your character. I had carefully made macros for all my favourite summons (if I was to be summoning 8 of them), but would sometimes be told that I could only summon "x" amount of creatures or creatures of a certain type. This did end up bogging down gameplay because I had to pull up new roll20 stuff on the fly to adapt to it. Eventually I built up a library of most of the things I usually summoned in all contexts, but it wasn't that fun to constantly be guessing what each game might entail in terms of my own capabilities. Point is, have a conversation with your DM. If I was DMing for a Shepherd I'd probably restrict them to a maximum of 4 creatures. That still leaves you with some very powerful options and great sustained DPR, but it's a little easier to work with and encourages people to take more creative/utility focussed creatures. As long as neither the DM or the player is surprising one another with the stuff, I think it all works out just fine.
Nice combo of draconic cry + conjure animals. while i agree that the best way to boost conjure animals is to simply get access to higher spell slots faster, i would've still multiclassed after shepherd 6 since we just really care about spell slots. multiclassing specifically into arcane casters will give you access to useful defensive spells like shield. diviner will give you portent for either initiative bonus or replacing a bad attack roll or save. wild magic sorc will do the same with tides of chaos. war magic/twilight cleric will give a bonus to initiative which is great for burst builds. twilight sanctuary also helps keep the animals alive. lore bards can allow you to get cutting words either to cut someone's initiative or lessen the dmg of an aoe spell. anyway i can just dream about being able to choose an optimal creature for conjure animals. never encountered a DM who let me choose and i've played with both friendly DMs and stranger DMs. still it's nice to theorycraft a conjure animals build after being inspired by your build. and yes i agree conjure animals is broken and i consider it a top 5 broken spell.
Regarding how my DMs have ruled in the past regarding Circle of the Shepard - Unicorn Totem with the Goodberry interaction. The ruling was made that the "If you cast a spell using a spell slot that restores hit points to any creature inside or outside the aura, each creature of your choice in the aura also regains hit points equal to your druid level." wording states that the "regains hit points equal to your druid level" trigger and the location of the target having restored hit points didn't matter as it could be either "inside or outside the aura" that the "restore hit points" part of the trigger would go off when "you cast a spell using a spell slot that restores hit points". Goodberry DOES cost a spell slot and DOES restore hit points; therefore the aura's area of effect healing would trigger when "you cast the spell using a spell slot". So as a Bonus Action you would throw out the Unicorn Totem, placing it wherever you wanted to heal people, then cast Goodberry which creates the 10 berries in addition to everyone in the aura having hit points equal to your Druid level restored to them.
Honestly, since we're not gonna be using damage cantrips very much, I'd go thematic with the cantrip from Draconic Legacy and pick up Dancing Lights, since deep rothé can cast it with innate spellcasting. One more little thing to justify how absolutely busted this character is.
53:00 "I actually don't think that I'm so much annoyed that someone else might outshine me, by abusing Conjure Animals for example, without any effort (although, sure, I'm human, there's obviously going to be some of that), but I think it's more that I could outshine MYSELF by doing it, right?" I think you've really hit the nail on the head for how overpowered options really make the game less fun in D&D. It's not so much outshining other players at the table; we all want to win the encounter, we all want to survive. Not all of us are even in it for the combat to start with, and nobody ever said a party NEEDS to be balanced around combat. It's when one option is so much stronger than anything else that it makes experimenting with other options, which is what a lot of us here love to do, feel unrewarding. A big part of game design is rewarding players for doing what they wanted to do anyways. You go on quests because you WANT to go on quests, and when the game rewards you with loot and xp, it makes the reward centers of your brain light up and reinforces wanting to do it as the right feeling to have going forward. In the same way, we WANT to build characters, and when those characters prove to be effective, it reinforces wanting to do it again. If the game rewarded player characters for staying home, farming, studying, and generally not going on quests, and it rewarded that as much or MORE than actually going on quests, it wouldn't take away that initial drive to go out and do quests because they're fun, but it would take away that reinforcement to do the thing that makes the game fun. In the same way, if the game rewards ONE spell selection more than anything else, it takes away the reinforcement to experiment with different builds like we like to do. It optimizes the fun out of optimizing.
Love the title. Looking forward to the one shot tonight! That LFG app is just what I need, too. Thanks for letting us know. The fact that it is local guys here in SLC is just icing on the cake!
Can't wait for you to see the ones coming up. It's going to be quite a journey. And the Critters are definitely one of the nicest and best fandoms out there. There's even a term for when someone gets pulled into the Critter family and their site gets overwhelmed, or all of their merchandise is bought out. It's called a Critter Hug. CR even had a short-lived show during pandemic where they did nothing but highlight some of the wonderful and talented fans they have, and it was called Critter Hug. I remember the first time CR offered any merch. It was one of the very early shows. They announced that they had 100 t-shirts for sale, and they were sold out before they even finished the announcement. The cast was flabbergasted. It was a very wholesome moment, and predictive of the future. Just look at the Kickstarter that made this series. (I know others have told this story before now)
In addition to the DM picking from the player shortlist of animals to be summoned, the DM could implement the morale rule for the summoned animals. Once they are reduced to half or fewer in number, they make a morale wisdom save and potentially run away.
Except "You summon fey spirits that take the form of beasts" and not beasts. And "They obey any verbal commands that you issue to them". So... why the absurd nerf?
thank you for your optimization creation, it does help some of us to see possibilities we wouldn't normally see. it gives some of us options when we do build. so, thank you for your hard work.
My first idea for triggering the subclass capstone was to ask your friendly party monk, to use stunning strike on you once, you fail by choice and bam, giant constrictor snakes. If the rogue goes before you and you do it on the first turn, you'd only loose 1 turn... Sure someone incapacitating you with a spell and then as soon as the snakes are summoned, drop concentration, so you get back conciousness, however that would probably require a whole turn of a caster and a spell slot, while for a monk it's just part of their action and 1 ki at lvl 14...
As a DM I have found that using terrain, AOE attacks and spells, flying enemies, ranged enemies in a building, etc. brings down the power level. The creatures are not too difficult to kill and they can get blocked pretty easily. Just the same that I don't mind players having flight because I have plenty of options against them. Note I had a player that was an aarakocra Shepard druid, they were effective but definitely not broken.
I DM for a group where our druid likes to summon animals quite a lot. I told him I would let him summon anything, provided he's encountered the animal before and it could reasonably come from the biome the party is currently in (no polar bears in desert kind of deal). It's constantly an exercise in self-control to separate what I wanna do as a DM vs. what enemies would do, and at the same time letting the player have his fun vs. balancing encounters. His beast of choice is Flying Snake, so it's exactly as Colby said, all or nothing - they are small, fast, and their poison packs a punch, but useless against something poison immune and a single cast of Burning Hands will shut all 8 of them down. Luckily the player is quite reasonable and recognizes that he's stealing spotlight from others, so he started to investigate other options.
I think it would be fun to choose ONE beast you can summon for the whole campaign by way of your backstory. For example, my shepherd druid is a Chultan. A pack of velociraptors follows him everywhere, but they are only mechanically useful when he casts the spell. Most of the time they are NPCs. Or weather. Choose a less optimal beast if raptors make gameplay glumpy. Try goats. Or giant ravens.
there is also the option of multiclassing into conjurer going something like 6 lvls of druid and 14 lvls of conjurer and you wont drop concentration due to dmg and your rothés will be a lot more sturdy sitting at 53 hp, which is more than enough hp to take a fireball or an opportunity attack and there is the added bonus of being a wizard and get access to wizard spells and more summons etc. without loosing any dmg from conjure animals as their attacks will still count as magical and they will still get +2 hp pr HD, it will allow you to get a bit more bang for your buck from your conjure animals as they will definately last longer.
I love conjure animals. As a player I make sure I have all the stats for the animals I intend to summon at hand and bring along the minis to represent them at the table. As a DM I insist my players do the same. If I have to supply the minis then I choose what animals are summoned.
Ok fine, I'll leave a comment. Just wanted to say thanks, your videos have all been great since I discovered them during this past home-while-under-the-weather week. Mood brightened, pages filled with notes and ideas.
I've been playing a druid for a few years now in a long running campaign. I was really excited when I got access to Conjure Animals. Discussed long and hard with my dm on how we'd run it. Tried to balance keeping it fun with not ruining every encounter. Ran it RAW for a while. He got bored of choosing my animals. I cooked up a rollable table but it took too long. In the end he just said you choose and now I do and nothing got broken. It is a fun spell and it's gotten our party out of a few scrapes over the years. Buuuut, one of the best things about druids is having access to IDK 150 spells. I rarely prepare Conjure Animals these days, I'm really conscious of not taking up loads of time on my turn (even though we play online mostly and it's really easy). I also like to try new stuff. Druids are swiss army knives, with loads of options and that's more fun than conjuring 8 wolves every week. So on balance it works at our table because I don't over use it. Other players still get excited when I bust it out because it's a treat not a chore. Man. I love druids. Although in unrelated news my druid (now level 11) got captured by mindflayers, rescued halfway through ceremorphosis and now has a symbiotic entity (i.e. he's half mindflayer) and has to be kept alive by wearing a magic mask gifted to him by an avatar of Selune.
As an action you summon eight tiny creatures or fuor medium creatures (your choice) *stat block for tiny creature* *stat block for medium creature* In combat they act after your turn. You roll a d8 (if choose to summon 8 creatures) or a d4 (if you choose to summon 4 creatures) to determine how many of them hit the target (or targets). If one or more creatures die, when you roll to hit, you subtract this number from the dice you rolled. *this is not fixed by any means, but it's just a way of translating conjure animals in a similar way of summon beasts, plus, I'm not really sure how to upscale this, maybe by making the creatures 16, you can roll 2d8 and continue in a similar way as written before.
I have LOVED watching all your builds, and been waiting for this! My Shepherd Druid is currently at 6th level, and I have been using your damage count method, and knew once you saw how effective a field of snarly allies can be, you would see the light ;) I want to tell you her story and details but don't want to be accused of CONGESTING THE FIELD lol.
Colby: If your enemy is flying how does that change the choice of animal and the numbers? BTW: great final thought. Fantastic honesty about how you think and your motives about the spell. Lovely to see self awareness and humility anywhere on RUclips! Thanks for the ‘Welcome Home’ each week.
Peace cleric is an insane dip for the shepherd druid.. either 1 or 6 lvls. At 6 lvls, you can use the summons to tank blows that target the peace cleric. Also the emboldening bond really helps with their to hit. Finally the channel divinity allows the peace cleric to heal them all at once. It’s by far the best summoner.
I don’t think a GM would need to aggressively target at all depending on story setting: what about an encounter on a ship voyage? Charge a kraken? Flying creatures? It is called dungeons and DRAGONS after all. You did also cover tight spaces… so DUNGEONS. I love this concept for open warfare scenes, replace Gandalf at Helms Deep and have them wreck everything.
First, context will apply, assimetrically of course, to all builds. So it's not super relevant for number crunching. Second, conjure animals is versatile enough to deal with all of these scenarios.
I feel compelled to chime in, kinda. I give summoners (any class) a list of 1 or 2 creatures at each CR that are available in the area. That way they still “pick” but the choices are more limited. A couple summons? They roll. 8+ creatures? Defer to a DPR calculator. Yes, I change who / what players encounter if they have a summoner, but the same is true for most any character/group composition. “Nova” based party? 4-5 encounters to force choice on when to “nova”. Prefer 2-3 rounds of bugging pre combat? Time sensitive encounters (wolves attacking caravan, there simply aren’t “free” rounds available). Heavy armored party? Be prepared to be caught surprised a lot…. I don’t know of any gm who doesn’t tailor encounters to force meaningful choices on the group?
As an alternative to a DPS route and more of a support/debuff approach, I want to see how using Conjure Woodland Beings does summoning eight Mites who use their Blood Boiling Hex on your enemies, after which they can run around lending help to party members. Blood Boiling Hex (Recharge 6). The mite places a hex on a creature it can see within 60 feet of it for 1 minute. If the mite is hidden, using this ability does not reveal its location. While the creature is affected by this hex, whenever it makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, it must roll a d6 and subtract the number rolled from the d20 roll. On any turn in which it suffers the effect of the hex, the target can attack an ally as a reaction, ignoring the effect of the hex when it does so. It can then ignore the effect of the hex until the end of its turn.
The way my DM and I run CA is that I have an approved list by CR type (broken out by land, sea, and air). I choose the CR and type and then roll a die and summon what that number translates to. I actually like this because I then have to react tactically to what shows up rather than just doing the same thing over and over. In terms of speeding up game play I use the macro Treantmonk built for rolling attacks in Roll20 and just take average damage. My turn goes faster than some of the other players by doing that.
We did avenis, with a shepherd druid, a necromancer cleric, and oathbreaker paladin. The summoned beasts and many skeletons massive bonus hp. Made them survive aoe effects better.
Tabaxi PC: "Nat 20"
DM: How do you want to do this?
Tabaxi PC: I push them into the stream of conjured rothé and say "long live the king"
It's great that you'll soon be respected
A king who'll be long time adored
Name them Scab
How about 2 creatures make your target prone, and the rest of the Rothe's just come by and dump poop on them making psychic damage!.... gotta suck
Combine them. Shepard Druid \ Twilight Cleric. Go first, summon an army, and endlessly boost their hp. Join the dark side. You know you want to.
More seriously, the spell is unfixable. Designers must have been thinking about 3.5, where AC and attack bonuses scaled more-or-less with level. In that system, the spell would reasonably approach uselessness as attacks failed to land. Sure, there would also be work-arounds to majorly boost to hit chance, but at least the player would have to seek them out instead of stumbling into a broken build by accident.
I am never allowing both a shepherd druid and a twilight cleric in the same party. I think I would legit cry if two people brought this combo to my table.
@@demiurge2763 aww. Maybe allow the Druid to be a centaur and also combo the other build Colby did with the rider and mount with that? Have the Druid be the centaur so concentration can almost never be broken. 🤣
I had good luck and alot of fun when playing this combo. *laughs maniacally*
@@mr.irishbastard5755 you cruel cruel man.. :)
My table plays conjure animals this way:
When you first take the spell, you pick three animals for each CR, and the DM picks the other three. Create a simple chart. Every time you cast it, you let the DM know what CR you summon and he rolls a d6 to determine the animals. This gives it some variety and fun but without just being overpowered or useless.
This rules, good compromise and allows for some fun randomness in battles.
wow this is wonderful and I'm totally stealing this. thanks dude/ette
you could also make the choices based off environments
Let's add a bit of reward to the player...
Top 6 creatures for each.
Each upcaast threshold gives a +1.
This means that at higher levels, they're likelier to get the better options.
Nobody:
Shepherd druid: “quantity has a quality all of its own.”
Original quote came from stalin fyi
@@spencervance8484 yes, I’m aware he was a druid.
Every week, Colby casts Aura of Wholesomeness. There is no saving throw.
If there was a saving throw, I would willingly fail it
@@gamecavalier3230 bc it also works on the very few enemies
We are all charmed for the duration of the video
Draconic Cry is a fantastic pairing with conjure animals!
Aren't you supposed to be running a 50k subs game right now? 😆😆
@@scottduncan7099 nahhh gotta drop everything when D4 deep dive uploads!
@@scottduncan7099 We still have 3 hours! :)
Nice! I won't be able to watch the live stream, not a Twitch guy. But can't wait for you or Chris or Eric to drop it.
@@DnDDeepDive WE'LL DO IT LIVE! FUCK IT!
A great use for Wild Shape, if somewhat cheesy, is to turn into a badger and hide 10 feet in the ground.
i really love how colby is just a guy, like he's so genuine and really just a cool person, love your videos man :)
Aw, cheers!
Totally agree with you about capstone abilities.
They should be iconic and encourage that specialisation in your class have something awesome to aim for.
The "Welcome home. You belong here." gets me every time.
The Shepherd Druid: d4 #92
Level 1:(see above) [druid 1 & race]
Level 2:(see above) [druid 2 & sub-clas]
Level 3:(@22:26) [druid 3]
Level 4:(@24:03) [druid 4 & ASI]
Level 5:(@26:34) [druid 5]
Level 6:(@32:18) [druid 6]
Level 7:(see above) [druid 7]
Level 8:(@37:29) [druid 8 & ASI]
Level 9:(@38:34) [druid 9]
Level 10:(see above) [druid 10]
Level 11:(@41:29) [druid 11]
Level 12:(@42:12) [druid 12 & ASI]
Level 13:(@42::23) [druid 13]
Level 14:(see above) [druid 14]
Level 15:(@45:49) [druid 15]
Level 16:(@46:12) [druid 16 & ASI]
Level 17:(@47:04) [druid 17]
Every time you mention the Kobold roar, I imagine a cat meow sound effect
The Kobold charges into the frey, leading a frenzied stampede of animals. It raises its staff, takes a deep breath, and from the top of its lungs,-
"Mrow"
I played a Shepherd Druid, I had an arrangement with DM. I wouldn't try to overpower / clog the combat encounters he let me choose and they went on my turn. I mostly summoned CR 1 or 2 beasts. They were heartier and I used unicorn spirit as she was healing and summoned focused. Was so much fun, nice bad ass healing spec.
Capping Conjure Animals at 4 creatures makes it WAY more reasonable in regards to both balance and practicality.
42:43 "Jehoshaphat, Trigger. Put that peashooter down."
I too loved the Disney Robin Hood as a child.
Regarding faithful summons, I immediately imagined a monk slapping the party's shepherd druid to make four giant elk appear
Same
Colby: "we could get Booming Blade and use it with Shillelagh, but we're probably not going into melee because we can't wear metal armor."
Also Colby: "we're taking a feat to learn Inflict Wounds."
Well....if they do get close, you may just have to give them the bad touch...
This is funny but in his defence he did say the focus was around nova damage not a melee build. And that spell is great for emergency nova damage up close
I don't think he was thinking this, but you can burn one Wild Shape to for Find Familiar (Tasha's "Wild Companion" optional rule for druids), then use that familiar to deliver Inflict Wounds as a touch spell while you're safely away from the melee.
I feel a simple solution to conjure animals could be to just break up the spell into conjure "specific animal" and have them all do the same thing but you pick the spell and only get to pick from a more balanced set of choices.
[Example: Conjure Wolves 2nd level spell - summon 4 wolves to the battlefield. Add 2 additional wolves for each spell level above 2nd ]
Today I needed to hear "welcome home, you belong here". Thanks Colby. Additionally, I find as a DM that spells like Conjure Animals and the like are great for what I call "RP Combat". An example I recently ran for my players was a full scale war. The players (two players only mind you) were thrust into the middle of a war for territory. There were several hundred combatants on each side, and so for the players to have any sway in the fight they were encouraged to think outside the box. Big, splashy spells that don't normally work in dungeons were called upon, spells like Conjure Animals. Initiative decided whose turn it was to make a tactical decision, but one on one combat rarely occurred. We also utilized the royal game of Ur to decide on how the players moved across the battlefield. All in all it really worked to simulate a huge war. Cheers!
Jeremy Crawford noted in Sage Advice that the DM picks what is summoned and specifically if the player wants pixies it is up to the DM to allow or deny.
@Professor Thinker I like that :). As if you are stood there saying “come to me pixies of the forest” and 1) there are no pixies nearby and 2) all the fey who hear you think ‘that isn’t me then’ and carry on with their day 🙃
@Professor Thinker Do you announce that rule before the game starts? If you forget, do you give them a warning? I know AL is faster and looser with rules than PFS, but in general house rules don't fly there.
I think a fun way to do it would be the same way I handle player requests for other spells. If you want to change a spell affect, you roll Arcana for it. DC set by the DM based on what your trying to change. If you give players a shot at affecting the way their magic works by understanding magic, they appreciate it a lot more and can't complain if they don't get the result they were trying for.
@@jonathanmartin8716 That would be fun :)
@Professor Thinker You're house ruling an effect on the conjuration spell. The spell states (using Conjure Animals as an example): "You summon fey spirits that take the form of beasts and appear in unoccupied spaces that you can see within range. Choose one of the following options for what appears:" and goes on to list four options. None of those options are "0 CR X creatures" as you are handing the player. The clarification provided in the Sage Advice Compendium states: "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." You're welcome to house rule that, but there is no "zero options arrive" scenario in the RAW as you claim.
You say claim this is "being a decent player" but it sounds vicious and vindictive. Maybe we have a more cooperative player base where I'm at. If you tried this at my FLGS you'd wind up on the GM no-fly list.
You came into this thread with "I have a rule..." And I think you opened with the truth there. This isn't RAW, this isn't "Sage Advice Clarification" this is a house rule. Your rule.
That said, have fun with the game and I hope your style allows your players to do the same. Colby asks us to be kind and good at the close of this video. I'd ask the same. Assume ignorance on the part of the player, take a chance to let them know the expectation for the spell and move on with play.
Even if it's combat-warpingly powerful, I really appreciate the videos on more straightforward "builds" like this that don't rely on anything complicated, contentious, or circumstantial. Keep up the great content!
I love the scene. A little kobold waves his hands and summons a herd of bison like creatures, runs 10 ft from an enemy and says "f@ck this guy" (probably in druidic to code the message) to the bison bois. Then they say "you got it boss" and absolutely obliterate them.
Hopefully it's not mating season and they don't take you literally lol.
I've been waiting for this! Despite the issues they may potentially bring in 5e, I've always loved summoner-type characters.
I played the Shepard Druid on a full campaign and safe to say I just turned it into a Konosuba episode everytime just from Conjure Animals (because I roll Giant Toads most of the time and most bosses would die when they get eaten by them)
Honestly that welcome home at the beginning of each episodes makes me feel warm and fuzzy
Love the new pbxpd! I liken it to Colville's "doublydoo". This proves that the channel is coming into it's own identity. Well done as always Colby. Also, I think you might have set a record on the preamble. I love my preambles!!!
The doobly Doo is an old RUclips meme from like 2009, I first heard it from the Vlog Brothers but Veritasium used it for a while too for example
I love my tuesday mornings and your new character every week.
Hearing you refer to us as long time viewers feels nice 😄 it's like "yup, we were there at episode 01 and we still love it !"
Perhaps we should start looking at other non-damage ways of using this spell. I mean a flock of owls can fly around giving the whole party advantage on all of thier attacks, or a wall of large elk could provide battlefield control, etc.
The animals can all take the help or grapple actions, it's a very potent use of the spell when the animals can't actually deal damage due to the enemy creature having nonmagical bps resistance or immunity
Some DMs might allow you to summon a swarm instead. Now that would be cool.
Also, I think it would be cool if you could get cover from the animals. Or you could have a ton of flying creatures lift you and fly you around.
@@oathboundhero1782 I play a Moon druid in one of my campaigns and I regularly use Giant Owls to fly the party around, or carry someone out of harm's way in combat. Giant Octopi are fantastic battlefield control via grappling and restraining enemies. The Giant Constrictor Snake is also excellent for dragon fights to keep the dragon on the ground. I've also summoned horses with it to enable the party to escape from a bad situation.
Thank you. I love this class. One house rule I use for any conjure spells is I give players the choice, but they can’t choose the same thing twice in a row. This way they can’t just spam their favorite.
I think it's OK if they have only one summon but that means they must put in the roll play why that is before
fantastic build! something of note, whilst your singing of toss a coin to your witcher song was great, the sudden volume change at the end had me rushing to turn down my speakers as it is currently 4 am whilst watching this lol
- Shepherd druid + Life cleric + (any) moon sickle = super healer
- For one minute all friends in the unicorn totem's aura gain a bonus from healing spells with another bonus from only one level in life cleric.
- You will hit 20s and 30s in healing. Keeps summons up longer as well.
(Edit) corrections
I have to say thank you for making these videos! I genuinely love the amount of thought and care you put into these. Their inviting and creative essence makes me want to play more dnd as well as make art.
My table’s solution for conjure animals: roll on a table to determine the animal summoned. Adjust the roll statistics for favorite animals (e.g. 10 possible animals predetermined before session. 3 of them are favored [chosen by player before session]. A D100 roll with a 56% chance to summon 1 of 7 regular animals (8%each) and 44% chance of a favored animal (15%,15%,14%). Semi-fair.
Conjure animals: alternate mechanic for spell level scaling - spell lvl 3: standard cr of spell.
- spell level 5: all cr levels go up by 1 cr rating, quantity stays the same. Eg.
1 cr2 -> 1 cr3
2 cr1 -> 2 cr2
4 cr1/2 -> 4 cr1
8 cr1/4 -> 8 cr1/2
- Spell lvl 7
1 cr1 -> 1 cr4
2 cr1 -> 2 cr3
4 cr1/2 -> 4 cr2
8 cr1/4 -> 8 cr1
- spell lvl 9
1 cr2 -> 1 cr5
2 cr1 -> 2 cr4
4 cr1/2 -> 4 cr3
8 cr1/8 -> 8 cr2
Potentially also broken, but it changes from overwhelming numbers to stronger allied beasts as the spell lvl increases; which I feel aligns with the parties levels at this stage of the game.
Popped into my head after watching this vid, so feel free to say how t ballace this properly.
That's a great fix, Conjure Fey already kind of shows this type of progression but annoyingly is 1 minute casting time (Why are all the good druid conjuration spells that aren't a swarm of creatures 1 minute casting time!!!).
I'm playing a Shepherd Druid in my campaign and I had to talk to my DM about not doing these kinds of shenanigans 🤣 He was so worried I was gonna curb stomp everything and he didnt want to shut down my character, thankfully I'm not an optimizer and wolves are the way I will go but this build is beautiful
Wolves are annoying because they require saving throws to avoid being knocked prone though.
Jaskier. Have nothing against Dandylion but I was 13 when I discovered the books.
For me you can be both as I simply love to listen to you while working. You have incredible voice sir.
Have a wondefull day.
Thanks! Same to you!
I'm a bit surprised you didn't multiclass here. Summon spells don't need spell attack rolls or save DCs, so being a little MAD isn't a problem. 10 levels of Conjuration Wizard would notably give benign transposition which refreshes "whenever you finish a long rest or cast a conjuration spell of 1st level or higher." All those summons means plenty of willing targets to trade places with. The multiclass would also give focused conjuration and no longer need to worry about damage breaking our concentration on conjuration spells.
All that being said, I prefer single class characters more often than not anyway so I'm happy to see it here 👍 Love the videos, thanks for your hard work
As a fix for conjure animals. Maybe say that only double your proficiency animals turn up at the start of each round. Making the damage ramp slowly. While also allowing the enemy to keep the numbers down. Maybe this is a better idea for a villain...
Since it's the action economy that makes this spell broken, the easiest way to fix it is to take away the options of CR 1/4 or 1/2 and thus to summon lots of beasts. Alternatively, you could make it so that those CR's simply cannot attack, leading to a more utility, tank or support based option.
To summon 4 creatures with a fifth level spellslot is still powerful, but it isn't broken imo.
I have a beast master Ranger who has a two level dip in Shepherd Druid. Great combination with the ability to talk with all beasts. My favorite use of conjure animals, was to conjure 8 Giant Owls. They would swoop in and use their flyby ability to grab player characters with their talons and fly them out of dangerous melee situations with no opportunity attacks.
Life cleric is my level 1 dip always for this build. The bonus healing they give combines wonderfully with the totem aura.
That was fun. Aren't druids awesome!
Our solution was just to remove the higher quantities of summoned creatures in the base spell (i.e. no 4 beasts or 8 beasts option). You can still double with upcasting but this limits the crazy. This also keeps the druid from taking so much time at the table from the other players.
I suppose you could also give it a material component (50gp per summoned?) or some downside like if you lose concentration they all turn on you. Removing the higher quantities seemes the most practical way to limit without affecting the spell overall. I have the feeling that in play-testing this spell they only summoned 1 or 2 creatures and never examined the action economy impact of summoning so many creatures.
Thanks for doing these videos!
Great build but there's one significant piece of the shepherd that's been left out. Conjure elemental and conjure fey plus planar binding lets you keep some pretty powerful boosted fey/elementals (korred, frost salamander, hags the regular elementals etc.) potentially forever. And they get the all the usual shepherd bonuses, the extra health gets crazy with higher hit die summons (e.g. frost salamander gets 32 extra hp). This is all while still having conjure animals running since planar binding removes the concentration requirement. Keep on having fun everyone :)
Man, I would love to play this as gruff, just past his prime, middle aged cowboy, looking forward to living his best life running a ranch. However, his plans are put on hold when he receives a message from the town sheriff, calling him to action. The cowboy gathers his herd and sets off to quash whatever threat is disrupting his would be peaceful retirement.
I might flavor it with a level dip into Peace or Life Cleric.
i laughed all the way outloud when you raspberried for pbtpd. You were right, it WAS hilarious.
Alternate Title: A 56-and-a-Half Minute Explanation of Why the DM Should Pick the Conjured Animals
Was so happy when i heard the deep Rothe btw! Used that one a few times on my shepherd in Storm kings thunder, no one expects poisonous cave cows.
One combo I stumbled on to was Conjure Animals and Crusader's Mantle. I rolled up a War Cleric and they get Crusader's Mantle, normally a paladin spell. I used it because we had an Arcane Archer and a Champion Fighter plus we were higher level, like 12-13ish. So adding in 1d4 extra damage for each of their 3 attacks did significant damage. What I didn't think of at the time was the Beast Master Ranger, who the DM allowed to summon panthers. So at higher levels that added in like 6d4 extra damage for the two fighters but then that is an extra 8d4 for the panthers. Then if they knocked the target prone that could be another 8d4 because the panthers could do a follow up follow up bite if the creature is prone.
There were times that the panthers would chew through a Fire Giant just by knocking it on its but and chomping. That was so fun.
It’s definitely interesting seeing the numbers to show how unfair this spell can be compared to other sustained damage options. Great work as always, even if this isn’t your preferred play style.
Would love to see a Dreams Druid in a build sometime! I feel that’s it’s a very underrated subclass, I’m intrigued to see where your brain could take it!
A good solution for conjure animals to keep a single player from gobbling up huge amounts of time each round in combat that I employ is to split up the conjured animals among the players. In my experience having 2-4 mini packs of raptors running around under multiple peoples control will give the players much more versatility and fun in the experience than one player just having a huge number of turns to take. As a druid player if room is constricted I would typically summon a pair of cr 1 or a single cr 2 creature, but those times when you can just be like "And you get three raptors, and you get three raptors, and you get the raptors" to all the other players at the table is more likely to elicit gleeful hoots than groans. Just be the Oprah of raptors and wolves!
A little idea on how to handle those conjure spells, since you really don't want to give the player a free choice, but you also don't want to just choose for them, so have them make suggestions of what they wanna summon instead:
1st as a homework they have to compile a list of the stat sheets of all the creatures they might wanna summon
2nd agree with them on a worst case failed summon, I'd suggest defaulting to a cat (CR 0 if I'm not mistaken)
3rd when they cast conjure animals, choose 4 more creatures of the chosen CR, or as close as possible, but only from animals that would makes sense to life in the current environment and since there's other players, have them each pick one of those four instead of you, as long as you (the DM) still get at least one pick (should work out perfectly with a party of 4 players)
4th assign each creature a number from 1 to 6, with 6 being the creature that the conjure spell casting player choose and 1 being the cat (or other preferably CR 0 fail creature)
5th roll a d6 to see what's summoned
that way the player has to prepare the stat sheets, the other players get involved and instead of being the super mean DM, you made it into a fun and flavorful (4 in 6 are local creatures, giving the role play potential of not being summoned at all and adds variety based on location) minigame
maybe switch it up, also while I'd wanna stay rules as written and only take CR of the category and lower, you could also add an option to fail upwards at times, that's something I thought of that for when there's not so many options at a single CR, but then probably use a d12 to keep the ratio of 1 in 6 (the thing that player wants is probably as op as the higher CR creature)
The only multiclassing I can think of that would increase damage without sacrificing spell slot progression is peace cleric to use emboldening bond on the conjured animals attack rolls, but it would be pretty small.
Another good one would be Twilight Cleric to massively increase their survivability.
An idea to control the chaos of conjure animal.
Summoned Swarms:
Similar summoned creatures become swarms when a summoner controls 4 or more of them. Swarms are large groups of monsters merged into a single entity. A character may control a number of swarms equal to their proficiency bonus.
When creatures join into a swarm, they retain their statistics except:
Creature Size.
Hit Points.
Strength ability score.
Damage Resistances.
Damage Vulnerability. Damage taken from sources effecting an area, such as a fireball spell.
Condition Immunities.
Swarm Trait.
Overwhelming Power. The swarm can make one additional attack.
Attack. The amount of damage dice rolled is doubled.
I have a homebrew for conjure animals. When you summon few creatures you can choose. If you summon the 8 or 4 option they are all from a random type in the table (the table is a d8 and have 4 options picked by the player and 4 options picked by me)
I think it's funny that you felt the need to cap your primary stat even though you acknowledged it was unnecessary. Capping Constitution might have actually been a better use of ASIs if you really felt the need to cap something. If you wanted to be practical, you could add some feats to give yourself proficiency and advantage in Concentration checks, but I'd probably have taken the chance to take all the feats I wish I could take on other characters but just couldn't afford to be frivolous with. Loved that you picked Chef at the end.
I would always rule as the DM that a character can conjure any animal they gain a lot of knowledge about. So if you put in the roll play for dome time before gaining the spell your good👍
Finally I found the pbtpd explanation! Ive been watching around 30 of your videos and was so curious why you did that! 😂😂😂
Colby, I love your work this time as much as every time and I appreciate the fact you took this one on especially with your misgivings about Conjure Animals. That said I’d like to highlight what you said in your final thoughts (or at least what I got out of it). The right way to play a summoner is working in concert with your DM for party support and story enhancement. Deep Rothe are good but I’d argue that getting them all to fit and maneuver is highly situational. I love the summons that provide utility to the group like Giant Owls, or even Chwingas and pulling out the DPS options when the group needs it. Additionally, there is a unique element of gameplay here that you don’t get many other paces in selecting the right summons and strategy to employ. I could see the DM allowing pixies in the situation of the party about to wipe on an over calibrated boss fight for example. Again, none of my post is intended as a criticism. I just want to point out that IF played correctly this type of build can be a value add to everyone and harder to play than constantly laying down one type of beast. Thank you for what you do and the value you bring to the D&D community.
R37 was an attempt to tap into the mystical druidic powers that have, up until now eluded the Warforged of Eberron. Previous attempts resulted in wonderfully crafted beings that, because of their metallic bodies were unable to tap into the natural magicks of the druidic realm.
With R37, an undetected imperfection of amethyst spread throughout the metallic frame of the Warforged seemed to be sufficient enough to allow this iteration to overcome the flaws of his 36 predecessors. There was, however an unexpected side effect of creating R37, it had an unnatural obsession with summoning life. It seemed as though it was trying to find a way to fill a void within itself, appreciating that it lacked the beating heart that it recognized in the creatures it summoned.
These days R37 can be found wandering the countryside, surrounded by an ever growing herd of elk.
Conservationists have expressed alarm at the herds ability to strip a field of grass in mere minutes and steps are being taken to shut R37 down, though it's insatiable love of life may make it feel threatened if the herd is threatened. Only time will tell.
Also, signed up for channel membership because Colby is awesome!
Great timing, Colby! Just starting to play two Lvl 10 Druid Twin Sister Halflings. One is a Shepherd Druid (by choice), the other a Circle of the Land (not by choice). I've created several macros in Roll20 to help move along combat. Looking forward to seeing all these animals bowl over the bad guys. I've always wondered what I would do after summoning the animals - like transform to an eagle and fly away or just dodge - so you've helped me with that.
Can confirm: life cleric dip took our D&D game, broke the plot’s metaphorical back over its divine knee, and the player built him to have the best healing output ever seen while also giving him the most OP passive perception possible.
We’re talking a 35+ passive perception. Morgan the Awakener got to the point that the DM couldn’t do anything to make his passive perception work mechanically other than giving him true sight. Morgan saw each individual ant as it marched along the side of the road while also seeing the 5 baby birds in their nest 78 feet away while also sensing that 25 gnolls were trying to ambush us 60 feet ahead while he sent swarms of crows to preemptively strike.
He also got a nasty habit of awakening (and later evolving) animals to the point the DM decided that it was Morgan that created all of the disparate beats races including making new branches of the already existing ones. All of a sudden Faerun’s Tabaxi, Minotaur, Centaur, etc. populations exploded with new indigenous members while also being the origins of Loxodons, shifters, Tri-kreen, et. al.
Of course the first time he used the spell were on two giant beetles in the Underdark and proceeded to give one of them a MASSIVE god complex that resulted in its demise.
I played a Shepherd druid on a Westmarches server for a good while - got to level 7 before retiring him. The format of such a server is that you play a continual character through a series of one-shots, continuous storylines or repeatable games.
I retired him not because of DMs nerfing my character, but primarily because you just never knew exactly how DMs would nerf your character. I had carefully made macros for all my favourite summons (if I was to be summoning 8 of them), but would sometimes be told that I could only summon "x" amount of creatures or creatures of a certain type. This did end up bogging down gameplay because I had to pull up new roll20 stuff on the fly to adapt to it. Eventually I built up a library of most of the things I usually summoned in all contexts, but it wasn't that fun to constantly be guessing what each game might entail in terms of my own capabilities.
Point is, have a conversation with your DM. If I was DMing for a Shepherd I'd probably restrict them to a maximum of 4 creatures. That still leaves you with some very powerful options and great sustained DPR, but it's a little easier to work with and encourages people to take more creative/utility focussed creatures. As long as neither the DM or the player is surprising one another with the stuff, I think it all works out just fine.
Nice combo of draconic cry + conjure animals.
while i agree that the best way to boost conjure animals is to simply get access to higher spell slots faster, i would've still multiclassed after shepherd 6 since we just really care about spell slots. multiclassing specifically into arcane casters will give you access to useful defensive spells like shield.
diviner will give you portent for either initiative bonus or replacing a bad attack roll or save. wild magic sorc will do the same with tides of chaos.
war magic/twilight cleric will give a bonus to initiative which is great for burst builds. twilight sanctuary also helps keep the animals alive.
lore bards can allow you to get cutting words either to cut someone's initiative or lessen the dmg of an aoe spell.
anyway i can just dream about being able to choose an optimal creature for conjure animals. never encountered a DM who let me choose and i've played with both friendly DMs and stranger DMs. still it's nice to theorycraft a conjure animals build after being inspired by your build. and yes i agree conjure animals is broken and i consider it a top 5 broken spell.
Regarding how my DMs have ruled in the past regarding Circle of the Shepard - Unicorn Totem with the Goodberry interaction. The ruling was made that the "If you cast a spell using a spell slot that restores hit points to any creature inside or outside the aura, each creature of your choice in the aura also regains hit points equal to your druid level." wording states that the "regains hit points equal to your druid level" trigger and the location of the target having restored hit points didn't matter as it could be either "inside or outside the aura" that the "restore hit points" part of the trigger would go off when "you cast a spell using a spell slot that restores hit points".
Goodberry DOES cost a spell slot and DOES restore hit points; therefore the aura's area of effect healing would trigger when "you cast the spell using a spell slot".
So as a Bonus Action you would throw out the Unicorn Totem, placing it wherever you wanted to heal people, then cast Goodberry which creates the 10 berries in addition to everyone in the aura having hit points equal to your Druid level restored to them.
I have a feeling the 2024 5e rework will change (nerf) this spell and other "conjure" spells to work like Tasha's summons.
I have a feeling that they just cease to exist at all, Tahsa summons already fill their role and they are much better designed
The Robin Hood reference killed me.... Excellent.
Honestly, since we're not gonna be using damage cantrips very much, I'd go thematic with the cantrip from Draconic Legacy and pick up Dancing Lights, since deep rothé can cast it with innate spellcasting. One more little thing to justify how absolutely busted this character is.
MY CURRENT CHARRACTER IN TWO CAMPAIGNS! thanks for posting this!
53:00 "I actually don't think that I'm so much annoyed that someone else might outshine me, by abusing Conjure Animals for example, without any effort (although, sure, I'm human, there's obviously going to be some of that), but I think it's more that I could outshine MYSELF by doing it, right?"
I think you've really hit the nail on the head for how overpowered options really make the game less fun in D&D. It's not so much outshining other players at the table; we all want to win the encounter, we all want to survive. Not all of us are even in it for the combat to start with, and nobody ever said a party NEEDS to be balanced around combat. It's when one option is so much stronger than anything else that it makes experimenting with other options, which is what a lot of us here love to do, feel unrewarding.
A big part of game design is rewarding players for doing what they wanted to do anyways. You go on quests because you WANT to go on quests, and when the game rewards you with loot and xp, it makes the reward centers of your brain light up and reinforces wanting to do it as the right feeling to have going forward. In the same way, we WANT to build characters, and when those characters prove to be effective, it reinforces wanting to do it again.
If the game rewarded player characters for staying home, farming, studying, and generally not going on quests, and it rewarded that as much or MORE than actually going on quests, it wouldn't take away that initial drive to go out and do quests because they're fun, but it would take away that reinforcement to do the thing that makes the game fun. In the same way, if the game rewards ONE spell selection more than anything else, it takes away the reinforcement to experiment with different builds like we like to do. It optimizes the fun out of optimizing.
Im only 9 minutes in, but i keep thinking Crusaders Mantle! (Paladin Ally) lol
Thank you for the build!!!
Love the title. Looking forward to the one shot tonight! That LFG app is just what I need, too. Thanks for letting us know. The fact that it is local guys here in SLC is just icing on the cake!
Can't wait for you to see the ones coming up. It's going to be quite a journey. And the Critters are definitely one of the nicest and best fandoms out there. There's even a term for when someone gets pulled into the Critter family and their site gets overwhelmed, or all of their merchandise is bought out. It's called a Critter Hug. CR even had a short-lived show during pandemic where they did nothing but highlight some of the wonderful and talented fans they have, and it was called Critter Hug. I remember the first time CR offered any merch. It was one of the very early shows. They announced that they had 100 t-shirts for sale, and they were sold out before they even finished the announcement. The cast was flabbergasted. It was a very wholesome moment, and predictive of the future. Just look at the Kickstarter that made this series. (I know others have told this story before now)
In addition to the DM picking from the player shortlist of animals to be summoned, the DM could implement the morale rule for the summoned animals. Once they are reduced to half or fewer in number, they make a morale wisdom save and potentially run away.
Except "You summon fey spirits that take the form of beasts" and not beasts.
And "They obey any verbal commands that you issue to them". So... why the absurd nerf?
@@WexMajor82 not a nerf, just they don’t necessarily fight to the death. This was in response to the question at the end of the vid.
Even more dice to roll and work for the DM.
That's not a bad idea but no.
@@Blobby3822 True. I always prefer the simpler solutions. Plus players should roll the dice wherever possible :)
thank you for your optimization creation, it does help some of us to see possibilities we wouldn't normally see. it gives some of us options when we do build. so, thank you for your hard work.
i just love that you get goodberries and raspberries and all the little friends you ever needed. is the tiny-but-mighty dragonling's dream!
My first idea for triggering the subclass capstone was to ask your friendly party monk, to use stunning strike on you once, you fail by choice and bam, giant constrictor snakes. If the rogue goes before you and you do it on the first turn, you'd only loose 1 turn...
Sure someone incapacitating you with a spell and then as soon as the snakes are summoned, drop concentration, so you get back conciousness, however that would probably require a whole turn of a caster and a spell slot, while for a monk it's just part of their action and 1 ki at lvl 14...
As a DM I have found that using terrain, AOE attacks and spells, flying enemies, ranged enemies in a building, etc. brings down the power level. The creatures are not too difficult to kill and they can get blocked pretty easily. Just the same that I don't mind players having flight because I have plenty of options against them. Note I had a player that was an aarakocra Shepard druid, they were effective but definitely not broken.
I DM for a group where our druid likes to summon animals quite a lot. I told him I would let him summon anything, provided he's encountered the animal before and it could reasonably come from the biome the party is currently in (no polar bears in desert kind of deal).
It's constantly an exercise in self-control to separate what I wanna do as a DM vs. what enemies would do, and at the same time letting the player have his fun vs. balancing encounters. His beast of choice is Flying Snake, so it's exactly as Colby said, all or nothing - they are small, fast, and their poison packs a punch, but useless against something poison immune and a single cast of Burning Hands will shut all 8 of them down.
Luckily the player is quite reasonable and recognizes that he's stealing spotlight from others, so he started to investigate other options.
I think it would be fun to choose ONE beast you can summon for the whole campaign by way of your backstory. For example, my shepherd druid is a Chultan. A pack of velociraptors follows him everywhere, but they are only mechanically useful when he casts the spell. Most of the time they are NPCs. Or weather. Choose a less optimal beast if raptors make gameplay glumpy. Try goats. Or giant ravens.
there is also the option of multiclassing into conjurer going something like 6 lvls of druid and 14 lvls of conjurer and you wont drop concentration due to dmg and your rothés will be a lot more sturdy sitting at 53 hp, which is more than enough hp to take a fireball or an opportunity attack and there is the added bonus of being a wizard and get access to wizard spells and more summons etc. without loosing any dmg from conjure animals as their attacks will still count as magical and they will still get +2 hp pr HD, it will allow you to get a bit more bang for your buck from your conjure animals as they will definately last longer.
I have been really enjoying your videos. Very clear, very entertaining. I have been sharing you with my friends. Love to see you above 50k.
I love conjure animals. As a player I make sure I have all the stats for the animals I intend to summon at hand and bring along the minis to represent them at the table. As a DM I insist my players do the same. If I have to supply the minis then I choose what animals are summoned.
Ok fine, I'll leave a comment.
Just wanted to say thanks, your videos have all been great since I discovered them during this past home-while-under-the-weather week. Mood brightened, pages filled with notes and ideas.
Cheers! Glad you're enjoying :)
Dad jokes galore. Love it!!!. Hugs and love from another dad in South America 🙇🏻♂️♿
I've been playing a druid for a few years now in a long running campaign. I was really excited when I got access to Conjure Animals. Discussed long and hard with my dm on how we'd run it. Tried to balance keeping it fun with not ruining every encounter. Ran it RAW for a while. He got bored of choosing my animals. I cooked up a rollable table but it took too long. In the end he just said you choose and now I do and nothing got broken. It is a fun spell and it's gotten our party out of a few scrapes over the years. Buuuut, one of the best things about druids is having access to IDK 150 spells. I rarely prepare Conjure Animals these days, I'm really conscious of not taking up loads of time on my turn (even though we play online mostly and it's really easy). I also like to try new stuff. Druids are swiss army knives, with loads of options and that's more fun than conjuring 8 wolves every week. So on balance it works at our table because I don't over use it. Other players still get excited when I bust it out because it's a treat not a chore. Man. I love druids. Although in unrelated news my druid (now level 11) got captured by mindflayers, rescued halfway through ceremorphosis and now has a symbiotic entity (i.e. he's half mindflayer) and has to be kept alive by wearing a magic mask gifted to him by an avatar of Selune.
As an action you summon eight tiny creatures or fuor medium creatures (your choice)
*stat block for tiny creature*
*stat block for medium creature*
In combat they act after your turn.
You roll a d8 (if choose to summon 8 creatures) or a d4 (if you choose to summon 4 creatures) to determine how many of them hit the target (or targets).
If one or more creatures die, when you roll to hit, you subtract this number from the dice you rolled.
*this is not fixed by any means, but it's just a way of translating conjure animals in a similar way of summon beasts, plus, I'm not really sure how to upscale this, maybe by making the creatures 16, you can roll 2d8 and continue in a similar way as written before.
A Scooby laugh is needed after you say Scooby snacks
I have LOVED watching all your builds, and been waiting for this! My Shepherd Druid is currently at 6th level, and I have been using your damage count method, and knew once you saw how effective a field of snarly allies can be, you would see the light ;) I want to tell you her story and details but don't want to be accused of CONGESTING THE FIELD lol.
Colby: If your enemy is flying how does that change the choice of animal and the numbers?
BTW: great final thought. Fantastic honesty about how you think and your motives about the spell. Lovely to see self awareness and humility anywhere on RUclips!
Thanks for the ‘Welcome Home’ each week.
Peace cleric is an insane dip for the shepherd druid.. either 1 or 6 lvls. At 6 lvls, you can use the summons to tank blows that target the peace cleric. Also the emboldening bond really helps with their to hit. Finally the channel divinity allows the peace cleric to heal them all at once. It’s by far the best summoner.
Great video!
You talked about maybe taking cleric levels you could always take some twilight and just have the best of both worlds =P
I don’t think a GM would need to aggressively target at all depending on story setting: what about an encounter on a ship voyage? Charge a kraken? Flying creatures? It is called dungeons and DRAGONS after all.
You did also cover tight spaces… so DUNGEONS.
I love this concept for open warfare scenes, replace Gandalf at Helms Deep and have them wreck everything.
First, context will apply, assimetrically of course, to all builds. So it's not super relevant for number crunching. Second, conjure animals is versatile enough to deal with all of these scenarios.
Velociraptors are the 3rd? highest DPR option and deal with most of these scenarios. Though for underwater you'd almost always want Giant octopi.
I feel compelled to chime in, kinda.
I give summoners (any class) a list of 1 or 2 creatures at each CR that are available in the area. That way they still “pick” but the choices are more limited.
A couple summons? They roll. 8+ creatures? Defer to a DPR calculator.
Yes, I change who / what players encounter if they have a summoner, but the same is true for most any character/group composition.
“Nova” based party? 4-5 encounters to force choice on when to “nova”. Prefer 2-3 rounds of bugging pre combat? Time sensitive encounters (wolves attacking caravan, there simply aren’t “free” rounds available). Heavy armored party? Be prepared to be caught surprised a lot…. I don’t know of any gm who doesn’t tailor encounters to force meaningful choices on the group?
If I were to GM D&D, I would've ruled "PC chooses summons from the list of animals appropriate to the kind of terrain they are in".
As an alternative to a DPS route and more of a support/debuff approach, I want to see how using Conjure Woodland Beings does summoning eight Mites who use their Blood Boiling Hex on your enemies, after which they can run around lending help to party members.
Blood Boiling Hex (Recharge 6). The mite places a hex on a creature it can see within 60 feet of it for 1 minute. If the mite is hidden, using this ability does not reveal its location. While the creature is affected by this hex, whenever it makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, it must roll a d6 and subtract the number rolled from the d20 roll. On any turn in which it suffers the effect of the hex, the target can attack an ally as a reaction, ignoring the effect of the hex when it does so. It can then ignore the effect of the hex until the end of its turn.
Can we talk about how 12:27 they literally pack tacticed him from talking heresy about Kobolds? XD
Highlight of the video!
The way my DM and I run CA is that I have an approved list by CR type (broken out by land, sea, and air). I choose the CR and type and then roll a die and summon what that number translates to. I actually like this because I then have to react tactically to what shows up rather than just doing the same thing over and over.
In terms of speeding up game play I use the macro Treantmonk built for rolling attacks in Roll20 and just take average damage. My turn goes faster than some of the other players by doing that.
I just about skipped over the sponsor plug but I’m glad I didn’t! I’m definitely checking it out!
We did avenis, with a shepherd druid, a necromancer cleric, and oathbreaker paladin. The summoned beasts and many skeletons massive bonus hp. Made them survive aoe effects better.
So glad I finally got this far going through the old episodes so I finally know the origin of *blows raspberry* ^_^