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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 8469021" data-attributes="member: 7635">AD&D summon spells just straight up summoned any monster it could grab in the area. 3e grabbed outsiders (celestial/fiendish animals mostly) but nothing was stated that the celestial badger the wizard just summoned was a mercenary on call. I don't remember 4e summons, but 5e spells certainly seem to fit with the "grab an elemental/celestial/fey/fiend spirit and make them fight for you" system. I guess it would be interesting to debate if the spirits that summoning/calling spells grab are actual sentient beings or just snippets of planar energy given form, but you can certainly rule that a casting Call Fey summons a pixie family to fight and die for you and you wouldn't be wrong. You casting an illusion to make your copper coins look like gold ones and then underpaying a merchant is scarcely better than outright armed robbery. Making yourself look like someone else to gain access to an area is identity theft. At best, it's a betrayal of trust. At worst, people have gone to jail for things first level illusionists do trivially. Is there much of a difference between casting Charm Person to make someone tell you their secrets or casting Detect Thoughts to rip them out of their head? My point is that most D&D magic is at best amoral and at worst ethnically unconscionable. If charm spells are "evil" for robbing a person of autonomy, you're going to have to lump a lot of additional summoning, illusion, and divination spells in there as well. To the point where a typical arcane spellcaster could hardly be described as "Good" for knowing and using most of them. As with much of D&D, the minute you apply real-life ethical debates to it, the game conventions collapse.</blockquote>

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