In PF1, summon monster and summon nature's ally offer a lot of options for each level. It makes these spells more flexible than most - which is nice for a patient player digging through the options, but means questionable game balance, stepping on other players' toes (healing summons, for example) and potential choice paralysis for less savy summoners.
So I wouldn't mind to see them broken down to different spells:
Summon animal
Summon fiend
Summon giant
etc. etc.
That would make it easier to create thematic summoners, and it would feel more rewarding to collect these spells.
Sounds more than reasonable, especially in light of auto-scaling/Heighten effect meaning 1-9 versions won't need to exist (as individual spells)... More specific creature types would be an obvious alternative to having 2 Summon spells in the game cover ever Summons need. I think it also opens door to having more unique ways for each group of Summons to function, which could address concerns like yours (re: healing), or a range of other angles which could be deepened.
That's definitely an interesting idea. It would serve to scale down the utility of these spells while also adding flavor to them. It also might add unnecessary bulk to the Core Rulebook, but if it could be kept tight it might be a really fun addition.
I don't think that would work too well. The nice thing about the many different options on the current summon spells is, that they work on any level. If you break it down by creature type, you end up with many different spells of different power levels.
You can't have "Summon Giant" as a first level spell, or even "Summon Fiend". And "Summon Animal" makes is a poor spell for a 9th level slot.
Also, printing that many different creature lists for different spells would eat up quite a bit of space in the book.
However, if it's true that the four spell lists are based on the four "Magical Traditions" mentioned in the Blog (Physical, Mental, Spiritual, Vital) I could see them limiting the access to certain monsters depending on the tradition(s) your character uses.
Why not base what can be summoned by a spell on CR? That would let the spells easily handle future books and standardize the system. I also think that it should be less flexible than it currently is, the flexibility the current summon monster spells provide is huge.
Base it on CR/alignment and also make the creature chosen at spell preparation time, not casting time. That should hopefully get rid of the fixed creature lists.
Maybe some kind of restrictions will still be needed on what SLAs are available for the summoned creatures as some of them don't have a big effect on CR but are very useful for the PCs to have (or the other way around).
Base it on CR/alignment and also make the creature chosen at spell preparation time, not casting time. That should hopefully get rid of the fixed creature lists.
Maybe some kind of restrictions will still be needed on what SLAs are available for the summoned creatures as some of them don't have a big effect on CR but are very useful for the PCs to have (or the other way around).
Spells only last as long as summon? And no use of 1/day or less frequent casting?
Whichever way they end up breaking down the summon spells, I hope the Bestiary tags summonable monsters with a line item saying which spell at which level.
Unless they've gone and pulled a Starfinder, where Summon no longer pulls actual monsters but instead a generic blob you skin with a graft. That would do me a sad. I mean, I like Astral Construct, but A, that's a different flavor, and B, Dreamscarred also handled that far better than Starfinder did.