Conjure Minor Elementals: Nothing Minor About It

Usable By: Druid, Wizard

Spell Level: 4

School: Conjuration

Casting Time: 1 minute

Range: 90 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour

Components: V, S

You summon elementals that appear in unoccupied spaces that you can see within range. Choose one of the following options for what appears:

One elemental of challenge rating 2 or lower
Two elementals of challenge rating 1 or lower
Four elementals of challenge rating 1/2 or lower
Eight elementals of challenge rating 1/4 or lower

An elemental summoned by this spell disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or when the spell ends. The summoned creatures are friendly to you and your companions. Roll initiative for the summoned creatures as a group, which has its own turns. They obey any verbal commands that you issue to them (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any commands to them, they defend themselves from hostile creatures, but otherwise take no actions. The GM has the creatures’ statistics.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using certain higher-level spell slots, you choose one of the summoning options above, and more creatures appear: twice as many with a 6th-level slot, three times as many with a 8th-level slot.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

To those of you out there wishing to conjure some minor elementals, heed my warning. This spell is messy. It is confusing. It is obnoxious to track. HOWEVER; there are few spells in this game that succeed in their mission to satisfy the summoner and elementalist fantasies.

Conjure Minor Elementals is THE spell carrying the concept into the mid tiers of play. If you’re willing to work with your DM, sink in the time, manage swaths of creatures’ abilities, and issue hyper specific commands, you’ll find this spell will satisfy your craving for conjuration. The bulk of its power is in its flexibility. Conjure minor elementals offers solutions to a wide variety of niche problems all while also being a powerhouse of a damage spell.

Some of the conjure spells require a caveat. As written, the caster picks the CR, then the DM picks the monsters that are summoned. This can make the spell a headache for many DMs to manage. I’d highly recommend working with your DM out of game with your expectations from the spell, and should the DM allow, I’d recommend allowing the summoner to choose which from the small list in the MM to summon instead to shift that burden to the player.

Of the monsters in the Monster Manual, ten in total are summonable. Mud, smoke, and steam mephits make up the CR 1/4th roster, and dust, ice, and magma mephits alongside magmin make up the summonable CR 1/2 elementals. The only CR 1 elemental is the fire snake, and if you’re in need of just one ally at CR 2 you can get an azer or gargoyle.

All of the following breakdowns come with a note: when you up-cast this, you’re not doubling the spell's effectiveness. The only cases where I’d consider it worth it are when you’re jumping to sixteen or thirty-two CR 1/4 monsters. Sixteen mud mephits can lock down huge groups of medium or smaller enemies; thirty-two is for when you need to restrain a small town.

Eight summoned mephits are typically your best in combat option. If you’re looking to use the spell without forcing your DM to micromanage eight new monsters, consider keeping them grouped together and working them in a similar way as a swarm. Each tends to be at their most effective when grouped like this, but also offer great flexibility to set up an encounter beforehand by tactically placing them around the space.

Steam is the damage option; the steam breath offers 8d8 fire damage in a cone from the mephits. Plus, their claw attacks deal 2d4 damage which scales nicely with crits and thus large numbers of attacks. Mud mephits’ mud breath can lock down small groups indefinitely, as they only get to retry the saves at the end of their turns. Staggering their breaths to maintain restraints on small groups can wreck encounters built around medium or smaller creatures, and lets not forget attacks made against restrained creatures have advantage. Smoke mephits are another utility option. Their death burst creates 5 ft. spheres of smoke, while their breath is a defensive blind that can make them high utility in and out of combat. They excel when put against large creatures mud mephits can’t affect.

Summoning four magma, dust, or ice mephits or four magmin can be powerful, but will require more niche circumstances. Each of these mephits comes with innate magic that wildly improves their utility; getting access to four extra sleeps, fog clouds, and heat metals is the main reason you’d summon these over eight of their CR 1/4 siblings. Magma mephits are comparable to steam; their breaths deal 8d6 over four breaths instead of 8d8 over eight, and their claws are marginally better. If you don’t want a low DC heat metal, though, you’re better off getting the eight steam. Dust mephits are comparable to smoke; the main reason you’d want the group of four dust over eight smoke is access to sleep which can end some encounters before they begin. Ice mephits are probably the worst of the bunch; they deal less comparable damage to magma and steam, and bring no utility outside their spell. You’d only choose them if you needed cold damage, or just wanted to summon a whole fog bank with minions.

Magmin are great if you want to summon specifically low health explosives built to make one round of attacks then die. They offer up to 8d6 fire damage in attack rolls, plus igniting hit targets for a perpetual 1d6 fire damage each round unless a creature wastes an action. I take magmin when I don’t want to have to think so much, and just want some minions to smash some stuff then explode.

There are next to no reasons to conjure two fire snakes. They have less hit points than nearly all the mephits, their multiattack ends up being worse than just summoning extra magmin or mephits, and their heated body is comparable to death burst. If you are fighting lots of tiny, low hit point, non-magical creatures, the pairing of damage resistance with heated body might come into play, but overall they just don’t bring the same utility or damage the lower CR summons do.

Fire snakes still are better than a lone azer, though. The main selling point is their 17 AC; beyond that all of the stuff they have is better on the lower CR monsters. They get a single attack for at most 1d10+1d6+3 damage, which is rookie numbers compared to the 8d8 aoe coming from the steam mephits. Even if just two of the eight summoned steam mephits hit, they’re dealing 4d4 damage (10 on average), where the average damage if the azer hits is a mesely 12. This doesn’t account for critical hits, which you will see regularly with the largest groups of mephits. Azer bring nearly nothing to the table outside their simplicity; if you’ve got a friend new to D&D, this might be the perfect option to help them start to grasp summoning magic. Otherwise, take any of the other options.

To round out all the elementals we have gargoyles. Their false appearance paired with a fly speed of 60 ft. makes them excel at observation and protection. Summoning one to keep watch for your group as you begin your sketchy business can feel great. This begs the question, is it better than having eight mud mephits under your command for the same purpose? I’d bet mud is less conspicuous than a statue in most cases, and you get eight times as many locations covered. If you also want it to act as a bodyguard that can travel further distances in less time, a gargoyle is possibly slightly better, but it's hard to beat the flexibility of also having built in restraints attached to all eight of the mephits. All the gargoyle has going for it is its HP, resistances, and speed comparatively, but sometimes that will be enough.

Conjure Minor Elementals is at its best when it’s in the hands of a player working with a DM who both have clear expectations for the spell. If everyone is ready to manage potentially eight new monsters with unique timed resources alongside single use spells, it can be one of the best spells in the game for its level. In the hands of somebody who wants the summoner fantasy but doesn’t want the hassle of managing all the mephits, the higher CR options will still deliver that experience. They are worse than the low CR options by a lot, but at lower power tables you’ll still get what you’re looking for.

Now take this knowledge forth to your table, and make many a DM give off a deep sigh as their band of hobgoblins is locked to the ground and beaten to death by a flurry of muddy fists!

5e Spells

Conjure Minor Elementals: Nothing Minor About It