Conjure Woodland Beings: Past Pixies

[Silkensword]

Hello, Playgrounders.

So, I picked up the spell conjure woodland beings! It looked like a fun summoning spell that could have a good amount of versatility! However....

When I began perusing the internet for other people's ideas on the spell, the only (and I mean only) thing I found was pages and pages about polymorphing pixies. I was trying to find a simple, compiled list of creatures it can summon, and found a war spanning Aeons of internet subculture about the validity and value of pixie based polymorphing. Any of you use the spell for literally anything else, because i'm very curious to hear some uses!

[Fiskco]

As far as I know, these are the creatures it can summon:

cr 1/4: Blink dog, pixie, sprite
cr 1/2: Darkling, satyr
cr 1: Dryad, quickling
cr 2: darkling elder, meenlock, sea hag.

just as a general list of what unique things you can do with each:

Blink dogs can teleport
Pixies break the game
sprites can turn invisible, and sense emotions
Darkling explode in light on death
Satyrs have magic resistance
Dryads have spells, can talk to plants, teleport through trees, and have magic resistance
Quickling are REALLY FAST (120ft movement)
Darkling elder are similar to Darkling, but they can cast darkness
meenlock have an aura of frightening, and can teleport to darkness
sea hags also have a frightening aura, but they can instakill a frightened creature


hope this helps.
personally, I've only used them as combat fodder, and the DM chose what I summoned, so it's hard to plan what to do before you summon them.

[sithlordnergal]

Gonna be honest, I have personally never used the spell. Generally, when I have the option between Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland Beings, I go with Conjure Animals. However, the few times I have used it I go for the Quickling option.

They may not be Pixies, but they are one of the best damage options on the list of available Fey. Sadly there aren't as many Fey to choose from. Pixies, Sprites, and Quicklings tend to be the best combat options, so you don't have much to choose from.

https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/monsters/

[stoutstien]

Boogles can be fun also

[MaxWilson]

One advantage of fey over animals is that the fey are smarter and more likely to be tool-users. For examle, eight summoned Sprites (if you get them) could theoretically turn invisible and scout out a whole dungeon and draw you a map, Harry Dresden/Toot-toot style, of what the terrain looks like and where they saw monsters. +8 Stealth, invisibility, flying (40'), opposable thumbs (plus 45 lb. of carrying capacity) and the ability to speak = great scout.

Sprites have an interesting ranged poisoning attack (+6 to hit, sometimes with advantage from invisibility) which can sometimes knock enemies unconscious. DC 10 Con save to avoid being poisoned for a minute, and DC 6 to avoid being knocked unconscious. (It also comes with 1 point of mostly-irrelevant damage.)

In theory, a squad of sprites could be a potent defensive asset for the PCs especially if the PCs are already pretty tanky (AC 20ish), but I've actually never seen it happen or run the numbers. Now I kind of want to.


Boogles can be fun also

Yes. They may be "only" CR 1/8 but they are surprisingly tough and they have a bunch of interesting at-will, no-concentration abilities. They're only CR 1/8 because their offensive output is so low, but that doesn't matter to PCs because they can still Help or even tank (Dodging or spreading oil or grappling). They just can't actually kill things very well.