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When mommy and daddy love each other very much...
In my games they are shaped by the primordial chaos that forms the boundaries between the planes, shaped to be a copy of an actual creature, but with its mind/purpose is shaped partially from the caster.
It's not life - no soul/prana/essence, or what the kids call it these days. It just looks like it. (to the knowledge of the world)
Summoned creatures go poof when they hit negative hit points. They don't actually die, as I understand it.
The Birds and the Bees and the Eidolons
The creature experiences the summoning most likely like a very violent lucid dream.
That explains the dreams I've had lately..
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One game in our area (not, sadly, one I was in) had summoned creatures pulled from an alternate reality. A really small alternate reality. Which got very odd when the guy with the horn of valhalla had started cycling through all the berserkers there were and started getting people he had seen before. Sometime the same person multiple times in a row.
"You again? Would you stop blowing that horn? I was in my bath*!"
*no he was not in his bath, berserkers don't take baths. But this is a PG 13 post.
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The general assumption is that called creatures can be slain for real if killed while on another plane, but that summoned creatures are like astral selves, and 'dying' while summoned just causes them to snap back to their own dimension.
My fanwank would be that outsiders who are summoned are actually assigned to 'summon duty' by whatever powers or hierarchies they serve, so that no spellcaster will ever summon a devil or angel who is actually doing something important for their bosses, or one that is in the middle of a pitched battle and down to half hit points and under the effects of some hostile spell, or just in the middle of a hot date with another outsider.
Non outsiders, such as animals or celestial/fiendish template creatures, would be formed out of the raw materials of either the planes, or the world itself (in the case of druids and Summon Nature's Ally), like a super-short-duration reincarnation effect. Before you cast that spell, the celestial wolf or whatever didn't exist, it was just planar essence, that got spun into the form of a wolf for a number of rounds equal to your level, and then dissolved back into undifferentiated planar energy/matter/stuff when the spell ended, like some sort of planar stem cells or extra-cellular matrix tissue or whatever that you made turn into a liver, and then reverted back to stem cells when you were done with the liver.
Because, for druids, these temporary creatures could even be giants or similar intelligent creatures, their temporary nature means that they might know stuff that a generic giant might now (stuff about giants in general), but they wouldn't have any *specific* information. The druid couldn't just summon a giant and learn where that giant's tribe lives, or interrogate it for setting-specific information. Like a human that's just been reincarnated as an orc, it would know enough to function as an orc, and even gain some cultural stuff like orcish weapon familiarity, but wouldn't suddenly know all sorts of stuff about the local orcish tribes that would be of great benefit to the various non-orcish communities in the area.
*If* I wanted to populate the heavens and hells with celestial tyrannosaurs and fiendish dolphins and other somewhat odd template animals for the purposes of filling out summon monster lists, I'd rule that they, like outsiders, have certain populations that exist specifically to be summoned, and are set aside during whatever time periods they are 'on call.' That way no summoning ever calls up a celestial bison that is down to 3 hit points because it was in the middle of being ripped apart by a celestial dire tiger, and no summoner is ever treated to the soul-searing horror of calling up a fiendish tyrannosaur that was in the middle of mating with a hawt female fiendish tyrannosaurus.
That could even be a plot point. Somewhere in the various upper / lower planes, there are 'arks,' huge sections of a plane in which dozens of specimens of various celestial / fiendish template creatures stand around, awaiting summons. Some higher ranking celestial or fiend keeps the place supplied as a service to clerics and other summoners in service to their patron deity, with some wizards having figured out how to take advantage of these arks to also call these creatures. But that's a strange sort of idea, and I'm not sure I love it, even if it suggests certain adventure seeds. (The ark-celestial needs to replace some celestial tyrannosaurs, after a few got called and slain on the mortal planes, or killed each other in their enclosure. Summoners on the mortal planes won't be able to summon celestial t-rexes until they replace the stock!)
More information from the PRD on this subject.
...Each conjuration spell belongs to one of five subschools. Conjurations transport creatures from another plane of existence to your plane (calling);... bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or forms of energy to you (summoning)...
Summoning: A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When the spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature is instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can't be summoned again.
In a recent adventure where we played in a locked prison plane, I was stymied by how to adjudicate summoning mere manifestations of creatures into the demiplane.
I tend to treat all (non-native)Outsiders, even if not called by a specific spell effect this way. When they get killed they go back to their home plane, where they respawn.
This also allows Player characters to give their Summons names etc., since it alwayswill be the same creature.
From the Ask James Jacobs thread (This is Golarion flavor rather than rules questions, so it ought to be okay to post it here):
On Golarion, if you use a calling spell to conjure an outsider, and then kill it, it dies as surely as if you killed it on its home plane. If you instead use a summon spell to conjure an outsider, the thing you summon isn't real before and after the summon spell ends. It doesn't "go back" to an outer plane when you kill it or dismiss it or the spell ends... it just stops existing, just as it didn't exist before you cast the spell in the first place.
I've always wanted to run a campaign that starts with the player characters being accidentally summoned by a wizard to help in a fight. Something goes wrong with the magic (when the wizard that summoned them dies) and so the player characters are now stuck in this new reality.
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James Jacobs' response is in contrast to recent products, including Champions of Purity which has some flavor text for Summon Good Monster (a feat that modifies Summon Monster).
Its flavor text reads: "You can summon the aid of creatures driven by their very nature to destroy evil."
It seems to me like a Summon plucks a compatible creature from its plane, brings it to the caster, and then it returns if the spell ends or the creature takes enough damage.
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I have always played it that when a spell caster learns a Summoning Spell, they develop a mystical bond with that creatures that could be summoned and every time they cast the summon spell for that kind of creature, the same creature is brought forth. If it dies, then it cannot be summoned again for 24 hours. This is consistent with the PRD rules:
Summoning: A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When the spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature is instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can't be summoned again.
I extrapolated the rules so that if the summoned creature was wounded, the time between summonings would be up to 24 hours based on the percentage of damage taken. Meaning, if the summoned creatures had 50 HPs and took 25 HP of damage (50%), it would be unavailable for 12 hours.
I even had the case where a Babau (demon) grabbed a cleric's discarded backpack and put it on just before the spells duration ended. I did this because the party's cleric kept blasting it with positive energy every time it was summoned - the demon was pissed off. It took several additional summonings and negotiations to get some of the more valuable items back.
If the character wants to change the summoned creature, they can make a Spellcraft roll to do so. The DC is 10 + (2 x the Spell's Level). Once changed, the bond is now set to the new creature until it is changed again.
I have even had a player character that took a Drawback that he was the target of a summons spell for another creature. Basically, I could pop him out at any moment to go do the summoner's bidding for a few rounds. He would pop back where he left after a while based on how much damage he took, up to 24 hours (if he was dropped to 0 HP).
Summons Come from whatever their home plane is, for instance, Archons and Angels come from Heaven, devils from Hell, etc. heck, you could summon a kitten from the Realm of Infinite Kittens if you wanted to. summoned creatures snap back to their plane once vanquished in the material plane, or any other plane but their own. we had a paladin that liked to force his cleric buddy to plane shift him to the planes of devils he'd slayed in an attempt to slay them for good. was kinda fun.
as an off-shoot of this, our gm once had us each build Archons, and randomly during a campaign in order to take a break from seriousness we would play these Hound Archons, chilling in heaven, when poof, we're each summoned by the same high level wizard who would have us do everything from the mundane daily chores to killing off devils/demons he'd summoned that were getting unruly. it was a pretty fun twist on a one-shot.
Does it really matter if summons are locked out for 24 hours? I mean couldn't you just summon other ones? for example if I summon four Cyclops (evil evil creatures with their practical auto triple damage crit) and they get killed it's not like you can say those are the only four Cyclops.
lol ya can tell I dealt with a lot of Cyclops in the last session I played.
This is one of those area's where roleplaying games really wussed out. They should be real people or creatures that are killed just like PCs. The summoning spells should have the PCs making pacts and agreements with the creatures before they are summoned.
As for the other part that people are talking about. Even if they are not killed, but summoned against their will that should be an evil act.
We did very little summoning in our old school game because we considered it evil.
Elsewhere.
there is an interesting Campaign Tracking down where your summoned monsters come from and befriend them
Alot of roleplaying opportunities. Making pacts and agreements.
If you're evil you really don't care just summon and bind them to your will. If they die they die. But a good spellcaster has to make moral decisions that evil ones do not.