How to Play a Summoner in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

there are many horrible monsters from various planes of existence that will try to kill your party in Dungeons and Dragons it might be nice to turn the tables on them and give them a taste of their own medicine for such awful and terrible creatures from the nine hells the abyss the elemental planes can in fact with the right magic be yours to command and control binding them to their will and turning their foul purpose to noble means as a summoner yourself my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we discuss everything Dungeons and Dragons including advice for Dungeon Master's and guides for players we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are taking an in-depth look at how to play a summoner as your player character in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition we're gonna take a look at the different classes feats and features that you might want to pick up as well as a list of the different creatures that you can summon there is so much to cover for this somewhat rare and esoteric archetype but a classic one nonetheless so let's get rolling there's so many different spells and abilities in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons that let you summon things into existence we're looking very specifically for beasts and monsters from the Monster Manual that can be summoned into the world here yeah there's many conjuration spells that will create walls of force or gas clouds or transmutation spells like animate objects or other celestial spells like spirit Guardians and guardians of faith that refer to creating spirits and creatures but for really capturing that feeling of playing a summoner we wanted to look for the spells that would let us crack open the monster manual and conjure a creature that we could control so while we're looking through our suggestions for how to play a summoner we're gonna keep this in mind as our core philosophy for what really makes you feel like you're playing a summoner although you could look at these other spells as a way of doing it this is what we're doing today we're looking at that today because the thing that makes playing a summoner feel so awesome is the ability to call forth different creatures and beasts from all sorts of different planes of existence to fight for you in battle and that's what we want to capture yeah there's a lot of great tactics that are unlocked through the Summoner play style and a lot of cool role-playing connections as well because there are so many different classes from wizards and warlocks to even druids and clerics that gain access to summoning magic but are all very different to play and roleplay because they all get access to different creatures that they can summon regardless of the types of creatures that you're going to be summoning there's a few tactical principles to keep in mind that will make your summon or play really really well at the table when you are making your summoner the greatest feeling is going to be calling in those reinforcements and the greatest benefit of all these creatures that you can call in is that they're expendable summoned creatures make excellent cannon fodder or meat shields on the battlefield far better than a summon creature takes that damage or suffers from that horrific spell in effect then one of your player characters or close allies summon creatures are disposable and this is one of the greatest benefits that you can use them for now of course they do bring a lot of other assets to the table which means that you don't always want to just throw their lives into the meat grinder but that is always a present factor with a summon creature keep in mind that your summon creatures are gonna come with a suite of different options and abilities that they can provide for you and your party as well as taking any of the normal actions that a player character could take like the help action or interacting with the environment there's so many ways that a summoned creature could be useful in the game beyond their uses on the battlefield summoned creatures can be excellent in exploration as well as many of them have unique movement modes high perception scores or other useful traits that can help you explore the environment for example you could summon flying creatures to help you traverse across a wide gap or summon creatures to use as lookouts or Scouts or even summons shape-changing creatures to help you out in social situations if we're talking pros and cons of being a summoner here the con is that when you summon creatures you yourself are going to have to concentrate on this you're using to summon them most of the time but keep in mind as a pro for this that the summon creatures that you have if they have spell-casting themselves they can concentrate on their own spells this is a really key advantage and as we look at the spells that we can use to call forth our own creatures will be a really key factor in assessing what monsters we want to bring onto the battlefield ourselves always keep these tactics in mind when summoning the versatility is truly endless and from one battle you might call forth a brute to help you in a combat but then in the next battle you could use the same spell to summon forth something to help you with movement or positioning the versatility of summoning really can't be understated and it really rewards a tactically mind player Monti and I have scoured the books of Dungeons and Dragons in search of the perfect summoner and all the great summoning spells that there are to offer from these books we've really landed on the fact that there are three main classes that you're gonna be looking at as your summoner and that is the wizard the Warlock or the druid these three classes have the widest access to summoning spells on their base class lists however clerics Rangers and bards who pick up summoning spells with their magical secrets can play with some summoning magic however these classes don't get as wide access to summoning spells as wizards warlocks and druids who begin getting their summoning spells by fifth character level when they get third level spells there are also three different types of spells that we are looking at there are ones that can be cast with one action ones that can be cast in one minute and one that take much longer to cast we've broken down our sort ment of spells by those definitions this is a key difference between the different types of summoning spells and is how we're organizing our discussion of all these summoning spells today so why don't we start by talking about the summoning spells that require one action two casts so the best thing about summoning spells that only take one action to cast is you can use them very easily in the middle of battle you don't have to have anything prepared in advance if you get jumped by the monsters flick of the wrist and you've got some allies there to help you out all of these spells require concentration and all of them last for up to one hour and they all kind of work on some similar principles so let's dive in with one of our first examples which is available to wizards and warlocks and that is summon lesser demons summon lesser demons is a third level spell available in Zanna thar's guide to everything on page 167 now summon lesser demons is kind of emblematic of all the risks of a summoning spell because you don't get to choose anything with this spell you roll a dice to find out the challenge rating of the demons you're going to be summoning and then the dungeon master picks the demons for you you'll get to choose where they're positioned when they appear but those demons are hostile to everybody including you you can use the blood of a recently slain creature to create a circle on the ground to protect yourself from the demons but once these things appear it's basically pandemonium this is a spell that you use in those clutch situations where you need extra help and you don't care where it comes from it's a bit of a risk reward because summoning a horde of demons into the battlefield can do a lot of interesting things but you are running the risk of them just rampaging on the entire party 7 lesser demons is a bit of a difficult spell to use but fortunately as an authority I do everything on the previous page on page 166 for one spell level higher a fourth level spell gives us summon greater demons a far more controllable but still high-risk high-reward spell that really captures the essence of being a demonic summoner the great thing about summon greater demon is that you as the player get to choose which demon you are summoning and based on the level that you use to cast this spell you might be able to get some really powerful demons out there you can start with demons starting at challenge rating 5 such as the bar Gura and as you up cast this all the way to ninth level spells you can summon demons upwards of challenge rating 10 so you've got a list up on screen here which shows you the full breakdown of all the demons you can sum with this spell and there are some really powerful ones on this list but there's a serious drawback to consider when you do some of them forth when you summon a greater demon you roll initiative for that demon and it gets its own turn in combat on each of your turns you can give it verbal commands that it can follow out on each of its turns though it might have a chance of escaping it gets to make a charisma saving throw at the end of each of its turns against your spell saving throw DC if you know the demon's true name you will be able to give a disadvantage on this saving throw but if it succeeds the demon breaks free of your control stops acknowledging your commands and it will start attacking any non demon it encounters which could include you as well furthermore if your concentration on the spell ends prematurely the demon sticks around for 1d6 rounds causing a bunch of chaos in the ensuing period it seems appropriate that all of these demons have a chance of causing extreme chaos on the battlefield and some players might be really into that but this is a high-risk high-reward sort of play style once again like some and lesser demons you can use a vial of blood from a recently slain humanoid to draw a circle around your space to protect you from the demonic rampage but it's not really going to help out your other allies this is why I recommend if you are going to be playing a summoner use spells like contact other plain divination that may help you find out the true names of demons and be sure to pack along the banishment spell yourself if you need to quickly dismiss one of your minions the good news for all of you summoners out there is that a lot of these demons have a pretty weak charisma save meaning that there's a good chance they're gonna fail and that you're gonna have control over them on top of that a lot of these demons have incredible abilities and spells that they can use to aid your party and there's nothing like adding a bunch of extra spells to your repertoire to use during battle some of the creatures that you can summon have some really unique powers such as the rocks stunning screech or the Guv Razoo which acquires an eighth level spell slot to summon it but it itself can cast power words stun which is also an eighth level spell if you are willing to traffic with the horrible forces of the abyss this spell really captures that feeling keep in mind that the Kolob Razoo has a charisma saving throw of +7 so although it is one of the coolest demons that you can summon be very wary of its ability to break out and use that stunning ability against you if the morally ambiguous high-risk high-reward demonic summoning of the wizard and warlock is not your style you might prefer to exist in harmony with nature and play a druidic summoner someone who has a much more reliable and controllable relationship with the beasts that inhabit the natural world the first spell we're going to look at for the Druids and their ability to summon is conjure animals conjure animals is a third level conjuration spell and well it's mainly available to druids Rangers actually do gain access of it you can find it on page 127 of the D&D basic rules when you cast conjure animals you summon face spirits that take on the form of beasts from the monster manual and there's a large array of different options that could arrive on the battlefield during this and if you cast the spell using a higher level spell slot the number of creatures that you can summon increases but you can't summon creatures of higher challenge ratings all of the creatures you can summon are beasts but when they are conjured with this spell they are considered to be Fae creatures instead unlike summoning demons the great thing about summoning animals is that they are friendly to you and your party and they obey your verbal commands you don't have to worry about them breaking out of the spell and attacking everybody and if you do lose your concentration on the spell they simply disappear immediately rather than running wild and attacking you and your party although there is a large array of different beasts that you could summon to your table keep in mind that there is some discussion that needs to happen between the player and the DM to decide who is going to choose what beasts are going to show up me personally I do allow the player to choose and I have never had a problem with this although some people very are very strict about this and mean that the dungeon master gets to choose or roll on the table but I find it appropriate that the player can summon any beast or creature that they have knowledge about it's a rule of thumb if you could polymorph or shape-shift into it you can summon it yourself I like to let the players have that kind of flexibility because to be perfectly honest there's a huge list of beasts and I just don't have the time to go and make up my own table or use a table to roll on I don't really like the randomness of that spell and that way it gives the player the control that they want from the spell I don't think there's anything too scary in the list of beasts ultimately very few of them if any have any special abilities and none of them cast spells most of the creatures that you can summon with conjure animals are either tough tanky creatures that you can use to defend and control the battlefield or great damage dealers and I don't think there's anything wrong with getting a bunch of creatures like that for a third-level spell I also think that by giving the players the option to choose their beasts you're giving a lot of tactical choice to the players and that's something that as a DM I enjoy doing I love presenting situations and seeing how the players are going to come up and strategize with ideas to solve those problems and choosing which beast you're summoning can be a great strategic choice an excellent middle ground for a spell like conjure animals or summoned demons is that the players have to unlock or find the options that they can summon and once they've learned about that or learn the specific manifestation of the spell then they can summon that whenever they want so if you don't want to give the complete carte blanche to your players to summon whatever they want this might be a good middle ground for your group in any case the strategies that you can use with the spell are really quite limitless I love simply using it to summon up a pair of giant Eagles to use as mounts for my party or even summon up a large group of horses to ride up and there's the cavalry there or just a stampede of Elks to crush all my enemies underfoot once the druid gets to fourth level spells they can upgrade to conjure woodland beings which has a very or breakdown to conjure animals but now you can grab fake creatures and bring them onto the battlefield exactly like conjure animals the creatures are friendly to you and obey your commands and you've got them for one hour as long as you keep concentrating on them but the ability to choose fake creatures instead of beasts gives you a much smaller but much more powerful list of creatures to choose from fake creatures are often equipped with special abilities or movements or spells that they can use to aid your party and this puts them well above most of the animals that you can summit however conjure woodland beings does have a bit of a bad rap for the ability to summon eight Pixies who with the ability to cast fly and polymorph have been the center of many disruptive and sometimes campaign D railing encounters in our groups we have a bit of a friendly agreement to not summon the pixie and once that's out of the way the rest of the spell is pretty amazing and the other options are really great summoning things like dryads sprites and hags have a bunch of creative options for play that have been unfortunately overshadowed by the gang of Pixies but make this spell nonetheless effective and in many respects much more game friendly so that wraps up the spells that you can use to summon creatures that have a casting time of one action there are only four of them but now we're going to move on to the spells that have a casting time of one minute and there's a few really awesome options in this list the challenge here is that just as before the creature that you summon remains for up to one hour as long as you concentrate on the spell the problem here is that you have to spend one minute casting the spell before the creature appears this makes these spells a much more strategic option rather than a tactical one because you have to plan in advance to bring these creatures in on the other hand these creatures are very powerful to start we're gonna throw it over to the cleric with their only great summoning spell that they have and that is conjure celestial which is a seventh level cleric spell conjure celestial allows you to summon eight challenge reading for celestial creature when you use the seventh level spell slot or a challenge rating five celestial creature when you use a ninth level one celestial creatures are very powerful so it might not seem like you're getting a lot of bang for your buck because you're cut off from the really powerful Celestials like the higher level angels with these spells nevertheless you can still use conjure celestial to summon up a quatl which is a quite powerful creature that can buff up your party or from Baldur's Gate descent into a furnace you might want to summon a Holly fan of your own both these celestial creatures are great companions for a cleric which can help you out with a wide range of healing abilities especially given that you get a lot of bang out of your spouse lot from their spell like abilities clerics may not be the best summoners in the game but if you are playing one and you're watching this video this is the option you want to take as a six level spell for druids and warlocks there is also conjurer faith this spell does let you summon a Fae creature of challenge rating six or lower so if you are really going for that summoner conjurer this option will let you summon some of the better options for hags unfortunately because you're only summoning one creature the hag that appears won't have her coven spell casting ability so it's a little bit of a weaker option and I think I would probably stick to some of the other summoning spells instead if you have three conjuration spell casters can you summon three hags and then create a coven potentially yes so I guess a warlock and a pair of druids could work together to summon up their own coven of witches next up we have conjurer elemental which is a fifth level spell available to druids wizards and warlocks who take the right invocation now conjure elemental is perhaps one of the more classic conjuration spells for summoning and it allows you to conjure up a challenge rating five elemental creature either an air water fire or earth elemental straight up out of the monster manual and all of these elemental creatures are really powerful indeed I think that basically there's an argument to be made for almost any of the elementals and being in the right situation at the right time will really give you an awesome bang for your buck out of calling one of these powerful creatures this is also where you really get to feel like a pokemon trainer who's trying to match damage types if you're fighting a bunch of fire enemies you want to pick the right elemental for the job now you can up cast conjure elemental to gain access to more powerful elemental creatures such as the elemental Myrmidon or perhaps even creatures like the invisible stalker although you can't crank it high enough to summon a genie we should also mention that there is conjurer minor elemental which is a fourth level spell available to druids and wizards this works very similar to conjurer woodland beings and conjurer animals in that you're gonna summon up a group of smaller elementals like a tzer's gargoyles or me fits that you can control on Mouse but of course in this case you are taking one minute to cast it so conjure mana elementals would be awesome if it was one of those one action cast I'm summoning spells but it ain't so I think it kind of looked lands in that spot where both the Druids and the Wizards are probably gonna go to their demons and woodland beings respectively for their fourth level spell slot rather than cast the spell but a tzer's and gargoyles are pretty powerful creatures and they might be useful in some circumstances lastly on this list of spells we have infernal calling which is available to wizards and warlocks now infernal calling feels like the most ritualistic of all the summoning spells it has all the trappings of having special components knowing the devil's true name which allows you to boost up the challenge rating of the creature that you can summon and in this case you are going to be able to summon a devil from one of the nine hells when you cast this spell you can choose a devil of challenge rating 6 or lower unless you know the devil's true name or have a talisman that will allow you to summon a c 1cr higher option this devil is unfriendly towards you and it will try to twist your commands to turn you towards evil if at all possible so there's some risk when you summon it and of course if you lose concentration on it much like the summoned demon spells this devil's gonna stick around and mess things up well it can the thing with this spell is that even when you cast it as a ninth level spell and have a devilish talisman or true name you could only get a devil up to challenge rating 11 which includes some pretty powerful Devils but the thing is that the infernal hierarchy of the nine hells means that a lot of Devils lower than challenge rating ten and eleven are actually just soldiers in the devilish legions so they don't have a lot of unique and powerful abilities there's some interesting ones in there but very few of them can cast spells for instance most of them really are just those frontline soldiers keep in mind that this spell does require a ruby that is worth 999 gold good luck getting that every time that you want to cast this spell I would probably stick towards some of the other summoning spells unless you've found a specific devil that you're dealing with and that might give you a few options or ends you could also use the spell to summon a low-level imp and kind of get the communication started between a much more powerful arch devil by summoning the spell so don't discount the narrative possibilities that infernal calling represents but I think if you're looking for a minion to control in battle it's probably not my first option so that wraps up our casting time of 1 minute spell list now we're gonna look at a list of spells that will allow you to conjure up an ally who will stay with you for a long period of time this includes things like fine familiar or fine steed or fine grater steed but the specific spell that we actually want to hone in here on is planar binding a fifth level spell in the players handbook available to bards clerics druids and wizards this spell has a casting time of one hour and you can bind a celestial elemental Fae or fiend to your service this binding lasts for 24 hours although by casting it with a higher-level spell slot the binding can last for weeks months or even upwards of an entire year when you use a ninth level spell slot to bind the creature to your will you do need to use a one thousand gold piece value gemstone to complete the binding process but once you do if that creature was summoned by a spell that spells duration is now increased to match the duration of the binding and no longer is concentration required to maintain that creature keep in mind that when you summon a creature using a spell they do get a charisma saving throw against it but if they fail that save they are now bound to you and they must obey your word to the letter so there is a chance here that if the creature is hostile to you they might try to twist your words now the tricky thing with plainer binding is that you have to have that creature in range for the entire one hour it takes to cast the spell so the creature has to be at your mercy in some way or incapacitated the other problem here is that when you are casting planar binding because it has a casting time of one hour you actually can't concentrate on another spell so it's not strictly possible to summon up your own celestial or elemental or fiend concentrate on the spell that's controlling it and then also bind it at the same time you're gonna need something else to pull that off and there's actually two tricky ways to do it number one is teamwork if you have to spell casters in your party one of which has a spell to summon a creature and another one who has plainer binding you can work together to try to keep control of this creature long enough to bind it to your plane of existence so in one case the druid could conjure an elemental which is friendly to you while the spell is in effect and the wizard casts planar binding to bind it to them the spell is now increased in its duration and you've got a friendly elemental to help you out for days weeks months or years the second option is for all of you Harry Dresden fans out there you can take Magic Circle and cast at a fourth level spell giving it a duration of two hours once you have the Magic Circle there you summon your demon or devil or whatever you want into that circle and then you can bind it using planar binding to your plane of existence this trick works best with conjurer elemental because the conjured elemental remains for the full one hour duration regardless of whether or not you're concentrating on the spell so if you create a Magic Circle summon the elemental into the circle stop concentrating on it the elemental is now trapped in the magic circle so now you have your full hour to cast planar binding on it timing it perfectly with the expiration of the duration and bind that elemental into your service permanently and that's how you can do it on your own as seen in the harry dressing books sometimes working alone to try to bind a demon to your will inside of a magic circle doesn't always go the way that you hope it does the teamwork option is usually a more reliable source yeah and technically speaking with some and greater demon once your concentration is broken it only sticks around for 1d6 rounds so it actually won't stay in the magic circle long enough because the magic circle doesn't hold it to this plane you would need something else then that kept it in the material plane in order for that to work that's why it works particularly well with conjurer elemental because that spell says it stays regardless of whether or not you're concentrating or not so be careful for these little rules gaps in there because how long the summon creature sticks around even when you're not concentrating on it can be a big problem if you want to use the magic circle method so now that we've looked at all of the spells that you might want to take as the conjurer and summoner let's talk about the other character options you might want to take as well so as we looked at all the spells we can see that playing a wizard druid or warlock are probably going to make your character feel the most like a summoner unless you're gonna be doing something funny with a bard that's gonna be picking up these spells with magical secrets I think that those classes are going to offer you the best experience as a summoner because of heavy reliance on concentration that you will have with being a summoner or conjurer you want to keep in mind that if you're looking at feets war caster and resilient are two great options that almost every summoner should take yeah you really want that proficiency in Constitution saving throws so that if you get damaged in combat you can keep your summons in play at the same time because you're always gonna be concentrating on your summoning spells you want to make sure that the rest of the spells you're choosing don't require concentration so take spells like counter spell dispel magic damage dealing spells like fireball or even other useful tactical spells like dimension door or healing spells if you're playing a druid we'll give you lots of other things to do in battle well your concentration is focused on your summoned creature also don't forget to pack magic circle and banishment just to protect yourself from things going wrong with your summons now if you're looking for the perfect subclass to choose for the Wizards there's really only one subclass that offers much benefit directly for summoning and that's the conjuration wizard who at tenth level doesn't have to make concentration checks when they take damage to maintain their conjuration spells and at xiv level any creature they summon gains an additional 30 temporary hit points so pretty decent features if you picked up a copy of XANA Thor's guide to everything you can find the circle of the Shepard druid in there who at higher levels will allow your conjured creatures to have more hit points and their attacks will become magical for the purposes of bypassing damage resistances I think in both cases of the conjuration wizard and the circle of the Shepards druid you could take it or leave it I think that the extra hit points and the little perks are nice but not required and I think that you can still play a great summoner if you choose a different subclass in particular I think that summoning is a great way to augment the toolset of virtually any wizard subclass and the moon druid is a really great summoner as well I think though that if you are doubling down on the summoner archetype playing one of these subclasses taking as many the spells that we listed as possible and also if you can get your hands or if your DM is feeling it really generous getting your hands on a bag of tricks an iron flask gems of conjure elemental there's a lot of really fun magic items and for you DMS out there who have a player at the table who wants to play a summoner it might be nice to drop a few of those magic items and along the way to make them really feel powerful and have the most fun they can at the table playing a summoner is a very difficult archetype and one that does require a fair amount of bookkeeping as well so if you do have a player or you yourself as a player are interested in playing one make sure that you are prepared to be ready with the stats of the creatures that you want to summon as well some of the best players that I played with that have played awesome summoners had printouts of all their summonable creatures and were organized they had the creature cards as well for them so of all those options whether you are printing out the stats or getting creature cards or using D&D beyond make it really really quick and easy to keep your characters stats all in one place so that that burden isn't placed on the dungeon master because many the ends have a lot on their hands just preparing the monsters that are going to be in the next combat encounter or the traps in the next dungeon or role-playing the next NPC and if you're gonna be saying I want to summon a devil or a demon and the DM wasn't really expecting to have to prepare that that's where it's on you as a player to be prepared to bring the summon into the game so this has been a look at playing a summoner in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition if you have great experience summoning monsters and minions to your side tell us about it in the comments below if you're enjoying our show please consider supporting our work on patreon you can find out how by following the links in the description below don't forget to check out season 2 of our dragon hime campaign which airs on January 14th if you need to get caught up with season 1 all the episodes are right up over here and we have many more guides to different character archetypes and Dungeons & Dragons to the addition over here please subscribe to our channel so that never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

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Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: UycZABIKUDI

Length: 33min 16sec (1996 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 09 2020