[3.5] Pondering Summon Monster

[AnimeTheCat]

So, I've been going over spells again as I'm creating spell cards to make my DM and playing life easier and I came across Summon Monster. I've had monster cards with stats and whatnot, including various different augments (Augment Summoning, Beckon the Frozen, etc.) and now i'm just putting the casting time, components, range, etc on a card for quicker reference. But whil I was doing this I realized something, the spell says this:


If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions.

Now, I could be wrong here, but that's the only line about directing the summoned monster in the spell's entire passage. Also, even though the Celestial Dog (for instance) has an int of 3, neither the entry in the Monster Manual or the Celestial Template lead me to believe that the creature can understand or speak common OR Celestial. Am I wrong? Wouldn't that mean that the DM would control the summoned monster, unless the summoner had a means to communicate and thusly control it?

For instance, a LG cleric of Heironeous uses Summon Monster 1 to summon a celestial dog. If the cleric can't communicate it's desires to the dog, the dog should just act in a way that a celestial dog would act. Right? Now, for some reason, the same cleric is using the same spell to summon a Feindish Dire Rat. Not only is the spell now an evil spell, it's also bringing something into existence that is opposed to your good alignment. Wouldn't the rat attack you if you didn't have a way to tell it what to do?

I guess ultimately, there's not support in the text that says a summoned monster is under any compulsory effect to do as you will, unless you can communicate with it. Because of this, why would a summoned celestial monkey run down a trapped tunnel and kill itself? Why would a Feindish Spider web the evil enemy instead of you? If you were in it's habitat (wherever feindish spiders come from) wouldn't it try to kill you? Why is this summoned one different?

Just a thought/ramble that in encountered while making spell cards. What does everyone else think?

[eggynack]

This is straightforwardly resolved by the line directly before that one. " It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability." This constitutes the input-less behavior of a summoned monster, so while we wouldn't expect a said summon to go after traps, because traps aren't opponents to attack, or use particularly high shelf tactics, it will, at the very least, go after your opponents, regardless of its alignment or general temperament. That list of possible actions isn't what the creature does instead of its favorite actions, or instead of nothing. It's what the creature does instead of attacking opponents. How it determines what is or isn't an opponent is left open, but it can be assumed that magic is responsible.

Incidentally, a fiendish rat is an evil creature, and summon monster adopts the [evil] descriptor from that, so a good cleric can't cast the spell to get that monster. At least not without some work put in.

[Eldariel]

Monster Manual I page 7 says this:
"Intelligence: A creature can speak all the languages mentioned in its description, plus one additional language per point of Intelligence bonus. Any creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher understands at least one language (Common, unless noted otherwise)."

So by RAW Celestial creatures understand Common, though reasonably speaking they should probably understand Celestial instead.

[Venger]

Now, I could be wrong here, but that's the only line about directing the summoned monster in the spell's entire passage. Also, even though the Celestial Dog (for instance) has an int of 3, neither the entry in the Monster Manual or the Celestial Template lead me to believe that the creature can understand or speak common OR Celestial. Am I wrong? Wouldn't that mean that the DM would control the summoned monster, unless the summoner had a means to communicate and thusly control it?
You are. It can understand and speak both. It's got an int of at least 3.

Under no circumstance does the gm control your summons. They are always in the summoner's control.


For instance, a LG cleric of Heironeous uses Summon Monster 1 to summon a celestial dog. If the cleric can't communicate it's desires to the dog, the dog should just act in a way that a celestial dog would act. Right? Now, for some reason, the same cleric is using the same spell to summon a Feindish Dire Rat. Not only is the spell now an evil spell, it's also bringing something into existence that is opposed to your good alignment. Wouldn't the rat attack you if you didn't have a way to tell it what to do?
No.

As the spell says, if you've been punched in the throat or are in a bubble or silence or something, the monster attacks your enemies to the best of its ability regardless of you saying or doing anything. Your summons will never attack you or each other.

[Crake]

This is the same reason why I always urge druids and other casters of summon nature's ally to get handle animal, so they can direct their animal summons.

[AnimeTheCat]

This is straightforwardly resolved by the line directly before that one. " It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability." This constitutes the input-less behavior of a summoned monster, so while we wouldn't expect a said summon to go after traps, because traps aren't opponents to attack, or use particularly high shelf tactics, it will, at the very least, go after your opponents, regardless of its alignment or general temperament. That list of possible actions isn't what the creature does instead of its favorite actions, or instead of nothing. It's what the creature does instead of attacking opponents. How it determines what is or isn't an opponent is left open, but it can be assumed that magic is responsible.

Incidentally, a fiendish rat is an evil creature, and summon monster adopts the [evil] descriptor from that, so a good cleric can't cast the spell to get that monster. At least not without some work put in.

huh, I didn't put that together that "It attacks your opponents to the best of it's ability". So, would you say though that unless you can communicate with the summon you can't really tell it to go trigger traps? Now I realize that you wouldn't likely summon a monster and say "Go step on that trap pressure plate for me." You would probably say "Walk up to that door and touch the doorknob with your nose" thereby triggering the trap, but does that make you evil now? You just tricked a sentient creature into harming, and possibly killing itself.

So many questions! from the description of Conjuration [Summoning] spells, it would seem this is a creature that actually lives, breathes, and exists that I'm calling and the things that happen to it while i have it summoned actually affect it, as evidence by the fact that it needs time to recover if it's killed.


Monster Manual I page 7 says this:
"Intelligence: A creature can speak all the languages mentioned in its description, plus one additional language per point of Intelligence bonus. Any creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher understands at least one language (Common, unless noted otherwise)."

So by RAW Celestial creatures understand Common, though reasonably speaking they should probably understand Celestial instead.

Oh, whoops. Well, I guess you can always communicate with the creature by RAW since they will always have Int of at least 3. I guess all of the questions from the first post are answered. Thanks friends!

[Venger]

huh, I didn't put that together that "It attacks your opponents to the best of it's ability". So, would you say though that unless you can communicate with the summon you can't really tell it to go trigger traps? Now I realize that you wouldn't likely summon a monster and say "Go step on that trap pressure plate for me." You would probably say "Walk up to that door and touch the doorknob with your nose" thereby triggering the trap, but does that make you evil now? You just tricked a sentient creature into harming, and possibly killing itself.

So many questions! from the description of Conjuration [Summoning] spells, it would seem this is a creature that actually lives, breathes, and exists that I'm calling and the things that happen to it while i have it summoned actually affect it, as evidence by the fact that it needs time to recover if it's killed.

Oh, whoops. Well, I guess you can always communicate with the creature by RAW since they will always have Int of at least 3. I guess all of the questions from the first post are answered. Thanks friends!

Again, if you're muted by contrivance or want to be silent to avoid causing an avalanche or something, tradition dictates you just summon the celestial dead monkey directly on the pressure plate to set off the trap. for a door, you could always just tell him to turn the knob via pantomime.

No, it doesn't make you evil because summons aren't real creatures, they're just avatars made of magic that exist to be killed by casters.

conjuration [calling] spells actually do bring the real creature, so if you're playing with some kind of paladin falls dm, then that might rack up some evil points on your arbitrary morality meter, but those spells are expensive, so you're probably not hurling those monsters into the meat grinder willy nilly like summons

[Eldariel]

This is the same reason why I always urge druids and other casters of summon nature's ally to get handle animal, so they can direct their animal summons.

Well, Druids should have enough Handle Animal to at least work with their animal companion anyways. Though that doesn't take that much, of course.

[AnimeTheCat]

No, it doesn't make you evil because summons aren't real creatures, they're just avatars made of magic that exist to be killed by casters.

Are you sure about that? The first line of Conjuration [Summoning] says this:


A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate.

It instantly brings the creature to a place you designate, not an avatar made of magic to a place you designate. Then it goes on to say:


When the spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature is instantly sent back to where it came from...
A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower. It is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can’t be summoned again.

So you pull a real thing, from a real place, and when the spell ends it goes back where it was. If it's reduced to 0 or less HP, it goes away and reforms.


conjuration [calling] spells actually do bring the real creature, so if you're playing with some kind of paladin falls dm, then that might rack up some evil points on your arbitrary morality meter, but those spells are expensive, so you're probably not hurling those monsters into the meat grinder willy nilly like summons

It's less about a paladin falling and more of a, would other good characters in a party have a problem with this? would their morality be brought into question as well? You're directing a sentient creature to hurt itself for you. It should have every right to refuse and if you're summoning it directly on the pressure plate, you're basically just hurting it for your own purposes which is fairly squarely Chaotic Evil. It would be like summoning a commoner onto a pressure plate to get a spear shot through him instead of you. That strikes me as fairly evil.

Also, I'm not sure if you can summon a dead celestial monkey...

[Eldariel]

Are you sure about that? The first line of Conjuration [Summoning] says this:

It instantly brings the creature to a place you designate, not an avatar made of magic to a place you designate. Then it goes on to say:

So you pull a real thing, from a real place, and when the spell ends it goes back where it was. If it's reduced to 0 or less HP, it goes away and reforms.

It's less about a paladin falling and more of a, would other good characters in a party have a problem with this? would their morality be brought into question as well? You're directing a sentient creature to hurt itself for you. It should have every right to refuse and if you're summoning it directly on the pressure plate, you're basically just hurting it for your own purposes which is fairly squarely Chaotic Evil. It would be like summoning a commoner onto a pressure plate to get a spear shot through him instead of you. That strikes me as fairly evil.

Also, I'm not sure if you can summon a dead celestial monkey...

Well, the fact that Summons can't die unlike Called creatures is the weird part. And Summons act as directed so they don't really have a free will. In general, they're kinda weird; underlings you can produce with magic that do their thing and magically disappear and reform in the plane they came from. The fact that they essentially do your bidding no matter what makes it feel unlikely that they're that real or sentient, and the fact that they always reform no matter where you summon them and how they die seems strange considering called creatures die for reals. That seems to be the key difference between the schools and this is the reason why assuming that summoned creatures aren't that sentient nor that real kinda makes sense. In any case, just calling them to battle could be considered evil if we give them the equivalent of modern day "human rights" - battle means they have to risk their lives for something that might not even concern them with no say nor the ability to decline from coming. But it does come at zero personal long-term risk (though they can probably feel pain) and the magic seems to somehow ward them so it's a bit of a weird case.

[Venger]

It's less about a paladin falling and more of a, would other good characters in a party have a problem with this? would their morality be brought into question as well? You're directing a sentient creature to hurt itself for you. It should have every right to refuse and if you're summoning it directly on the pressure plate, you're basically just hurting it for your own purposes which is fairly squarely Chaotic Evil. It would be like summoning a commoner onto a pressure plate to get a spear shot through him instead of you. That strikes me as fairly evil.

Also, I'm not sure if you can summon a dead celestial monkey...

There's no lasting consequences for the creature. He might miss his tee time, but it's a bit of a reach for a gm to expect you to know that in advance, especially since by default, you summon a random creature and not a specific guy within a monster species.

I use paladin falls as a catchall term for gotcha gming and prescriptiveness regarding alignment as a shorthand.

commoners don't respawn 24 hours later.

the spell is only [Evil] if you summon an Evil monster with it.

I've never heard of anyone trying to trick their party into Evil alignments in exactly this way before.

"summon celestial dead monkey" is what people refer to sm1 as due to its most common use.

[AnimeTheCat]

Meh, on the morality of it all I guess it's just not something I would do. Personally, I wouldn't like summoning something just to cause it harm or pain, like triggering a trap.

I guess the whole deal about it dying then being reformed feels like it's been killed (-10 hp or less) and is being brought back to life on it's natural plane of existence. That's like reviving someone that you killed. Killing the creature just to kill the creature for your own benefit and then reviving it later does not make killing the (in this specific scenario) innocent creature any less evil. That's just my opinion, but that's because I see the description to mean that the creatures are the real deal and should be treated/respected as such.

Potato/Tomato... Good/Evil... Whatever. Alignment in D&D is so strange anyway I don't know why I constantly ask myself "Is this evil?!".

[Venger]

Meh, on the morality of it all I guess it's just not something I would do. Personally, I wouldn't like summoning something just to cause it harm or pain, like triggering a trap.

I guess the whole deal about it dying then being reformed feels like it's been killed (-10 hp or less) and is being brought back to life on it's natural plane of existence. That's like reviving someone that you killed. Killing the creature just to kill the creature for your own benefit and then reviving it later does not make killing the (in this specific scenario) innocent creature any less evil. That's just my opinion, but that's because I see the description to mean that the creatures are the real deal and should be treated/respected as such.

Potato/Tomato... Good/Evil... Whatever. Alignment in D&D is so strange anyway I don't know why I constantly ask myself "Is this evil?!".

If that's how you feel, are you comfortable morally with using them to kill people and steal their money? Maybe summoner's not a good fit for your playstyle.

it's 0hp or less actually.

yeah, alignment is completely arbitrary. if it troubles you, there's a class for you, specifically geared for summoning no less called malconvoker where you specialize in summoning Evil creatures to fight for you and step on traps so you can tell yourself if bad stuff is happening, it's at least to people who deserve it

[RoboEmperor]

If that's how you feel, are you comfortable morally with using them to kill people and steal their money? Maybe summoner's not a good fit for your playstyle.

it's 0hp or less actually.

yeah, alignment is completely arbitrary. if it troubles you, there's a class for you, specifically geared for summoning no less called malconvoker where you specialize in summoning Evil creatures to fight for you and step on traps so you can tell yourself if bad stuff is happening, it's at least to people who deserve it

Since when can you summon people?

[Venger]

Since when can you summon people?

people is a catchall. nonhumanoids are people too. but if you're stuck on being humancentric (like dnd) then you can summon 20th level monks if you really want to