I'm running a campaign and we just added a Summoner to the party; that sent me on a small research spree that turned up no definitive answers, so I'll be asking for y'allz help here:
What kind of action (if any) is it for a controller of summoned creature(s) to direct critters to a specific action? What are limitations?
Summon Monster spell says (quote) :
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.
That seems to imply several things :
a) Unless summoner has means of communicating with the creatures, he doesn't have direct control of them, past the "they'll attack hostiles" stage?
b) Unless summoner spends time (and actions?) directing the creatures, they run in autonomous mode, attacking (presumedly) creatures summoner perceives as hostile? Or creatures displaying active hostility to summoner?
c) How is handling of multiple creatures resolved? Say summoner pulled out 3 fire elementals; how much a "management overload" does he have to deal with if he wants one elemental to go help fighter flank, another to stay between summoner and hostiles and third to cut off the enemies' escape routes?
Any insight, RAW, RAI or IMHO is appreciated!
Andro
|
I think "if you can communicate with the creature" basically means that if you can speak the creature's language, you can tell it to do things by speaking to it - ie. a free action. It doesn't appear that Summon Monster imparts any means of actually communicating with a creature in and of itself, ie. if you summon an animal and have no means of communicating with it, it behaves according to the default - attacking enemies and so on, unless you cast speak with animals or something along those lines. The nature of the spell is such that it compels the creature to attack those you perceive as enemies - so a mindless creature will still attack in accordance with the spell.
There's no management overload, since it's a free action - 'you go help him, you protect her, you attack the enemy on the right' is perfectly reasonable.
What kind of action (if any) is it for a controller of summoned creature(s) to direct critters to a specific action?
Speaking is a free action. If it's something really complicated or that the creature would be adverse to, there's the handle animal rules, but that's kind of a mess.
a) Unless summoner has means of communicating with the creatures, he doesn't have direct control of them, past the "they'll attack hostiles" stage?b) Unless summoner spends time (and actions?) directing the creatures, they run in autonomous mode, attacking (presumedly) creatures summoner perceives as hostile? Or creatures displaying active hostility to summoner?
Yep. An intelligent creature would have a better grasp of what's going on, while an animal or vermin would pretty much just attack whatever hostiles are handy.
c) How is handling of multiple creatures resolved? Say summoner pulled out 3 fire elementals; how much a "management overload" does he have to deal with if he wants one elemental to go help fighter flank, another to stay between summoner and hostiles and third to cut off the enemies' escape routes?
It's really a DMs call. Saying "Jack: flank the elf to your left, Moe: block the doorway, Manny: protect me" should be doable, even in combat. If micro-managing the pets or causing unintended casualties would make your game more fun, go for it, but it seems to me that most of the time you're better off just letting the player run his pets.
One thing I've seen suggested, is letting other players take control if there's a whole bunch of extra critters. Let the summoner run his Eidolon, and split up the summons among the other players that don't have much to do. This keeps the summoner from dominating the table (time-wise) and gives the barbarian something to do other than hit orc with sword.