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Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Conjuration Spells by a Factor of Three
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Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Conjuration Spells by a Factor of Three

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This look at homebrew spells for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons involves the transportation of objects and creatures from one location to another. There’s currently over 13,220 homebrew conjuration spells at D&D Beyond so while Nerdarchists Dave and Ted skillfully looked at the homebrew Roguish Archetypes for 5E D&D there I’m cracking open the spellbook in this post. We get a kick out of checking out the 5E D&D content folks come up with and sharing their homebrew creations. (There’s lots of these posts whether for homebrew subclasses, magic items, spells, feats and more floating around for the curious.) Let’s get into it.

Conjuration spells at D&D Beyond

Before getting started it’s important to note you can create homebrew content for private use and share your homebrew content publicly at DDB at no cost — there’s no subscription required to access these services. However if you want to add any of the homebrew conjuration spells mentioned below or any other homebrew content you come across to your 5E D&D collection you must subscribe at the Hero Tier or above. There’s a lot you can do at DDB for free. Check out what you can do here.

The DDB homebrew collection uses several statistics to track entries. Views shows how many eyeballs any particular homebrew creation received, Adds shows the number of times a creation was added to someone’s collection and Rating is an upvote/downvote system. Since there are over 13,220 conjuration spells in the collection I’m going to share the top 10 highest rated, most viewed and most added selections and to see what’s out there along with any crossover between these three lists.

Top 10 highest rating conjuration spells

  1. Egg (2nd level). My first thought was this versatile spell is too powerful for 2nd level. But after doing some comparison and thinking more about it the various effects feel suitably balanced to me. If anything the unbalanced quality of this spell lies in the number of different things it can do, which is why it sours for me and likely appeals to a large number of players.
  2. Bees?! (cantrip). Reflavored poison spray. Read up on making spells your own. Next!
  3. Summon Chair (cantrip). If you absolutely, positively cannot sit on the ground at any time this is the spell for you. My only issue with this is the chair, which becomes more ornate when cast by higher level casters, remains as a permanent object until dispelled. This makes it broken but with a duration I’m cool with it.
  4. Summon a Guy (1st level). Wow. This spell yanks a commoner from anywhere the Dungeon Master decides and makes them an obedient ally until the duration ends, when they crumble to dust. That’s messed up in so many ways.
  5. Aarakocra Arrow Storm (1st level). Kinda like hail of thorns except greater range, area of effect and damage but at the same level so…nope!
  6. Aboleth’s Mist (cantrip). I haven’t looked at the spell yet but a cantrip with “aboleth” in the name doesn’t bode well. Turns out it has nothing to do with aboleths or any of their traits and instead offers a short term self-buff for being sneaky. I dig it.
  7. Pear (1st level). Another one with a choice of effects. Neither is too powerful but a single spell available to all classes to either heal whoever eats the conjured fruit or deal damage as a thrown weapon is a design choice I cannot abide.
  8. Water Whip (3rd level). Single target damage on the low end with a minor bit of control feels very underpowered for this one. I feel like there’s cantrips out there to do the job better.
  9. Oozeundheit (2nd level). My favorite so far. I love oozes! 5E D&D has moved away from referencing creatures and replaced this with special stat blocks and I’d love a version of this along those lines. This spell also showed up when I covered the Top 10 Homebrew Summoning Spells for 5E D&D too.
  10. Greater Demiplane (9th level). Wonky, weird and wild and I’m here for it. The most powerful spells do some incredible things and this one lets the caster play worldbuilder on a very large scale.

Top 10 most viewed conjuration spells

  1. Egg (2nd level).
  2. Bees?! (cantrip).
  3. Aarakocra Arrow Storm (1st level).
  4. Hand of Radiance (cantrip). A different take on a radiant cantrip isn’t anything to write home about but if you enjoy the style of this more than sacred flame or word of radiance go for it.
  5. Summon Chair (cantrip).
  6. Improved Find Familiar (1st level). I believe the differences are the familiar can attack using the caster’s bonus action and the range for delivering a touch spell is greatly increased.
  7. Summon a Guy (1st level).
  8. Alunni’s Infinite Armory (4th level). Pretty nifty spell for an adventuring party to store their weapons in an extradimensional space and conjure them into their hand any time or return them to storage.
  9. Aboleth’s Mist (cantrip).
  10. Aagra’s Energy Dagger (7th level). Weaksauce Mordenkainen’s Sword and saves 250 gp on a special material component but otherwise I’m not seeing the point of this.

Top 10 most added conjuration spells

  1. Bees?! (cantrip).
  2. Summon Chair (cantrip).
  3. Egg (2nd level).
  4. Water Whip (3rd level).
  5. Aarakocra Arrow Storm (1st level).
  6. Summon a Guy (1st level).
  7. Aboleth’s Mist (cantrip).
  8. Black/Holy Fire (cantrip). The caveat regarding how to obtain this spell is irrelevant from a design perspective and in this case it’s much too powerful.
  9. Greater Demiplane (9th level).
  10. Globe of Twilight (3rd level). I really dig this one a lot. The visual description is excellent and the effects are terrific. A minor buff for allies and a minor debuff for enemies is my jam.

Conjuration spells rising to the top

These 16 spells standout to me for one particular aspect I have not observed in other homebrew spell explorations before. There’s a number of these with either a variety of effects or a choice among several effects and therein lies the problem. Individually these effects would be great (and probably bring the spell level down a bit) but when a single spell can accomplish several impactful things with one casting that is a red flag particularly when they’re lower level spells and especially for cantrips. Designing a conjuration spell also needs to consider permanency. Creating something from nothing is powerful magic and doing so as a cantrip is just not reasonable at all.

Notable homebrew conjuration spells from these lists include aboleth’s mist primarily because I expected some sort of ridiculous effect. Throwing the world aboleth out there is not to be taken lightly! I also like the ooze conjuring spell because oozes are wonderful and the weapon storage spell for the whole party is pretty terrific too. My favorite of the whole bunch is globe of twilight though because I’m a sucker for anything cosmic sounding. I don’t think I’ve ever pointed out my least favorite of any homebrew content before but I’ll make an exception for summon a guy, which is repugnant to me.

5E D&D spell resources

I mention our own forays into homebrew content creation for 5E D&D several times to plant the seed in your mind. Now you’re wondering, “What kind of homebrew content do you create, Nerdarchy? I’m extremely interested!” In addition to the monthly rewards our Patreon supporters receive we’ve presented tons of material in our videos and right here at Nerdarchy the Website ready to drop right into your games too. Another place we frequently create new content for Dungeon Masters and players to drop right into games is Nerdarchy the Newsletter and you’ll also get several gifts including $9.99 in store credit so you can add whatever you like there to your own collection when you sign up. Over the years we’ve scribed over 60 new spells of our own. Here’s some places where you’ll find these spells along with other spell related stuff we’ve shared.

*Featured image — Conjuration is the bread and butter in Magic: The Gathering. Basic Conjuration from the Strixhaven: School of Mages expansion doesn’t seem very basic to me though. There’s no guarantee you’ll discover anything to summon and you regain life by doing so, which doesn’t really make any sense whatsoever. In 5E D&D conjuration spells involve the transportation of objects and creatures from one location to another or create objects or effects out of nothing. [Art by Randy Vargas]

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Doug Vehovec

Nerditor-in-Chief Doug Vehovec is a proud native of Cleveland, Ohio, with D&D in his blood since the early 80s. Fast forward to today and he’s still rolling those polyhedral dice. When he’s not DMing, worldbuilding or working on endeavors for Nerdarchy he enjoys cryptozoology trips and eating awesome food.

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