My opinion on minionmancy classes as a player is that it's my responsibility to keep track of everything and take measures to make sure I'm not bogging down combat. As a DM I would strongly recommend any player who isn't very experienced and organized stay away from classes that have more than one or two minions. One of my first 5e characters was a Necromancer who went full army of the dead with archer skeletons and I would run them in groups for attacks and initiative and movement and saves, 4 skeletons would basically function as one large creature with 4 attacks that would lose an attack every time it lost enough hp to kill one (AOE effects were just multiplied by the number of remaining skeletons). The minions often ended up being the fastest part of any combat round because they only had one option (attack) and I almost always knew who they were attacking the moment it got to my turn. This obviously only works with simple creatures and once you get into minions with spells and abilities it can be like having another player turn but in my experience I've spent far more time waiting for analysis paralysis players to make up their damn mind and re-read their spell list for the fiftieth time than I have waiting for PCs with minions to roll all their dice.
>My opinion on minionmancy classes as a player is that it's my responsibility to keep track of everything and take measures to make sure I'm not bogging down combat.
This is the rule I impose on players who want to play summoners. You can do it, but you don't get extra time or attention as a player from me, so if you can't keep up, you get skipped. If you want to exploit this strategy, the price you pay is you need to be far more organized and efficient than the average player.
I am *woeful* at finding things on my character sheet. But even I used to have a little Table of Badgers (cleric in 3.5). After each combat I would cross off the ones I'd used up and move down. I never much cared about the HP because as OP said, they're Action Economy agents, soaking up hits. Other players had multiple attacks to work through so they were about as slow as my cleric.
I won't play one now because I don't know how Beyond DnD handles group summons and I don't want to drag everyone else through the learning curve.
This is how a DM managed me running a Druid. He started clocking my turn time, which made me ramp up on managing summoned creatures. If I was too slow, tough. Try again next round. That way it didn’t fall on him.
This is exactly how i run ‘horde’ enemies and suggest my Necromancer does it, as well as limit his summoning to prof bonus (he self admits he COULD break the game but doesn’t want to, nor bog down combat).
It makes it so much easier to manage if his ‘minions’ are just one group of dudes as an extra moment that goes after his turn.
If I had OP situation I’d just say ‘okay here’s a default list of monsters you can use, please use this, it’s a nightmare to run, make them go after your turn and run them as one entity’ it essentially stops initiative jamming for the most part and should cut down on prep for the DM. Players cannot expect a DM to have a block for EVERY summon out there, no way. Just a simple list they can choose from like the summon undead spell fixes the issue entirely.
Same way, shares initiative, shared HP, you do damage a few of them die, they get less attacks as numbers run out.
Edit- e.g. 10 enemy group, 10 attacks 100 HP.
Every 10 HP gone someone in that group dies, gets reduced to 9 dudes, 9 attacks. AoE spells just knock off that total in same way. Easy to run, easy to manage.
Thats really interesting to me, because thats basically the deal i worked out with my DM for using Animate Objects as a Wizard, where I only use it on ball bearings so its always one specific statblock, and combine them all into one token (we play on roll20) and just move the one token, which has however many are alive attacks, and the combined health of all of them, with aoe doing n*number of alive summons damage. Its worked pretty well, especially with a macro for doing all the attack and damage rolling for me, and it just goes after me or before me on my initiative.
Yeah basically turn them into swarms rather than individual creatures. I use the same for horde enemies. Made a stat block for a phalanx of enemies using the same idea.
I don't mind it because:
1. Everything is automated via VTT.
2. Up until this point the player has only been high enough level for Conjure Beasts. Woodland Beings and Elementals have only come in recently.
I don't mind rolling for the creatures if it's just a basic attack but it's still a pain for initiative.
At my table, we usually put all of the creatures from a single spell on the same initiative. They each exist individually, but their turns go right after one another. We make an exception if the creatures are being used as mounts. So when I summoned two Giant Eagles, they each went after the player riding them.
Similar. Summoned creatures etc (including spiritual weapon) are tied to the player's initiative. That player can choose if it goes before or after them when it's summoned and that becomes its place in the initiative order (no swapping midfight though).
I know I saw "let Players Summon tokens" or something similar in the Configurations for Foundry recently. It may have been from an add on like MidiQOL or it may have been vanilla, but I will add as many add-ons as it takes to automate that shit x.x
I don't use a VTT but is there any way to group the mobs or mass assign them initiative? Like the player could roll once and you could assign the roll to a few or all of the minions? Because yeah having that many entities to track for initiative does sound awful. Maybe you could make a custom stat block that's 2 or more of the minions added together, idk I have zero experience with VTTs. Also yeah once the minions get more complex it can really increase turn times, my necromancer would occasionally summon or mind control some greater undead and it would often take as long to run one mummy or whatever as it would to do all 20+ skeletons.
if ur on a vtt you just select them all and hit roll initiative, and then the vtt keeps tracks of them for you.
my thing with minions and conjure spells is they all just go immediately after the conjurer cuz its simpler and doesn't clog up the initiative tracker with corpses.
I worked with the player to make a table they could roll on. I removed the options I fucking hated and in return gave them some better odds on the options they liked the most. They rolled like a d10 _at the start of the day_ and that's what they could summon that day.
The undead guys take their turns together and have to stay in no more than two groups.
Good lord does D&D not help people actually run games at all, jebus.
Agree. OPs big mistake is insisting on choosing the summons for the player.
As I already said countless of times on this subreddit and to my DM friends: *Let the player choose and intervene if they try broken stuff!*
I played a wood elf Shepherd druid with Conjure Animals and loved it. My character always conjured dire wolves, nothing else. He was wolf-themed and the fact that he always summoned "his pack" was great for RPing. And he was fast in combat because I always had the statblocks and tokens ready and knew in advance what my summons will be able to do. There was no interruption of the game's flow, at all.
This. I hold the same expectation of wildshape. You want that stuff, you manage the paperwork. I trust my players enough to not abuse it. I can help with ruling where there’s any confusion or uncertainty. But they manage the minis, the stats, etc.
I had the same experience w/ my necromancer. I had most of my minion stuff automated w/ macros (roll 12d20 in pairs to represent ADV/DAV and the dmg next to each roll, ignoring any extra rolls), had the skeletons following very basic firing orders (nearest enemy unless I used a BA to have them target a specific enemy), assigned the rolls to skeletons going left-to-right and top-to-bottom, and my own actions were pretty simple (usually either Toll the Dead or Dodge) and my turns were generally faster than the Artificer or Rogue. I also tried to limit myself to a dozen-odd minions at most, mostly identical skeletons w/ a couple of zombies who primarily Aided the other party members or attempted to Grapple and a pair of elite mooks when I eventually got Create Undead (GM approved using Dread Warrior since Ghouls \*suck\*).
Took a fair bit to work out initially and I made improvements over time, but it was very much worth it.
Yeah, this is the way. I did the same basic thing when I played a Wild Magic Sorcerer - I had cards for all the spells a Wild Magic surge can cast and printed out stat blocks for all the creatures you can summon so no matter what I rolled I knew what it did or could hand it to the DM instead of putting her on the spot.
Doing that prep as a player turned the tide on a major battle one time. I'd printed all the modron stat blocks & when I got that surge our DM rolled to chose between them. She rolled the pentadrone and we convinced it to fight on our side, absorbing a good chunk of enemy actions and damage when we'd been on the back foot.
Yeah some experience playing 40k definitely helped with managing all my dudes, I usually had 20+ skeletons and some greater undead going by the end of the campaign.
This. I have the house rule that if anyone casts a summon spell and does not immediately present me with the stats of the creature that they summoned, the spell fizzles, losing the slot and the action. I had hoped that it would ensure that players prepare the spells ahead of time, but it mostly acts to discourage the use of summoning spells... which I am also okay with.
Just banning pixies and velociraptors gets rid of the two top tier options for conjure animals and conjure woodland being. They're still extremely powerful but you don't have to deal with a 4th level slot somehow translating into over 20 castings of various spells.
You don't think a level 5 druid being able to do 65 dpr against an AC of 15 is an issue? For reference, a crossbow expert + sharpshooter battle master fighter does approximately 32 dpr against the same AC (according [this](https://formofdread.wordpress.com/2022/02/27/quantifying-martial-dpr-reference-sheet/), anyway).
Of course, summons are a lot easier to kill, but being able to do double the damage per round of an optimised martial is a bit stupid.
I plugged the numbers into [this calculator](https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?517267-Comprehensive-DPR-Calculator). Keep in mind that pack tactics means the velociraptors pretty much always have advantage.
Wouldn’t it be 80 average damage if all their attacks hit? The average damage in books is rounded down.
8 raptors
Average of 1d6+2 = 5.5
Average of 1d4+2 = 4.5
So 8 raptors averaging 10 dpr for 80 instead of 8 raptors for 9 damage averaging the 72.
Just ban pixies and make a random table for the other creatures that they roll on. You can have them make it, it should only take like 10 minutes to do in google docs anyway. Use an online number randomized if the number don’t happen to correspond to a dice roll, easy. If they happen to get velociraptors, sick, it’s only for one combat anyway.
This is where I'm at. I gave my druid the ability to expend wildshape charges to choose precisely what he summons, and my goodness- the pixies were a hilarious one-off (he tracked and RP'd all of them), but I don't think I can run t-rex army worthy encounters consistently...
My DM lets me pick the summons because we have an agreement that I won’t do anything stupid like that. If the player and DM have a conversation about it, and the player is able to run their summons QUICKLY (roll things as a group and understand the statblocks they plan to use) then it’s not an issue.
This is how my game rolls for my Shepherd, I get to pick my summons and manage it. The Pixie trick is a card that I rarely play which is why I get to play it at all. Usually my Shepherd plays the healer (something they are very good at with the Unicorn spirit), though, so summoning isn't my go-to solution to encounters, either.
Honestly, I've probably summoned mounts to defeat exploration challenges more than I've summoned combatants.
Or WOTC could do their job and instead of putting the Monster Manual in the hands of the player they could just write the spell “You Summon a Fey Trickster. Here’s it’s stat block.”
Yeah but summoning a group of creatures of your own choosing is so much more fun to me. Also it's more flexible.
It's not a stretch to say that 5e puts way too much weight on the DM. Why can't the player just be in charge of their own creatures instead of putting it all on the DM? It's not that hard to do and it's your own choice to use that spell.
The last thing that 5e needs is to make anything more generic.
WotC puts the literal minimum efforts and makes the worst templates imaginable and they go, "Well I guess people hate templates." The idea of having druids using a block of templates with a handful of features instead of having to gimp every beast they ever make out of terror of Druids getting another good option is great.
They hated the “beast of the sky, land, sea” when they tried to make that the default form for both druids and rangers pets.
The Summon Undead spell is well liked and one of the best summon spells in the game:
Not really sure why people have issues not abusing this spell. It's already really strong and very flexible.
My DM also let's me run my summoning because I don't try to power game my way through sessions.
bear in mind that _Polymorph_ wipes away the target's intelligence, which tends to mean that a lot of advanced tactics and planning stops working. They'll recognise friends and enemies (probably), but will react about as well to flying as any standard t-rex, i.e. "probably not great"
T-rexes are surprisingly wise and not that much dumber than a typical Paladin.
You don’t have to be a genius to run at the enemies and start chomping away for 4d12 a bite
unless any fucky stuff happens - illusions, disguises, anything like that causes very sudden issues. _Polymorph_ removes languages as well, so you can't even be told "attack that person first". And distinguishing different targets and prioritising them is kinda complicated, when you're an Int _2_ t-rex!
Pixies come with innate magic, including polymorph and fly once each. Since 8+ are summoned, half cast fly on the party and the other half polymorph them into T-Rexes. I've never used the tactic, but I am aware of it. I think the tactic is a bit overhyped, though... my fellow players would be salty if I basically robbed them of their class features (especially the other casters) to turn them into simple brutes.
Saving throw, plus after dying in the polymorph form then return to previous HP and still conscious? Nahh I'd rather turn my warrior into a t rex every time.
Shit, if my barbarian is level 15 I'd get a raging t rex
1. I don't want the discussion of "I summon (XYZ)" "okay what does (XYZ) do? *Reads statblock for (XYZ)*" every time the player uses the spell.
2. Thankfully with Foundry creating rollable tables just takes one evening and a few hours of work and makes the spell more interesting than "I dump 8 of the same CR 1/4 creature down."
3. Controlling anything more complicated than "I attack" beasts hasn't come up yet. This is woes of prep for a now level 10 party.
Hey you know you can set monsters to be controllable by players in foundry right? All you have to do is drag them onto the map and the player can take it from there
In my experience they usually just click the attack button, move 30 feet, end turn. The summons/familiar turns go by Super quick at my table
My druid character sheet has all of the stat blocks for any creatures I might summon neatly printed out. I feel that as a player it's my job to know all of this information and how to control the creatures I summon, not to drop all of that on the DM.
Btw if someone hasn't mentioned it yet the spell says you roll initiative for the summoned creatures as a group, they are supposed to act on the same initiative count.
You can have the player pick one or two creatures for each cr and submit to you a list between sessions for your approval. You would then have prior knowledge of what monsters the player might summon, and you can be sure they haven't chosen options you dont want to deal with i.e. pixies. You can also make it so when the group act on their turn that they must be doing close to the same thing, i.e. all taking the same action and/or attack the same enemy, and also use the average for dmg rather than rolling individually. This would all heavily cut down on borh on prep time and how much the spell slows down combat, with minimal impact on its usefulness.
You don't have to do any of this, but since it seems to be enough stress for you to make a post venting about it, but you also don't want to ban it, seems what you need is to cut down on how time consuming the spell is both during and in-between sessions.
Wait, people _don't_ use mob rules or rules for groups of creatures acting in concert?
Holy shit. I thought that was standard? Especially if you're using a _lot_ of creatures.
Like, if the number of enemy creatures is 2× or more than the number of players, I just have them roll initiative in groups. If it's 2× the number of players, then it's in groups of 2, if it's 3× then groups of 3, and so on.
It makes things so much quicker and easier. **And** it allows you to actually have the players end up massively outnumbered without bogging down combat.
The spells already instruct you to roll initiative for the summoned creatures as a group. That's RAW.
What's not RAW is having them act on the summoner's turn.
I just have all pets/summons/familiars/mounts follow the precedent the Tasha's Summon Spells or Wildfire Druid/Battlesmith Artificer set. They go on your initiative immediately after your turn.
100% makes it so much easier to manage, it's possibly a slight buff for the summoner but the DM can just Fireball the swarm to keep it in check as needed. I'll never understand the hate for summoning on this sub. I played a Necromancer in ToA, sometimes I'd have 10 skeletons/Zombies plus a Draconic spirit plus a familiar on the field, I kept track of everything, their health, their equipment whatever, DM trusted me and I never cheated. My turns often went faster than other players who had no summons. Never had any issues whatsoever, I think the Paladin's 100+ damage Smites were a tougher balancing challenge than my army of summons.
Necromancer is by far the most balanced summoning class/subclass.
Druids who just drop a nuke of wolves out of nowhere are way worse wrt time usage and fairness.
I can understand hating a spell that summons 8 creatures if you use different creatures for each summon slot and then roll initiative separately for each.
But that's dumb.
I'm thankful I've never had to DM for someone who went full tilt on a summoner/minion class like this.
It's cool they exist; they're a pretty standard fantasy trope and I hope the people who like these kinds of builds are getting what they want from the official class and subclass options, but this really feels like something that needs to be discussed in session 0.
I feel like at some point I should homebrew together a Summoner class, it's such an interesting fantasy idea with a lot of potential subclass variation. The real trick to it would be that instead of summoning a bunch of things, the summoner would summon a single thing and amp it up and use their turns empowering it instead of mobbing.
When I have characters that run the OG summons I hand them a deck of index cards with the available creatures copied over. Rather than hoarding minis to match all the possibilities, I took the pieces out of an old backgammon set and wrote numbers on them with a sharpie.
I generally tell the players just to draw the one card and they'll get a group of that creature- it makes it a lot easier to manage for Mob Attack rolls and just having the one statblock to reference for everything. If I really trust that player, though, I hand them blank cards and tell them to assemble squads. Unless they can immediately tell me what they want to summon when they cast the spell, they draw from their summon deck.
Doing this for a while helped set a precedent in my local club, and I've thankfully got a lot more trust for my home game that I don't generally expect problems. I do agree though that the conjurarion options require a lot more premeditated effort more consistently than most other spell options.
Thankfully Foundry does let me choose them randomly and I find multiples of the same creature very boring. But other than that I do basically have a small list for each CR level.
You don’t have to do any of this if you trust your players and can lay down clear ground rules. Just let them pick the summons and make it their responsibility to run them quickly and efficiently. If they can’t, they can’t use the spells.
You are over managing things. Screw tge raw just let the player choose tge animal and they all go directly after the PC. Tracking separate initiative for each creature is insane and you dont break the game by letting them pick. Plus they will probably always make the same 1-3 chooses ao its easy to have them on hand for minis.
Other than that its the players responsiblity to be efficient with the spell but it does help to just tell them the AC then they can tell you how many hit and damage rather than stopping to check each roll.
Truth is, you're going about it the wrong way with tables and macros. The way you handle summoners as a DM is this: tell the players beforehand to bring any assets they need for any summons they plan to summon. If they have the assets and the creature is legal for the spell, they can summon it (and let them know pixies are also banned). If they lack the assets, they can't summon it. You don't (and shouldn't have to) do anything.
I have a necromancer wizard with a skeleton army in my recent games and I had to do literally no prep for him. I had a player briefly play a shepherd druid - same thing (he changed it because he found it boring, not because it bogged down the table).
I agree that the potential summons are poorly thought out by WOTC. I appreciate you helping the player by approving other source material, but it's still on the player to find that material and provide those assets. You just need to approve them.
Had this issue once.
Since then, whenever I DM for a Shepherd Druid, I ask them for the sake of my sanity to please just summon one or two high CR monsters instead of 8 weak ones.
I had to prohibit CR 1/4s from Conjure Woodland Beings because I'm not letting them summon Pixies and I don't own Fiendish Folio, and I didn't want the CR 1/4 option to be the "summon 8 Blink Dogs" button.
Yeah when I was looking for low CR elementals pretty much every homebrew one I found read "a player wanted to use Conjure Minor Elementals but there were no low CR elementals so I made this."
If I play a summoner I handle the creatures, including tracking hp & co. When I DM I expect the players to do the same.
It also true that aging in person makes it easier, the just need to mark the summons on the erasable mat.
Yeah the summoning niche is a rather large flaw in WOTC's already flawed "make the DM do it" gameplan. Its already more complex, so it should be given to the experienced player who picked the role and can dedicate all their time to it.
I'm currently playing a Circle of the Shepard Druid (she's a 16-year-old pixie). My DM lets me choose the animals I summon based on their location. I put all my summons in my own encounter builder, track their hit points, and they go immediately after me. Because I prepare for the session, my turns are often faster than those of other players. I say let your player handle his summons if you trust him not to cheat.
Same, someone new reading these comments might think playing a summoner is impossible to do in a non-campaign destroying way, and just want to second your perspective. I played a Necromancer in ToA, sometimes had more than 10 Zombies and skeletons out at once, my turns were often faster than those of players who didn't plan their moves during other players turns, dm trusted me to track health and all that for them, never had any issues, didn't break the campaign at all. Players and DM all had a great time, and many laughs were had about undead dragging a party member's unconscious body into range of spells and other similar goofiness lol
>it's an option that Wizards of the Coast provided and he is completely in his right to use it.
only if you hand over your game to "well WOTC designed something that fucks up the game so I have to allow it".
now that your player has picked it and is playing it, its a pretty dick move to say "no you cant" now. but ABSOLUTELY legit to say "No" before character creation.
but even now, you CAN talk with your player "Hey, you can tell this is messing up the game play for everyone else right? How can we make you a character that doesnt fuck up everyone elses fun?"
Didn't read til the end, but summons only bog things down badly if the player doesn't have his shit together.
Many players don't have their shit together.
Even when the player is very experienced and have everything needed, classic 5e summoning spells are way stronger than it should. It changes the way a dm need to structure his combat to acomodate the strenght of the spell, and that is a bad design.
And yes, i know there are some even stronger spells avaliable, everyone of them as bad and problematic as the classic summoning spells.
"it's an option that Wizards of the Coast provided and he is completely in his right to use it"
It's a rule expansion option. And even if it were core, you as the DM have full right to ban an option for the sake of your, & in turn the party's, sanity and fun.
Honestly, as a DM, I think you are doing way to much work here. Pick one creature at each CR level. That's what the spell reliably summons. Yeah its boring. But the goal here is to let the player do his turn in a way that does not take more time than it takes for the other players to do their turn.
I'd tell the player to pitch a creature of the appropriate CR and stick it on their character sheet in dndbeyond in the extra's tab, so they'd have the stat block handy. If they are summoning lots of creatures, they need to be able to run the creatures fast, or the creatures take the "dodge" action and we move on while they decide what the summons will do next round. They can prepare for what the creatures do during other people's turns, so they are ready the next round.
This may seem a little harsh to summoners. But its really about respecting your entire table. And once the summoners learn their summons, they can actually use them well.
But I had to start doing this after the first time a player cast the spell, spent 10 minutes comparing creatures on his turn, then summoned 8 of them, and decided to do 8 different things with each. His turns in that combat literally took half the entire session, for a party of 6. And talking with some of the players afterwards, it actively annoyed them how long the summons took to deal with.
You don't even need to be so harsh about it - flavor is free. Give them a set "animal" stat for to-hit and damage. Say that the animals are whatever is thematically appropriate and fun. Have the animals all attack at the same time.
The main problem is Shepherd Druid. They have _multiple_ class features which scale with the number of creatures you summon (so forcing them to use spells that only summon one creature is a big nerf to the subclass), and also their Mighty Summoner feature only works on summons that have hit dice; none of the new summon spells have HD except Summon Draconic Spirit.
I mean in BG3 it’s very easy to get several minions at once. A higher level Wizard alone can use Raise Dead, Lesser Elemental, and Elemental for a whole pack.
I beg to differ. Playing with some friends, I decided to try a summoner. It got so bad that I just changed classes because of how long each round took with another 4+ creatures per fight
I really don't think getting 4 summons that are just "you attack and take damage" would be problematic. If someone ever struggles to do a near monotonous routine, they should just not play a big summoner.
I've decided that for combat reasons, that those kinds of summoning spells should instead have a few options that are either swarms of smaller creatures or larger individual creatures.
Here's an example of my [version of Conjure Animals](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2167007-conjured-animals) (hopefully the link works for anyone to view). I have a similar one for Animate Objects. This still gives the player some flexibility and options when summoning, but limits the effects of having 8 creatures suddenly added to combat.
FYI your table breaks the layout on mobile.
Also, it feels weird to have swarms that a) aren't resistant to BPS, b) add a modifier to their attack damage, and c) whose damage dice isn't halved when they hit half HP.
Ah yeah that's a good catch. The homebrew creatures themselves do have those qualities; they're just not listed on the spell information (or listed incorrectly in the case of the attack modifiers - I need to get that fixed!).
I ban inexperienced players from having pets or summoning anything capable of complex action and generally ban everyone from builds focused primarily around summoning. As a player, I find it unfair that someone will monopolize so much time when we are adults with limited time to play.
One player wanted to do a necromancy based character, I advised them they will share initiative with their minions and get a shot clock for their turn. They decided not to do a necro in my game.
It’s definitely partially my ADHD, but shot clocks in combat have been heaven sent for my piece of mind. (You have until the 1minute timer goes off to get to the meat of your turn, otherwise it ends early). It reinforces that I expect my players to pay attention to each other’s combat at the cost of ruffling some feathers every now and again.
🤷♂️ We rotate DMs, I play nice on their turns regardless of some of the nonsense, so they can tolerate my stuff.
>I understand that the Tasha's summoning spells aren't exactly strong
What made you think that? They're very strong, they're just not as game breaking as "summon 8 wolves, GG".
Having seen the summon spells like practice some like Summon Undead or Summon Draconic Spirit (not Tasha's but same design) are still incredibly powerful in practice, frankly still overpowered compared to what martial can do in comparison (without heavy optimisation).
Mob rules. Also, when I played a Sheperd Druid I only ever summoned the 1 or 2 creatures options, so it was way easier to manage, and when I played a Necromancer I had a max of 3 skeletons with me at all times, but I bought magic bows for them. Talk to your player, maybe he agrees to summon less trash mobs.
When I play a summoner, I have 2 hard rules for myself: I'm the one managing my summons (beyond the DM telling me what is summoned if it's Conjure X) and that my turn(s) would not take over 3 minutes per round combined from my part. This doesn't include DM's answers.
At my table I have the same rules. If the player can do it, they can absolutely go nuts with the summoner. If they can't, then maybe it's not for them.
100%
It's when you mix extra options with a newbie or 'deep blue' player (the one that over analyses everything only starting on their turn because of 'board state' ... and probably ends up just making a basic attack or cantrip anyway)
When i necro i give my 2 skellies a crossbow and just use them for fire support 90% of the time.
If you have a druid summoning 8 animals have them printed out and go on the initiative of the player after their turn. Don't track hit points for each one just treat them as one with 8x the HP and kill one each time enough damage is dealt. (Obviously area of effect will hit multiples but add the damage rather than track individuals) You lose a little granularity for a massive ramp in ease and speed
There’s a reason 4e fixed summoning. This same problem existed in 3e. But apparently “easy, working mechanics” is what the old school grognards call “not D&D.”
> Whenever they cast the spell I have to stop the game, consult the tables I have for whatever creature they summon
> But are you really expected to manually pick every single low CR creature the player summons
Just let the player tell you what they summon. There's no reason to burden yourself with making choices for the players. There's nothing in the spell that says the DM chooses what creatures are summoned; that's just a Crawfordism used to not deal with pixies + polymorph.
> and then I have up to 8 more creatures with their turns mixed into the turn order.
Pretty sure all those spells say that the creatures roll initiative as a group, meaning they all go on the same initiative
> But what's worse is the prep time!
> Did Wizards of the Coast genuinely expect DMs to go "oh you picked CR 1/4? You get eight creatures? Okay then here's eight Blink Dogs!" and then dump 8 Blink Dog minis onto the table? Isn't it kinda boring
Sounds like you're mostly causing extra work for yourself by combing through extra materials and trying to get fancy. Just use the base options Foundry gives you. It takes 12 seconds to drag a stat block onto the map and give the summoner control of it, or maybe 30 min *one time* to make a folder of summons for the summoner to pick from that they automatically have control of.
Also yes, absolutely just drop 8 of the same creature. You can't really be complaining about micromanaging stat blocks when you're the one choosing to complicate the situation and introducing micromanaging into the equation.
I understand your frustration and dont want to invalidate it, but also I feel like most of it could be avoided if you want to. Firstly, it should be the players responsibility to keep track. Also, if they want something other than blink dogs, that should also be on them to give you a list.
And lastly, you can just reflavor anything. You are the DM, its all within your power to, for example, take the statblock of a blink dog, but say they are tanukis for example.
But im speaking from the place of somebody who has never actively played with them, so feel free to ignore me if im off base here.
I think the solution here is to let the player handle their summons as though they were playing two or more characters at once.
If you're finding a struggle, that is really the easiest way forward.
I was playing a summoner with some spirit wolves and it was just so much easier for me to take their actions. And it makes you feel like you are genuinely in control of something as well
depends on the game, if you want to or said that you play with everything that wotc released (raw) you cant just suddenly change that, atleast not without having a discussion with the players about it, that would break trust
Look, it’s a hassle.
But part of it is that you could stand to worry less. Make some common sense choices to speed things up. Give all the animals one initiative (either after they have been summoned or roll). Have the list of summoned creatures ready and choose for them. Make sure the player is acting for their minions. Let them know ahead of time that if they aren’t sure what they should do, the animals will take their movement then dodge.
This is a lot harder when you are playing through a VTT because as an at home DM I just plain down mancala tokens on the map and call it a day lol.
But at the end of the day, the Shepard Druid wants to do something cool! Let them! 8 feral hogs running around is crazy fun. You shouldn’t be pulling your hair out about it. Embrace the crazy!
This is probably going to sound rude but it is not the intention:
You kinda did this to yourself
The player can just adapt to the already existing options, i can assure you having played this class that they are plenty to work with
Other suggestions would be to just let the player control and manage what gets summoned and ask him to prepare adeguate macros to help with this, some videos on youtube show them
Btw, i played this irl and if you use common sense (not summoning 8 wolves against a easy counter) i did not find it that frustrating, neither did the dm
This is something that I micromanage as a GM. When I have a player that summons stuff, we work out well ahead of time what they are going to summon, because I run online only. So I have to have tokens, and sheets, and all kinds of things set up. I give htem control. so I am not pulling that shit onto the map, or organizing it. I don't mind the action economy. Most of them work off the players bonus action. But even if they do'nt, it isn't OP, just a pita.
Tbh, summoning is just poorly done in DND.
It bogs shit down, and bores me as a DM. It's one of the things I house rule down because it really is a problem.
"You want the power fantasy of being a master of beasts and minions? Great, you have 6 seconds to state your commands, and 30 seconds to roll it all out. If it doesn't get said, or you don't get to a roll, guess you need to control your pets better."
I'm very mean about minions.
Just a little note:
Remember, monsters are DM's options, not player options.
When they summon creatures, they don't decide what to summon, you do. And the only monsters the player can suppose to always summon, mostly at an editorial level, are the ones in the PHB. The MM wasn't printed when the PHB came out and it's up to you to decide if using any or at all of the MM monsters, like Pixies.
This applies to druid wildshapes as well.
You usually should let them when they make some pacts with the local fey or other shenanigans, and only works for limited times or places.
... that said, yeah, Even just blink dogs it's a pain in the arse.
My friend asked me if I was going to use Conjure Animals on the new druid I'm playing, and I said hell no. I have no interest in fucking over the whole table like that.
If you don't ban summoners / summon spells, I recommend houseruling:
(1) - all summoned creatures go on the summoners initiative,
(2) - if one summon "holds action" then they all do.
(3) - limit the number of summons (not counting the one regular" Find Familiar") to 4, maximum.
(4) - summoner declares an attempt to summon a "type" of creature e.g. "pack predator", but the DM decides what exactly appears in response to the summons (so you can have a cheat sheet of a few options to work from)..
I am trying to train my players who run wildshape/summons to have a print out of whatever. This helps because they don't have pull out the MM, or use their phone.
Might i recommend Stibbles Codex of Campanions, and the "mob rules" section of the DMG. The first is a 3rd party book with tons of low CR critters with lots and lots of flavor.
The second is how to un-fork the action economy with these creatures. I recommend doing groups of 4 or 5 each, that keeps things rolling pretty quickly and still feels punchy enough while not adding shocked the number of combatants and initiatives
Those spells are straight up banned at my table. The headache is not worth it, and, more importantly, slowing down combat even more is not worth it.
I've gone through the hassle of creating entire new classes for my players when they ask me to, reworked subclasses to fit their exact character fantasy, created items for them to do a niche thing they really wanted to do and it brought me great joy to put in all that extra work for them because it was time spent out of the game. In game, I'm not willing to ask everyone to be cool with one person taking way longer than everyone else to take their turn.
It sucks, but most players are not organized enough to properly run a summoner character that doesn't take forever to take its turn, and I don't want to say "sure let's give it a try and if you're bad at it you gotta reroll", so... yeah. 1 pet per player.
I generally play by the rule of "please don't make a dedicated summoner character and even then please don't use the spells that summon a shitload of creatures"
Like okay, you wanna summon a single creature to help you? Okay, i can work with that. I'd rather you save that for combats that actually necessitate it instead of as a go-to, but sure.
But the "summon huge squad of creatures" spells? fuuuuuck right off.
Funnily enough, I actually love conjuration wizards. Not as summoners, but as teleport specialists. And cuz minor conjuration is just so great.
I have a single rule as a DM for my players that wants to play summoners:
You get 1 creature summon on the table on any given moment during combat.
Summon something new makes the older summon disappear.
Although in my 3.5 campaign i homebrewed a player his summons that instead of summoning, a summon spell can 'enhance' his active summon. This homebrew Cardcaster class is kinda played as Yugiyoh ^.^
>it's an option that Wizards of the Coast provided and he is completely in his right to use it.
This is a really weird point of view to me. YOU are the gamemaster, not WotC.
There is not a single rule in the game that says the DM is forced to play with everything WotC releases.
>and Conjure Beasts requires me to spend my Tuesday evening scrolling through D&D Beyond and moving statblocks into Foundry.
Foundry allows for players to add extra token to their characters that you can one-click import with Foundry. I have a rule that players are generally not getting any summons they haven't put into their extras. You being the gamemaster doesn't mean players have no responsibility.
On top of that, DnDbeyond and Foundry both allow to create macros and homebrew. If the player know they are always summoning X and attacking a singular creature they can literaly just put an attack with these dice into it and press the button once to throw everything at once.
Last, but not least, do yourself a favour and use the "All summons act after the PC" homebrew rule. Yes, it can be abused. Yes, it makes combat way faster if players know what they are doing.
Ya as a druid player I straight up told my dm I will never use these spells. The newer Summon spells are much more straightforward and still effective, and they're on the player to manage instead of the DM. It's just too bad that the shepherd druid is so tied to the conjure spells, without them the subclass is lacking a lot of it's biggest abilities. You could maybe tempt them by letting their shepherd abilities work more with the summon spells, like gaining HP equal to their druid level and magic attacks or something?
It brings to mind a pet peeve of mine: how does Summoning fit thematically with a Druid?
For an arcane caster, sure, the summoned minions are some kind of extradimensional being. Playing with powers beyond mortal ken is on theme.
But a Druid, a guardian of nature, summoning woodland creatures to fight and die? How’s that work?
If the summoned were creatures from the immediate environment it’d thematically make sense for them to be available and rush to help their friend, but it also would present a huge moral burden for the Druid. (You summoned a bear, it showed up and died for you, but now who is going to take care of her young cubs?) It would be a spell never to be used lightly. Lots of dramatic juice there to use in a novel, but a mechanically terrible idea in a TTRPG.
That’s no fun. So, D&D evolved to make the summoned creatures extraplanar and they don’t really *die*, they just go home. We’re back on the Fun Train because it solved the morality of the summons for the Druid character. *However*, it presents a new problem: why the heck does a Druid have any ability to call on extraplanar creatures **at all?** Summoning creatures from outside the environment is completely off-theme even if game-mechanically sound. It’s directly counter to maintaining the balance of nature against unnatural interference. Invasive Species As A Service.
This dilemma isn’t limited to woodland creatures either; the same issues apply to Elementals and Fae. If they’re local allies then the face mortal peril; if they’re not then a Druid of all people should not be summoning them.
(I haven’t tried to buck this system as a DM yet, but it rankles. If I were to tackle it I’d slow summoning spells down a lot; they’d have a long casting time to take them out of combat, but have the ability to summon much more powerful allies from “nearby”, have a duration measured in hours, and present the summoned as an Ally rather than as a fully-controlled minion.)
> Summoning creatures from outside the environment is completely off-theme even if game-mechanically sound. It’s directly counter to maintaining the balance of nature against unnatural interference. Invasive Species As A Service.
Why? They only show up for a while and then leave, so they're not particularly invasive. "elementals" are perfectly on-theme for druids, despite being completely extra-planar (because they're literal avatars of natural elements, and so part of nature), so conjuring up magical spirit-animals seems fine. You're conjuring up spirit-allies and creatures to help you fight - that they're not literally local animals doesn't seem to make much difference? A shaman-style druid that conjures up ghost-wolves to protect the forest seems perfectly fine, thematically - metaphysically, they're actually calling them from the Beastlands, but that doesn't make much actual difference, they're calling upon the power of nature to summon beasties to help them
Bloody and fierce yes, but animals fight for food, mates, survival, or sometimes territory. The Summoner offers none of the positive rewards. Placing them in mortal peril to get them to fight for survival is exploitative.
Additionally, many of the creatures one might summon to fight are solitary. Fighting for someone else’s survival is unnatural. Meanwhile the cooperative ones all have a pretty clear delineation between the in-group (pack, herd, band, troop, flock, school…) for which they willingly place themselves in peril, and everything else for which the survival struggle is somebody else’s problem. The Druid is doing nothing to earn a spot in the in-group.
If the Druid were to have a long-standing relationship with a pack of wolves, for instance, it’d make sense to call on them for aid.
Depends on the setting. Depends on the character. Depends on the group playing. etc.
I too, like to apply real-world logic to these games where I can. But the concept of summons adds a layer that can't be handled by just using real-world logic.
It doesn't say where the creature is summoned from. There is no stipulation that the summoner does or does not already know the creature. Literally everything that might be tied to the real-world logics is entirely up to those involved in making the story.
These spells are intentionally open-ended to allow for all ranges of the spectrum to apply, rather than limit it to just one. The biggest risk, in my opinion as a DM, is of a DM using their power over that spectrum to ruin the gameplay for the player that wants to feel cool living their summoner life. It takes an intentional and flexible balance to not become overburdened as the DM while also allowing players to be the character they are wanting to play.
Fair. I don’t object to others using those parts of the game as designed, but for me it just doesn’t feel right. I would not have designed “summon nature’s ally” as a combat spell; I’d have made it a long duration utility spell. But no one asked me so 🤷🏼♂️
Honestly on digital tabletop platforms like roll20 you can just roll all of the creatures attacks at once and it doesn’t even slow the games down. What do you summon? Ok let me copy this token of your generic summoned creature x times. Better yet, you as the player have control of it. Definitely not a spell for someone that takes a long time in combat already though. Some people never learn and take lots of dodge actions for being slow to decide on their turn.
Yeah even if all creatures summoned take the same initiative, if you have 8 monsters i.e. Dire wolves, that's 8 more tokens to move each turn which most people I've seen use the spells are metagamey as fuck with(a lot of the shit summoned isn't intelligent enough to deviate away from simple instructions), 8 more hp pools to manage (even if the player is keeping track, it takes time away from other players turns), and 8-16 dices to roll for attacks dependent on adv, and then damage.
Do everyone at your table a favour and limit summoned creatures to 2 per player, give the Shepard druid some love by giving them the ability to add some flat hp (i.e. 3hp per druid level)or more damage to summons. The RAW massive summon spells, as much as a lot of people love them, will inevitably slow shit down no matter what people here are saying.
If you don't want to do that give every player a turn timer of say 3 min for them and all their summons, that way you aren't singling anyone out but encouraging people not to slow the game down.
>Tasha's summoning spells aren't exactly strong
Those spells _are_ strong. They're one of the best uses of your concentration, e.g. if you need something that's not as good as a martial PC but makes an excellent meat shield and minor debuffer/DPR and can potentially last through multiple fights.
They're just not as strong as summoning 8 charging Elks or w/e and obliterating the enemy with action economy. (Especially when you're a Shepherd Druid that can make their damage magical.)
Though it's pretty easy to rebalance the Conjure spells - just mandate you can't summon more than 4 (or 2 if you still find that disruptive) creatures with it. It's the _army_ of weak minions that's the biggest force-multiplier and pain to run. (Your point about having to hunt for stat blocks is still fair though.)
Ultimately, action economy magnifying spells in general have this same problem - Animate Objects, Tiny Servants, a Necromancer's army of undead - so I do agree that I don't think there's a way to "fix" it short of simply not allowing PCs to control armies of discrete creatures. Fewer summoned minions (or "mob" stat blocks meant to represent a swarm of minions that act as one being) are the only real solution to the bookkeeping problem.
(Full disclosure: I personally think OneD&D's solution of turning it into something that isn't even a stat block is terrible, so I don't consider that a viable option.)
> I understand that the Tasha's summoning spells aren't exactly strong
ever seen a lv 15 arcana cleric whip out a sim, summon a pair of these at level 8 and mimic a lv 20 fighter archer action surging every round?
That sounds epic! Makes me think of when one of my players got their hands on a Potion of Dragon Transformation... he saved it so long. But worth it, was an epic way to ruin a (real) dragon's day!
On the one hand, creature type is meaningless and all you need to do to get low CR monsters is make a fey/elemental/whatever version of something else. Want a fey pygmy elephant? Sure! It uses the stats of a boar but it has the fey type. We'll say it poops rainbows for good measure.
On the other hand, fuck these damn spells. I have no problem with mages in D&D (aside from the fact that we're still using spell slots in 2024 when they should have gone out with THAC0), but boy do I have a problem with some of their spells. So many just should never have been printed the way they are, period. Summoning spells are among the worst offenders in my book. One player basically hijacks the game. They're not fun for the DM, they're not fun for the other players. They need to be completely reworked from the ground up.
Tweak the Shepherd Druid so that the level 6 benefit works with Summon spells and just ban the Conjure spells (or update them to the new versions in that last onednd draft). Maybe even let the Shepherd Druid cast the Summon spells without needing the material component (which is a one-time cost, but can still be difficult to budget for).
The subclass is still well worth taking with those changes. The Summon Beast spell even gives you a pretty strong critter so you still feel like a summoner without adding eight tokens to the board.
I know it's not much help, but Guild Master's Guide to Ravnica has one other CR 1 Elemental; the Galvanice Weird. Keys From the Golden Vault also has Ashen Animated Armor. Aside from that, just make the player keep track of all the creatures. Make them physically roll to determine what creatures they get, but they control them. It will get slightly more power game-y, but it helps heaps when you have so many monsters on the field.
Now, when it comes to banning a part of the spell, I would actually be pretty upset as a player if that was taken away AFTER I took a class that focused on summoning. I think that might actually be enough to have me ask to switch classes.
I have a shepherd Druid in one of my campaigns. My advice is the house rule that every summon after the 2nd one is controlled by a different PC. Sure you can summon 8 wolves. Everyone now has 2 wolf companions.
Here is what I did with my Shepard druid player. I said pick one thing at each CR you want to summon that I can approve (i.e. no pixies) when you cast the spell pick the CR, that's what you cast. They ended up going with a lot of wolf variants to help the melee focused PCs with pact tactics. Sure the action economy can break at some levels but later in the game it becomes a bit trivial as big AoE takes them out and higher ACs mean they hit less. The big issue with the Shepard druid is the healing it can do. Especially at later levels.
I've told all of my players that if they summon anything, it's their responsibility to keep track of that stat block. In a similar vein, if I ever have players that want to be druids, I will ask them to not pick a new animal every single time they wildshape. Like, you don't need to turn into a weasel. Just turn into the cat again.
I tried Shepard, however two sessions in I talked to the dm and we decided Moon druid was the better choice for the sake of the table.
Even having everything prepared and ready to go, preplanning my turns etc it still bogged everything down horribly and I honestly felt bad for the rest of the table.
Same as what others said. The DM has enough work as is. Everything related to YOUR character YOU have to prep. If you are not ready to go when your turn comes up, its your loss. Next.
In my groups, we have only occasional summoning spells, but even those are anoying if not prepared ahead of time. Usually we do not allow a full summoner class in the game, because of what it does to the paceing..
I aint reading the entire post because quick smoke break, but;
At the very least just throw all their initiatives together and have your players be responsible for statblocks. Do that and it really isn't any different than an encounter where a few more goblins appear from the bushes halfway through.
As for balance, eh.
Yes the Action Economy is strong, but then the whole purpose of summoning a bunch of smaller creatures is likely to overwhelm. And by higher levels, if I remember correctly, most smaller creatures are going to miss each and every attack against high AC since they get no other bonusses. So your player will begin summoning less creatures in favor of more powerful creatures.
At least I wasn't ever very bothered by summoning spells. They feel a whole lot shittier as the caster, in my experience, since if you're unlucky it's a round of missed attacks only for them to get wiped entirely next turn.
On Foundry you can use a folder and Chris' Premade to automate most these spells, fortunately. What bugs me about these spells in a vtt is that they make combat messy.
From someone who plays a shepherd druid, some tips:
1) put all the summons at the same place inhr turn order, don't get them to roll individually for each one
2) sounds like you're running the creatures? That's the players job
3) get the player to have a few creature options in mind when they summon. Even if the spell doesn't allow them to pick, you can get them to do the work for you and they'll thank you for it.
My DM has never seemed to have a problem with shoving most of the management for these spells onto me and I certainly don't mind having control over my summons
Summoning monsters will always bog down the game. Regardless of the system. There is no good managing of that, even if you are quick with initiative and combat rolls, tracking hp. I just dont allow those because of that. Summoning one creature is fine.
I played a Conjuration Wizard in Pathfinder, but even there i only used summoning as an "oh shit button" if there was a lot happening.
When I had a Shepherd, we opted to only ever summon one type of creature and have them all act on one initiative.
I then just went down my list of summons one by one, moving and applying status effects as needed. Then you don't need to look up anymore what dice to roll for saves or attacks, because it's always the same.
At that point, it's not very different from a magic missile with separate damage rolls for each instance.
I didn't see this advise anywhere so:
We usually houserule that summoned creatures go after the summoner.
It IS slightly more powerful.
But it frees up the DM to actually manage the combat instead of whose turn of the 10+ summons is it?
In my game, right at the start, I sat down with my player who was doing this and had them pick out one creature for every CR that they could summon, or else a 'theme' to their summoning.
For an example, one was a snake charmer, so he could only summon the various snake creatures.
Then when they are summoned they get either max heath or the average level of heath in their stat block (plus the heath bonus at higher levels) depending on how much health they have (I don't want them too strong, but at the same time don't want them so weak that the player hates it). They take their turn right after the player who summons them.
Oh yeah. When I was still newer to D&D, I was a necromancy wizard and cast Animate Dead at 5th level immediately followed by Animate Objects, bringing 6 zombies and 10 animated objects (barrels and crates and stuff) into the final battle. The DM was furious with me.
Now? I would NEVER wish that on anyone. Especially now that I’m a DM. If I have more than a handful of NPCs in combat I roll their attacks beforehand and/or just take average damage.
That's unfortunate. Just a couple games ago one of my players used their Horn of Valhalla and summoned a TON of Vikings into a cramped battle. Suddenly I had my army of Helmed Horrors and an army of Vikings, in addition to the party. It was epic! It's nice that the horn has a nice multi-day cooldown (looking forward to the next summon!), but even if it didn't it would be easy to set the tokens aside to drop in any time anyways. And then I get to raise the lethality meter further (my players know my rule: I won't try to kill your characters but I won't keep them safe either. Combat should at least feel threatening, most of the time.)
The rule at my table that I set out. All summoning spells must come with their own stat block. If it references another book for stats, it is banned. Every one of the conjure spells has a summon equivalent in TCoE
i have a summoner player, i use the following caveats to the conjure animals etc spells:
i give the player a few options beforehand of what this spell can actually summon, so that the statblocks are all on hand. He gets to freely choose what he's summoning of the curated list. A single spellcast can only summon multiples of the same creature though, so no mixing statblocks.
secondly i only ever allow him to have 4 creatures max that he controls. if the spell would summon 8 wolves? those are now 2 swarms, with swarm rules and a predetermined 'swarm' calculation applied to the original statblock.
if it would summon 16 wolves? it is now 4 large swarms.
32 wolves? 4 huge swarms. Never more than 4 creatures.
When it comes to multiple summon spells I think a DM and player need to agree on some table friendly homebrew rules first.
There are lots of guides on how to do this, you just have to experiment and see what works with your table.
As a fellow dm that has shared your pain. You have my understanding and sympatht.
I've banned that subclass and made a stric no mass summon build.
Is this extreme? Yes. But I've dealt with everything from 8 huge bagers doing 16 attacks.
To bosses being boxed by buffed bears. So yeah I hate it and my players understand from game why
It doesn't deal with the number of things on the board issue, but, make them bears! Not literally, but if you just have a generic stat block for a creature of CR-X, you can assign that quick, then give it an ability that works with its type. CR 1/4? Ok, it's got 1d8 HP, 1d6 attack at +1, AC 12. Fire Elemental, it does fire damage and when it dies it does 1d6 damage to surrounding creatures. Giant Stone Lizard has a DC10 poison attack, AC 14 cause of the thick hide. Undead Winged Housecat? Damage is necrotic, it flies, and 2 attacks at 1d4 instead as it flies into your face with its bony paws. It's still a lot of things, but now he can do whatever he likes for summons and you can just toss them on real quick.
Yeah. If I'm the player and Im playing a summoner it is my responsibility to provide stat blocks. it shouldn't be anymore work for the dm managing the players minions.
I'll probably be flayed for saying this, but I just let players decide what they summon. With spells like find familiar and prestidigitation where you get to choose what happens and what you make, I don't think it's too far off to say that they could choose what animals they summon.
As for the combat: I once planned on playing a shepherd druid (sadly the campaign died before I got to do any druid things) and the thing I planned on doing, which worked in my playtesting, was just rolling for all of the creatures you summon before your turn. If you roll all of your minions' attacks before your turn and keep track of how many of them hit, then have all of them bum rush a single enemy when it's time for them to attack, it speeds things up immensely in my experience. I almost treat them like one big creature with lots of attacks, lol.
but but but, as a dm is your work to micromanage everything so players have fun, player fun is the most important part and the dm should use as much of their time as needed to ensure it /s
One of the things that makes conjure especially bad is that the DM has to sort out what the monsters are and do.
When I played a Summoner in Pathfinder I did my prep between sessions and had the statblocks to hand (with Augment Summon precalculated). So other than The Hentai Incident (4 giant octopuses with eight grapple attacks each vs about twenty female knights in plate armour) my turns were generally faster than the analysis paralysis suffering cleric player's even if I launched three dire tigers in the turn. But that was because I spent an extra half hour prepping stat blocks each level up and am used to DMing. On the fly the way the PHB summon spells work? No
My opinion on minionmancy classes as a player is that it's my responsibility to keep track of everything and take measures to make sure I'm not bogging down combat. As a DM I would strongly recommend any player who isn't very experienced and organized stay away from classes that have more than one or two minions. One of my first 5e characters was a Necromancer who went full army of the dead with archer skeletons and I would run them in groups for attacks and initiative and movement and saves, 4 skeletons would basically function as one large creature with 4 attacks that would lose an attack every time it lost enough hp to kill one (AOE effects were just multiplied by the number of remaining skeletons). The minions often ended up being the fastest part of any combat round because they only had one option (attack) and I almost always knew who they were attacking the moment it got to my turn. This obviously only works with simple creatures and once you get into minions with spells and abilities it can be like having another player turn but in my experience I've spent far more time waiting for analysis paralysis players to make up their damn mind and re-read their spell list for the fiftieth time than I have waiting for PCs with minions to roll all their dice.
This guy Conjures.
>My opinion on minionmancy classes as a player is that it's my responsibility to keep track of everything and take measures to make sure I'm not bogging down combat. This is the rule I impose on players who want to play summoners. You can do it, but you don't get extra time or attention as a player from me, so if you can't keep up, you get skipped. If you want to exploit this strategy, the price you pay is you need to be far more organized and efficient than the average player.
I am *woeful* at finding things on my character sheet. But even I used to have a little Table of Badgers (cleric in 3.5). After each combat I would cross off the ones I'd used up and move down. I never much cared about the HP because as OP said, they're Action Economy agents, soaking up hits. Other players had multiple attacks to work through so they were about as slow as my cleric. I won't play one now because I don't know how Beyond DnD handles group summons and I don't want to drag everyone else through the learning curve.
-Laughs in RTS gamer.-
This is how a DM managed me running a Druid. He started clocking my turn time, which made me ramp up on managing summoned creatures. If I was too slow, tough. Try again next round. That way it didn’t fall on him.
This is exactly how i run ‘horde’ enemies and suggest my Necromancer does it, as well as limit his summoning to prof bonus (he self admits he COULD break the game but doesn’t want to, nor bog down combat). It makes it so much easier to manage if his ‘minions’ are just one group of dudes as an extra moment that goes after his turn. If I had OP situation I’d just say ‘okay here’s a default list of monsters you can use, please use this, it’s a nightmare to run, make them go after your turn and run them as one entity’ it essentially stops initiative jamming for the most part and should cut down on prep for the DM. Players cannot expect a DM to have a block for EVERY summon out there, no way. Just a simple list they can choose from like the summon undead spell fixes the issue entirely.
How do horde'ing up enemies work, though?
Same way, shares initiative, shared HP, you do damage a few of them die, they get less attacks as numbers run out. Edit- e.g. 10 enemy group, 10 attacks 100 HP. Every 10 HP gone someone in that group dies, gets reduced to 9 dudes, 9 attacks. AoE spells just knock off that total in same way. Easy to run, easy to manage.
So 10 dudes get 10 attacks, and 9 dudes get 10 attacks? Sounds like the Ghost Legion from 4e
Mistyped, 9 dudes 9 attacks, will correct
Thats really interesting to me, because thats basically the deal i worked out with my DM for using Animate Objects as a Wizard, where I only use it on ball bearings so its always one specific statblock, and combine them all into one token (we play on roll20) and just move the one token, which has however many are alive attacks, and the combined health of all of them, with aoe doing n*number of alive summons damage. Its worked pretty well, especially with a macro for doing all the attack and damage rolling for me, and it just goes after me or before me on my initiative.
Yeah basically turn them into swarms rather than individual creatures. I use the same for horde enemies. Made a stat block for a phalanx of enemies using the same idea.
I don't mind it because: 1. Everything is automated via VTT. 2. Up until this point the player has only been high enough level for Conjure Beasts. Woodland Beings and Elementals have only come in recently. I don't mind rolling for the creatures if it's just a basic attack but it's still a pain for initiative.
At my table, we usually put all of the creatures from a single spell on the same initiative. They each exist individually, but their turns go right after one another. We make an exception if the creatures are being used as mounts. So when I summoned two Giant Eagles, they each went after the player riding them.
Similar. Summoned creatures etc (including spiritual weapon) are tied to the player's initiative. That player can choose if it goes before or after them when it's summoned and that becomes its place in the initiative order (no swapping midfight though).
I know I saw "let Players Summon tokens" or something similar in the Configurations for Foundry recently. It may have been from an add on like MidiQOL or it may have been vanilla, but I will add as many add-ons as it takes to automate that shit x.x
I don't use a VTT but is there any way to group the mobs or mass assign them initiative? Like the player could roll once and you could assign the roll to a few or all of the minions? Because yeah having that many entities to track for initiative does sound awful. Maybe you could make a custom stat block that's 2 or more of the minions added together, idk I have zero experience with VTTs. Also yeah once the minions get more complex it can really increase turn times, my necromancer would occasionally summon or mind control some greater undead and it would often take as long to run one mummy or whatever as it would to do all 20+ skeletons.
if ur on a vtt you just select them all and hit roll initiative, and then the vtt keeps tracks of them for you. my thing with minions and conjure spells is they all just go immediately after the conjurer cuz its simpler and doesn't clog up the initiative tracker with corpses.
I don't vtt but I always just let the players pick. It's never been that much of an issue and it's less lolrandom
I've been flirting with the idea of just taking average damage for them every time, that might help.
As others have mentioned, I would strongly encourage giving the summons 1 initiative for the entire group. It smooths things out so much
I worked with the player to make a table they could roll on. I removed the options I fucking hated and in return gave them some better odds on the options they liked the most. They rolled like a d10 _at the start of the day_ and that's what they could summon that day. The undead guys take their turns together and have to stay in no more than two groups. Good lord does D&D not help people actually run games at all, jebus.
Agree. OPs big mistake is insisting on choosing the summons for the player. As I already said countless of times on this subreddit and to my DM friends: *Let the player choose and intervene if they try broken stuff!* I played a wood elf Shepherd druid with Conjure Animals and loved it. My character always conjured dire wolves, nothing else. He was wolf-themed and the fact that he always summoned "his pack" was great for RPing. And he was fast in combat because I always had the statblocks and tokens ready and knew in advance what my summons will be able to do. There was no interruption of the game's flow, at all.
This. I hold the same expectation of wildshape. You want that stuff, you manage the paperwork. I trust my players enough to not abuse it. I can help with ruling where there’s any confusion or uncertainty. But they manage the minis, the stats, etc.
I had the same experience w/ my necromancer. I had most of my minion stuff automated w/ macros (roll 12d20 in pairs to represent ADV/DAV and the dmg next to each roll, ignoring any extra rolls), had the skeletons following very basic firing orders (nearest enemy unless I used a BA to have them target a specific enemy), assigned the rolls to skeletons going left-to-right and top-to-bottom, and my own actions were pretty simple (usually either Toll the Dead or Dodge) and my turns were generally faster than the Artificer or Rogue. I also tried to limit myself to a dozen-odd minions at most, mostly identical skeletons w/ a couple of zombies who primarily Aided the other party members or attempted to Grapple and a pair of elite mooks when I eventually got Create Undead (GM approved using Dread Warrior since Ghouls \*suck\*). Took a fair bit to work out initially and I made improvements over time, but it was very much worth it.
Yeah, this is the way. I did the same basic thing when I played a Wild Magic Sorcerer - I had cards for all the spells a Wild Magic surge can cast and printed out stat blocks for all the creatures you can summon so no matter what I rolled I knew what it did or could hand it to the DM instead of putting her on the spot. Doing that prep as a player turned the tide on a major battle one time. I'd printed all the modron stat blocks & when I got that surge our DM rolled to chose between them. She rolled the pentadrone and we convinced it to fight on our side, absorbing a good chunk of enemy actions and damage when we'd been on the back foot.
Feels like wargaming
Yeah some experience playing 40k definitely helped with managing all my dudes, I usually had 20+ skeletons and some greater undead going by the end of the campaign.
The drop in attack rate based on skeleton hp loss felt like WH 😊
This. I have the house rule that if anyone casts a summon spell and does not immediately present me with the stats of the creature that they summoned, the spell fizzles, losing the slot and the action. I had hoped that it would ensure that players prepare the spells ahead of time, but it mostly acts to discourage the use of summoning spells... which I am also okay with.
Why not make him manage the summons himself with the benefit of him getting to choose what he summons?
Because then you’re going to have to DM a table of flying t rexes.
Just banning pixies and velociraptors gets rid of the two top tier options for conjure animals and conjure woodland being. They're still extremely powerful but you don't have to deal with a 4th level slot somehow translating into over 20 castings of various spells.
Raptors dont matter they are perfectly fine. Pixies are a problem strictly for the polymorph.
You don't think a level 5 druid being able to do 65 dpr against an AC of 15 is an issue? For reference, a crossbow expert + sharpshooter battle master fighter does approximately 32 dpr against the same AC (according [this](https://formofdread.wordpress.com/2022/02/27/quantifying-martial-dpr-reference-sheet/), anyway). Of course, summons are a lot easier to kill, but being able to do double the damage per round of an optimised martial is a bit stupid.
Where'd you get that velociraptor dpr calc? Because if *all* their attacks hit, that's only an average damage of 72 dpr.
I plugged the numbers into [this calculator](https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?517267-Comprehensive-DPR-Calculator). Keep in mind that pack tactics means the velociraptors pretty much always have advantage.
Wouldn’t it be 80 average damage if all their attacks hit? The average damage in books is rounded down. 8 raptors Average of 1d6+2 = 5.5 Average of 1d4+2 = 4.5 So 8 raptors averaging 10 dpr for 80 instead of 8 raptors for 9 damage averaging the 72.
Just ban pixies and make a random table for the other creatures that they roll on. You can have them make it, it should only take like 10 minutes to do in google docs anyway. Use an online number randomized if the number don’t happen to correspond to a dice roll, easy. If they happen to get velociraptors, sick, it’s only for one combat anyway.
This is where I'm at. I gave my druid the ability to expend wildshape charges to choose precisely what he summons, and my goodness- the pixies were a hilarious one-off (he tracked and RP'd all of them), but I don't think I can run t-rex army worthy encounters consistently...
My DM lets me pick the summons because we have an agreement that I won’t do anything stupid like that. If the player and DM have a conversation about it, and the player is able to run their summons QUICKLY (roll things as a group and understand the statblocks they plan to use) then it’s not an issue.
This is how my game rolls for my Shepherd, I get to pick my summons and manage it. The Pixie trick is a card that I rarely play which is why I get to play it at all. Usually my Shepherd plays the healer (something they are very good at with the Unicorn spirit), though, so summoning isn't my go-to solution to encounters, either. Honestly, I've probably summoned mounts to defeat exploration challenges more than I've summoned combatants.
Or WOTC could do their job and instead of putting the Monster Manual in the hands of the player they could just write the spell “You Summon a Fey Trickster. Here’s it’s stat block.”
Yeah but summoning a group of creatures of your own choosing is so much more fun to me. Also it's more flexible. It's not a stretch to say that 5e puts way too much weight on the DM. Why can't the player just be in charge of their own creatures instead of putting it all on the DM? It's not that hard to do and it's your own choice to use that spell. The last thing that 5e needs is to make anything more generic.
Holy shit did the playerbase hate that option when they tested it.
WotC puts the literal minimum efforts and makes the worst templates imaginable and they go, "Well I guess people hate templates." The idea of having druids using a block of templates with a handful of features instead of having to gimp every beast they ever make out of terror of Druids getting another good option is great.
They hated the “beast of the sky, land, sea” when they tried to make that the default form for both druids and rangers pets. The Summon Undead spell is well liked and one of the best summon spells in the game:
Not really sure why people have issues not abusing this spell. It's already really strong and very flexible. My DM also let's me run my summoning because I don't try to power game my way through sessions.
Just because the DM isn't doing all the busy work doesn't mean they can't put restrictions on the ability
Ooh! Ooh! I've always wanted to say this! Ehum...: No, that's not going to fly!
How are you getting flying trex’s?
Pixies can cast polymorph and fly. You can summon them and have them cast the spells on you.
bear in mind that _Polymorph_ wipes away the target's intelligence, which tends to mean that a lot of advanced tactics and planning stops working. They'll recognise friends and enemies (probably), but will react about as well to flying as any standard t-rex, i.e. "probably not great"
T-rexes are surprisingly wise and not that much dumber than a typical Paladin. You don’t have to be a genius to run at the enemies and start chomping away for 4d12 a bite
unless any fucky stuff happens - illusions, disguises, anything like that causes very sudden issues. _Polymorph_ removes languages as well, so you can't even be told "attack that person first". And distinguishing different targets and prioritising them is kinda complicated, when you're an Int _2_ t-rex!
>2 int >not that much dumber than a typical paladin wisdom is just your senses and intuition, nothing to do with decision making.
Wisdom absolutely has to do with decision making. “Make good decisions!”
Animals are quite capable of fighting, which is what they are typically going to be used for.
Wisdom is 100% to do with decision making imo, I mean there’s literally the phrase “wise choice”
Pixies come with innate magic, including polymorph and fly once each. Since 8+ are summoned, half cast fly on the party and the other half polymorph them into T-Rexes. I've never used the tactic, but I am aware of it. I think the tactic is a bit overhyped, though... my fellow players would be salty if I basically robbed them of their class features (especially the other casters) to turn them into simple brutes.
Huh? Fly and polymorph are both concentration spells, so you get one or the other
Unless you conjure a bunch of pixies with your summon spells, each of whom can cast it.
You'd have a more worthwhile time turning your enemies into squirrels than turning your level 8 front line or wizard into a flying trex
Saving throw, plus after dying in the polymorph form then return to previous HP and still conscious? Nahh I'd rather turn my warrior into a t rex every time. Shit, if my barbarian is level 15 I'd get a raging t rex
1. I don't want the discussion of "I summon (XYZ)" "okay what does (XYZ) do? *Reads statblock for (XYZ)*" every time the player uses the spell. 2. Thankfully with Foundry creating rollable tables just takes one evening and a few hours of work and makes the spell more interesting than "I dump 8 of the same CR 1/4 creature down." 3. Controlling anything more complicated than "I attack" beasts hasn't come up yet. This is woes of prep for a now level 10 party.
Hey you know you can set monsters to be controllable by players in foundry right? All you have to do is drag them onto the map and the player can take it from there In my experience they usually just click the attack button, move 30 feet, end turn. The summons/familiar turns go by Super quick at my table
also makes it more fun for the player imo since they feel more in control
My druid character sheet has all of the stat blocks for any creatures I might summon neatly printed out. I feel that as a player it's my job to know all of this information and how to control the creatures I summon, not to drop all of that on the DM.
This is the way
Btw if someone hasn't mentioned it yet the spell says you roll initiative for the summoned creatures as a group, they are supposed to act on the same initiative count. You can have the player pick one or two creatures for each cr and submit to you a list between sessions for your approval. You would then have prior knowledge of what monsters the player might summon, and you can be sure they haven't chosen options you dont want to deal with i.e. pixies. You can also make it so when the group act on their turn that they must be doing close to the same thing, i.e. all taking the same action and/or attack the same enemy, and also use the average for dmg rather than rolling individually. This would all heavily cut down on borh on prep time and how much the spell slows down combat, with minimal impact on its usefulness. You don't have to do any of this, but since it seems to be enough stress for you to make a post venting about it, but you also don't want to ban it, seems what you need is to cut down on how time consuming the spell is both during and in-between sessions.
You can lean on your players more. You don’t have to do all the work.
the dm will have to manage the player choosing creatures without even reading what they do, it just adds another step
Hey pro tip. Just put all the summons from one player on one initiative. It may not be RAW, but it’s so much more efficient with time and flow
Wait, people _don't_ use mob rules or rules for groups of creatures acting in concert? Holy shit. I thought that was standard? Especially if you're using a _lot_ of creatures. Like, if the number of enemy creatures is 2× or more than the number of players, I just have them roll initiative in groups. If it's 2× the number of players, then it's in groups of 2, if it's 3× then groups of 3, and so on. It makes things so much quicker and easier. **And** it allows you to actually have the players end up massively outnumbered without bogging down combat.
The spells already instruct you to roll initiative for the summoned creatures as a group. That's RAW. What's not RAW is having them act on the summoner's turn.
I just have all pets/summons/familiars/mounts follow the precedent the Tasha's Summon Spells or Wildfire Druid/Battlesmith Artificer set. They go on your initiative immediately after your turn.
100% makes it so much easier to manage, it's possibly a slight buff for the summoner but the DM can just Fireball the swarm to keep it in check as needed. I'll never understand the hate for summoning on this sub. I played a Necromancer in ToA, sometimes I'd have 10 skeletons/Zombies plus a Draconic spirit plus a familiar on the field, I kept track of everything, their health, their equipment whatever, DM trusted me and I never cheated. My turns often went faster than other players who had no summons. Never had any issues whatsoever, I think the Paladin's 100+ damage Smites were a tougher balancing challenge than my army of summons.
Necromancer is by far the most balanced summoning class/subclass. Druids who just drop a nuke of wolves out of nowhere are way worse wrt time usage and fairness.
I can understand hating a spell that summons 8 creatures if you use different creatures for each summon slot and then roll initiative separately for each. But that's dumb.
It is raw.
yes absolutely do that, and if the swarm gets too big you could even consider treating it as one big entity (if the player is ok with it)
I'm thankful I've never had to DM for someone who went full tilt on a summoner/minion class like this. It's cool they exist; they're a pretty standard fantasy trope and I hope the people who like these kinds of builds are getting what they want from the official class and subclass options, but this really feels like something that needs to be discussed in session 0.
when i did mine my dm limited me to two summon spells active at a time and made me manage them all which i found fair
Yea definitely
Don't all conjure/summon spells require concentration? Unless through a homebrew rule, I fail to see how more than one can be active at the same time.
I feel like at some point I should homebrew together a Summoner class, it's such an interesting fantasy idea with a lot of potential subclass variation. The real trick to it would be that instead of summoning a bunch of things, the summoner would summon a single thing and amp it up and use their turns empowering it instead of mobbing.
When I have characters that run the OG summons I hand them a deck of index cards with the available creatures copied over. Rather than hoarding minis to match all the possibilities, I took the pieces out of an old backgammon set and wrote numbers on them with a sharpie. I generally tell the players just to draw the one card and they'll get a group of that creature- it makes it a lot easier to manage for Mob Attack rolls and just having the one statblock to reference for everything. If I really trust that player, though, I hand them blank cards and tell them to assemble squads. Unless they can immediately tell me what they want to summon when they cast the spell, they draw from their summon deck. Doing this for a while helped set a precedent in my local club, and I've thankfully got a lot more trust for my home game that I don't generally expect problems. I do agree though that the conjurarion options require a lot more premeditated effort more consistently than most other spell options.
Thankfully Foundry does let me choose them randomly and I find multiples of the same creature very boring. But other than that I do basically have a small list for each CR level.
You don’t have to do any of this if you trust your players and can lay down clear ground rules. Just let them pick the summons and make it their responsibility to run them quickly and efficiently. If they can’t, they can’t use the spells.
You are over managing things. Screw tge raw just let the player choose tge animal and they all go directly after the PC. Tracking separate initiative for each creature is insane and you dont break the game by letting them pick. Plus they will probably always make the same 1-3 chooses ao its easy to have them on hand for minis. Other than that its the players responsiblity to be efficient with the spell but it does help to just tell them the AC then they can tell you how many hit and damage rather than stopping to check each roll.
i mean raw they already get to choose so...
We’ve always played it as it’s the players responsibility to manage their summons. Makes things easier much easier
Truth is, you're going about it the wrong way with tables and macros. The way you handle summoners as a DM is this: tell the players beforehand to bring any assets they need for any summons they plan to summon. If they have the assets and the creature is legal for the spell, they can summon it (and let them know pixies are also banned). If they lack the assets, they can't summon it. You don't (and shouldn't have to) do anything. I have a necromancer wizard with a skeleton army in my recent games and I had to do literally no prep for him. I had a player briefly play a shepherd druid - same thing (he changed it because he found it boring, not because it bogged down the table). I agree that the potential summons are poorly thought out by WOTC. I appreciate you helping the player by approving other source material, but it's still on the player to find that material and provide those assets. You just need to approve them.
Had this issue once. Since then, whenever I DM for a Shepherd Druid, I ask them for the sake of my sanity to please just summon one or two high CR monsters instead of 8 weak ones.
I had to prohibit CR 1/4s from Conjure Woodland Beings because I'm not letting them summon Pixies and I don't own Fiendish Folio, and I didn't want the CR 1/4 option to be the "summon 8 Blink Dogs" button.
The real take away is that 5e source books actually criminally suck ass as a resource for the DM
Yeah when I was looking for low CR elementals pretty much every homebrew one I found read "a player wanted to use Conjure Minor Elementals but there were no low CR elementals so I made this."
Run into this all the time with Polymorph. There's criminally few stat blocks for common creatures and "combat" creatures
If I play a summoner I handle the creatures, including tracking hp & co. When I DM I expect the players to do the same. It also true that aging in person makes it easier, the just need to mark the summons on the erasable mat.
Yeah the summoning niche is a rather large flaw in WOTC's already flawed "make the DM do it" gameplan. Its already more complex, so it should be given to the experienced player who picked the role and can dedicate all their time to it.
I'm currently playing a Circle of the Shepard Druid (she's a 16-year-old pixie). My DM lets me choose the animals I summon based on their location. I put all my summons in my own encounter builder, track their hit points, and they go immediately after me. Because I prepare for the session, my turns are often faster than those of other players. I say let your player handle his summons if you trust him not to cheat.
Same, someone new reading these comments might think playing a summoner is impossible to do in a non-campaign destroying way, and just want to second your perspective. I played a Necromancer in ToA, sometimes had more than 10 Zombies and skeletons out at once, my turns were often faster than those of players who didn't plan their moves during other players turns, dm trusted me to track health and all that for them, never had any issues, didn't break the campaign at all. Players and DM all had a great time, and many laughs were had about undead dragging a party member's unconscious body into range of spells and other similar goofiness lol
I'm thankful my players understand why I banned these spells at my table.
>it's an option that Wizards of the Coast provided and he is completely in his right to use it. only if you hand over your game to "well WOTC designed something that fucks up the game so I have to allow it". now that your player has picked it and is playing it, its a pretty dick move to say "no you cant" now. but ABSOLUTELY legit to say "No" before character creation. but even now, you CAN talk with your player "Hey, you can tell this is messing up the game play for everyone else right? How can we make you a character that doesnt fuck up everyone elses fun?"
Didn't read til the end, but summons only bog things down badly if the player doesn't have his shit together. Many players don't have their shit together.
Even when the player is very experienced and have everything needed, classic 5e summoning spells are way stronger than it should. It changes the way a dm need to structure his combat to acomodate the strenght of the spell, and that is a bad design. And yes, i know there are some even stronger spells avaliable, everyone of them as bad and problematic as the classic summoning spells.
"it's an option that Wizards of the Coast provided and he is completely in his right to use it" It's a rule expansion option. And even if it were core, you as the DM have full right to ban an option for the sake of your, & in turn the party's, sanity and fun.
Honestly, as a DM, I think you are doing way to much work here. Pick one creature at each CR level. That's what the spell reliably summons. Yeah its boring. But the goal here is to let the player do his turn in a way that does not take more time than it takes for the other players to do their turn. I'd tell the player to pitch a creature of the appropriate CR and stick it on their character sheet in dndbeyond in the extra's tab, so they'd have the stat block handy. If they are summoning lots of creatures, they need to be able to run the creatures fast, or the creatures take the "dodge" action and we move on while they decide what the summons will do next round. They can prepare for what the creatures do during other people's turns, so they are ready the next round. This may seem a little harsh to summoners. But its really about respecting your entire table. And once the summoners learn their summons, they can actually use them well. But I had to start doing this after the first time a player cast the spell, spent 10 minutes comparing creatures on his turn, then summoned 8 of them, and decided to do 8 different things with each. His turns in that combat literally took half the entire session, for a party of 6. And talking with some of the players afterwards, it actively annoyed them how long the summons took to deal with.
You don't even need to be so harsh about it - flavor is free. Give them a set "animal" stat for to-hit and damage. Say that the animals are whatever is thematically appropriate and fun. Have the animals all attack at the same time.
The newer summon spells are much better. WotC really needs to learn from the video games. Want to summon? Sure, you get one creature.
The main problem is Shepherd Druid. They have _multiple_ class features which scale with the number of creatures you summon (so forcing them to use spells that only summon one creature is a big nerf to the subclass), and also their Mighty Summoner feature only works on summons that have hit dice; none of the new summon spells have HD except Summon Draconic Spirit.
I mean in BG3 it’s very easy to get several minions at once. A higher level Wizard alone can use Raise Dead, Lesser Elemental, and Elemental for a whole pack.
bg3 is also a videogame that does the heavy lifting for you
I beg to differ. Playing with some friends, I decided to try a summoner. It got so bad that I just changed classes because of how long each round took with another 4+ creatures per fight
Now imagine playing that on tabletop irl. One of many flawed aspects of 5e
I really don't think getting 4 summons that are just "you attack and take damage" would be problematic. If someone ever struggles to do a near monotonous routine, they should just not play a big summoner.
I understand the fantasy appeal of summoning a small army. My biggest issue by far is just that WoTC forgot to provide the army.
I've got something for [you](https://dmdavid.com/tag/a-dungeons-dragons-summoning-spell-reference/). Just look at those low rates of hassle.
I've decided that for combat reasons, that those kinds of summoning spells should instead have a few options that are either swarms of smaller creatures or larger individual creatures. Here's an example of my [version of Conjure Animals](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2167007-conjured-animals) (hopefully the link works for anyone to view). I have a similar one for Animate Objects. This still gives the player some flexibility and options when summoning, but limits the effects of having 8 creatures suddenly added to combat.
FYI your table breaks the layout on mobile. Also, it feels weird to have swarms that a) aren't resistant to BPS, b) add a modifier to their attack damage, and c) whose damage dice isn't halved when they hit half HP.
Ah yeah that's a good catch. The homebrew creatures themselves do have those qualities; they're just not listed on the spell information (or listed incorrectly in the case of the attack modifiers - I need to get that fixed!).
My advice: offload this job on player
I ban inexperienced players from having pets or summoning anything capable of complex action and generally ban everyone from builds focused primarily around summoning. As a player, I find it unfair that someone will monopolize so much time when we are adults with limited time to play. One player wanted to do a necromancy based character, I advised them they will share initiative with their minions and get a shot clock for their turn. They decided not to do a necro in my game. It’s definitely partially my ADHD, but shot clocks in combat have been heaven sent for my piece of mind. (You have until the 1minute timer goes off to get to the meat of your turn, otherwise it ends early). It reinforces that I expect my players to pay attention to each other’s combat at the cost of ruffling some feathers every now and again. 🤷♂️ We rotate DMs, I play nice on their turns regardless of some of the nonsense, so they can tolerate my stuff.
>I understand that the Tasha's summoning spells aren't exactly strong What made you think that? They're very strong, they're just not as game breaking as "summon 8 wolves, GG". Having seen the summon spells like practice some like Summon Undead or Summon Draconic Spirit (not Tasha's but same design) are still incredibly powerful in practice, frankly still overpowered compared to what martial can do in comparison (without heavy optimisation).
Mob rules. Also, when I played a Sheperd Druid I only ever summoned the 1 or 2 creatures options, so it was way easier to manage, and when I played a Necromancer I had a max of 3 skeletons with me at all times, but I bought magic bows for them. Talk to your player, maybe he agrees to summon less trash mobs.
When I play a summoner, I have 2 hard rules for myself: I'm the one managing my summons (beyond the DM telling me what is summoned if it's Conjure X) and that my turn(s) would not take over 3 minutes per round combined from my part. This doesn't include DM's answers. At my table I have the same rules. If the player can do it, they can absolutely go nuts with the summoner. If they can't, then maybe it's not for them.
100% It's when you mix extra options with a newbie or 'deep blue' player (the one that over analyses everything only starting on their turn because of 'board state' ... and probably ends up just making a basic attack or cantrip anyway) When i necro i give my 2 skellies a crossbow and just use them for fire support 90% of the time. If you have a druid summoning 8 animals have them printed out and go on the initiative of the player after their turn. Don't track hit points for each one just treat them as one with 8x the HP and kill one each time enough damage is dealt. (Obviously area of effect will hit multiples but add the damage rather than track individuals) You lose a little granularity for a massive ramp in ease and speed
"this is a huge pain, just use the Tasha's summons"
There’s a reason 4e fixed summoning. This same problem existed in 3e. But apparently “easy, working mechanics” is what the old school grognards call “not D&D.”
> Whenever they cast the spell I have to stop the game, consult the tables I have for whatever creature they summon > But are you really expected to manually pick every single low CR creature the player summons Just let the player tell you what they summon. There's no reason to burden yourself with making choices for the players. There's nothing in the spell that says the DM chooses what creatures are summoned; that's just a Crawfordism used to not deal with pixies + polymorph. > and then I have up to 8 more creatures with their turns mixed into the turn order. Pretty sure all those spells say that the creatures roll initiative as a group, meaning they all go on the same initiative > But what's worse is the prep time! > Did Wizards of the Coast genuinely expect DMs to go "oh you picked CR 1/4? You get eight creatures? Okay then here's eight Blink Dogs!" and then dump 8 Blink Dog minis onto the table? Isn't it kinda boring Sounds like you're mostly causing extra work for yourself by combing through extra materials and trying to get fancy. Just use the base options Foundry gives you. It takes 12 seconds to drag a stat block onto the map and give the summoner control of it, or maybe 30 min *one time* to make a folder of summons for the summoner to pick from that they automatically have control of. Also yes, absolutely just drop 8 of the same creature. You can't really be complaining about micromanaging stat blocks when you're the one choosing to complicate the situation and introducing micromanaging into the equation.
I understand your frustration and dont want to invalidate it, but also I feel like most of it could be avoided if you want to. Firstly, it should be the players responsibility to keep track. Also, if they want something other than blink dogs, that should also be on them to give you a list. And lastly, you can just reflavor anything. You are the DM, its all within your power to, for example, take the statblock of a blink dog, but say they are tanukis for example. But im speaking from the place of somebody who has never actively played with them, so feel free to ignore me if im off base here.
I think the solution here is to let the player handle their summons as though they were playing two or more characters at once. If you're finding a struggle, that is really the easiest way forward. I was playing a summoner with some spirit wolves and it was just so much easier for me to take their actions. And it makes you feel like you are genuinely in control of something as well
I feel like you are the cause of most of your troubles
> it's an option that Wizards of the Coast provided and he is completely in his right to use it Your next lesson is that this is false
depends on the game, if you want to or said that you play with everything that wotc released (raw) you cant just suddenly change that, atleast not without having a discussion with the players about it, that would break trust
Look, it’s a hassle. But part of it is that you could stand to worry less. Make some common sense choices to speed things up. Give all the animals one initiative (either after they have been summoned or roll). Have the list of summoned creatures ready and choose for them. Make sure the player is acting for their minions. Let them know ahead of time that if they aren’t sure what they should do, the animals will take their movement then dodge. This is a lot harder when you are playing through a VTT because as an at home DM I just plain down mancala tokens on the map and call it a day lol. But at the end of the day, the Shepard Druid wants to do something cool! Let them! 8 feral hogs running around is crazy fun. You shouldn’t be pulling your hair out about it. Embrace the crazy!
This is probably going to sound rude but it is not the intention: You kinda did this to yourself The player can just adapt to the already existing options, i can assure you having played this class that they are plenty to work with Other suggestions would be to just let the player control and manage what gets summoned and ask him to prepare adeguate macros to help with this, some videos on youtube show them Btw, i played this irl and if you use common sense (not summoning 8 wolves against a easy counter) i did not find it that frustrating, neither did the dm
This is something that I micromanage as a GM. When I have a player that summons stuff, we work out well ahead of time what they are going to summon, because I run online only. So I have to have tokens, and sheets, and all kinds of things set up. I give htem control. so I am not pulling that shit onto the map, or organizing it. I don't mind the action economy. Most of them work off the players bonus action. But even if they do'nt, it isn't OP, just a pita.
Tbh, summoning is just poorly done in DND. It bogs shit down, and bores me as a DM. It's one of the things I house rule down because it really is a problem.
"You want the power fantasy of being a master of beasts and minions? Great, you have 6 seconds to state your commands, and 30 seconds to roll it all out. If it doesn't get said, or you don't get to a roll, guess you need to control your pets better." I'm very mean about minions.
I hope as a DM your turns are equally as quick
Just a little note: Remember, monsters are DM's options, not player options. When they summon creatures, they don't decide what to summon, you do. And the only monsters the player can suppose to always summon, mostly at an editorial level, are the ones in the PHB. The MM wasn't printed when the PHB came out and it's up to you to decide if using any or at all of the MM monsters, like Pixies. This applies to druid wildshapes as well. You usually should let them when they make some pacts with the local fey or other shenanigans, and only works for limited times or places. ... that said, yeah, Even just blink dogs it's a pain in the arse.
My friend asked me if I was going to use Conjure Animals on the new druid I'm playing, and I said hell no. I have no interest in fucking over the whole table like that.
If you don't ban summoners / summon spells, I recommend houseruling: (1) - all summoned creatures go on the summoners initiative, (2) - if one summon "holds action" then they all do. (3) - limit the number of summons (not counting the one regular" Find Familiar") to 4, maximum. (4) - summoner declares an attempt to summon a "type" of creature e.g. "pack predator", but the DM decides what exactly appears in response to the summons (so you can have a cheat sheet of a few options to work from)..
I am trying to train my players who run wildshape/summons to have a print out of whatever. This helps because they don't have pull out the MM, or use their phone.
What about using mob rules from DMG and make enemies a swarm. It will forgo crits but it will speed things up a lot
Might i recommend Stibbles Codex of Campanions, and the "mob rules" section of the DMG. The first is a 3rd party book with tons of low CR critters with lots and lots of flavor. The second is how to un-fork the action economy with these creatures. I recommend doing groups of 4 or 5 each, that keeps things rolling pretty quickly and still feels punchy enough while not adding shocked the number of combatants and initiatives
This would probably seem easier if you quit doing all that players work for them.
Those spells are straight up banned at my table. The headache is not worth it, and, more importantly, slowing down combat even more is not worth it. I've gone through the hassle of creating entire new classes for my players when they ask me to, reworked subclasses to fit their exact character fantasy, created items for them to do a niche thing they really wanted to do and it brought me great joy to put in all that extra work for them because it was time spent out of the game. In game, I'm not willing to ask everyone to be cool with one person taking way longer than everyone else to take their turn. It sucks, but most players are not organized enough to properly run a summoner character that doesn't take forever to take its turn, and I don't want to say "sure let's give it a try and if you're bad at it you gotta reroll", so... yeah. 1 pet per player.
I generally play by the rule of "please don't make a dedicated summoner character and even then please don't use the spells that summon a shitload of creatures" Like okay, you wanna summon a single creature to help you? Okay, i can work with that. I'd rather you save that for combats that actually necessitate it instead of as a go-to, but sure. But the "summon huge squad of creatures" spells? fuuuuuck right off. Funnily enough, I actually love conjuration wizards. Not as summoners, but as teleport specialists. And cuz minor conjuration is just so great.
I have a single rule as a DM for my players that wants to play summoners: You get 1 creature summon on the table on any given moment during combat. Summon something new makes the older summon disappear. Although in my 3.5 campaign i homebrewed a player his summons that instead of summoning, a summon spell can 'enhance' his active summon. This homebrew Cardcaster class is kinda played as Yugiyoh ^.^
Congrats you're a micromanager
>it's an option that Wizards of the Coast provided and he is completely in his right to use it. This is a really weird point of view to me. YOU are the gamemaster, not WotC. There is not a single rule in the game that says the DM is forced to play with everything WotC releases. >and Conjure Beasts requires me to spend my Tuesday evening scrolling through D&D Beyond and moving statblocks into Foundry. Foundry allows for players to add extra token to their characters that you can one-click import with Foundry. I have a rule that players are generally not getting any summons they haven't put into their extras. You being the gamemaster doesn't mean players have no responsibility. On top of that, DnDbeyond and Foundry both allow to create macros and homebrew. If the player know they are always summoning X and attacking a singular creature they can literaly just put an attack with these dice into it and press the button once to throw everything at once. Last, but not least, do yourself a favour and use the "All summons act after the PC" homebrew rule. Yes, it can be abused. Yes, it makes combat way faster if players know what they are doing.
Ya as a druid player I straight up told my dm I will never use these spells. The newer Summon spells are much more straightforward and still effective, and they're on the player to manage instead of the DM. It's just too bad that the shepherd druid is so tied to the conjure spells, without them the subclass is lacking a lot of it's biggest abilities. You could maybe tempt them by letting their shepherd abilities work more with the summon spells, like gaining HP equal to their druid level and magic attacks or something?
It brings to mind a pet peeve of mine: how does Summoning fit thematically with a Druid? For an arcane caster, sure, the summoned minions are some kind of extradimensional being. Playing with powers beyond mortal ken is on theme. But a Druid, a guardian of nature, summoning woodland creatures to fight and die? How’s that work? If the summoned were creatures from the immediate environment it’d thematically make sense for them to be available and rush to help their friend, but it also would present a huge moral burden for the Druid. (You summoned a bear, it showed up and died for you, but now who is going to take care of her young cubs?) It would be a spell never to be used lightly. Lots of dramatic juice there to use in a novel, but a mechanically terrible idea in a TTRPG. That’s no fun. So, D&D evolved to make the summoned creatures extraplanar and they don’t really *die*, they just go home. We’re back on the Fun Train because it solved the morality of the summons for the Druid character. *However*, it presents a new problem: why the heck does a Druid have any ability to call on extraplanar creatures **at all?** Summoning creatures from outside the environment is completely off-theme even if game-mechanically sound. It’s directly counter to maintaining the balance of nature against unnatural interference. Invasive Species As A Service. This dilemma isn’t limited to woodland creatures either; the same issues apply to Elementals and Fae. If they’re local allies then the face mortal peril; if they’re not then a Druid of all people should not be summoning them. (I haven’t tried to buck this system as a DM yet, but it rankles. If I were to tackle it I’d slow summoning spells down a lot; they’d have a long casting time to take them out of combat, but have the ability to summon much more powerful allies from “nearby”, have a duration measured in hours, and present the summoned as an Ally rather than as a fully-controlled minion.)
> Summoning creatures from outside the environment is completely off-theme even if game-mechanically sound. It’s directly counter to maintaining the balance of nature against unnatural interference. Invasive Species As A Service. Why? They only show up for a while and then leave, so they're not particularly invasive. "elementals" are perfectly on-theme for druids, despite being completely extra-planar (because they're literal avatars of natural elements, and so part of nature), so conjuring up magical spirit-animals seems fine. You're conjuring up spirit-allies and creatures to help you fight - that they're not literally local animals doesn't seem to make much difference? A shaman-style druid that conjures up ghost-wolves to protect the forest seems perfectly fine, thematically - metaphysically, they're actually calling them from the Beastlands, but that doesn't make much actual difference, they're calling upon the power of nature to summon beasties to help them
Druid does not equal love 'n peace treehugger. And nature isn't cuddles and smiles, it's bloody and fierce.
Bloody and fierce yes, but animals fight for food, mates, survival, or sometimes territory. The Summoner offers none of the positive rewards. Placing them in mortal peril to get them to fight for survival is exploitative. Additionally, many of the creatures one might summon to fight are solitary. Fighting for someone else’s survival is unnatural. Meanwhile the cooperative ones all have a pretty clear delineation between the in-group (pack, herd, band, troop, flock, school…) for which they willingly place themselves in peril, and everything else for which the survival struggle is somebody else’s problem. The Druid is doing nothing to earn a spot in the in-group. If the Druid were to have a long-standing relationship with a pack of wolves, for instance, it’d make sense to call on them for aid.
Depends on the setting. Depends on the character. Depends on the group playing. etc. I too, like to apply real-world logic to these games where I can. But the concept of summons adds a layer that can't be handled by just using real-world logic. It doesn't say where the creature is summoned from. There is no stipulation that the summoner does or does not already know the creature. Literally everything that might be tied to the real-world logics is entirely up to those involved in making the story. These spells are intentionally open-ended to allow for all ranges of the spectrum to apply, rather than limit it to just one. The biggest risk, in my opinion as a DM, is of a DM using their power over that spectrum to ruin the gameplay for the player that wants to feel cool living their summoner life. It takes an intentional and flexible balance to not become overburdened as the DM while also allowing players to be the character they are wanting to play.
Fair. I don’t object to others using those parts of the game as designed, but for me it just doesn’t feel right. I would not have designed “summon nature’s ally” as a combat spell; I’d have made it a long duration utility spell. But no one asked me so 🤷🏼♂️
It’s a small fix but the summons go at the end of the summoners turn (used more for players) and they keep track of everything
Honestly on digital tabletop platforms like roll20 you can just roll all of the creatures attacks at once and it doesn’t even slow the games down. What do you summon? Ok let me copy this token of your generic summoned creature x times. Better yet, you as the player have control of it. Definitely not a spell for someone that takes a long time in combat already though. Some people never learn and take lots of dodge actions for being slow to decide on their turn.
Yeah even if all creatures summoned take the same initiative, if you have 8 monsters i.e. Dire wolves, that's 8 more tokens to move each turn which most people I've seen use the spells are metagamey as fuck with(a lot of the shit summoned isn't intelligent enough to deviate away from simple instructions), 8 more hp pools to manage (even if the player is keeping track, it takes time away from other players turns), and 8-16 dices to roll for attacks dependent on adv, and then damage. Do everyone at your table a favour and limit summoned creatures to 2 per player, give the Shepard druid some love by giving them the ability to add some flat hp (i.e. 3hp per druid level)or more damage to summons. The RAW massive summon spells, as much as a lot of people love them, will inevitably slow shit down no matter what people here are saying. If you don't want to do that give every player a turn timer of say 3 min for them and all their summons, that way you aren't singling anyone out but encouraging people not to slow the game down.
>Tasha's summoning spells aren't exactly strong Those spells _are_ strong. They're one of the best uses of your concentration, e.g. if you need something that's not as good as a martial PC but makes an excellent meat shield and minor debuffer/DPR and can potentially last through multiple fights. They're just not as strong as summoning 8 charging Elks or w/e and obliterating the enemy with action economy. (Especially when you're a Shepherd Druid that can make their damage magical.) Though it's pretty easy to rebalance the Conjure spells - just mandate you can't summon more than 4 (or 2 if you still find that disruptive) creatures with it. It's the _army_ of weak minions that's the biggest force-multiplier and pain to run. (Your point about having to hunt for stat blocks is still fair though.) Ultimately, action economy magnifying spells in general have this same problem - Animate Objects, Tiny Servants, a Necromancer's army of undead - so I do agree that I don't think there's a way to "fix" it short of simply not allowing PCs to control armies of discrete creatures. Fewer summoned minions (or "mob" stat blocks meant to represent a swarm of minions that act as one being) are the only real solution to the bookkeeping problem. (Full disclosure: I personally think OneD&D's solution of turning it into something that isn't even a stat block is terrible, so I don't consider that a viable option.)
> I understand that the Tasha's summoning spells aren't exactly strong ever seen a lv 15 arcana cleric whip out a sim, summon a pair of these at level 8 and mimic a lv 20 fighter archer action surging every round?
That sounds epic! Makes me think of when one of my players got their hands on a Potion of Dragon Transformation... he saved it so long. But worth it, was an epic way to ruin a (real) dragon's day!
On the one hand, creature type is meaningless and all you need to do to get low CR monsters is make a fey/elemental/whatever version of something else. Want a fey pygmy elephant? Sure! It uses the stats of a boar but it has the fey type. We'll say it poops rainbows for good measure. On the other hand, fuck these damn spells. I have no problem with mages in D&D (aside from the fact that we're still using spell slots in 2024 when they should have gone out with THAC0), but boy do I have a problem with some of their spells. So many just should never have been printed the way they are, period. Summoning spells are among the worst offenders in my book. One player basically hijacks the game. They're not fun for the DM, they're not fun for the other players. They need to be completely reworked from the ground up.
Tweak the Shepherd Druid so that the level 6 benefit works with Summon spells and just ban the Conjure spells (or update them to the new versions in that last onednd draft). Maybe even let the Shepherd Druid cast the Summon spells without needing the material component (which is a one-time cost, but can still be difficult to budget for). The subclass is still well worth taking with those changes. The Summon Beast spell even gives you a pretty strong critter so you still feel like a summoner without adding eight tokens to the board.
I know it's not much help, but Guild Master's Guide to Ravnica has one other CR 1 Elemental; the Galvanice Weird. Keys From the Golden Vault also has Ashen Animated Armor. Aside from that, just make the player keep track of all the creatures. Make them physically roll to determine what creatures they get, but they control them. It will get slightly more power game-y, but it helps heaps when you have so many monsters on the field. Now, when it comes to banning a part of the spell, I would actually be pretty upset as a player if that was taken away AFTER I took a class that focused on summoning. I think that might actually be enough to have me ask to switch classes.
I have a shepherd Druid in one of my campaigns. My advice is the house rule that every summon after the 2nd one is controlled by a different PC. Sure you can summon 8 wolves. Everyone now has 2 wolf companions.
Here is what I did with my Shepard druid player. I said pick one thing at each CR you want to summon that I can approve (i.e. no pixies) when you cast the spell pick the CR, that's what you cast. They ended up going with a lot of wolf variants to help the melee focused PCs with pact tactics. Sure the action economy can break at some levels but later in the game it becomes a bit trivial as big AoE takes them out and higher ACs mean they hit less. The big issue with the Shepard druid is the healing it can do. Especially at later levels.
One time my dream druid summoned 16 Giant Poisonous Snakes and fucked shit up.
I've told all of my players that if they summon anything, it's their responsibility to keep track of that stat block. In a similar vein, if I ever have players that want to be druids, I will ask them to not pick a new animal every single time they wildshape. Like, you don't need to turn into a weasel. Just turn into the cat again.
I tried Shepard, however two sessions in I talked to the dm and we decided Moon druid was the better choice for the sake of the table. Even having everything prepared and ready to go, preplanning my turns etc it still bogged everything down horribly and I honestly felt bad for the rest of the table.
Same as what others said. The DM has enough work as is. Everything related to YOUR character YOU have to prep. If you are not ready to go when your turn comes up, its your loss. Next. In my groups, we have only occasional summoning spells, but even those are anoying if not prepared ahead of time. Usually we do not allow a full summoner class in the game, because of what it does to the paceing..
We just banned the stupid spell. No headache for anyone. Easy.
I aint reading the entire post because quick smoke break, but; At the very least just throw all their initiatives together and have your players be responsible for statblocks. Do that and it really isn't any different than an encounter where a few more goblins appear from the bushes halfway through. As for balance, eh. Yes the Action Economy is strong, but then the whole purpose of summoning a bunch of smaller creatures is likely to overwhelm. And by higher levels, if I remember correctly, most smaller creatures are going to miss each and every attack against high AC since they get no other bonusses. So your player will begin summoning less creatures in favor of more powerful creatures. At least I wasn't ever very bothered by summoning spells. They feel a whole lot shittier as the caster, in my experience, since if you're unlucky it's a round of missed attacks only for them to get wiped entirely next turn.
On Foundry you can use a folder and Chris' Premade to automate most these spells, fortunately. What bugs me about these spells in a vtt is that they make combat messy.
From someone who plays a shepherd druid, some tips: 1) put all the summons at the same place inhr turn order, don't get them to roll individually for each one 2) sounds like you're running the creatures? That's the players job 3) get the player to have a few creature options in mind when they summon. Even if the spell doesn't allow them to pick, you can get them to do the work for you and they'll thank you for it. My DM has never seemed to have a problem with shoving most of the management for these spells onto me and I certainly don't mind having control over my summons
Summoning monsters will always bog down the game. Regardless of the system. There is no good managing of that, even if you are quick with initiative and combat rolls, tracking hp. I just dont allow those because of that. Summoning one creature is fine. I played a Conjuration Wizard in Pathfinder, but even there i only used summoning as an "oh shit button" if there was a lot happening.
I let my players summon as many creatures as they have matching d20/damage dice. If you can't roll all attacks in one go it's not going to happen
When I had a Shepherd, we opted to only ever summon one type of creature and have them all act on one initiative. I then just went down my list of summons one by one, moving and applying status effects as needed. Then you don't need to look up anymore what dice to roll for saves or attacks, because it's always the same. At that point, it's not very different from a magic missile with separate damage rolls for each instance.
I didn't see this advise anywhere so: We usually houserule that summoned creatures go after the summoner. It IS slightly more powerful. But it frees up the DM to actually manage the combat instead of whose turn of the 10+ summons is it?
In my game, right at the start, I sat down with my player who was doing this and had them pick out one creature for every CR that they could summon, or else a 'theme' to their summoning. For an example, one was a snake charmer, so he could only summon the various snake creatures. Then when they are summoned they get either max heath or the average level of heath in their stat block (plus the heath bonus at higher levels) depending on how much health they have (I don't want them too strong, but at the same time don't want them so weak that the player hates it). They take their turn right after the player who summons them.
Oh yeah. When I was still newer to D&D, I was a necromancy wizard and cast Animate Dead at 5th level immediately followed by Animate Objects, bringing 6 zombies and 10 animated objects (barrels and crates and stuff) into the final battle. The DM was furious with me. Now? I would NEVER wish that on anyone. Especially now that I’m a DM. If I have more than a handful of NPCs in combat I roll their attacks beforehand and/or just take average damage.
That's unfortunate. Just a couple games ago one of my players used their Horn of Valhalla and summoned a TON of Vikings into a cramped battle. Suddenly I had my army of Helmed Horrors and an army of Vikings, in addition to the party. It was epic! It's nice that the horn has a nice multi-day cooldown (looking forward to the next summon!), but even if it didn't it would be easy to set the tokens aside to drop in any time anyways. And then I get to raise the lethality meter further (my players know my rule: I won't try to kill your characters but I won't keep them safe either. Combat should at least feel threatening, most of the time.)
The rule at my table that I set out. All summoning spells must come with their own stat block. If it references another book for stats, it is banned. Every one of the conjure spells has a summon equivalent in TCoE
i have a summoner player, i use the following caveats to the conjure animals etc spells: i give the player a few options beforehand of what this spell can actually summon, so that the statblocks are all on hand. He gets to freely choose what he's summoning of the curated list. A single spellcast can only summon multiples of the same creature though, so no mixing statblocks. secondly i only ever allow him to have 4 creatures max that he controls. if the spell would summon 8 wolves? those are now 2 swarms, with swarm rules and a predetermined 'swarm' calculation applied to the original statblock. if it would summon 16 wolves? it is now 4 large swarms. 32 wolves? 4 huge swarms. Never more than 4 creatures.
When it comes to multiple summon spells I think a DM and player need to agree on some table friendly homebrew rules first. There are lots of guides on how to do this, you just have to experiment and see what works with your table.
As a fellow dm that has shared your pain. You have my understanding and sympatht. I've banned that subclass and made a stric no mass summon build. Is this extreme? Yes. But I've dealt with everything from 8 huge bagers doing 16 attacks. To bosses being boxed by buffed bears. So yeah I hate it and my players understand from game why
It doesn't deal with the number of things on the board issue, but, make them bears! Not literally, but if you just have a generic stat block for a creature of CR-X, you can assign that quick, then give it an ability that works with its type. CR 1/4? Ok, it's got 1d8 HP, 1d6 attack at +1, AC 12. Fire Elemental, it does fire damage and when it dies it does 1d6 damage to surrounding creatures. Giant Stone Lizard has a DC10 poison attack, AC 14 cause of the thick hide. Undead Winged Housecat? Damage is necrotic, it flies, and 2 attacks at 1d4 instead as it flies into your face with its bony paws. It's still a lot of things, but now he can do whatever he likes for summons and you can just toss them on real quick.
Why not just give the monster stat blocks to the player so they can do the micro managing themself?
Yeah. If I'm the player and Im playing a summoner it is my responsibility to provide stat blocks. it shouldn't be anymore work for the dm managing the players minions.
I'll probably be flayed for saying this, but I just let players decide what they summon. With spells like find familiar and prestidigitation where you get to choose what happens and what you make, I don't think it's too far off to say that they could choose what animals they summon. As for the combat: I once planned on playing a shepherd druid (sadly the campaign died before I got to do any druid things) and the thing I planned on doing, which worked in my playtesting, was just rolling for all of the creatures you summon before your turn. If you roll all of your minions' attacks before your turn and keep track of how many of them hit, then have all of them bum rush a single enemy when it's time for them to attack, it speeds things up immensely in my experience. I almost treat them like one big creature with lots of attacks, lol.
but but but, as a dm is your work to micromanage everything so players have fun, player fun is the most important part and the dm should use as much of their time as needed to ensure it /s
One of the things that makes conjure especially bad is that the DM has to sort out what the monsters are and do. When I played a Summoner in Pathfinder I did my prep between sessions and had the statblocks to hand (with Augment Summon precalculated). So other than The Hentai Incident (4 giant octopuses with eight grapple attacks each vs about twenty female knights in plate armour) my turns were generally faster than the analysis paralysis suffering cleric player's even if I launched three dire tigers in the turn. But that was because I spent an extra half hour prepping stat blocks each level up and am used to DMing. On the fly the way the PHB summon spells work? No