Summon Shadowspawn: Out of the Shadows
Spell Level: 3
School: Conjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 90 feet
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
Components: V, S, M (tears inside a crystal vial worth at least 300 gp)
You call forth a shadowy spirit. It manifests in an unoccupied space that you can see within range. This corporeal form uses the Shadow Spirit stat block. When you cast the spell, choose an emotion: Fury, Despair, or Fear. The creature resembles a misshapen biped marked by the chosen emotion, which determines certain traits in its stat block. The creature disappears when it drop 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 your. It obeys your verbal commands (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any, it takes the Dodge action and it uses its move to avoid danger.
At Higher Levels. When you cast the spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, use the higher level wherever the spell’s level appears on the stat block.
Shadow Spirit
Medium monstrosity
Armor Class: 11 + the level of the spell (natural armor)
Hit Points: 35 + 15 for each level of the spell above 3rd
Speed: 40 ft.
13 (+1) DEX: 16 (+3) CON: 15 (+2) INT: 4 (−3) 10 (+0) 16 (+3)
Damage Immunities: necrotic
Condition: Immunities: frightened
Senses: darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 10
Languages: understands the languages you speak
Challenge: —
Proficiency Bonus: equals your bonus
Terror Frenzy (Fury Only). The spirit has advantage on attack rolls against frightened creatures.
Weight of Sorrow (Despair Only). Any creature, other than you, that starts its turn within 5 feet of the spirit has its speed reduced by 20 feet until the start of that creature’s next turn.
Actions
Multiattack. The spirit makes a number of attacks equal to half this spell’s level (rounded down).
Chilling Hand. Melee Weapon Attack: your spell attack modifier to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1d12 + 3 + the spell’s level cold damage.
Dreadful Scream (1/Day). The spirit screams. Each creature within 30 feet of it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or be frightened of the spirit for 1 minute. The frightened creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
Bonus Action
Shadow Stealth (Fear Only). While in dim light or darkness, the spirit takes the Hide action.
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 Shadowspawn is a 3rd level summoning spell giving you a choice from three emotional shadow entities: fury, despair, or fear. They all share dreadful scream, an action to potentially frighten everything around them once a day, and individually each comes with some neat opportunities that make them a consideration. They all also have the same 1d12+6 damage attack roll (scaling with spell level) which gets way better when multi-attack comes online with a 4th level cast.
Fury shadowspawns get terror frenzy, equating to advantage on attacks made against frightened creatures. This isn’t wildly powerful or anything, but if you already like weaponizing Fear or Cause Fear in your build, it becomes a free upside. Its a bit clunky with dreadful scream, as if you’re screaming, you’re not making attacks, and creatures aren’t that likely to fail two or more subsequent saves, but you can still get a bit of juice out of combining the two on their own. It definitely will be better alongside other fear inflicting effects, and can be a part of a larger “fear” build and theme.
Despair shadowspawns get weight of sorrow, automatically reducing everything within 5 feet of its speed by 20 when it starts its turn there (except you). This becomes a gigantic anchor locking down a massive space. This is the rare instance where the summon spell’s 90 ft. cast range actually can be super impactful, as you can summon a despair shadowspawn inside a group of approaching enemies, gutting their speed and preventing approach until they kill it. It will eat a lot of non-ranged actions, no save required, and also can get a scream out to frighten everything next to it as well. This turns the spell into a 3rd level ranged Fear + Slow that’ll occasionally stick around and whack things with a d12 cold fist every turn. I love this effect.
Fear shadowspawns come with shadow stealth which is just a bonus action hide. Of all the options, this is by far the dullest, but still can turn on advantage frequently, which isn’t nothing. I think more often than not this is going to be worse than fury, as hiding isn’t something you care that much about with summoned allies, and if you’re using it just to get the advantage on an attack, the frightened condition effect has more legs to be built around and empowered meaningfully. Still, it's perfectly fine if you do need a quick and sneaky ally to move through the darkness before popping out with a horrible scream.
Despair stands out head and shoulders above the other two options to me, but all three will pop out occasionally. Fury and fear both likely are just attacking, and doing so with advantage sometimes because of their features. Not amazing, but still a bonus 1d12+6 damage a round for a 3rd level slot, or twice that for a 4th level slot. Summon Shadowspawn isn’t revolutionary, but it is pretty cool, and definitely gives you a way to live out your edgiest fantasies by manifesting the shadowy incarnation of dread itself.
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