Quote Originally Posted by jas61292 View Post
I basically agree with this. If the game is going to be designed with combat as a major focus, and such combats are typically going to be skirmishes between small groups, you simply cannot have characters whose whole thing is controlling multiple creatures and expect it to be balanced. Action economy is too important to allow a character to just break it for free. We see that issue with every summon spell. No matter how weak, they are all among the most busted for their level. Heck, even having a single permanent companion is incredibly difficult to do. We've now had multiple takes on the concept across a few classes, and I'm not convinced any of them are truly balanced against their alternatives.

While I much prefer the newer summon spells to the conjure ones from the PHB, I'd really just prefer none of them exist in the first place. Players should play a single character. More than that just does not work well.
Summoning can be balanced but it does tend to break the game in one of a few ways
  1. being better tanks and meatbags than the characters built for such a purpose because the summons are expendable and generally take up more space.
  2. breaking the action economy (the help action is particularly relevant here, but reaction attacks as a means to control space are also relevant)
  3. exploiting aura buffs that were balanced with the assumption of only targeting 3-5 characters
  4. If you allow specific creatures, you'll always end up giving PCs access to abilities they definitely shouldn't have access to at a given level (conjure animals as a mass flying taxi service, pun-pun in 3.5, nonmagic bsp immunity, )


There's also a problem that mass summons in particular tend to be completely feast or famine. Either the enemy has no AOE and you run them over, or the dragon roasts all twenty of your zombies in the opening round at no extra cost.

Basically, its imo not worth the trouble. I know people like summons, but asking for more than the (very very strong) spells we have in Tasha's just feels whiny to me. But maybe I'm just a salty martial fanboy.