I've been wondering what is reasonable to require of someone using the Summon Monster or Summon Nature's Ally line of spells.
This spell summons an extraplanar creature (typically an outsider, elemental, or magical beast native to another plane). It appears where you designate and acts immediately, on your turn. It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions.
This spell summons to your side a natural creature (typically an animal, fey, magical beast, outsider with the elemental subtype, or a giant). The summoned ally appears where you designate and acts immediately, on your turn. It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions as you command.
In both cases it states that the will attack your opponents to the best of its ability. The question becomes what are the limits of their ability.
Attack (DC 20): The animal attacks apparent enemies. You may point to a particular creature that you wish the animal to attack, and it will comply if able. Normally, an animal will attack only humanoids, monstrous humanoids, or other animals. Teaching an animal to attack all creatures (including such unnatural creatures as undead and aberrations) counts as two tricks.
The above (along with the defined general purpose tricks) indicates to me that an animal, even one with the general combat or fighting training, will not attack undead.
The question is does this limit apply to either creatures summoned via Summon Monster or Summon Nature's Ally?
Handle Animal is a class skill for Druids and Summoners, but not Clerics, Wizards, Sorcerers or Arcanists. There are ways to pick the skill up as a class skill for the others, but not everyone with access to these spells will have it.
The Summon Nature's Ally clearly summons a normal version of the creature. The Summon Monster summons what I believe would be considered a Magical Beast (since the animals have the Celestial or Fiendish templates applied to them).
Special: You can use this skill on a creature with an Intelligence score of 1 or 2 that is not an animal, but the DC of any such check increases by 5. Such creatures have the same limit on tricks known as animals do.
The rules indicate you can use this skill with (as an example) a Celestial Dog. Nice to know if you want your summons to Flank a creature.
I'm still uncertain if it is appropriate to require a Handle Animal check to attack certain creature types such as undead or abominations.
Sorry, was a cut and paste for the training DCs. I didn't mean to suggest that was the DC to perform the trick.
I agree that pushing would be a DC 20 trick, 22 if the critter is injured.
For the Summon Monster spells, treating the Celestial Dog as a regular dog would actually be beneficial if we are to require any pushing. If we do treat it as a Magical Beast, the DCs become 25 and 27 respectively. This is a bit high, especially since all of the starting summons only include animals.
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You may have a specific overriding general situation here. In this case the Handle Animal is the general way of handling animals but Summon Monster/Nature's Ally specifically says "It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability."
Now if you want the animal to do something other than attack to the best of its ability, then you would need both the time and the skill. So if you summoned a dire bat to carry you quickly across a chasm, then you would need a Handle Animal check.
Also "best of its ability" may indicate it will attack within the limits of its intelligence. For example a summoned earth elemental may move to flank each round because it is smart enough to do so and/or follow commands while a dire tiger would simply pounce forward and then full attack each round, without deliberately moving into a flank position unless you pushed it with a DC 25 to use the flank trick.
I just played a scenario where I glitterdusted a pair of enemies and told the earth elementals to attack the sparkly ones. I had them run past an enemy on the board my character couldn't see and provoke because they were following my orders.
An Earth Elemental is a different situation. Even a small elemental has an Int 4 and a language. At that point you are no longer dealing with an animal so speaking their language is enough to have them do something special other than attack. They also wouldn't be limited by what it says in the Handle Animal skill with respect to the Attack trick and what sort of creatures they would attack.
Take Linguistics skill and the appropriate language.
It is the animals that I'm wondering about.
The Pathfinder version of the Celestial Template does not state that you change the base creature's Type so a summoned celestial dog is an Animal but it also doesn't state it gains the Extraplanar subtype so I cannot tell if this was intentional or a mistake.
Summoned Animals attack a part of the spell and so you probably do not need a Handle Animal check to get them to attack--even undead creatures.
As an aside, I actually prefer the 3.5 version of the Celestial Template since it is clearer.
Debby
Summoned Animals attack a part of the spell and so you probably do not need a Handle Animal check to get them to attack--even undead creatures.
Attack normal creatures, I agree. No check required to just have them attack.
The thing is as far as I can tell an animal would not normally attack undead. Even the combat and fighting general training do not include attacking such creatures.
So does this mean to the "best of their ability" includes something that requires advanced training or not? The creatures are supposed to be normal versions, and the normal versions would not attack undead without pushing.
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Keep in mind you are using magic to summon a creature, in some cases from another plane and with the extraplanar subtype.
The spell specifies attacks your opponents. At this point, specific over general, regardless of the Handle Animal rules. The magic works as it says in the spell.
Now getting it to do something else, that's when the rules you quote and Handle Animal come into play.
You are right in that a "normal" animal would not attack undead. This is not a "normal" animal. It is a summoned animal and it has rules that specify the differences in the spell. In this case it is an animal that will attack an "opponent" to the best of its ability. It also cannot attack opponents guarded by protection from or magic circle spell. A normal animal can.
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@BretI I think you're overstretching the Handle Animal rules.
Animals, as defined by the animal type in the Bestiary, have no rule about what they will or will not attack.
The Handle Animal skill has an option to command an animal to attack. It then lists a limit to what you can order the animal to attack.
That doesn't mean animals can't attack other things - just that you can't use Handle Animal for that.
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@Archaeik: it depends a bit on how you read it.
Attack (DC 20): The animal attacks apparent enemies. You may point to a particular creature that you wish the animal to attack, and it will comply if able. Normally, an animal will attack only humanoids, monstrous humanoids, or other animals. Teaching an animal to attack all creatures (including such unnatural creatures as undead and aberrations) counts as two tricks.
In other words, the "Normally" part only applies to the Attack Trick, not anything else.
It's not the same as a feat, where a "Normal:" line starts a new paragraph discussing the situation without the feat; this is still part of the discussion of what the Attack Trick X1 and X2 does.
Conversely, the spell says what animals summoned by the spell will do. A summoned creature will attack the caster's enemies. It doesn't say "attack some of the caster's enemies, according to various restrictions scattered throughout the books".
A summoned wolf, earth elemental or shadow demon: it makes no difference. They'll attack the caster's enemies, because that's what the spell says they'll do.
Sorry, was a cut and paste for the training DCs. I didn't mean to suggest that was the DC to perform the trick.
I agree that pushing would be a DC 20 trick, 22 if the critter is injured.
For the Summon Monster spells, treating the Celestial Dog as a regular dog would actually be beneficial if we are to require any pushing. If we do treat it as a Magical Beast, the DCs become 25 and 27 respectively. This is a bit high, especially since all of the starting summons only include animals.
In Pathfinder they do not become magical beast anymore.