The "Summon" spells from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything are some of my favorite spells added to the game. They take a lot of the complexity out of other creature-conjuring spells while bringing a whole lot of power in terms of damage output.
Fizban's adds another to that list: Summon Draconic Spirit. It's a 5th level spell that works the same as the others, but this one conjures, well, a dragon (we just need a Summon Ooze, Summon Plant, and Summon Humanoid and we'll have the full set!)
The Draconic Spirit in question, however, will play a somewhat different role. Its attacks are going to be a little less powerful than, say, the Fiend or the Shadowspawn, but they also have a breath weapon.
First off, this spell is available to Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards. This is actually some great news for Sorcerers, who tend not to get these spells (the Tasha's subclasses each get their appropriate ones - Aberration and Construct - through their expanded spells).
Let's get the stats:
The draconic spirit is a large dragon. Its armor class is 14 + the spell's level, which means at baseline, it'll have an AC of 19 (and can hit 23 if you cast it at 9th level, which is huge). This actually gives them the highest AC of any of these conjured creatures (even the defender Celestial).
Its hit points are 50 plus 10 for each level above 5th. This is fairly standard scaling, which means it falls behind the Shadowspawn, Fiend, and Construct, and also seems to start at a lower baseline - but of course it will not be hit quite as often given its high AC. (Also, the spell specifies that the dragon has a number of d10 hit dice equal to the spell level).
The dragon has a normal 30 ft movement speed, but also a 30 ft. swim speed and a 60 ft. fly speed - so it's fast.
When you summon it, you pick metallic, chromatic, or gem. The spirit basically covers all of that family's damage types and gets resistances to all its types - Metallic and Chromatic get acid, cold, fire, lightning, and poison resistance (yeah, metallic dragons don't breathe poison, but this is easier) while Gem dragons get force, necrotic, psychic, radiant, and thunder resistance.
Additionally, when you summon it, you choose one of the damage resistances it has and you get that resistance as well.
The dragon is immune to charm, fear, and being poisoned. It has 30 ft. blindsight, and 60 ft. darkvision.
Now, its attacks:
First off, its Rend attack scales just like the others - you get a number of attacks equal to half the spell's level rounded down (as a 5th level spell, that means a base of 2). Rend uses your spell attack modifier, has a 10 foot reach, and does 1d6 + 4 + the spell's level in damage. While the +4 (based on its strength modifier) is better than a lot of the creatures, the 1d6 is low, though not terrible.
However, in addition to the attacks, you also get a Breath Weapon once a turn. This is a 30-foot cone that deals 2d6 damage of one of the types the dragon has resistance to (your choice), with a dexterity save to reduce the damage by half.
While 2d6 isn't a massive amount of damage, this is the only summoned creature with a reliable AoE ability, and that's gravy on top of the regular attacks (while the 1d6 is definitely lower than, say, a summoned slaad's 1d10, it's not that far off - the Slaad's average damage if 1d10+3+the spell's level, while the dragon's is 1d6+4+the spell's level. If both cast at 5th level, that goes out to 13.5 versus 12.5 damage per hit. With the breath attack, even on a single target the dragon comes out ahead - even if the monster succeeds on its save, actually).
Point being - this might be the strongest of all the summon creature spells. Actually, real quick, I think the previous winner was the Avenger Celestial. Let's do the math real quick:
We'll look at both cast at the base level. Celestial does 2d6+2+spell's level, on its radiant bow attacks. That comes to 14 damage, and thus 28 damage per turn.
Dragon does 1d6+4+spell's level, or 12.5 per attack, coming to 25 damage per turn. But then we have the breath, giving us 2d6 additional damage on a failed save, making it 32 damage per turn.
Though Rend is non-magical piercing, so unless you're a Shepherd Druid, situationally it'll be less powerful.
Phew. It's a good spell.
But that's not all the spells in Fizban's!
There aren't a ton of spells, but I don't think I'm going to go through all of them. Let me just touch on the really interesting ones to me:
Ashardalon's Stride is the only one that is available to Artificers (also Rangers, Sorcerers, and Wizards). It's primarily a movement boost, giving you 20 additional feet of movement, and your movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks. Any creature you skate by (for some reason I picture this as "flame rollerblades") takes 1d6 fire damage. At higher levels (it's a 3rd level spell) the speed increases by 5 feet per level and the damage increases by 1d6 per level.
I think the movement speed thing is the real buff here - you go way faster and can get away from (or move between) foes with ease.
Nathair's Mischief is another I really like. It's a 2nd level illusion spell that fills a 20-ft cube with fey and draconic magic, on each of your turns for a minute, you roll randomly for some whimsical crowd-control ability. This includes a smell of apple pie that charms creatures, flowers that spray water in peoples' faces to blind them, infectious giggling that incapacitates foes and sends them in random directions, and drops of molasses that hover in the air and make it difficult terrain. Since none of this can harm a person on its own, this seems like something for a friendly if mischievous character to cast on the party - it is a bit unpredictable to use reliably, but super fun.
Anyway, I'm playing a wizard in a campaign that is due to start up next week, and I'm keeping an eye open for any good-looking spells.
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