Guide to the new Summoning Spells in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

hey up to manchester chris here we're gonna talk about some summoning spells because tasha's cauldron of everything has introduced all kinds of new summoning spells for us to go over are they any good is it worth taking them i'm getting asked all the time whether people should even bother with the old summoning spells anymore whether they should be jumping all over these spells i'm going to go over them today and discuss my opinions of them but before we do that i want to thank some of my patrons the support of these patrons helps me do what i do if you are interested in looking at my patreon there is a link in the video description today i would like to specifically thank thomas barrero geek dice jay gamel joseph roberto and michael troy thank you all so much for your support so let's talk about summoning spells let's get started [Music] so tasha's cauldron of everything has brought us a number of new spells not a huge amount of new spells but still a decent number and of the new spells that have been introduced in tash's the majority of them are summoning spells there are a reasonable amount of non-summoning spells that have been introduced and a couple minor changes to existing spells and i'll be going over those in my next video but today i want to really focus on summoning because i think if we're talking about these spells we kind of need to be comparing them to each other to determine which ones are worth taking now i did a video on summoning a while ago and during that video i actually discussed how i evaluate summoning spells and when i look at these spells i'm really evaluating the same way so if we look back at what i said before this is what i said so what summoning spells are good for players well when i am evaluating a summoning spell i'm looking at a few different things the first thing i'm going to look at is the casting time because summon spells tend to be either one action to cast or one minute to cast if it is a one minute casting time obviously we are going to have to cast it outside of combat and the reason why this is a significant downside is it means we can't place it in the combat because one of the tactical advantages of a one-action casting summon spell is we might see a place where a creature could just appear in combat that could be super useful to us it might block an enemy might protect an ally if the summoned creature is just another creature in combat that was right beside the pcs it may not be able to move into those positions that are advantageous to you the second thing i look for is control of the creatures because that is not a guarantee if you are a druid you're pretty much going to have control of your creatures keep in mind that there's certain spells like conjure elemental where if you lose your concentration then the creature doesn't disappear you just lose control over it and that can be significantly worse than it disappearing but creatures like summon lesser demons or some greater demon or infernal calling either don't provide you control at all or they provide you limited control or control that can be broken so when i look at a spell when i see that that's a big downside because especially if we're looking at a one hour duration spell if a creature is getting a saving throw every round to break our control it is going to make that saving throw in a lot less than an hour so we're likely to only get a combat out of that spell rather than maybe several combats the next thing i'm going to look at is who picks the creature because some spells will allow the player to pick the creature and other spells allow the dm depict the creature but still if the dm is picking the creature generally speaking that's a downside to this spell another thing i look when i'm evaluating spell is are there any creatures i can pick that have cool neat or spell-like abilities now if i evaluate these spells by the same criteria and i don't see any reason i wouldn't they all do very well because they are all an action to cast in all cases you control the creature in all cases you get to pick multiple options for the creature and in all cases there are some cool abilities available so i would say first and foremost i think these are good spells now part of the reason i think summoning is good is because these spells are more than just a method to deliver damage often when i see other people evaluating summoning spells they're kind of looking at the damage they can cause and then comparing them to other damage dealing spells but summoning does a lot more than doing damage there's battlefield control we've got to keep in mind these creatures can use reactions they can probably do things like grappling i actually go over a pretty comprehensive list of how you can use summoning effectively tactically in that previous video so i'm going to post a link to that video in the video description if you want to check it out and i'll post a link up above here now i will say you're only getting one creature with these spells when some of the summoning spells in d d currently allow you to summon many creatures so obviously there's a significantly reduced capability there and when i compare this to spells that summon a single creature like conjure elemental or conjure celestial there is probably less we can do with these in terms of picking creature abilities these creatures are also usually less durable than those so i'm not convinced these spells are necessarily better but i do think they work better i think these creatures are likely to slow down gameplay far less than the current summoning spells because we are using set stats the dm doesn't have to flip through monster manuals the player doesn't have to look up stat blocks everything is happening on the same initiative you don't have to roll for the new initiative there's just a number of factors that are going to make this easier for game play in general and i suspect very strongly that if the designers could go back in time this is the kind of the format we would be seeing for summoning spells in general so there are nine different summoning spells here and there are differences between all of them but there are some common factors number one all of them take one action to cast this is a big advantage because this means you can cast it in combat when you need it where you need it they all have a 90 foot range that's a pretty good range and when we're combining that with a one action cast that gives a tactical advantage to us because we can place the creature where they are needed where they can be most effective and when you are using summoning spells you do need to think about where you place your creature because sometimes you can place creatures in places that are actually hindering to your own party you need to want to put them in places where they're hindering to the enemy in places where they will potentially draw enemy attacks that may have gone against player characters and in places where they can use their attacks and special abilities effectively all of these spells are concentration and they all have a duration of up to an hour that is a good duration it means that potentially you could have the same creature for several combats if it survives and in all cases these spells have a verbal somatic and material component and the material component for these spells is always a costly component and it's equal to 100 gold pieces per spell level and it is not consumed by the spell now this means that you're not going to be able to use a spell focus in order to cast these spells you're going to need to have a free hand available to access the component in all cases these creatures you don't need to roll initiative for they're going to share your initiative score and they're going to take their turn immediately after yours and in all cases these require no action by you to command so keep in mind that when we're comparing these to the various pets we see in tashas those pets usually require a bonus action to command these require no action to command so this means that if you are playing a character that has a pet you could combine that with a summoned creature and in all cases the creature's stats are based on the spell level and your spell attack modifier and they all up cast reasonably well and in all cases the number of attacks you get is equal to half the spell level it is cast at so there are a number of ways that all these spells are the same so i think to some degree what you could do is you could select one of these spells and simply up cast it if you want to but that doesn't mean i don't think there's an advantage in having multiple spells here because there are things about them that are different and i'm going to go over specifically the differences between them right now now i'm going to use my standard color coding for these spells that means blue if i think it's really good green if i think it's good purple if i think it's okay orange if i think it's probably a little too circumstantial and red if i think it is bad now in this case i've already said that i think these spells are pretty good and generally i think all these spells are reasonably good but i do think that some are better than others so for the purposes of this video i will be color coding them specifically comparing them against each other the other thing i want to note is if you are color blind i will be adding stars to each one so red will get one star orange will get two stars purple will get three stars green will get four stars and blue will get five stars you can also look i will be doing time stamps for this video and i will be writing in the color coding for each spell in the timestamps now these spells range anywhere from second level through six level so i'm going to go through them from the lowest level spells to the highest level spells so at second level the very first summoning spell we get is summon beast this is available to druids and rangers and i love this spell i mean second level summoning let's go three different performs provide three different movements and either flyby attack if it's a flying creature pack tactics if it's a land creature or water breathing if it's a swimming creature now the idea of these summoning spells is that these creatures are general so you can flavor them however you want so your land creature might be a badger it might be a cheetah it's up to you now when we look at the armor class of this creature it is on the lower side for the summoning spells if we look at the damage for this creature it's actually on the upper side so if we're scaling this spell it is doing damage comparable to the other creatures that you can summon with summoning spells but the hit points are not scaling all that well so although they start very well if we're scaling this spell we shouldn't expect our hit points to keep up with the other summoning spells so that doesn't mean they're the worst hit points because even if we raise this up to six level we're still looking at potentially up to 50 hit points and that is actually higher than some of the other summoning spells at level six so this isn't the lowest hit points it's just on the lower side now one of the first things i got asked about when i was asked to talk about summoning spells is should we just take summon beast forget all the rest of the summoning spells and just up cast it because it's going to get just as many attacks its damage is going to keep up summer class is a little lower but not a lot lower it's hit points a little lower but not a lot lower and then we only need to prepare one spell and i think you could do that it depends how much you want to deep dive into summoning there are some downsides to only using summon beast and i want to go over those the first is this creature does non-magical piercing damage that means this creature is going to be facing resistance to damage a lot as you go up in levels in some cases you'll be facing immunity to its damage and the special abilities can impact offense but aren't really interesting or creative tactically now as a second level spell i love this spell i think it is one of the best second level spells out there but as a third level spell and higher i don't think it quite measures up to the other summoning spell so it's really up to you if you only want to prepare one summoning spell i think summon beast isn't a bad way to go because you're going to have a useful application for those second level slots and when you are playing a ranger or a druid you're looking for second level spells that are effective and summon beast is effective if i am looking for a ranger spell that is second level that is useful in combat summon beast is now my go-to spell and potentially at higher levels i might be able to keep the beast safe by getting a flying creature and having it do fly by attack i still think as you go up in levels this creature is going to be pretty fragile and the damage it delivers is going to be less and less because we're going to be facing resistance more and more so i do think this is the best second level spell that a ranger can get for combat and certainly one of the best spells that a druid can get for combat at second level but if i'm using third level slots fourth level slots fifth level slots i don't think i would be using summon beast in either of those cases but i do think because this is such a good second level spell it is a blue spell for me my next ranger 100 percent is going to have summoned beast my next druid 100 is going to have summoned beast and remember if you're something like a shepherd druid your summoned beast will actually eventually get magical attacks that could make it more applicable for higher level casting and that brings us right into our third level spells and the first third level swell i'm going to talk about is summon fae this one is also available to druids and rangers but this is also available to warlocks and wizards now one of the advantages of summon fae are the base statistics armor class is pretty average for the summoning spells the damage is actually pretty good it's on the higher side we're basically looking at about 10 points of damage per attack plus the level of the spell and the hit points are right in the middle so when we look at armor class damage and hit points this is going to outperform up casting a summoned beast for example but i think that summon fe has some pretty significant downsides and i'm not a huge fan of it if i'm looking at the third level summoning spells because number one there is no fly speed so this is a land bound creature now they do get a bonus action phase step which is like a bonus action misty step and that can be pretty decent but the various mood add-ons and that's basically your three choices for these creatures those add-ons are pretty tiny and when we look at the other third level summoning spells i generally see better special abilities should also keep in mind that a good portion of the damage in fact most of the damage this does is still non-magical piercing damage it adds on a d6 of force damage so some of it will bypass resistance but not most of it so i'm going to give this an orange ranking again if i am a druid and i'm casting a third level spell instead of a second level spell and i want to cast the summoning spell and summon fae is the option compared to summon beast i think i'm better off with someone fae but the difference isn't very big the next summoning spell is called summon shadow spawn this one is just available to warlocks and wizards and if i'm a warlock or wizard i'm definitely taking summon shadow spawn before summon fae first we're doing cold damage now cold damage isn't perfect but it is more reliable than non-magic piercing damage unfortunately we still have no fly speed but we are going to get some neat special abilities you can choose at summoning we're picking fury despair or fear in terms of what kind of shadow creature we have now the fury option gets advantage on attack rules against frightened creatures and although we get a special ability to potentially cause fear i would think that if we really want to synergize this we would want to put it in a party where we have multiple ways of creating fear maybe we have a fallen asimar maybe we have a conquest paladin these kinds of things are going to work well with a shadow spirit with the fury form if we choose the despair option any creature that starts its turn within 5 feet of the spirit has its speed reduced by 20 feet and there is no save for it 20 feet is a fair amount to drop speed by you add that with something like a ray of frost and we might take that creature speed and reduce it right to zero that's like a grapple with no escape attempt now the thing about this ability is it does have friendly fire it doesn't affect you but it can absolutely affect the rest of the party so the placement of this creature is something you're going to need to think very carefully about and then finally the fear form allows a bonus action hide in dim light or darkness now the thing i like about this is if we are in perpetual dim light or darkness it is going to allow the shadow spirit a much better chance of surviving battles because what it can do is it can make its attacks and then at the end of its turn it can hide now stealth score isn't great it's plus three but that's still going to give it a reasonable chance to hide in between its turns now tactically sometimes we actually want our summoned creatures to be attacked so it really depends on what you want to do but if you're hoping to keep your spirit alive for multiple combats fear is a reasonable way to go now one of the reasons i really like shadow spirit is that no matter which kind of shadow spirit you summon you get a special ability called dreadful scream you're going to be able to use that once during the spell duration and it is a 30 foot radius area of effect around the summoned creature all creatures need to make a wisdom-saving throw against your spell dc or be frightened for potentially up to a minute now they get a saving throw every round but it is very possible that you'll have a number of creatures affected by this for more than one round now once again this can have friendly fire so you want to be careful where you do this but again you can summon the creature in a place where it can do this effectively hit the maximum number of creatures that are against you while not hitting your allies and then have it use the dreadful scream right away on its turn and get this effect off right away and then you just have the shadow spirit doing its attacks of course if it is a fury shadow spirit it's going to get advantage on attacks against those frightened creatures this is a really good ability and i think it gives this spell an entirely new level of tactical application that the other summoning spells don't necessarily have so i really like this one and if i'm a wizard or a warlock i'm definitely going for a shadow spirit over fey and i think it is a very strong spell to take despite the fact that we are up against some pretty strong spells at third level now the armor class of the shadow spawn is on the lower side but its hit points are actually extremely good if we were to up cast our shadow spawn to level six it would have more hit points than any other of these summons at that level and the damage here is reasonably strong as well very comparable to the summon fae very comparable to summon beast so i would rate this summon shadow spawn a strong green that brings us to our next third level spell which is summon undead this one also just available to warlocks and wizards and i gotta say i gotta really think about whether i would prefer to have some in shadow spawn or summon undead probably wouldn't take them both but i would definitely not consider it an easy choice between them because i think summon undead brings some really cool stuff to it but it does have some downsides so let's go over the downsides right away it's going to have armor class on the low side its damage is lower than the other summon spells and it doesn't have a lot of hit points not the worst of all the summoning spells but on the lower side so in our straight offense and our straight defense as just a combat creature that does damage and takes hits it is weaker than the other summoning spells but let's talk about the good things first thing if you take the ghostly form it gets fly 40 with hover so this is our first third level summon spell that has a fly option next it does necrotic damage awesome so this so far is the most reliable kind of damage we've had now we get three different forms to choose from ghostly skeletal or putrid and all three of them have some pretty cool abilities so if we choose our ghostly form of course we're getting the fly with hover as i mentioned before but we're also including their attack includes a save or be frightened and they have incorporeal passage so you can go through walls you can go through floors you can go through locked doors and not just the use of that in combat but also keep in mind the use of that when you're not in combat to have something that can just pass through solid objects obviously going to be very helpful for you so the ghostly form i think is really nice now if we choose the skeletal option we're basically just choosing arranged option no real special abilities here you can just attack at range now if you're trying to keep your summon creature alive and just have it as a way to add damage to the combat skeletal is the way you would want to go and then our third option is putrid it has a poisoning radiance now once again potential friendly fire but basically any creature that starts its turn within five feet has to make a constitution saving throw or it's going to be poisoned until the start of its next turn that basically gives it disadvantage on its attack roles now we have to worry about things like poison immunity but if we're fighting creatures that do not have poison immunity this could make the undead spirit more effective in melee because creatures might have disadvantage to attack it if they fail their constitution saving throw and there is a bit of synergy there with the attack because if there are attack hits and the creature is already poisoned it needs to make a constitution saving throw or be paralyzed now paralyzed is debilitating but remember in order to get that paralyzation we basically have to number one we have to hit and number two that creature needs to have failed two constitution saving throws in a row so i think landing this is going to be pretty tough but it is going to land once in a while and when it does it's going to be huge so in terms of the straight stats i think summoning dead is a little bit weaker but in terms of the special abilities i think summon undead is a little stronger so overall i think someone undead just like with summon shadow spawn is a solid green and again i would be really thinking about which one of those i wanted to take if i wanted to go with a third level summoning that brings us into our fourth level spells and the first fourth level summoning spell that i'm going to talk about is a barren servant now with this one you're choosing one of three different options you're choosing either a slaad or a beholder kin or a star spawn so slaad are like those toad-like creatures that are creatures of pure chaos the beholder can we're talking like a beholder-like creature so the floating thing with the eye and the eye stalks and star spawn we're talking about alien tentacle creatures so first off i'll say we have one possible flying creature that's the beholder kit and bolderkin is basically our ranged combat option it deals psychic damage which is reliable and we can hang it back so it has a better chance of survival but there's no real special abilities here next option is our slot now one thing about the slot that i really like is it regenerates five hit points per round now in combat five hit points per round isn't very much creatures are doing a lot more than five hit points so if they're concentrating on this creature just like any other summon creature it's going to die but if it just takes some damage maybe it was caught in an area of effect or maybe it took a couple attacks from a creature then the advantage here is in between combats it's going to very quickly regenerate back up to full hit points so that means we may get a lot more lasting time out of the slot what i don't like about the slot is it is doing slashing damage and again this is non-magical damage so we're going to be facing resistance and the special ability here is the attack prevents healing which can occasionally be a big deal but most of the time it's nothing so all in all not a huge fan of the slaad form so that brings us our star spawn form and what this one gets is area of effect damage on failed wisdom saves and this doesn't require an action at the start of each of its turns any creature within five feet must succeed on a wisdom saving throw against your spell dc or take 2d6 psychic damage so this is a way that the star spawn might be able to deliver some extra damage potentially to multiple creatures and that is going to have a regular melee attack that delivers psychic damage on top of that now the armor classes here are on the weaker side the damage is also on the weaker side and that's for all of these forms and then the hit points are basically average so i'm not a huge fan of summon aberration i mean the special abilities here aren't all that cool and the best ability here i think is the regeneration but then as soon as we take that we're talking about doing non-magical slashing damage which is a big downside and there's not anything else that's really standing out here for me so i think overall this is an orange option that brings us to our next summoning spell which is summon construct and this one is only available to wizard and artificer so this is the first summoning spell that an artificer can take and note that the warlock can't select this one very first thing i'm going to say these creatures do non-magical bludgeoning damage and that is a big downside right off the bat number two there's no fly options but there are some advantages here the ac is as good as you're going to get with one of these summoned creatures and they have lots of conditioned immunities there are also some neat abilities here if you have the metal construct any creature that hits it with a melee attack or touches it well within five feet takes a d10 fire damage no save this is not once per round this doesn't use the creature's reaction with the stone option anytime a creature starts its turn within 10 feet of the construct so this is a little different it has a bigger radius than most of these effects that are five feet from the creature the construct can force it to make a wisdom saving throw against your spell dc on a failed safe it can't use reactions and its speed is halved until the start of the next turn the first thing i'm going to note is most of these abilities have friendly fire this one does not this one you get to choose who this affects and i also think this could be something very useful when we are looking at creatures like spell casters that have reactions like counterspell and the like those creatures shutting down their reactions can be really effective and then our final option is the clay option this gets a berserk attack as a reaction so this whole reaction attack thing is a pretty confusing ability first thing if the construct takes damage it makes a slam attack against a random creature within five feet of it now it doesn't say random enemy just random creature so maybe one of your friends now do you as a player get to decide if the clay construct takes this reaction i think you do but that isn't really clear here so you could have friendly fire with this completely unintentionally but then it says if no creature is within reach the contract moves up to half at speed towards an enemy it can see without provoking opportunity attacks but if it does this the way it reads is then it doesn't get an attack it just moves so this is kind of a crappy ability i think because if it takes the reaction then we are going to either have it make a random attack against a creature next to it might be an ally or it gets a little bit of movement and when i compare that to what the stone form gets and what the metal form gets this just seems kind of worse to me so i don't really see taking the clay form here so with the construct we have a better ac than mostly summoning spells better hit points than most of these summoning spells and lots of condition immunity so defensively this creature is stronger and it does punish the creatures that attack it but offensively these creatures aren't very strong bludgeoning damage that's non-magical and the base damage itself is a little bit lower than average so we really have to count on getting those special abilities in order to make this as effective as other summoning spells still the enhanced defenses give this a niche in the summoning spells that it can claim for itself and i think overall i would rank it as a purple spell it is definitely a spell i want if summoning is something i'm specializing in because this is my defensive option but if i'm just looking for the best summoning spell for my character and i really only want to fill one preparation it's not nearly the first one i'd go to the next fourth level spell we have is the summon elemental now right away i don't like the name here because people are going to confuse this with conjure elemental obviously but this spell is available to druids rangers wizards and the new fathomless warlock now i'll say that the damage types here again where this is kind of a theme with the fourth level summoning spells is damage types aren't reliable and we're going to have that again with some in elemental three of the four options are delivering non-magical bludgeoning damage and the one that's not delivering non-magical bludgeoning damage is delivering fire damage which is the least reliable of the elemental damages still at least you get to choose when you cast the spell which kind of damage you're going to be doing based on the form you choose so that versatility does count for something in terms of damage reliability but if you're facing fiends there's not really an elemental spirit you can pick that's not going to be facing damage resistance so what does the elemental spirit give you well number one three of the four forums are going to get amorphous form that is going to allow it to move through a space as little as one inch without squeezing second we have a number of movement options available if we're earth we can get burrow if we're air we can get fly with hover and if we're water we can get swim and if we're the fire form we will get fire immunity the earth form is going to get damage resistance to piercing and slashing and this is not even non-magical piercing and slashing this is all piercing and slashing there are also some decent conditioned immunities exhaustion paralyzed petrified poisoned and unconscious the damage of summon elemental isn't bad and the hit points aren't bad though the armor class isn't great my big issue here is that there aren't very many special abilities that are cool amorphous form is okay it's always nice to have something with like a burrowing option but odd you don't get tremor sense with the earth elemental and we're not really getting any special attacks here but as a straight summoned creature that can take a decent amount of damage and deliver a decent amount of damage get some neat movement options i think summon elemental is a decent spell i'm giving it a purple ranking but i think it is on the low side of purple and in general i think our fourth level options here are weaker than the third level options we had because third level options gave us a lot of need abilities and i don't see as many need abilities at fourth level and i'm not seeing as much advantage over casting the fourth level spell then simply up casting the third level spell now we only have one fifth level option and one six level option the fifth level option is summon celestial now summon celestial is the first time we can do one of these summon spells and we get a large creature instead of small or medium now small or medium mechanically don't have a lot of differences but of course large makes a difference on the battlefield this isn't always a good thing but sometimes it is now this one is available to clerics and paladins so these are two classes that have had access to none of these options before this and none of the classes that had access to any of the other spells have access to this one so is summon celestial any good well we get fly 40 feet standard radiant damage for all attacks all options are immune to charm and frightened and we have two types here avenger and defender avenger is basically our ranged attack option and defender is our melee option and the defender gives 1d10 temporary hit points that it can give either to itself or another creature within 10 feet of it and this is applied with every single hit so if the celestial spirit attacks twice and hits twice it can deliver the d10 to maybe itself and then maybe another d10 to an ally now i'm going to point out this is potentially abusable or exploitable with optimization we often talk about is there a way to take advantage of a bag of rats in this case easy celestial spirit kills rats in between combat everyone gets 10 temporary hit points a lot of dms are going to shut that down i just want to point out that that is technically legal now regardless of the type of celestial spirit you get you also get a healing touch this is once per day you get 2d8 plus the spells level this requires the creature's action armor class is weak on the avenger side strong on the defender side damage is pretty average and the hit points are a little bit on the low side but overall i think this is a pretty solid option particularly the defender i like that d10 temporary hit points and if you don't have a method to deliver temporary hit points reliably and continually to party members i think the defender is a very strong option and so overall i think the summit celestial is a solid green option and something maybe to consider if you want to get into summoning with either your cleric or your paladin that brings us to our six level spell which is summon fiend this one is available to warlocks and wizards summon fiend just like with summon celestial we're talking about a large creature instead of a medium or small creature with the fiend we have three options we can choose a demon form a yugoloth form or a devil form for movement options with the devil we get a good fly speed of 60 and with the demon we get a climb speed of 40. otherwise these are land bound and we are getting either necrotic damage or fire damage so in terms of reliability that's not bad i note that all three forms get fire resistance none of them get fire immunity with the demon form we're going to get okay hit points it's still on the low side for summoning spells and we get an area of effect fire damage when it's destroyed this is 10 foot radius around the demon when it's destroyed and everything makes a dexterity saving throw or they take 2d 10 damage plus the spells level so at least six more fire damage on a failed safe or half as much on a successful one as with most of these abilities this is a friendly fire ability the devil is going to get devil's sight so it can see through magical darkness and all three of these forms are going to get magic resistance so they're going to get advantage on their saves against magic now the devil has a ranged attack it does fire damage which is technically the least reliable but if it's not facing resistance it technically does the most damage and the range is really good at 150 feet the eugeloth does the least damage and it does slashing damage which is the least reliable kind of damage it just gets a free teleport after it makes an attack one neat thing here is we're going to have at least three attacks which means we could potentially do three teleports not sure how useful that is though and the demon is just straight damage and it's one of the better damages and it's necrotic which is really reliable when we look at the armor class of these creatures it is pretty average the damage pretty average overall and the hit points are actually on the low side we're not getting a lot of really cool special abilities here so overall i don't think this is as strong as i would like to see at six level and i think i've got to give this an orange ranking obviously there are ways we can use this more effectively if we have a party that uses magical darkness and devil's sight or other ways to see through magical darkness the devil form could be really useful but just as a straight out of the box summoning spell i would say it's on the weaker side especially considering it's the highest level we can do some pretty cool stuff with six level spells and i'm not sure this one is up to stuff that said if i am playing a conjurer and i'm getting six level spells summon feat is still something i'm going to consider because again if we look at it compared to up casting a third level spell i think there are some definite advantages here now if we look at the existing summoning spells in dungeon dragons do i think these are mechanically stronger because i do think they are better for gameplay just for the reasons i mentioned before but are they mechanically stronger and i think that in some ways they are being able to put them wherever you want on the battlefield as an action is a big advantage and with a 90-foot range we can put it pretty much anywhere on the battlefield not having to worry about control the creature is a definite advantage and having full control over what we pick is an advantage but when i compare say summon celestial to conjure elemental an elemental can take way more damage and remember with something like the conjure animals we can get up to eight creatures this is giving us one creature and it's generally recognized that summoning one creature with conjure animals is not nearly your best bet and frankly conjure animals is still probably the strongest third level druid spell but summoning is a very good kind of spell for any spell caster for the reasons i mentioned in that previous video there is so much we can do with it beyond just taking damage beyond just delivering damage and here we are seeing a number of ways we can use these creatures whether it is frightening enemies whether it is special movement rates though i would say there are still less things you can do with these than summoning creatures with spells but i do think that if i wanted to play a summoning character i would now be drawn to these spells because i think they are also significantly better for gameplay these spells are going to be less disruptive to your game than other summoning spells and i went over a huge section on how i figured you could use summoning spells in a way that wasn't going to be as disruptive to your game but with these spells i don't think you need to worry about it they're going to be no more disruptive than a pet and i love that we now have a second level summoning option we now have an option for any ranger to have a pet even if they're not a beast master the obese master now can use this to have two pets at the same time and druids get into summoning right at third level which is fantastic now one other major change to remind you about these spells compared to previous summoning spells is previous summoning spells were never based on your casting stat no matter what summoning spell you chose your casting stat was completely unimportant to the spell now some of those spells did require charisma for certain things which might have been your casting stat but it wasn't necessarily your casting stat in this case regardless of the spell you're using your casting stat is important this means things like rangers now have to think about their wisdom score a lot more than they did before because they have so many spells that don't rely on wisdom but here's a really solid option for rangers i think at level five you would be a fool not to take summon beast and that is going to be better if you have a good wisdom score but that doesn't mean that your wisdom score is vital i'd say it's still less important than with most spells you can have a little bit lower chance to hit with a creature and that's it you're gonna have the same hit points you're gonna cast in the same amount of time you can have the same duration you're gonna have the same movement rates so it's not a huge difference but i do think it is important to realize that now with these summoning spells your casting stat now is a factor for the first time so that's what i think of the summoning spells i'm going to be going over the rest of the spells and tashas in my next video otherwise until then i'm going to sit back relax and have some fun d d is for everyone thanks everyone and i'll talk to you next time you

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

Views: 69,838

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Id: -g78VhqdYAs

Length: 42min 23sec (2543 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020