Summon Beast/Bestial Spirit 5E Spell

Hello magic casters of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 74th episode of our second level spell series. Today we have a very special one in store for us in the way that we’re talking about a spell that doesn’t really exist yet!

So today we’re talking about summon beast/beastial spirit 5e it is usable by the druid and the ranger and it is found in the unearthed arcana. So what that means is this being play tested right now! May or may not make it into the main game, personally i think it should, i think this spell is baller but it might not.

So run and past your DM if you’re planning on taking it, this really does makes the classes play substantially different especially at those early levels. Now without further ado let’s take a quick look at its mechanics and kind of get into this, just as a quick warning however this is gonna be a little bit longer of article there’s just a lot to cover here.

Table of Contents

Mechanics

Level: 2nd
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range/Area: 90 ft
Components: V, S, M *
Duration: 1 Hour (Concentration)
School: Conjuration
Attack/Save: None
Damage/Effect: Summoning

The effect at a glance is as followed: Summon a beastly spirit , that is friendly to you and your allies. It shares your initiative and obeys verbal commands. In any case you can also check out this what is the charm of animal summoning 5e?.

The cast time is one action, the range is 90 feet, the duration is one hour and it is a concentration spell. The components are the holy trinity so somatic, material and verbal. If you’re curious about that material component it is a feather tough of fur and fish tail inside a gilded acorn worth at least 200 gold piece which is pretty interesting. Also read this summon beast vs conjure animals.

At higher levels you get more AC, health, attacks and damage for each slot level above 2nd. And the school is conjuration. Which makes sense because you’re conjuring the beast you’ll spirit. In any case let’s take a look at the full description here and better flesh out exactly how this spell functions.

Description

You call forth the spirit of a beast. The spirit manifests physically in an unoccupied space that you can see within range. This corporeal form uses the Bestial Spirit stat block below. When you cast the spell, choose an environment: Air, Land, or Water. The creature physically resembles an animal of your choice that is native to the chosen environment, which also determines one of the movement modes in the creature’s stat block. The creature disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or when the spell ends.

The creature is friendly to you and your companions for the spell’s duration. In combat, the creature shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. It obeys verbal commands that you issue to it (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any, it defends itself but otherwise takes no action.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the creature assumes the higher level for that casting wherever it uses the spell’s level in its stat block.

Very cool stuff! Now needless to say this really goes a long way in terms of giving the ranger and druid a little bit more teeth. I think the druid has plenty of teeth already but i think there’s a couple of the ranger archetypes they could really use this but let’s take a look at the actual stats behind it.

Stats

BESTIAL SPIRIT: Small beast, unaligned

So looking at the stats for the bestial spirit it is technically a small beast which is interesting i expected it to be medium but whatever, it is also unaligned. Now taking a look at its stats.

STR: 18 (+4)
DEX: 11 (+0)
CON: 16 (+3)
INT: 4 (−4)
WIS: 14 (+2)
CHA: 5 (−3)

From the above stats you’ll notice its strength is very impressive then this constitution’s not bad either. It’s not particularly smart it’s not particularly charismatic but in combat you don’t necessarily always need those things.

Armor Class: 11 + the level of the spell (natural armor)
Hit Points: equal the beast’s Constitution modifier + your spellcasting ability modifier + ten times the spell’s level
Speed: 30 ft., climb 30 ft. (Land only), fly 60 ft. (Air only), swim 30 ft. (Water only)

Now it’s AC is a little weird so this is where the slot level gets involved. So it’s AC is 11 plus the slot levelso you cast it at second level that means it’s AC is 13 right…so its 11+2 so that’s kind of how this all works. It’s HP is calculated very similarly so it’s the beast con modifier which is 3 plus your spellcasting modifier whatever that may be and then multiply and then added by 10 multiplied by the slot level so casting at second level would be 20. Right!

The speed is also really interesting because it comes down to which version of the beast you selected. I personally think the land might be the best one but i’ll leave that for you to decide. In any case land gets you a 30 feet of movement but it also gives you a 30 feet climb speed so you can kind of do either or. You can also check out this summon lesser demon 5e options.

Air gives you a fly speed of 60 feet which is impressive, water gives you a swim speed of 30 feet as well which i’m to the right circumstances is pretty useful. Now let’s take a quick look at its senses and how it communicates. You can also check out this summon greater demon 5e.

Senses And Communication

Senses: So it has a darkvision up to 60 feet which is great, it has a passive perception of 12 which isn’t the best but once again this is more or less meant to be used exclusively in combat so passive perception isn’t that important.
Languages: It understands the languages you speak. It can’t speak on it’s own but it does share of your languages with you which is kind of cool and it makes sense because you’re gonna be issuing at verbal commands right! Now let’s take a look at its abilities.

Abilities

So this is another thing where it kind of depends on which beast you chose.

Amphibious (Water Only): The beast can breathe air and water.
Flyby (Air Only): This is one of my all time favorite abilities certainly top three. The beast doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks when it flies out of an enemy’s reach. The owl in the find familiar spell is this exact same ability and it is so great.
Pack Tactics (Land and Water Only): This is absolutely great, god i love pack tactics. 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.

It’s pretty cool! It basically guarantees you constant advantage especially if you have a lot of martial characters this really helps out. Now let’s take a look at its actions. Keep reading this how many spells can you prepare 5e wizard.

Actions

So this is a little bit unique in the way that it actually is a multiattack, so you can do more than one attack per round. How you calculate it as it is the number of attacks is calculated by taking the spell level and then divided by 2 and then rounding down. It’s pretty interesting, the most you can ever really get is four attacks in and that’s if you use an 8th level spell slot, so whether or not it’s worth it i’ll leave that for you to decide, i do think under certain circumstances there’s some benefit there but whatever.

You can also use the Maul attack so it is 4+ the spell level to hit, reaches five feet so it’s a melee attack. You could target one target in terms of amage it’s 1d8 + 4 + the spell’s level piercing damage. So potentially pretty decent and it’s piercing damage by the way i actually really like this spell. * – (a feather, tuft of fur, and fish tail inside a gilded acorn worth at least 200 gp)

Whether i’d have to like play a game with it to know exactly how a function but for the most part i certainly don’t see any immediate problems i think it’s a little bit too tanky in terms of how much healthy he can get but overall i really don’t think that’s too too much of an issue. I don’t know i’d really need to see it play tested before i made any like real judgments about a glance it.

Looks pretty decent, it’s worded in a ay that’s very creative and i can really respect that, i like creative spells a lot. In any case let’s take a quick look at some alternative uses here and just better flesh out this spell a little bit. Also read this 5e spell tier list.

Alternative Uses

So one of my favorite ways to use spells like this is to use it to essentially raid an enemy camp well they’re not suspecting it usually at night. So the way you do this, is you actually just cast it in the middle of one of their larger 10 or storehouses or what have you. Do you know what counts as a beast in dnd.

And you just have the beast go berserk, this is a little bit unique because it does have health but it’s pretty pretty chunky especially for an early level spell slot. So i really do think it has a high degree of survivability, ultimately this is a great spell to use if you’re trying to balance encounters, that’s kind of what it’s meant to be used for i think. Also check out this 5e when to give magic weapons.

I think this was aimed a little bit more so at the ranger than it was at the druid but once again i’d have to see play tested before i really knew too too much about that. You can also check out this is bane a good spell 5e.

Another great way to use this is to take advantage of that casting range and that ludacris speed. So if you have an enemy that’s running. You cast it 90 feet out grab the air variant so that’s 60 feet of flight and just chase that guy down. It doesn’t say at any point that the beast has to remain within a certain distance from you which might be a little broken might not i don’t know you can’t perceive through its senses but you can issue a verbal command.

So you can just be like kill this guy do whatever you take come back to you and you’re done. Like that’s really all you’d have to say for the most part. Also read summon woodland beasts 5e.

Conclusion

That being said, if you have any thoughts, questions, ideas, comments, concerns please put them down beneath in the comment section, i really do appreciate it. I apologize for how long this article has been this is our longest spell article i think so thanks for bearing with me.

That being said, thank you so much for checking out guys i really do appreciate it. I hope you all have a great day and as always happy spell-casting.