Hordes and Monsters – A Guide to Summoning

Summoning spells are a really cool thing in 5^th edition, but they can be an extremely daunting prospect for newer players due to the complexity they present. In this article, I would like to talk about how to be effective(and get stuff done fast) as a summoner in D&D 5e.

Definitions

Throughout this article, I shall be referring to four different types of summon – Tasha summons, horde summons, single summons and persistent summons. The terms mean:

• Tasha summons are summon spells following the design philosophy in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything – that is to say, the spell provides you with a unique statblock for the creature you summon, and it typically scales with your spell attack modifier and save DC, as well as the level of the slot you cast it with. Examples include summon fey and summon draconic spirit.
• Horde summons are defined as summoning spells that summon a large number of creatures. For the purposes of this definition, “large” means two or more. These spells typically provide creatures weaker individually, but are usually the strongest of the bunch due to action economy. Examples include conjure animals and summon lesser demons.
• Single summons provide an individual creature. This includes thins like summon greater demon and conjure fey.
• Persistent summons are what I call summons that last a longer time. By “a longer time”, I mean upwards of 8 hours. This category includes find familiar and animate dead, for example.

Addressing the most common complaint regarding summons – speed

“But summons slow down the game” is a phrase said too often. It is a reasonable concern, but rest assured that can be solved. Several techniques exist to make everything go smoother, and I will also present a few simple homebrew rules you may wish to use too.

First of all, purely within the realm of RAW:

• When making multiple attacks of the same type, roll them all together. If you have twelve skeletons firing their bows, for example, roll 12d20 to hit simultaneously and pick the rolls that hit. Then roll as many d6s for damage and add the modifiers together. Much faster than rolling d20s separately.
  If you would roll with advantage, you can do so simply by re-rolling the misses separately(so they don’t get mixed up with the hits), then re-rolling the hits to see how many extra crits you got. Then take all the hits and go on. If you would roll with disadvantage, just re-roll the hits.
  If you’re using a dice roller bot, you can probably already see the difference in speed between twelve uses of !r 1d20+4, followed by some amount of !r 1d6+2, as opposed to just getting it all done at once.
• Bear in mind that most horde summons have all the creatures go on the same initiative. This means you can take all their turns at once. Just make sure to ask your DM if they’re planning on having anything use a legendary action between the turns of your minions. If yes, do part of your stuff, resolve the LA, then continue.
  Moving all the creatures at once also means you can use an area selection tool if on a VTT to speed things along. On a real-life battlemap, the secret to speeding things along lies in using both hands to move your minis.
• Have the models/statblocks/tokens prepared beforehand. When you declare that you will be casting a summoning spell, it would be wise to be fully prepared. Since most if not all VTTs only allow DMs to add creatures to a map, it’s a good idea to send your DM tokens of anything you will be commanding in advance. Bonus points if you already have the appropriate sourcebook open on the page with all the rules for your summoned creatures for ease of reference.
• Communicate as to whether you will be using Rules as Written or Rules as Twitter regarding horde summoning spells, as there’s a lot of table variance here. Check out this article on Tabletop Builds for relevant information(https://tabletopbuilds.com/what-to-ask-before-playing-a-druid/). RAW the player chooses the spell, due to it being worded in the same way as polymorph, but the designers’ comment in the Sage Advice Compendium contradicts that and brings its own take with issues. If we were to follow the logic of “if it does not explicitly say who chooses, then the DM chooses” elsewhere, we get to a very weird game where you don’t get to choose the target of polymorph or what it turns into, you can’t pick the spell you cast with wish, you don’t get to choose when to Action Surge, fabricate only lets you choose what materials you use and not what you create and more. Hence I prefer to follow the less contradictory version, although plenty of tables use the SAC ruling. Whatever the case, make sure that whoever is responsible for choosing the thing at your table is prepared.

Out of homebrew rules that also help, my favorite is:

• The summons act on the player’s initiative, taking their turns after them. This cuts down on the number of initiative rolls required to start a combat. Of course, it is a pretty damn good buff for summons, since they now benefit from you being a Dhampir Chronurgist with gift of alacrity, Alert and guidance for an average of +21.5 to initiative after biting someone. Still, it’s not gonna break the universe, and helps increasingly more the more different types of minion you have active at once. In this article, I will not be assuming you are using it.

Basic strategy

Now that we’ve covered speeding things up, let’s talk about how to make our summoned creatures perform effectively in combat.

• Watch out for monsters with AoE effects. About half the monsters in this game have some kind of AoE ability, and nearly half of those are not spells. A good way to deal with it is anti-AoE positioning. The easiest way to do that is by spreading them out. If we have, for example, eight wolves, we could put them all together in one easily fireballable group, or we could split them into a group of two and two groups of three, having them converge on our chosen enemy on their turn. It’s worth mentioning that an AoE directed at our minions is not directed at us, and vice versa.
  Another way to deal with AoE monsters is to kill them before casting your summon spell. Very straightforward and effective.
• Focus fire. Targeting a single enemy with all your attacks is better than splitting your fire across multiple, as it will lead to actions being removed from the enemy’s side of the battle faster. This is true always, not only for summons.
• If you have magic stone, use it. It’s a great way to give summoned creatures magical attacks.
• Wall of flesh tactics – if this was Warhammer 40k, I’d call it screening. Most enemies are melee monsters, and fewer than half have any ranged attack at all(with a very small minority being better at range than in melee). If you put a bunch of bodies between yourself and the enemy, they will need to get through your screen before they get to you. If they try to shoot you, remember about cover. Most summons will provide you with half cover, and some may qualify to even provide three-quarters cover. That’s a lot of AC!

Spells

With all of that said, it is now time to look at the actual spells themselves. There are quite a few of them.

Level 1 Spells

Find familiar

Persistent spell, available to Wizards, Pact of the Chain Warlocks, Pact of the Tome Warlocks with Book of Ancient Secrets, anything and anyone with a Spellwrought Tattoo of find familiar(available to Artificers since level 2), anyone who casts wish, etc.

You get a permanent summon, with a few things going for it. First of all, it’s capable of taking the Help action in and out of combat. Second, you can use it to deliver touch spells for you. This doesn’t have many uses, but one genuinely useful one is making magic stone rocks from further away, if you get separated from your throwers on the battlefield and returning to them would be tactically disadvantageous. Third, you can use an action to perceive through your familiar’s senses. I recommend using this all the time when traveling if you can. Bats have 16 passive Perception when hearing is involved, which is probably more than you will all the way until level 13 or even 17. This helps tremendously to avoid being surprised.

Finally, familiars can carry stuff like ball bearings, bags of holding(ready for a bag of holding bomb) or caltrops and throw them onto the battlefield.

It’s worth mentioning that if you find a way to enlarge your familiar, like the enlarge/reduce spell, you can have it Dash up and fall on someone’s head. I love bat airstrikes.

You could also just be a Small race and have your familiar grapple you and fly around. I, too, love to ride owls.

Unseen servant

Single summon, available to Bards, Warlocks and Wizards. Allows you to create an invisible, mindless, shapeless Medium force that does stuff for you when you use a bonus action. It only has one hit point, but that doesn’t even matter because not only is a force not a creature, it’s not even an object either. There exists exactly one thing in the entire game capable of targeting such a creation, namely the spell disintegrate… and it requires line of sight.

This completely untouchable, unkillable creature cannot attack, but it can do the same stuff a regular human servant would be capable of. Can it activate magic items? I would assume so.

The standard uses for this thing would be to carry around a wall for portable cover or lay down caltrops and ball bearings.

It’s worth having one of these up all the time when exploring. After all, traps tend to be deadly when triggered, and this thing just cannot die.

Level 2 Spells

Find steed

Persistent summon, available to Paladins and the people who gave their paladin friend a Ring of Spell Storing.

The big option here is the Warhorse, a pretty good combatant in its own right on top of its high speed. Apart from using it to fight and riding it, there’s one more funny thing you can do, and that’s having all spells you cast that only affect you affect your mount too.

This means that if you cast shield, you can totally have a 23AC horse for a turn. Absorb elements for a horse resistant to fire. Simulacrum for a free extra horse.

Flock of familiars

Horde summon, available to Wizards and Warlocks. You get to summon more familiars. This spell is not a powerhouse in most cases, seeing as you’re not getting much out of them, although it has its uses if you are able to command them all with one bonus action via Investment of the Chain Master – I’m uncertain as to whether that works.

If you have a Medium or larger familiar, you can do some funny stuff with airstrike tactics.

Summon beast

Tasha summon, available to Druids and Rangers. Creates a beast with flight, swimming or Pack Tactics. Flight is typically the best option, as your beast will be able to avoid retaliation via Flyby. It only makes a single attack though, so don’t expect a miracle there.

While it’s not good – a single creature with a single attack can only do so much, after all – it serves as pretty decent training wheels for a new summoner, allowing them to practice with an easier statblock before diving into the amazing world of 8 charging elks.

Level 3 Spells

Animate dead

Persistent summon available to Clerics, Spores Druids, Divine Soul Sorcs, Wizards, Oathbreaker Paladins and Warlocks wish they could cast it more than once or at least upcast with that one funny invocation.

Zombies are an example of a good wall of flesh, having a chance to survive when dropped to 0 hit points. For a large chunk of the game, this isn’t going to be all that unlikely to occur, as monster damage is often spread across multiple smaller attacks.

Skeletons, on the other hand, are prime offensive tools. Each has a shortbow and shortsword, hitting for +4/1d6+2. This adds up pretty fast, and a pack of skellies can be quite the threat on the battlefield.

The spell also upcasts well, and maintaining control over your minions is cheaper than summoning them.

Conjure animals

Horde summon. I’ve covered this before, so this time I’ll go into less detail. The spell is available to Druids and Rangers, and every single class wishes they had it. The big names among the creatures you get to summon include, but are not limited to:

• Elks, highest damage on the charge
• Velociraptors, highest damage without charging
• Wolves, high damage on top of a prone effect
• Giant owls, flying mounts with solid damage
• Horses, wolf-tier damage dealers that double as mounts
• Constrictor snakes, grapple+restrain effects

This spell is just outstanding, and it’s more than just damage. Walls of flesh and grappling are really impactful as well.

Phantom steed

Single summon, available to Wizards and Undead Warlocks.

I was thinking what Pact Boon to take on my Undead Warlock, and was torn between Chain and Tome. Then I read this spell and my decision became obvious.

Phantom steed gives you a horse for an hour. It’s non-concentration, and on top of that its speed is… one hundred feet. This is the ultimate kiting tool, no doubts here. But kiting is just the beginning of what we can do with it(although it’s the best use as well).

I’m a fan of a trick I like to call Wall of Horse. To pull it off, you will need four horses. Basically, we’ll want them to run up to an enemy and surround them on all sides, then start attacking in melee.

Our enemy now has two options – don’t attack the horses, and just make ranged attacks at the party if it even has any, or attack the horses, which then take a whole minute to disappear after dying, meaning it’s still stuck in the Wall of Horse unless it can get out somehow. Of course, it’s not gonna be effective against flying or teleporting enemies, but beating up other monsters like this will work.

Summon fey

Tasha summon, available to Druids, Rangers, Warlocks and Wizards. As Tasha summons go, this isn’t absolutely terrible. It has the highest DPR of their lot, and a bonus action teleport that can put you in a cube of magical darkness which messes with enemy effects dependent on sight. The charm effect is decent as well. Unfortunately, it’s awfully fragile for a 3rd-level single summon, which is a common flaw of Tasha summons – they just don’t stay alive for long enough.

Summon lesser demons

Horde summon available to Wizards and Warlocks, who don’t want it. There’s one good option here, and that’s the abyssal chicken. Throw them in some place where their blindsight can do work and they’ll kill something. Sadly, they’re hostile to everything, including you, which makes this spell far from ideal. Still, if you have a friend who casts fog cloud, you can sometimes make use of it. The DPR is actually good.

Is this DPR a reference to how chickens are related to dinosaurs? Because this is what a velociraptor horde does.

Summon shadowspawn

Tasha summon, available to Warlocks and Wizards. This is the best Tasha summon by far, thanks to Despair providing a 20ft slow effect. The other two spirits are much less powerful than Despair, but at least they have something going for them. The spirit gets a free fear effect once per day, which is nice because it comes free with the slowness bot. Once again, this spell suffers from insufficient survivability, which holds it back greatly.

Summon undead

Tasha summon, available to Warlocks and Wizards. This one has a ranged attack option, a poison/paralysis option, and a flying incorporeal option. The fear effect on the ghost is nice with Form of Dread, as you can repeatedly attempt to frighten your target from two angles and lock it in place. Overall, it’s not a great spell by a long shot, suffering from the same weaknesses that plague all of its kind, but at least it has some utility.

Tiny servant

Basically animate dead for people who prefer spoons to skeletons. They may very well be small enough to fit in your pocket and throw your stones before going back in for total cover. They also have blindsight, making them great artillery for firing at things inside a sleet storm.

Bear in mind that while they don’t have proficiency in weapons, they have a good enough Dexterity score to make it worth handing them a bunch of crossbows or guns.

DPR of three tiny servants(so we can clearly see the action cost of loading and aiming a cannon). Magic stone caster assumed to have +5 casting stat.

Level 4 Spells

Conjure minor elementals

Horde summon, available to Druids and Wizards. This one is a funny spell, practically all your options suck but there are also chwingas. Chwingas are pretty funny, you can get a whole load of charms. Also, the chwinga statblock is what a rule is actually worded like if the DM chooses what happens *cough*hordesummons*cough*.

I highly recommend the Tabletop Builds article on the subject, we covered this spell in detail a month ago.

Conjure woodland beings

Horde summon, available to Druids and Rangers. This spell is really, really good. It’s the utility cousin of conjure animals, and has quite a few really potent options for us to make use of:

• Pixies are the most obvious choice, having access to a ton of spells. They’re powerful enough that plenty of people ban them, myself not included. The innate spellcasting list they possess is really impressive.
• Reflections are basically shadows but fey and not undead. Draining Str is a fast way to erase problems.
• Sea hags are hags, if you upcast to 8th-level or have multiple people who can cast this you can have them form a coven.
• Dryads have pass without trace and a lot of goodberries. 60 berries of healing on top of the best 2nd-level spell in the game is a great trade for a 4th-level slot.

Find greater steed

Persistent summon, available to Paladins but actually to Bards and anyone with wish. All the wonderful things that apply to find steed, but you can get a pegasus. 90ft flying speed is a lot. If you get a Ring of Spell Storing, make sure to cast this spell into the ring and pass it around a few times so that everyone in the party and their familiars and their undead minions can get a horse. Then do the funny flying Hussar charge.

Don’t forget to sit on the horse while casting simulacrum, two horses are better than one.

Giant insect

Horde summon, available to Druids. Ah, my favorite insect, the wonderful spooder. Anyhow, 10 giant centipedes ain’t bad, though you obviously need to have them to cast the spell which is… not really a downside, more like just a prerequisite.

Not as good as conjure animals, sadly. Getting three CR 1 giant spiders is probably the best option, because since they’re not doing wolf damage they might as well do utility stuff, and spiders are good at utility thanks to their webs.

Summon aberration

Tasha summon, available to Warlocks, Wizards and Aberrant Mind Sorcerers. You get to choose between a dollar store Beholder that shoots two eye rays while flying, a Star Spawn that’s an embarrassment to its family and a Slaad that heals itself and says no to the regeneration of people it hits. It’s one of the weaker Tasha summons, and severely lacking in strong special abilities.

Assumed 60% chance to fail a WIS save, one target affected by the aura.

Summon construct

Tasha summon, available to Artificers, Wizards and Clockwork Soul Sorcerers. Creates a construct, which either burns people, slows them a bit or whacks random people.

The “random people” bit really hurts Clay. Overall, Stone is the best because halving speed is really good, which basically means its best function is wishing it was a Shadowspawn. It also does less damage than summon shadowspawn upcast to 4^th level.

Summon elemental

One more Tasha summon for Druids, Rangers, Wizards and Fathomless Warlocks, this time an elemental. Earth is the only one I would ever consider casting, because it has the best damage resistances, as well as a burrowing speed which is a great way to avoid getting killed.

Its weapon whacks are nothing to write home about, and its fit-in-small-spaces abilities aren’t of much battlefield use.

Summon greater demon

Single summon, available to Wizards and Warlocks. This spell is unique in that the summon can resist your control by making a Cha save. If you lose control, it stays active until you end concentration plus 1d6 rounds. This means there are two ways to approach the spell:

• You can use it as a regular summon, commanding it to tell you its true name then immediately saying it back to it to give it disadvantage on saving throws
• You can try to force it to break free of your control ASAP, thus allowing you to let it loose and cast another concentration spell. Sure, it’s not under your control anymore… but when that happens it becomes hostile to the nearest thing. Set it up behind enemy lines and it’s a win-win.

The value of this spell lies not only in raw damage, but also in the unique features of the demons you can summon. I’ve included the most notable traits of the main summons below:

• Babau(CR 4, Cha save +1): At-will casts of DC11 darkness, dispel magic, heat metal, fear and levitate. Multiattack includes a Weakening Gaze ability.
• Dybbuk(CR 4, Cha save +2, Magic Resistance): At-will casts of dimension door, fear and phantasmal force both 3/day each(DC 12). Additionally it can possess a corpse, allowing you to take control of a creature and gain its abilities, excluding class features. Although Magic Resistance makes it likely to succeed on saving throws, it’s a great tool. A prime candidate for planar binding.
• Barlgura(CR 5, Cha save -1): 2/day disguise self and invisibility for sneaking around like an assassin monkey, 1/day entangle and phantasmal force cast with DC 13. And if that wasn’t good enough, it’s also the best brawler of the demons, with three attacks and Barbarians’ Reckless Attack. The summoner variant has a 30% chance of summoning another barlgura.
• Tanarukk(CR 5, Cha save -1): Basically a much worse barlgura with higher speed.
• Chasme(CR 6, Cha save +0, Magic Resistance): it gets to knock people unconscious within 30 feet, which means it’s probably not a good idea to use in enclosed spaces… then again, passing a DC 12 Con save may very well no longer be a concern at the levels where you have 5th-level slots, if there’s a Paladin in the party you’re probably passing on a nat 1(1d20 + 5 Cha bonus + 3 Con modifier + 4 proficiency bonus = minimum roll of 13). Its proboscis reduces max HP without a saving throw which is really painful to be on the receiving end of, and the attack deals plenty of dice of damage which has some neat synergy with the fact that unconscious creatures suffer automatic crits from melee attacks. Also worth having a familiar take the Help action to aid it in hitting, it has a lot riding on a single attack. Chasmes are also able to be summoners capable of summoning one chasme.
• Vrock(CR 6, Cha save +2, Magic Resistance): Has a stunning screech on a failed DC 14 Con save. Apart from that it can shoot poison in an AoE and make some attacks. Oh, and it can summon 2d4 dretches or another vrock.
• Armanite(CR 7, Cha save +1, Magic Resistance): Shoots lightning bolts almost as strong as the lightning bolt spell and has a pretty decent melee attack. Also a fast monster with decent hit points.
• Maurezhi(CR 7, Cha save +2, Magic Resistance): If you have any ghoul minions, this can revive them. Apart from that it drains Charisma which is pretty nasty considering monsters don’t often have high mental stats.
• Glabrezu(CR 9, Cha save +7, Magic Resistance): power word stun, fly, confusion 1/day each, darkness, dispel magic, detect magic at will. I heard there was a reduced-threat variant with lower CR, but have failed to locate it thus far. Considering it costs an 8th-level slot, I’d say that’s too much.
• Yochlol(CR 10, Cha save +6, Magic Resistance): A summoner with a 50% chance of being two yochlols. Most notably, it has web at will, and can turn into mist. Not a bad option for planar binding, especially when you consider this in combination with true polymorph. While you would normally be limited to CR 9 when turning objects into creatures, 9th-level summon greater demon allows you to get this CR10 thing to turn into something else later.

DPR for a Barlgura, column on the right includes a 30% chance of summoning a second one.

Level 5 Spells

Animate objects

Horde summon, available to Artificers, Bards, Sorcerers, Wizards and Forge Clerics. Animate ten Tiny nonmagical objects and cause them to become creatures. They follow your commands and attack. You can choose bigger objects, but the Tiny ones are the best. Carry around a handful of silver coins in your pocket for combat purposes.

If your table happens to run revivify in its funny RAW way(not working because it targets a creature that died within the last minute, and a corpse is an object not a creature), this spell allows you to fix the wording error and turn the corpse into a creature.

The objects gain blindsight, which can be used to give them advantage against creatures in a fog cloud, for example.

Conjure elemental

Single summon available to Druids, Wizards and Warlocks with the Minions of Chaos invocation, and a rather unimpressive one. If only chwingas had an appropriate area for them…

The creatures of interest here are the main elementals – by which I mean earth and air, earth for the burrow speed and air for 90ft flying – as well as the galeb duhr(tough monster with the ability to summon two more of itself), and pretty much everything after that is just really overcosted.

One really big issue with this spell is that the elemental becomes your enemy when you lose concentration. Be very afraid.

The casting time of this spell is also too long to use mid-combat.

It has tremorsense, which you may be able to use as a gateway to inexpensive advantage.

Danse macabre

Horde summon available to Wizards and Warlocks. Animates five corpses/piles of bones, turning them into zombies or skeletons. All undead made by this spell add your spellcasting ability modifier to attack and damage rolls, besides that it’s like animate dead but 1 hour and concentration. I’m a huge fan of giving these monsters magic stone, to get three magical attacks at +12/1d6+10 eventually, but another option I have been made aware of(thanks to TheUntrainedEye) is giving skeletons two shortswords each so they can engage in Two-weapon Fighting. It’s the number 1 single-target damage option for Warlocks and I love it.

This is with 20 in your casting stat.

Infernal calling

Single summon, available to Warlocks and Wizards. This spell has two issues – first of all, too long casting time to use in combat. Second, there just isn’t anything noteworthy to summon. No innate spellcasting, barely any special abilities. Just brawlers.

The fact it requires an ability check to have the devil obey you means that we can add it to the list of things dhampirs are good at, but dhampir or not, I’d never pick this. At least not until we get some better devils.

One of the better summons this spell has to offer. Nearly a third of this damage is dealt to a random creature. This assumes the abishai takes damage in melee every round.

Negative energy flood

Persistent summon, available to Warlocks and Wizards. Did you ever want to spend a 5th-level slot to deal 5d12(32.5) damage, Con save for half(assuming 50% save chance 24.375 damage), just so you could get a zombie that isn’t even friendly to you? Me neither.

Handing out an average of 16 temporary hit points with leftover slots is… okay.

Planar binding

Persistent summon, available to Bards, Clerics, Druids, Wizards, Divine Soul Sorcerers, Clockwork Soul Sorcerers and Warlocks. The most powerful 5th-level spell in existence, this thing just lets you decide you’d much rather be playing a bigger wargame as opposed to the skirmish-scale combat of 5e. Upcast to get an actual army. I don’t know what made the designers not restrict this more(like limiting the number of bound creatures), I guess the only explanation is that the spell wrote and approved itself.

Insanity aside, you can just cast this every day with a 6th-level or higher slot to build yourself an army. Do with that what you will. Works nicely with magic circle to keep a creature in place.

Summon celestial

Tasha summon, available to Clerics, Paladins and Divine Soul Sorcerers. Cleric and Paladin lack good ranged attack spells so it becomes a “might as well” for them. It has a longbow that deals radiant damage, which is the main feature of interest, and may actually help if you’re sniping vampires.

Summon draconic spirit

Tasha summon, available to Druids, Sorcerers and Wizards. Flying Large mount with a little breath weapon and weak attacks, also gives you resistance to one damage type that it also has. Nothing too impressive, not even any type-exclusive features.

I assumed 60% save fail chance for Dex saves, and four targets caught in the cone – we could probably reliably target more if we flew up and fired the breath weapon straight down, but that would make us less likely to get in range for the melee attacks. It’d be a better option survivability-wise too.

Level 6 Spells

Conjure fey

Single summon, available to Druids and Warlocks. Summon a fey or beast. The options you get are pretty good overall, and with most of them being hags there are some tricks worth pulling off here with two other party members with access to the spell. If you drop concentration, watch out – it will turn on you.

Good creatures to summon with this spell(I didn’t include named characters this time) include:

• Annis Hag(CR 6): Three attacks at +8/3d6+5, crushing grapple-hug, and can cast disguise self and fog cloud 3 times a day each.
• Dusk Hag(CR 6): 3/day hypnotic pattern and dream, as well as 3rd-level sleep whenever that matters. Legend lore and scrying are good too, and on top of that it has detect magic and disguise self at will. It also has two attacks that deal a lot of damage to unconscious creatures.
• Mammoth(CR 6): A powerful attack that knocks its target prone on a failed DC 18 Strength save, and a bonus action attack against prone targets.
• Bheur Hag(CR 7): 3/day innate casts of wall of ice, and hold person and cone of cold are actually decent when they provide their own separate resource to cast them with.
• Korred(CR 7): Rock thrower that comes with a free galeb duhr. Also at-will stone shape which can be absolutely insane. You can use that spell to form cages of rock, for example.
• Giant Ape(CR 7): Throws rocks, climbs trees and punches people.
• T-Rex(CR 8): Grapple and restrain on a bite attack, neat chunk of damage.
• Conclave Dryad(CR 9): Shuts down magic items and has all the good movement-debuffing druid spells. Also gets to conjure a free elk.

Worth mentioning this spell has a 1-minute casting time and as such cannot be cast mid-combat.

Also relevant for all polymorph fans

Create undead

Persistent summon, available to Clerics, Wizards, Divine Soul Sorcerers and Warlocks. Also to anyone who uses wish to cast it as that’s honestly not a bad idea.

The base version of the spell is lame, as ghouls’ low save DC and even more pitiful attack modifiers coupled with low strength in numbers make them unlikely to do much work besides being extremely expensive magic stone bots. However, upcasting is a different story. The best option is the 8th-level version of the spell, which gives us two wights. This is good because each wight can kill commoners in downtime or something like that to get up to 12 zombies. That means this spell becomes animate 24 zombies and two longbow-wielding machines. Pretty good.

I would not count on having the room to maneuver all of them into position, but having those zombies act as the great wall of flesh they are, or ordering them to man cannons… now that’s a different story.

Druid grove

Persistent summon available to Druids and people who cast wish. Basically, choose a dungeon in front of you and fill it with traps. Fog, spike growth etc. The summon here is a pack of up to four angry trees. They don’t hit hard, but they’re a freebie provided by a good control spell.

It’s not just Wintersplinter that’s capable of being an arboreal nightmare war engine.

Planar ally

Persistent summon, available to Clerics and Divine Soul Sorcerers. Impossible to say much about because it does… something. That’s all we know for sure. They left it way, way too much to DM choice here, there’s not even a CR limit for us to work with. Depending on your DM, you may get absolutely anything. I’m assuming nobody’s gonna give you anything lame like abyssal chickens, but it’s impossible to judge the spell when the thing you get may just as well be a deva as a balor dual-wielding staffs of power that it’s not attuned to and wants to hand them out.

Summon fiend

Tasha summon available to Wizards and Warlocks. Who would have expected a Tasha summon to suck? Yeah, predictably this thing is just a punching machine, and its punches aren’t even outstanding.

Level 7 Spells

Conjure celestial

Single summon, available to Clerics, Divine Soul Sorcerers and people with wish. The main interesting thing here is the couatl. That thing has incredible innate spellcasting and can use its Change Shape ability to become any humanoid it wants, which generally means:

• Even more innate spellcasting
• Free lycanthropy for everyone

Becoming a wereraven is cool.

Finger of death

Persistent summon, available to Sorcerers, Warlocks, Wizards and people who cast it with wish in downtime. 7d8+30 damage to a target, Con save for half, which isn’t impressive, and if the target dies you get a free zombie, which is impressive. The zombie lasts forever which is cool. Just build yourself an army of pets and double true polymorph them into anything you want up to CR 9.

Simulacrum

Persistent summon, available to Wizards and everyone who gets wish, also level 14 Bards rushing to pick this up with Magical Secrets. Pick someone, such as yourself, and make a copy of them that takes its turn after you. The clone can’t regain spell slots, but anything else works, which is worth bearing in mind for Warlocks, whose duplicates really suffer from few spell slots, but at least get more spammable Mystic Arcanum options.

Level 9 Spells

True polymorph

Single summon, available to Wizards, Warlocks and Bards. I’m just going to be focusing on the object-to-creature summon here, although it’s worth mentioning that if you have severely underpowered allies turning them into dragons may be just as good as summoning a dragon and adding it to the party at no cost whatsoever. If you’re ever doing a high-level oneshot designed for more players than your party has, there’s always the option of asking your DM to add a comatose monk to the party for such purposes(and magic jar).

Pick an object, turn it into a CR9 creature for an hour, if the time passes in full the creature stays a creature but it doesn’t have to follow your orders anymore. Doesn’t necessarily become hostile though.

Anyhow, there’s just too much to go through. All CR 9 or lower creatures in the game is just a huge amount of stuff. Suffice to say that there is no doubt about this being the strongest summon. A few funny examples:

• Inquisitors of the Mind Fire, with Int-save-or-stun multiattack
• Dragons
• Daemogoths
• Treants
• Bodaks
• Shadow assassins
• Phylaskias
• Gloom weavers
• Glabrezus
• Strixhaven professors, for when you want to use an action to cast mirage arcane, say “the floor is lava, all monsters die”, then take your turn

Durability Evaluation

Now that we’ve talked about their DPR and made a few comments about sturdiness, I would like to show one more thing – effective hit points. We can get a basic idea of those by measuring how many attacks it takes to kill a summoned creature. To this end, I have selected all the single summons(hordes generally don’t have the durability to withstand multiple attacks without an external buff and rely on weight of numbers, and it wouldn’t be fair to account for something like Twilight Sanctuary on them, so I just skipped the hordes) and taken an average CR 5 creature – that is to say, I took the CR 5 expected attack bonus and damage per round if everything hits from the DMG. It’s 31-38, I picked 35 for this example. How many monsters of CR 5 does it take to kill a summon/how long does one CR 5 monster need to whack in order to kill the summon?

Purple denotes a Tasha summon. Yellow represents resistance to nonmagical weapon damage. Turquoise is immunity. Damage is assumed to be nonmagical weapon damage.

Concluding thoughts

Summoning is a really strong playstyle in D&D 5e. Action economy is king, and the best way to kill an enemy is usually death by a thousand cuts. Adding additional bodies to the battlefield with their own hit points that enemies need to spend their turns chewing through if they don’t want to get killed is a simple yet effective way to win a fight.

With a bit of experience, you can get everything done in barely any time at all, especially with an online dice roller.

Summoning provides not only damage and control in the form of a wall of flesh, you also get access to the special abilities of the creatures you summon. Spells, Legendary Resistance and unique actions are all on the table for us to make use of.

Is there anything I missed about any of these spells? Have I forgotten to mention something important? If so, please let me know in the comments!

That’s all I had to say on the subject of summoning. Thanks for reading, and until next time!