summoning templated creatures.

[noretoc]

Just wondering if this seems balanced. I am starting a new campaign, and one of my players is a priest of Andrade (Fire and Light). Now, he was trying to think up some cool ideas for new spells, and he really likes minotaurs. He asked me if he could make a spell later on in levels that lets him summon a minotaur covered in flames. I didn't see a problem with it, and remmebered that the manual of the planes has elemental fire template in it. I checked it out, and realized that all of his summoned creatures could have this template. I think it would add a lot of flavor if the creatures he summoned were flaming. The only problem is, when looking at the CR, for low HD creatures the CR is unchanged. The combat damage these do though are higher, as each attack adds d4 fire. However, the template says the CR stays the same.
I want to replace all the creatures he summons, into firey replicas, but would like to get some opinions on whether or not it will be unbalancing at low levels.

 

[the Jester]

I would probably add one level to the summoning spell required for a given creature with the elemental fire template, except for those that are already fiery (thoquaa, for instance). And maybe add a few summon monster 1 fire critters.

 

[Carnifex]

Simple way to do it is simply replace the celestial and fiendish templates on all the animals on the summoning tables with the fire elemental template. It doesn't make *everything* fire, but it does change enough of the list to give lots of flavour