While I'm not obsessed with strict adherence to 5e D&D rules, the rules were very much made and balanced around the idea of having multiple summons (in fact, there are entire classes and subclasses who are based around the concept.) There are several iconic D&D spells that won't be implementable properly with this restriction - it's not a small, minor change, it outright guts a core mechanic and a major play style. Nor is it something that makes the slightest sense as a "tabletop to videogame" conversion - if anything, a videogame is more suitable to having multiple spells. The argument that it is easier to balance with only one summon is similarly nonsense (the original game already balanced having multiple summons; by restricting it to just one summon you are pointlessly creating more balance-busywork for yourself in order to make the game worse by removing things that were possible in tabletop.)

Beyond that, summoning multiple creatures is more interesting for players because it lets us try different combinations and interactions. It makes no sense to limit people to one summon at a time and then rebalance all the summons around this restriction that wasn't in the original mechanics, especially given that you're making the game less fun and spellcasting less interesting by going this route, while stripping entire subclasses of their main reason for existence.

In particular, restricting us to just one summon results in a brutally unfun interaction between familiars and unseen hand, since someone who uses a familiar cannot cast Unseen Hand at all without losing their familiar. At the very least, please make those not count against the summon limit - unseen hand is a limited utility spell, it's completely obnoxious and unintuitive to have your familiar vanish into the aether (wasting the spell slot used to summon it) simply because you cast unseen hand.

(Obviously spells like Find Familiar and Summon Companion the like should be limited to one of that type of summon. But you should be able to summon other stuff using other spells as well, otherwise players who use one long-term summon get locked into never using any other summoning spells ever again. How is that fun?)

I thought all summoning spells require concentration in 5e? Now one spell is capable of summoning multiple creatures but you can’t cast multiple summon spells at once.

Or are you asking for something different?

Some do; some don't. Find Familiar and Mage Hand don't require concentration. Summon Companion isn't even a spell for rangers - you just have an animal that hangs out with you.

I am pretty sure on higher levels, several summons could become a thing.
Dunno if that is already planned for the low levels of EarylAccess though.

Find Familiar doesn't require concentration, in particular (it's why that spell interacts very badly with this change to the rules.)

Mage Hand doesn't require concentration in 5e but does in BG3; its function is a bit different, though, since it can act as a combat tool, so that part isn't what bothers me.

More importantly, necromancy spells generally don't require concentration.

But then why have Find Familiar and Mage Hand be mutually exclusive? Using both is hardly overpowered enough to qualify as a high-level trick.

I thought you were also asking for conjure spells not requiring concentration. I understand your point and agree.

In all honesty?
Mage hand is such a GARBAGE skill, to have Concentration bound to it is such a joke.
Its inferior to the psionic Hand in all aspects.

It is just a way to kill necromancers.

5e already got rid of OHK spells and high CR undead creatures for PCs, with a single summon limit, you killed necromancy.

The reason why you cant have more summons is because of a single design philosophy: "everything must be about muh balance"
Its a dumb and stupid idea that should have only ever applied to MMOs, but sadly some dummies decided that it has to be the be all end all of all videogame design.
Now you know what to blame.

Even on mmos, Age of Conan allows you to have up to 8~11 minions as a necromancer. 11 by taking some disadvantages and your mininons get the "minion" template which makes then weaker than the regular version. And note that AoC is not a old school pre WoW mmo, where fun and immersion was above balance. Thin on ultima online times.

I agree. Later on when we get summoning spells involving concentration, concentration will be giving us a limit there. A wizard or warlock should be able to maintain a mage hand and a familiar with ease, cause one doesn't require concentrations.

+1, couldn't agree more.

One summon limit is SO awful that IMO removing all spells with summons is better than a single summon limit.

Hilariously, you all doing it wrong anyhow.
Go recruit Glut and 'summon' till you are blue in the face.

That doesn't help with the underlying problem of Mage Hand, Find Familiar, and other minor spells which are not balanced around occupying concentration currently wasting your one summon slot.

Dude it’s like you ignore everything everyone has to say and input how great you are at soloing and winning the game.

The OP wants to be able to cast mage hand, have a familiar and cast summon monsters. You can do it in D&D but you can’t in BG3. What has Glut and the broken summon mechanic got to do with this discussion?

Mm, Find Familiar and Mage Hand should have no interaction preventing each other and it makes the cantrip feel bad. Additionally it would create an issue where future summons have bad interaction with find familiar, making it a waste and gimping the Warlock.

And, let me guess, still struggling to not get full party wiped?
The hate is real and I relish it. More please.

Wanna 'summon monsters," then wait for the actual spell or go recruit Glut, cause Glut a true monster 'summoning' machine via animate dead spores................lmao.

Hey think whatever makes you happy.

Yeah the game is so hard that’s why I am trying to convince Larian to remove the game mechanics that make the game a joke. Right. I’m suggesting this because I can’t win.

Take away the height advantage, broken Larian action economy, dipping weapons, special surfaces, healing food and I guarantee you wouldn’t be able to solo this game. But that’s it isn’t it? You don’t want changes because you know I’m right?

Being 'right' this day and time is a matter of subjectivity.
Height advantage is real life, read military history books much?
Dipping weapons is real life, read history books on assassin organizations, etc.?
Surfaces are real life, go dump a can of gas around your feet and then drop a match and see what happens?
And given some cultures in this world, healing food is real life.
Furthermore, is not all this stuff covered in various DnD rulesets, as well?
I can understand you not liking certain aspects of the game cause I don't agree with certain aspects myself.....you and I just tend to disagree on them there 'aspects'.

Know your right? Subjective. Hardly.

For me it is not the difficulty, more the powers are actively gimping eachother which is not satisfying to play, especially coming from BG1/2 or DnD5e, as familiars and concentration summons should not be interacting nor taking up the same slot. It also gimps Necromancers from having a familiar, and Warlocks can't take summoning powers later without losing one of their core features for the fight.

I am actually fine with many of the added changes that add more things to combat, but I think summoning right now was not changed for the better in terms of enjoyability or balance.

It's not subjective. We aren't talking about real life. We are talking about a game based on the 5E ruleset. Is Larian trying to follow the ruleset or not?

If they are trying to follow 5E as much as possible, all those things I mentioned needs to be removed or adjusted.

The spell `Conjure Animals` is level 3. So available at player level 5... Just need to raise the level cap by 1... And this spell can summon up to 8 animals that obey your commands...

Wonder how that will be handled...

Impending satire: Conjure woodland beings...pixies...all with the polymorph spell!

It will be interesting to see how they implement these...I'm OK with nerfing the pixies though.

On one hand I want them to keep that insanity so we can rampage as dinos, but on the other that is unbalanced and something that should be avoided from a game design perspective

The thing is, most of this stuff is already fairly well balanced in 5e. By messing with the fundamental mechanics of how things work, Larian throws that balance off.

Conjure Woodland Beings is a concentration spell - if you're focusing on keeping those pixies around, it limits the things that you can do (nothing else that requires concentration) and makes you a juicy target for enemy attacks. And just because pixies can cast polymorph doesn't mean that it will work against an enemy or that it's the best thing to do in the moment.

In 5e, familiars (which are generally not supposed to be able to attack, except for Pact of the Chain familiars) and Mage Hand do not require concentration. They aren't mutually exclusive and they don't exclude anything else. By messing with the basics of how they work, Larian has dramatically reduced the strength of two already-fairly-simple utility spells.

I'd love to see them implement the 5e rules as they're actually written - many things about this game feel very broken in places where they have deviated.

The classic thing is that you summon a pixie to Polymorph the party into Dinosaurs, and then it doesn't matter about concentration because you are considerably stronger than most things. Its more of a meme thing than something practical. And I am on your side with the fact that familiars should not be conflicting with concentration conjuration spells, similarly, features giving companions like a Necromancer's undead should not conflict either. Also we are likely not going to have the Dinosaur TF thing cause I don't think Faerun has dinosaurs, or atleast doesn't have them anywhere close to Baldurs gate.

The dinosaur thing also seems to ignore the fact that when polymorphed, you take on all of your new form's stats, including mental. Dinosaurs aren't known for being that smart (they all have an INT of 2). Were I the DM, depending on the situation, I'd probably be having the dinos rolling some kind of check to see if they got bored and wandered off or possibly got confused about who is their ally and who is their enemy.

True, but I think a bunch of DMs did not know how to handle it, and it is something that is wonderfully crazy.