Fauchard1520
Adventurer
As illustrated here. I think the least evil option might be summoning neutral creatures...?
Is summoning creatures to spring traps an evil act?
Fauchard1520
Adventurer
Heh. Now I want a lemming-themed Druid that specializes in throwing herself / her minions into certain doom.
Flexor the Mighty!
18/100 Strength!
Just get a sack of orc babies and use them.
Fauchard1520
Adventurer
Don't be absurd! There's no "summon orc babies" spell. It would be wildly inconvenient to gather them by hand!
Tony Vargas
Legend
"Such & such obvious abuse of a spell is 'Evil!'" is an old stand-by for DMs with too-clever-for-their-own-good players. D&D has always encouraged players to be 'clever' and DMs to alternately reward & punish them for it. It's just part of the dynamic that keeps the game so wildly popular after 40 years.
Seriously, though, if you don't want to summon monsters, buy a flock of sheep. As long as the traps don't involve poison on inconveniently deep pits, you can go back to town and burnish your rep by feeding the hungry, too.
Seriously, though, if you don't want to summon monsters, buy a flock of sheep. As long as the traps don't involve poison on inconveniently deep pits, you can go back to town and burnish your rep by feeding the hungry, too.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
It really, really depends on the edition.
In some versions, a spell to summon animals will call them out of the nearby forest, so letting them die would be no different from carrying around a sack full of bunnies to check for traps for you.
In some versions, the spell creates a magical copy of a creature, without a true spirit or soul; and after they die, the energy dissipates and there is no more suffering.
That being said, I did once play an Evil summoner in Pathfinder, who specifically only liked to summon Good creatures so she could watch them get hurt.
In some versions, a spell to summon animals will call them out of the nearby forest, so letting them die would be no different from carrying around a sack full of bunnies to check for traps for you.
In some versions, the spell creates a magical copy of a creature, without a true spirit or soul; and after they die, the energy dissipates and there is no more suffering.
That being said, I did once play an Evil summoner in Pathfinder, who specifically only liked to summon Good creatures so she could watch them get hurt.
Fauchard1520
Adventurer
That's the weirdness I'm getting at! Apparently that is a capital-G Good act!
The Crimson Binome
Hero
At some point, you need to draw a line between Good and good, or Evil and evil. Dungeons & Dragons assumes a cosmology where the concepts of Good and Evil are primal forces that permeate reality, and certain magic stains your soul. If you cast too many Evil spells, then you become Evil for the purposes of magic, regardless of whether you do good or evil things.
One of the very first characters, in one of the very first D&D games that I played in, was an Evil necromancer who used the undead to perform manual labor and to take the place of living soldiers on the battlefield. If someone needs to suffer, then it might as well be the mindless undead who can't feel anything, right? The necromancer was definitely a good and noble person, even though he was considered Evil for the purposes of magic.
I think that the way it's supposed to work is that the stain on your soul should influence your behavior. Even if you have good intentions, summoning a bunch of undead will make you magically Evil, which will then make you more inclined to perform evil acts. Or if you're a good person, who commits the evil act of summoning a Good creature to suffer on your behalf, then the magical stain of Good (from casting a Good spell) will counteract the non-magical creep toward becoming evil (from committing evil acts). I think.
So in the case of my evil summoner who kept summoning Good creatures to watch them die, repeated castings of that Good summoning spell should have eventually corrupted her over toward not being evil anymore. (At which point she would stop casting that spell, because it no longer seems like a fun thing to do.)
Greenfield
Adventurer
Summon Nature's Ally, which in D&D 3.5 is the Druid's go-to summoning spell, still summons a "natural" creature from pretty much nowhere.
So does Summon Monster. When they "die", they vanish. No actual death occurs.
In most instances, even summoning them into combat is a "death" sentence. The biggest thing you can summon is about half your caster level, rounded up. So at anything over 1st level, anything you call to aid you is outgunned two to one.
So if sending Summoned animals in to check for traps is Evil, then so is calling them up to fight against unwinnable odds.
And if they do survive, what then? They vanish when the spell expires, exactly the same as if they'd been killed.
So does Summon Monster. When they "die", they vanish. No actual death occurs.
In most instances, even summoning them into combat is a "death" sentence. The biggest thing you can summon is about half your caster level, rounded up. So at anything over 1st level, anything you call to aid you is outgunned two to one.
So if sending Summoned animals in to check for traps is Evil, then so is calling them up to fight against unwinnable odds.
And if they do survive, what then? They vanish when the spell expires, exactly the same as if they'd been killed.
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