One interesting effect of the healing changes: a 7th level Cure Wounds actually comes pretty close to the Heal spell, and would surpass it in circumstances where dice rolls are better than a flat number (Gift of the Everliving). Being a flat number is still better most of the time though
cure wounds is still probably not worth casting in every situation, but now they are alot less situational, if you change the healing amounts in Treantmonk's healing video, and the fighter actually survives if you are a life cleric with a 3rd level cure wounds, which is now a viable option!
Seconded. That book and loot taverns other materials is literally focused on all that. Harvesting, crafting, several small adventures focusing on hunting down big boss monsters. They recently fixed up their website so you can buy the helianas pdf (i think) and most of their hunt adventures.
Powerword fortify could give the recipients advantage on constitution checks and saves as added incentive to spread the temp HP around(or not). I feel conjure elemental could add more functionality to it, move creatures or objects and such, I never felt that conjure elemental itself was that overpowered, but I can be persuaded otherwise :D.
I'm happy with the redesign of the conjure spells. This is going to be much easier to balance by simply adjusting some numbers and clarifying some mechanics before release. But even numbers aside, one of the major drawbacks of spells like Conjure Animal is how they abused the action economy, in both directions. That Conjure Animal outperforms almost all martials up to lvl 10 is a huge problem in itself, but then there is the fact that any monster without strong AoE capabilities could be tied down for several turns chewing through individually harmless yet numerous bodies surrounding them. Even something dealing 20-30 dmg per hit and 3 attacks per turn just get neutered, because that's all three attacks used to deal with 30ish health in total. And they have to do that 3 turns just to get rid of 8 weak creatures. If they don't deal with the summons, they have ((2d4+2)x8) damage coming their way every turn, assuming wolves. Can't even get around it with weapon immunity if the Druid wants to play a summoner, as Circle of the Shepard gives summons magical attacks. So while no longer summoning creatures to act as bodies on the field is a bit of a shame from a flavor perspective, the Conjure spells needed to go. Even if you "fix" their offensive numbers, their impact on the action economy is huge if the enemy can't immediately AoE them away.
I just want them to act more like a swarm. Hp and some utility like the original did (minus the action economy and blog of combat). And no I don't want to use the Tasha spells like this. Particularly summon beast/fey is small so it ain't grappling crap... A giant octopus 🦑 could grapple a huge creature.
@@TheTdroid Yes it's an example, it's the best option with a less than 1% chance of happening. Half the options for summon animals are just moving difficult terrain or do cumulatively 10 damage. Summon animals is only strong because DMs give the player the strong beasts. Technically each beast can be different, so a raven, 2 hares, a badger, 3 rats, and a goat is an option the DM could say are summoned. Creatures 2 sizes apart can go through an enemies space as if it's difficult terrain. So tiny creatures are difficult terrain to medium creatures.
@@Sky_lars I think DMs give out combat summons because not doing that would make the player annoyed because they want to be a combat summoner. But even if we actually use a random chance for what monster you get, having creatures that can create constant difficult terrain no matter where the enemy goes is very powerful. It will allow you to waste a lot of enemy actions on Dash unless they can't immediately AoE them away or teleport. This is, for example, why Entangle is such a good spell; even if they're not restrained, they must deal with difficult terrain. Even forcing a creature to make a single Dash instead of another attack or character feature is strong, given how most combats typically don't last that many turns. And with the summons moving, this can happen again and again. So Conjure Animals is problematic either way, because difficult terrain is a powerful mechanic against so many enemies. Especially when it can move to new positions with no additional actions from the summoner.
There is one change I would like to see that you did not mention. Not for any balance reasons, but I feel the flavor would be better and it would differentiate the spell more. Instead of scaling damage, I would like more attacks out of stary whisps. I see enough players wanting to use this in a Sailor Moon esque build, and I all for it. I think they would want more stars.
Probably too strong when combined with cantrip scaling on the druid, just home flavour it however you want I always flavour high leveled firebolts to be bigger, for instance
For the question at the end, if you want a monster hunting campaign with systems to support it, Wilderfeast looks fantastic to me. Here's a review a friend showed me: ruclips.net/video/GRlRjpV6i_Q/видео.html If you just want a freeformish crafting system to adapt, I quite like the systems in "Dark Ones" and "Blades in the Dark", though they're fairly intertwined with the systems' other subsystems.
Please don't let people choose how much HP each target gets with PWF. I'm having visions of players agonizing about how much HP to give each player for 10 minutes straight while the rest of the table just gets bored and angry. Choosing the number of targets is enough complexity.
I don't think you can actually do 12d8 to a creature that's Restrained by Conjure Elementals. The first part says that you can attack a creature when it Moves within 5 feet of the spirit, but a Restrained creature cannot Move (I presume the capitalization of "Moves" means it's referring to the creature's Move, not forced movement; the other spells say, "when a creature ... enters a space within X feet"). Conjure Elementals does not allow the attack roll when a creature starts its turn within range of the effect like Conjure Animals does. The only start-of-turn damage is the 4d8 to the Restrained creature if it fails its saving throw. It's still unclear whether the Move-triggered attack can happen more than once per turn, so the wording should be updated to clarify that. I presume they only intend it to trigger once per Move, but it doesn't say that, while the other spells say once per turn, so it could be interpreted to trigger the attack for each 5' square the creature moves through that's within 5' of the spirit. That definitely seems overpowered. It's also unclear if the Restrained creature can be attacked if it makes its saving throw, ending the Restrained condition and avoiding the 4d8 damage, and then Moves out of the area of effect. I suspect the intent is to trigger the attack when a creature Moves to within 5' from further away, but again it doesn't say that. But even if you can attack a formerly-Restrained creature when it Moves, that still doesn't allow 12d8 in a single turn, because the creature avoided the 4d8 when it made its saving throw.
Yeah, I don't think that players moving the creature is the intended meaning at all. The text says, "for the first time on a turn." I think that's really trying to say that this happens on the creature's turn. So the players repeatedly pulling a creature in and out of the effect doesn't seem right.
Some great reasoning about some of the spells being a bit out of balance! And a few being unhelpfully ambiguous. I've listened to other analyses, like Insight Check and Treantmonk, and while I like their takes too, I think I agree the most with your assessments. Thanks for the new perspective!
I reckon its OK, because they didn't buff HW in a meaningful way. That spell was strong because of its casting time and range, which would have been true even if it only restored 1hp, so all the buff does is make it slightly more likely that people will use it for other purposes. Also bear in mind that cure wounds was buffed almost twice as much as HW, so the change is more significant for the use cases for that spell (where quantity is important, rather than just action economy and range).
@joshuawinestock9998 I just don't think spells that are already good need to be buffed. If HW was 1d4 and CW was 2d8, HW would still be the better spell, but it would be a much harder choice.
Iron Kingdoms Borderlands Survival Guide has a great custom equipment system, but not so much for monster parts. Also, some of that content is specific to their steampunk setting.
Fabula Ultima hype comment for everyone who stopped actually watching the videos and just want Twig to keep talking until they're all out of stuff to discuss about D&D and we make it to the *good stuff!*
I really appreciate you, and other people, looking at the new spells and saying 'this isn't the strongest thing in the game, but it will get the job done. Good. Love it.' Is Wizard Dena the default? :O I feel like this was mostly Druid and Cleric content. The supplement you're asking for sounds exactly like Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms. But there's also the Complete Armorer's Handbook, Kibbles' Crafting (which has free PDFs!) and Hamund's Harvesting Handbook (which is great when it has what you need, but is far from comprehensive.) You could also check out Modular Armor and Weapon Crafting v1.4, which is free. But probably the first few are the heavy hitters.
Druids weren't great to begin with, but they did have the busted conjure spells. Now they're still not great, but they don't have the busted conjure spells either. I can't imagine anyone wanting to play them at all now. The problem with the spells was too many creatures. They should have reduced the creatures down to one or two and let them conjure monsters, but with the caveat that any monster they conjure that they had to have faced it in battle and done damage to the creature before they can conjure it.
I entirely disagree about conjure elemental, I think this spell is perfect because it is a wizard spell The other spells are mostly druid spells, but wizards get better control spells and worse damage over time spells than priests, so conjure elemental, which is a stationary control spell, is actually really cool Also, enemies can fairly easily break out of the area especially with teleportation, so I am perfectly fine with it having hard crowd control I will take this on almost every wizard from now on if they leave it as is
I really hate how lifeless the new summons sound. The thing I liked about the 2014 summons was that since they were monster Stat blocks, it made it easy to role-play the monsters better. I really hated that Tasha‘s culture of everything basically turned summons into lifeless stat blocks. It sounds like now they’re not even that anymore. They’re just areas of affect now. This is going to make playing a druid or any type of summoner incredibly lame.
I agree the old Conjure spells needed to be rebalanced, but as someone who loves playing summoners who can just pop new and interesting creatures onto the battlefield, I wish these at least had HP or something to actually feel like a creature and not an effect. I will miss things like Conjure Fey and Summon Greater Demon where you can actually call an additional spell caster to gain temporary access to additional spells, though
I think "conjure blank" should actually conjure something with a stat block tho :/. Especially beast(they can't move, lol) misses the mark. They are just different spells entirely. Fun spells, but even me (a fairly creative player when it comes to flavor) have a hard time imagining that I'm actually conjuring a celestial or beast :/
I literally reflavor 90% of my builds and I agree. This takes me out of it. It really doesn't behave like summoning. Like we know what a swarm stat block is and does as well as what it's like to have an extra body on the field.
I think you're misreading conjure elemental. You can only attack if a creature moves within 5 feet of it. So if you restrain a creature they cannot move and so you cannot attack it, you only get the restrain damage. On the other hand because you get to make an attack whenever anything moves within 5 feet of the elemental if they escape the restraint and attempt to leave you can hit them with the attack. And if that attack hits they're restrained again without a save. I think the spell is OK and has some use cases though i think i agree on the damage scaling, damage scaling at 2d8 is weird when Cone of Cold is scaling at 1d8. At 8th level this would hit for 14d8 when incendiary cloud is hitting for 10d8. Other than that the damage is on par with cone of cold with the exception that if you do it you can entirely ruin one enemies day for the downside of having a much lower area
IMO Healing Word should not be buffed! The Jojo effect of that spell was enough for it to be good! Cure wounds buff is better, because it takes an Action compered to a Bonus Acion! The new Conjure spells have lost the flavor of protective spirits! The damage wasn't really why I picked those spells! It was also because of the utility use of those creatures! I would prefer to have the older version but with curated lists of creature choices! They could make the lists easier to use and make the spells less DM dependent and thus less problematic! If these new spells were released on their own I would like that too! They seem fine but don't have the flavor! Although this is just my opinion!
Even though I think the changes do make the spells better I think changing them from actual summon creatures to an AOE lingerie effect really changes the spirit of the spell and appeal imo. Its like, why would I as a druid take moonbeam as a spell when I can cast these spells instead? Now the only one who can interact with an animal is the beast master ranger and not druids? I guess you could just meet one out in the wild but again that takes the fun and fantasy of what a summoner should feel like and now you're just another spell caster that flings spells with animal face prints on it.
Druid can cast Find Familiar (fey) with a use of Wild Shape. Druid should be able to get a combat familiar (or at least be able to buff their stat block) but I don't think they are going to do that, you can still use your familiar to cast touch spells through though. I liked the generic stat blocks that they gave for the Warlock and other familiars but I think they are going back to beast stat blocks and a list of options.
Summon Beast (from Tasha's) is going to be in the 2024 PHB, and is available two levels lower than Conjure Animals(2nd level spell instead of 3rd level) so the beast summoner archetype is going to be fine*. You just won't be able to have a pack/swarm of animals functioning as independent creatures, because that's the specific thing that has been found to be problematic for the game due to action economy and creating really long turns reasons. *Well, Circle of the Shepherd needs some adjustments, but that's been an issue since the Tasha's spells came out.
I agree, though it seems like an unpopular opinion around here. Summoning loads of animals was sick. We always talk about this as a fight between functionality and evocativeness, where the designers can't have both and need to find some compromise in the middle, and I really feel like there's gotta be a better way to have both, even if WOTC's limited time and chaotic playtesting process doesn't facilitate finding it...
@@jtspender I was thinking of fixes for Shepard using these spells. I came up with, for Mighty Summoner, +2 attack damage per spell level (putting Conjure Animals at +6 damage at base) and Guardian Spirit would be automatically succeed concentration checks related to those spells. The capstone would center the 9th level spell on the caster and benefit from the improvements of mighty summoner.
I like these changes to healing spells but I would personally like to see two changes to healing and dying in the game: Make Cure Wounds have a 60 foot range and make Healing Word have a touch range. Often the superiority of Healing Word over Cure Wounds comes down to that range, so it make the action cast spell more broadly usable over the bonus action spell. Add a wounded system that discourages letting a party member go to 0 hp. Applying levels of exhaustion or “sticky” death saves or some other penalty. With the boosted potency of heal spells that offsets the brutality of a system like this.
In all older editions conjure spells were never broken, why? because they could never summon 8 creatures at a time. It is really sad that you cannot summon a bear, summoning 1 bear was never broken even in 5E. Its summoning a stanpeded of 8 yaks.. all with enhanced damage on charge that is broken or any other variant of high damage cr1/4 creature like flying snakes. I expected all summon spells to follow the formula from tashas, which would of been fine as a nerf to conjure spells. But instead they say no you cannot have any creature at all to take hits for you, you got more moonbeam or spirirt guardian type spells, which well are good but you do not need a roster of these spells at every level. WOTC is just dumbing the game down even more trying to avoid anything an everything that may be considered broken all the while killing the fun and creativity of players.
I don’t like the way the conjure spells have been fixed. Unless you actually conjure a creature that can act independently you remove all the out of combat utility the spells had. We already have more than enough spells that just do damage, adding more is just boring. I like the power ups of the healing spells but still wish healing word was an action and not a bonus action to better balance it with cure wounds.
Do note that Conjure Animals says that you conjure a swarm, and swarms have a rules definition. Swarm: The swarm can occupy another creature's space and vice versa, and the swarm can move through any opening large enough for a Tiny insect. The swarm can't regain hit points or gain temporary hit points.
swarm isn't a rules definition in the same sense weapon attack is. It's just an ability a bunch of creature stat blocks have. Those creature stat blocks don't share the exact same text for the swarm, those swarms share several traits that aren't the swarm trait, and the swarm trait isn't identical for all of them. The swarm trait is also only found on creatures, and the effects it grant only effect creatures, but the conjure animals effect doesn't conjure a creature, since the stat block doesn't have ability scores, statistics, or hit points, and if the word swarm had a keyword mechanical reading it'd have been capitalized. Between all of this, it would be a huge stretch to say that any use of the word swarm has the same mechanical implications or is in anyway applicable to this spell.
One interesting effect of the healing changes: a 7th level Cure Wounds actually comes pretty close to the Heal spell, and would surpass it in circumstances where dice rolls are better than a flat number (Gift of the Everliving). Being a flat number is still better most of the time though
cure wounds is still probably not worth casting in every situation, but now they are alot less situational, if you change the healing amounts in Treantmonk's healing video, and the fighter actually survives if you are a life cleric with a 3rd level cure wounds, which is now a viable option!
For the question at the end, "Heliana's guide to monster hunting" might be exactly what you're looking for.
Seconded. That book and loot taverns other materials is literally focused on all that. Harvesting, crafting, several small adventures focusing on hunting down big boss monsters.
They recently fixed up their website so you can buy the helianas pdf (i think) and most of their hunt adventures.
I came here to bring up exactly this
This has been absorbed into Ryoko’s guide to the Yaokai realms by dndshorts i think! The kickstarter is closed but I’m sure you can still get it
@@pederw4900 not really, Ryokos mainly use a light version of it as far as I know so it cant really substitute the crafting on its own.
Powerword fortify could give the recipients advantage on constitution checks and saves as added incentive to spread the temp HP around(or not). I feel conjure elemental could add more functionality to it, move creatures or objects and such, I never felt that conjure elemental itself was that overpowered, but I can be persuaded otherwise :D.
I'm happy with the redesign of the conjure spells. This is going to be much easier to balance by simply adjusting some numbers and clarifying some mechanics before release. But even numbers aside, one of the major drawbacks of spells like Conjure Animal is how they abused the action economy, in both directions.
That Conjure Animal outperforms almost all martials up to lvl 10 is a huge problem in itself, but then there is the fact that any monster without strong AoE capabilities could be tied down for several turns chewing through individually harmless yet numerous bodies surrounding them. Even something dealing 20-30 dmg per hit and 3 attacks per turn just get neutered, because that's all three attacks used to deal with 30ish health in total. And they have to do that 3 turns just to get rid of 8 weak creatures. If they don't deal with the summons, they have ((2d4+2)x8) damage coming their way every turn, assuming wolves. Can't even get around it with weapon immunity if the Druid wants to play a summoner, as Circle of the Shepard gives summons magical attacks.
So while no longer summoning creatures to act as bodies on the field is a bit of a shame from a flavor perspective, the Conjure spells needed to go. Even if you "fix" their offensive numbers, their impact on the action economy is huge if the enemy can't immediately AoE them away.
I just want them to act more like a swarm. Hp and some utility like the original did (minus the action economy and blog of combat).
And no I don't want to use the Tasha spells like this. Particularly summon beast/fey is small so it ain't grappling crap... A giant octopus 🦑 could grapple a huge creature.
Why would you assume wolves? There are over 100 beasts that can be summoned with 8 creatures, and like half of them are tiny and can't attack.
@@Sky_lars It's called an example.
@@TheTdroid Yes it's an example, it's the best option with a less than 1% chance of happening. Half the options for summon animals are just moving difficult terrain or do cumulatively 10 damage. Summon animals is only strong because DMs give the player the strong beasts. Technically each beast can be different, so a raven, 2 hares, a badger, 3 rats, and a goat is an option the DM could say are summoned. Creatures 2 sizes apart can go through an enemies space as if it's difficult terrain. So tiny creatures are difficult terrain to medium creatures.
@@Sky_lars I think DMs give out combat summons because not doing that would make the player annoyed because they want to be a combat summoner. But even if we actually use a random chance for what monster you get, having creatures that can create constant difficult terrain no matter where the enemy goes is very powerful. It will allow you to waste a lot of enemy actions on Dash unless they can't immediately AoE them away or teleport. This is, for example, why Entangle is such a good spell; even if they're not restrained, they must deal with difficult terrain. Even forcing a creature to make a single Dash instead of another attack or character feature is strong, given how most combats typically don't last that many turns. And with the summons moving, this can happen again and again.
So Conjure Animals is problematic either way, because difficult terrain is a powerful mechanic against so many enemies. Especially when it can move to new positions with no additional actions from the summoner.
Weird that upcasting Conjure Minor Elemental only increases the Difficult Terrain area and not the area of the damage.
DND Shorts has a crafting system in his new book - Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms. I'm going to use it for every monster. Not just kaiju.
There is one change I would like to see that you did not mention. Not for any balance reasons, but I feel the flavor would be better and it would differentiate the spell more.
Instead of scaling damage, I would like more attacks out of stary whisps. I see enough players wanting to use this in a Sailor Moon esque build, and I all for it. I think they would want more stars.
Probably too strong when combined with cantrip scaling on the druid, just home flavour it however you want
I always flavour high leveled firebolts to be bigger, for instance
For the question at the end, if you want a monster hunting campaign with systems to support it, Wilderfeast looks fantastic to me. Here's a review a friend showed me: ruclips.net/video/GRlRjpV6i_Q/видео.html
If you just want a freeformish crafting system to adapt, I quite like the systems in "Dark Ones" and "Blades in the Dark", though they're fairly intertwined with the systems' other subsystems.
Please don't let people choose how much HP each target gets with PWF. I'm having visions of players agonizing about how much HP to give each player for 10 minutes straight while the rest of the table just gets bored and angry. Choosing the number of targets is enough complexity.
I don't think you can actually do 12d8 to a creature that's Restrained by Conjure Elementals. The first part says that you can attack a creature when it Moves within 5 feet of the spirit, but a Restrained creature cannot Move (I presume the capitalization of "Moves" means it's referring to the creature's Move, not forced movement; the other spells say, "when a creature ... enters a space within X feet"). Conjure Elementals does not allow the attack roll when a creature starts its turn within range of the effect like Conjure Animals does. The only start-of-turn damage is the 4d8 to the Restrained creature if it fails its saving throw.
It's still unclear whether the Move-triggered attack can happen more than once per turn, so the wording should be updated to clarify that. I presume they only intend it to trigger once per Move, but it doesn't say that, while the other spells say once per turn, so it could be interpreted to trigger the attack for each 5' square the creature moves through that's within 5' of the spirit. That definitely seems overpowered.
It's also unclear if the Restrained creature can be attacked if it makes its saving throw, ending the Restrained condition and avoiding the 4d8 damage, and then Moves out of the area of effect. I suspect the intent is to trigger the attack when a creature Moves to within 5' from further away, but again it doesn't say that. But even if you can attack a formerly-Restrained creature when it Moves, that still doesn't allow 12d8 in a single turn, because the creature avoided the 4d8 when it made its saving throw.
Yeah, I don't think that players moving the creature is the intended meaning at all. The text says, "for the first time on a turn." I think that's really trying to say that this happens on the creature's turn. So the players repeatedly pulling a creature in and out of the effect doesn't seem right.
Some great reasoning about some of the spells being a bit out of balance! And a few being unhelpfully ambiguous. I've listened to other analyses, like Insight Check and Treantmonk, and while I like their takes too, I think I agree the most with your assessments. Thanks for the new perspective!
Battlezoo made a monster parts system for pf2 with their battlezoo bestiary
I kinda wish that they only buffed the healing of cure wounds and mass cure wounds. Healing word was already good enough and cure wounds was not.
I reckon its OK, because they didn't buff HW in a meaningful way. That spell was strong because of its casting time and range, which would have been true even if it only restored 1hp, so all the buff does is make it slightly more likely that people will use it for other purposes.
Also bear in mind that cure wounds was buffed almost twice as much as HW, so the change is more significant for the use cases for that spell (where quantity is important, rather than just action economy and range).
@joshuawinestock9998 I just don't think spells that are already good need to be buffed. If HW was 1d4 and CW was 2d8, HW would still be the better spell, but it would be a much harder choice.
Iron Kingdoms Borderlands Survival Guide has a great custom equipment system, but not so much for monster parts. Also, some of that content is specific to their steampunk setting.
Fabula Ultima hype comment for everyone who stopped actually watching the videos and just want Twig to keep talking until they're all out of stuff to discuss about D&D and we make it to the *good stuff!*
For crafting magical items, I wonder why people don't consider magical ores (from locations like a dragon's lair) to craft items using smith's tools.
Thank you the_twig
I really appreciate you, and other people, looking at the new spells and saying 'this isn't the strongest thing in the game, but it will get the job done. Good. Love it.'
Is Wizard Dena the default? :O I feel like this was mostly Druid and Cleric content.
The supplement you're asking for sounds exactly like Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms. But there's also the Complete Armorer's Handbook, Kibbles' Crafting (which has free PDFs!) and Hamund's Harvesting Handbook (which is great when it has what you need, but is far from comprehensive.) You could also check out Modular Armor and Weapon Crafting v1.4, which is free. But probably the first few are the heavy hitters.
Of all these spells I don't think conjure elemental needed to be changed at all from the 2014 phb.
Druids weren't great to begin with, but they did have the busted conjure spells. Now they're still not great, but they don't have the busted conjure spells either. I can't imagine anyone wanting to play them at all now.
The problem with the spells was too many creatures. They should have reduced the creatures down to one or two and let them conjure monsters, but with the caveat that any monster they conjure that they had to have faced it in battle and done damage to the creature before they can conjure it.
I entirely disagree about conjure elemental, I think this spell is perfect because it is a wizard spell
The other spells are mostly druid spells, but wizards get better control spells and worse damage over time spells than priests, so conjure elemental, which is a stationary control spell, is actually really cool
Also, enemies can fairly easily break out of the area especially with teleportation, so I am perfectly fine with it having hard crowd control
I will take this on almost every wizard from now on if they leave it as is
I really hate how lifeless the new summons sound. The thing I liked about the 2014 summons was that since they were monster Stat blocks, it made it easy to role-play the monsters better. I really hated that Tasha‘s culture of everything basically turned summons into lifeless stat blocks. It sounds like now they’re not even that anymore. They’re just areas of affect now. This is going to make playing a druid or any type of summoner incredibly lame.
I agree the old Conjure spells needed to be rebalanced, but as someone who loves playing summoners who can just pop new and interesting creatures onto the battlefield, I wish these at least had HP or something to actually feel like a creature and not an effect. I will miss things like Conjure Fey and Summon Greater Demon where you can actually call an additional spell caster to gain temporary access to additional spells, though
I think "conjure blank" should actually conjure something with a stat block tho :/. Especially beast(they can't move, lol) misses the mark. They are just different spells entirely. Fun spells, but even me (a fairly creative player when it comes to flavor) have a hard time imagining that I'm actually conjuring a celestial or beast :/
I literally reflavor 90% of my builds and I agree. This takes me out of it.
It really doesn't behave like summoning.
Like we know what a swarm stat block is and does as well as what it's like to have an extra body on the field.
I think you're misreading conjure elemental. You can only attack if a creature moves within 5 feet of it. So if you restrain a creature they cannot move and so you cannot attack it, you only get the restrain damage. On the other hand because you get to make an attack whenever anything moves within 5 feet of the elemental if they escape the restraint and attempt to leave you can hit them with the attack. And if that attack hits they're restrained again without a save. I think the spell is OK and has some use cases though i think i agree on the damage scaling, damage scaling at 2d8 is weird when Cone of Cold is scaling at 1d8. At 8th level this would hit for 14d8 when incendiary cloud is hitting for 10d8. Other than that the damage is on par with cone of cold with the exception that if you do it you can entirely ruin one enemies day for the downside of having a much lower area
Don't bards have truestrike?
Bards are the only class that get Starry Wisp and True Strike and neither one are on the Cleric list.
IMO Healing Word should not be buffed! The Jojo effect of that spell was enough for it to be good! Cure wounds buff is better, because it takes an Action compered to a Bonus Acion!
The new Conjure spells have lost the flavor of protective spirits! The damage wasn't really why I picked those spells! It was also because of the utility use of those creatures!
I would prefer to have the older version but with curated lists of creature choices! They could make the lists easier to use and make the spells less DM dependent and thus less problematic!
If these new spells were released on their own I would like that too! They seem fine but don't have the flavor! Although this is just my opinion!
Even though I think the changes do make the spells better I think changing them from actual summon creatures to an AOE lingerie effect really changes the spirit of the spell and appeal imo.
Its like, why would I as a druid take moonbeam as a spell when I can cast these spells instead?
Now the only one who can interact with an animal is the beast master ranger and not druids? I guess you could just meet one out in the wild but again that takes the fun and fantasy of what a summoner should feel like and now you're just another spell caster that flings spells with animal face prints on it.
Druid can cast Find Familiar (fey) with a use of Wild Shape. Druid should be able to get a combat familiar (or at least be able to buff their stat block) but I don't think they are going to do that, you can still use your familiar to cast touch spells through though. I liked the generic stat blocks that they gave for the Warlock and other familiars but I think they are going back to beast stat blocks and a list of options.
Summon Beast (from Tasha's) is going to be in the 2024 PHB, and is available two levels lower than Conjure Animals(2nd level spell instead of 3rd level) so the beast summoner archetype is going to be fine*. You just won't be able to have a pack/swarm of animals functioning as independent creatures, because that's the specific thing that has been found to be problematic for the game due to action economy and creating really long turns reasons.
*Well, Circle of the Shepherd needs some adjustments, but that's been an issue since the Tasha's spells came out.
I agree, though it seems like an unpopular opinion around here. Summoning loads of animals was sick. We always talk about this as a fight between functionality and evocativeness, where the designers can't have both and need to find some compromise in the middle, and I really feel like there's gotta be a better way to have both, even if WOTC's limited time and chaotic playtesting process doesn't facilitate finding it...
@@jtspender I was thinking of fixes for Shepard using these spells. I came up with, for Mighty Summoner, +2 attack damage per spell level (putting Conjure Animals at +6 damage at base) and Guardian Spirit would be automatically succeed concentration checks related to those spells. The capstone would center the 9th level spell on the caster and benefit from the improvements of mighty summoner.
I like these changes to healing spells but I would personally like to see two changes to healing and dying in the game:
Make Cure Wounds have a 60 foot range and make Healing Word have a touch range. Often the superiority of Healing Word over Cure Wounds comes down to that range, so it make the action cast spell more broadly usable over the bonus action spell.
Add a wounded system that discourages letting a party member go to 0 hp. Applying levels of exhaustion or “sticky” death saves or some other penalty. With the boosted potency of heal spells that offsets the brutality of a system like this.
In all older editions conjure spells were never broken, why? because they could never summon 8 creatures at a time. It is really sad that you cannot summon a bear, summoning 1 bear was never broken even in 5E. Its summoning a stanpeded of 8 yaks.. all with enhanced damage on charge that is broken or any other variant of high damage cr1/4 creature like flying snakes. I expected all summon spells to follow the formula from tashas, which would of been fine as a nerf to conjure spells. But instead they say no you cannot have any creature at all to take hits for you, you got more moonbeam or spirirt guardian type spells, which well are good but you do not need a roster of these spells at every level. WOTC is just dumbing the game down even more trying to avoid anything an everything that may be considered broken all the while killing the fun and creativity of players.
I don’t like the way the conjure spells have been fixed. Unless you actually conjure a creature that can act independently you remove all the out of combat utility the spells had. We already have more than enough spells that just do damage, adding more is just boring.
I like the power ups of the healing spells but still wish healing word was an action and not a bonus action to better balance it with cure wounds.
Do note that Conjure Animals says that you conjure a swarm, and swarms have a rules definition.
Swarm: The swarm can occupy another creature's space and vice versa, and the swarm can move through any opening large enough for a Tiny insect. The swarm can't regain hit points or gain temporary hit points.
swarm isn't a rules definition in the same sense weapon attack is. It's just an ability a bunch of creature stat blocks have. Those creature stat blocks don't share the exact same text for the swarm, those swarms share several traits that aren't the swarm trait, and the swarm trait isn't identical for all of them. The swarm trait is also only found on creatures, and the effects it grant only effect creatures, but the conjure animals effect doesn't conjure a creature, since the stat block doesn't have ability scores, statistics, or hit points, and if the word swarm had a keyword mechanical reading it'd have been capitalized.
Between all of this, it would be a huge stretch to say that any use of the word swarm has the same mechanical implications or is in anyway applicable to this spell.