In our group, several players have taken offense at the fact that TN spellcasters get all the ups of summoning, with none of the downs (getting to choose what template to place on their summons plus the ineffectiveness of Protection from $aligment, so I thought to throw a bit of a wrench into the gears of TN summoning.
Delete the following text in the Summon Monster spell:
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.
and replace it with:
Creatures on Table 10–1 marked with an “*” can be summoned with the celestial, entropic, fiendish, or resolute template if you have a good, chaotic, evil or lawful alignment, respectively. Only one of these templates may be applied in the same summoning, and it will affect all of the summoned creatures.
which, for example, gives a LG character the option of summoning a vanilla, celestial, or resolute creature; a CN character has the option of calling a vanilla or entropic creature... while a TN caster is stuck with standard critters (which, on the bright side, still cannot be hedged out by simple protection spells)
Comments? Ideas? Flames?
Seems like a fair rule. Aligned summoners get power, unaligned ones get versatility.
I don't like it too much. I also allow entropic and resolute templates, as written in the bestiary 2(and 3, I guess).
Only divine casters are prevented from summoning critters of opposite alignment, which shouldn't be in their nature in the first place...
And a good cleric/deity shouldn't rely on divine intervention to grant smite good - you are not prevented from killing good creatures, but your good deity/alignment should not make it easier for you.
And why would a caster without grievances towards any specific alignment not be able to summon a creature with an aligned template?
Are neutral caster isn't banned from casting other aligned spells, so why just these?
I would say it should be: "creatures with '*' may be summoned with the celestial, entropic, fiendish, or resolute templates, this adds an alignment descriptor to the spell."
Or make a "neutral" template(the advanced template seems a little too much)
DonDuckie: The reason why would probably be that it takes a special attunement to that plane to be able to reach into it it easily. It's magic, we have literally hundred of arbitrary decisions when it comes to magic.
Ilja: possibly.
In my games: summoned creatures are duplicates of a sort of average, not an actual creature; they are formed from the primordial chaos still residing between planes. So, to me, there is no reaching into planes.
But that could be a reason.
But "it's magic"(words I love, btw) is just as much a reason for it to defy all logic :)
EDIT:
and I don't agree with your statement, that unaligned caster have versatility. Aligned can choose un-templated critters too.
That's a good point on aligned casters being able to choose un-templated critters if they're arcanists.