Summon Beast: Bear With Me
Spell Level: 2
School: Conjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 90 feet
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
Components: V, S, M (a feather, tuft of fur, and fish tail inside a gilded acorn worth at least 200 gp)
You call forth a bestial spirit. It manifests in an unoccupied space that you can see within range. This corporeal form uses the Bestial Spirit stat block. When you cast the spell, choose an environment: Air, Land, or Water. The creature resembles an animal of your choice that is native to the chosen environment, which determines certain traits in its stat block. The creature disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or when the spell ends.
The creature is an ally to you and your companions. In combat, the creature shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. It obeys your verbal commands (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any, it takes the Dodge action and uses its move to avoid danger.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, use the higher level where the spell’s level appears in the stat block.
Bestial Spirit
Small beast
Armor Class: 11 + the level of the spell (natural armor)
Hit Points: 20 (Air only) or 30 (Land and Water only) + 5 for each spell level above 2nd
Speed: 30 ft., climb 30 ft. (Land only), fly 60 ft. (Air only), swim 30 ft. (Water only)
STR: 18 (+4) DEX: 11 (+0) CON: 16 (+3) INT: 4 (−3) WIS: 14 (+2) CHA: 5 (−3)
Senses: darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 12
Languages: understands the languages you speak
Challenge: —
Proficiency Bonus: equals your bonus
Flyby (Air Only). The beast doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks when it flies out of an enemy’s reach.
Pack Tactics (Land and Water Only). The beast has advantage on an attack roll against a creature if at least one of the beast’s allies is within 5 feet of the creature and the ally isn’t incapacitated.
Water Breathing (Water Only). The beast can breathe only underwater.
Actions
Multiattack. The beast makes a number of attacks equal to half this spell’s level (rounded down).
Maul. Melee Weapon Attack: your spell attack modifier to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1d8 + 4 + the spell’s level piercing damage.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything introduced a new way to handle summoning magic that looks like it’ll be the new way D&D handles summoned monsters. This is one of, if not THE best quality of life update it opened up. Each varies in spell level from 2nd to 6th level, but all of them share a common mechanic that makes them feel streamlined and easy to use while maintaining a bit of the flexibility the original conjure spells like Conjure Minor Elementals had. Because you’re getting just one, and it requires your concentration, immediately a lot of the problems bulk low CR summoning magic created vanishes. Instead, each offers you a unique set of tools you can somewhat tailor by situation that reflects the strength of the summoned creature type. If you love casting and using your spirit friend, the up-casting benefits scale pretty well, and can be major threats even in the upper tiers. If you’re just curious as to if they’re powerful or useful, the answer, regardless of summon, is absolutely. Some more than others based on their spell level, but you will consistently find they open up new ways to navigate encounters in a big way.
Summon Beast specifically is the one I’m most familiar with, and I adore it. This functionally is all you need to build a decent version of whatever beast you want in a single spell. Want to summon a bear? Bam, you got a small land bear. How about a crocodile? A hawk? A shark? All of them fit well enough in the rules text here that you’ll feel like you’re summoning whatever beasts you want, but won’t need to comb through the hundreds of pages of monsters to find one specific stat block to know if you should be adding a +2 or +3 to its maul attack.
The three options you get with this summon are Land, Water, and Air. It being just a 2nd level slot makes it so you don’t even need any of the modes to do something radically powerful; just having a beast companion with a fly speed opens up a lot of opportunities in the lower tiers.
Land beasts get a 30 ft. climb speed and pack tactics. Immediately, you’re starting off with a bonus spell attack roll to hit with its maul, usually made with advantage, that makes this very castable even as a ranger. You don’t need to be the one engaged either to leverage the pack tactics: your paladin or barbarian works just fine. Summon a tiger or giant ape (flavored with the land stat block) and send it in to support your frontline. That, on its own, can feel as or more impactful as some classes will feel at third level.
Air loses a bit of HP, starting with just 20, but is functionally your “ranged” option. It comes with flyby to ignore attacks of opportunity and has a 60 ft. fly speed. The basic play pattern is it swoops into range, mauls, and flies out without fear. The HP drop does mean its more likely to get shot down faster, but against melee combatants when you don’t really need more front line allies, this will feel a lot like Spiritual Weapon, and that’s a great place for a spell to be. Out of combat, it's also still a small flying creature you can use to do whatever you’d want a flying creature to do. It’s excellent.
Water is probably the worst, as water breathing denies it the ability to breathe in most places, but as an optional mode, it is invaluable in some situations. Summon Beast will nearly always be easy to cast, regardless of environment, because even when delving into an underwater cavern, you’ll have something to pull out and use that can help. I wish it got to be a bit faster in the water than just having a 30 ft. swim speed, as it feels like a worse version of land even in water. As is, though, it’ll still be the easy option to pick when navigating the depths of the oceans and dealing with merfolk and merrow.
Summon Beast is the introductory level summoning spell, and it thrives at being that. It's simple, clean, and WAY easier to manage than the other options in the PHB. It has led to a lot of groups where most players are managing two or more characters at once, but I’m all for that. Boosting encounter complexity is always a good time for me; Summon Beast is an early way for druids (and to a lesser extent rangers) to get access to animal assistance for a cheap rate that can scale into bigger, scarier, multi-attacking monsters down the road.
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