I would allow a handle animal check as a move action to try to direct the animal.
#4: Sure.
Here is how i would rule it:
Keep in mind the animal has little intelligence, but regards the caster as a "Helpful" ally (hostile -> unfriendly -> Indifferent -> friendly -> helpful), and the caster's allies could be "Friendly" allies.
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This is the way my group has always played it:
Summoned creatures are summoned with the knowledge of who your enemies and allies are. They also have no sense of self-preservation since they return to where they were summoned from upon death. Without any means of communicating with their summoner, they will attack the closest enemy to the best of their ability.
If you want the creature to do anything other than attack the nearest enemy, you need to be able to communicate your wishes in some way. You can do that for free if you can speak to it. For convenience we say that summoned animals know all tricks so you can make a Handle Animal check as a move action to get it to do something else.
1) The DM determines who the animal attacks. We can assume that it magically knows who are your allies and who are your enemies.
2) Again, up to the DM, based on the animal's nature.
3) Its overriding priority is to attack your enemies. It will fight to the death, and it would go through a wall of fire if by doing so it actually has a chance of reaching an enemy.
4) You need a successful Handle Animal check for that one.
5) That one is a tricky case. A summoned creature would attack all detectable enemies. Since it cannot see or hear the bud guy, the question becomes -- cant it smell him?
For convenience we say that summoned animals know all tricks so you can make a Handle Animal check as a move action to get it to do something else.
Remember that you can "push" an animal to perform a trick that it doesn't know. There is no good reason to assume that a summoned animal knows any tricks.
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Remember that you can "push" an animal to perform a trick that it doesn't know. There is no good reason to assume that a summoned animal knows any tricks.
The spell says "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."
If it were an animal companion, and you could speak with it, you could only give it commands for tricks it knows. You'd have to push it for anything it hadn't been trained to do. By saying that communication is enough to get the animal to do a task, that implies that the animal already knows how to perform that task.
1) If you cannot communicate with a creature, how does it know whom to attack?
I rule it works similar to summon monster. In that spell, the monster knows who to attack. That spell says: "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. "
2) Given a choice of enemies, who does the creature attack?
Reading above, it would most likely attack the closest opponent. Animals aren't strategy/tactical beasts outside of their typical pack mentality.
3)Does the creature have any kind of self-preservation instincts? Not really. It's compelled to fight for you per the spell, so I'd say it's death is somehow instinctively known that all it does is send it back to its plane, not really a death.
4) Can the creature be used for utility-purposes, such as transport (yo octopus, transport me to the shore)?
Only if you can communicate with it. Even then, I'd probably make you do a Handle Animal check.
5) A special case from our own gaming session:
The bad guy swims into a cave via an underwater entrance. The druid, being outside the cavern, summons a water-creature (an octopus in this case) and expects for it to swim into the cave, locate the bad guy and attack him. How would you rule on that expectation?
I'd make him roll Handle Animal with the DC for asking him to perform an unknown trick. The reason it wouldn't naturally attack is because the bad guy isn't an "opponent" of the druid at that point. Had the druid and the bad guy had some kind of fight, or fought after the summons, then the octopus would naturally attack since that would now be an opponent of the person who summoned it.
That's how I would rule. The key would be "opponent". Not "someone I don't like".
I would say that expecting the octopus to move to the water would not require a check though. I mean, it is an aquatic creature, that instinctually prefers being in water, and you summoned it near a body of water. Since most people do not summon them in the middle of a desert, it would be fairly reasonable to expect it to head into an available source of water if it is presented with one.