The redesigned Conjure Minor Elementals, which in 2014 was primarily a way to put a ton of Mephits on the field, was flagged as among the most overpowered spells in the 2024 PHB. Utterly redesigned to do something completely different, CME now empowers your attacks, adding elemental damage to them. The thing that made it overpowered was its scaling.
The power was so much that WotC took the fairly unusual step of issuing power errata to just nerf the spell.
The old version would add 2d8 of your choice of Acid, Cold, Fire, or Lightning to attacks that hit a target within the 10-foot emanation of the spell (the emanation is also difficult terrain for your enemies). That's actually unchanged. However, for every level you upcast the spell, you would add 2d8 damage.
As a fourth level spell, this meant that by tier 3, pure casters using the spell could push its damage to fairly extreme levels. In particular, subclasses like Valor Bards and Bladesinger Wizards, who both get access to Extra Attack and also full-caster spell scaling, could take advantage of the fact that you could effectively stack up multiple instances of the spell by up-casting it: a 5th level CME was twice as powerful as a 4th level one.
The errata nerfed the spell, dropping its upcasting scaling to 1d8.
While that did bring it somewhat under control, it's still a very powerful spell, especially if you can combine the benefits of upcasting and extra attacks. (While it's still good for half- and third-casters like Eldritch Knights, the potential for up-cast scaling makes it still, I believe, better overall for a full caster.)
However, what I find kind of interesting is the way in which there's an older spell that fills the same role and might be... better?
Spirit Shroud was published in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Available to Clerics, Paladins, Warlocks, and Wizards, it's a 3rd level spell (CME is 4th level) that deals 1d8 additional radiant, necrotic, or cold damage to targets you hit within 10 feet of you.
Indeed, the structure of the spell is quite similar - though it pre-dates the "emanation" wording brought in the 2024 PHB, it also has this interesting range rider and even has a slowing effect - though rather than difficult terrain, it reduces the movement speed of enemies within its range by 10.
The scaling, however, is different: you only gain 1d8 extra damage every two spell levels above its base.
But there is one key difference: Spirit Shroud is a bonus action to cast, while CME is an action.
Two notes before we get into a discussion on damage:
First, both of these actually work on both ranged and melee attacks. A Warlock (who admittedly will not benefit as well from the spell scaling, as they only have actual spell slots up to 5th level) can use Eldritch Blast with either spell and benefit (though they'll need to get the spell some special way, as it's not on the Warlock list - though a single-level Warlock dip can give you Eldritch Blast). That said, the 10-foot range on both kind of implies that the expectation is that you'll probably be using melee weapons for this, and the scaling is of course twice as good if you have Extra Attack. That said, like Eldritch Blast, if you have a spell that breaks up its attacks into multiple rolls, you can benefit a lot from them. Scorching Ray, for example, will do far more damage if you have this active and are close enough (arguably this might be the best use, as Scorching Ray's base 2nd level already does three rays, and every level adds one. A 5th level Scorching Ray will do 6 rays, each hitting for 2d6, and now you might be adding a bunch of d8s on top of those).
Second, the movement speed element is kind of interesting and nuanced. Spirit Shroud will reduce a creature's speed who starts its turn in the aura by 10 feet, while CME creates difficult terrain.
If you are directly in melee with a target, that means that they'll have to spend 10 feet of movement to get 5 feet away from you, but I guess stepping another 5 feet away will only cost the normal 5 (does difficult terrain apply to the space you're stepping into or out of? I think I'd generally rule the former.) Thus, that'd only wind up penalizing the creature 5 feet total, less than Spirit Shroud. However, if the creature is trying to maneuver around you, perhaps moving more than 5 feet in that move, they'd wind up spending more for every "grid square" that they move while still in the aura with CME. If they move 3 squares/15 feet to circle you, they're going to lose more of their speed.
Ok, now: let's get into the nitty-gritty:
Because these spells are different level, to properly evaluate their power, we should consider them at the same level.
However, their scaling is also a little different: CME goes up with every spell level, while Spirit Shroud goes up every two.
At 5th level, thus, they each get one instance of their spell scaling. This means that CME is now doing 3d8 additional damage on each hit (the base 2d8 and 1d8 for one level higher) and Spirit Shroud is now doing 2d8.
In fact, the damage of CME will always be ahead of Spirit Shroud. At 4th, it's 1d8 vs 2d8, at 5th it's 2d8 vs 3d8. At 6th it's 2d8 vs 4d8, and 7th it's 3d8 vs 5d8, etc., with CME pulling father ahead.
But, the cast time is an issue:
Spirit Shroud can be cast on the turn that you make your other attacks. Thus, you can (depending on how you're getting those attacks) get another turn's worth of damage out of it. Indeed, you're even getting more damage out of your, you know, attacks.
Let's make some assumptions:
We're either a Valor Bard (using Magical Secrets to get this) or a Bladesinger Wizard. We've got a +5 at this point to our weapon, which is probably a Rapier (though Bladesingers can use a lot of different d8 weapons - yes, I know that dual-wielding is strong here as well, but we'll assume that we haven't been able to get the weapon masteries to pick up Nick yet). (We'll say we're level 10 or so, a reasonable level at which we might have capped our attack stat, but pre-tier 3.)
We have True Strike (yes, Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade would be better, but we'll stick with 2024+ options for now). Thus, we're going to make one of our attacks a True Strike and the other a regular attack (because it's a cantrip, there's no conflict with casting Spirit Shroud on the same turn).
We're casting each at 5th level.
Using Spirit Shroud, we're going to be dealing 1d8+1d6+2d8+5 damage, or 22 total damage on the True Strike, and then 1d8+2d8+5 with our second attack, or 18.5 on average with the regular hit. That comes to a total of 40.5 damage, which we can expect to do each round (though of course, it's not quite that because we're not hitting with every attack).
If we use CME, we're going to be hitting for 1d8+1d6+3d8+5, or 26.5 damage on the True Strike and 1d8+3d8+5, or 23 on the normal attack, for a total of 49.5.
So, it obviously depends on how long of a fight we're in:
Round one, we're talking 40.5 versus 0.
Round two, we're at 81 versus 49.5
Round three, we're at 121.5 versus 99
Round four, we're at 162 versus 148.5
Round five, we're at 202.5 versus 198
Round six, we're at 243 versus 247.5.
So, it takes CME a full six rounds to overtake Spirit Shroud in this scenario, if my logic is sound. It's extremely rare to have a combat last that long. At level 10, by the time a single character has put out over 200 damage, the monsters have probably been dead for a good long while.
There are two factors here that can benefit CME, though: at higher levels, we'll be able to upcast this spell further, which widens out the gap between the two. Additionally, if we can get dual-wielding, we'll likely benefit this scaling better.
Using the same levels, but assuming we're dual-wielding a shortsword and scimitar (and we'll say we somehow have the Nick mastery to allow us to preserve our bonus action, which honestly benefits Spirit Shroud more), we'll get the following:
Spirit Shroud will get 1d6+1d6+2d8+5 on our True Strike, for a total of 21 on our first attack, and then our second normal attack will do 1d6+2d8+5, or 17.5, and then our off-hand (assuming we haven't been able to get Two Weapon Fighting) will do 1d6+2d8 per hit, or 12.5. That gives us a total of 51 per turn.
CME of course still has to skip the entire first turn of attacks, but we'll get 1d6+1d6+3d8+5 on True Strike, for 25.5, and then 21.5 on the second attack, and 17 on the off-hand, for a total of 64 damage each turn.
Again, let's go Round by Round:
Round one, we're at 51 vs 0
Round two, we're at 102 vs 64
Round three, we're at 153 vs 128
Round four, we're at 204 vs 192
Round five, we're at 255 vs 256
Ok, so we're catching up sooner, but it still takes a pretty damn-long while.
The next adjustment would be to upcast further. If we cast at 7th level, rather than 5th, we'd be getting 5d8 damage per hit on CME and only 3d8 on Spirit Shroud. We also need to be 15th level, which means that we're quite a ways into our adventuring career. By this point we will have had an opportunity to probably grab Two Weapon Fighting and the Nick Mastery one way or another (a Bard could grab some Paladin levels, potentially, which would net them both some spell levels and a fighting style and weapon masteries, and I believe half-casters get to round up for their caster level now - though they need two levels of Paladin to get the fighting style, so this might have to wait until 16 to get all its moving pieces).
But let's say at 16 we have Nick, we have Two Weapon Fighting (we also probably have Vex for a shortsword, but forgive me, but I'm going to skip all the hit-chance-with-advantage stuff here).
True Strike is now adding 2d6 to the damage of our cantrip. So:
Spirit Shroud is going to give us a True Strike of 1d6+2d6+3d8+5, or 29. Then, both our second attack and our off-hand attack are going to hit for 1d6+3d8+5, or 22 (so 44 total) so that our total damage per turn is 73.
CME is now giving us a True Strike that deals 1d6+2d6+5d8+5, or 38, and then our next two attacks are hitting for 1d6+5d8+5, or 31 (62 total) so that our total damage per turn (after the first) is a nice round 100.
Once again:
Round one, we're at 73 vs 0
Round two, we're at 146 vs 100
Round three, we're at 219 vs 200
Round four, we're at 292 vs 300.
Ok! Now, four rounds of combat is certainly not unheard of. But it is notable that we're only barely behind a little bit by then with Spirit Shroud.
Spirit Shroud isn't a Bard spell, but given that Bards can get nearly any spell by this level, that's sort of irrelevant.
So, bizarrely, unless I'm missing some crucial detail... I think Spirit Shroud might be better than CME? The price you pay for having to use your whole action to cast CME gives Spirit Shroud such a head start that it takes probably too long for CME to catch up with it. If you do have a way to get it running ahead of time - casting pre-combat or getting something like Quickened Spell will be really great for it.
But Spirit Shroud has a couple other things going for it: it has a lower base level, so you can access it earlier (and cast it at low levels if you don't need to totally go insane on damage). It also gives you Radiant, Necrotic, or Cold damage as your options - two of which are very rarely resisted (Radiant is, I'd guess, second only to Force damage as the most reliable damage type).
I'd say that, especially at mid-levels when you can't upcast CME that much anyway, Spirit Shroud probably does better overall.
And I guess this goes to show that the nerf to CME has brought it down to a reasonable power level - it's still a good spell, but it isn't necessarily going to blot out all other options.
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