This is largely just for me - I play a Wizard in my longest-running-campaign-I'm-not-DM'ing, and we're level 8 (yes, my friends and I tend to level slowly - despite this running nearly as long as my Ravnica game, where players are level 18, we're still only level 8) and I've been giving a lot of thought, as I always do, to what spells I intend to take on level-up.
Wizards are, of course, incentivized to make their two free spells from each level to be from the highest level of spell slot they have, because it essentially saves time and money (though as a Scribes Wizard, even an 9th level spell would only take him 18 minutes to copy into his book).
Animate Objects is one of the few 2024 spells that lets you put a bunch of friendly creatures on the board, though it's limited by how many are actually in the space where you cast it. Still, given that the targets can be any objects you see, unless you're in an empty void-like room, you'll nearly always have something to cast it on - and you could bring along a set of silverware of something to unfurl any time you needed to use the spell.
In 2014, the statistics of the animated objects were variable, with fixed attack bonuses. Strangely, the smallest and largest objects had the best attack bonuses, and I think the optimal use was to animate as many tiny objects as possible - even if each only did something like 1d4+2, having ten of them meant that all added up to be the highest damage potential (especially with their +8 to hit).
The new version, wisely, gives us a single template for the objects, and the size affects the damage per hit and the HP of the objects, but the hit bonus is equal to the caster's spell attack modifier, which is always preferable. (And by level 9, it's not unreasonable to assume that a Wizard has at least a +8 to hit with spells).
The new version also narrows the size categories: Medium or Smaller, Large, and Huge.
These have 10, 20, and 40 HP, respectively.
The number of objects you can animate is equal to your spellcasting ability modifier, with medium or smaller objects counting as 1 object, large objects counting as 2, and huge objects as 3 (gargantuan objects can't be animated).
Interestingly, the upcasting of this spell increases the objects' number of damage dice, but not the number of objects you can animate.
Unlike the "Summon" spells, you need to use a bonus action to command the objects, so it's a bit more action-economy-dependent, but not overly burdensome.
Each object makes a single Slam attack when commanded to attack (you can issue this command to all of them with the same bonus action). Medium and smaller objects deal 1d4+3 damage. Large objects deal 2d6+3+your Spellcasting Ability Modifier, and Huge objects deal 2d12+3+your spellcasting ability modifier.
So: optimally, what kind of objects should we animate?
First, a caveat: you're at the DM's mercy as to what objects are available. Objects cannot be fixed to the ground, and have to be smaller that gargantuan, but in theory anything from bits of rubble to paintings on walls to bones - technically speaking, you could do some off-label necromancy here and animate a bunch of corpses, which are objects (there's probably another post to do here comparing it with Danse Macabre, another 5th level spell - I've heard arguments that Necromancy as a school of magic is kind of a cobbled-together set of spells that could actually be classified among the other schools).
But let's assume we're in FAO Schwartz, and we've got everything from little, tiny-sized dolls to a fifteen-foot-tall teddy bear, and we have our pick of different-sized objects.
We need to determine what "loadouts" of objects we can go with, and that first depends on our spellcasting ability.
At level 9, when we first get 5th level spells (ah, the bane of new players - levels versus levels) there's a decent chance we have a +5 to our spellcasting ability, but in fairness, we might not. If we use point buy or standard array, the highest we can get any score at level 1 is 17, and then if we want to take some half-feats, we might only be up to a +4.
Still, if we just use my specific character as our example, who was lucky enough to start off with an 18 in Intelligence at level 1 (and a 17 in Con!) we'll just make the assumption that you're capped on your spellcasting ability.
Thus, we have 5 potential objects. That means we could have:
5 Medium (or smaller) objects
1 Large object and 3 Medium objects
2 Large objects and 1 Medium object
1 Huge object and 1 Medium object
Now, proportionately, we will be getting a greater damage boost from a critical hit with the smaller objects, because a larger portion of their damage comes from die rolls. Or, is that true?
1d4+3 is an average of 5.5, or 2.5 from dice and 3 from our flat value, meaning we're just under half from dice.
2d6+3+5 is 15, with 7 from dice and 8 as a flat amount. That's actually pretty close, though we're slightly skewed further to the flat value.
2d12+3+5 is 21, but here 13 is coming from dice and only 8 is coming from our flat value, so I stand corrected: it's the huge object that crits hardest, proportionately.
In other words, in the grand scheme of things, our Huge object skews a little higher than its apparent average damage compared to the others, and the medium objects skew a little lower than their apparent damage (again, in comparison with others).
Good to know.
Ok, now let's figure out the average damage on a hit for each of our potential groups.
5 Medium Objects:
The damage here should be smoothest, because we have a larger sample size. If each hits for 1d4+3, that's a flat 5.5 damage per hit, and thus between 5 objects, we're looking at 27.5 damage per turn overall (again, assuming all hit, none crit, and we're rolling average damage).
1 Large Object and 3 Medium Objects:
We have one object hitting for 15, and three hitting for 5.5, so that's 31.5 damage - a bit higher than our 5 medium objects, thanks to how hard that larger one is hitting.
2 Large Objects and 1 Medium Object
The math here is easy - 30 from the large objects and 5.5 from the sole medium object, so that's 35.5, meaning we're even better now.
1 Huge object and 1 Medium Object
We get 21 damage from that single huge object, but only 5.5 from the medium one, so that's a total of 26.5, which actually gives us our lowest damage potential.
Funnily enough, this means that using Large objects actually gives us the best damage, which then makes it perhaps beneficial that the other objects do better on crits. In theory, for all of this to be perfectly balanced, a large object should do twice as much as a medium object and a huge object should do four times as much, but we can see that it's not quite that close. I doubt that critical hits could make up for the disparity here.
However, let's talk about upcasting.
Casting the spell at 6th level or higher will mean that each slam increases by a single die. Medium objects start doing 2d4+3, Large start doing 3d6+3+casting ability modifier, and huge start doing 3d12+3+CAM.
Because we're talking about different dice, the proportionate increase in damage isn't necessarily obvious, so let's run this as if we were casting at level 6.
5 Medium Objects
Each object now deals 2d4+3, or 8 on average, so we're doing 40 damage total.
1 Large Object and 3 Medium Objects
Our Large guy is now dealing 3d6+3+5, or 18.5 with our capped Intelligence, and then our three mediums are doing 8 apiece, so that's 24, giving us a total of 42.5
2 Large Objects and 1 Medium Object:
Now, our Large objects are giving us 37 damage, with our Medium giving us 8, so that's 45 damage.
1 Huge object and 1 Medium Object:
3d12 is 19.5 on average, so we're doing 27.5 with the huge object and 8 with the medium one, so that's actually only 35.5.
Actually, the easier way to look at this is just totalling what we get for each upcast: 5d4, 1d6+3d4, 2d6+1d4, or 1d12+1d4. That's easy enough to solve, as these have clear average values of 12.5, 11, 9.5, and 9, meaning that the scaling favors the smallest objects best.
Which does mean that, if you upcast things by a lot, you might hit a point where it's no longer optimal to do the large objects. It's clear to me that the huge object option is not going to be the best choice, and even if you're somehow critting more often, that scaling skews away from the huge objects, as the damage-from-dice increases with the smaller objects faster.
Let's just look at the extreme now and see how much these would deal when cast at 9th level. If the second option (1 large and 3 medium) is still best, we'll know what to generally do when we can.
At 9th level, medium and smaller objects hit for 5d4+3, or 15.5
Large objects do 6d6+3+5, or 29
Huge objects do 6d12+3+5, or 47
So:
5 Medium: 77.5
1 Large and 3 Medium: 75.5
2 Large and 1 Medium: 73.5
1 Huge and 1 Meidum: 62.5
So, a big fall-off four our Huge option, and by this point, you're actually doing best (but only by a little) with the 5 medium objects, but this only starts happening at 8th level spells.
Now, one thing we haven't touched on is HP. The HP of the objects is proportional to its size budget. Medium and smaller objects have 10 HP, Large have 20, and Huge have 40.
This becomes very relevant if dealing with a foe that has AoE damage abilities or spells. The animated objects do count as creatures - they become constructs - and so they will be fully subjected to things like Fireball or a dragon's breath. They also don't have any good saving throw profieicies - their best is a +3 for Strength, but they have severe negatives in all "mental" saving throws, and +0s to Dex and Con.
Thus, I wouldn't recommend using these against any creature that has AoE capabilities. If you do need to, the Huge creature is probably the best option because they might survive an AoE ability, whereas the medium creatures might even die on a successful save. They do have immunity to poison and psychic damage, so against a green dragon you should be ok (though the objects can't fly - which the smaller ones used to be able to in the 2014 version).
They only have an AC of 15, which means that by the time you're casting this spell, a lot of monsters shouldn't have that hard of a time hitting them. That said, an attack on one of these objects is an attack not against one of your party members, so it's probably worth it - the Huge creature will have a big target on their back, but a DM will need to weigh the value of using up several attacks to knock down your smaller objects.
The spell only lasts a minute, so at most you're getting 10 rounds out of these guys.
I guess the other major consideration is how these compare with the Summon spells. The latter last an hour, so you can potentially get a lot more use out of them.
If we compare this with, say, the Skeletal Spirit from Summon Undead, when cast at 5th level (not that I'd recommend casting those spells at an odd level) they'll be doing 2d4+3+5 per hit, or 13 per hit, and two attacks per round. That's 26 damage. You'll get a little bit to a lot better damage with this spell (depending on your object choices) with this at 5th level, but again, it only lasts a minute and requires your bonus action on each of your turns. Depending on your class, your bonus action might be pretty broadly available (even as a Scribes wizard, which takes your bonus action to direct your Manifest Mind feature, I can often get by with using it on other things). A Bard, or a Sorcerer who makes ample use of Quickened Spell, might be a little less inclined to give over their bonus action to this.
Still, I think it's a decently solid spell, and certainly if you want to use the objects as cannon fodder to absorb attacks, given that they only last a minute anyway, they become very disposable (not to say that this is an asset).
The balance between its possible uses is fairly decent - I think you're going to be in ok shape with most configurations, though it does seem that the most dramatic version of it, the Huge object, is actually the least powerful.
The obvious caveat to all of this is that you're still reliant on the environment. A DM has a decent amount of leeway in determining what you can use. But in a scenario where you have free choice, I hope this will give you some guidance on what is best to use.
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