Summoning evil monsters

[Grandmikus]

The issue I had with my Jade Regent campaign caught up with me. My party's summoner casualy summoned without any notice, 4 devils during negotiations with local paladins as a counterspy measure. He did that a lot before but this time I called for smite.

My stance was always that RAW nothing happens to your character as far as the game mechanic goes but people around you will be displeased with the demon summoning. I also added that using higher level demons will automatically bar you from any good oriented places in the afterlife unless you atone.

I'm afraid this demon summoning will result in greatly derailing the whole campaign and other good aligned PC aren't very responsive or inclined to do anything against the summoner. The cleric of sarenrae basicly only gave him a pinch in the ear and a no-no gesture.

How do I save this?

[Myrryr]

Was it summoning or calling devils? Because summoning is just effectively creating a solid planar copy of what the outsider is. It's basically a life-like, able-to-hurt-and-interact-with-things illusion.
It takes a calling spell to bring an actual outsider to the material plane. A summon cannot DO anything on it's own. Without orders, it literally just stands there like a broken automaton. So honestly, not really evil. And in fact, it could be seen as insulting to actual fiends, using summons of them to do good things.

I assume you're talking about the summon accuser devil spell since you mentioned counter-spys, which it is extremely good for of course. One thing to keep in mind is that as devils, the spell is also lawful, which is something paladins greatly revere, just as much as the good.

And canonically, casting an aligned spell always 'tugs' your alignment in that direction a little, and abusing one alignment type in particular, will eventually cause you to take that alignment (but it takes a LOT of casts, if that is the ONLY factor).

You also need to keep in mind the player's goal. If he's still working towards a good goal, being good, altruistic, helpful, etc., then it will simply outweigh the evil spellcasting and his soul will still shine good under detect good.

Last thing... even archons have assassins, so good knows the value of doing dirty things for the greater good.

[QuidEst]

Summoned creatures are NOT just fake copies, unless you're using Shadow Conjuration. They are under your control while summoned, but that doesn't mean they aren't watching and learning. Source.

If you are going to put restrictions on future afterlives, though, you should make sure the summoning list contains appropriate summons for the character. If he's CG choosing between LG, LE, and CE summons, that's unfair to him. I recommend looking at the Summon Good Monster and Summon Neutral Monster feats as appropriate, and grabbing some items off there in exchange for your restrictions.

[Myrryr]

QuidEst wrote:

Summoned creatures are NOT just fake copies, unless you're using Shadow Conjuration. They are under your control while summoned, but that doesn't mean they aren't watching and learning. Source.

Which is ridiculously exploitable and any wizard worth their salt will do so. Reading the summoning part as written allows you to 'designate a target', meaning you can literally choose 'that outsider right there we're fighting right now' and summon him under your control and order him to do X, like stand there and die while we kill you for the next 24hrs. (So long as it's on your summon spell list of course).

[QuidEst]

Myrryr wrote:

QuidEst wrote:

Summoned creatures are NOT just fake copies, unless you're using Shadow Conjuration. They are under your control while summoned, but that doesn't mean they aren't watching and learning. Source.

Which is ridiculously exploitable and any wizard worth their salt will do so. Reading the summoning part as written allows you to 'designate a target', meaning you can literally choose 'that outsider right there we're fighting right now' and summon him under your control and order him to do X, like stand there and die while we kill you for the next 24hrs. (So long as it's on your summon spell list of course).

"Designate a target" doesn't show up in the summoning section, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Nothing says you get to summon an individual of your choice.

[Bill Dunn]

Grandmikus wrote:

The issue I had with my Jade Regent campaign caught up with me. My party's summoner casualy summoned without any notice, 4 devils during negotiations with local paladins as a counterspy measure. He did that a lot before but this time I called for smite.

<snip>

How do I save this?

Why do you need to save this rather than let things play out? If they make things harder for themselves or do dumb things, let the consequences fall.

[Lorewalker]

Myrryr wrote:

QuidEst wrote:

Summoned creatures are NOT just fake copies, unless you're using Shadow Conjuration. They are under your control while summoned, but that doesn't mean they aren't watching and learning. Source.

Which is ridiculously exploitable and any wizard worth their salt will do so. Reading the summoning part as written allows you to 'designate a target', meaning you can literally choose 'that outsider right there we're fighting right now' and summon him under your control and order him to do X, like stand there and die while we kill you for the next 24hrs. (So long as it's on your summon spell list of course).

The spell is vague on selection(most likely on purpose) and it is a long standing variant to allow a player to 'know' outsiders and summon them specifically. Thus, this could work if you knew whatever you must know about an outsider to summon it about the outsider you are in battle with. If the GM in this case allows you to play by that variant.

It would only be as exploitable as your GM allows it to be.

In base Pathfinder, though, this does not work.

[Myrryr]

Mmm, that runs into a different issue though... namely, why is the guy you're summoning to die painfully (as most summons do die), not ever try to get revenge? Being that it calls out that you can't summon the same creature for 24hrs, that would indicate that you always summon the same one with the same spell, otherwise there's no point in mentioning a timer that's meaningless.

[Lorewalker]

Myrryr wrote:

Mmm, that runs into a different issue though... namely, why is the guy you're summoning to die painfully (as most summons do die), not ever try to get revenge? Being that it calls out that you can't summon the same creature for 24hrs, that would indicate that you always summon the same one with the same spell, otherwise there's no point in mentioning a timer that's meaningless.

It's not meaningless, it just doesn't come up very often.

[Myrryr]

Lorewalker wrote:

Myrryr wrote:

Mmm, that runs into a different issue though... namely, why is the guy you're summoning to die painfully (as most summons do die), not ever try to get revenge? Being that it calls out that you can't summon the same creature for 24hrs, that would indicate that you always summon the same one with the same spell, otherwise there's no point in mentioning a timer that's meaningless.

It's not meaningless, it just doesn't come up very often.

Still raises the question... do you summon the same succubus every time you cast Summon Monster V? If you do, and she's died several times, why hasn't she gotten revenge? If you don't, why is the timer mentioned since you summon different creatures?

Lastly, if any given outsider can be summoned at a moment's notice by random joe wizard schmoe's on the material plane, why do outsiders not have a 'Summon humanoid' spell that can randomly pull people from the material plane for 1 rd/lvl?

[Bill Dunn]

Myrryr wrote:

Still raises the question... do you summon the same succubus every time you cast Summon Monster V? If you do, and she's died several times, why hasn't she gotten revenge? If you don't, why is the timer mentioned since you summon different creatures?

Some of the text is hold-over from 3e and allows for a variant version of summoning called out in the DMG. That option involved summoning the same creatures with summoning spells - any equipment you got to them in their home plane could come over with them. In effect, you could kit them up with better gear and have a more effective servant you could summon. But then it would make sense for there to be some "recovery" time if that summoned creature got killed in a fight.