Slowed Summoned Monsters too heavily penalized?

[Snickersnax]

So in our last game one of the characters summoned a water elemental not touching water. A water elemental is Waterbound and when not touching water is slowed 1. I ruled that since the summoned elemental has 2 actions and is slowed 1, that it would only have 1 action per round.

The player argued that the summoned creature is already a slowed version of the creature and thus was already slowed 1 as a summoned creature and that the effects shouldn't stack.

Obviously we ended up with the DM ruling, but what is the intention here? Is a slow spell an effective counter to summoned creatures because they only get two actions? or are summoned creatures immune to slow spells unless they get slowed 2?

[Tholomyes]

To me, I'd say that the summoned creature wasn't slowed, but simply had 2 actions either as a result of being controllled or from simply being an animal companion. There's nothing I can see in the text that argues that the fact that an animal companion only gets two actions, to say that it is innately slowed. As such, I'd rule a slowed animal companion only gets one action, but can use that action in any way the PC controller can, in any other way allowable from the AC feat/

[Fuzzypaws]

Yeah, the summon would only get one action. Ugh, I hadn't thought of this until now, this is even more of an argument against Companions and summons only getting two actions. JFC what a shit show.

[swordchucks]

When looking at it (when a player mentioned they'd summoned something else because of the water elemental for this very reason), I came to the same conclusion that it would only have one action because of the wording of various things.

While it'd make sense to just give companions/summons Slowed I, I can see that it would eventually get powergamed (either explicitly or unintentionally) and may not be a good path to take because of it. I'd rather just see the water elemental get tweaked to lose the Slowed I or have it only kick in after a minute of being removed from water (which would be the duration of the summon, anyway).

[Snickersnax]

swordchucks wrote:

I'd rather just see the water elemental get tweaked to lose the Slowed I or have it only kick in after a minute of being removed from water (which would be the duration of the summon, anyway).

Agreed, they already have their movement speed reduced on land (vs swimming), and that is a sufficient penalty. If they want another penalty for water elementals they could give it slowed by cold spells so you could potentially freeze a water elemental. That would be cool :)