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My First and Last Conjure Minor Elementals Build (Patreon)

Published:
2024-08-16 22:58:35
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

I was planning a character for my first campaign, and this abomination is where the math led me. I think I'll play something else.

Files

Previews only

2024 PHB Build: The Elemental Overlord D&D 5.24

If you like what I do and would consider supporting this channel through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Treantmonkstemple Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:21 The Build 7:46 L11 198% over BL 10:12 L15 415% over BL 11:40 L18 563% over BL 13:19 L18 715% over BL 15:37 The Fix

Comments

ustnk

The title alone makes me excited to watch this!

Bradley Palm

10/10 will not show this to my dm… atleast until after my one glorious battle!

Matthew Blachut

This is a broken interaction with 3 specific good spells (none of which are on the offending classes base spell list) a borderline broken higher level class feature and a very good subclass feature. In the classes that have CME on their actual spell list I don’t see how this is broken. Very strong, sure, but broken? I don’t see it. Wizard can do what? Burn their 8th (CME) and 9th (Scorching Ray) spell slot to do (10D8 + 2D6) x 10? To a single target? Powerful? Sure! Broken? Eh? Druid I don’t think can do near that amount. TWF for 3 attacks maybe? I’ll probably ban the Bard from picking it up, but I’ll definitely see how everything else shakes out before axing CME entirely.

Alexander Woods

Funny to see this broken new spell pairs so well with what’s essentially the cheesy, ubiquitous old ‘Hexblade’ dip. Gonna be so obnoxious to see this play out on straight rules/AL tables, so I hope it gets errata’d fast.

Joshua Galiley

I am definitely nerfing this day one as well. I have no idea how this made it to the playtest, let alone the actual book

Skrzynek

Turns out that firing game designers that have the necessary game system/ institutional knowledge leads to worse quality D&D booms. WHO'D HAVE THUNK?!

Greg Smith

Thanks for keeping us abreast of potential table issue builds! Cutting Edge should be a Weapon Mastery just for Treant Monks. Oh, new PH page 34-35 character sheet - did you notice the grid sheet lines in many of the boxes? It whirred me back to the old days when that was the only paper I used

Tessa Morecroft

I know you kept this build simple to illustrate a point but I can't help but wonder what it would look like if you went way more overboard. :D Sorc levels to Quicken Eldritch Blast? Action Surge? Someone casting Haste on you? LOL. I don't think my table will power game this spell but I'll keep an eye on it.

EdibleFriend

Not that this is the biggest issue in the video, but I'm kinda miffed they went back on making Eldritch Blast scale with warlock levels only. I can understand wanting consistency, but this one little dip right here demonstrates how it can be abused

Greg Smith
>>146778478

“On your turn, you can take one additional action, except the Magic action.” Totally cut out spell casting use for a fighter dip.

Tessa Morecroft
>>146778478

Is this Action Surge? But you can still attack twice! Probably a waste of two levels though, I was just throwing ideas at the wall...

John M

Maybe this was originally meant to be a once per turn damage bonus.

Nik the RAWful evil

Exactly my point, I'm more inclined to fix it as a 1/turn thing, so I don't push my players to look for as many attacks as they can do. This same build (or any wizard) could also go for scorching ray for 1100% over BL with a 7th lv slot. Actually, at that point elemental adept, in spite of still being ridiculous, would push it to 1150% more or less

Daniel Lingeman

I’m feeling the urge to go hard in the other direction with my first character using the new rules. When will we get an update on the God Wizard that elects not to do damage, but makes everyone else shine?

Keegan MBG
>>146778478

That’s the way I read it. So action surge on this does work, however for Chris’ purpose he was saying reliable and action surge is considered Nova.

Keegan MBG

I think I’m going to house rule that Eldritch Blast is a class feature, that mimics a spell, all Warlocks get it automatically known, and then make it scale with Warlock level. That would make this a non issue. Sure it would still be powerful but it’s mostly EB doing the heavy lifting with two extra attacks.

Keegan MBG

Shouldn’t baseline be changing w/2024 rules?

Kcaz the Mighty
>>146772369

Moon druid can probably get pretty close, although we won't know for sure until we see the new Monster Manual.

Matthew Blachut
>>146772369

Are there many Beasts in the current monster manual that give upwards of 3 attacks per turn? I’ve never had any interest in Moon Druid, so I honestly don’t know.

Robert Lavallee

This is a case were I will not ban the spell but if one of my players tries to take this spell to the extreme we will need to have a talk It should be common sense nowadays to not overshadow your friends at the table if someone wants to do this everyone better be accepting this and for me it will only be allowed at this capacity in one shots Imagine 4 players running this spell you could have them face off against huge threats My first thought was multiple legendary creatures and see what happens lol

Nate Finch

I'm just not going to let per-attack damage work with spells that require multiple attack rolls. That's supposed to be a disadvantage, not an advantage. Maybe let it work once per spell, but not once per attack roll from the same spell. That's not the intent of those spells.

Xeviat
>>146841175

That's why I really liked the Hex and Hunter's Mark from one of the playtests. 1/round, damage scales with spell-level. Multiple attacks increase your chance of dealing the bonus damage.

Barry Mitchell Smith

Hey Chris, as much as I was hoping that this spell would be fine, I see your point. Your fix seems reasonable and allows the spell to still be useable with upcast. Thanks for the tip! I'm implementing your idea in my game.

Barry Mitchell Smith
>>146841175

The problem with your idea is that multi attack with spell upgrade is very important for druids in beast form. Chris' idea works better.

Nate Finch
>>146841175

I don't know what you mean "with spell upgrade". If you mean CME while you have multi attack from the creature you wild shaped into, that would still work fine. That's not a spell that has multiple attacks as its effect.

Moxx

While not something you can run continuously, and a bit of a cheesy multiclass setup, but for pure nova at level 20, I get: Wizard level 7 Warlock level 2 Sorcerer level 11 Wizard gets Conjure Minor Elementals. Warlock gets Eldritch Blast and Agonizing Blast Sorcerer gets Innate Sorcery, and Extend Spell and Quicken Spell metamagics, and options for extra spell slots Innate Sorcery gives advantage on magic attacks (don't need Foresight) CME cast at level 9, for +12d8 damage per attack Scorching Ray is cast at levels 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 (ignoring multiple spell slots for the lower levels) Quicken Spell used to make Scorching Ray a bonus action Combine with casting Eldritch Blast for the main action Total attacks made per round: 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, for the different tiers of spell Total damage per attack: 61 for Scorching Ray, 64.5 per Eldritch Blast beam With 60% base acc (before advantage), accuracy + crit is 84% + 9.75%, for an average of 93.75% of base damage per attack. Damage per round thus progresses as: 757, 699, 642, 585, and 528 average damage. Total HP of an ancient red dragon: 546 Of course an ancient red dragon is immune to fire damage, which uses up a chunk of Scorching Ray. Removing that part of the damage entirely, we get: 698, 647, 596, 546, and 495 average damage. So even building on a fire spell vs an ancient red dragon, you can one-shot an ancient red dragon on four consecutive rounds.

Tim Løye Møller

I really dislike the idea of banning spells or nerfing spells within the game, but this one is absolutely madness. How did this survive Q&A. It is so comparable to Spirit Shroud, that I cannot imagine that this is a "design choice" (i acknowledge that Spririt Shroud is bonus action and CME is action, but it does not warrant a 4x increase in power).

Jamien Ousey

Good video Chris, hopefully it gets reworked officially.

Dan Macke

Love that they are pushing ranger DPR with hunters mark and then they print things like this

4RoryVT

Not even most broken- add 2 levels of Fighter for Weapon Mastery (nick) & Action Surge (so you can CME AND get a full attack round 1), and replace 4 levels of Bard with 4 levels of Sorcerer, no Foresight, but we can Quicken Eldritch Blast and use Seeking Spell to reroll misses, burn some low level slots to Metamagic over and over. If you don't care about Action Surge you could take a level of Paladin instead and keep 19/20 Caster Level

4RoryVT

I note that Spirit Shrouds is a Bonus Action casting, and since both are self buffs, the Action casting is a significant DPR loss in a typical 3-4 round combat. We agree that CME is scales WAY too well, but I would consider +1d8 per spell level instead of /2 levels, since as we approach 9th level spells, spending a turn to do... nothing.... in hopes of maintaining concentration and doing something next turn is a pretty huge opportunity cost.

Moxx
>>146874164

Heh, could work. Don't actually need to swap them, though. Sorcery Incarnate allows you to use two metamagics at once, and since you're using Innate Sorcery for the attack advantage, Sorcery Incarnate will also be active. So do it in whatever order you want, and take the higher damage total from the above post. It'll cost you 3 SP per turn, which means you can do 3 turns' worth before you need to start converting spell slots. Still easy enough, since you can get 3 more turns out of burning your 2nd level spell slots.

Parker Brantley

This isn't a sufficient fix. It can't work with spells because this spell plus scorching ray breaks the game in half.

Joe Machin

Add the hallow spell and make target vulnerable to fire damage. 8 scorching rays and 4 eldritch blasts eacj with additiinal 12d8 damage and double damage to the scorching rays!!!!

Bartosz Czaplewski

I did some math to see what's more important for Conjure Minor Elementals - number of attacks or accuracy of attacks. I came up with the idea that instead of maximizing the number of attacks by using Eldritch Blast, it's better to go the route where you have "only" 4 attacks that are almost certain. Sure, a huge number of attacks through Eldritch Blast will give you big results with Conjure Minor Elementals, but a lot of those attacks will miss (you have to multiply the average damage by the probability of a hit). From my calculations, you'll get statistically more average damage per round if you make sure all 4 attacks with CME hit. Here's how to do it (1 Fighter / 1-19 Valor Bard): 1. Choose Elf/Shadar-kai/Eldarin as your race (you know where this is going). 2. Take Magic Initiate as your Origin feat to get Find Familiar and Booming Blade (you can later get Find Familiar from Magical Secrets, and switch Magic Initiate to Shield or Absorb Elements to get one more cast). 3. Start as 1st level in Fighter to have weapon mastery for shortsword and scimitar, as well as Two-weapon Fighting Style, Constitution saving throw proficiency. 4. Fight using shortsword + scimitar. Max Dexterity instead of Charisma (Charisma probably stays at 16). 5. At 4th level, take Elven Accuracy with +1 to Dexterity (you already have 18 Dexterity). 6. At 15th level (1 Fighter / 14 Valor Bard), you already have 4 attacks: 3 as Actions and 1 as Bonus Action thanks to Battle Magic. Result: First attack: You have triple advantage thanks to Find Familiar and Elven Accuracy. You swap this attack for Booming Blade. Big Boom. Attack with shortsword with Vex. Second attack: You use Battle Magic (bonus action) because you cast a spell this turn that has a casting time of one action. You have triple advantage due to Vex from the previous hit and Elven Accuracy. You attack with a shortsword with Vex. Third attack: You have Extra Attack, so you make another strike. You have triple advantage due to Vex from the previous hit and Elven Accuracy. You attack with a shortsword with Vex. Fourth attack: You have scimitar from Nick, so you make another strike. You have triple advantage due to Vex from the previous hit and Elven Accuracy. You attack with a scimitar with Nick. If you are below level 11, you can use Fount of Moonlight instead of Conjure Minor Elementals. Also, if you need to focus on CC (e.g. Hypnotic Pattern / Wall of Force), your damage will still be very high. Also, you can assume that your weapons are magical (e.g. Flame Tongue shortsword/scimitar), which is not the case with Eldritch Blast.

Martín Hoecker-Martínez

I'm curious what are the characteristics of spells that scale properly with up-casting in light of the need for a house rule to reign in conjure minor elemental