Conjuration is the school of creation; bringing things to this world that weren’t there before. It’s there to make weather, items, and – thanks to the Player’s Handbook – a subclass of Wizards. Conjurers are also responsible for teleportation and movement, making them the prime choice if you want to either construct a cut of rib or avoid becoming dinner yourself. They are so important for farmers and merchants – they can stop droughts, food shortages, and summon creatures to defend them. Are they just as useful in a player party? Let’s find out with our Conjuration Wizard 5E Guide.
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Create a Plane: Conjuration Wizard 5E
The Conjuration Wizard is a pseudo-blaster with a focus on summoning. Your goal is to defend your backline with summoned creatures to reinforce the frontline.
Unfortunately, this wizard school just doesn’t do a lot. The abilities are lackluster, and only two of them help with Summoning… Your main thing. And neither do a very good job of it. If you’re wanting to be a Conjurer, consider siding with War Magic or another school instead. Conjuration Magic almost works exactly as well with any other subclass
Conjuration Savant
Of course, the strength of this class is not helped by the Savant ability that the PHB classes have.
Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a Conjuration spell into your spellbook is halved.
This ability’s power is exclusively dependent on your GM. Does your GM throw many conjurers at you? Then you’ve hit the jackpot! Do you have a chance to sit at a library and study spellbooks for a week? Awesome, that’s a few new spells in your pocket! Otherwise, you might be in trouble.
Conjuration is the school of summoning and teleportation. Not too many enemy Wizards will have summoning – that’s an annoying thing for a Party to deal with! – but a lot of them will have Dimension Door, or Web. You might be able to get away with collecting some of your later-game Conjuration spells from random books. Still, you’ll want to pick up your basic and advanced summoning spells to be as useful as possible for your party. Don’t leave your important stuff to chance!
Minor Conjuration
Here’s where the problems start brewing for this subclass; at level 2, you get a cantrip.
…you can use your action to conjure up an inanimate object in your hand or on the ground in an unoccupied space that you can see within 10 feet of you. This object can be no larger than 3 feet on a side and weigh no more than 10 pounds, and its form must be that of a nonmagical object that you have seen. The object is visibly magical, radiating dim light out to 5 feet.
The object disappears after 1 hour, when you use this feature again, or if it takes any damage.
This isn’t useless… But it doesn’t help you in that crucial, early stage in a Wizard’s life, where their Subclass is their best offense and defense.
This spell is highly dependent on your GM’s kindness, and how creative you can be. It also, strangely, relies on how many things your character has seen. Thank goodness you can always say your wizard has seen a log before! If you wish, you can roll a 10-pound log down a hallway to check for tripwires and pressure plates. That’s useful!
Otherwise… The options are limitless, but somewhat pointless. You could conjure a Dagger to help stab someone in a bar fight. Or, you could make a bottle of ink to write messages that only last an hour. You could create a perfect copy of a statue to help solve a crime. It can solve a lot of problems…
But none of them is the actual problem that you have. Which is at level 2, Wizards need more than another cantrip.
This ability could potentially solve a lot of problems, but it doesn’t solve your big problem. You’re putting yourself in a very risky situation here.
Benign Transportation
Because Conjuration is both teleportation and summoning, you get something with teleportation first. Neat, but goodness that’s not too helpful.
Starting at 6th level, you can use your action to teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space that you can see. Alternatively, you can choose a space within range that is occupied by a Small or Medium creature. If that creature is willing, you both teleport, swapping places.
Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest or you cast a conjuration spell of 1st level or higher.
Oh, and the ability isn’t that good.
A lot of class abilities have restrictions on where or when you can teleport, so this feature’s freedom is great. You can move wherever you want, including right onto an ally’s square. You can move the princess out of her cage, cast a Conjuration spell, and then teleport out the next turn. It’s like Dimension Door all by itself, with the added benefits of space-switching!
So… What gives? Why is this bad?
Well, most class abilities that offer teleportation offer it as a Move or Bonus action. For example, the Shadow Monk, that only has a darkness limitation… And it gets advantage on attacks after. Compared to this ability, Shadow Step seems like you rolled out a red carpet for movement opportunity.
Though, this ability has more rule-bound princess saving applications. That’s a plus!
But, it’s a free teleport anywhere you want. That’s worth something, yeah? But it isn’t, not really; this is an action to cast Misty Step, unless you’re teleporting with someone else. Misty Step is a 2nd level bonus action spell. And Dimension Door removes the requirement of seeing the space, and gives you 500 feet.
If you specifically think your GM will put you in a “princess-in-a-cage-lowering-into-lava” scenario, then this ability would be a good addition to your toolkit. However… It’s just not worthwhile. You have too many better teleportation options.
Focused Conjuration
At last, a summon ability! Your bread-and-butter is finally going to get better! It’s about ti-
Beginning at 10th level, while you are concentrating on a conjuration spell, your concentration can’t be broken as a result of taking damage.
Oh, it’s… It’s a concentration thing. Cool.
So, unsurprisingly, this is a bit superfluous by level 10. The bright side is, by now, damage is getting rough. DC of half damage is usually impossible by now, unless the enemy is a martial with low damage output. Being able to completely ignore those concentration checks means your summon spells – and cloud spells – can stay alive longer. Even if you’re targeted by arrows or fireballs!
A few problems, however. Firstly, you’re a summoner. You have an army of disposable meat to throw in front of you. If you’re getting hit by anything, you’re likely not making use of Fly, Misty Step, Dimension Door, Invisibility, etc. You have so many ways to avoid taking damage entirely that you probably shouldn’t be taking any damage anyways.
Another? You’re a Wizard. Taking damage has never been just about losing Concentration; It’s been about the sword-sized hole in your chest. You can’t take that much damage, so you’re going to have to use defensive spells to avoid anything. That means that this is simply a backup plan if you do get hit, rather than an important class feature.
Despite how powerful this may seem, Wizards simply have other ways to avoid taking damage. You don’t need to rely on this; your concentration is pretty unlikely to be broken by damage in the first place. If you like the flavor of this ability, I’d recommend checking the War Mage. That reduces damage taken, and makes it so spells that might stop you from concentrating are more likely to fail.
Durable Summons
This ability is the only one that successfully does something better than any other class or spell. And that’s because it strictly buffs your summons.
Starting at 14th level, any creature that you summon or create with a conjuration spell has 30 temporary hit points.
And it’s an unscaling 30 temp HP shield. Ugh.
So, 30 HP for free is obviously fantastic. This means when you summon 8 creatures with a Minor spell, you give out 240 HP. And, if you use an 8th level spell slot to triple that, you handed out a staggering 720 temporary hitpoints. That’s a lot! Most creatures are going to have trouble beating through your army of little friends without level 5 or 6 Areas of Effect. And they actually have a half-decent chance to hit, thanks to how low AC is in this edition.
Of course, summoning a single creature makes this a bit worse. You can summon a CR 10 demon (a dangerous debacle), but giving that just 30 hitpoints makes it only likely to survive a few extra weapon smacks, or one more spell. Also, you’re probably gonna not want to tell the party you gave the rampaging barlgura extra health.
So, you’re gonna wanna throw out a bunch of CR 1 Elementals, or weaker elementals. It depends a little bit on the AC of the creature you’re fighting – and if the GM implemented flanking rules. Giving the CR ¼ creatures, like, triple or quadruple the health will make them so much better at tanking hits.
And your GM will probably hate you.
Best Race for Conjuration School Wizards
The Conjuration school is probably your best chance to experiment with low intelligence Wizards. That being said, I’d recommend still getting Intelligence to 20 ASAP. You just benefit from Int too much. Dexterity and Constitution are good for staying alive on the battlefield.
Kobold
Okay, maybe “best” race was a bit of a misnomer, but hear me out.
The Volo’s Guide Kobold is rocking a +2 Dexterity, -2 Strength. You don’t care about Strength, so this is an okay stat log. In addition, since your Summons count as allies (well, your Elemental summons), you can get Advantage easily. That means your cantrips and spells with ranged spell attack rolls will absolutely destroy your surrounded opponents. In addition, if you get surrounded, you can use Grovel, Cower, and Beg to give your allies – and summons – advantage to save your life.
If your GM is nice, do consider talking to them about negating Sunlight Sensitivity or replacing the Strength reduction with an Intelligence increase. Despite the flavor text saying Kobolds are creative and clever… They decided to give them a penalty to a score. One of the two races that take it.
Even so, get a bunch of spell attack slots and you’ll do fine.
Githyanki
The Githyanki from Mordekainen’s Tome of Foes are a strength-based race that gives Medium Armor proficiency. Admittedly peculiar, but not exactly bad for you! Thanks to that, if you were worried about getting hit, you can cast in half-plate. Or, if you’re super adventurous, you can dump Dexterity and get Heavy Armor at level 4 to just chill in Plate mail. You still get +1 Intelligence from the base Gith stats, and the spells you get are great. A bonus proficiency and language is far from useless.
You even get Misty Step! Your own racial ability one-ups your class feature! That’s hilarious!
Conclusion – Our Take on the School of Conjuration Wizard 5E
The Conjuration school offers a single significant class ability. But, that one can turn the Summon Minor spells into major threats (if you space around AoEs!). If you like the Conjurer and it’s flavor, I’d look at War Magic for their defensive skills. If you’re really, really sure you want specifically extra health on your summons, I’d still consider the Necromancy school. Now, if you’ve considered both of those, and want a Wizard that may die until level 5, and then gets okay utility? Then the Conjurer might be the only option for you.
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