In Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, it's generally considered polite to check in with the DM before you build a character around summoning creatures—this is because the rules system doesn't exactly handle large swarms of enemies well, needing you to laboriously roll through each of your minion's turns one by one. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't have a DM, however, so you can do whatever the hell you want—as Real-Business6593 on the game's subreddit has.
When you take honor mode too seriously... from r/BaldursGate3
Under any other circumstance, I would've simply assumed this was some modding shenaniganry and moved on, but the master summoner in question laid out how they pieced together this army of the damned (and some elementals, and also a dog) step-by-step and… yeah, everything checks out.
Combing through their comment and putting it into list form, Real-Business6593 has summoned, in total:
- Two mummies (Create Undead).
- Two devas (Planar Ally).
- A Cambion (from the Infernal Rapier).
- Four myrmidons (Conjure Elemental, upcast at 6th level).
- 13 undead (Animate Dead).
- Eight mephits (Conjure Elemental).
- Three spiritual weapons (from the Cleric spell of the same name).
- Four flame spheres (from the spell Flaming Sphere).
- Shovel, a unique quasit you can obtain from Act 1.
- A second quasit, presumably so Shovel doesn't get lonely.
- Us, from the mind flayer ship in Act 1, freed from the colony in Act 2.
- Connor, a zombie from a questline in Act 1.
- Five ghouls (from the Necromancy of Thay).
- Two Dryads (Conjure Woodland Beings).
- Two Wood Woads (summoned by the Dryads).
- Five baby spiders from a spider egg sac you can find in Act 1.
- A Shadow from the Shadow Lantern item.
- Boo, who is a miniature space hamster and friend to Minsc.
- Scratch, who is a dog and the best boy.
- A host of spore zombies. Real-Business6593 says they think they had "like 28".
Reading through this list feels like the world's strangest rendition of "Twelve Days of Christmas".
What really strikes me as impressive, here, is how several of these summons are pulled from either hyper-specific quest rewards or certain items. The Infernal Rapier, the Necromancy of Thay, the Crypt Lord Ring, the book Sights of the Seelie, the Shadow Lantern—this isn't just some wacky build, it's a set of circumstances that demands a huge amount of setup.
In total, Real-Business6593 has summoned (by my count) 60 summons baseline. Which, if their counting of spore zombies is to be believed, brings their army to a total of 88. They also bring up the Spirit Guardians spell, but because that's just a spell effect that deals damage, I've decided not to count it here.
I should point out that this (mercifully) wouldn't be possible in D&D 5th edition, and is a quirk of Baldur's Gate 3, since many spells like Conjure Woodland Beings are "concentration" in the tabletop ruleset, meaning you can only have one active at a time—bringing them into direct conflict with spells like Conjure Elemental. In the game, however, few of these spells are concentration, allowing you to stack them to your heart's content.
I did something similar in my recent honour mode playthrough, combining both a druid and a war cleric's summoned undead together, then buffing them all up with Longstrider and Aid. Doing that every Long Rest was exhausting enough, so I have to assume that Real-Business6593 isn't going through the same torture here. All this to say, this army is magnificent: but it may be vulnerable to a well-placed fireball.
