Conjure Elemental: Brave the Elements

Spell Level: 5

School: Conjuration

Casting Time: 1 minute

Range: 90 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour

Components: V, S, M (burning incense for air, soft clay for earth, sulfur and phosphorus for fire, or water and sand for water)

You call forth an elemental servant. Choose an area of air, earth, fire, or water that fills a 10-foot cube within range. An elemental of challenge rating 5 or lower appropriate to the area you chose appears in an unoccupied space within 10 feet of it. For example, a fire elemental emerges from a bonfire, and an earth elemental rises up from the ground. The elemental disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or when the spell ends.

The elemental is friendly to you and your companions for the duration. Roll initiative for the elemental, which has its own turns. It obeys any verbal commands that you issue to it (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any commands to the elemental, it defends itself from hostile creatures but otherwise takes no actions.

If your concentration is broken, the elemental doesn’t disappear. Instead, you lose control of the elemental, it becomes hostile toward you and your companions, and it might attack. An uncontrolled elemental can’t be dismissed by you, and it disappears 1 hour after you summoned it. The GM has the elemental’s statistics.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, the challenge rating increases by 1 for each slot level above 5th.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. My DM used to tell me stories of games long ago, when wizards replaced their other party members with hoards of creatures summoned from these four elements.

Fortunately in 5e, elementals aren’t so much replacements for your fighters and barbarians as supplemental assistants you can leverage to massively sway the odds of a fight in your favor.

Of all the summoning spells in the SRD, Conjure Elemental feels the most fair. It is incredibly consistent, offers a fair amount of versatility, and delivers on the summoner and elementalist fantasies superbly. The four main elementals (water, air, earth, and fire elementals) all are bruisers built to smash, yet have niches that can encourage you to switch them up fight to fight.

Going head to head with golems, or need to break through a barricade? Earth elementals got your back as siege monsters with earth glide! Looking for the most damage you can get from something as it gets pummeled by a squadron of enemies? Fir elementals with their fire form and touch attacks are a great choice. Air elementals come with a whirlwind that can take advantage of precarious terrain or tactically positioned enemies, and water elemental’s whelm can offer great area control by restraining two medium or one large creature at a time.

Conjure elemental’s summon list extending out to all elementals adds in some other neat additions that expands out with more source books. Personally I love the idea of using a Xorn as a metal detector and telling it to just run through the walls of the dragon’s lair till it pinpoints the hoard room.

The higher level casting can put an invisible stalker in your arsenal; you can literally summon an invisible hit man. The myrmidons are basically bigger versions of their elemental counterparts, meaning if you have Mordkainen’s Tome of Foes or access to Princes of the Apocalypse you’ll have the option to cast the spell at 7th level to summon them.

What really stands out to me about this from the others is how it has a practical purpose alongside conjure minor elementals. Going from summoning groups of tiny mephits or a few azer to a hulking fire elemental delivers on the fantasy of a growing summoner getting a better grasp on how to control the elements.

This spell’s downside, potentially losing control over your summon, ties in beautifully with spells like Banishment. Because the elementals you’re summoning are robust melee combatants, they can act as protectors to help mitigate the downside, making the entire play experience engaging and leading to lots of interesting decisions.

As a DM summoning magic normally gives me a headache. At least with conjure elemental I don’t have to worry too much about game warping CR problems in bulk. Most of the time the spell summons a single cool elemental built to smash, and sometimes its summoner loses control and chaos ensues.

It wins the trophy for “Least Game Warping, Most Balanced” summon spell from me by a landslide.

5e Spells

Conjure Elemental: Brave the Elements