
thewastedwalrus |

I think the moral qualms addressed was the question of whether summoning in general is evil, as ripping a creature out of their natural home/environment to serve you for a minute would be pretty rude. The idealized versions of creatures summoned by the standard spells come into being with a desire to fight for you, so allowing them to do so seems fine (though some may argue against that).
Final sacrifice is clear that using it on a non-mindless creature is evil, and it seems that casting it on a magically temporary summon doesn't change that. So the options would be to either play an evil character, summon mindless creatures if you want to blow them up, or don't blow up sentient creatures.

David knott 242 |

There is a benign mundane use I made of summoned creatures in PF1 that could have horrifying implications under the new approach.
I was playing a 10th level summoner with Cha 22. My GM wanted us to give a plausible rationale for learning languages in play. So, whenever I finished a day without using my Summon Monster ability, I would summon an Azata repeatedly for about an hour and a half of language lessons (since this special ability makes the duration of each summons a minute per level). Obviously, this approach required the assumptions that summoned creatures continued to exist between times they were summoned and that I could summon the same creature repeatedly. The moral implications of such a summons would be very different if they ceased to exist when the summoning effect ended, since they were in a sufficiently non-stressful situation that they were likely to realize their impending fate during the several minutes they spent chatting with the summoner.

Temperans |
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You known, I always assumed that what "Summoning" did was create a clone out of planar energy of a creature. Which explained why it had so many restrictions and knew exactly who to attack even when you could not normally communicate with them. It also explained why they had some memories and knowledge.
It didn't create any conflict with sending creatures to die. It didn't create any conflict with the same creature being summoned simultaneously in multiple places. Etc.

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There is a benign mundane use I made of summoned creatures in PF1 that could have horrifying implications under the new approach.I was playing a 10th level summoner with Cha 22. My GM wanted us to give a plausible rationale for learning languages in play. So, whenever I finished a day without using my Summon Monster ability, I would summon an Azata repeatedly for about an hour and a half of language lessons (since this special ability makes the duration of each summons a minute per level). Obviously, this approach required the assumptions that summoned creatures continued to exist between times they were summoned and that I could summon the same creature repeatedly. The moral implications of such a summons would be very different if they ceased to exist when the summoning effect ended, since they were in a sufficiently non-stressful situation that they were likely to realize their impending fate during the several minutes they spend chatting with the summoner.
Or they might be quite at peace with their expected fate, since it is basically what they were created to do.
Whereas no summoned creature was created to specifically explode through Final Sacrifice. So the caster using that spell robs them of the peace they had at fulfilling their role.

Claxon |
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Say you summon a facsimile of one of your childhood's heroes, a hero of old, always fighting for the right reasons and willing to die rather than surrender.
They fight for you. Is that Evil ?
Now, you take the same creature, and, without asking them, blow them apart to hurt the people near them. Is that not Evil ?
Why would the facsimile have the same mindset?
So yes it's evil to have them fight for you, because you didn't stop to ask the creature before hand if it wanted to do it, you forced it into doing it. And it can't not obey you. You also brought it into existence for a minute.
Look, for me either summons need to be none sapient/sentient independent thinking entities or the whole thing is evil. I'm not saying summons can't act intelligently, but that it's really the summoners mind driving things.
Otherwise, the whole practice of summoning is pretty damn evil.
And if they aren't sapient or sentient creatures, but rather akin to marionettes then there should be no qualm about blowing them up.

Perpdepog |
You known, I always assumed that what "Summoning" did was create a clone out of planar energy of a creature. Which explained why it had so many restrictions and knew exactly who to attack even when you could not normally communicate with them. It also explained why they had some memories and knowledge.
It didn't create any conflict with sending creatures to die. It didn't create any conflict with the same creature being summoned simultaneously in multiple places. Etc.
This is how I always imagined it as well. By and large summons, at least outsider summons, are happy to do what the summoner asks of them because either the summoner shares their alignment so their purposes would generally align, or the summoner doesn't share their alignment and the summon views their summoning as an opportunity to spread more of their plane's influence through assisting the summoner before returning to the quintessence that made them in the first place. By the same token, I treated players' instructions to their summons as more strong suggestion than order. Just because a summon is comfortable with doing service during their pseudo-lifespan it doesn't mean they'd necessarily want to just stand in front of the caster and get pummeled, or mindlessly walk into a trap, for example.

Claxon |

Temperans wrote:This is how I always imagined it as well. By and large summons, at least outsider summons, are happy to do what the summoner asks of them because either the summoner shares their alignment so their purposes would generally align, or the summoner doesn't share their alignment and the summon views their summoning as an opportunity to spread more of their plane's influence through assisting the summoner before returning to the quintessence that made them in the first place. By the same token, I treated players' instructions to their summons as more strong suggestion than order. Just because a summon is comfortable with doing service during their pseudo-lifespan it doesn't mean they'd necessarily want to just stand in front of the caster and get pummeled, or mindlessly walk into a trap, for example.You known, I always assumed that what "Summoning" did was create a clone out of planar energy of a creature. Which explained why it had so many restrictions and knew exactly who to attack even when you could not normally communicate with them. It also explained why they had some memories and knowledge.
It didn't create any conflict with sending creatures to die. It didn't create any conflict with the same creature being summoned simultaneously in multiple places. Etc.
For me, in PF1, this was the difference between a summoning spell and Planar Ally and why Clerics got Planar Ally and no summoning.
Planar Ally is conjuration calling, not summoning. So you got the real creature, and it came because you ostensibly had similar goals and ideas about the universe.
Summoning to me was always I use the magical energy to pull forth something that looks and functions (a bit) like one of these creatures, but isn't really.