Summoner druid: pretty darn boring

[Waazraath]

Ok, we just finished White Plume Mountain with a group. This was my first druid (ever, I think), I played a warforged shepard summoner, and I liked the charecter background. But the entire package just felt... boring.

Most adventuring days started with giving everybody temp hp, then taking a short rest. I used all lvl 1 slots for berries before long resting, so that's another 30-40 points of extra healing during downtime per day. With conjure spells, the DM deceided I could make a level check to see if I could choose the summon, and if failed, I got a random one. In challenging combats I used summons, either beasts (I usually tried brown bears or wolves) or woodland beings (sprites or pixies), and often used a bonus action to give them temp hp as well. It worked well. It's a very good subclass, but somehow, I didn't find it quite as enjoyable as my to latest characters (a tempest cleric and an ancients paladin).

Some problems:

- most importantly, it has too many deus ex machina's. The combination of summons + wildshape just gives an answer to too many obstacels. Flying enemy? Giant Eagels, Bats, or Sprites. See in Darkness? Giant Owl. See in magical darkness, or see something invisible? Giant bats. Lots of strong melee enemies? Wall of Wolves. And if you are out of summons, you can use wildshape to emulate a lot of this, or use it as a panic button to turn in something with 'flyby' as you end up in melee by accident. Need to scout, land water or air? Just grab some sprites or use a wildshape. And that's not mentioning the fey spell casters. There are several, but especially those pixies, damn those pixies....

- they deserve a bullit on their own. 8 pixies. That's 8 sleeps, 8 polymorphs, 8 fly's, 8 dispel magics, 8 entangles, 8 phantasmal force... it's just too much. Yeah, you can't depend on getting them always when you need them and they only have 1 hp (with shepard at this lvl about 15 though, thus they might even survive a lucky hit), but if you do get them, it's just too easy to keep them out of sight and use skirmish tactics.

- but maybe most important, even though all of the above it's powerful, it isn't neccesarily fun. A wall of souped up wolves keeps enemies at bay and does decent damage, but since it takes up concentration, the druid is standing there fiddling his fiddle, throwing some cantrips (or just stay out of line of sight, to avoid loosing concentration). Combat doesn't get exiting, cause in the unlikely case the wolves get killed before the rest of the party finishes the baddies, you just summon new ones. My character hardly has been in any danger, the entire dungeon. And though that might be 'good' from an optimization point of view, it just wasn't that interesting.

- I also missed the tactical challange. I enviously looked at the battle master who had a whole bunch of options every round: yeah/no maneuvers, which one, action surge or not, but also tactical and through positioning. Same for the paladin, it had meaningful choices, and was in danger, and could smite (or not) or use a channel divinity (or not). While my 8 wolves stood there, doing damage and taking damage, but not much else (that's mostly how it played out, but I also think it's beyond the spell to instruct 8 not very intelligent creatures into doing complex maneuvers).

- summoning makes turns take long. Yeah, I knew this of course, saw it at my table. But it stays annoying, especially with more and complex creatures, that also know complex spells like Phantasmal Forrce.

- of course I could just use other spells, but since I picked a subclass that empoweres summoning, I gimp myself if I start casting Erupting Earths, Blights, Entangles, Ice knives, Flaming Sphere's or Heat metal, to name a few. If I do that, I guess I can better make a new character.

In general, I think 5e did a decent job with 'not having an obvious solution to every situation through class features'. But both summons and wildshape offer quite a decent button for lots of different things, and the druid has 'em rolled in the same class. So I'm not too thrilled with the design. Instead of creative thinking, it's "I wildshape" or "I summon X".


What do I want from the playground, exept ranting?
1) I'd like to known if people have similar experiences?
2) Any advice on how to play this character in a way that is more fun for me, given my gripes above?

I'm considering to switching to another character (DM is ok, we're between adventures anyway), but am not sure yet.

[Eldariel]

Well, summoners are strong. A single level 6 Shepherd can compete with a whole average party not using minionmancy. That's how strong. So of course ordinary challenge isn't gonna cut it: you're too powerful. That's like a level 5 party taking on a single CR5 encounter: worst case scenario is that you lose some resources. The only real solution is that enemies begin figuring out that your Druid is the problem and begin targeting you in specific, preferably with powerful magic and powerful special abilities.

In short, what you need is a hostile party with lots of resources aware of you and attempting to specifically take you out. Or make a weaker character (basically any non-minionmancer). Minionmancers are kinda broken OP in this edition, in part due to bounded accuracy and in part due to how strong low CR monsters were made (and how stupidly large amounts of them single spells get).


For variety, you could of course change up things you summon. There's a lot of strong options after all.

[jaappleton]

Being brutally honest?

The build you had was extremely effective... But that's exactly part of the problem. You always knew the clear cut route to take for action economy, you used all your first level slots for Goodberry... From a tactical, handbook optimization standpoint?

You did everything that had a sky blue or gold rating, so to speak. You went for all the top tier options. And there's nothing wrong with that. I do it myself quite often.

The problem is that it left every other choice, every other decision, as suboptimal, and therefore a bad decision because of this mindset.

I once played a Wood Elf Scout Rogue with Elven Accuracy, using Cunning Action: Aim to get Advantage on every attack and Triple Advantage. I never missed, ever. It was quite effective, as I was doing large chunks of damage to enemies extremely consistently. It also meant if I used my action to do anything else, I'd be failing to take out a 35hp chunk of an enemy and therefore, every other action I could take was a poor one.

I had no tactical choices to make, because my build decided it all for me. And it was an effective build, just like yours.

.....But was it fun? No. In combat it was an outright bore. Snoozefest.

Frankly, I believe your build suffers from the same thing: A lack of player choice.

I recently just started a Wildfire Druid, and I also use Summon Beast and Summon Fey. I find having the small amount of statblocks compared to the Conjure spells the Druid was famous for prior to Tasha's gives me more choice, because the Summon spells have more tactical options, and its less micromanagement. So I have my action, my Wildfire Spirits, and the Summon. Each with multiple things they can do. Wildfire Spirit, run to the Sorcerer and teleport them out, they're surrounded. Summon, move in to keep those same bandits occupied. And I'll cast Cure Wounds on the Sorc.

[Amnestic]

2) Any advice on how to play this character in a way that is more fun for me, given my gripes above?

Short of changing characters my only advice would be to split control of your summons between other players - if there's four PCs and you summon 8 animals, each player gets to control two, for instance, which can help mitigate the long turn issues a little.

Realistically though, conjure animals with the 8 animal choice and shepherd druid is just very potent and very one-note because of it. My future games restrict CA to only the one or two animal options, mostly for the reasons you've listed.

If you're not having fun, you should switch, and it's cool that your DM is okay with it. Wildfire druid (UA/Tasha's) gets a single summon that doesn't require concentration. If you wanna stick with "druid+summon" idea on the same character, that might be a good alternative.

[stoutstien]

Druids, and to some extent all full casters, have always seemed to have this weird relationship with the game. If played halfway decently in most average games, they will make easy problems go away and hard problems easy. That in and of itself isn't the problem but it's how they accomplish it. All I have to do is activate the correct feature. There's no sense of accomplishment if all you have to do is smash the correct button. This problem is exasperated if you are running campaigns that have pacing issues so even the resource management is a non-issue.

It's possible to build games that can equally be rewarding for the player with the shepherd druid and a champion fighter in the same party but it takes a ton of work and most DMs don't have that kind of time or drive to do so. My suggestion would be to do some self-regulating. Use the new summon spells rather which are still reasonably powerful just not to the same extent as the PHB ones. Also don't drop the bear totem and immediately rest. Sure it's the most optimized way to do it but it's also low brow.

[jaappleton]

Druids, and to some extent all full casters, have always seemed to have this weird relationship with the game. If played halfway decently in most average games, they will make easy problems go away and hard problems easy. That in and of itself isn't the problem but it's how they accomplish it. All I have to do is activate the correct feature. There's no sense of accomplishment if all you have to do is smash the correct button. This problem is exasperated if you are running campaigns that have pacing issues so even the resource management is a non-issue.

It's possible to build games that can equally be rewarding for the player with the shepherd druid and a champion fighter in the same party but it takes a ton of work and most DMs don't have that kind of time or drive to do so. My suggestion would be to do some self-regulating. Use the new summon spells rather which are still reasonably powerful just not to the same extent as the PHB ones. Also don't drop the bear totem and immediately rest. Sure it's the most optimized way to do it but it's also low brow.

I'm going to wholeheartedly agree with parts of this, and disagree with others.

You're absolutely correct in that casters can often trivialize what are supposed to be larger problems. In one game I played, we were in a mega dungeon, and the whole point was to wander around and get these gems to slot into a sealed door to lead us into the bottom floor: The treasure hoard. And I'll admit, at the time I found it incredibly clever, and this likely only worked because the DM was a bit inexperienced at the time; I cast Stone Shape on the floor and opened a hole to the lower level, bypassing the whole 'sealed door' problem.

But that's part and parcel of spellcasters. Doing otherworldly things, doing what non-magic users are simply incapable of. Its difficult to draw the line somewhere with what spells should and shouldn't be able to do. They can heal wounds and resurrect the dead, hurl balls of fire, change the state of matter. And players can often find the "I win" button for a situation. How do you have a game with spellcasters that can do such amazing things, but also can't click the "I Win" button when everything says it should work? Its often an unfair balancing act against the DM, for sure, because they can't really say "Yeah your Fireball worked 4 minutes ago in this same spot, but now suddenly there's an anti-magic field so Stone Shape is a no go".

And I'll agree 100%, dropping a totem and then resting to START your adventuring day is pretty cheesy. I find stuff like that often puts the PCs above the power level they should be, and for the encounters to be thrilling and challenging, it inadvertently creates an arms race between the DM and Players. That's one of the worst things that can happen in the game, IMO.

[Waazraath]

Thnx for the replies, all of them are helpful. This one " Frankly, I believe your build suffers from the same thing: A lack of player choice." hits the nail on the head.

Of course, I can play the character in a diffent way to make it less powerful. But what annoys me a bit: I'm not going out of my way here to optimize the hell out of the subclass. I haven't gone through the optimzation guides on 'how to cheese the hell out of a shepard druid". It's a single class character, no fancy multiclass. It only has on feat (warcaster) which is logical for a build that almost always has a concentration spell going (and which I didn't use once, I think). If you have spells that last 24 hours, people will cast them before long resting. If temporary hp stay until depleted, of course people use them at the beginning of an adventuring day. If you give "every creature 12 temp hp" with shepard druid, you don't need a phd in mathematics to deceide its better to summon 8 creatures than 1 to get the most out of it (besided other advantages of more creatures). I played it pretty straightforward, I think.

In addtion: we did keep up the pace (and didn't go for 5 min adventuring days, I hate those), but if you keep concentration up, you only need 1 conjure spell for 2, sometimes 3 combats. With three level 3 and two level 4 spells... by the time those are gone, the fighter and pally wants a long rest as well.

If a (sub)class requirers you to not to play to it strenghts, I think something went wrong in the design. But oh well. I guess I'll roll up a new character. Good thing I like making characters :)

[Emongnome777]

- most importantly, it has too many deus ex machina's. The combination of summons + wildshape just gives an answer to too many obstacels. Flying enemy? Giant Eagels, Bats, or Sprites. See in Darkness? Giant Owl. See in magical darkness, or see something invisible? Giant bats. Lots of strong melee enemies? Wall of Wolves. And if you are out of summons, you can use wildshape to emulate a lot of this, or use it as a panic button to turn in something with 'flyby' as you end up in melee by accident. Need to scout, land water or air? Just grab some sprites or use a wildshape. And that's not mentioning the fey spell casters. There are several, but especially those pixies, damn those pixies....

So, when I read that, I read it like this:


- most importantly, it has too many deus ex machina's tons of options. The combination of summons + wildshape just gives an answer to too many numerous obstacels. Flying enemy? Giant Eagels, Bats, or Sprites. See in Darkness? Giant Owl. See in magical darkness, or see something invisible? Giant bats. Lots of strong melee enemies? Wall of Wolves. And if you are out of summons, you can use wildshape to emulate a lot of this, or use it as a panic button to turn in something with 'flyby' as you end up in melee by accident. Need to scout, land water or air? Just grab some sprites or use a wildshape. And that's not mentioning the fey spell casters. There are several, but especially those pixies, damn wow those pixies....

If I didn't know better, I'd say you were loving the character and telling us why in this paragraph. I seriously read that and said to myself, "sounds like fun!". But yes, I will concede pixie summons are op, maybe broken op and I second some other suggestions of dropping the temp hp cheese and considering the new Tasha's summon spells as alternatives may make it more enjoyable for you.

[jaappleton]

Thnx for the replies, all of them are helpful. This one " Frankly, I believe your build suffers from the same thing: A lack of player choice." hits the nail on the head.

Of course, I can play the character in a diffent way to make it less powerful. But what annoys me a bit: I'm not going out of my way here to optimize the hell out of the subclass. I haven't gone through the optimzation guides on 'how to cheese the hell out of a shepard druid". It's a single class character, no fancy multiclass. It only has on feat (warcaster) which is logical for a build that almost always has a concentration spell going (and which I didn't use once, I think). If you have spells that last 24 hours, people will cast them before long resting. If temporary hp stay until depleted, of course people use them at the beginning of an adventuring day. If you give "every creature 12 temp hp" with shepard druid, you don't need a phd in mathematics to deceide its better to summon 8 creatures than 1 to get the most out of it (besided other advantages of more creatures). I played it pretty straightforward, I think.

In addtion: we did keep up the pace (and didn't go for 5 min adventuring days, I hate those), but if you keep concentration up, you only need 1 conjure spell for 2, sometimes 3 combats. With three level 3 and two level 4 spells... by the time those are gone, the fighter and pally wants a long rest as well.

If a (sub)class requirers you to not to play to it strenghts, I think something went wrong in the design. But oh well. I guess I'll roll up a new character. Good thing I like making characters :)

A core issue with the Shepard Druid is that, while immensely strong, its also so narrow in scope that there's very little player agency involved.

[Eldariel]

Thnx for the replies, all of them are helpful. This one " Frankly, I believe your build suffers from the same thing: A lack of player choice." hits the nail on the head.

Of course, I can play the character in a diffent way to make it less powerful. But what annoys me a bit: I'm not going out of my way here to optimize the hell out of the subclass. I haven't gone through the optimzation guides on 'how to cheese the hell out of a shepard druid". It's a single class character, no fancy multiclass. It only has on feat (warcaster) which is logical for a build that almost always has a concentration spell going (and which I didn't use once, I think). If you have spells that last 24 hours, people will cast them before long resting. If temporary hp stay until depleted, of course people use them at the beginning of an adventuring day. If you give "every creature 12 temp hp" with shepard druid, you don't need a phd in mathematics to deceide its better to summon 8 creatures than 1 to get the most out of it (besided other advantages of more creatures). I played it pretty straightforward, I think.

In addtion: we did keep up the pace (and didn't go for 5 min adventuring days, I hate those), but if you keep concentration up, you only need 1 conjure spell for 2, sometimes 3 combats. With three level 3 and two level 4 spells... by the time those are gone, the fighter and pally wants a long rest as well.

If a (sub)class requirers you to not to play to it strenghts, I think something went wrong in the design. But oh well. I guess I'll roll up a new character. Good thing I like making characters :)

You could change up what you summon a bit though. CR 1/4 alone does offer a lot of interesting stuff to change it up: Constrictor Snakes for CC, Elks for chargers (+ knockdown), Giant Frogs to eat small things, Flying Snakes for the flyby aerial summons, Giant Badger for burrowing badgerers, etc. It's not just a reskin: all of them fight quite differently. And if it gets too dull, 4 CR 1/4s isn't a bad call either, if not quite optimal. But if you wanna change it up, it works: Apes for kiting and stoning people, Wasps for anything vulnerable to poison, Crocodiles as another crowd control option. Two Giant Toads isn't entirely out of question either if you have two medium things that need swallowing. Giant Rocktopus is also pretty sweet for ink cloud as a concealment option (also CR1), and Dilophosaurus [Beasts of the Jungle Rot] can spit to blind enemies.

In this case, dumpsterdiving for options is mostly for your own amusement since you're kinda nerfing yourself by doing so, so I'd just go for it and find all the interesting sounding beasts and fey you can summon; this way you get more variety out of your core spells while still probably remaining quite efficient. Some stuff like Ink Cloud and swallow whole do offer alternative axes of attack too, which should at least in part alleviate your boredom. Think of the beasts as you.


A core issue with the Shepard Druid is that, while immensely strong, its also so narrow in scope that there's very little player agency involved.

I don't even know about that: you have a vast list of beasts and fey at your disposal on top of a very powerful spell list. You can change what you do day to day and you even have the other Totems (though unfortunately they're quite poorly balanced): overall there are lots of options and while Conjuring stuff is too often optimal, you can at least conjure lots of different stuff and then you get to play positioning with not one, but 9 characters. You have tons of lateral options to solve any given issue too: more brawn than any warrior combined with blindsight and telepathy and tremorsense and burrow speed and flight and so on. Only classes with more practical options are probably Wizards and maybe Clerics and even there it's close. Wizards are the only ones who have enough good options to probably have more reasonable choices in any given combat.

[noob]

Being brutally honest?

The build you had was extremely effective... But that's exactly part of the problem. You always knew the clear cut route to take for action economy, you used all your first level slots for Goodberry... From a tactical, handbook optimization standpoint?

You did everything that had a sky blue or gold rating, so to speak. You went for all the top tier options. And there's nothing wrong with that. I do it myself quite often.

The problem is that it left every other choice, every other decision, as suboptimal, and therefore a bad decision because of this mindset.

I once played a Wood Elf Scout Rogue with Elven Accuracy, using Cunning Action: Aim to get Advantage on every attack and Triple Advantage. I never missed, ever. It was quite effective, as I was doing large chunks of damage to enemies extremely consistently. It also meant if I used my action to do anything else, I'd be failing to take out a 35hp chunk of an enemy and therefore, every other action I could take was a poor one.

I had no tactical choices to make, because my build decided it all for me. And it was an effective build, just like yours.

.....But was it fun? No. In combat it was an outright bore. Snoozefest.

Frankly, I believe your build suffers from the same thing: A lack of player choice.

I recently just started a Wildfire Druid, and I also use Summon Beast and Summon Fey. I find having the small amount of statblocks compared to the Conjure spells the Druid was famous for prior to Tasha's gives me more choice, because the Summon spells have more tactical options, and its less micromanagement. So I have my action, my Wildfire Spirits, and the Summon. Each with multiple things they can do. Wildfire Spirit, run to the Sorcerer and teleport them out, they're surrounded. Summon, move in to keep those same bandits occupied. And I'll cast Cure Wounds on the Sorc.

I believe you can not stack advantage.
So you probably meant something else than triple advantage.
(like getting 3 different kinds of boosts to accuracy)

[Eldariel]

I believe you can not stack advantage.
So you probably meant something else than triple advantage.
(like getting 3 different kinds of boosts to accuracy)

Elven Accuracy.

[Segev]

I believe you can not stack advantage.
So you probably meant something else than triple advantage.
(like getting 3 different kinds of boosts to accuracy)

He probably is referring to Elven Accuracy. Which gives you three dice on Advantage.



I think 5e would benefit from more clear-cut random encounter rules and turn-based exploration rules. Rules that make resting risky. Not impossible, but risky. This can be tricky to design well; if you can lose resources by short resting, that defeats the purpose. But if you can secure your short rest, we are back to where we are now.

The issue is that fifteen minute adventuring days are hard to discourage. And short rests immediately after long rests and at the party’s convenience is a similar issue.

[Tanarii]

With conjure spells, the DM deceided I could make a level check to see if I could choose the summon, and if failed, I got a random one.How does a level check work?

If the DM is getting frequent choice (depending on how that check works), I'd say it's up to the DM to give you some interesting, not optimal, but not useless results for your summons when they do so. Of course, if you're picking the most and lowest CR category, you'll probably see a lot of repeats.

And of course, if you can choose, you can choose something interesting instead of always what's the most absolutely optimal.


- they deserve a bullit on their own. 8 pixies. That's 8 sleeps, 8 polymorphs, 8 fly's, 8 dispel magics, 8 entangles, 8 phantasmal force... it's just too much. Yeah, you can't depend on getting them always when you need them and they only have 1 hp (with shepard at this lvl about 15 though, thus they might even survive a lucky hit), but if you do get them, it's just too easy to keep them out of sight and use skirmish tactics.Yup. If a DM allows the player to choose and doesn't house rule away pixies as an option, that's the DMs fault.


- but maybe most important, even though all of the above it's powerful, it isn't neccesarily fun. A wall of souped up wolves keeps enemies at bay and does decent damage, but since it takes up concentration, the druid is standing there fiddling his fiddle, throwing some cantrips (or just stay out of line of sight, to avoid loosing concentration).

- I also missed the tactical challange. I enviously looked at the battle master who had a whole bunch of options every round: yeah/no maneuvers, which one, action surge or not, but also tactical and through positioning. Same for the paladin, it had meaningful choices, and was in danger, and could smite (or not) or use a channel divinity (or not). While my 8 wolves stood there, doing damage and taking damage, but not much else (that's mostly how it played out, but I also think it's beyond the spell to instruct 8 not very intelligent creatures into doing complex maneuvers). Imagine how you would have felt if the DM had followed a strict interpretation of the RaW: PC speaks a command on their turn, but the DM does all the resolution of the NPC wolves (or whatever) executing it on their turn.

[Valmark]

Seems to me that there are three things that contribute to making it 'bad': the DM house ruling the spell so that it's stronger (as if it needs a boost), the fights apparently too easy to require much in the way of contribution from you and you not playing tactically (which is probably helped by the second point).

I'd address these three to try and see if your character becomes more fun to play.

[MaxWilson]

What do I want from the playground, exept ranting?
1) I'd like to known if people have similar experiences?
2) Any advice on how to play this character in a way that is more fun for me, given my gripes above?

I'm considering to switching to another character (DM is ok, we're between adventures anyway), but am not sure yet.

Yes, have had similar experiences. Often what is good for the character (safety) is not good for the player (challenge, fun). This is especially true in 5E for summoners, and you either have to find a way to self-limit (e.g. playing randomly generated characters, or taking over existing NPCs instead of making your own PC so you are forced to drive challenge from play instead of builds) or find a way to seek greater challenges, and rewards, faster.

I.e. Shepherd Druids and other summoners are less boring in a sandbox where the question is not "what spell should I cast this round?" but rather "should we even be fighting this battle? What will be the consequences of winning? Are there any hidden threats I'm not yet seeing? Was fighting truly the only way?"

[Bobthewizard]

I'm having a lot of fun with my shepherd druid. Amnestic lets me use this random selector after I pick the CR.

CR 1/4 - 1. Constrictor Snake 2. Flying Snake 3. Giant Poison Snake
4. Giant Wolf Spider 5. Velociraptor 6. Wolf
CR 1/2 - 1. Ape 2. Giant Wasp (Reef Shark)
CR 1 - 1. Brown Bear 2. Dire Wolf 3. G Octopus 4. G Spider
CR 2 - 1. Cave Bear 2. Giant Constrictor Snake
Flyers 1. Flying Snake 2. Giant Owl 3. Giant Bat 4. Giant Wasp
Medium size 1.Flying snake 2. Giant Wolf Spider 3. Velociraptor 4. Wolf

They are all pretty good options, but there's enough variety to keep it interesting. In combat, my druid isn't what I'm playing. I mean she's there and she helps where she can, but mostly I'm tactically playing the summons, trying to protect the other players and hold down one or two of the enemies. I like to pretend they are the same fey spirits that keep helping my druid by taking different forms.

Amnestic has done a great job making encounters with lots of enemies in different locations. The conjured animals can take on one or two, but there are others for the rest of the party to deal with. And even with the summons, we always need the barbarians damage, and hypnotic patterns and fireballs from the bard and wizard.

Right now, I don't have enough 3+ level spell slots to use it every encounter so I often have to do something else. I suspect that by the time I get enough high level slots to use it every encounter, the low to hit bonuses will start to make the spell less effective and I'll need to use them differently.

I like the spell as is, but if I were to nerf the spells, I would make number of animals be 1 CR2, 2 CR 1, 3 CR 1/2 or 4 CR 1/4 or below, let them choose their summons, and then give shepherd druids one free casting per LR.

For conjure woodland beings, I would ban pixies altogether, then let them choose what they summon. I didn't even take the spell because I think pixies are too broken and the rest are worse than conjure animals.

[Tanarii]

I like the spell as is, but if I were to nerf the spells, I would make number of animals be 1 CR2, 2 CR 1, 3 CR 1/2 or 4 CR 1/4 or below, let them choose their summons, and then give shepherd druids one free casting per LR.

Yeah, the number of creatures per CR doesn't scale properly, especially at higher upcasting levels.

[Eldariel]

I'm having a lot of fun with my shepherd druid. Amnestic lets me use this random selector after I pick the CR.

CR 1/4 - 1. Constrictor Snake 2. Flying Snake 3. Giant Poison Snake
4. Giant Wolf Spider 5. Velociraptor 6. Wolf
CR 1/2 - 1. Ape 2. Giant Wasp (Reef Shark)
CR 1 - 1. Brown Bear 2. Dire Wolf 3. G Octopus 4. G Spider
CR 2 - 1. Cave Bear 2. Giant Constrictor Snake
Flyers 1. Flying Snake 2. Giant Owl 3. Giant Bat 4. Giant Wasp
Medium size 1.Flying snake 2. Giant Wolf Spider 3. Velociraptor 4. Wolf

They are all pretty good options, but there's enough variety to keep it interesting. In combat, my druid isn't what I'm playing. I mean she's there and she helps where she can, but mostly I'm tactically playing the summons, trying to protect the other players and hold down one or two of the enemies. I like to pretend they are the same fey spirits that keep helping my druid by taking different forms.

Amnestic has done a great job making encounters with lots of enemies in different locations. The conjured animals can take on one or two, but there are others for the rest of the party to deal with. And even with the summons, we always need the barbarians damage, and hypnotic patterns and fireballs from the bard and wizard.

Right now, I don't have enough 3+ level spell slots to use it every encounter so I often have to do something else. I suspect that by the time I get enough high level slots to use it every encounter, the low to hit bonuses will start to make the spell less effective and I'll need to use them differently.

I like the spell as is, but if I were to nerf the spells, I would make number of animals be 1 CR2, 2 CR 1, 3 CR 1/2 or 4 CR 1/4 or below, let them choose their summons, and then give shepherd druids one free casting per LR.

For conjure woodland beings, I would ban pixies altogether, then let them choose what they summon. I didn't even take the spell because I think pixies are too broken and the rest are worse than conjure animals.

Woodland Beings has some other good ones too. Quicklings are an obvious one; against physical enemies, Quicklings with bonus HP are pretty stupid. They also hit hard enough that just two of them can cause significant pain. Sprite can very occasionally be worth it too; decent range, invisibility and the possibility of dropping creatures unconscious is a decent combination (the damage is obviously nonexistent so it's mostly for the rider which, while DC10, is pretty brutal if enemy can fail it by over 5). Of course, Pixies are many tiers stronger.

[Waazraath]

How does a level check work?

...

Imagine how you would have felt if the DM had followed a strict interpretation of the RaW: PC speaks a command on their turn, but the DM does all the resolution of the NPC wolves (or whatever) executing it on their turn.

1d20 + lvl vs DC (10 + spell lvl); if fail, then player deceides number of critters, DM deceides what type.

I think we more or less did that: I gave orders during my turn, only I also did the resolution myself on the critters turn. DM wasn't really willing to run a number of creatures in addition to the (sometimes already large and complex) encounters and running an NPC.

In addition: we only used MM for creatures (so no volo's theros etc.), and as I said, I kept instructions to the critters fairly simple, especially for (low int) beasts, and kept them attacking foes in front of them - I thought micro-managing 8 wolves would be not in line with the intention (besides, it was strong enough already). Ymmv, but I think the way we ran this was not over the top, or heavily favoring the player to make it more powerful. We did limit ourselves in several ways. Obviously not enough though, or I wouldn't have written this post.

[Thunderous Mojo]

I would like to point out that White Plume Mountain is not a very difficult dungeon.

The puzzles are straight forward to solve, and the few 'gotcha' moments are easily exploitable by cautious players. White Plume Mountain has no defensive features, such as secret passageways and doors that allow creatures to use hit and run tactics, and the occupants of the rooms largely do not reinforce each other.

Instead of a horde of smaller monsters, or a legendary creature with lair actions, (and terrain) on their side, White Plume Mountain settles for encounters that have around 2 moderately, threatening creatures.

A Gladiator and a 4th level Werewolf Wizard, for example, are not a sufficient challenge for any 8th level party...let alone, a party that has a Druid or Wizard played by a knowledgeable player.

White Plume Mountain is only considered 'a classic' because it is old,
and was a 'classic' "Monty Haul" dungeon...
e.g..too little risk.for...too much reward.

If your group had played the Lost Shrine of Tamoachan,
(which is also in Tales of the Yawning Portal, and a lower level module),
then I suspect your Summoning spells might have played a lesser role.

The persistent poison effects kills low HP creatures like Sprites real quick.
Lost Shrine, is just a better designed, and a more dynamic adventure.

Being chased by a Vampire Like Creature with a Magic Axe that casts Passwall, while sucking down poisonous gas is more exciting then answering easy riddles and getting super powerful Magic Weapons as a result.

[Valmark]

1d20 + lvl vs DC (10 + spell lvl); if fail, then player deceides number of critters, DM deceides what type.

I think we more or less did that: I gave orders during my turn, only I also did the resolution myself on the critters turn. DM wasn't really willing to run a number of creatures in addition to the (sometimes already large and complex) encounters and running an NPC.

In addition: we only used MM for creatures (so no volo's theros etc.), and as I said, I kept instructions to the critters fairly simple, especially for (low int) beasts, and kept them attacking foes in front of them - I thought micro-managing 8 wolves would be not in line with the intention (besides, it was strong enough already). Ymmv, but I think the way we ran this was not over the top, or heavily favoring the player to make it more powerful. We did limit ourselves in several ways. Obviously not enough though, or I wouldn't have written this post.

I mean... You have a check that gets easier as you level up to pick exactly what you want. And you control the summons.

That's a substantial boost which imo far outweights not using "real" tactics.

You'd probably have more fun if you removed the boost and played them tactically, giving you the options in combat you think you miss.


I would like to point out that White Plume Mountain is not a very difficult dungeon.

The puzzles are straight forward to solve, and the few 'gotcha' moments are easily exploitable by cautious players. White Plume Mountain has no defensive features, such as secret passageways and doors that allow creatures to use hit and run tactics, and the occupants of the rooms largely do not reinforce each other.

Instead of a horde of smaller monsters, or a legendary creature with lair actions, (and terrain) on their side, White Plume Mountain settles for encounters that have around 2 moderately, threatening creatures.

A Gladiator and a 4th level Werewolf Wizard, for example, are not a sufficient challenge for any 8th level party...let alone, a party that has a Druid or Wizard played by a knowledgeable player.

White Plume Mountain is only considered 'a classic' because it is old,
and was a 'classic' "Monty Haul" dungeon...
e.g..too little risk.for...too much reward.

If your group had played the Lost Shrine of Tamoachan,
(which is also in Tales of the Yawning Portal, and a lower level module),
then I suspect your Summoning spells might have played a lesser role.

The persistent poison effects kills low HP creatures like Sprites real quick.
Lost Shrine, is just a better designed, and a more dynamic adventure.

Being chased by a Vampire Like Creature with a Magic Axe that casts Passwall, while sucking down poisonous gas is more exciting then answering easy riddles and getting super powerful Magic Weapons as a result.

The fights being on the easy side means you have less to do once you dropped your CA or SWB and also makes you feel stronger in comparison- which unfortunately you can't do much about.

[Tanarii]

1d20 + lvl vs DC (10 + spell lvl); if fail, then player deceides number of critters, DM deceides what type.Oh okay. I was envisioning 1d20 roll less than your level. This makes it more likely you'll get to choose, instead of 35-40% it'd be on the order of 70-80%.


I think we more or less did that: I gave orders during my turn, only I also did the resolution myself on the critters turn. DM wasn't really willing to run a number of creatures in addition to the (sometimes already large and complex) encounters and running an NPC.

In addition: we only used MM for creatures (so no volo's theros etc.), and as I said, I kept instructions to the critters fairly simple, especially for (low int) beasts, and kept them attacking foes in front of them - I thought micro-managing 8 wolves would be not in line with the intention (besides, it was strong enough already). Ymmv, but I think the way we ran this was not over the top, or heavily favoring the player to make it more powerful. We did limit ourselves in several ways. Obviously not enough though, or I wouldn't have written this post.Yeah that's substantially the same thing, provided the DM isn't hosing you with silly misinterpretations and the player is playing it in good faith. (By which I mean it sounds like you definitely were.)


I mean... You have a check that gets easier as you level up to pick exactly what you want. And you control the summons.

That's a substantial boost which imo far outweights not using "real" tactics.

You'd probably have more fun if you removed the boost and played them tactically, giving you the options in combat you think you miss.Agreed. In this case Waazraath I think you'd have enjoyed being given some good faith but not necessarily completely perfect for the job creatures chosen by the DM you might not have thought of, possibly even some mixed creatures when there was more than one, but playing them as tactically as a player typically plays their PC. (At least on a battle mat.) That would probably be both challenging and engaging.

[micahaphone]

This is a slight tangent, but in Curse of Strahd I might need a backup character soon. I have a fun thematic option to play a druid, probably a wildfire druid. I've never been much interested in Druids, usually not one for nature themes. This would be a level 9 character, so what do druids do in combat other than summon an army to help them? I'm really not interested in summoning, and I think it would stress out my DM. Every time I scan the spell list, I see some nice first and second level spells, but other than that I'm not too enthused.

What cool stuff have you seen druids do in combat that's not summoning?

[stoutstien]

This is a slight tangent, but in Curse of Strahd I might need a backup character soon. I have a fun thematic option to play a druid, probably a wildfire druid. I've never been much interested in Druids, usually not one for nature themes. This would be a level 9 character, so what do druids do in combat other than summon an army to help them? I'm really not interested in summoning, and I think it would stress out my DM. Every time I scan the spell list, I see some nice first and second level spells, but other than that I'm not too enthused.

What cool stuff have you seen druids do in combat that's not summoning?

The druid list is mostly about control and area denial.they also have good array of buffs like polymorph as well. The only real weakness is being very concentration heavy.

[micahaphone]

The druid list is mostly about control and area denial.they also have good array of buffs like polymorph as well. The only real weakness is being very concentration heavy.

For example of my issue, for first level spells Entangle is dang good, second level has both Spike Growth and Heat Metal, those are both cool and fun and unique(ish) to druids. Third level has tidal wave? fourth has ice storm/polymorph/wall of fire? Those are on sorc/wizard lists anyway. The unique spells like Giant Insect or Grasping Vine seem meh to me. 5th level has good out of combat spells like Awaken but the best combat I'm seeing is Insect Plague. Other than wildshape utility and summoning spells, I'm struggling to see the power of druids over other support casters.

[stoutstien]

If you like unique spell lists 5e is probably not the best system for you lol. Saying that Druids have a nice mix of blasting, CC, utility, and recovery spells and are prepared casters meaning they can pick and choose their spells everyday.

[Bardon]

I would like to point out that White Plume Mountain is not a very difficult dungeon.

The puzzles are straight forward to solve, and the few 'gotcha' moments are easily exploitable by cautious players. White Plume Mountain has no defensive features, such as secret passageways and doors that allow creatures to use hit and run tactics, and the occupants of the rooms largely do not reinforce each other.

Instead of a horde of smaller monsters, or a legendary creature with lair actions, (and terrain) on their side, White Plume Mountain settles for encounters that have around 2 moderately, threatening creatures.

A Gladiator and a 4th level Werewolf Wizard, for example, are not a sufficient challenge for any 8th level party...let alone, a party that has a Druid or Wizard played by a knowledgeable player.

White Plume Mountain is only considered 'a classic' because it is old,
and was a 'classic' "Monty Haul" dungeon...
e.g..too little risk.for...too much reward.

If your group had played the Lost Shrine of Tamoachan,
(which is also in Tales of the Yawning Portal, and a lower level module),
then I suspect your Summoning spells might have played a lesser role.

The persistent poison effects kills low HP creatures like Sprites real quick.
Lost Shrine, is just a better designed, and a more dynamic adventure.

Being chased by a Vampire Like Creature with a Magic Axe that casts Passwall, while sucking down poisonous gas is more exciting then answering easy riddles and getting super powerful Magic Weapons as a result.


I remember running my group through Tamoachan when it first came out back in The Olden Days...

The party cleric had been really going above and beyond in representing his deity and ensuring that he set an example of how his deity's way was the best etc.
So when he submitted his spell list for the first day and found that instead of what he'd requested his deity had replaced a lot of his spells with Slow Poison, Resist Poison, Cure Poison etc the whole party got the hint. :biggrin:

I do love doing that with Divine casters. What you pray to your deity to get may not be what they decide you really *need* and if you've been bad recently in their eyes you may get worse spells or even fewer ones!

[Hael]

I think it’s pretty clear that the design team punted on summoning to some extent. They had bounded accuracy, and likely wanted to restrict summons to one or two minions max, but couldn’t bc people have gotten used to things from DnDs past.

The only other solution would be to have the summons obey different rules, which also slows things down.

So their solution was a bunch of warnings to the DM that have been ignored in most games. Hence the 5e summoner problem.

We did a lot of tests to determine the right amount of summons that don’t break the game, and it was between 2-3 (u need to houserule what 3 looks like), provided that they don’t offer too many other advantages (like casting, dark vision or flying), if so then 2 max.

[Waazraath]

We did a lot of tests to determine the right amount of summons that don’t break the game, and it was between 2-3 (u need to houserule what 3 looks like), provided that they don’t offer too many other advantages (like casting, dark vision or flying), if so then 2 max.

This was my (and my groups') first test. Conclusion: if somebody wants to play another summoner one day, we'll do it differently :) Many useful suggestions on these pages. For now, my druid will retire, and I'll try out an artificer.

What I btw forgot to mention in the OP: we were only a party of 3, with a fighter and a paladin as other characters. Having a character with minions and some bfc / utility was on purpose, given the small size of the party (in my experience a party of 3 is pretty critical - if one partymember goes down with a few bad roles, you enter TPK territory quite easily. Which was a reason why I lookes for something that could provide temp hp for everybody). Next adventure, another player joins the fray once more, so less need for minionmancing and temp hp shenenigans.

[Eldariel]

I think it’s pretty clear that the design team punted on summoning to some extent. They had bounded accuracy, and likely wanted to restrict summons to one or two minions max, but couldn’t bc people have gotten used to things from DnDs past.

The only other solution would be to have the summons obey different rules, which also slows things down.

So their solution was a bunch of warnings to the DM that have been ignored in most games. Hence the 5e summoner problem.

We did a lot of tests to determine the right amount of summons that don’t break the game, and it was between 2-3 (u need to houserule what 3 looks like), provided that they don’t offer too many other advantages (like casting, dark vision or flying), if so then 2 max.

At least in 3e though it was pretty impossible to get 8 creatures out of a single spell. You got 1 creature of max level, 1d3 creatures of a lower level or 1d4+1 creatures of two levels lower. So even Maximized, you'd still need two castings of a top level spell to match the numbers given to you by Conjure Animals, a 3rd level spell.

5e did this in a really stupid way: they simultaneously made it much easier to get hordes and built the edition so that hordes can take on just about anything. In this edition, summoning one big strong thing isn't really all that, actually, while summoning hordes of small things easily breaks the game (imagine four level 6 Shepherd Druids each casting Conjure Animals for about anything useful - that's 32 buff things hitting stuff in the face for you with plenty of HP to tank some hits and stupid damage potential and the Druids themselves are still free to cast stuff - or hell, a level 7 Wizard burning all their slots and Arcane Recoveries on Animate Dead and then casting Summon Greater Demon from their last 4th level slot for a Barlgura they have the truename for).

There are so many ways to get a horde of small things (Animate Dead and Conjure Animals both do this effortlessly and then you have Animate Objects, Tiny Servant, Conjure Woodland Beings, Danse Macabre, etc. just reinforcing the "you can get a bunch of things for a single spell basically effortlessly") and rather difficult to get a single big strong thing (you have to put a lot of effort to keep your Elemental or Demon or Devil or Fey or whatever around long enough to be useful and it's still hard for it to match a simple Tier 3 minionmancy effect) even though the "one big strong thing" is far less powerful than "numerous small weaker things" in this edition. 1-2-3-4 would indeed have been much more fair than 1-2-4-8; you optimally never choose anything but the quadratic option since this edition is all about numbers.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think it’s pretty clear that the design team punted on summoning to some extent. They had bounded accuracy, and likely wanted to restrict summons to one or two minions max, but couldn’t bc people have gotten used to things from DnDs past.
The only other solution would be to have the summons obey different rules, which also slows things down.
So their solution was a bunch of warnings to the DM that have been ignored in most games. Hence the 5e summoner problem.

We did a lot of tests to determine the right amount of summons that don’t break the game, and it was between 2-3 (u need to houserule what 3 looks like), provided that they don’t offer too many other advantages (like casting, dark vision or flying), if so then 2 max. One of the parties I DM for has a shephard druid. He and I have a deal: before a session starts, he has a list of 3-5 summons he'd like to use that session, and unless I balk ( I never have yet) that's what's pre loaded. It's easier that way - and working together is a thing players and DMs need to do in general.

If there is a pack of 8 wolves, I like the idea of each player taking control of two wolves, for example, to get around the problem of play stalling during the druid's / wolves' turn.

Summoning 8 pixies? now and again, that just needs to be done for Shennanigans! :smallbiggrin:

[MaxWilson]

So their solution was a bunch of warnings to the DM that have been ignored in most games. Hence the 5e summoner problem.

What warnings? WotC didn't seem to even realize there was a balance problem until long after everyone else did, or they wouldn't have created Shepherd Druids.

[stoutstien]

What warnings? WotC didn't seem to even realize there was a balance problem until long after everyone else did, or they wouldn't have created Shepherd Druids.

I think they were aware of the potential problem hence why they added the creature seen chart and doubled down on DM determining what you get when you cast the spell. Seems like passing the buck to the DM is the standard move now.
Saying that, the game didn't need a better druid. Shep is amazing even if you removed the lv 6 feature.

[Waazraath]

At least in 3e though it was pretty impossible to get 8 creatures out of a single spell. You got 1 creature of max level, 1d3 creatures of a lower level or 1d4+1 creatures of two levels lower. So even Maximized, you'd still need two castings of a top level spell to match the numbers given to you by Conjure Animals, a 3rd level spell.


But to be fair, in 3e you didn't have the 5e concentration mechanic, and you could twin and quicken and use prestige classes as much as your heart desired (and you cheesed out your build). Hell, I remember a lvl 20 campaign with a malvonvoker who would summon 20+ fiendish t-rexes per combat... things weren't that bad at my table.

[MaxWilson]

I think they were aware of the potential problem hence why they added the creature seen chart and doubled down on DM determining what you get when you cast the spell. Seems like passing the buck to the DM is the standard move now.
Saying that, the game didn't need a better druid. Shep is amazing even if you removed the lv 6 feature.

But "choosing the creature" isn't the real root of the balance issue. Even if the player gets a randomly-chosen-by-kobold.club CR 1/4 creature, it's still very strong. [picks randomly from Kobold.club] A Rothe is unimpressive, but 8 Rothes is still 104 HP and 8d6+32 (60) damage (at +6 to hit), plus 16d6 more (56.5) if there's room to charge. And then there's the opportunity attacks to consider, and the fact that that it's functionally more than 104 HP because of the overkill effect.

8 Draft Horses? Still strong.

8 Elks? Strong.

8 Giant Poisonous Snakes? Strong.

Even 8 cows is strong for a 3rd level spell, especially if your party has enough sense to couple it with strong ranged attackers (warlocks and Sharpshooters) so that having 8 Large meatshields in play is a benefit instead of a hindrance.

The only case I know of where choosing the creature is a problem is for Pixies, and Pixies shouldn't be CR 1/4 in the first place because fighting nine Orcs is NOT the same difficulty as fighting eight Orcs and two Pixies. The pixies make it much, much tougher.

[stoutstien]

But "choosing the creature" isn't the real root of the balance issue. Even if the player gets a randomly-chosen-by-kobold.club CR 1/4 creature, it's still very strong. [picks randomly from Kobold.club] A Rothe is unimpressive, but 8 Rothes is still 104 HP and 8d6+32 (60) damage (at +6 to hit), plus 16d6 more (56.5) if there's room to charge. And then there's the opportunity attacks to consider, and the fact that that it's functionally more than 104 HP because of the overkill effect.

8 Draft Horses? Still strong.

8 Elks? Strong.

8 Giant Poisonous Snakes? Strong.

Even 8 cows is strong for a 3rd level spell, especially if your party has enough sense to couple it with strong ranged attackers (warlocks and Sharpshooters) so that having 8 Large meatshields in play is a benefit instead of a hindrance.

The only case I know of where choosing the creature is a problem is for Pixies, and Pixies shouldn't be CR 1/4 in the first place because fighting nine Orcs is NOT the same difficulty as fighting eight Orcs and two Pixies. The pixies make it much, much tougher.

That's fair. Personality I never have a problem of the low CR pack of X with conjure animal because I like weak/moderate aoe effects . It's still a very good spell but it doesn't turn into the encounter grinder that seems to be wide spread at tables. Sure every once in a while it levels an encounter but so does fireball or spirit guardian.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Summoning spells have always been powerful in D&D, (outside of 4e).
An AD&D Druid was 'balanced' by having spells or abilities designed to not work in the 'standard' play space.

An AD&D Druid was a powerhouse when the terrain favored them, and just plain good when the circumstances did not.

Magic Users with the Summon Monster spells, or Illusionists with Shadow Monsters were often overpowering....players exercising restraint and choosing not to rely too heavily on summoned creatures isn't exactly a new phenomenon. 😀

A 10th level Wizard with Animate Objects, and whom purchased the services of hirelings armed with caltrops and flasks of oils, could solo the 5e version of White Plume Mountain.

Beasts and Fey in 5e are probably the strongest version as classes of creatures then in prior editions of D&D. Conjure Woodland Beings is broken by the CR assessment of Pixies.

Waaz, mentioned it was a 3 person party. The 3 person party, I have found, often outperforms a 5 person party. Three person parties tend to synchronize their actions and build off synergies with greater deftness and greater effect, then larger parties that play not as a team, but as a bunch of individuals.

(Wow...6 posts, posted, while typing this...got to catch up..I feel like the White Rabbit)

[Magicspook]

I might have agreed with you by the title, but I read the OP and now I just think that the class isn't boring, the problem is that you're playing like a total munchkin. I mean seriously, short resting a few minutes after long resting? Pouring all leftover slots into goodberry? I don't know if that's standard fare for your group, and I don't want to tell you what's fun or not, but in my opinion that's a ridiculous way to play.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Max, I agree that Summoning Spells with 8 creatures, and HP bloat can be problematic.

For me the "Exhaust Port" weakness of Conjure Animals is this:
Each beast is also considered fey.

I interpret this as meaning the summons are both simultaneously Fey and Beasts.

5e has no shortage of powers that severely hamper both categories of creatures.

Frankly, a simple DM countermove is to up the damage dealt when an army of creatures are on the map.

A 3/4 strength Fireball wipes out a "Wall of Wolves".

[Eldariel]

Max, I agree that Summoning Spells with 8 creatures, and HP bloat can be problematic.

For me the "Exhaust Port" weakness of Conjure Animals is this:
Each beast is also considered fey.

I interpret this as meaning the summons are both simultaneously Fey and Beasts.

5e has no shortage of powers that severely hamper both categories of creatures.

Frankly, a simple DM countermove is to up the damage dealt when an army of creatures are on the map.

A 3/4 strength Fireball wipes out a "Wall of Wolves".

The only problems with that are that for many campaigns it's pretty obvious that a character is being blatantly countered (most modules for example mostly lack enemies with broad AOE other than dragons and few other monsters, meaning minionmancers walk through all but a handful of encounters in the entire campaign). But certainly, enemy spellcasters and AOE monsters are the only reasonably efficient solution. Then it of course comes down to positioning too; if you get to summon the creatures so that they summon the primary AOE enemy in the start, said enemy will have a hard time hitting them all with many spells (and even the ones that can will probably hit themself too).

There's also the Shepherd class itself making most weaker summons durable enough that they can often survive a single AOE spell: Conjure Animals on level 6 for Wolves + Spirit Bear Totem = 8 Wolves with 15 HP Wolves and 11 Temporary HP for a total of 26 HP instead; even on a failed save they can survive a Fireball 30% of the time and on a successful save pretty much 100% of the time. And if they happened to be Giant Badgers/Velociraptors/Elks/Panthers/Giant Owls/etc., they'd have even better odds of surviving even on failed saves (most of those things have 27-28 HP with the level 6 buffs - something like Giant Owl can have 36). Of course, some levels higher the temp HP keeps growing.

[MaxWilson]

Max, I agree that Summoning Spells with 8 creatures, and HP bloat can be problematic.

For me the "Exhaust Port" weakness of Conjure Animals is this:
Each beast is also considered fey.

I interpret this as meaning the summons are both simultaneously Fey and Beasts.

5e has no shortage of powers that severely hamper both categories of creatures.

Frankly, a simple DM countermove is to up the damage dealt when an army of creatures are on the map.

A 3/4 strength Fireball wipes out a "Wall of Wolves".

On the one hand, I agree that it's obvious that the 5E designers/writers expected AoEs to be fairly ubiquitous--it's the only way to explain things like Conjure Animals balance. If you assume players are fighting e.g. Young White Dragons, then a CR 2 Giant Elk is in some ways better than 8 CR 1/4 Cows.

On the other hand, it's fairly easy for a player to mitigate this weakness just by using his summons as meatshields more than damage-dealers, e.g. breaking them into multiple groups. And even then it doesn't help against meatshields with ranged weapons (mostly skeletons, but also rock-throwing apes and Korreds) or flyby (Giant Owls).

On the gripping hand, in actual play, usually you won't be fighting against things with the tactical profile of Young White Dragons. But sure, yeah, if the DM wants to make Flameskulls and Bone Nagas (and therefore Fireballs and Lightning Bolts) ubiquitous, that will at least justify summoning elementals instead of wolves and spiders, etc. although I'm not sure it makes wolves and spiders genuinely unattractive.

[KorvinStarmast]

But sure, yeah, if the DM wants to make Flameskulls and Bone Nagas (and therefore Fireballs and Lightning Bolts) ubiquitous, that will at least justify summoning elementals instead of wolves and spiders, etc. although I'm not sure it makes wolves and spiders genuinely unattractive. Flame skull, CR 4, fireball. Try running into two of them. Bar-B-Q. :smalleek: And then, a few episodes later, in a different dungeon, run into four defending a small area. :smalleek: :smalleek:

DM: my brother.

[MaxWilson]

Flame skull, CR 4, fireball. Try running into two of them. Bar-B-Q. :smalleek: And then, a few episodes later, in a different dungeon, run into four defending a small area. :smalleek: :smalleek:

DM: my brother.

Yeah, I love doing that kind of thing too. Especially a small area with lots of total cover up high so the Flameskulls can fly in and out, and PCs have to ready actions in order to hit them. (And remember that Flameskulls are resistance to piercing damage so arrows don't work well on them, you need sling stones and/or warlocks--but sling stones are low damage so they also don't work great without Sharpshooter, and Sharpshooter -5/+10 doesn't work well on Flameskulls with Blur + Shield up, and it's all just a big mess... for the PCs that is. The Flameskulls are having a great time.)

In practice what that means is that you just have to eat three to four Fireballs, so you hope to eat them with a wildshape HP or on someone with Absorb Elements or both. Or, find away to avoid the Flameskulls instead of fighting them.

[Waazraath]

Waaz, mentioned it was a 3 person party. The 3 person party, I have found, often outperforms a 5 person party. Three person parties tend to synchronize their actions and build off synergies with greater deftness and greater effect, then larger parties that play not as a team, but as a bunch of individuals.


This is spot on I think. I picked this class among others cause it perfectly complemented the other characters: a PAM/Sentinel fighter and a Vengeance S&B paladin. We already had some tactical battlefield control and some healing, and with only 3 players I always go for something with decent AC/HP. Full caster was obviously missing especially for utility, healing was available but more would be better, some form of minions were wanted because of few players, there weren't any buffs yet, no AoE, no scout. This more or less filled all the blanks, provided a powerful temp hp buff without costing spell slots, provided a scout option (wild shape) without costing spell slots, and loads of extra out of combat healing.

I first considered what the party needed, then considered a number of builds, then picked this one cause it fitted the bill nicely (and I never played a druid before, nor played a summoner in 5e). If it would have been a 5 person party, I probably just picked whatever I liked playing (fitted a themetical concept, or maybe a monk cause I'm really curious about playing one of those myself in 5e). So yeah.


I might have agreed with you by the title, but I read the OP and now I just think that the class isn't boring, the problem is that you're playing like a total munchkin. I mean seriously, short resting a few minutes after long resting? Pouring all leftover slots into goodberry? I don't know if that's standard fare for your group, and I don't want to tell you what's fun or not, but in my opinion that's a ridiculous way to play.


Well... to each their own, if this constitutes 'munchkinism' at your table, that's fine. But I think this is very logical to be honest, and way, waaaay far from munchkinism. I mean, the goodberrries: its a 24 hour non concentration spell. Of course you cast some of them before taking that long rest. I honestly thing that is intended, if not, why wouldn't designers haven't capped it at 8 hour like spells like Aid? Same for an ability that lasts all day, but gets recharged on a short rest: if it isn't intended use, why wouldn't have the designers phrased it as "until the next rest"?

You also touch the roleplay dimension here. Tbh, it annoyed the heck out of me when people in earlier editions optimized their builds through the roof and defended it by 'good roleplaying', of course my wizard is a focussed specialist turns into an initiated of the 7th veil, adventuring is dangerous so its only logical he gets the best tools. But here I see the point. I have this druid who will walk into a deadly dungeon tomorrow. He's resting somewhere safe now. Is there any plausible reason for not casting 3 or 4 times a goodberry spell, before going to sleep? And the next day, if he can bestow a Natures Blessing on his companions for which he'll need an hour to recover before being able to use it again, is there any reason for not casting it at the beginning of the day, and having a good one hour breakfast after that?

I mean, I think this is quite normal even if you don't have a 3 player group and try to compensate a bit for that. It's just very straightforward and logical use of the rules. If Druids actively refrain from using their 24 hour spells before taking a long rest, that shows something's wrong with the design of the class imo...

[Tanarii]

The most efficient counter is it's a concentration spell. And without optional rules, Druids don't get Con saves (takes mc or a feat) nor advantage on Con saves (takes a feat), unless then have a transmuter in the party.

[Amnestic]

The most efficient counter is it's a concentration spell. And without optional rules, Druids don't get Con saves (takes mc or a feat) nor advantage on Con saves (takes a feat), unless then have a transmuter in the party.

On the other hand, Shepherd druids focusing on summoning would probably prefer to spend an ASI on warcaster and/or res:con vs. wisdom boosting, since maintaining their concentration spells will be more important in the short term than boosting Wis.

Unless you meant feats themselves are an optional rule which...yeah, I guess, but they're very much pervasive in the majority of games.

[Tanarii]

Unless you meant feats themselves are an optional rule which...yeah, I guess, but they're very much pervasive in the majority of games.
That's exactly what I meant. DMs should think long and hard before allowing Resilient (Con) into their games. It has a fairly dramatic impact on spellcaster balance.

[MaxWilson]

The most efficient counter is it's a concentration spell. And without optional rules, Druids don't get Con saves (takes mc or a feat) nor advantage on Con saves (takes a feat), unless then have a transmuter in the party.

Even that isn't a great counter, since nothing requires the Shepherd Druid to do anything more with their action than Dodge/Dash/Hide, potentially while wildshaped into a tiny innocuous spider. Or even just Meld Into Stone and stay there while the summons go fight things with the rest of the party.

At least, that's what I'd do if I were playing a shepherd druid in a game without feats or MC, until I realized how boring that is, and then I'd give my guy some kind of psychological disorder to make him take more risks so I can have fun as a player.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One other note--how in the name of all that's holy are you fitting 8 medium/large creatures, 3 PCs, and a bunch of monsters into a standard dungeon room? And having them all be able to reach enemies? Are you fighting in gigantic open spaces?

Oh, and by the default rules you can't micromanage. You get one command per turn, which they interpret how they can. Unless you're spreading your commands out over many turns, you're basically having to give all your commands to the whole group. Which is a kludge. So pixies have to all focus on the same target (or you get random results), etc.

[Valmark]

One other note--how in the name of all that's holy are you fitting 8 medium/large creatures, 3 PCs, and a bunch of monsters into a standard dungeon room? And having them all be able to reach enemies? Are you fighting in gigantic open spaces?

Oh, and by the default rules you can't micromanage. You get one command per turn, which they interpret how they can. Unless you're spreading your commands out over many turns, you're basically having to give all your commands to the whole group. Which is a kludge. So pixies have to all focus on the same target (or you get random results), etc.

You are thinking of the undead spells- there is no restriction on how many orders you can give for Conjure Beasts/Woodland Beings.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You are thinking of the undead spells- there is no restriction on how many orders you can give for Conjure Beasts/Woodland Beings.

Other than the (obvious) requirement that you have to give the commands in 6 seconds or less, because that's how long a round is. Which strongly cuts down on the micromanaging. And I'd personally say that anything more than a short phrase/short sentence costs you your action. Just like I would with any other longwinded speechifying in combat.

[Hael]

The fact that there’s not enough room to put summons in is usually a big win for the party. Even if you can’t fit all 8 in a room and instead only get eg 4, you now have an unholy mess bc monsters can no longer move effectively and might struggle getting to the caster. Bc the caster chooses when to cast the spell and his positioning, he/she can usually guarantee a good layout.

For that reason minionmancy tend to gain more power when their movement is boxed in. It’s more of a problem outdoors, where they can be led through reactions (depends whether the DM allows the player to move them or not, and how intelligently he plays them).

Our tables experience was that the DM zerging and stampeding the herd was not much fun (if the herd is stupid, why aren’t the dms creatures stupid as well). So we restricted the total number of summons and allowed the player to path and position the minions independently.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The fact that there’s not enough room to put summons in is usually a big win for the party. Even if you can’t fit all 8 in a room and instead only get eg 4, you now have an unholy mess bc monsters can no longer move effectively and might struggle getting to the caster. Bc the caster chooses when to cast the spell and his positioning, he/she can usually guarantee a good layout.

For that reason minionmancy tend to gain more power when their movement is boxed in. It’s more of a problem outdoors, where they can be led through reactions (depends whether the DM allows the player to move them or not, and how intelligently he plays them).

Our tables experience was that the DM zerging and stampeding the herd was not much fun (if the herd is stupid, why aren’t the dms creatures stupid as well). So we restricted the total number of summons and allowed the player to path and position the minions independently.

But neither can any of the melee players. Which ruins their fun and slows everything to a crawl. IMO, that's the cardinal sin.

I don't ban summoning. But I do strongly encourage going with fewer over more. I think I will very strongly encourage people to use the Tasha's Summon line instead of the Conjure line if for no other reason than that.

[MaxWilson]

One other note--how in the name of all that's holy are you fitting 8 medium/large creatures, 3 PCs, and a bunch of monsters into a standard dungeon room? And having them all be able to reach enemies? Are you fighting in gigantic open spaces?

Why would you have to fit all of the PCs and summons into the same room? IIRC you tend to play with newbies, and I can understand why they might simply accept the framing of a given scene as fixed, never thinking to strafe from the doorway or shoot a monster from the end of an adjacent hallway, but just because newbies don't do something doesn't mean you can't.


The fact that there’s not enough room to put summons in is usually a big win for the party. Even if you can’t fit all 8 in a room and instead only get eg 4, you now have an unholy mess bc monsters can no longer move effectively and might struggle getting to the caster. Bc the caster chooses when to cast the spell and his positioning, he/she can usually guarantee a good layout.

Especially since PCs are more likely than monsters to have good ranged attacks that ignore partial cover, like Sharpshooter.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Why would you have to fit all of the PCs and summons into the same room? IIRC you tend to play with newbies, and I can understand why they might simply accept the framing of a given scene as fixed, never thinking to strafe from the doorway or shoot a monster from the end of an adjacent hallway, but just because newbies don't do something doesn't mean you can't.

I've rarely run into situations where there was room for
* monsters
* PCs
* and all those summoned things
To all interact meaningfully.

Sure, you could summon in all your monsters and run away. Works as a diversion. But that's super boring, watching the summons do the fighting. Or it just gets handwaved because no one wants to take that time when they can't do anything.

But all your melee people are now out of luck--they can't do anything meaningful. Neither can really anyone else, except the ranged types. Who have to just stand there (there's never enough room to do anything else, not and have line of sight) and shoot. Which bores the crap out of everyone else. I consider that horrible play.

Plus the huge drain in table time--summoning 8 creatures effectively doubles (or at least increases by 50%) the number of combatants and the number of rolls needed. Ugh.

[MaxWilson]

But all your melee people are now out of luck--they can't do anything meaningful. Neither can really anyone else, except the ranged types. Who have to just stand there (there's never enough room to do anything else, not and have line of sight) and shoot. Which bores the crap out of everyone else. I consider that horrible play.

Congratulations, you are one step closer to understanding why melee fighters are terrible in 5E's ruleset. (But sometimes fun despite being terrible, as long as you're willing to accept gratuitous risks.)

You're wrong about the ranged types having to just stand there, of course (they can move before and after they shoot).

[PhoenixPhyre]

Congratulations, you are one step closer to understanding why melee fighters are terrible in 5E's ruleset. (But sometimes fun despite being terrible, as long as you're willing to accept gratuitous risks.)

You're wrong about the ranged types having to just stand there, of course (they can move before and after they shoot).

Yay? Everyone else spends an hour of table time just sitting there, because some munchkin wanted to summon a bunch of wolves?

I consider that highly table-unfriendly.

[MaxWilson]

Yay? Everyone else spends an hour of table time just sitting there, because some munchkin wanted to summon a bunch of wolves?

So play a terrible class instead of a good class, or ban the good classes. Or skip over the boring fights and just declare "the wolves kill all three zombies and one wolf dies" and move on to a different adventuring activity like deciphering puzzles to find treasure. Read the thread to see other people's suggestions.

"It was strong, but boring" is why this thread exists!

[PhoenixPhyre]

So play a terrible class instead of a good class, or ban the good classes. Or skip over the boring fights and just "the wolves kill all the monsters and one wolf dies" and move on. Read the thread to see other people's suggestions.

Or...just encourage people to summon 1 thing instead of 8? Problem solved?

This is why I dislike munchkins. Power over all, if it's not optimal it's terrible, no matter the cost to the game itself.

[MaxWilson]

Or...just encourage people to summon 1 thing instead of 8? Problem solved?

This is why I dislike munchkins. Power over all, if it's not optimal it's terrible, no matter the cost to the game itself.

The OP created this thread because they DIDN'T enjoy the "strong, but boring" experience, which is the opposite of what a munchkin would say. Please see the rest of this thread for suggestions from many people how to deal with the issue, whether by changing the rules or changing the way you write adventures or both.

[Thunderous Mojo]

The only problems with that are that for many campaigns it's pretty obvious that a character is being blatantly countered

In any challenging situation, I think there are aspects that counter some options the players may normally have access to.

To use a chess analogy, Waaz played White, and so thoroughly trounced his opponent that they swore off ever going first in a match again.

By not challenging the players, the only thing the DM countered was fun.

White Plume Mountain is a 1,300 year old magical redoubt. Adding a few teleport traps and other magical effects just brings the module up to a comparable power level to the final portion of ToA..which is around the same character level.

Icewind Dale literally advises DMs to use a Roc to drop PCs into frigid, arctic seas.

White Plume Mountain is amateur league, not Premier League.
Druid is a Premier League class.


On the other hand, it's fairly easy for a player to mitigate this weakness just by using his summons as meatshields more than damage-dealers, e.g. breaking them into multiple groups. And even then it doesn't help against meatshields with ranged weapons (mostly skeletons, but also rock-throwing apes and Korreds) or flyby (Giant Owls).


Players often set their goals, and thus set their own restrictions on spell use.

If one's group is trying surreptitiously enter the panopticon prison ran by
a beholder, one is likely only casting Summon Cattle Meatshields,
due to the 'jig being up' and eye beams are filling the air.

I call that creative play. Yet, in terms of meeting player goals, the role play consequences of the group's infiltration being revealed might
temper the Druid being excessively happy at dominating an encounter.

Also I don't think it requires High Magic solutions to challenge Druids.
Ankhegs might hunt like sappers and trap door spiders.

A pre-summoned "wall of wolves" might have trouble navigating a farmer's field riddled with ankheg pits...15' deep pits, with acid pools.
Now the Druid and party need to decide, rescue the wolves or cancel the spell.

Some DMs like to use ad hoc rules and dynamic terrain. A remorhaz, bursting out of a frozen crevasse might create small environmental hazards, pits..difficult terrain etc.

All of these can play a check on summoned creatures.
All of these can also be a boon, to a clever player, that uses
summoned creatures to exploit dynamic terrain.

Realistically, one should expect to have both happen, at one point or other.

[MaxWilson]

All of these can play a check on summoned creatures.
All of these can also be a boon, to a clever player, that uses
summoned creatures to exploit dynamic terrain.

Realistically, one should expect to have both happen, at one point or other.

I agree, it's fine if those things happen and a player should absolutely expect it (with or without a Druid in the group). Such things are what adventure is made of. I think we just disagree over how much trouble such things will actually cause the druid.

Edit: okay, I have an idea how to make things harder. If you decide, in character, that every animal you summon that dies under your command ACTUALLY DIES, and you take it upon yourself to write letters home to their loved ones delivering the bad news and telling them what a heroic death it was, then that puts the Shepherd Druid implied flavor back in line with the ostensible flavor: now you're NOT trying to efficiently use up all your wolves' HP meatshielding before the duration runs out, you're trying to borrow their aid and send them back home safe and sound without having to write any sad letters. That might be a challenging and fun way to play a shepherd druid even in an easy-ish adventure.

[stoutstien]

Full casters just tend to have this effect. Wall of fur, arcane eye, rez effects, AOEs, and save or basically die effects.
I stopped playing them because they are rarely challenging.

Maybe try a ranger who summons?

[Eldariel]

Full casters just tend to have this effect. Wall of fur, arcane eye, rez effects, AOEs, and save or basically die effects.
I stopped playing them because they are rarely challenging.

Meh, that's only true if the other PCs aren't on the same power level and thus the DM can't build the world to be dangeorus/strong enough for them. Full casters work great in parties with other full casters, and non-full casters with non-full casters. It's precisely the same reason 3e had its Tier system too, and I do think 5e could use something similar to spread the word on what's actually stupid strong and what's not so as to let people craft parties from classes with similar power levels. 'cause it's no fun for anyone to end up in a position where:
1) They can't do their thing (Shepherd's thing is literally just summoning a bunch of things and empowering them; Necromancer's thing is having a bunch of skeletons; Artificer's those Tiny Servitors, etc.)

OR

2) If they do their thing, the game ceases to be challenging and a single character is doing more than their share of the job.

[Xeko]

There's a saying at my table. "Any action a warlock takes that isn't Eldritch Blast is a suboptimal action". There are two Warlocks at our table. Neither of us use Eldritch Blast, and one of us doesn't even know the cantrip. We sort of use the expression as an excuse or a joke whenever we fail at something. "Oh, should have just used Eldritch Blast, I guess. To do anything else as a Warlock is a waste".

I also have a Shepherd druid in another game, though only level 6. The shepherd druid duel wields scimitars while on foot, and will often attempt to mount his summons with a spear. I would use a lance, but you know, Druid and all, no metal equipment... and it's important to clarify, he has a normalish druid distribution of stats (11, 14, 20, 10, 15, 8), so strength is NOT a good stat for him. Sometimes playing suboptimal is just more fun. There's nothing wrong with that.

[Valmark]

There's a saying at my table. "Any action a warlock takes that isn't Eldritch Blast is a suboptimal action". There are two Warlocks at our table. Neither of us use Eldritch Blast, and one of us doesn't even know the cantrip. We sort of use the expression as an excuse or a joke whenever we fail at something. "Oh, should have just used Eldritch Blast, I guess. To do anything else as a Warlock is a waste".

I also have a Shepherd druid in another game, though only level 6. The shepherd druid duel wields scimitars while on foot, and will often attempt to mount his summons with a spear. I would use a lance, but you know, Druid and all, no metal equipment... and it's important to clarify, he has a normalish druid distribution of stats (11, 14, 20, 10, 15, 8), so strength is NOT a good stat for him. Sometimes playing suboptimal is just more fun. There's nothing wrong with that.

Does that mean the scimitars are made out of wood? But yeah, I see your point- even if for the OP summoning itself was the problem (well, that and how they run it at the table).

[Tanarii]

Congratulations, you are one step closer to understanding why melee fighters are terrible in 5E's ruleset. (But sometimes fun despite being terrible, as long as you're willing to accept gratuitous risks.)



Meh, that's only true if the other PCs aren't on the same power level and thus the DM can't build the world to be dangeorus/strong enough for them. Full casters work great in parties with other full casters, and non-full casters with non-full casters. It's precisely the same reason 3e had its Tier system too, and I do think 5e could use something similar to spread the word on what's actually stupid strong and what's not so as to let people craft parties from classes with similar power levels. 'cause it's no fun for anyone to end up in a position where:

Except that isn't even remotely correct. Even in Tier 2, Martials dominate, and it's melee martials that really wreck things.

It takes especially lenient rulings on specific spells before full casters start to become dominant. (Lenient use of the optional rules powers up every one, but martials even more than casters.)

[stoutstien]

Meh, that's only true if the other PCs aren't on the same power level and thus the DM can't build the world to be dangeorus/strong enough for them. Full casters work great in parties with other full casters, and non-full casters with non-full casters. It's precisely the same reason 3e had its Tier system too, and I do think 5e could use something similar to spread the word on what's actually stupid strong and what's not so as to let people craft parties from classes with similar power levels. 'cause it's no fun for anyone to end up in a position where:
1) They can't do their thing (Shepherd's thing is literally just summoning a bunch of things and empowering them; Necromancer's thing is having a bunch of skeletons; Artificer's those Tiny Servitors, etc.)

OR

2) If they do their thing, the game ceases to be challenging and a single character is doing more than their share of the job.

It's not necessary about power levels as much as DMs not being prepared or being unaware of how class X or spell Y impacts the game. Let alone a party who has both a large array of tools and are clever in their application.

[Valmark]

Except that isn't even remotely correct. Even in Tier 2, Martials dominate, and it's melee martials that really wreck things.

It takes especially lenient rulings on specific spells before full casters start to become dominant. (Lenient use of the optional rules powers up every one, but martials even more than casters.)

Must be a matter of experiences- I've never seen anything done by martials that full casters wouldn't be able to reproduce in their own way, but I've seen the opposite.

[Tanarii]

Must be a matter of experiences- I've never seen anything done by martials that full casters wouldn't be able to reproduce in their own way, but I've seen the opposite.
I've never seen an all full spell caster party that didn't have to cut and run before end of session early, or TPK.

I've seen multiple all martial party succeed many times, although healing magic items helps on that front. (And yes, martials using magic items and spells doesn't stop them being martials)

Long rest recharge spells for 5/6 full spell casters is a huge dependency. If your DM runs 5MWD games less than an adventuring day, it'll seem OP. But otherwise its at best par.

[Eldariel]

Except that isn't even remotely correct. Even in Tier 2, Martials dominate, and it's melee martials that really wreck things.

It takes especially lenient rulings on specific spells before full casters start to become dominant. (Lenient use of the optional rules powers up every one, but martials even more than casters.)

Well, we clearly have such different experiences that we don't even play the same game. My experiences: Tier 1, martials are pretty weak; they barely have anything casters don't have in their at-will repertoire and they mostly lack the proper nova options (and they tend to have awfully limited resources for the few novas they do have). Tier 2 is the strongest phase for the martials as their at-will is at its best comparatively and they tend to have enough resources to make their short rest stuff do something (or LR stuff in the case of the Pally as they finally unlock higher spell levels and as such multiply their spell slots).

But fact is that a full party of 4 martials of level 5 has a hard time against two level 5 minionmancer casters; and it only gets worse when we put them in PvE instead of PvP, since martials are more subject to attrition than well-played casters (though Tier 2 is the point where casters are probably most vulnerable to attrition). Animate Dead as written is just busted, and Conjure Animals with anything but super-adversial DM is also busted. If you roll randomly or get anything remotely worthwhile, it's great with just making them just hit the nearest enemy to the best of their ability. Martials have to take damage themselves; casters can just outsource damage to their minions and don't even need to fight. Doesn't matter how strong a tier 2 melee is (obviously melee PCs suck optimisation-wise; Sharpshooter + CBE and Archery Style are just plain stronger than GWM + PAM and any style numerically, and that's without even getting into the tactical advantages), they're still putting themselves on the line and dying in melee to slightly more dangerous adversaries. Meanwhile, casters don't even need to let enemies attack them.

It's one thing of course with most players who just don't play very optimally (and that's by no means wrong). But you can't measure power by comparing classes at varying levels of optimality. The only valid comparison is the same level of optimality and the only distinctive tier that's clearly definable is 100% optimality. Therefore the only worthwhile point of comparison between class power is optimally played version of the class. Besides, by other metrics you mostly compare your players' ability more than class ability, which is totally irrelevant far as class comparisons go.

IME, there's never a reason to play a martial class over a caster if power is your only metric. Martials just interact with the system in a far less powerful way since they have little in terms of being able to generate extra actions (Action Surge alone doesn't cut it) and they lack options for interacting with most of the system beyond combat in addition. In other words, at best "useful" in combat (never "essential") and comparatively worthless elsewhere. The number of encounters doesn't really matter far as optimality goes; every additional caster gives you more resources so you can go longer before another long rest while every martial you have is just a decrease in your overall all-day resources.


In any challenging situation, I think there are aspects that counter some options the players may normally have access to.

To use a chess analogy, Waaz played White, and so thoroughly trounced his opponent that they swore off ever going first in a match again.

By not challenging the players, the only thing the DM countered was fun.

White Plume Mountain is a 1,300 year old magical redoubt. Adding a few teleport traps and other magical effects just brings the module up to a comparable power level to the final portion of ToA..which is around the same character level.

Icewind Dale literally advises DMs to use a Roc to drop PCs into frigid, arctic seas.

White Plume Mountain is amateur league, not Premier League.
Druid is a Premier League class.

Precisely, but that's an issue with the system, which is the whole point. WPM is easy, yes. Druid is too strong for it, yes. If you have to adjust for a given class, you're already implicitly broadcasting that the game design is borked and class power levels are too far apart for them to be a part of the same game. This brings about many issues:
- A Druid player might not play Druids because they're strong but because they like summoning animals. Playing a class to do X only to keep running into counters constantly doesn't feel very fun. OTOH running over all challenges isn't very fun either. Therefore, the preferable solution would be bringing the powers in line rather than try to up the challenge to match.
- The same challenges that are sufficiently challenging for Druids can be absolutely brutal for others. A group with a couple of martials facing those fireball chuggers regularly? Most martials don't even get Absorb Elements, and especially melee martials are tactically restricted to options that put them at the mercy of AOE casters.

This is a design issue plain and simple. The DM shouldn't have to change up modules to suit for a straight single-classed single subclass PC with a standard race; there's no excuse for saying that's not accounted for in the design, that should literally be a playtest option. Ultimately, I think the only good solution to this is to either have everyone play classes of sufficient power level to vindicate upping the power level of the whole world so as to ensure that all the PCs are premiere league characters and the world is indeed said league; that or nerf the class (explicitly, since it feels like crap otherwise) to the point that it's playable in a lower powered world.

[Nhym]

- most importantly, it has too many deus ex machina's. The combination of summons + wildshape just gives an answer to too many obstacels.

That's kind of the point of the Druid, and especially the Shepherd. Their purpose is to be the utility belt of D&D. You have a problem? Druid has the answer. Stock druids have spells that can assist with most problems but Shepherds take it to another level where they can almost single-handedly resolve problems using their summons.

This playstyle doesn't fit everyone and it seems like you don't like the power.


- but maybe most important, even though all of the above it's powerful, it isn't neccesarily fun. A wall of souped up wolves keeps enemies at bay and does decent damage, but since it takes up concentration, the druid is standing there fiddling his fiddle, throwing some cantrips (or just stay out of line of sight, to avoid loosing concentration). Combat doesn't get exiting, cause in the unlikely case the wolves get killed before the rest of the party finishes the baddies, you just summon new ones. My character hardly has been in any danger, the entire dungeon. And though that might be 'good' from an optimization point of view, it just wasn't that interesting.

This is probably the mindset that is causing you to not have fun with it. There are two solutions I can suggest:

You don't have to summon the best creatures for the situation, or even summon at all. After all, you have a full spell list of druid spells. You are trying to win, rather than to have fun. If the DM is not challenging you hard enough to warrant conjuring 8x creatures, then don't do it; cast Entangle or something instead. Using the toolbox analogy, other characters usually have much smaller toolboxes and tools while you have a premium, multi-tiered toolbox with the best tools on the market. If your DM wants you to chop some wood with that toolbox, sure you can whip out a chainsaw and destroy that puny timber, but seems like you'd be having more fun using a handsaw with the rest of your party. Sure, if by chance you are given a tree out of nowhere, go ham with the chainsaw, but wisdom is knowing when to use it.

Second solution is not thinking that your character is your character. Hear me out. You are playing from the perspective that your character casts Conjure Animals and is basically done with combat, but that's the furthest from the truth. Try to see that you ARE the summons. Cast your Conjure spell and f*ck off to the horizon but once you cast that spell, your focus should be on the summons, not your character. As far as you care, as long as your character isn't in danger, who cares, you have an army of creatures that are your now. They are an extension of your character that is just as much a part of you as anything else. As for the "tactical challange", you can get no more tactical than being a general for your furry army. Use them as you would troops in a battle: engage them in formation, perform flanking maneuvers, bait an ambush, create a defensive perimeter... you can do more with a group of summons tactically than any single character can and there are no shortage of options you can take every round with all of the summons together. They aren't just static meat bags; they are independent, individual full creatures that can take all the actions any creature can (Dash. Disengage. Dodge. Help. Hide. Ready. Search. Use an Object.) When you think of them like that, play becomes a LOT more dynamic. Instead of having all your wolves sit there and attack, for example, 2 can attack, 2 dodge, 1 helps an ally, 1 pulls the level and the other 2 disengage to get a better position to flank the enemy. See how tactical you can get? The options are literally limitless.



summoning makes turns take long. Yeah, I knew this of course, saw it at my table. But it stays annoying, especially with more and complex creatures, that also know complex spells like Phantasmal Forrce.

Preparation is the best solution to this. Know exactly what you intend to do before you take your turn. Also if you are on roll20 make tons of macros which makes the time it takes to roll negligible.


of course I could just use other spells, but since I picked a subclass that empoweres summoning, I gimp myself if I start casting Erupting Earths, Blights, Entangles, Ice knives, Flaming Sphere's or Heat metal, to name a few. If I do that, I guess I can better make a new character.

The point a of a toolbox isn't to use all the tools in it always, it's to use what you need. The power of Shepherds is that they CAN nuke 8 suped-up conjures onto the field if needed, but they don't need to. You especially don't need to if you are having less fun because of it, but you should never think that you are better off making a new character that has less options because you can't use all the options the Shepherd provides. Being a Druid means having access to all the spells a druid has to offer so while you are a Shepherd, you are just as much a Druid.


In general, I think 5e did a decent job with 'not having an obvious solution to every situation through class features'. But both summons and wildshape offer quite a decent button for lots of different things, and the druid has 'em rolled in the same class. So I'm not too thrilled with the design. Instead of creative thinking, it's "I wildshape" or "I summon X".

The only limit to creative thinking is your imagination.



What do I want from the playground, exept ranting?
1) I'd like to known if people have similar experiences?
2) Any advice on how to play this character in a way that is more fun for me, given my gripes above?

I'm considering to switching to another character (DM is ok, we're between adventures anyway), but am not sure yet.

1. No but I can see where you are coming from.
2. I hope what I've said above is of use to you and I hope you stick with it. Obviously, it's my thing to get more people playing druids.

The biggest takeaway I can see is that you need to understand that what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do are two very different things. Also, you need to start thinking of your summons as extensions of your own character.

Personally, I have a LOT of experience with Shepherd Druids as I have played them in multiple campaigns for years. I am also the author of the most popular Shepherd Druid guide (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xXgYqPxkEHaCisQ0tteFF-KtsmfJxkOQojeWwHf22n4/edit?usp=sharing) so feel free to ask me anything.

[KorvinStarmast]

Personally, I have a LOT of experience with Shepherd Druids as I have played them in multiple campaigns for years. I am also the author of the most popular Shepherd Druid guide (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xXgYqPxkEHaCisQ0tteFF-KtsmfJxkOQojeWwHf22n4/edit?usp=sharing) so feel free to ask me anything. Reviewing the guide now. Enjoying it. :)

[MaxWilson]

Except that isn't even remotely correct. Even in Tier 2, (A) Martials dominate, and (B) it's melee martials that really wreck things.

It takes especially lenient rulings on specific spells before full casters start to become dominant. (Lenient use of the optional rules powers up every one, but martials even more than casters.)

I don't want to argue about (A) because it's pointless, but I think you are greatly mistaken about (B) especially in games with feats (which I know you don't allow).

I've been replaying the old Gold Box AD&D CRPGs this week and it's really fun to reminded of all the things AD&D does to lock you into melee combat once you get there, which 5E does the opposite of:

(1) Ranged weapons do far less damage than melee weapons in AD&D (e.g. 1d12+13 for longsword +3 and Enlarge spell vs. 1d4+3 for sling +3); in 5E they're about the same.

(2) Attacking with a melee weapon or casting a spell in Gold Box games ends movement--I have recently been playing AD&D as if it doesn't end movement but now I'm wondering if I was just influenced by 5E, need to re-check the rules. 5E lets you move before and after attacking/casting.

(3) When you "flee" from an enemy in AD&D (move faster than 1/3 your speed away from them), they get a full attack sequence against you ignoring Dex bonus and shield, so even one monster can pin several PCs in position. (And taking damage prevents spellcasting that round, so spellcasters especially get pinned in place.) In 5E they get only a single attack, once per round, so it's actually fairly painless to move your whole party away from a big tough monster and find a different position.

(4) 5E of course has a ton of spells and special abilities (Zephyr Strike, Mobile feat, Swashbucklers, Cunning Action, Nimble Escape, Misty Step) designed to let you cheaply escape melee while still attacking that round.

And we haven't even gotten into monster analysis yet and how many 5E monster abilities like Fire Aura and Parry are designed specifically to work against melee fighters, while others like Medusa gazes and Bodak auras and Hill/Frost/Fire/etc. Giant Multiattacks may or may not be specifically designed vs. melee fighters but wind up functioning that way anyway, as reasons not to get into melee.

5E is D&D: Gunfight Edition. Don't bring a knife, except as a backup weapon.

-Max

[Waazraath]

Some points about the discussion above. Warning: some mild spoilers about different encounters!


To add some further context: I think I summoned the entire adventure: 1x 8 wolves, 1x 2 giant toads, 1x 2 giant (dunno's - forgotten), 1x 2 giant owls, 1x 8 sprites, and 3x 8 pixies. So it's not that I opted for the 8 wolves all the time, I got them once, and that was bloody powerful in that encounter something like 6 or 7 knights with one more powerful leader, in a large room, and i went first so could give the wolves a good starting position (didn't changed them after that). All melee enemies, so no fireball, and they needed to engage the wolves, punch through their hp, and were vulnerable to their pack tactics. It worked great in that context, but yeah, it doesn't in others.

- as far as descriptions on 'munchkinism' go, I don't know if they are in general about my specific situation PhoenixPhyre, but as I've said: 1) this was my first druid 2) my first summoner in 5e (first summoner I've seen at a table as well); I did the '8 wolves' once, and the 8 pixies 3 times (and summoned those we needed their spells to clear an obstacle, and kept them around for any later combats). Part of this adventure was 'trying out summoning / sheapard druid' for me, so I tried several combinations, especially for the animals. Fey don't have that many choices (especially if you limit yourself to the PhB), and if it weren't for "the party needs fly" I probably would have tried some different "2 feys" combinations. Having said that: the shepard druid subclass abilities greatly encourage more smaller creatures, as I stated earlier. I think this is simply bad design: playing a class to its strengths shouldn't lead to (the risk of) unbalancing an encounter and (unavoidably) making the turn take much longer. Tasha's got this right with the new "1 creature" spell.

- we play premade adventures because we have little time (kids, busy jobs). Of course a DM can adjust to a certain party, but that does take extra time again, but more important: for this DM it also was the first summoner in 5e. So for him it was as much a learning experience as for me.

- White Plume Mountain may be a 'low power' dungon, I don't know. For 3 players of level 8, facing a vampire or that encounter I described in the first part of this post could have been quite deadly without much trouble. We were lucky on some accounts I think (me already having my summons ready with the vampire, and we all going first and being immune to surprises with the knights). Though we could have played better, probably could have scouted better, whatever. Personally, I'm really happy NOT knowing what most monsters in 5e can do and how they work, since I want to be surprised and feel exited, and (rp perspective), my characters won't know either. So I'm really sure I didn't play my pixies 'optimal' in encounters, but I treasure not knowing how (e.g. what spells work against a vampire in 5e and what not).

- The discussion tends to narrow to 'power' or even the age old 'martial vs caster' dialogue. But 1) (Too much) power wasn't the only thing that made things boring. Not being able to cast other concentration spells contributed to the boredom. The lack of any credible threat to my character contributed to the boredom (could always hang in the back and be full effective, and have a panic button in wild shape ready). The fact that "summon things" could be the solution to scouting, flying, underwater, invisible creatures, magical effects needed to be dispelled etc. (though this falls under 'versatility is power as well', to be honest).
And 2) It's not that it was far overshadowing the other characters. When a vampire was grappling and sucking dry the paladin, the fighter saved the day by breaking the grapple (several times) with a maneuver. Several times the paladin saved the day with his +5 to save aura, among others against a vampire's charm and a sorcerer or wizard that casted something with a high dc will save.
So yeah, with certain summons this build gets really good, I did dominate some encounters, but you can't count on getting those summons you need (and as I learned from this thread, the DC my DM deceided for 'let the player pick' was probably also too low, or this option shouldn't be given at all). But I certainly wouldn't use my thread as evidence of caster superiority or anything like that. If anything what I've seen so far including my other games, I'm most impressed (tier 1 and 2) with paladins, fighters, clerics, druids (though boring), and warlocks, and less with rogues, bards, wizards and sorcerers. But balance is so close that it really is depending on the type of campaign/adventure, enemies, encounter setup, party setup, and player skill, more than the power of a class. Ymmv obviously.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Edit: okay, I have an idea how to make things harder. If you decide, in character, that every animal you summon that dies under your command ACTUALLY DIES, and you take it upon yourself to write letters home to their loved ones.

Why do the spirits have to die, for there to be some interesting ethical considerations to ponder? Repeatedly forcing the consciousness of Fey spirits into beast forms, and forcing those consciousness to fight to the death....could have some ethically dodgy bits. Does Druidic Magic utilize ambient spirits or does the Druid forge a bond and only a few spirits heed the callings of the Druid's magic.

The mechanics stay the same, regardless of the answer, but the answer will certainly influence the decisions the player makes.

As I DM, I try not provide answers to players. I do provide questions, I would like the players to consider. Often times, I use the players answers for the game world.

I've never read a Superman comic, but the only meaningful way to challenge an invincible character is to challenge their character.

How does the player of a 10th level Druid react to the bombshell that all
those Fey spirits they have been summoning to fight for them, permanently die?

Plus, Henry the V, "If these Fey Spirits do not die well tis a black mark against the Druid that lead them". 😁

I find those types of questions much more engaging, then the just the mechanics of killing everything and taking their stuff.

Now, please don't get me wrong...I like that type of game as well, and as much.


- The same challenges that are sufficiently challenging for Druids can be absolutely brutal for others. A group with a couple of martials facing those fireball chuggers regularly? Most martials don't even get Absorb Elements, and especially melee martials are tactically restricted to options that put them at the mercy of AOE casters.

All of the above doesn't help when the Druid has to joust in heavy armor, in a Tournament, to impress the Dread Lord of Uterbol.

Absorb Elements, doesn't help the Druid get the password to
Hephaestus' workshop from Akidos the Cyclops.

Absorb Elements doesn't help if you enter a chamber of brick, and
the only thing in the room is a large, 4' long level of iron, attached to a switch box.

Eladriel, your design scope seems to have a very particular focus.
Druids are great, but you need to have system mastery, to get the most out of the class.

My idle conspiracy theory was WoTC panicked when the Moon Druid seemed to be the most popular subclass, and over-corrected with the Shepard Druid, to entice people away.


This is a design issue plain and simple. The DM shouldn't have to change up modules to suit for a straight single-classed single subclass PC with a standard race;

I don't agree with the premise behind this statement.
I DM for the group of players, that are playing.
I think a DM should absolutely make changes to get the group more involved.

The masked bandit is the uncle of a PC. Maybe replace one NPC for another NPC the adventuring group has met before.
Likewise, if I know that Eladriel the Druid can tear up the module,
then why wouldn't I mix it up to challenge the player?

I'm not talking about, vindictive nerfing...I'm not talking "gunning for someone",
just about making the game a challenge and fun for the player.

[MaxWilson]

Why do the spirits have to die, for there to be some interesting ethical considerations to ponder?

Maybe they don't, but I didn't (and still don't) have a better idea for creating the same tension between druid and summons as between a Commanding Officer and his or her troops.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Thumbs up to that MaxWilson!

[Nhym]

Maybe they don't, but I didn't (and still don't) have a better idea for creating the same tension between druid and summons as between a Commanding Officer and his or her troops.

It could be that the fey spirits are reoccurring individuals with their own personalities, passions, goals and while they are your allies and will form to any summons you wish and follow your orders, they still feel pain and are sad when their allies are defeated in combat.

If you act coldly to them and care little for their pain, maybe they act the same toward you. Maybe they get more aggressive. If you care for them, comfort them outside of battle or play with them, maybe they are more receptive to your commands or actively protect you and your companions.

If you really want to go all out, maybe mistreating summons results in....broken... spirits. One of the spirits thinks it's an eagle regardless of what you summon it as, so unless you pay more care to it, it spends its turns trying to fly. Or you summon cows that think they are wolves and act like a pack. Anything land-based that thinks it's a fish so freaks out when it's outside of water.

[dmhelp]

Has anyone made a variant shepherd or conjurer that buffs only a single summons? I think that would be nice and work well with the TCOE spells.

[MaxWilson]

Has anyone made a variant shepherd or conjurer that buffs only a single summons? I think that would be nice and work well with the TCOE spells.

I've played a Shepherd who mostly just summons a single big CR 2 Giant Constrictor Snake. It was still pretty strong.

[KorvinStarmast]

[QUOTE=MaxWilson;24846393]I've played a Shepherd who mostly just summons a single big CR 2 Giant Constrictor Snake. It was still pretty strong. Heh, with an artificer in the party granting temp HP with each bonus action, that snake might last for a very long fight, squeezing and constricting many enemies.

[Eldariel]

All of the above doesn't help when the Druid has to joust in heavy armor, in a Tournament, to impress the Dread Lord of Uterbol.

Absorb Elements, doesn't help the Druid get the password to
Hephaestus' workshop from Akidos the Cyclops.

Absorb Elements doesn't help if you enter a chamber of brick, and
the only thing in the room is a large, 4' long level of iron, attached to a switch box.

Eladriel, your design scope seems to have a very particular focus.
Druids are great, but you need to have system mastery, to get the most out of the class.

My idle conspiracy theory was WoTC panicked when the Moon Druid seemed to be the most popular subclass, and over-corrected with the Shepard Druid, to entice people away.

I don't know what Absorb Elements has to do with that, or any of that for that matter. I brought it up since lacking it or similar effects is one of the reason why the same fireballs/dragon breaths/whatever that fry the Druid's minions are extremely dangerous to the actual melee PCs themselves - that's one of the reasons the "fix" actually causes collateral damage to the already weakest party members. All of those are things any class can do, more or less (with some degree of variance). At least the "impress the Dreadlord"-part; you can usually come up with any number of means.


I don't agree with the premise behind this statement.
I DM for the group of players, that are playing.
I think a DM should absolutely make changes to get the group more involved.

There's difference between making changes and having to make changes. I'll make changes, because I want to enhance the feel/change things up/whatever. If my hands are tied because I have to counter a particular character, that's going to restrict the changes I can make for no good reason and little gain as we're just talking about a mistake in game system design that WotC refuses to correct due to their lack of errata policy.

One issue is also that it has to be challenging and fun for everyone, not just the strongest character. If the strongest character is getting challenged, the weaker PCs are likely getting trounced.


The discussion tends to narrow to 'power' or even the age old 'martial vs caster' dialogue. But 1) (Too much) power wasn't the only thing that made things boring. Not being able to cast other concentration spells contributed to the boredom. The lack of any credible threat to my character contributed to the boredom (could always hang in the back and be full effective, and have a panic button in wild shape ready). The fact that "summon things" could be the solution to scouting, flying, underwater, invisible creatures, magical effects needed to be dispelled etc. (though this falls under 'versatility is power as well', to be honest).
And 2) It's not that it was far overshadowing the other characters. When a vampire was grappling and sucking dry the paladin, the fighter saved the day by breaking the grapple (several times) with a maneuver. Several times the paladin saved the day with his +5 to save aura, among others against a vampire's charm and a sorcerer or wizard that casted something with a high dc will save.
So yeah, with certain summons this build gets really good, I did dominate some encounters, but you can't count on getting those summons you need (and as I learned from this thread, the DC my DM deceided for 'let the player pick' was probably also too low, or this option shouldn't be given at all). But I certainly wouldn't use my thread as evidence of caster superiority or anything like that. If anything what I've seen so far including my other games, I'm most impressed (tier 1 and 2) with paladins, fighters, clerics, druids (though boring), and warlocks, and less with rogues, bards, wizards and sorcerers. But balance is so close that it really is depending on the type of campaign/adventure, enemies, encounter setup, party setup, and player skill, more than the power of a class. Ymmv obviously.

Yeah, the Concentration issue is a real one. Druid has lots of cool spells but practically speaking most of the time you'll just be casting Conjure Animals and letting it deal with everything. There are some decent non-Concentration spells on the Druid list: Thunderwave, Plant Growth, Tidal Wave, Daylight, Stone Shape, etc. The biggest issue is lacking good low level options so they are slot intensive though.

Regarding balance, do note what you said: lack of credible threat to your character contributed to boredom. That's a manifestation of the imbalance; Fighter or Paladin has to be there to be charmed and sucked dry if they wanna do damage while your wall of things does stuff for you while you can go read a book after the first round. That's a massive tactical advantage. It also means enemy has a real hard time breaking your Concentration or doing any of those things people usually bring up as these wannabe-counters, unless they're incredibly mobile (preferably teleporting) and with significant ranged prowess. That's not to say Fighter and Pally can't do anything [Pally specifically has that one great non-caster ability in Aura of Protection]; it's just that you can do more or less the same with much less risk, and with much more versatility. The comparison is not particularly close, even if a Fighter were to do more damage (which is...situational at best).

[Thunderous Mojo]

Yup. Using Conjure Animals for a Giant Constrictor Snake is nigh comparable to a Staff of the Python. Grant that Python Advantage on Strength checks, through the Bear Spirit option, and and elect to have the snake Grapple and not use the Constrict action. This makes a potent grappler.


Snakes are powerful creatures in 5e. Staff of the Python is an uncommon item.

5e abounds in Giant Constrictor Snakes, apparently.

[Waazraath]

Yeah, the Concentration issue is a real one. Druid has lots of cool spells but practically speaking most of the time you'll just be casting Conjure Animals and letting it deal with everything. There are some decent non-Concentration spells on the Druid list: Thunderwave, Plant Growth, Tidal Wave, Daylight, Stone Shape, etc. The biggest issue is lacking good low level options so they are slot intensive though.

Regarding balance, do note what you said: lack of credible threat to your character contributed to boredom. That's a manifestation of the imbalance; Fighter or Paladin has to be there to be charmed and sucked dry if they wanna do damage while your wall of things does stuff for you while you can go read a book after the first round. That's a massive tactical advantage. It also means enemy has a real hard time breaking your Concentration or doing any of those things people usually bring up as these wannabe-counters, unless they're incredibly mobile (preferably teleporting) and with significant ranged prowess. That's not to say Fighter and Pally can't do anything [Pally specifically has that one great non-caster ability in Aura of Protection]; it's just that you can do more or less the same with much less risk, and with much more versatility. The comparison is not particularly close, even if a Fighter were to do more damage (which is...situational at best).

We agree on the first part.

Regarding the second part: I do see what you mean, and it's a fair point to assess 'less risk' is a part of being powerful. But, especially in a dungeon like this where each room with enemies is a self-contained environment, if you push that logic in its extreme, the 'most powerful' option is to have 3 summoners/necromancers, open a door, push 8 sprites, 8 wolves and a bunch of skeletons through, and close it again, opening it only when the noise dies away. Powerful? No doubt. Fun? Meh.

Btw, it was me who succeeded against the vampire's charm, with help of the paladin's aura, replacing that character with a random full caster wouldn't have made things better I think.

In addition, the dungeon setup catered quite to a summoners strength I think. Few ranged attackers (able to disrupt concentration), few casters (who could dispell summons or counterspell), no ambushes or surprise attacks (who are in my experience much more a problem for casters, with - generally - lower hp, ac and sometimes a concentration spell going which they might loose) - and no time limit running (though we kept the pace ourselves, disliking 5m adventuring days). This is exactly what I mean with 'ymmv', I've no doubt that in your games casters are stronger, or that tanarii sees martials dominating in his games. It really depends on a lot of other variables how it turns out (and for me, that is testament to 5e's general balance between classes).

[Thunderous Mojo]

I don't know what Absorb Elements has to do with that, or any of that for that matter.

I was tossing out scenarios, (off the top of my head), that do not revolve
around the Druid being able to use the "Usual Suspects" spells.

D&D has always had a Justice League issue, (or an Avengers Issue),
of not all of the teammates being the same power level.

If comic books can find away for Aquaman and Superman to Adventure together, then a Druid or Wizard in the party can work as well.
Admittedly, this can require more effort.


There's difference between making changes and having to make changes.

I acknowledge what you are saying, and I empathize with the emotion
the statement is expressing.

I just do not think the sentiment helps in the practical day to day of playing an RPG.

If a change is needed, then I am going to make a change...otherwise the game will wither and end.

Expert players with premier league classes, don't bother me as a DM.
In fact those type of players, (to me), make my role of being the DM easier.

I can introduce open ended scenarios, where I as the DM do not have an answer spelled out, and assume the players will come up with a solution.

(This really cuts down on session prep time, and keeps in game play stimulating to me as the DM)

[Eldariel]

I was tossing out scenarios, (off the top of my head), that do not revolve
around the Druid being able to use the "Usual Suspects" spells.

D&D has always had a Justice League issue, (or an Avengers Issue),
of not all of the teammates being the same power level.

If comic books can find away for Aquaman and Superman to Adventure together, then a Druid or Wizard in the party can work as well.
Admittedly, this can require more effort.

Mostly it means playing your character in a suboptimal way or accepting that you play a second fiddle. Comics and stories in general are a different medium than tabletop RPGs; unless agreed otherwise, everyone should be an equal participant in tabletop. Such considerations don't apply to written media. As such, it's rather more productive to bring everyone roughly to similar par or at least to make everyone excellent enough within their specialty that everyone has a thing they're going to outshine the rest at.


I acknowledge what you are saying, and I empathize with the emotion
the statement is expressing.

I just do not think the sentiment helps in the practical day to day of playing an RPG.

If a change is needed, then I am going to make a change...otherwise the game will wither and end.

Expert players with premier league classes, don't bother me as a DM.
In fact those type of players, (to me), make my role of being the DM easier.

I can introduce open ended scenarios, where I as the DM do not have an answer spelled out, and assume the players will come up with a solution.

(This really cuts down on session prep time, and keeps in game play stimulating to me as the DM)

IMHO by far the easiest change is for the DM to just alter the spells and characters so that the board is a bit more even. It doesn't need perfect, Go-level balance, but sufficient balance to ensure that everyone appears to be contributing approximately equally and that everyone can participate on the same adventures. After all, character level is supposed to be an indicator of character's power level; if a level 6 PC of class X can be significantly stronger than a level 9 PC of another class, there are some issues that might need remedying.



In addition, the dungeon setup catered quite to a summoners strength I think. Few ranged attackers (able to disrupt concentration), few casters (who could dispell summons or counterspell), no ambushes or surprise attacks (who are in my experience much more a problem for casters, with - generally - lower hp, ac and sometimes a concentration spell going which they might loose) - and no time limit running (though we kept the pace ourselves, disliking 5m adventuring days). This is exactly what I mean with 'ymmv', I've no doubt that in your games casters are stronger, or that tanarii sees martials dominating in his games. It really depends on a lot of other variables how it turns out (and for me, that is testament to 5e's general balance between classes).

Hm. In this edition AC is the least expensive to casters because spells don't need your second hand so you can afford a shield pretty easily. For warriors, meanwhile, shield takes your second hand. Further, Shield as a level 1 spell makes caster AC pretty bogus. It is true though that ambushes are incredibly dangerous; ranged attackers not so much (cover, concealment, simple dropping prone tends to make them far less frightening combined with some basic level AC and the Shield-spell if necessary). However, it is true that less experienced casters often fail to take advantage of these options and less experienced DMs might run extremely plain environments with less stuff to interact with making this less efficient of course: which is why I find casters are stronger in more experienced groups overall, because lack of experience tends to cut into caster power disproportionately. Which might not be a bad thing.

I have no doubt that some DMs may see martials dominating, but if told how the PCs are playing, I think it's pretty easy to point out what the casters are not doing in any given circumstance.

[Thunderous Mojo]

IMHO by far the easiest change is for the DM to just alter the spells and characters so that the board is a bit more even. It doesn't need perfect, Go-level balance, but sufficient balance to ensure that everyone appears to be contributing approximately equally and that everyone can participate on the same adventures.

I've never experienced a case in which a motivated player has not
meaningfully contributed to a session.

This is true, even when the dice roll cold for them.

Not every session of a campaign is going to show case all characters equally.
Not realistically.

Beyond this, the truly daunting question is how does one even evaluate what equal participation looks like? ( Solely Quantitatively is out)

The basketball player Robert Horry is famous for being a player that conserved their resources, and delivered critical plays, exactly, when those particular plays were needed. He did this multiple times on different teams.

Each player, in a successful adventuring group, is adding something, that makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

If every encounter, every player is trying to be the top DPR dealer,
that group will not be as successful as a group that has Robert Horry.

[MaxWilson]

I've never experienced a case in which a motivated player has not meaningfully contributed to a session.

Contributing and feeling like you're contributing aren't necessarily the same, especially if you can't contribute in the way you originally intended.

Example: I remember a player who had gotten his Barbarian up to level 13 or so coming to me to me and expression some dissatisfaction with his Barbarian fantasy. You see, what with all the spelljamming the group had started doing, it was hard for him to engage as a melee fighter. There was still dungeon crawling, but there were also flying foes and outdoor battles. He asked me for advice, and while I was able to suggest a couple of things (like using stealth at night to get closer), I also had to sort of say, "That's just kind of how melee is in 5E." He didn't discard the Barbarian completely but he wound up making and playing a warlock much more frequently instead.

He's a good player and he was contributing all along as a Barbarian, but it wasn't fully satisfying, and it's perfectly fine for someone to want to switch to something that matches better with the ruleset and the nature of the campaign.

[Thunderous Mojo]

MaxWilson, I admit to being a little perplexed as I don't think anything I wrote, should have given the impression that I am opposed to accommodating players.

I myself have had a player retire their 5e Barbarian.

While the qualia of satisfaction and dissatisfaction is subjective, the game itself
is inter-subjective. I, personally, would never expect any to devote, possibly,
years of their life to something that was profoundly dissatisfying.

Now, with that said...I fully concur with your post above.

[MaxWilson]

(A) MaxWilson, I admit to being a little perplexed as I don't think anything I wrote, should have given the impression that I am opposed to accommodating players.

I myself have had a player retire their 5e Barbarian.

While the qualia of satisfaction and dissatisfaction is subjective, the game itself
is inter-subjective. I, personally, would never expect any to devote, possibly,
years of their life to something that was profoundly dissatisfying.

Now, with that said...I fully concur with your post above.

(A) Sorry, what gave you the impression that I had the impression you were opposed to accommodating players? I didn't think we were talking about DMing at all, only about our various experiences with how often players feel useless. Apologies if that was topic drift.

I do not and have never had the impression that you were opposed to accomodating players. I did have the impression you perhaps had never had a player feel useless in a session, which would have led me to predict that your players have never been dissatisfied with e.g. Barbarians, but clearly that particular impression was wrong.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Max you are fine. I have a hard time processing 'tone' in communication.
So when I think I might have misinterpreted a signal, or sent an erroneous signal of my own I like to ask.

Despite, potentially coming across as a passive aggressive jab, my post was truly about gauging wether I had unwittingly given the wrong impression, and possibly offense.

I have enjoyed the conversation...(though references to US Basketball players from 20 years ago directed to posters based in Finland, was probably a tactical blunder) 😀

[Waazraath]

Example: I remember a player who had gotten his Barbarian up to level 13 or so coming to me to me and expression some dissatisfaction with his Barbarian fantasy. You see, what with all the spelljamming the group had started doing, it was hard for him to engage as a melee fighter. There was still dungeon crawling, but there were also flying foes and outdoor battles. He asked me for advice, and while I was able to suggest a couple of things (like using stealth at night to get closer), I also had to sort of say, "That's just kind of how melee is in 5E." He didn't discard the Barbarian completely but he wound up making and playing a warlock much more frequently instead.

Just curious: if your games work like that, with plenty of outdoor encounters or flying enemies: why didn't the barbarian took a flying race, had a flying mount (e.g. with handle animal or just with gc), had some items to help there (I think there are few uncommon items that allow flight, and there are potions of course), or didn't receive a fly from a team mate (team game and all that), etc? Cause I don't think "melee can't engage the enemy" is "how melee is in 5e", at least it doesn't have to be, nor is it intended to be I think.

[JediMaster]

I love playing summoners. It takes a while, but the rest of the party eventually realizes that you consider them a minion.

[Tanarii]

Cause I don't think "melee can't engage the enemy" is "how melee is in 5e", at least it doesn't have to be, nor is it intended to be I think.
Yeah. It's not that way at all, unless you specifically make it so by running a game full of flat open plains (or in this case, open spelljamming space) or you're having a white room optimization discussion. Natural terrain includes a lot of limited lines of Sight. And if you're going to play DM Mongols vs European Knights PCs in the plains, players should take that into account in terms of tactics. (And probably read the Mongoliad.)

[Witty Username]

To address turns taking a long time, you could ask your DM if you could use the mob rules when applicable.
In terms of power, some options like 8 pixies you could forgo.
In terms of tactics, I am not sure. The closest personal experience I have is using animate objects. Which did have some choices depending if I needed damage(10 daggers) or a door jam(once I animated a fallen giants shield because I felt the hp bucket and barakade would be more helpful). I am not sure how applicable that is.

[MaxWilson]

Just curious: if your games work like that, with plenty of outdoor encounters or flying enemies: why didn't the barbarian took a flying race, had a flying mount (e.g. with handle animal or just with gc), had some items to help there (I think there are few uncommon items that allow flight, and there are potions of course), or didn't receive a fly from a team mate (team game and all that), etc? Cause I don't think "melee can't engage the enemy" is "how melee is in 5e", at least it doesn't have to be, nor is it intended to be I think.

If memory serves, this was the first 5E PC he'd ever created, about five months before. Flying races like Aarakocra hasn't been published yet. I tend to grant few but powerful magic items, and none of them let you fly, and I actually don't know if that was his problem--I don't remember them actually fighting any flying enemies in that campaign although they did negotiate their way out of a fight that included one bat-mounted warlock. I can't answer for why no teammate cast spells on him although from memory I conjecture their concentration was busy with other things, and this group of players was pretty individualistic anyway (high school kids, often wanted to split the party rather than arguing others into going along with them).

Note: I run character trees, and Thok the Barbarian was not the player's only PC even before he created the warlock. He also played Jandar the Shadow Monk/Moon Druid (who never actually cast any druid spells that I can remember, just wildshaped). I don't know why he was dissatisfied with Thok and not with Jandar.

Re: flying mounts, I don't remember Thok ever attempting to acquire one, although I remember Thok trying to tame a wolf (success) and then later a triceratops (failure), and a different PC Nox tried to steal roc eggs to train tame rocs and wound up getting killed several times (none permanent due to a house rule on karma), but none of the other PCs were with him in that attempt including Thok. I don't remember why, but if Thok had wanted a flying mount he could have pursued the roc option, but he didn't.

It's also possible that he was simply in the mood to play a warlock. I think he was hoping I would make a bigger deal of the patron than I wound up being able to do; I feel bad about that in retrospect and hope I've learned since then.

[sambojin]

Can understand his point though. From a flying encounters perspective, even with pretty suboptimal play, a druid walks all over them.

At lvl12, a Moon druid (not the most powerful subclass at this level) can summon a lvl6 Tasha's beast spirit, wildshape into an air elemental, and absolutely dominate what a Barb can do in such an encounter from a melee perspective.

This is one of the worst ways of a druid handling such an encounter, but is still far better than a Barb can ever do without a bit of DM help along the way.

So many tools to use, that even using square pegs, you can usually smash through round holes with just your class kit, no adventure stuff needed. And not even using your best hammer.

(PS. I find druids fun because of this, because I like doing different/ whatever stuff, even if it's suboptimal. They've got a tonne of resources, even early-on, so it's up to you to make them interesting. I prefer that than the optimal attack routine/ character build/ spell use that other classes tend to do, over and over)

[Thunderous Mojo]

At lvl12, a Moon druid (not the most powerful subclass at this level) can summon a lvl6 Tasha's beast spirit, wildshape into an air elemental, and absolutely dominate what a Barb can do in such an encounter from a melee perspective.


Is this a testament to a Druid being overpowered, or the 5e Barbarian being too limited in scope?

A 12th level Barbarian in AD&D had magical strikes and vastly more HP than anyone else and better AC.

They could Hide in Shadows like a 15th level thief. They could detect illusions 60% of the time, and also Detect Magic.

A Barbarian could Spring Jump up 20+ feet..fairly easily.
Ohh..they also could summon a 750+ person horde of armed combatants.
( and this is a fraction of what the Barbarian could do)
(Though a Magic User was 16th level with the same XP)

The 5e Barbarian class just suffers from a paucity of imagination.
The Druid meanwhile can leverage spells, Wildshape, and subclass abilities to be an effectively versatile character.

[Merudo]

- I also missed the tactical challange. I enviously looked at the battle master who had a whole bunch of options every round: yeah/no maneuvers, which one, action surge or not, but also tactical and through positioning. Same for the paladin, it had meaningful choices, and was in danger, and could smite (or not) or use a channel divinity (or not). While my 8 wolves stood there, doing damage and taking damage, but not much else (that's mostly how it played out, but I also think it's beyond the spell to instruct 8 not very intelligent creatures into doing complex maneuvers).


Dipping 1 level into another spellcasting class (typically Cleric) opens up a whole lot of tactical options that can be used while concentrating on summoning spells.

For example, dipping 1 level into Cleric opens up:

- Command, which can multiply the damage the party & summons can cause
- Sanctuary, arguably the best defensive spell after Shield
- Toll the Dead, which contrarily to Druid cantrips actually does respectable damage

Additionally, your choice of domain can open up even more tactical options:

- Arcana for Magic Missile & powerful melee cantrips
- Death for twinned Toll the Dead
- Light for Burning Hands & Warding Flare
- Order for Voice of Authority

[Jerrykhor]

Just gonna say, too much hate on the Munchkin being thrown around here. They get crapped on unfairly in my opinion.

First of all, they didn't write the spell, or the rules, or anything. Casting the spell that already exist in the book and expecting it to work as written is NOT munchkinry. If a single spell breaks your game, maybe the spell or the rules isn't that good to begin with. Also not their fault if the spell invalidates the BSF.

[truemane]

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