Instant Summons: Conjure Up Some Debt Fast!

Usable By: Wizard

Spell Level: 6

School: Conjuration (ritual)

Casting Time: 1 minute

Range: Touch

Duration: Until dispelled

Components: V, S, M (a sapphire worth 1,000 gp)

You touch an object weighing 10 pounds or less whose longest dimension is 6 feet or less. The spell leaves an invisible mark on its surface and invisibly inscribes the name of the item on the sapphire you use as the material component. Each time you cast this spell, you must use a different sapphire.

At any time thereafter, you can use your action to speak the item’s name and crush the sapphire. The item instantly appears in your hand regardless of physical or planar distances, and the spell ends.

If another creature is holding or carrying the item, crushing the sapphire doesn’t transport the item to you, but instead you learn who the creature possessing the object is and roughly where that creature is located at that moment.

Dispel Magic or a similar effect successfully applied to the sapphire ends this spell’s effect.

Review by Samuel West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

I can’t emphasize enough how bad Instant Summons is. You shouldn’t take Instant Summons. Instant Summons is garbage. It is trash. It is a giant heaping smelly pile of bull feces. Instant Summons is AWFUL.

For the low low price of 1,000 gold, you can bind a sapphire to a small object that has to weigh ten pounds or less. For reference, this means the heaviest item you can reasonably bind to is a Great Sword. For a 6th level spell, we are not off to a good start. This thing should be able to summon your boat, your fort, your hideaway; instead, you get a itty bitty little piece of adventuring gear. For a 7th level slot you could instead have Magnificent Mansion, or Demiplane for an 8th. Both these bring you entire realms of existence; this brings you some level one gear from the player’s handbook.

Next, you have to deliberately leave said item elsewhere, ideally in a secure location away from any entities that can casually pick up the object. Don’t hurl the horrible phylactery into the sea, as a hermit crab might find it and drag it along the ocean floor, negating the entirety of the spell.

Finally, you can crush the sapphire to summon the object. It's destroyed the first time you summon it. You know how else you could summon an object of that size to your hand? Pulling it out of your bag! Worried about somebody noticing that horrifying death sword? Wrap it up in loose cloth! Give it to your druid and have them Wild Shape! Cast Invisibility on yourself! Any and all of these options are better than burning 1,000 gold to summon a single object once!

I can’t for the life of me figure out why this spell exists at this level. It doesn’t matter that it has the ritual tag, because the cost to effectiveness of the spell is just horrendous. This feels like it exists as a catch all to get your spellbook back if it gets taken from you; you know what else might get taken from you when you're robbed? A sapphire priced at 1,000 gold. Seems like a pretty reasonable thing to take. Do you just have to swallow the sapphire and shit it out later like a key?

Don’t waste your gold on this. This spell exists to siphon gold from you, nothing else. Pact of the Blade (the worst pact option by far) lets you conjure into existence at will items, and even bind to specific magic weapons to teleport to you indefinitely. You can shunt them to extraplanar spaces safely, and functionally always have it on you. This feature available to 3rd level warlocks, largely believed to be the worst option they get, is better in nearly every way when compared to this 6th level spell which requires an 11th level character to access. I beg you; don’t take Instant Summons. Take anything else. Take another first level spell. Take nothing at all; consider it a long term savings account. Just don’t take Instant Summons.

5e Spells

Instant Summons: Conjure Up Some Debt Fast!