What Happens When You Summon an Elemental While On Their Native Plane?


Rules Questions


The players in my campaign have traveled to the elemental plane of air, and should be there for a bit. In the past, one of them has often used summon monster to conjure an air elemental. The players have given the elemental a voice and personality. Whether this is possible in the rules or not, I totally allow it because it is fun and hilarious.

Now that we're actually on the creature's native plane, what would happen if they try to summon it? Would the spell fail? Would the creature actually be teleported from it's current location? Or would it work as normal, and only a manifestation of the creature would appear, not the real thing?

From the CRB:
...bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or forms of energy to you (summoning);...

Summoning: A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When the spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature is instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can't be summoned again.

When the spell that summoned a creature ends and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast expire. A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have.

I'm thinking a good adventure hook might be conjured if I rule that the spell actually teleports the creature to their current location. The elemental, who has a life of it's own, becomes frantic when it learns that the spell doesn't actually send him back when it expires. The players then need to get the elemental back to it's home.

The only negative to this I can imagine is that they might decide to summon more and more elementals to create an army. To combat that I might say that the other way the spell doesn't work is that the creatures summoned on their own plane aren't tied to the summoner, and don't automatically "attacks your opponents to the best of its ability."


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I note that the CRB's description of conjuration(calling) specifies "from another plane" and the description of conjuration(summoning) (that you quoted) doesn't. One might conclude that the latter doesn't depend on plane, so it acts normally. That's not 100% since it doesn't actually say it explicitly, so you don't have to ax your idea, but if you want a rules-based answer that's probably it.

OTOH... the first time they tried it on the plane of Air, would the elemental realize it was only a manifestation? You might have some fun with that. The PCs should be able to figure it out with Knowledge(arcana), but will a panicky elemental believe their reassurances?

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