The tashas summons definitely don’t feel like they were made to be optimized. It’s more like, “we fucked up the original summoner spells. They are broken and unfun. You can use these weaker but streamlined ones if you want.” It’s as if they are a revision of summoning on the whole. I do really respect this position. I do wish there was a tashas spell that could summon at least two creatures though.
I played a summoner character and DM for a party with 3 characters with summons, I really like the Tasha's spells, way more manageable than conjure animals even if all summons are out then everyone has more fun
I totally agree with the points made by the original poster. The original summon spells are poorly worded and poorly balanced. And no, player should absolutely not choose creature on those. I significantly buffed the Tasha summons in my games I DM and only allow those. It is a significant improvement to the games and summoner's in general. It is reliable and powerful but not immeasurable and random and bad for the game.
@@PackTactics but KOBOLD! The shadowspawn from Summon Shadowspawn can scream and give a fear effect to all creatures within a sizeable radius against your spell DC - so you’re essentially casting the Fear spell AND getting a decent body on the field to soak enemy damage! Plus if you pick Despair, all creatures that start next to it lose 20ft of movement, with no saving throw! Fear on it’s own is great so surely this is a good three for one deal? You get a fear effect, a slowdown, and a HP sponge, all for a 3rd level spell!
@@jeffjefforson5929 And the best part? Neither of those can be Counterspelled/Dispelled! Maybe the initial casting, but then again, how many times are you going up against enemy casters?
The reason people love the new Summon Spells isn’t because of how powerful they are for pure damage. It’s because of how nightmarishly bad it is to run Conjure whatever spells. The fact that there are so many guides specifically on how to make the spell run smoother really says a lot about how poorly designed it is, even though it’s a strong option. The Summon spells are nice, simple to understand, provide a lift it of damage and utility, and most importantly there is basically no debate on whether or not they run into problems with magical resistance
@@Hazel-xl8in truthfully I had forgotten about this comment. At the time, I had yet to see this consensus emerge. However, I don’t think the logic applies. Bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from spells are considered magical unless otherwise stated. The reason things like Conjure Animals and the like don’t is because the spell isn’t directly cause damage, it just summons what does. Summon spells fully are the spell.
It was pretty obvious that the Tasha summons were meant as an easier to manage, balanced option in place of various conjure spells, which makes the fact that theyre gated behind expensive, specific components so stupid
The Summon spells from Tasha are objectively worse than the Conjure spells, but that's because both come from a different philosophy of design. It focus more on one decently powerful creature instead of a huge amount of creatures that either are chosen by the DM, giving them more things to think about, or only the one or two creatures that people usually use with Conjure Animals.
@@BODELTOTE more organic, easier and honestly, more in line with how 5e's power gap should be. Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland Beings make Frontline Martials irrelevant while also not offering a risk like the demon summons.
For sure, Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland Beings (with pixies) are very poorly designed spells that are more powerful than basically everything in the game along with numerous other big problems. These summon spells were likely a way to replace these broken spells designing summons from a fresh slate.
@@mogalixir Ya I don't get the need for expensive material components, there's a very small amount of spells where I think costly components are good. I think Conjure animals and woodlands need more DM fiat though, with them being so potentially abrasive and problematic.
"All the summons from Tasha's is bad" My mans, clearly not seen the power of a Superheated Modron on the board. Love having that thing just get in the way of melee combatants.
@@nimric3348 I love Summon Fey, I think the problem with this sort of number crunching style, is that it only makes sense in a vacuum. There's a lot of extra little things that make these particular summons good compared to things like Conjure animals or Conjure Fey. And Especially Conjure Celestials. Summon Celestial is bonkers for Team survivability if you go defender.
Summon aberration was great for me as a GOOlock. 2 extra blasts from a flying companion with 50hp or an extra melee combatant to flank with our Paladin.
I use this spell on one of my characters and there is a use case: If you only take 5-8 levels of ranger and then multiclass to another class that doesn't get summon spells for a while, such as cleric. Having extra slots you can only upcast, upcasting to a level 4 spell and getting two attacks with flyby is great. The HP is reasonable for the flying beast since they often won't get hit at all. I agree the land and water beast become near useless at tier 2 and above, but the air beast is still good in tier 3. It's not the best spell at that level but if its your only summon option, its above average.
True, but... Doesn't upcasting the other spell options end up being more useful? In particular, Aid, Healing Spirit and Magic Weapon all have better upcast options, to say nothing of spells like Pass Without Trace that are good enough to use a higher level spell slot anyway if that's all you have OR level 1 Cleric spells like Guiding Bolt. Plus, having 5 levels of Ranger and 3 levels of Cleric only gives you up to 3rd level Spell Slots, after the point that you have access to 2nd level Cleric spells that can also be upcast. If you go Ranger 8/Cleric 1, you'd have 3rd level spell slots without 2nd level Cleric spells, but even then, that's only +5 HP and +1 AC when you could be giving half your party +10 HP each with Aid.
@@sterlingmuse5808 @Sterling Muse Agreed, its not the best spell one can upcast to level 4, though Magic Weapon is not a strong spell in many campaigns. Anyway, many of the spells you mentioned are available to multiple classes, so decent chance someone else has it taken care of. Additionally, Spirit Guardians is normally the no brainer, but not anymore when a character has extra attack because the opportunity cost is higher. Aid is amazing but you only need one slot for it usually so there's room to spare. Like I said its above average and variety is power. Situationally, the spell has been really good. Especially because you can safely cast it before combat and it lasts an hour, which means its generally with me as long as the group doesn't take a short rest. So it tends to last for a good amount of time.
At the 6:17 part: I made a slip up! Basically just change the % to hit in that section to 60% and then 84% to hit with advantage and you'll get the real dpr I was talking about. My mind must have been in the Ranger head space when I punched those numbers in. I tend to do napkin calculations. Anyways, if you change it to 60%, The value doesn't change much anyways, we're talking about a 1 point dpr increase. Thats 6.52 dpr (.60x10.5+0.05x4.5) and with advantage 9.25 dpr (.84x10.5+0.0975x4.5) The Video is Sponsored by dScryb: dscryb.com/packtactics Please check them out and if you like what they do and want more stuff from them, use the coupon code PACKTACTICS (not case sensitive) for 10% off your first subscription! Thank you very much dScryb for sponsoring this video!
I love conjure animals as well, and I don't think it is given enough love, but my biggest issue with it is that conjure animals invalidates every other concentration option available to the druid. Since the animals have the capacity to do so much damage, and they can provide astounding utility even when they can't do damage it makes other options completely obsolete making all spell slots of 3rd level and above be best used casting conjure animals. There are a few exceptions, but ultimately you are likely going to use most of your higher level slots to cast conjure animals because it is the optimal choice.
But Kobold. Without Summon Beast, how will you be able to summon Gator? D: But yeah. I'd probably just remove the 200-gold cost of the acorn. Store-bought acorns are never as good as naturally grown. ...That, and I'd give the 200 gold cost to Conjure Animals. >:D
Hey Kobold, I tend to have trouble finding people who are sharp enough witted to get my jokes. You have a functioning brain as all dragons should, mind listening to one of my jokes to help keep me from finally snapping?
"All summoning spells from Tasha are bad" Well, I don't know about everyone of them, but Summon Shadowspawn is definitely not bad IMO. A lvl 3 spell that summon a minion that can instantly use its dreadfull scream to try to frighten every creatures in a radius of 30ft around it, based on your spell saving throw, is really, really good. You can summon the Shadowspawn in a way that put you and your party out of this radius. The likeliness of your spawn surviving after its first turn is somewhat decent due to the fear effect, so you might get some use out of it after using its scream. In addition to that, most of the Spawn's statblock is based on either your spellcasting ability, your proficiency bonus, or the level of the spellslot used. It's actually a decent spell to upcast. If you cast it at lvl 4, its HP are raised to 50, its armor class to 15, and it can now attack twice in a turn with a decently powerfull melee attack. The three forms your spawn can take are also somewhat good. The fury's attacks have advantage on frightened creatures, increasing its DPR, the despair reduce the movement of creatures who start their turn next to it, increasing its crowd control utility, and the fear allow it to hide in shadows for a bonus action, which is more situational. But yeah, having access to that at lvl 5 and being able to upcast it at lvl 7 is not something I would considere sub-optimal.
Summon Shadowspawn can be hilarious on a Fathomless warlock. Choose Despair, a hit from your Tentacle against something adjacent to your Despair will reduce the thing's speed by 30 feet.
@@lord6617 Summon Undead or Summon Aberration allow you to fly. They're strong enough to carry almost any party member, only the _really_ heavy ones might be a problem. As medium creatures, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to use them as mounts so long as you play a small race. Aberration is ranged attacker in its flying form, and Undead inflicts frightened in its flying form.
the only issue is that if you have 4th level spell slots, wizards might as well use polymorph. you can make the case for warlocks, but i think there are better spells for your slot. i really want to like the tasha’s summoning spells. i want to be able to summon creatures on the battlefield without breaking the encounter. i want to have creativity and live that fantasy of Harry Dresden, John Constantine, or a puppetmaster, but the creatures just don’t have enough health or AC to stick around on the battlefield. furthermore after a certain point monsters start resisting nonmagical damage so construct, beast, and elemental get thrown out the window.
@@Hazel-xl8in Casting Polymorph on yourself means being very vulnerable to concentration checks, and maybe your allies don't _want_ to be polymorphed until their HP is down by a fair bit. Plus, you're not putting any extra bodies on the battlefield to bolster your action economy. Polymorph is powerful and incredibly valuable, but it's not the perfect fit for _every_ situation. Here's a thought, while I'm at it: What would happen if you cast Polymorph on a Tasha summon? What even is their CR/level? Do they use the level of the spell? Do you have to use a CR calculator? The level of the caster? Or are they meant to be impossible to Polymorph?
Who on earth is saying that summon beast is the best Tasha's summon spell? It has zero utility beyond summoning an extra beast to the field. Any other summon spell from tashas has more utility: Summon fey allows for repeated attempts to charm your enemies as the fey's bonus action, or a small patch of magical darkness. Summon elemental doesn't have much direct utility, but they can be used in interesting ways(earth elemental's burrow speed to punch stuff through walls, water elementals can be mounts for small creatures, fire elementals are immune to lava and fire), they're also very hard to kill, especially the earth one. Those are the only two for ranger and druid, but if you compare to the wizard spells you have to summon shadowspawn that can drop someone's speed by 20 without a save, summon undead which can paralyse poisoned enemies or cheese enemies with incorporeal movement, summon aberration is just solid around with an option for anti heal, summon construct can also slow down enemies and prevent reactions. The only thing summons best has on any of these spells is pack tactics, which is good on a player or a pack of wolves, not so much on a single summoned monster. And I guess the reason to pick any of these spells over conjure animals is that while conjure animals is strong, it's just such a poorly designed spell. The obvious part being it has the potential to be overpowered, so it is sometimes banned or has house rules applied to it. The player has no real control over what gets summoned, the gm could screw them over by summing eight goldfish if they wanted(they won't, but they can). But if we assume that the dm drops in some beasts appropriate for the region there is still an issue, it *can* bog down the game. The simple fix is to use mob combat rules to skill the rolling and keep things flowing. I could honestly get behind a redesign of conjure animals. I reckon there needs to be a list of animals that can be summoned with a note of "if your gm allows you may also select animals not listed below but equal to the listed cr" just so you don't end up summoning eight sea cucumbers to fight a dragon.
With conjure spells, I pretty much let the player summon what they want as long as it fits the table of restrictions. That way, players can come prepared with statblocks of what they want to summon, and I as a dm don't have to go through a large number of statblocks, even using dndbeyond to aid in sorting, to pick something for the scenario. However, I don't let things like Chwingas be summoned as that is very high levels of powergaming, and the odds are high the character themselves don't even know of the setting specific minor elemental
Actually, the Air option can fly away with someone without provoking opportunity attacks. RAW, small-sized creatures don’t have any penalty to their carrying capacity. So if you were to say grapple an ally, or even yourself, the beast can fly you out of reach safely, as they can’t take an opportunity attack against you (forced movement) or the beast (Flyby). That said, it’s definitely the weakest Summon that came out of Tasha’s
@@deadpoolrwbyfan8419 while it might not have any reductions to carry weight, it can only carry 270 lbs before overencumbered, which isn't enough for most player character weights+equipment weights
@@deadpoolrwbyfan8419 An interesting interaction for sure, though technically anything that can grapple can do the same as long as they don't enter anyone's range. Eg a winged monkey familiar could manage this. I do reckon that summon beast is still a *good spell* as long as you don't compare it to conjure animals. It is still basically a slightly more fallible form of spiritual weapon that takes longer to cast after all.
+1 Ally +1 Attack -1 Enemy Attack "0 utility" in the worst case scenario. In other cases you get +2 -2 or +1 -2 which is a massive advantage. If 2-3 party members get this then you have literally 2-3x the effect which can ensure a lot of fights are won. Outside of combat... make them walk through trap infested nightmares. Having a beast "tamed" by your side would be great for intimidation. The beast should have a stronger sense of smell ect for other uses. It only has 0 utility if you don't think about it, stop and think about it.
Actually having Tasha's summons as the base for summons is something I would prefer, maybe removing the gold cost or lowering the level of the spells by one, but me and my players really prefer those
Same. The og summons are just a massive pain in the backside to manage. The tasha summons are elegant and that is the best thing one can say about them really
Ok, is it just me, or is everyone throwing a fit over the summon spells because they aren't as powerful as the conjure spells? Tell you something, if the conjure spells didn't exist, these summoning spells would be amazing. Because guess what? All of them are better than the Wildfire Druid's _main gimmick,_ some of them effectively solve the problem of needing a frontline fighter, and some of them are just essentially another party member. Not to mention that the player gets to choose what they summon. I know most DMs allow their players to choose what they summon with conjure spells, but I also know of some DMs, including myself, who despise those spells and give their players 0 control over what they summon. The newer spells are better for balance, and you cannot change my mind Edit: Ok, I should be nicer. You will not likely change my mind, but I am open to any and all arguments.
@@thatrandomnerd6996 The wildfire spirit doesn't use a spell slot or concentration and can be used twice per short rest. It's pretty much free, minus using wild shape for find familiar. The damage it deals is pretty decent for being free at lower levels too. Regardless of damage, try finding one summon that can teleport allies. The only summon x spell I found that can teleport is summon fey, and it can't take another creature with it. Conjure woodland beings has blink dogs; same thing, and even the infamous pixie doesn't get teleportation. If you use summon greater demon, you can choose a dybbuk, which has at will dimension door. However, if you read the spell this just won't work.
@@Chrokosaur Fair, but here is my counterpoint (sarcasm): You've made a very good argument, and I honestly can't disagree. I just prefer the summon spells because _the conjure spells make me want to defenestrate myself._
At the start of the video you explain that a Ranger will have a conflict for the costly component in Tier 1 play, but how did a Ranger get 2nd level spells before level 5?
Treantmonk. You're gathering money, I know some players don't see half plate until like 6th level. I know that sounds crazy but thats a real problem people have.
full casters also don't have alot of things they need to buy compared to martials unless they can easily buy magic items and scrolls. I always also considered these summoning spells most useful in out of combat situations.
Ok so I understand a few of your problems with the spell the price tag itself is a bit of a downside. However, I think it would be good to consider a few of the ways that the ranger has changed post Tasha's. 1. Rangers can make Wisdom based builds: with the new fighting style (druidic warrior) the ranger can take either shillelagh or magic stone which gives them the option to attack with their wisdom modifier. Not only that but with the addition of entangle to the ranger spell list your spell save DC becomes a little more viable. 2. It is an extra body at earlier levels: for the ranger It is a half caster which means it's spell progression is far slower than that of a druid or wizard and is going to get their second level spells at 5th level and their third level spells at 9th level which is far later in the game. Conjure Animals is powerful yes but at as late in the game as it is there is a high likelihood that you might not get to cast it because the current game you were playing ended. With summon beast you get a body on the field that if the enemy attacks it they waste a turn attacking a summoned creature instead of your barbarian, paladin or fighter that's hacking at them. Also it doesn't require an action or bonus to command the beast so you have a bonus action free.
Although I consider wisdom a cancerous-weak option for a ranger, but here I must agree. This opens up at least some options for builds and variety. I don’t understand by what criteria a small lizard judges, if the economy of actions speaks for itself. It is especially terrible that the author believes that the same spells are good on the ranger and the druid at the same time. (I really want to see how a kobold finds the difference between a ranger with 3 attacks and a druid who can only cast)
@@whydidiwatchthis5174 Why wisdom based builds are super bad in your opinion? I played my shillegah beastmaster (tashas) rider and it was a lot of fun just runing around on my land beast and bonking bad guys.
My instinct is that the big advantage here is the hour duration, combined with it's 4 Int, understanding of languages, and ability to either swim, climb, or fly. So perhaps it is better as a utility creature For example, summon a hawk; have it fly ahead. It's smart enough to answer "Is there anything dangerous?" and smart enough to loop a rope around an outcrop in rocks so you can climb up. It can delivery your friends a message if they are relatively nearby. It is basically instantly trained and dutiful, so you can have it help when you need to entertain some nobles by having it ride a ball or fly through hoops or whatever. You can give it a torch and have it drop it on the rooves of a settlement you don't like. It does not appear to have a range, so scouting or delivering messages to nearby people seems solid. In particular, the fact that it takes the form of a native animal is good here - People won't care about a deer in the forest or a rat in the sewers, which is good. That being said, it's still not great in this regard. Niche... You have a spell with decent, but still limited utility and poor combat but not at the level of something like an Unseen Servant. But like, I think those options should be considered as well, as part of the whole.
3:30 Ranger must be 5-th level to cast Summon Bestial Spirit, so it cannot be 4-th level when casting this. And if it is 5-th level and you compare to Hex/Hunter's Mark, then you need to include Multiattack into the mix, which increases the damage of the latter two spells.
have you considered the summon spells at a table that bans conjure animals/woodland beings? I think they are very good in that scenario. also a Ranger with 14 Wis is best case? what? its super easy to start with 16 wis.
@Alice Wight the fact that the summon X spells are trash compared to Conjure animals kinda proves the point though. Without Conjure animals, they are fine and balanced. It's only CA that invalidates them because its so OP compared to anything else.
@@Apfeljunge666 The Summon X spells aren’t balanced though, because they’re absolutely terrible; they don’t really need the help invalidating themselves. If the Conjure spells are banned, you don’t really have an alternative period, because the Summon spells are still bad spells. Generally speaking, Conjure Animals is seen by optimizers as a powerful spell that’s balanced in conjunction with other powerful spells.
@@technicolormischief-maker5683 tashas's summon spells are strong extra dpr and sometimes utility. They are very balanced. I did the math on all of them. Conjure animals is broken OP. That is fact. if a caster has access to it and the DM isnt actively sabotaging the spell, then its an absolute no brainer to take it since it fills the battlefield with bodies and at least doubles your overall dpr.
That was hilariously perfect timing. You were reading about the crocodile. You got to the point where you said and suddenly....(RUclips commercial)... Chips. I was laughing so much I don't know which ones they were advertising.
Oh, it's another "better pick Conjure Animals", isn't it? C'mon, this spell comes up every time a damaging spell discussed, what's that if not an indication of how broken it is?
Yeah. It’s so obviously leagues above anything else. I made it so that everything summoned with it is halved, so like if u would summon 8 you’d only get 4. And honestly, it’s still super strong. It’s just unfair that a caster can summon the equivalent of two martial characters just for the fun of it
If CA was the only thing better, maybe this would matter. But summon beast can't even beat the pathetic Spiritual weapon, which is just sad and places it near the bottom of damaging spells.
Summon spells used to be problematic in older editions because it left up in the air where the beasts came from. Which meant you might end up summoning a nearby creature thT was caring for young and putting it in dire danger. By specifying it's a spirit animal that at least is solved. Spirits just poof and go home when killec.
I never really liked Conjure animals because it was so vague for a new player. It doesn't really tell you what can be summoned, just how many of which CR, and then ends with dumping the problem on the DM by stating, "The DM has the creatures’ statistics". Atleast with Tasha's spells they have a spell that gives choices between air, land, or water and has the stat block to go with it so there is no confusion. As far as the cost is concerned, I would just do what I do with magic items, task the player to gather the materials/item. So they need a feather, tuft of fur, and a fish tail? Why not have a feather of a majestic eagle, tuft of fur from the beast king of a local forest, and a fish from a local fishing tournament? Value is subjective in the game, so after getting those items (which the DM controls the difficulty for) then just do like a 20 gold process to gild an acorn in gold. Also I feel that "if it isn't good for a druid it isn't good for a ranger" is a bad take. I personally have run a Wisdom based Beastmaster Ranger with the Druidic Warrior fighting style picking up Shillelagh and magic stones, getting some good use out of Beast summon from 5-9. At level 9 I switched Beast summon for Conjure animals but never thought my choice of picking up Beast summons was bad. I do understand that some points I make are moot because its not from a optimizer's viewpoint. My fun usually comes from concepts and themes (like a grappler, summoner, geomancer) vs how can I get the highest dmg output. I AM NOT SAYING THAT YOU CAN'T DO BOTH. I just tend to find that some people would argue that picking spike growth would be a better pick for 2nd level on a Beastmaster then the spell that would literally let them summon more beasts, because one does more damage/better control.
Wait I'm a bit confused here, from how I (and the people of Reddit) read this spell you also add your proficiency bonus to the attack roll of the beast since it's your spell attack modifier but your math would suggest otherwise(since you usually assume a 65% chance to hit) so what's going on?
65% assumes that you buff it at Lv4, you can't do that cause your a ranger/druid and need feats. Especially for ranger your wisdom might be even lower than that.
@@naturalkind5591 Well yes but in the video he assumed that you do increase your Wisdom as a druid, and even if he took a feat the numbers wouldn't look like that, it would be about 60%, but at 5th level it's 50%
@@undeadboi8441 Oh noooooooooo! I made a slip up! Basically just change the % to hit in that section to 60% and then 84% to hit with advantage and you'll get the dpr I was talking about. My mind must have been in the Ranger head space when I punched those numbers in. I tend to do napkin calculations. Anyways, if you change it to 60%, The value doesn't change much anyways, we're talking about a 1 point dpr increase. Thats 6.52 dpr (.60x10.5+0.05x4.5) and with advantage 9.25 dpr (.84x10.5+0.0975x4.5) So the conclusion still stands. I hope reddit isn't going crazy because of a 1 dpr mistake.
@@PackTactics hey kobald I really appreciate your work, can you cover zepher strike.one of my player used this spell and dealt 32 damage in a single turn at just level 4
I'm surprised you don't want Conjure Animals changed, I feel it is far to OP personally. I much prefer the control/support aspects of druid rather than raw damage personally, but to each their own. What are your thoughts on another of the Tasha's summoning spells though, Summon Fey? Since picking it up it's been by far my favourite 3rd level spell and the go-to use for my concentration, and in my little time at level 7 currently I was not disappointed by the significant power boost of upcasting. Perhaps my opinion has been raised however by it's use in PvP, where it has been genuinely debilitating to many of my opponents to be incapable of directly targeting us with attacks and harmful effects, especially since if you're patient you can still use non-damaging effects without breaking the charm, so take a little time to do the shove and grapple combo. Not to say that it's at all felt underwhelming in PvE environments either. I wouldn't say I've been through several very challenging encounters, but it took the hardest adventure so far to get them down to low health after 2 mini BBEG combat encounters. (The healing of the Shepard Druid probably made the difference between that and hitting 0 HP)
@@PackTactics Ahhh, I see. I certainly don't want it to be completely driven into the ground either. My intuition for nerfing it just goes as far as removing the 8 x 1/8th option. I feel like that's a rather simple way to take the edge off of it's power in a way that also make maps easier to handle. I certainly wouldn't say that anyone should take that as gospel though, I have little experience with the spell and have done no maths regarding it.
@@cubicengineering4715 removing one of the main strengths of 2 classes is a pretty major change, but if we also remove like shield from wizards and a few other balance changes, I can totally see it being a good idea.
I like the Tasha's summons - and I especially like upcasting them. An 8th level upcasting with four attacks is like having another martial in the party. Complete with 19 AC.
EXACTLY! See, this is why I love the Summon spells from Tasha's: because you're having your beast/fey/undead/etc get more than just HP from upcasting. If you're gonna summon something at your highest level slot, it should feel like you're actually getting something worthy of it out of the spell slot you just used. And, since it has a mechanical benefit, it scales up much better than Conjure Animals at higher tiers of play! I still wouldn't waste my highest level slot on it, but I would still use a slot that I'm not going to use with another spell I have for the same level, for example a 6th level spell when I have access to 7th/8th level spells.
There is probably something better than a summon for an 8th level spell, but honestly I respect it all the same. If you want to play the summoner character than so be it, its not like your wasting the spell.
This is the first video I've watched from your channel, and I don't think I've ever disagreed with so many points in a single d&d video. I will find another video and give this channel 1 more chance.
In our group, we have a lot of players and another is an Artificer with an Iron Defender, so we've kinda agreed Conjure Animals won't really be used to summon a lot of beasts at once because we can't really handle that many, but it will still probably render this redunadent. Honestly, I'm kinda regretting playing a Shepard Druid in such a large party.
@@gavros9636 Because if the player cannot handle it and make combat take so long, the DM would have to take over. It appears in many cases, a player casting this spell bogged down combat.
@@tyree403 Then you direct them towards, as Natural Kind helpfully noted, Mob rules, or better yet, if you have a druid/ranger in the party and you're the dm, talk with them about their spell choices and how they can improve. There's barely any difference between 4 beasts making four attack rolls and 1 fighter making 4 attack rolls, again, this argument makes no sense.
Honestly most of the Tasha summoning spells could have like 50% or double health across the board. Also: don’t think Summon beast is the best one. Something has to be said about summon shadow spawn having fear in built into an option that can also no save slow enemies and do damage as well as being medium sized with a decent strength and hands thus grapple capable. The cc it wonders is one of the better spells to cast if someone ELSE cast web, or spike growth or other such hazard. Summon beast has pack tactics for the highest dpr, but other summons offer other outwards contribution that aren’t damage, and non summoning spells give these spells a run for their DPR
@@voodoophil not really. You can just micro manage your summons and or be significantly smarter than 14 with knowledge proficiencies. Their int doesn’t come up in significantly useful ways
This is a pretty bad take on Summon Beast. A solid level 2 summoning spell is an amazing option to have because of how powerful summoning is overall. Being a level 2 spell is a big deal because it can free up spell slots for important spells like dispel magic, plant growth, tidal wave, etc. Or if you have a lot of encounters, you can keep summoning all day. I like conjure animals, but it's just not a well designed spell. If the player chooses the beasts, the power level of the spell skyrockets way out of line. And 8 creatures is just too many for a player to be summoning, even if you're good at managing them. I hope they tone conjure animals down a bit and make it easier to manage for DM's and players.
The biggest value is hard to determine with dps tools. having an extra independent body on the field has some value. This could simply be the help that goes first and sets off traps or the rear guard preventing Pincer attacks. The fact that a ranger gets this at level 5 instead of waiting till 9 for a summon is nice. just like every thing thing roleplaying its a tool finding creative and fun uses is more important than DPR.
I remember a short time I did get to play some dnd and I was playing as some Druid with a summon which was just a normal gator, the main use of him was to hold foes in place which added onto the hold spells I was already running with so yeah the gator was just there to hold on so the heavy hitters of the party could take care of the foe as his damage was too low to do much harm.
This is what they need to do with Conjure Animals. Reduce how many animals you get, but increase the CR. This make inexperienced players not blog down the game and have the table stare at you with discontent. The main reason why Conjure Animals is so disliked by the community are due to new players ruining sessions/combat.
The spell already lets you summon less with higher CR. The spell just scales incredibly strong with numbers. The only way I've seen spells like this slow down a game is when: 1) Caster's player doesn't bring enough dice to support the actions they want their char to do. 2) DM puts a lot if effort into narrating the beasts actions.
@@anniedarkheart5224 That's the point. It allows the spell to be more accessible to the newbies because the power mostly lies from few, but higher CR creatures than a bunch of them. And I've seen Conjure Animal put combat on hold before for quite a while.
The DM should put their foot down and say that you can only choose what you summon if you already know what you want AND have the stat block ready. Otherwise the DM will choose something completely useless on purpose (which is effectively the same as banning the spell).
@@theuncalledfor Nah. Never make Conjure Animals useless on purpose. That's not professional DM behavior. The player would think you have a lot of hostility towards them. Sometimes, people can be new and make mistakes. And that's okay. Repeated slow down of combat while not trying to improve should warrant the spell being limited to CR 2 or CR 1 animals where it'll be a lot easier to manage. I could complete 16 animals' turns fairly quickly. Hell, I could complete their turns quicker than martial characters. It's all about being experienced and taking some time to do your homework.
@@tyree403 Warn them beforehand, that way it's fair. "You can take this spell, and choose what you want to summon, but you have to bring the statblocks and choose what you want before you actually cast. If you forget, you can ask for help before it becomes relevant, or just cast something else. If you cast it, but you have no stat blocks prepared, I will count that as your character fumbling and summoning rats by accident, so don't mess this up. This is a very powerful and very time consuming spell, and I will not tolerate any player disrespecting the other players' time, so come prepared."
I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's good at level 3 and 4 and that's it I don't know if I agree that *all* the Summon options from Tasha's are bad. I just think Summon spells are circumstantial. I'll take a debuff spell over a summon, but what if the enemy has LR? I'll take a control spell over a Summon, but what if that enemy is also a spellcaster or has some means of teleporting? If you're a Wizard, unless you multi-class you don't have a bunch of good buff options. Fly wouldn't be too helpful if the caster has ranged options and Haste, which you did a video on is an option. In situations like those, a repeatable source of extra damage is pretty good.
So a while back I created my own 2nd level summon spell, it creates two wolves (standard stats), except they are spirit creatures with nonmagical damage resistance. The upcast let's you summon one extra wolf for each level over 2nd. No big material costs but it's a concentration spell. In our games, it was used by a druid to some great effect but it never felt broken. Curious what others think!
My Druid's Land Beast does an absurd amount of DPR and sponges pretty well, too. Same thing with Summon Fey. Have saved my hide in more than a few situations. This is while using a rank4 spell slot. Anecdotal, I admit. And mileage will vary, particularly based on your party comp. But the Tasha's Summon spells are not always bad. We're playing in ToA and, even in that setting, conjuring a gaggle of velociraptors is pure cheese OP. Our DM has made this explicitly known, haha.
Though this is probably going to be the only option after they remove the old summoning spells in the new revision And no, this is actually the shittiest of the Tasha's summoning spells. And I hope conjure animals (and friends) gets removed in the new edition.
I personally use conjure animals and the other Tasha spells for summoning on my npcs since it gives them flavor and giving a player a free use of the spell pee day via a magic relic is always nice.
The druid I played in my last campain used this spell almost every encounter, mostly for the memes. Casting it at level 6 and sometimes even 8 or 9. That Corgi was probably the MVP of that campaign as it struck fear to those who spoke his name: Winston.
When I was using conjure animals, we decided the animals I would get was random, because the DM didn't want to have to decide, like they are supposed to with that spell. Whenever I wanted to cast it, I'd have to roll on a table, look up the stats for the creature, write down the hp and put down all the tokens. I wouldn't know what happened in some rounds, cus I was prepping to keep the game moving. It was such a pain in the ass to use, I just don't anymore. Summon beast worked really well on my beast master ranger though, especially when casting it ahead of time. Summon fey was pretty fun too. They could buff the hp a bit, but sometimes they aren't the target the enemy wants to attack either.
Bad DM'ing. You should have spammed that spell as much as possible to get back at him (AFTER attempting to reason with him, and only proceed to do this if diplomacy fails).
@@theuncalledfor I don't know if I'd call it bad per se, it wasn't great at least. Maybe I shouldn't have dropped such a complicated spell on an inexperienced DM either, right? x) I will say that I think Conjure Animals is terribly designed.
I liked the summon undead from Tasha's. Cast as a level 4 spell using the ranged attack option, it can put out a good chunk of damage. Its basically like having a marksman ranger in your pocket.
The ghost form has more HP and can frighten opponents. It also flies and is strong enough to carry most PC's, so you can fly with it. If you're Small, you can even use it as a mount if you want to. The putrid form can poison opponents and paralyse them. All three forms are useful.
7:01 1. A 4th level cure wounds plus L1 damage isn't bad productivity from a spell for a PC that can only cast L2 spells. 2. If there's other types of damage like traps, saving throws (particularly Str or Con) or magic missile effects it's tanking a lot better than this calculation. 3. Lasting 1 hour, It can be cast before an encounter and last multiple encounters, it can be healed between encounters. So it takes damage and deals damage throughout multiple encounters without ever costing an action. 4. It can help enabled flanking, or other effects like Hobgoblin's Saving Face. 5. It helps fulfill lots of utility in many cases acting like a super familiar that can also attack things if need be, so it goes beyond 1 combat and beyond combat. Yes upcasting generally not good, just compare, Summon Fey is a lot better at L3. (Conjure animals is almost always by far the best spell, it's broken and bad for the game)
You say all the summons from tasha's are bad but the Shadowspawn can be pretty cool. Take the Despair option and reduce their speed by 20 feet. Then shoot them with Ray of Frost to reduce their speed to zero. Or even better! After someone takes away their remaining 10 feet of movement, trip them/shove them prone with that shield bash feat. Now they are prone and can't get up because their speed is effectively 0 feet. And neither the Despair ability, nor the Ray of Frost has a save! Could potentially work against very high level enemies!
Ah, I see we are dying on the "I love conjure animals, there's nothing wrong with it" hill again. Also, I wouldn't call all of the Tasha's summons bad, they are just more balanced in a spell system that includes unbalanced summoning spells. As someone who played a wizard with summon undead, it was super refreshing to put a summoning spell on my spell list that was clearly a good option at some times, but inferior to other concentration spells at other times. The ghost was a solid exploration tool, as it could fly and go through walls, but still do/soak up a bit of damage if a fight broke out. The skeleton felt nice to summon because it could stay out of the thick of it and would still be around if a fight didn't last super long, unlike a lot of concentration spells that only last a minute. The putrid spirit would usually be a good way to "draw aggro" because it's cc was decent if it wasn't dealt with, so it could in niche moments be pulled out as a way to waste an enemy turn without there being a chance to save. The spell had alot of utility, but there were still times when a hard cc spell or a buff spell were better, which ultimately made playing a spellcaster feel like it had variety, rather than just raw power. People liked the spells because they were a step towards balance between spells, not because they were a new path to optimization.
Conjure animals is definitely a stupidly powerful spell. (Duh) But in a game where better options exist, this does make the worse options bad. You wouldn't call upcasting burning hands to 3rd level good, fireball exists.
@@naturalkind5591 yeah but there might be times we’re casting burning hands is better cuz it’s aoe is more narrow. Optimization is frequently done in a void. I have seen people summon a bunch of creatures. It slows down combat and everyone gets mad and people have less fun. so summon beasts isn’t optimal to fun frequently. Unless you are summoning like giant constrictor snakes only
@@naturalkind5591 That's a fair point for summon beast and summon fey I suppose, since their older and stronger counterparts are part of the same spell lists, but the arcane casters can actually get a lot out of the Tasha summons, given that conjure elemental takes an hour. I think most people like the new spells better because the older spells are so powerful or disruptive that they are considered taboo by certain groups. From a purely optimization standpoint, some of them are bad (mainly the druid/ranger options). From the standpoint of addressing the above problem and being designed as replacements for the older summoning spells, they are solid, well rounded spells.
my party member is a shepherd druid whose go-to is conjuring as many giant owls as possible. With flyby, flanking (they isolate targets whenever possible), and the temporary hp from the bear totem, it's absurd how strong they are. We're at level 13, and they consistently do 75+ dpr and survive multiple encounters
sure, if you're aiming for straight up damage, it's not optimal, but there are a lot of opportunity options that it provides. giving a paladin advantage (through flanking) on an attack is huge for crit fishing potential, giving a rogue an ally next to the monster is enough to get sneak attack at no risk, getting AoO's from the beast, or drawing out AoO's can be the right situation (eg, wizard on 1 hp, concentrating on haste, if he runs, party's screwed, if the beast draws the AoO, they might drop, but might not, and wizard doesn't)
Thinking of planning a Druidic Warrior Style Ranger that goes into Beast Master (Primal Companion) and summons animals, fey and elementals down the line. With my focus on wisdom for Shillegah and my animal companion, it really feels like this spell is actually going to be excellent for him until he gets summon fey and summon elemental down the line. Even if it only absorbs some damage, that's basically a spell that did damage and then wasted an enemy's turn.
It ended up being busted good. I had 4 attacks around a lvl 6 between extra attack, summon beast, and my primal companion, all based on my Wisdom. Also, it was *rare* for any single enemy to do more then 10 damage a shot, in reality, at least at lvl 5. So it rarely popped. I think you must be playing a MASSIVELY tuned table, because in a moderately tuned table, this spell was busted good and busted fun because of it. Also, it is by far the worst of the summon spells introduced by Tasha's man.
we are a party of spell casters at lvl 3 and every battle i summon it (i am a druid) and i use it as our fighter (will stop working in like lvl 5 but ill conjure animals then) (also i am circle of the shepherd so it will get stronger)
there's not need to worry about stuff from 5e making it to 5.5 since everything from 5e is supposed to be compatible with the 5.5/6e content anyways, even the old stuff that's being rewritten. I think it's also worth considering how each of the summon spells scale when upcast and for summon undead how it interacts with the school of necromancy subclass for wizard specifically, I know I wouldn't mind more content for this type of thing in the future and I'm sure others would love to watch it as well.
Wouldn't the value of this depend on how many combats you can squeeze into a 1hr duration? The other question is would this summoned beast benefit from the features a beast master rangers regular beast?
This spell would be way better if you could use tiny best or swarms with it. As you could hide them on you. Still it has some utility. pack mule aid in getting into places. mount for some races or help with enlarge/ reduce You could do combos with it. ( Evil grin ) It would also be of use with RP.
Huh. I hadn't even tried to use this yet due to it being exclusive to Ranger and Druid. I'm going through a campaign of my own now where I'm playing a mix of paladin/summoner to give the feel of a dark fantasy Kingdom Hearts character and some of his signature spells are the other Summon spells (Undead, Draconic Spirit, and Fiend). They've got a lot of fun rp potential being the closest thing I could find to a Square Enix-style summon in dnd, but I wonder what you think about those considering what you had to say about Beast. 🤔
@@crunchevo8974 eh it's 5th level. Clerics get it level 9. Granted, there are other things the cleric could use that slot for, but having a summon that deals ok damage with good ac, and albeit mediocre hp but also comes with the ability to heal itself or others on hits is a good use.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 yeah but like... imo heal is a better use of a 5th level spell if you wanna heal people. and spirit guardians would deal more damage. it's not that i'd never pick it up since clerics can swap out whole spell lists per day. but like i wouldn't make a whole build around it.
@@crunchevo8974 whether spirit guardians or summon celestial does more damage depends on the creature's AC, number of creatures, and their wisdom saves. Additionally, the celestial is another body than can grant flanking, act as a hp buffer, and can heal allies. You don't need to build around it, but it's a handy tool to have. Summon celestial also lasts 6x as long as spirit guardians
I give Beast Master Rangers the ability to Cast Summon Beast without a cost, but you have convinced me that is not enough. (I created an extra spell list for Beastmaster and Hunter to bring them up to the other Ranger subclasses.) I wonder if Beastmasters added extra hit points to their summons if that would matter?
Hey Kobold, you are going to love this. It is a niche option to be sure, but when 5e created its designed its Protection from Evil and Good / Magic Circle spells, they were reworded so as to only prevent the attacks of Fey, Fiends, Aberrations, Undead, Celestials and Elementals. Earlier versions had a line that said ALL SUMMONED CREATURES are protected against as well. Up till Tasha's Cauldron there was no problem as they simply reworded all the summon spells to be one of those types of creatures. Except now we have spells that can summon beasts and other constructs and other monsters. So it is possible to override a master mage's barrier with a 2nd lvl spell. Have fun nuking the DM's arch mage
I mean, conjure animals has essentially already been "nerfed" as the game designers have come out and said it dosen't work the way munchkins want it to. I don't see why a rework in 5.5 would be any more effective in stopping people from abusing it, especially if you're already ignoring the errata.
Summon Fey on a Warlock is hilarious by level 9. Don't mind me as I summon a little 50 hp, 17 ac buddy that is speedy gonzales, pokes harder than most melee characters at that level, can use charm, create personal darkness, or just straight up give itself advantage on an attack, and can flank with me. For a single 300 gold investment.
i really want these spells to be good. i think a case can be made for summon shadowspawn in particular as a useful way to get frightened and damage on the board for concentration, but the ones that only deal damage just aren’t worth it. we know spellcasters can deal a lot of damage with concentration spells, that’s why we have moonbeam, spirit guardians, wall of fire and cloudkill. i want to be the puppetmaster, i want to be harry dresden or john constantine, i want to summon creatures that can actually do things and stick around. i’d genuinely rather risk a summoned demon escaping the spell or losing concentration on a conjured elemental because it’s way more fun. it’s wild to me that a warlock can literally summon a tanarukk with their 4th level spell slot that has more than double the hp and potentially more damage for no material component but needs 400 gp worth of tentacle and eyeball to summon a slaad that will die in a single action and deal less damage.
Summon Undead is the best among the "Summon" spells, costs less than Aberration, has a flying terrifying occupied square ignoring necrotic melee pet, or a necrotic blast skeleton, or a stinky bag of poisonous farts that can paralyze people.
maybe not the top pick of the list but this spell is so much fun to cast, btw to overcome the resistance to bludgeoning damage I image my summone beast to be a gorilla/ape and whenever it's necesary I just cast magic stone and give it to the beast adding a 60 ft magic bludgeoning damage to its kit.
I remember being a bit upset when I saw that handful of summoning spells in Tasha's, because I don't keep track of summoning rules and errata. My caster builds don't have any summoning spells; I follow the KISS mindset: keep it simple, stupid. Because I'm stupid and want to keep bookkeeping to a minimum. XD
I don't think they are bad there uses are just spread out. at levels up until 4 its ok damage , taking up space in combat, and every hit that is targeted on your summon isn't targeting your party. as for the third level spells summon fey and summon undead have use in exploitation. fey has unlimited teleportation and undead can be ethereal and go through walls to do tasks. shadowspawn is a hit box with a decent aoe fear effect. I find the most use for these things is out of combat; distractions, attacking enemy's from and unseen distant location, guarding things, and unique abilities to exploit. what's scarier than a wizard hiding in your town sending ghosts and assassins after you at all points of the day.
Yes but with many tables, conjure animals and conjure woodland beings are straight out banned because they are so good. I think the tasha's summon spells are streamlined are more balanced versions of summoning spells and honestly I like them a lot.
How do you feel about the Primal Companion Tasha’s gave the Beast Master? It’s basically just Summon Beast with HP tied up Ranger level and an action tax to use. Does it lacking a spell slot / concentration do enough to make it a good feature?
Yaaa, have to agree here. In DnD, Summon/Conjure abilities have it pretty rough. They tend to either not be worth the spell slot or so incredibly powerful that your DM might want to nerf or ban them.
I love conjure animals and Conjure Woodland beings but I HATE the fact the DM needs to be involved in my spell. I see the abuse but wish a set criteria was setup or at least have options of 1 strong summon or a bunch of weak ones. I also really don't like that Wizards didn't get an equivalent. I like the idea on conjuring a bunch of minions to swarm my enemies to help my party. Pathfinder even had a summoner class to address this type of play. Closest we get is druid Shepard circle.
I’m not even sure if you could do this but what if you summon an ape or monkey as you land creature and have them throw magic stones? They can still benefit from pack tactics and don’t have to put themselves into melee range! Yes it’s still unoptimized you’d probably be better off casting flaming sphere but would it atleast make it a little better if they had a ranged attack and pack tactics?
Would I pick spike growth and heat metal first ? Yes. But there are some fights were they are both completely useless. Summon beast is good for it's range. You summon your creature right beside a squishy target. Not in the middle of the melee.
Of course the older summon spells aren't well received. Half of the players who read a statblock are convinced you multiply the damage by the average because of the parenthesis. That, and summoning monsters that are meant to be a challenge to the players against something presumably that is also meant to be a challenge to players (or pvp I don't judge) is going to be more powerful. Minions in general aren't well liked because of this. Specialist classes for summoning like Shepherd Druid and Necromancy Wizards are fantastic for damage, especially in tier 2-3, because even if Shepherd Druid summons are pitiful in terms of accuracy, they're beefier and magical at higher levels, and Necromancy Wizards make their archer skeleton hordes (maximum of 16 at level 6 without magic items and assuming you cast animate dead before a long rest) deal 1d6+5p (at 6th level) with a range of 80/320ft, on top of being beefier. That doesn't mean its a good thing for the game however. The summons from Tasha's also have much more utility, don't make it easy to just summon random monsters, and a halfway decent bonus to hit since they use *your spell attack bonus* which means that they're going to be considerably more accurate than the normal flimsy npc summons with wildly ranging abilities, which can also lead to obvious balance issues if you don't pick an optimal choice. No one is saying that they're better mathematically. Paper thin monsters that don't even serve as a halfway decent meatshield? FOR A CASTER? Screw that, I'd rather just summon a Tanarukk for a 4th level Summon Greater Demon spell if I need 95 hit points of meatshield unlike this bullshit of "Elemental Spirit at *9th level* has 100 hit points" The use of the Tasha's spells removes that choice, the really thin and nonexistent ceiling of googling what you can summon with spells, and the few minutes everyone has to wait for a Player or DM to scroll through options before finding a summon, and at the end of the day most people don't like making complicated choices, its human nature. Its why 5e is more popular than pathfinder. Why should a new player just trying to summon nature to help keep his friends alive have to study 100/450 entries in the monster manual to have a basic understanding of what beasts exist? If they remove the old school conjure spells, it isn't ideal, but it is a problem that new players won't have to face anymore since the setup will likely be easier to understand.
This is why I advocate for people to use dndbeyond. Only one person in the group needs to buy the virtual books, then they can share with the rest of the players. Sure that comes with a monthly fee but if everyone chips in its trivial. Using dndbeyond you can go to a search of all creatures you have access to, and sort by a number of criteria, such as creature category and/or CR. From there, just choose a list of creatures that seem fun to summon and bookmark their statblocks
My problem with Summon or even Conjure spells is that in throws in extra bodies which don't really have a way to be accounted for when trying to calculate the party's half of a fair encounter. It just throws the entire action economy out of whack, even if it's just one out of eight wolves finally getting the failed save that knocks the BBEG prone. I have the same problem with creatures like Wraiths, which explicitly state in the statblock that they can have a certain number of CR 1 Specter minions, which definitely do affect the power of an encounter in tier 2 play. An extreme example is a game of Mad Mage I'm currently in where the DM let us recruit a CR 6 Shield Guardian, a Large creature that magically halves all damage that's dealt to the person attuned to their amulet (taking the remaining damage itself), having a 10-point regenerate, can store a spell of 4th-level or lower, and even has a nice little reaction that adds +2 to your AC. This is on top of it being a natural chokepoint blocker with +4 STR to grapple things so the rest of the party doesn't have to get into melee if they don't want to. The healer can save spell slots for healing the frontliner since it regenerates all of its health after a minute and a half of no combat, and an excess spell at the end of a LR can be put into the robot for a surprise Fireball or Counterspell when we might otherwise be tapped out. Now, Conjure Animals isn't that powerful until you get to upcasting, even then the most I'd change is docking it from an hour per slot to ten minutes, just so you can't just have constant guards while the rogue has to spend time thoroughly searching for traps and picking open their third lock; it's not supposed to be a mobile version of Level-4 Guardian of Faith. But the issue is that Tasha's Summon spells want to be Shield Guardian on a smaller and more temporary level, while also not outpowering the already horribly awful drawbacks of Infernal Calling or Summon Greater Demon. When going tall isn't worth it, the only option is to go wide.
As a DM when a player in my table picks a spell like this, a spell with an expensive material component that doesn't consume it's materials, I give them the components in a mission or encounter, as we don't use xp system in our table at least they have have some use for the spell and then they sell the materials and it's a net positive.
Sometimes, my DM has given items that may not specifically fit a spells material component, but have a strong enough affinity to work anyways. For example, summon fiendish spirit requires human blood inside a ruby vial worth at least 600 gp. However, we obtained a crystallized drop of blood of an archdemon, which the dm ruled works.
For my table, the DM let us craft the parts for Tasha's spells. I was a necromancer, so with the help of our forge cleric we melted down a bunch of raw gold ore and dipped a human skull I... "borrowed" to gild it. Ultimately it was cheaper than buying it, but at the cost of our free time over a few long rests.
The tashas summons definitely don’t feel like they were made to be optimized. It’s more like, “we fucked up the original summoner spells. They are broken and unfun. You can use these weaker but streamlined ones if you want.” It’s as if they are a revision of summoning on the whole.
I do really respect this position. I do wish there was a tashas spell that could summon at least two creatures though.
Allowing you to pick an additional option to summon on upcast would have been cool
I played a summoner character and DM for a party with 3 characters with summons, I really like the Tasha's spells, way more manageable than conjure animals even if all summons are out then everyone has more fun
@@christhiancosta1844 had a druid who tried to use these as the damage source for the party. The druid died. I have gone back to conjure animals since
Sadly these spells don’t work for making an army of tigers, so I must stick with the more powerful but more annoying spells
I totally agree with the points made by the original poster. The original summon spells are poorly worded and poorly balanced. And no, player should absolutely not choose creature on those.
I significantly buffed the Tasha summons in my games I DM and only allow those. It is a significant improvement to the games and summoner's in general. It is reliable and powerful but not immeasurable and random and bad for the game.
Props for correcting yourself, many aren't brave enough to do it, but it speaks volumes to your integrity.
If I'm wrong, its fine, you know?
Glad to see mistakes corrected. Glad to see it appreciated
Agree as Fck. You're a true gentleman Ser Kobold 🙇🏻♂️♿
@@PackTactics but KOBOLD!
The shadowspawn from Summon Shadowspawn can scream and give a fear effect to all creatures within a sizeable radius against your spell DC - so you’re essentially casting the Fear spell AND getting a decent body on the field to soak enemy damage! Plus if you pick Despair, all creatures that start next to it lose 20ft of movement, with no saving throw!
Fear on it’s own is great so surely this is a good three for one deal? You get a fear effect, a slowdown, and a HP sponge, all for a 3rd level spell!
@@jeffjefforson5929 And the best part? Neither of those can be Counterspelled/Dispelled! Maybe the initial casting, but then again, how many times are you going up against enemy casters?
The reason people love the new Summon Spells isn’t because of how powerful they are for pure damage. It’s because of how nightmarishly bad it is to run Conjure whatever spells. The fact that there are so many guides specifically on how to make the spell run smoother really says a lot about how poorly designed it is, even though it’s a strong option. The Summon spells are nice, simple to understand, provide a lift it of damage and utility, and most importantly there is basically no debate on whether or not they run into problems with magical resistance
basically no debate, in that they do? people online seem to say that they follow the same rules for damage resistance as the conjure spells did
@@Hazel-xl8in truthfully I had forgotten about this comment. At the time, I had yet to see this consensus emerge. However, I don’t think the logic applies. Bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from spells are considered magical unless otherwise stated. The reason things like Conjure Animals and the like don’t is because the spell isn’t directly cause damage, it just summons what does. Summon spells fully are the spell.
It was pretty obvious that the Tasha summons were meant as an easier to manage, balanced option in place of various conjure spells, which makes the fact that theyre gated behind expensive, specific components so stupid
yeah, i just cut the costs and remove the traditional conjure spells. upcasting makes tasha summons better
You are real one
The Summon spells from Tasha are objectively worse than the Conjure spells, but that's because both come from a different philosophy of design. It focus more on one decently powerful creature instead of a huge amount of creatures that either are chosen by the DM, giving them more things to think about, or only the one or two creatures that people usually use with Conjure Animals.
they might be worse but they are way more organical and easier to implement
@@BODELTOTE more organic, easier and honestly, more in line with how 5e's power gap should be. Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland Beings make Frontline Martials irrelevant while also not offering a risk like the demon summons.
Some of the Conjure spells only summon one creature too, like Conjure Elemental.
For sure, Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland Beings (with pixies) are very poorly designed spells that are more powerful than basically everything in the game along with numerous other big problems. These summon spells were likely a way to replace these broken spells designing summons from a fresh slate.
@@mogalixir Ya I don't get the need for expensive material components, there's a very small amount of spells where I think costly components are good. I think Conjure animals and woodlands need more DM fiat though, with them being so potentially abrasive and problematic.
"All the summons from Tasha's is bad" My mans, clearly not seen the power of a Superheated Modron on the board. Love having that thing just get in the way of melee combatants.
also summon undead and summon fey.
lots of use foe infinite teleportation and the ability to travel through walls
@@nimric3348 I love Summon Fey, I think the problem with this sort of number crunching style, is that it only makes sense in a vacuum. There's a lot of extra little things that make these particular summons good compared to things like Conjure animals or Conjure Fey. And Especially Conjure Celestials. Summon Celestial is bonkers for Team survivability if you go defender.
Summon aberration was great for me as a GOOlock. 2 extra blasts from a flying companion with 50hp or an extra melee combatant to flank with our Paladin.
@@GenuinelyUniqueGents true. We used summon fey to get summon to cast goodberry since we didn't have the spell itself and needed the food effect
@@andreymontag You are thinking of Conjure Fey.
I use this spell on one of my characters and there is a use case: If you only take 5-8 levels of ranger and then multiclass to another class that doesn't get summon spells for a while, such as cleric. Having extra slots you can only upcast, upcasting to a level 4 spell and getting two attacks with flyby is great. The HP is reasonable for the flying beast since they often won't get hit at all. I agree the land and water beast become near useless at tier 2 and above, but the air beast is still good in tier 3. It's not the best spell at that level but if its your only summon option, its above average.
True, but... Doesn't upcasting the other spell options end up being more useful? In particular, Aid, Healing Spirit and Magic Weapon all have better upcast options, to say nothing of spells like Pass Without Trace that are good enough to use a higher level spell slot anyway if that's all you have OR level 1 Cleric spells like Guiding Bolt. Plus, having 5 levels of Ranger and 3 levels of Cleric only gives you up to 3rd level Spell Slots, after the point that you have access to 2nd level Cleric spells that can also be upcast. If you go Ranger 8/Cleric 1, you'd have 3rd level spell slots without 2nd level Cleric spells, but even then, that's only +5 HP and +1 AC when you could be giving half your party +10 HP each with Aid.
@@sterlingmuse5808 @Sterling Muse Agreed, its not the best spell one can upcast to level 4, though Magic Weapon is not a strong spell in many campaigns. Anyway, many of the spells you mentioned are available to multiple classes, so decent chance someone else has it taken care of. Additionally, Spirit Guardians is normally the no brainer, but not anymore when a character has extra attack because the opportunity cost is higher. Aid is amazing but you only need one slot for it usually so there's room to spare. Like I said its above average and variety is power. Situationally, the spell has been really good. Especially because you can safely cast it before combat and it lasts an hour, which means its generally with me as long as the group doesn't take a short rest. So it tends to last for a good amount of time.
At the 6:17 part: I made a slip up! Basically just change the % to hit in that section to 60% and then 84% to hit with advantage and you'll get the real dpr I was talking about. My mind must have been in the Ranger head space when I punched those numbers in. I tend to do napkin calculations.
Anyways, if you change it to 60%, The value doesn't change much anyways, we're talking about a 1 point dpr increase. Thats 6.52 dpr (.60x10.5+0.05x4.5) and with advantage 9.25 dpr (.84x10.5+0.0975x4.5)
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Love you dude, keep up the grind!
All Praise be to Pun Pun
I love conjure animals as well, and I don't think it is given enough love, but my biggest issue with it is that conjure animals invalidates every other concentration option available to the druid. Since the animals have the capacity to do so much damage, and they can provide astounding utility even when they can't do damage it makes other options completely obsolete making all spell slots of 3rd level and above be best used casting conjure animals. There are a few exceptions, but ultimately you are likely going to use most of your higher level slots to cast conjure animals because it is the optimal choice.
But Kobold. Without Summon Beast, how will you be able to summon Gator? D:
But yeah. I'd probably just remove the 200-gold cost of the acorn. Store-bought acorns are never as good as naturally grown.
...That, and I'd give the 200 gold cost to Conjure Animals. >:D
Hey Kobold, I tend to have trouble finding people who are sharp enough witted to get my jokes. You have a functioning brain as all dragons should, mind listening to one of my jokes to help keep me from finally snapping?
"All summoning spells from Tasha are bad"
Well, I don't know about everyone of them, but Summon Shadowspawn is definitely not bad IMO. A lvl 3 spell that summon a minion that can instantly use its dreadfull scream to try to frighten every creatures in a radius of 30ft around it, based on your spell saving throw, is really, really good. You can summon the Shadowspawn in a way that put you and your party out of this radius.
The likeliness of your spawn surviving after its first turn is somewhat decent due to the fear effect, so you might get some use out of it after using its scream.
In addition to that, most of the Spawn's statblock is based on either your spellcasting ability, your proficiency bonus, or the level of the spellslot used. It's actually a decent spell to upcast. If you cast it at lvl 4, its HP are raised to 50, its armor class to 15, and it can now attack twice in a turn with a decently powerfull melee attack.
The three forms your spawn can take are also somewhat good. The fury's attacks have advantage on frightened creatures, increasing its DPR, the despair reduce the movement of creatures who start their turn next to it, increasing its crowd control utility, and the fear allow it to hide in shadows for a bonus action, which is more situational.
But yeah, having access to that at lvl 5 and being able to upcast it at lvl 7 is not something I would considere sub-optimal.
summon undead, ranged version, 2 marksman attacks per round for 1 hour is pretty decent.
Summon Shadowspawn can be hilarious on a Fathomless warlock. Choose Despair, a hit from your Tentacle against something adjacent to your Despair will reduce the thing's speed by 30 feet.
@@lord6617
Summon Undead or Summon Aberration allow you to fly. They're strong enough to carry almost any party member, only the _really_ heavy ones might be a problem. As medium creatures, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to use them as mounts so long as you play a small race. Aberration is ranged attacker in its flying form, and Undead inflicts frightened in its flying form.
the only issue is that if you have 4th level spell slots, wizards might as well use polymorph. you can make the case for warlocks, but i think there are better spells for your slot.
i really want to like the tasha’s summoning spells. i want to be able to summon creatures on the battlefield without breaking the encounter. i want to have creativity and live that fantasy of Harry Dresden, John Constantine, or a puppetmaster, but the creatures just don’t have enough health or AC to stick around on the battlefield. furthermore after a certain point monsters start resisting nonmagical damage so construct, beast, and elemental get thrown out the window.
@@Hazel-xl8in
Casting Polymorph on yourself means being very vulnerable to concentration checks, and maybe your allies don't _want_ to be polymorphed until their HP is down by a fair bit. Plus, you're not putting any extra bodies on the battlefield to bolster your action economy. Polymorph is powerful and incredibly valuable, but it's not the perfect fit for _every_ situation.
Here's a thought, while I'm at it: What would happen if you cast Polymorph on a Tasha summon? What even is their CR/level? Do they use the level of the spell? Do you have to use a CR calculator? The level of the caster? Or are they meant to be impossible to Polymorph?
Who on earth is saying that summon beast is the best Tasha's summon spell? It has zero utility beyond summoning an extra beast to the field.
Any other summon spell from tashas has more utility:
Summon fey allows for repeated attempts to charm your enemies as the fey's bonus action, or a small patch of magical darkness.
Summon elemental doesn't have much direct utility, but they can be used in interesting ways(earth elemental's burrow speed to punch stuff through walls, water elementals can be mounts for small creatures, fire elementals are immune to lava and fire), they're also very hard to kill, especially the earth one.
Those are the only two for ranger and druid, but if you compare to the wizard spells you have to summon shadowspawn that can drop someone's speed by 20 without a save, summon undead which can paralyse poisoned enemies or cheese enemies with incorporeal movement, summon aberration is just solid around with an option for anti heal, summon construct can also slow down enemies and prevent reactions.
The only thing summons best has on any of these spells is pack tactics, which is good on a player or a pack of wolves, not so much on a single summoned monster.
And I guess the reason to pick any of these spells over conjure animals is that while conjure animals is strong, it's just such a poorly designed spell. The obvious part being it has the potential to be overpowered, so it is sometimes banned or has house rules applied to it. The player has no real control over what gets summoned, the gm could screw them over by summing eight goldfish if they wanted(they won't, but they can). But if we assume that the dm drops in some beasts appropriate for the region there is still an issue, it *can* bog down the game. The simple fix is to use mob combat rules to skill the rolling and keep things flowing.
I could honestly get behind a redesign of conjure animals. I reckon there needs to be a list of animals that can be summoned with a note of "if your gm allows you may also select animals not listed below but equal to the listed cr" just so you don't end up summoning eight sea cucumbers to fight a dragon.
With conjure spells, I pretty much let the player summon what they want as long as it fits the table of restrictions. That way, players can come prepared with statblocks of what they want to summon, and I as a dm don't have to go through a large number of statblocks, even using dndbeyond to aid in sorting, to pick something for the scenario. However, I don't let things like Chwingas be summoned as that is very high levels of powergaming, and the odds are high the character themselves don't even know of the setting specific minor elemental
Actually, the Air option can fly away with someone without provoking opportunity attacks. RAW, small-sized creatures don’t have any penalty to their carrying capacity. So if you were to say grapple an ally, or even yourself, the beast can fly you out of reach safely, as they can’t take an opportunity attack against you (forced movement) or the beast (Flyby). That said, it’s definitely the weakest Summon that came out of Tasha’s
@@deadpoolrwbyfan8419 while it might not have any reductions to carry weight, it can only carry 270 lbs before overencumbered, which isn't enough for most player character weights+equipment weights
@@deadpoolrwbyfan8419 An interesting interaction for sure, though technically anything that can grapple can do the same as long as they don't enter anyone's range. Eg a winged monkey familiar could manage this.
I do reckon that summon beast is still a *good spell* as long as you don't compare it to conjure animals. It is still basically a slightly more fallible form of spiritual weapon that takes longer to cast after all.
+1 Ally
+1 Attack
-1 Enemy Attack
"0 utility" in the worst case scenario.
In other cases you get +2 -2 or +1 -2 which is a massive advantage.
If 2-3 party members get this then you have literally 2-3x the effect which can ensure a lot of fights are won.
Outside of combat... make them walk through trap infested nightmares.
Having a beast "tamed" by your side would be great for intimidation.
The beast should have a stronger sense of smell ect for other uses.
It only has 0 utility if you don't think about it, stop and think about it.
Actually having Tasha's summons as the base for summons is something I would prefer, maybe removing the gold cost or lowering the level of the spells by one, but me and my players really prefer those
Same. The og summons are just a massive pain in the backside to manage. The tasha summons are elegant and that is the best thing one can say about them really
Ok, is it just me, or is everyone throwing a fit over the summon spells because they aren't as powerful as the conjure spells? Tell you something, if the conjure spells didn't exist, these summoning spells would be amazing. Because guess what? All of them are better than the Wildfire Druid's _main gimmick,_ some of them effectively solve the problem of needing a frontline fighter, and some of them are just essentially another party member. Not to mention that the player gets to choose what they summon. I know most DMs allow their players to choose what they summon with conjure spells, but I also know of some DMs, including myself, who despise those spells and give their players 0 control over what they summon.
The newer spells are better for balance, and you cannot change my mind
Edit: Ok, I should be nicer. You will not likely change my mind, but I am open to any and all arguments.
@@thatrandomnerd6996 The wildfire spirit doesn't use a spell slot or concentration and can be used twice per short rest. It's pretty much free, minus using wild shape for find familiar. The damage it deals is pretty decent for being free at lower levels too. Regardless of damage, try finding one summon that can teleport allies. The only summon x spell I found that can teleport is summon fey, and it can't take another creature with it. Conjure woodland beings has blink dogs; same thing, and even the infamous pixie doesn't get teleportation. If you use summon greater demon, you can choose a dybbuk, which has at will dimension door. However, if you read the spell this just won't work.
@@Chrokosaur Fair, but here is my counterpoint (sarcasm):
You've made a very good argument, and I honestly can't disagree. I just prefer the summon spells because _the conjure spells make me want to defenestrate myself._
@@thatrandomnerd6996 Nooo, don't defenestrate yourself. Defenestrate the designers instead!
At the start of the video you explain that a Ranger will have a conflict for the costly component in Tier 1 play, but how did a Ranger get 2nd level spells before level 5?
Because you're gathering the gold during tier 1 lol
I was thinking the same thing. Rangers get 2nd level spells at level 5 and 200gp doesn't seem like an absurd amount of money
Treantmonk. You're gathering money, I know some players don't see half plate until like 6th level. I know that sounds crazy but thats a real problem people have.
full casters also don't have alot of things they need to buy compared to martials unless they can easily buy magic items and scrolls.
I always also considered these summoning spells most useful in out of combat situations.
@@PackTactics your missing the point. Tier 1 play is 1 - 4 levels. By definition this spell is only usable in tier 2 play at 5th level.
Ok so I understand a few of your problems with the spell the price tag itself is a bit of a downside. However, I think it would be good to consider a few of the ways that the ranger has changed post Tasha's.
1. Rangers can make Wisdom based builds: with the new fighting style (druidic warrior) the ranger can take either shillelagh or magic stone which gives them the option to attack with their wisdom modifier. Not only that but with the addition of entangle to the ranger spell list your spell save DC becomes a little more viable.
2. It is an extra body at earlier levels: for the ranger It is a half caster which means it's spell progression is far slower than that of a druid or wizard and is going to get their second level spells at 5th level and their third level spells at 9th level which is far later in the game. Conjure Animals is powerful yes but at as late in the game as it is there is a high likelihood that you might not get to cast it because the current game you were playing ended. With summon beast you get a body on the field that if the enemy attacks it they waste a turn attacking a summoned creature instead of your barbarian, paladin or fighter that's hacking at them. Also it doesn't require an action or bonus to command the beast so you have a bonus action free.
Although I consider wisdom a cancerous-weak option for a ranger, but here I must agree. This opens up at least some options for builds and variety. I don’t understand by what criteria a small lizard judges, if the economy of actions speaks for itself. It is especially terrible that the author believes that the same spells are good on the ranger and the druid at the same time. (I really want to see how a kobold finds the difference between a ranger with 3 attacks and a druid who can only cast)
@@whydidiwatchthis5174 Why wisdom based builds are super bad in your opinion? I played my shillegah beastmaster (tashas) rider and it was a lot of fun just runing around on my land beast and bonking bad guys.
@@yolu6334 I'm going to playing the same here soon minus the riding
My instinct is that the big advantage here is the hour duration, combined with it's 4 Int, understanding of languages, and ability to either swim, climb, or fly. So perhaps it is better as a utility creature
For example, summon a hawk; have it fly ahead. It's smart enough to answer "Is there anything dangerous?" and smart enough to loop a rope around an outcrop in rocks so you can climb up. It can delivery your friends a message if they are relatively nearby. It is basically instantly trained and dutiful, so you can have it help when you need to entertain some nobles by having it ride a ball or fly through hoops or whatever. You can give it a torch and have it drop it on the rooves of a settlement you don't like.
It does not appear to have a range, so scouting or delivering messages to nearby people seems solid. In particular, the fact that it takes the form of a native animal is good here - People won't care about a deer in the forest or a rat in the sewers, which is good.
That being said, it's still not great in this regard. Niche... You have a spell with decent, but still limited utility and poor combat but not at the level of something like an Unseen Servant. But like, I think those options should be considered as well, as part of the whole.
Nice video, I really liked the way you integrated the descryb ad
3:30 Ranger must be 5-th level to cast Summon Bestial Spirit, so it cannot be 4-th level when casting this. And if it is 5-th level and you compare to Hex/Hunter's Mark, then you need to include Multiattack into the mix, which increases the damage of the latter two spells.
It also adds 5% to hit since prof bonus is added to their attack roll.
have you considered the summon spells at a table that bans conjure animals/woodland beings? I think they are very good in that scenario. also a Ranger with 14 Wis is best case? what? its super easy to start with 16 wis.
@Alice Wight the fact that the summon X spells are trash compared to Conjure animals kinda proves the point though. Without Conjure animals, they are fine and balanced. It's only CA that invalidates them because its so OP compared to anything else.
@@Apfeljunge666 this is why I hate power gamers trying to get the most dpr
@@Apfeljunge666 The Summon X spells aren’t balanced though, because they’re absolutely terrible; they don’t really need the help invalidating themselves. If the Conjure spells are banned, you don’t really have an alternative period, because the Summon spells are still bad spells.
Generally speaking, Conjure Animals is seen by optimizers as a powerful spell that’s balanced in conjunction with other powerful spells.
@@technicolormischief-maker5683 tashas's summon spells are strong extra dpr and sometimes utility. They are very balanced. I did the math on all of them. Conjure animals is broken OP. That is fact. if a caster has access to it and the DM isnt actively sabotaging the spell, then its an absolute no brainer to take it since it fills the battlefield with bodies and at least doubles your overall dpr.
The Tasha's Beastmaster with this spell will have two beasts effectively giving them 3 attacks.
That was hilariously perfect timing. You were reading about the crocodile. You got to the point where you said and suddenly....(RUclips commercial)... Chips. I was laughing so much I don't know which ones they were advertising.
Oh, it's another "better pick Conjure Animals", isn't it? C'mon, this spell comes up every time a damaging spell discussed, what's that if not an indication of how broken it is?
Yeah. It’s so obviously leagues above anything else. I made it so that everything summoned with it is halved, so like if u would summon 8 you’d only get 4. And honestly, it’s still super strong. It’s just unfair that a caster can summon the equivalent of two martial characters just for the fun of it
Both are related to summoning things. I can't really dodge this one.
@@PackTactics Summon Beast is just a balanced version of Conjure Animals.
@@antongrigoryev6381 Spiritual weapon contributes more to a party than summon beast.
If CA was the only thing better, maybe this would matter.
But summon beast can't even beat the pathetic Spiritual weapon, which is just sad and places it near the bottom of damaging spells.
Summon spells used to be problematic in older editions because it left up in the air where the beasts came from. Which meant you might end up summoning a nearby creature thT was caring for young and putting it in dire danger. By specifying it's a spirit animal that at least is solved. Spirits just poof and go home when killec.
Pretty sure this is true for the Conjure spells in 5e, and definitely for the Tasha's summon spells in 5e. So 5e in general seems to have fixed this.
That is oddly specific. Did this happen to you?
Did you have to take care of some bear cubs?
Step 1: Conjure 8 geese
Step 2: take a seat.
Step 3: ask yourself if that was overkill.
I never really liked Conjure animals because it was so vague for a new player. It doesn't really tell you what can be summoned, just how many of which CR, and then ends with dumping the problem on the DM by stating, "The DM has the creatures’ statistics". Atleast with Tasha's spells they have a spell that gives choices between air, land, or water and has the stat block to go with it so there is no confusion. As far as the cost is concerned, I would just do what I do with magic items, task the player to gather the materials/item. So they need a feather, tuft of fur, and a fish tail? Why not have a feather of a majestic eagle, tuft of fur from the beast king of a local forest, and a fish from a local fishing tournament? Value is subjective in the game, so after getting those items (which the DM controls the difficulty for) then just do like a 20 gold process to gild an acorn in gold.
Also I feel that "if it isn't good for a druid it isn't good for a ranger" is a bad take. I personally have run a Wisdom based Beastmaster Ranger with the Druidic Warrior fighting style picking up Shillelagh and magic stones, getting some good use out of Beast summon from 5-9. At level 9 I switched Beast summon for Conjure animals but never thought my choice of picking up Beast summons was bad.
I do understand that some points I make are moot because its not from a optimizer's viewpoint. My fun usually comes from concepts and themes (like a grappler, summoner, geomancer) vs how can I get the highest dmg output. I AM NOT SAYING THAT YOU CAN'T DO BOTH. I just tend to find that some people would argue that picking spike growth would be a better pick for 2nd level on a Beastmaster then the spell that would literally let them summon more beasts, because one does more damage/better control.
It makes me happy that the lawnmower was important enough to be remembered/recorded for Gator's home.
Wait I'm a bit confused here, from how I (and the people of Reddit) read this spell you also add your proficiency bonus to the attack roll of the beast since it's your spell attack modifier but your math would suggest otherwise(since you usually assume a 65% chance to hit) so what's going on?
65% assumes that you buff it at Lv4, you can't do that cause your a ranger/druid and need feats. Especially for ranger your wisdom might be even lower than that.
@@naturalkind5591 Well yes but in the video he assumed that you do increase your Wisdom as a druid, and even if he took a feat the numbers wouldn't look like that, it would be about 60%, but at 5th level it's 50%
@@undeadboi8441 Oh noooooooooo! I made a slip up! Basically just change the % to hit in that section to 60% and then 84% to hit with advantage and you'll get the dpr I was talking about. My mind must have been in the Ranger head space when I punched those numbers in. I tend to do napkin calculations.
Anyways, if you change it to 60%, The value doesn't change much anyways, we're talking about a 1 point dpr increase. Thats 6.52 dpr (.60x10.5+0.05x4.5) and with advantage 9.25 dpr (.84x10.5+0.0975x4.5)
So the conclusion still stands. I hope reddit isn't going crazy because of a 1 dpr mistake.
@@PackTactics hey kobald I really appreciate your work, can you cover zepher strike.one of my player used this spell and dealt 32 damage in a single turn at just level 4
I'm surprised you don't want Conjure Animals changed, I feel it is far to OP personally. I much prefer the control/support aspects of druid rather than raw damage personally, but to each their own.
What are your thoughts on another of the Tasha's summoning spells though, Summon Fey? Since picking it up it's been by far my favourite 3rd level spell and the go-to use for my concentration, and in my little time at level 7 currently I was not disappointed by the significant power boost of upcasting.
Perhaps my opinion has been raised however by it's use in PvP, where it has been genuinely debilitating to many of my opponents to be incapable of directly targeting us with attacks and harmful effects, especially since if you're patient you can still use non-damaging effects without breaking the charm, so take a little time to do the shove and grapple combo. Not to say that it's at all felt underwhelming in PvE environments either. I wouldn't say I've been through several very challenging encounters, but it took the hardest adventure so far to get them down to low health after 2 mini BBEG combat encounters. (The healing of the Shepard Druid probably made the difference between that and hitting 0 HP)
Yeah, 3rd level spell to invalidate all the martials in your party is terrible design.
So, I want conjure animals changed but I don't want it dramatically changed is what I should have said really. Oh well.
@@PackTactics Ahhh, I see. I certainly don't want it to be completely driven into the ground either.
My intuition for nerfing it just goes as far as removing the 8 x 1/8th option. I feel like that's a rather simple way to take the edge off of it's power in a way that also make maps easier to handle. I certainly wouldn't say that anyone should take that as gospel though, I have little experience with the spell and have done no maths regarding it.
@@cubicengineering4715 removing one of the main strengths of 2 classes is a pretty major change, but if we also remove like shield from wizards and a few other balance changes, I can totally see it being a good idea.
@@naturalkind5591 even Treantmonk bans Shield
I like the Tasha's summons - and I especially like upcasting them. An 8th level upcasting with four attacks is like having another martial in the party. Complete with 19 AC.
EXACTLY! See, this is why I love the Summon spells from Tasha's: because you're having your beast/fey/undead/etc get more than just HP from upcasting. If you're gonna summon something at your highest level slot, it should feel like you're actually getting something worthy of it out of the spell slot you just used. And, since it has a mechanical benefit, it scales up much better than Conjure Animals at higher tiers of play! I still wouldn't waste my highest level slot on it, but I would still use a slot that I'm not going to use with another spell I have for the same level, for example a 6th level spell when I have access to 7th/8th level spells.
There is probably something better than a summon for an 8th level spell, but honestly I respect it all the same. If you want to play the summoner character than so be it, its not like your wasting the spell.
This is the first video I've watched from your channel, and I don't think I've ever disagreed with so many points in a single d&d video. I will find another video and give this channel 1 more chance.
In our group, we have a lot of players and another is an Artificer with an Iron Defender, so we've kinda agreed Conjure Animals won't really be used to summon a lot of beasts at once because we can't really handle that many, but it will still probably render this redunadent.
Honestly, I'm kinda regretting playing a Shepard Druid in such a large party.
Have you tried going higher CR? Yeah, this class require management to handle properly.
Brutally honest, I don't get this argument, dm's handle swarms of armies all the time, how is it that different with a player?
@@gavros9636 Because if the player cannot handle it and make combat take so long, the DM would have to take over. It appears in many cases, a player casting this spell bogged down combat.
I recommend taking a look at mob rules. They slightly reduce damage, but they take litterally 3 seconds.
@@tyree403 Then you direct them towards, as Natural Kind helpfully noted, Mob rules, or better yet, if you have a druid/ranger in the party and you're the dm, talk with them about their spell choices and how they can improve.
There's barely any difference between 4 beasts making four attack rolls and 1 fighter making 4 attack rolls, again, this argument makes no sense.
Honestly most of the Tasha summoning spells could have like 50% or double health across the board.
Also: don’t think Summon beast is the best one. Something has to be said about summon shadow spawn having fear in built into an option that can also no save slow enemies and do damage as well as being medium sized with a decent strength and hands thus grapple capable. The cc it wonders is one of the better spells to cast if someone ELSE cast web, or spike growth or other such hazard. Summon beast has pack tactics for the highest dpr, but other summons offer other outwards contribution that aren’t damage, and non summoning spells give these spells a run for their DPR
@@voodoophil not really. You can just micro manage your summons and or be significantly smarter than 14 with knowledge proficiencies. Their int doesn’t come up in significantly useful ways
This is a pretty bad take on Summon Beast. A solid level 2 summoning spell is an amazing option to have because of how powerful summoning is overall. Being a level 2 spell is a big deal because it can free up spell slots for important spells like dispel magic, plant growth, tidal wave, etc. Or if you have a lot of encounters, you can keep summoning all day.
I like conjure animals, but it's just not a well designed spell. If the player chooses the beasts, the power level of the spell skyrockets way out of line. And 8 creatures is just too many for a player to be summoning, even if you're good at managing them. I hope they tone conjure animals down a bit and make it easier to manage for DM's and players.
ah hell yeah, our favorite kobold getting some good sponsors!
The general consensus is that most tables handwave material costs if they arent consumed by the spell so that works in the summon spells favor.
The biggest value is hard to determine with dps tools. having an extra independent body on the field has some value. This could simply be the help that goes first and sets off traps or the rear guard preventing Pincer attacks. The fact that a ranger gets this at level 5 instead of waiting till 9 for a summon is nice. just like every thing thing roleplaying its a tool finding creative and fun uses is more important than DPR.
I remember a short time I did get to play some dnd and I was playing as some Druid with a summon which was just a normal gator, the main use of him was to hold foes in place which added onto the hold spells I was already running with so yeah the gator was just there to hold on so the heavy hitters of the party could take care of the foe as his damage was too low to do much harm.
This is what they need to do with Conjure Animals. Reduce how many animals you get, but increase the CR. This make inexperienced players not blog down the game and have the table stare at you with discontent. The main reason why Conjure Animals is so disliked by the community are due to new players ruining sessions/combat.
The spell already lets you summon less with higher CR. The spell just scales incredibly strong with numbers.
The only way I've seen spells like this slow down a game is when:
1) Caster's player doesn't bring enough dice to support the actions they want their char to do.
2) DM puts a lot if effort into narrating the beasts actions.
@@anniedarkheart5224 That's the point. It allows the spell to be more accessible to the newbies because the power mostly lies from few, but higher CR creatures than a bunch of them. And I've seen Conjure Animal put combat on hold before for quite a while.
The DM should put their foot down and say that you can only choose what you summon if you already know what you want AND have the stat block ready. Otherwise the DM will choose something completely useless on purpose (which is effectively the same as banning the spell).
@@theuncalledfor Nah. Never make Conjure Animals useless on purpose.
That's not professional DM behavior. The player would think you have a lot of hostility towards them. Sometimes, people can be new and make mistakes. And that's okay.
Repeated slow down of combat while not trying to improve should warrant the spell being limited to CR 2 or CR 1 animals where it'll be a lot easier to manage.
I could complete 16 animals' turns fairly quickly. Hell, I could complete their turns quicker than martial characters. It's all about being experienced and taking some time to do your homework.
@@tyree403
Warn them beforehand, that way it's fair.
"You can take this spell, and choose what you want to summon, but you have to bring the statblocks and choose what you want before you actually cast. If you forget, you can ask for help before it becomes relevant, or just cast something else. If you cast it, but you have no stat blocks prepared, I will count that as your character fumbling and summoning rats by accident, so don't mess this up. This is a very powerful and very time consuming spell, and I will not tolerate any player disrespecting the other players' time, so come prepared."
Well, at least the 200g component isn't consumed upon casting the spell like other do. So it's got that going for it?
I said that in the video.
@@PackTactics Ah, I must have missed that tidbit.
Gators can climb trees.
When you said "and suddenly" I got an ad on RUclips lol.
I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's good at level 3 and 4 and that's it
I don't know if I agree that *all* the Summon options from Tasha's are bad. I just think Summon spells are circumstantial. I'll take a debuff spell over a summon, but what if the enemy has LR? I'll take a control spell over a Summon, but what if that enemy is also a spellcaster or has some means of teleporting? If you're a Wizard, unless you multi-class you don't have a bunch of good buff options. Fly wouldn't be too helpful if the caster has ranged options and Haste, which you did a video on is an option.
In situations like those, a repeatable source of extra damage is pretty good.
"And then suddenly-" immediately smacked in the face by an actual youtube ad
So a while back I created my own 2nd level summon spell, it creates two wolves (standard stats), except they are spirit creatures with nonmagical damage resistance.
The upcast let's you summon one extra wolf for each level over 2nd. No big material costs but it's a concentration spell.
In our games, it was used by a druid to some great effect but it never felt broken. Curious what others think!
My Druid's Land Beast does an absurd amount of DPR and sponges pretty well, too. Same thing with Summon Fey. Have saved my hide in more than a few situations. This is while using a rank4 spell slot.
Anecdotal, I admit. And mileage will vary, particularly based on your party comp. But the Tasha's Summon spells are not always bad. We're playing in ToA and, even in that setting, conjuring a gaggle of velociraptors is pure cheese OP. Our DM has made this explicitly known, haha.
Though this is probably going to be the only option after they remove the old summoning spells in the new revision
And no, this is actually the shittiest of the Tasha's summoning spells. And I hope conjure animals (and friends) gets removed in the new edition.
I personally use conjure animals and the other Tasha spells for summoning on my npcs since it gives them flavor and giving a player a free use of the spell pee day via a magic relic is always nice.
The druid I played in my last campain used this spell almost every encounter, mostly for the memes. Casting it at level 6 and sometimes even 8 or 9.
That Corgi was probably the MVP of that campaign as it struck fear to those who spoke his name: Winston.
When I was using conjure animals, we decided the animals I would get was random, because the DM didn't want to have to decide, like they are supposed to with that spell.
Whenever I wanted to cast it, I'd have to roll on a table, look up the stats for the creature, write down the hp and put down all the tokens. I wouldn't know what happened in some rounds, cus I was prepping to keep the game moving.
It was such a pain in the ass to use, I just don't anymore.
Summon beast worked really well on my beast master ranger though, especially when casting it ahead of time. Summon fey was pretty fun too. They could buff the hp a bit, but sometimes they aren't the target the enemy wants to attack either.
Bad DM'ing.
You should have spammed that spell as much as possible to get back at him (AFTER attempting to reason with him, and only proceed to do this if diplomacy fails).
@@theuncalledfor I don't know if I'd call it bad per se, it wasn't great at least. Maybe I shouldn't have dropped such a complicated spell on an inexperienced DM either, right? x)
I will say that I think Conjure Animals is terribly designed.
The spell can be upcast so an explanation why it’s “obviously not worth it” would have been nice.
I liked the summon undead from Tasha's. Cast as a level 4 spell using the ranged attack option, it can put out a good chunk of damage. Its basically like having a marksman ranger in your pocket.
The ghost form has more HP and can frighten opponents. It also flies and is strong enough to carry most PC's, so you can fly with it. If you're Small, you can even use it as a mount if you want to.
The putrid form can poison opponents and paralyse them.
All three forms are useful.
My favourite summon X spell is Summon Undead Spirit, because my Skeleton Warlock uses his own Gilded Head as the spell component
Thanks for responding to my email about Mold Earth. You're a real gem kobold.
7:01
1. A 4th level cure wounds plus L1 damage isn't bad productivity from a spell for a PC that can only cast L2 spells.
2. If there's other types of damage like traps, saving throws (particularly Str or Con) or magic missile effects it's tanking a lot better than this calculation.
3. Lasting 1 hour, It can be cast before an encounter and last multiple encounters, it can be healed between encounters. So it takes damage and deals damage throughout multiple encounters without ever costing an action.
4. It can help enabled flanking, or other effects like Hobgoblin's Saving Face.
5. It helps fulfill lots of utility in many cases acting like a super familiar that can also attack things if need be, so it goes beyond 1 combat and beyond combat.
Yes upcasting generally not good, just compare, Summon Fey is a lot better at L3. (Conjure animals is almost always by far the best spell, it's broken and bad for the game)
At higher levels, you can do some nasty stuff with a wizard that knows wish and a summon celestial caster / summon fiend caster
My lawnmower mimic was fine eating up grass until it got a taste of blood
I should point out that the description was for a crocodile, not an alligator.
You say all the summons from tasha's are bad but the Shadowspawn can be pretty cool. Take the Despair option and reduce their speed by 20 feet. Then shoot them with Ray of Frost to reduce their speed to zero. Or even better! After someone takes away their remaining 10 feet of movement, trip them/shove them prone with that shield bash feat. Now they are prone and can't get up because their speed is effectively 0 feet.
And neither the Despair ability, nor the Ray of Frost has a save! Could potentially work against very high level enemies!
Ah, I see we are dying on the "I love conjure animals, there's nothing wrong with it" hill again. Also, I wouldn't call all of the Tasha's summons bad, they are just more balanced in a spell system that includes unbalanced summoning spells. As someone who played a wizard with summon undead, it was super refreshing to put a summoning spell on my spell list that was clearly a good option at some times, but inferior to other concentration spells at other times. The ghost was a solid exploration tool, as it could fly and go through walls, but still do/soak up a bit of damage if a fight broke out. The skeleton felt nice to summon because it could stay out of the thick of it and would still be around if a fight didn't last super long, unlike a lot of concentration spells that only last a minute. The putrid spirit would usually be a good way to "draw aggro" because it's cc was decent if it wasn't dealt with, so it could in niche moments be pulled out as a way to waste an enemy turn without there being a chance to save. The spell had alot of utility, but there were still times when a hard cc spell or a buff spell were better, which ultimately made playing a spellcaster feel like it had variety, rather than just raw power. People liked the spells because they were a step towards balance between spells, not because they were a new path to optimization.
Conjure animals is definitely a stupidly powerful spell. (Duh)
But in a game where better options exist, this does make the worse options bad. You wouldn't call upcasting burning hands to 3rd level good, fireball exists.
@@naturalkind5591 yeah but there might be times we’re casting burning hands is better cuz it’s aoe is more narrow.
Optimization is frequently done in a void.
I have seen people summon a bunch of creatures. It slows down combat and everyone gets mad and people have less fun.
so summon beasts isn’t optimal to fun frequently.
Unless you are summoning like giant constrictor snakes only
@@naturalkind5591 That's a fair point for summon beast and summon fey I suppose, since their older and stronger counterparts are part of the same spell lists, but the arcane casters can actually get a lot out of the Tasha summons, given that conjure elemental takes an hour. I think most people like the new spells better because the older spells are so powerful or disruptive that they are considered taboo by certain groups. From a purely optimization standpoint, some of them are bad (mainly the druid/ranger options). From the standpoint of addressing the above problem and being designed as replacements for the older summoning spells, they are solid, well rounded spells.
my party member is a shepherd druid whose go-to is conjuring as many giant owls as possible. With flyby, flanking (they isolate targets whenever possible), and the temporary hp from the bear totem, it's absurd how strong they are. We're at level 13, and they consistently do 75+ dpr and survive multiple encounters
sure, if you're aiming for straight up damage, it's not optimal, but there are a lot of opportunity options that it provides. giving a paladin advantage (through flanking) on an attack is huge for crit fishing potential, giving a rogue an ally next to the monster is enough to get sneak attack at no risk, getting AoO's from the beast, or drawing out AoO's can be the right situation (eg, wizard on 1 hp, concentrating on haste, if he runs, party's screwed, if the beast draws the AoO, they might drop, but might not, and wizard doesn't)
Thinking of planning a Druidic Warrior Style Ranger that goes into Beast Master (Primal Companion) and summons animals, fey and elementals down the line. With my focus on wisdom for Shillegah and my animal companion, it really feels like this spell is actually going to be excellent for him until he gets summon fey and summon elemental down the line. Even if it only absorbs some damage, that's basically a spell that did damage and then wasted an enemy's turn.
It ended up being busted good. I had 4 attacks around a lvl 6 between extra attack, summon beast, and my primal companion, all based on my Wisdom. Also, it was *rare* for any single enemy to do more then 10 damage a shot, in reality, at least at lvl 5. So it rarely popped. I think you must be playing a MASSIVELY tuned table, because in a moderately tuned table, this spell was busted good and busted fun because of it.
Also, it is by far the worst of the summon spells introduced by Tasha's man.
we are a party of spell casters at lvl 3 and every battle i summon it (i am a druid) and i use it as our fighter (will stop working in like lvl 5 but ill conjure animals then) (also i am circle of the shepherd so it will get stronger)
This spell is XXX rating? Perhaps I should tell the Druid…
Don’t forget outdoors you can summon a “meatier shower”. Having a herd of cows rain down is an awesome AOE.
I used this spell in a one-shot for a Pokémon Trainer build. Loads of fun but I can see how it wouldn't be the best for a long-term campaign.
We Stan a content creator with accountability
there's not need to worry about stuff from 5e making it to 5.5 since everything from 5e is supposed to be compatible with the 5.5/6e content anyways, even the old stuff that's being rewritten.
I think it's also worth considering how each of the summon spells scale when upcast and for summon undead how it interacts with the school of necromancy subclass for wizard specifically, I know I wouldn't mind more content for this type of thing in the future and I'm sure others would love to watch it as well.
Wouldn't the value of this depend on how many combats you can squeeze into a 1hr duration?
The other question is would this summoned beast benefit from the features a beast master rangers regular beast?
This spell would be way better if you could use tiny best or swarms with it. As you could hide them on you. Still it has some utility.
pack mule
aid in getting into places.
mount for some races or help with enlarge/ reduce
You could do combos with it. ( Evil grin )
It would also be of use with RP.
I've actually had good results from summon undead on my ghost lance build, I'd be curious for a breakdown as to why the summon spells are bad.
Huh. I hadn't even tried to use this yet due to it being exclusive to Ranger and Druid. I'm going through a campaign of my own now where I'm playing a mix of paladin/summoner to give the feel of a dark fantasy Kingdom Hearts character and some of his signature spells are the other Summon spells (Undead, Draconic Spirit, and Fiend). They've got a lot of fun rp potential being the closest thing I could find to a Square Enix-style summon in dnd, but I wonder what you think about those considering what you had to say about Beast. 🤔
Summon shadowspawn is a really good summon option in my opinion, especially for warlocks.
Summon celestial is also a decent pick for clerics.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 only downside is it's incredibly high level tbh.
@@crunchevo8974 eh it's 5th level. Clerics get it level 9. Granted, there are other things the cleric could use that slot for, but having a summon that deals ok damage with good ac, and albeit mediocre hp but also comes with the ability to heal itself or others on hits is a good use.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 yeah but like... imo heal is a better use of a 5th level spell if you wanna heal people. and spirit guardians would deal more damage. it's not that i'd never pick it up since clerics can swap out whole spell lists per day. but like i wouldn't make a whole build around it.
@@crunchevo8974 whether spirit guardians or summon celestial does more damage depends on the creature's AC, number of creatures, and their wisdom saves. Additionally, the celestial is another body than can grant flanking, act as a hp buffer, and can heal allies. You don't need to build around it, but it's a handy tool to have. Summon celestial also lasts 6x as long as spirit guardians
I'm still gonna use it on a Druidic Warrior Ranger
3:25 . Mistake here, a level 4 ranger can't cast summon beast since they only have access to level 1 spells.
Is there a wis ranger that runs polearm master/sentinel combo w the shillelagh cantrip? Actually in retrospect that sounds pretty bonus action heavy
I give Beast Master Rangers the ability to Cast Summon Beast without a cost, but you have convinced me that is not enough. (I created an extra spell list for Beastmaster and Hunter to bring them up to the other Ranger subclasses.) I wonder if Beastmasters added extra hit points to their summons if that would matter?
Conjure Animals (/Woodland Beings) is (/are) the Spiders George of spells.
What do you think about the summon draconic spirit from fizbin, as its stronger than everything from tashas?
Hey Kobold, you are going to love this. It is a niche option to be sure, but when 5e created its designed its Protection from Evil and Good / Magic Circle spells, they were reworded so as to only prevent the attacks of Fey, Fiends, Aberrations, Undead, Celestials and Elementals. Earlier versions had a line that said ALL SUMMONED CREATURES are protected against as well. Up till Tasha's Cauldron there was no problem as they simply reworded all the summon spells to be one of those types of creatures. Except now we have spells that can summon beasts and other constructs and other monsters. So it is possible to override a master mage's barrier with a 2nd lvl spell. Have fun nuking the DM's arch mage
Niche option that cost 200 gp is ridiculous
I mean, conjure animals has essentially already been "nerfed" as the game designers have come out and said it dosen't work the way munchkins want it to. I don't see why a rework in 5.5 would be any more effective in stopping people from abusing it, especially if you're already ignoring the errata.
Is crazy good on lv 3, specially because of the pack tactics.
But Pack Tactics! The beast has Pack Tactics! It’s the name of the thing!
Summon Fey on a Warlock is hilarious by level 9. Don't mind me as I summon a little 50 hp, 17 ac buddy that is speedy gonzales, pokes harder than most melee characters at that level, can use charm, create personal darkness, or just straight up give itself advantage on an attack, and can flank with me. For a single 300 gold investment.
i really want these spells to be good. i think a case can be made for summon shadowspawn in particular as a useful way to get frightened and damage on the board for concentration, but the ones that only deal damage just aren’t worth it. we know spellcasters can deal a lot of damage with concentration spells, that’s why we have moonbeam, spirit guardians, wall of fire and cloudkill.
i want to be the puppetmaster, i want to be harry dresden or john constantine, i want to summon creatures that can actually do things and stick around. i’d genuinely rather risk a summoned demon escaping the spell or losing concentration on a conjured elemental because it’s way more fun. it’s wild to me that a warlock can literally summon a tanarukk with their 4th level spell slot that has more than double the hp and potentially more damage for no material component but needs 400 gp worth of tentacle and eyeball to summon a slaad that will die in a single action and deal less damage.
Summon Undead is the best among the "Summon" spells, costs less than Aberration, has a flying terrifying occupied square ignoring necrotic melee pet, or a necrotic blast skeleton, or a stinky bag of poisonous farts that can paralyze people.
maybe not the top pick of the list but this spell is so much fun to cast, btw to overcome the resistance to bludgeoning damage I image my summone beast to be a gorilla/ape and whenever it's necesary I just cast magic stone and give it to the beast adding a 60 ft magic bludgeoning damage to its kit.
I remember being a bit upset when I saw that handful of summoning spells in Tasha's, because I don't keep track of summoning rules and errata. My caster builds don't have any summoning spells; I follow the KISS mindset: keep it simple, stupid. Because I'm stupid and want to keep bookkeeping to a minimum. XD
I don't think they are bad there uses are just spread out.
at levels up until 4 its ok damage , taking up space in combat, and every hit that is targeted on your summon isn't targeting your party.
as for the third level spells
summon fey and summon undead have use in exploitation. fey has unlimited teleportation and undead can be ethereal and go through walls to do tasks.
shadowspawn is a hit box with a decent aoe fear effect.
I find the most use for these things is out of combat; distractions, attacking enemy's from and unseen distant location, guarding things, and unique abilities to exploit.
what's scarier than a wizard hiding in your town sending ghosts and assassins after you at all points of the day.
Yes but with many tables, conjure animals and conjure woodland beings are straight out banned because they are so good. I think the tasha's summon spells are streamlined are more balanced versions of summoning spells and honestly I like them a lot.
How do you feel about the Primal Companion Tasha’s gave the Beast Master? It’s basically just Summon Beast with HP tied up Ranger level and an action tax to use. Does it lacking a spell slot / concentration do enough to make it a good feature?
Yaaa, have to agree here. In DnD, Summon/Conjure abilities have it pretty rough. They tend to either not be worth the spell slot or so incredibly powerful that your DM might want to nerf or ban them.
"rangers want half plate" me who rolled a 16 and a 17 for my wis and dex stats
I love conjure animals and Conjure Woodland beings but I HATE the fact the DM needs to be involved in my spell. I see the abuse but wish a set criteria was setup or at least have options of 1 strong summon or a bunch of weak ones. I also really don't like that Wizards didn't get an equivalent. I like the idea on conjuring a bunch of minions to swarm my enemies to help my party. Pathfinder even had a summoner class to address this type of play. Closest we get is druid Shepard circle.
Action economy, this plays well and gives a good economy of action. I've banned the Conjure spells and have them use summon.
Conjure Demons and Conjure Greater Demon are good though? I'm thinking in these spells to my wizard
I’m not even sure if you could do this but what if you summon an ape or monkey as you land creature and have them throw magic stones? They can still benefit from pack tactics and don’t have to put themselves into melee range!
Yes it’s still unoptimized you’d probably be better off casting flaming sphere but would it atleast make it a little better if they had a ranged attack and pack tactics?
Would I pick spike growth and heat metal first ? Yes. But there are some fights were they are both completely useless. Summon beast is good for it's range. You summon your creature right beside a squishy target. Not in the middle of the melee.
Of course the older summon spells aren't well received.
Half of the players who read a statblock are convinced you multiply the damage by the average because of the parenthesis.
That, and summoning monsters that are meant to be a challenge to the players against something presumably that is also meant to be a challenge to players (or pvp I don't judge) is going to be more powerful. Minions in general aren't well liked because of this. Specialist classes for summoning like Shepherd Druid and Necromancy Wizards are fantastic for damage, especially in tier 2-3, because even if Shepherd Druid summons are pitiful in terms of accuracy, they're beefier and magical at higher levels, and Necromancy Wizards make their archer skeleton hordes (maximum of 16 at level 6 without magic items and assuming you cast animate dead before a long rest) deal 1d6+5p (at 6th level) with a range of 80/320ft, on top of being beefier. That doesn't mean its a good thing for the game however.
The summons from Tasha's also have much more utility, don't make it easy to just summon random monsters, and a halfway decent bonus to hit since they use *your spell attack bonus* which means that they're going to be considerably more accurate than the normal flimsy npc summons with wildly ranging abilities, which can also lead to obvious balance issues if you don't pick an optimal choice. No one is saying that they're better mathematically. Paper thin monsters that don't even serve as a halfway decent meatshield? FOR A CASTER? Screw that, I'd rather just summon a Tanarukk for a 4th level Summon Greater Demon spell if I need 95 hit points of meatshield unlike this bullshit of "Elemental Spirit at *9th level* has 100 hit points"
The use of the Tasha's spells removes that choice, the really thin and nonexistent ceiling of googling what you can summon with spells, and the few minutes everyone has to wait for a Player or DM to scroll through options before finding a summon, and at the end of the day most people don't like making complicated choices, its human nature. Its why 5e is more popular than pathfinder. Why should a new player just trying to summon nature to help keep his friends alive have to study 100/450 entries in the monster manual to have a basic understanding of what beasts exist?
If they remove the old school conjure spells, it isn't ideal, but it is a problem that new players won't have to face anymore since the setup will likely be easier to understand.
This is why I advocate for people to use dndbeyond. Only one person in the group needs to buy the virtual books, then they can share with the rest of the players. Sure that comes with a monthly fee but if everyone chips in its trivial.
Using dndbeyond you can go to a search of all creatures you have access to, and sort by a number of criteria, such as creature category and/or CR. From there, just choose a list of creatures that seem fun to summon and bookmark their statblocks
The Tasha summons spells having expensive and specific material components have been disastrous for the summoner meta
My problem with Summon or even Conjure spells is that in throws in extra bodies which don't really have a way to be accounted for when trying to calculate the party's half of a fair encounter. It just throws the entire action economy out of whack, even if it's just one out of eight wolves finally getting the failed save that knocks the BBEG prone. I have the same problem with creatures like Wraiths, which explicitly state in the statblock that they can have a certain number of CR 1 Specter minions, which definitely do affect the power of an encounter in tier 2 play.
An extreme example is a game of Mad Mage I'm currently in where the DM let us recruit a CR 6 Shield Guardian, a Large creature that magically halves all damage that's dealt to the person attuned to their amulet (taking the remaining damage itself), having a 10-point regenerate, can store a spell of 4th-level or lower, and even has a nice little reaction that adds +2 to your AC. This is on top of it being a natural chokepoint blocker with +4 STR to grapple things so the rest of the party doesn't have to get into melee if they don't want to. The healer can save spell slots for healing the frontliner since it regenerates all of its health after a minute and a half of no combat, and an excess spell at the end of a LR can be put into the robot for a surprise Fireball or Counterspell when we might otherwise be tapped out.
Now, Conjure Animals isn't that powerful until you get to upcasting, even then the most I'd change is docking it from an hour per slot to ten minutes, just so you can't just have constant guards while the rogue has to spend time thoroughly searching for traps and picking open their third lock; it's not supposed to be a mobile version of Level-4 Guardian of Faith. But the issue is that Tasha's Summon spells want to be Shield Guardian on a smaller and more temporary level, while also not outpowering the already horribly awful drawbacks of Infernal Calling or Summon Greater Demon. When going tall isn't worth it, the only option is to go wide.
As a DM when a player in my table picks a spell like this, a spell with an expensive material component that doesn't consume it's materials, I give them the components in a mission or encounter, as we don't use xp system in our table at least they have have some use for the spell and then they sell the materials and it's a net positive.
Sometimes, my DM has given items that may not specifically fit a spells material component, but have a strong enough affinity to work anyways. For example, summon fiendish spirit requires human blood inside a ruby vial worth at least 600 gp. However, we obtained a crystallized drop of blood of an archdemon, which the dm ruled works.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 yeah we kinda do the same at our table, makes all those expensive material components and hard to get stuff more manageable.
For my table, the DM let us craft the parts for Tasha's spells. I was a necromancer, so with the help of our forge cleric we melted down a bunch of raw gold ore and dipped a human skull I... "borrowed" to gild it.
Ultimately it was cheaper than buying it, but at the cost of our free time over a few long rests.