Spell Spotlight: Conjure Minor Elementals

Author: Haen the Heretic

It’s the most festive time of year! In that spirit, we’re doing a Spell Spotlight on a spell you might not have expected: conjure minor elementals. Curious about what this spell has to do with the Christmas spirit? Keep reading to find out.

This spell is an oft-ignored summoning spell on the Druid and Wizard spell lists. It has only one truly great option, but that option is good enough to warrant the spell its own article.

Conjure minor elementals, also sometimes known as “conjure chwingas”, is a 4th-level spell available to Druids and Wizards. The spell has the standard rules of a multi-creature summoning spell—you can choose one CR 2, two CR 1, four CR ½ or eight CR ¼ elementals to appear and follow your commands; you can additionally choose creatures of lower CR for any of these options.

In order to evaluate how good this spell is, we need to take a look at our options and see how good the creatures we can summon are. This spell falls more on the utility side of summoning spells rather than the raw damage side (compared to a spell like conjure animals, for example). Even then, it isn’t the most powerful spell, and we usually won’t be casting this spell at all unless we can guarantee the appearance of its very best option, unless we are somehow getting to cast it for free. 

One major drawback of this spell is its 1 minute casting time. Unlike conjure animals or conjure woodland beings, you won’t be able to cast conjure minor elementals in the middle of combat—you will always need to cast it preemptively before an encounter, though its 1 hour duration does make managing that aspect not horribly cumbersome.

The following ratings have been determined based on an analysis of what you can do with them—damage was considered, but also other abilities, such as the debilitating effects of blinding or restraining the enemy. The number of creatures summoned by CR was also taken into account since it should be a given that you summon the maximum number of summons for each challenge rating category.

CR 2 Elementals

Azer (★☆☆☆☆)

A monster that unfortunately can only provide damage, and not a lot of it.

Four-Armed Gargoyle (★☆☆☆☆)

This is much like a usual gargoyle, but with an additional attack. Unfortunately, it isn’t a noticeable improvement.

Gargoyle (★☆☆☆☆)

This monster has nothing but raw melee damage, which is on par with three skeletons firing shortbows, or worse than three wolves. Anything that it can do can be done better by a different spell, such as fireball or animate dead.

CR 1 Elementals

Animated Drow Statue (★★★☆☆)

This is just an animated armor with its creature type changed. The only remarkable thing about it is its high AC. You could use it for doorway dodging if desperate.

Fire Snake (★☆☆☆☆)

Another option severely lacking in utility or offensive output, 4 attacks in total that do less than a few wolves.

Firenewt Warlock of Imix (★★★☆☆)

Three ranged attacks apiece with a range of 120 feet allow these creatures to stay far from the enemy and survive a few rounds, although their damage output–14.9 DPR vs AC 16–isn’t good at all. At least they also have guidance. Mage armor at will could be relevant if other players are summoning a creatures without armor too.

Galvanice Weird (★☆☆☆☆)

Its damage is low and there’s nothing to it besides a DC 13 Constitution saving throw to take away a monster’s reaction. That’s an ability that has some potential—it’s great in combination with wall of stone, for example—but by the time you have access to that spell a DC 13 Constitution save simply isn’t reliable, even if you can summon two.

Giant Strider (★★★☆☆)

These guys have an action that basically lets you cast a marginally less damaging shatter. Of course, this begs the question of why you would want to cast a rechargeable shatter twice with a 4th-level spell slot, when fireball became available to you two levels ago. They’re Large, so they can be used as mounts, but with a default of two you’ll struggle to supply the entire party. If they survive a fight, you can heal them out of combat with something like fire bolt with to their Fire Absorption trait.

CR ½ Elementals

Dust Mephit (★★☆☆☆)

This has a worse chance to make the enemy fail compared to its ice-y cousin, but the blinded condition is significant and they are numerous enough to reliably force a failed saving throw. A 35% chance to fail such a save, the average for a CR 7-10 monster, means that just four mephits have a 58% chance of blinding a target. Unfortunately, affected creatures do get the chance to repeat the save every turn. All in all, it’s still a 4th-level spell slot to attempt blind several creatures.

Firenewt Warrior (★★★☆☆)

Each firenewt warrior can spit for 2d8 fire damage to one target, forcing a Dexterity save for half damage once per short rest, essentially making this a free cast of blight with a worse damage type, and they do 12.6 DPR in melee–again, nothing outstanding.

Ice Mephit (★★☆☆☆)

Similar to magma mephits, but the save DC and damage is much lower, so it’s not worth summoning these for damage purposes if you can summon magma mephits instead. The draw here is their ability to innately cast fog cloud. A 4th-level slot for the ability to cast fog clouds four times is a strange tradeoff and one that we don’t foresee happening often, but it is at least something to keep in mind. This is compounded additionally by the fact that fog cloud has a unique upcasting benefit of increasing its radius by 20 feet per level. If you need to make some sort of getaway under visual obscurement and need to place four separate fog clouds, this is the option. Additionally, while the damage from these icy critters is strictly worse, it’s not nothing, so you could have them throw down some obscurement and try to slow down enemies while you get away.

Magma Mephit (★★★★☆)

This little thing gets to spew fire. Each magma mephit has a Fire Breath ability (recharge 6) which is a 15 foot cone, 2d6 fire damage, DC 11 Dexterity save for half, and a Death Burst ability that triggers on death, which is a DC 11 Dexterity save for half, also 2d6 fire damage. It’s the save-for-half effect that makes these effects usable. The average Dexterity save bonus of creatures from the Monster Manual, Volo’s Guide to Monsters, and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes doesn’t exceed +3 until CR 12 and higher, so a 65% chance of success is a slightly conservative estimate for the ranges in which you’d actually be casting this spell. These assumptions give us 4.6 damage per target per Fire Breath. If four magma mephits can target 2 creatures per breath, that’s a respectable 36.5 damage (do note that you probably won’t get to Fire Breath twice because it’s a recharge ability). Throw on the Death Burst that does the same 4.6 average damage per target that’s likely to come soon thereafter on an annoying AC 11, 22 hit point creature, and we’re doing alright here, even if it’s not the same as 8 velociraptors. Obviously, don’t summon these if you know you’re up against fire-resistant enemies.

They also get to cast heat metal, which has its uses, especially if you play in campaigns where you face off against humanoid enemies more often than monstrous ones. A DC 10 isn’t high, but the disadvantage debuff applies even on a successful save, which is quite relevant. 

Magmin (★☆☆☆☆)

This creature is unable to do anything besides damage, so one might hope it at least delivers in that regard. Against a 16 AC target, four of them will do 12.6 damage in a round and light its target on fire for an additional 1d6 per round. Perhaps you will get the monster to waste an action to douse itself, but 1d6 damage is so low most enemies will likely just ignore it.

These things can decide to emit or not emit light with a bonus action, which is some very situational utility that can be accomplished with mundane items or cantrips like light.

CR ¼ Elementals

Art Elemental Mascot (★★★★☆)

They hit for 16.8 DPR at range, charm people, and blind enemies when they are killed–the save DC may be low, but it triggers every time one of them dies.

Mud Mephit (★★★★☆)

Each mephit’s Mud Breath can temporarily restrain a (Medium or smaller) target, and we already know how impactful forcing a lot of saves can be. It’s not great, but has its uses. Their Death Burst has the same effect as their Mud Breath. A somewhat flexible way to inflict the restrained condition, which is a good debuff. Web probably suffices in most situations, but this is certainly one of the best options out of the mephits family.

Smoke Mephit (★★★★☆)

Same as the dust mephits, but you get twice as many. Blinding enemies is very good, and with twice the number of mephits we have an 82% chance of blinding our target until the end of the smoke mephit’s next turn. Against tightly clumped enemies this can be quite useful, though it’s still a costly maneuver. Their Death Burst leaves behind a 5 foot radius sphere centered on their square, which lasts for one minute. This is realistically far too small of an area of effect to make use of.

Steam Mephit (★★★☆☆)

One steam mephit does 2.8 damage on average to a creature with a +3 Dexterity saving throw bonus (2.9 to creatures with a +2). 8 mephits can do 22 damage per target with their breath weapons, and that’s basically all they do. As before, the breath weapon is on a recharge 6, but they’ll probably die before they get a second one off. Their Death Burst does an equivalent amount of damage per target.

CR 0 Elementals (AKA: Why You Take This Spell)

Chwinga (★★★★★)

The best thing here. It has two excellent spells in its innate casting arsenal: guidance and pass without trace. Additionally, the feature we want it for (and the reason why this article is being released during such a festive, gift-giving time): Magical Gift. You can get a free supernatural charm, or multiple, which we’ll explain further below.

If that wasn’t good enough, they have blindsight and high passive Perception, which means they can double as great scouts if familiars aren’t an option.

How to Guarantee Chwingas

A big reason for this spell’s strength is that we can make sure we get chwingas when we want them. While there is heavy table variance on how it is decided which creatures are summoned with conjuration spells, there is a good chance you will be able to guarantee that chwingas are summoned, and that is for one specific reason:

The creatures you summon must fit in an unoccupied space within range. Thus, by choosing 8 creatures when casting the spell, you can limit your options to only chwingas by conjuring your summons in a location where only a Tiny creature can fit. This works because there are no other Tiny elementals of CR ¼ or lower.

Guaranteeing chwingas is especially useful in downtime scenarios, when you can easily get all the charms you and your party would ever want. (Check with your DM before you do this, of course! It’s polite and communication is key.)

Dungeon Master’s Guide Charms

While there are many more sources of charms, most notably adventure modules, for this guide we will for the most part only be rating the ones found in the DMG as it’s not guaranteed that your DM will choose an adventure-specific boon.

Charm of Vitality (★★★☆☆)

Get the most out of your hit die, and a way to get rid of exhaustion and any diseases or effects of poison. This charm disappears when used once.

Charm of the Slayer (★★☆☆☆)

Only affects swords, which aren’t good to begin with, and only matters much if you fight dragons or giants. Against dragons or giants, this is going to be a slight damage boost over a PAM/GWM Barbarian wielding a nonmagical polearm. Should you really run at dragons and giants with a puny sword though? Well, if it’s your only option, perhaps, though you might want to rethink your options then!

Charm of Restoration (★★★★☆)

Free casts of lesser restoration and greater restoration are handy backups to have. These basically just save spell slots and spell preparations—both very valuable—if you have a Cleric or Druid in the party, but can be lifesavers if you don’t. 

Charm of Heroism (★★★☆☆)

Contrary to what you might assume from its name, this charm doesn’t grant you the effects of heroism, but bless. Using an action to bless only yourself isn’t worth it in combat, but as it lasts an hour you should be able to use this beforehand. That and 10 temporary hit points (that disappear after an hour, unlike normal temporary hit points) are a nice boon to any character.

Charm of Feather Falling (★★★☆☆)

Helpful, but fall damage isn’t very common.

Charm of Darkvision (★★★☆☆)

Free Darkvision three times. Darkvision is quite readily available, but if you or your party members lack other means to acquire it, it’s not bad.

Charm of Animal Conjuring (★★★★★)

Conjure animals is one of the best spells in the game. Getting three free casts is awesome and lets the martials pull their weight in challenging games.

Noteworthy Charms from Other Published Content

Boros Charm (★★★☆☆)

This charm allows the beneficiary to cast crusader’s mantle once, which functions very nicely with horde summons. Since the spell also works on ranged attacks, this is a good way to empower your necromancer allies as well as Druids and Rangers. And no, you should not use this to caste haste.

Charm of Nine Lives (★★★★★)

You get the ability to drop to 1 hit point as opposed to going down when reduced to 0 hit points, nine times. This is like nine death wards, but you can control when to use them so they never go to waste! 

Selesnya Charm (★★★★★)

The good part of this allows you to cast conjure animals like the Charm of Animal Conjuring. The ability to confer resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, as well as the ability to cast aura of vitality, are not worthwhile uses of this charm.

Charm of the Traveling Haven (★★★★★)

Thanks to Rime of the Frostmaiden, we are able to replicate one of the most broken pieces of tech available to level 10 Chronurgy Wizards—casting Leomund’s tiny hut as an action, meaning we are able to make a barrier around our party that no enemy may pass through. Basically, slap this down on the battlefield and shoot at the enemy with your ranged weapons until you win. You may not kill the enemy as they are likely to notice you are unstoppable and retreat, but they sure won’t beat you without dispel magic.

Below we will provide ratings for several noteworthy charms that reveal minor spoilers from published adventure modules.

Sometimes, power is found in the little things—or the Tiny things, in the case of conjure minor elementals. As always, make sure to communicate your plans prior to setting them in motion if you want to make use of the chwinga’s charms, as it can be a lot to spring onto your DM without warning. It’s also worth communicating with them to set expectations regarding what charms you will get—they are stated to be up to the DM’s choice, so it would be wise to establish what you can hope to get early on. 

If having at-will access to permanent charms all the time is too much, there are still other ways your group can use this option. The DM can use this as an opportunity to integrate charms into progression rewards, keep them as a one-off, special occasion bonus for dramatic tension, or select the minor, consumable charms as available options and treat them as another staple function of the spell. 

Even at a table where you can’t get supernatural charms, the chwinga’s ability to cast pass without trace—a spell known to be worth wish-ing for—as a Wizard makes it worth a 4th-level spell slot.

Hopefully you enjoy gift-themed Spell Spotlight, just in time for the holiday season! 

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