It basically covers Earth Elementals.
It basically covers Earth Elementals.
Including mephits.
It also applies to chthonic creatures, which you can summon if you have Versatile Summon Monster or Versatile Summon Nature's Ally feat.
So, if you have access to the Summon Monster spells rather than the Summon Nature's Ally spells, your summoning duration for Earth and Salt Mephits is slightly longer.
Actual Earth Elementals are on the lists for both Summon Monster and Summon Nature's Ally.
Other creatures may be available if you take certain feats or worship certain deities. I haven't looked into whether any deity grants access to additional Earth creatures.
At one point summons last the whole fight regardless. Useful for levels 3-5 maybe.
Flagging this for a move to the Advice board, as this isn't a rules question.
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I was considering making an Oread Druid and taking advantage of the Earth Insight Trait
Earth Insight: Summon monster and summon nature’s ally spells that such oreads cast last 2 rounds longer than normal when used to summon creatures with the earth subtype. This racial trait replaces earth affinity.
At first it seemed like a rather useful trait until I started investigating Earth Subtype summons, and I could barely find anything. Is there something I am missing?
Less effective when originally written. Now, we've got Verstatile Summon Monster, which grants access to a Template that gives any creature the Earth Subtype. That would be Monster Summoner's Handbook, for the record.
At one point summons last the whole fight regardless. Useful for levels 3-5 maybe.
Yeah, but this ability might have some use outside of fights.
Two elementals make fantastic scouts- wind elements for their speed/flight, and earth elementals because of earth glide. Earth elementals in particular can just stay underground and use tremor sense just to make a note of the number of opponents.
So with this insight ability, the scouts can go one turn farther out (assuming a round trip- they can walk out for one more turn, then come back for one more turn). Since they can ignore walls and such, that can cover a lot more distance.
Particularly if you are summoning multple low rank elementals (like small ones- you can get that 1d3 from some rather low ranked summon spells, and if the caster has summoning feats, than that is an average of...what? 3? )
Obviously, you need to spend skill points on languages to communicate... but it still seems fairly useful.