Is the intent of Sacred Summons to apply to Celestial / Fiendish animals, or just Outsiders?

[Cheapy]

As the title.

Relevant part of Summon Monster wrote:

When you use a summoning spell to summon a creature with an alignment or elemental subtype, it is a spell of that type. Creatures on Table 10–1 marked with an “*” are summoned with the celestial template, if you are good, and the fiendish template, if you are evil. If you are neutral, you may choose which template to apply to the creature. Creatures marked with an “*” always have an alignment that matches yours, regardless of their usual alignment. Summoning these creatures makes the summoning spell's type match your alignment.

Sacred summons wrote:

Sacred Summons

The minions of your divine patrons stand ready to answer your call.

Prerequisites: Aura class feature, ability to cast summon monster.

Benefit: When using summon monster to summon creatures whose alignment subtype or subtypes exactly match your aura, you may cast the spell as a standard action instead of with a casting time of 1 round.

Discuss. Be nice. As usual, FAQing would be much appreciated so we can finally get this lame dispute out of the way.

[Cheapy]

Any thoughts?

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

If it matches your alignment, template or no, it applies. Seems pretty clear.

[LazarX]

Sacred Summons does NOTHING to your summons adds no templates, no modifiers, nada.

What it allows is faster summoning if what you summon as an alignment subtype that matches your own. So if you are a good cleric that summons Lantern Archons, with this feat the spell becomes a standard action.

So for a summoner that uses his SLA summon spells, the feat is absolutely useless.

If you're a cleric, or a summoner that decides to use a standard summon spell instead of the SLA, then you get the benefit of doing the spell as a standard action instead of a full round cast.

[Cheapy]

Tiny Coffee Golem wrote:

If it matches your alignment, template or no, it applies. Seems pretty clear.

The issue is that the templates do not add the subtype.

I am curious as to the intent, as it makes it either really good, or not so good.

So the issue is that RAW, this does nothing for summoning creatures with a template. That means there are all of...7 [Good] summons that work here.

FAQ please?

[LazarX]

Cheapy wrote:

Tiny Coffee Golem wrote:

If it matches your alignment, template or no, it applies. Seems pretty clear.

The issue is that the templates do not add the subtype.

I am curious as to the intent, as it makes it either really good, or not so good.

So the issue is that RAW, this does nothing for summoning creatures with a template. That means there are all of...7 [Good] summons that work here.

FAQ please?

Yeah but those 7 summons are among the best of the lot.

Take a look on the flipside though and see what it does for Big Bad Evil Clerics and Wizards though, and may DMs rejoice.

[Quandary]

Cheapy wrote:

The issue is that the templates do not add the subtype.

Exactly.

Celestial Template doesn´t mention anything about Good Sub-Type, which is what Sacred Summons cares about.
Good Sub-Type says: This subtype is usually applied to outsiders native to the good-aligned outer planes.
Celestial Template Animals aren´t Outsiders, they are still of the Animal Type.

Good (or other Alingment) Sub-Type Outsiders have a special role in the game, they are literal exemplars of that Alignment from every fiber of their being, in a way that merely having that Alignment is not... And merely being Native to the same (Alignment) Plane that said Outsiders usually live on isn´t the same as having an Alignment Sub-Type, because said Alignment Sub-Type Outsiders can also be Native to the Material Plane... You can ´say´ Celestial Animals are somehow ´closer´ to Good Sub-Type Outsiders, but it isn´t the same...

So per RAW, Sacred Summons doesn´t apply to Celestial Animals... And I don´t see a problem with that. Just because Celestial Animals live on the same Plane as Good Sub-Type Outsiders doesn´t mean they should be treated the same for all effects. Good Sub-Type don´t have the Celestial Type, either... Those are separate things. Yes, Celestial Animals and Good Sub-Type Outsiders will usually be good buds (as much as Animals and intelligent Outsiders can be) because they have similar Alignments, but they aren´t the same thing.

I still FAQ´ed it for you.

[Howie23]

The fiendish and celestial templates do not grant alignment subtypes to the creature summoned, regardless of what its alignment is. When casting a summon spell to summon a celestial or fiendish creature, it takes on your alignment. The spell gains the descriptors of your alignment. The creature gains no alignment based subtypes.

Sacred Summons requires that the creature's subtype(s) match your aura(s).

Since a fiendish/celestial creature has no alignment subtypes, it does not match the aura of the caster. Thus, Sacred Summons does not apply to fiendish/celestial summons. sacred Summons is useful on those creatures that have alignment subtypes only; these are called out in the summoning list.

There may be a corner case for a caster of Neutral alignment of a Neutral deity. He has no auras. The fiendish/celestial creatures that he summons have no alignment subtypes. Whether they match or are undefined is unclear. However, I tend to see this as outside the intent of matching the alignment subtype to the aura of the caster.

Edit: I have FAQ'd, but primarily for the issue of the neutral caster corner case for PFS. I don't see that it would require a FAQ reply in the general case.

[Cheapy]

Upon realizing that the subtypes are explicitly listed (no clue how I didn't see that), and that if the author of the ability had intended for the celestial / fiendish templates to apply they would've said something about the subtype of the spell, not the creature, I think the intent was that templates don't change which summons this applies to.

That kills the evangelist summoner. :(