Army of Trees

[Hikuen]

Summon Plant/Fungus allows you to summon an Arboreal Regent (CR 8). The Regent has a 2 action ability called Awaken Tree

Awaken Tree (concentrate, primal) The arboreal regent causes a tree within 180 feet to uproot itself and fight as a minion using the statistics for an awakened tree. The arboreal regent can control up to two awakened trees at a time, and it can issue commands to both trees as a single action, which has the concentrate and auditory traits.

Now, according to the Summoned creature trait: " A summoned creature can’t summon other creatures" but does this ability fall into that category? Or does that rule only prevent summoned creatures from doing things like casting Summon _______ ?

I know that in general if something seems too good to be true, it is... but the idea of having an Arboreal Regent and 2 Awakened Trees as minions of a Leaf Druid seems awesome

[thenobledrake]

getting to use 1 action to effectively get 5 (2 from each awakened tree, and 1 left for the arboreal regent after it commands the awakened trees) just because you picked the correct thing as your minion is definitely in the realm of too good to be true.

[Castilliano]

Technically this is allowed, since it's not a Summon, at least from that point of view. What I wonder about is whether minions can have minions.

That said, since it's not a Summon, the awakened tree cannot act on its first round since it hasn't received commands nor does the ability have the stipulation that Summon spells do of being able to command it to act immediately.

So round one, summon Regent who awakens a tree (if there is a sizable tree around and in a decent location). Nothing contributed to combat.
Round two, Regent makes a 2nd tree. Caster has two actions.

Round three, now you're cooking, except these Awakened Trees are Level 6 on a Level 13+ battlefield. They need an 18 to hit a Gelugon, if it doesn't fly out of reach, and note its DR 10 to the tree's damage, and that it may have tossed out a 16d6 Cone of Cold (56 ave. damage) which would likely crit the Awakened Trees (Nat 14 to Fail instead of Crit fail) which would kill it (100 h.p.).
And that'd be an encounter of 1 at-level creature.
Gashodokuro has a breath weapon for similar effect.
In a battle vs. minions, this tree army (again, if in a forest) would likely provide some decent meat shields, but tossing out a 7th-level AoE would likely end the battle cleaner and sooner.

So yeah, I'm not too afraid of this situation's extra actions since the actions are mostly ineffective and the initial actions by the PC could have done more.

[Mechagamera]

My first thought was "well a heightened to 7th level spell should be good", but then I looked up awakened trees and saw they were creature 6, and getting an 8 and 2 6's (even if they are all minions) for one 7th level spell does seem more than generous.

[Aratorin]

The only reason I would say that this doesn't work, is that your Minions act on your turn. The Arboreal Reagent never gets a turn, so it can't command Minions.

Although that raises a larger question about how Conditions interact with Minions, as if they never get a turn, they can never reduce Conditions, like Fear.