Conjure Animals 5e Who Chooses
That is it is the player chooses the number of beasts andchallenge rating desired from those options.
Conjure animals 5e who chooses. Concentration up to 1 hour You summon fey spirits. When you cast conjur animals you summon one of the following options. One beast of challenge rating 2 or lower.
2 By the book the DM chooses what animals appear. I am not going to burn a lv3 spell with a random chance it could effectively be wasted based on DM whim or dice roll If my DM were to enforce this I would most likely choose a different spell to cast that as a less random outcome. Swarms are specifically multiple creatures many many more than could ever be summoned by.
The design intent for options like these is that the spellcaster chooses one of them and then the DM decides what creatures appear that fit the chosen option. The DM has the creatures Statistics. There might be more.
For example find familiar gives the caster a list of animals to choose from. Some spells of this sort specify that the spellcaster chooses the creature conjured. However if you prefer to choose your animals try to choose the simple creatures.
If the player casts conjure woodland beings and chooses the fourth optioneight CR 14 or lower fey creaturesthen the DM can bring out up to eight of the following creatures. One beast of challenge rating 2 or lower. Given that conjure animals only lets the player choose the beasts challenge rating this would be one of the spells where the dm decides exactly what creature is conjured.
This reference lists the likely options available when players choose summoned creatures. 5e locate animals or plants 5e locate creature 5e locate object 5e longstrider. For reference the three I can recall off the top of my head that use this formulation are conjure animals conjure minor elementals and conjure woodland beings.