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I am playing a Conjuring Wizard and am, of course, summoning animals and monsters whose languages I cannot speak (like Dire Tiger). My DM is ruling that when I summon them they have no idea who my enemies are until I either tell them (again I do not speak Tiger), the enemy actually attacks me, or I attack the enemy.
This leaves me with the problem of them appearing on Round 1 not knowing who to attack and me trying to figure out who to get them to attack the intended target without wasting a round doing something like throwing a rock at the enemy instead of doing something useful like casting a Haste. Please tell me if this is the way the spell is supposed to work since I've never encountered this before.
Thank you.
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...It appears where you designate and acts immediately, on your turn. 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.
It says nothing about being unable to discern who your enemies are; it simply attacks them. Chances are it’ll attack the closest enemy to them but if they get significantly damaged by one enemy it could certainly change targets. If you want a lantern archon to cast aid on you though, you have to speak a language it understands, but summoned monsters will inherently understand your base intentions of who enemies and who allies are.
It acts immediately, and it attacks your enemies. Those are spelled out rules for SM and should be pretty cut and dry.
If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions.
That one line is all you should really need to convince your DM. Because you wouldn't need to direct the summon to not attack, if attacking wasn't already the default behavior.
Although this isn't necessarily true of all summoning magic. The quoted line is from summon monster and its derivatives. For comparison, a horse you summon with the mount spell isn't going to attack your enemies unless you have some other abilities to convince it to do so, because the mount spell doesn't say it attacks your enemies.
well, from summon monster
It appears where you designate and acts immediately, on your turn. 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.
Note that the first part happens even if you can't speak its language. So, you should be able to designate who your enemies are as soon as it appears and it will attack whichever of them is most convenient to attack.
While I would assume that celestial creatures can speak celestial I can see why a DM would rule that animals don't gain the power of speech and/or understanding just because they are angelic.
edit: when I started to post there hadn't been any other answers and my delay has caused me to basically say what's already been said. I apologize for the repeated information.
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https://www.aonprd.com/WizardArcaneDiscoveries.aspx
Feral Speech (Su) (Ultimate Magic pg. 86): You gain the ability to speak with and understand the response of any animal as if using speak with animals, though each time you speak to animals, you must decide to communicate with either amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, or reptiles, and can only speak to and understand animals of that type. You can make yourself understood as far as your voice carries. This discovery does not predispose any animal addressed toward you in any way. When you reach 12th level, you can also use this ability to communicate with vermin. You must be at least a 5th-level wizard to select this discovery.
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Feral speech is good if you want the animal to do something other than attack. But I don’t want anyone to think it’s some kind of proof that you have to speak to animals to get summoned creatures to attack your enemies.