Using Summoned Creatures to gain an AoO

[Storm Raven]

Storyteller01, creatures summoned through Summon Monster and Summon Nature's Ally spells do not truly die. When they would die, they disappear and return to whence they came, but they do not actually die. Unlike Calling spells, Summon spells either create a temporary duplicate of the summoned creature's body (not summoning the creature itself, but a copy of its body and essence), or they otherwise fiddle with reality in such a way as to summon a creature that doesn't actually die when it dies (perhaps summoning the creature from an alternate potential timeline, or whatever). It's in the PH as far as I know, under Conjuration (Summoning) in the Magic chapter.

Yes it is, and that's not particularly relevant to the morality of summoning things to kill them. The temporary nature of the harm you have inflicted only mitigates the evil you do when you engage in such acts, it doesn't eliminate it. You are still intentionally inflicting pain and suffering and temporary death (they don't reform immediately).

A Summoned creature doesn't truly die, it just returns to whence it came, and lives on. No demigod or whatnot is likely to care about this, or else I should think that if gods did care about Summoned creatures (who don't truly die), they would have already killed all mages with knowledge of Summon spells and destroyed all records of such magic. Regardless of alignment, any mage can cast Summon spells if they learn them. No deific power is going to care if a good guy Summons temporary creatures to be killed by that good guy's ally, no more so than that deific power is going to care if the bad guy Summons a temporary creature to go die for them by attacking the good guys. Whether the Summoned critter is a celestial, a fiend, an elemental, a pixie, or whatever, it doesn't matter, nobody cares, the Summoned creatures are only partially real or at least only real in some unfulfilled alternate-reality timeline that never would've come to pass anyway.

It is the nature of good to care about things like "means", and what sort of use a particular power is put to. "Good" implies that the method by which a goal is accomplished is important, in many cases, as important as the end itself. There is no need to kill all of the mortals who know how to summon creatures, since the ones who don't abuse the power can do good with it.

Even if it is temporary, killing things is evil. The permanence of the damage and harm is not a dispositive factor. Suppose the local lord of the manor, stockpiled with bread that will spoil overnight, refuses to distribute this soon to be worthless povender before it goes bad saying "who cares if the peasants are hungry and have no food, they can eat something else tomorrow". Does the fact that the peasant's suffering is presumably temporary eliminate the callus nature of their treatment?

Besides, why would some demigod or whatnot see the bad guys as enemies, and be angry at the PCs using creatures they Summon from the demigod's domain for the sake of being the party Fighter's AoO-Cleave bait? The Summoned creatures would be just as dead if Summoned to attack the bad guys directly, and would be far less effective if used that way. Why wouldn't the demigod or whatever take offense at the bad guy Summoning monsters from that realm to attack the PCs or something? Exactly, it makes no sense, so nobody anywhere in the D&D multiverses cares about Summoned creatures; they're not real enough to be cared about, and they aren't really truly dying. No Cleric of Pelor (or any other compassionate deity) would dare summon anything for the purposes of fighting evil if he summoned creatures were real beings, actually suffered, and died for real.

Why not? Soldiers are sent into battle all the time for "good" causes, and that isn't seen as evil. Suppose that instead, we killed soldiers out of hand because it increased our convenience factor, do you see this as "not-evil"? The distinction between good and evil in many ways hinged on seeing the difference there, a difference you clearly just want to gloss over.

 

[KarinsDad]

Because you choose not to, gaining the benefit of greater numbers. I'm not saying you couldn't but I'm wondering why you would. I spent four years in the military, having the concept of teamwork and combat by strength of numbers drilled into my head. You don't kill (or incapcitate, or remove from combat) those working with you.

The entire morality question is moot. IMO.

WotC purposely made summoned creatures extraplanar in nature to avoid the morality / alignment question.

A summoned creature is no different than a spell that created a conjured ball of light which acted like a creature (e.g. Mirror Image-like) and by the spell description, stated that it could be used for AoOs, Cleaves, AoO+Cleave combos, etc.

It is merely a spell guys. The creatures are not totally real. For example, you cannot dispel the magic that sends them back to where they came from so that they stay forever. If they attack a spell resistant creature, that creature can poof them back if they do not make the SR roll. They will blink out in an anti-magic sphere. They are magic guys, not real creatures. They are conjurations.

"Conjurations bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you"

They are not real creatures, they are manifestations of creatures as PER THE RULES.


Two questions for the moral argument supporters:

1) Does your PC attack, kill, and loot enemies? If so, he has assaulted, murdered, and stolen from others. That sounds immoral to me, no matter how you try to spin doctor his rationale for doing so.

2) Do you as a person eat pork? Pigs are a very intelligent animal more intelligent than even dogs. Yet we slaughter millions of them every year in the US to consume. If murdering a pig for food in the real world is not immoral, murdering a non-real (effectively magical) summoned creature is not immoral either.


Morality is totally irrelevant to the conversation here.

 

[Storm Raven]

WotC purposely made summoned creatures extraplanar in nature to avoid the morality / alignment question.

No they didn't. The fact that they are extraplanar in nature brings the morality issue into sharp focus.

A summoned creature is no different than a spell that created a conjured ball of light which acted like a creature (e.g. Mirror Image-like) and by the spell description, stated that it could be used for AoOs, Cleaves, AoO+Cleave combos, etc.

It is merely a spell guys. The creatures are not totally real. For example, you cannot dispel the magic that sends them back to where they came from so that they stay forever. If they attack a spell resistant creature, that creature can poof them back if they do not make the SR roll. They will blink out in an anti-magic sphere. They are magic guys, not real creatures. They are conjurations.

"Conjurations bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you"

I believe the core of your misunderstanding is that you don't seem to know what the word "manifestation" means:

manifestation

n 1: a clear appearance; "a manifestation of great emotion" 2: a manifest indication of the existence or presence or nature of some person or thing; "a manifestation of disease" 3: an appearance in bodily form (as of a disembodied spirit) [syn: materialization, materialisation] 4: expression without words; "tears are an expression of grief"; "the pulse is a reflection of the heart's condition" [syn: expression, reflection, reflexion] 5: a public display of group feelings (usually of a political nature); "there were violent demonstrations against the war" [syn: demonstration]

In other words, they are a concrete appearance of a spiritual being. The thing actually is brought from its plane of existence to the prime, and exists as a real creature, no matter how much you want to try to justify treating them as video game constructs.

They are not real creatures, they are manifestations of creatures as PER THE RULES.

Which means, by the definition of the word "manifestation", that they are the real creature.

Two questions for the moral argument supporters:

1) Does your PC attack, kill, and loot enemies? If so, he has assaulted, murdered, and stolen from others. That sounds immoral to me, no matter how you try to spin doctor his rationale for doing so.

Except that the reasons for actions are critical, and the identity of those involved. Killing another is usually considered evil. But is it evil to kill someone in self-defense? In the defense of others? No? Then you've just agreed that the morality of an act is subjective to the situation. Therefore, while it may be moral to kill, say, demons and devils, it may be condiered equally immoral to kill celestial beings, simply by the nature of what they are.

2) Do you as a person eat pork? Pigs are a very intelligent animal more intelligent than even dogs. Yet we slaughter millions of them every year in the US to consume. If murdering a pig for food in the real world is not immoral, murdering a non-real (effectively magical) summoned creature is not immoral either.

We don't live in a world of absolute morality in which the powers of good and evil are physical substances that can be called upon.

 

[Asmo]

Can a celestial dog feel any pain when a sword pierces its body?
Can a fiendish wolf feel terror when a steel clad warrior is about to crush its head?

Asmo

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I have to agree with Storm Raven in the moralic part of this discussion. A summoned creature is as real and physically present as your player character, it will be hurt, feel pain and it certainly can be reduced to 0 HP or lower, which means it can be killed. It won't leave blood and a sad corpse because as soon as it is dead, it vanishes to where it was called from. There, it will take 1 day to reform it's physical presence.
Seeing as all creatures summoned by a Summon Monster I will have at least an Intelligence rating of 3, which effectively pushes them in the range of humanoid intelligence, attacking one of them to gain the advantage of the discussed AoO+Cleave combo is comparable to AoO a humanoid being that is on your side in a fight to gain a personal advantage in your next attack.
The rules for Attack of Opportunity as written allow this, as they only name combatants when they talk about who can provoke an attack of opportunity, as such naming everyone involved in a combat scene.

Now the biggest problem is, as always, adjudicating the moral of certain acts. In my opinion, attacking an ally that fights at your side against an enemy with the intent to kill, because that ally gives your attack an opening and killing it with one stroke will give you an advantage against your enemy is, if it's not the very last possibility to stop something extremely evil and your ally is okay with it, evil. It doesn't matter if you have the means to raise that ally later, or if that ally will take only a day to reform itself. There's only a very limited amount of situations in which an action like that would be even considered good, from a moral point of view.
There's a heap of situations where the summoned creatures could be viewed as something else than the fighter's allies...like when the wizard is taking the chance to summon them to attack the fighter, against whom he harbors some resentments for weeks already. Or when he summons creatures that he can coomunicate with and specifically orders them to attack the fighter.
The point is that it can be damn complex to adjudicate the moral value of an action...but that a lot of blanket statements done in this discussion simply would lead to an alignment shift, if the same tactic would be used with the same disinterest about causing pain and killing an ally for a few times, at least in my game. Which is not how others would handle it, I'm aware of that, but we've been asked our opinions.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Can a celestial dog feel any pain when a sword pierces its body?
Can a fiendish wolf feel terror when a steel clad warrior is about to crush its head?

Asmo

If you take it for granted that being killed (or simply losing hitpoints already) causes a certain amount of pain, and further take into account that those templates don't confer upon their bearers the immunity to pain, I'd say yes, they do feel pain when they are treated as you decribed?

 

[KarinsDad]

Which means, by the definition of the word "manifestation", that they are the real creature.

No it doesn't.

The word manifestation merely means that they appear. It doesn't indicate whether they are real or not. Go reread your own dictionary definition.

Illusions are "real" in the sense that my PC can manifest one and your PC can see it. That does not make it a moral issue to destroy an illusion.

What indicates whether they are "flesh and blood" creatures vs. "magical" creatures is:

1) Extraplaner - Not of this Earth. Hence, not flesh and blood in the traditional sense. "Unlike most other living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit. When an outsider is slain, no soul is set loose"

2) Short duration - They are conjured and go back where they came from. Whether they came from a sea of identical creatures on a demi-plane or a tiny little house with a garden and a family on that demi-plane is unknown. For all we know, they could be volunteers and love to die and re-die to further a cause.

3) Short duration - They poof if they attack a creature and do not overcome it's SR. This indicates that they are NOT normal creatures and not subject to the morality rules of normal creatures. Killing it yourself, or poofing it by having it attack an enemy, or wounding or killing it by having it hold off an enemy is irrelevant.

4) Magical Existence – A spell maintains their total existence in the campaign world. They do not exist in an Anti-Magic sphere (unless the caster of the sphere does not overcome their SR), but if the sphere moves, they pop back into existence.

5) Immune to Death - These creatures cannot die in the traditional sense from a summoning spell. Hence, the morality of killing them in the plane of existence of the campaign world is irrelevant to them. Saying that you believe it is immoral to kill them is like saying that you believe it is immoral to burn a dead ant with a magnifying glass because you believe it is immoral to burn a living ant with a magnifying glass. They are both ants, but they are not identical.


Also, in this particular tactic where if the Fighter hits, he cannot fail to kill the creature (at mid to high level when the fighter has the appropriate feats/equipment and the wizard is willing to give up a lower level spell to get the tactic to work), we have no knowledge if the creature feels pain or not. Since it instantly dies (to our knowledge), instantly disappears, and reforms in 24 hours, there is a reasonable chance that it does not feel pain using this tactic.


And it is not necessarily immoral to inflict pain. Doctors do it all of the time in order to heal.


You are getting hung up on the fact that they are " intelligent creatures". That does not make it moral or immoral to act in certain ways with respect to them as it would with other similar, but not identical creatures. To assume so is false.


Aberrations are creatures. Not usually immoral to kill them.
Constructs are creatures. Not usually immoral to kill them.
Elementals are creatures. Not usually immoral to kill them.
Outsiders are creatures. Not usually immoral to kill them.
Plants (i.e. types) are creatures. Not usually immoral to kill them.
Undead are creatures. Not usually immoral to kill them.
Vermin are creatures. Not usually immoral to kill them.

The further away from "social norm" creature types you get, the more obscure the morality rules become. Like in the real world where killing animals is not usually considered immoral.

I suspect that many of your PCs have killed many of these types of creatures over time and nobody really gave a rats rearend about the morality of it.


Your entire sense or morality here is also skewed by your "real world" morality. In the real world, murdering someone is considered immoral by most people. But, if you could kill someone and they could be summoned back by the authorities with 24 hours, then murder would be a considerably lesser offense in our society (maybe on par with a lesser form of kidnapping as opposed to murder).

Murdering an insect in the real world or the game world is typically not considered immoral.


The point is that a given DM MIGHT make this a moral issue, but the way WotC set this up does not REQUIRE that this is a moral issue.

You want to make it a moral issue in your game, fine.

But, that does not necessarily make it one by default, in fact the exact opposite by their intention to NOT make them normal same plane creatures.

 

[Storyteller01]

A summoned creature is no different than a spell that created a conjured ball of light which acted like a creature (e.g. Mirror Image-like) and by the spell description, stated that it could be used for AoOs, Cleaves, AoO+Cleave combos, etc.

They are not real creatures, they are manifestations of creatures as PER THE RULES.


Two questions for the moral argument supporters:

1) Does your PC attack, kill, and loot enemies? If so, he has assaulted, murdered, and stolen from others. That sounds immoral to me, no matter how you try to spin doctor his rationale for doing so.

2) Do you as a person eat pork? Pigs are a very intelligent animal more intelligent than even dogs. Yet we slaughter millions of them every year in the US to consume. If murdering a pig for food in the real world is not immoral, murdering a non-real (effectively magical) summoned creature is not immoral either.

In response to the first quote: If extraplanar creatures (and that is what is summoned, as I recall) do not exist, why would WotC created the Manual of the Planes? Why gives them homes, ecologies, or predators to run from? And more importantly, why are they usable as player characters (Manual of the Planes as well as the Savage Species book)? Are these player characters illusions as well?

In response to the second quote: Surprisingly, no! My players do kill in self defense, or when they have no other option (which is something I as a DM have to help them with). But they don't actively go hunting or killing enemies strictly for treasure(unless its our military campaign, but everyone is evil, and following orders ). They do tend to take what the other enemy had, but you can chalk that up to practicallity. Like I said, they have yet to go kill something just for treasure. Then again, the nature of the campaign is that each player has an important destiny, so everyone is hunting them.

In response to the third quote: Never said killing a summoned critter for food would be evil. Desperation kicks in, and things happen. Too bad the meat disappears! Seriously though, its not the same thing. We can argue survival over morality for the rest of time. My concern is: you strike down and intelligent creature (they can understand what you say, not just a limited sweries of trained phrases after all) summoned for the specific purpose of giving use a purely mechanical advantage. Even with the Angel example given in the previous thread, the cop deliberately missed Angels heart. Her intent was not "kill my friend to kill the other guy".

As for whether morality is a moot point: then why have alignments at all? Now, if you don't use them. Great!! I wouldn't mind trying a cammpaign like this. But the a campaign where there is good and evil, and alignments matter, would the actions of those with specific alignments also matter?

Seriously, my point isn't (or not completely) the morality of the situation. Going back to my example with riot police, would they kill each other to gain an AoO advantage (since most are trained in Aikido, AoO's are the bread and butter of their fighting style). No, because there is strength in numbers and the benefit is short lived. Also, the policeman's friend may kill you back. Now, I can give examples of attacking 'allies' to gain an advantage (Wesley Snipes throwing the Museuam curator through a plate glass window comes to mind...), and can even see 'the poor critter got in the way' arguement.

My complaint is: "My fighter attacks that summoned creature".
DM: "Why?"
Response: "For the AoO."

No explanation, no reason why THE FIGHTER would make such an attack, just a blatant malipulation of the rules by the player. Not even "In the heat of battle, I can't tell them from the enemy." Of course, that would go back to my previous argument: if summoned creatures (and we can agree that they are intelligent, if primal, buggers)are fair targets for AoO abuse, why not players?

 

[Storyteller01]

By the way, has anyone seen something like this in a D&D or WotC FAQ? Does anyone know what the response was?

 

[Storyteller01]

There are unambiguously legit reasons why I may want to threaten an ally. Frex, he is under a magical compulsion and I want to trip him before he runs off somewhere where he might come to harm. Can I not trip my friend as he runs past? If you say "no" we are really off the deep end, and maybe we should all hand our character sheets over to the DM because we clearly cannot trusted to play our PCs correctly.

Why would it be different for a summoned badger?

BTW, a BBEG may well choose to threaten all his nearby minions all the time. For sound reasons. If he does not like what his minion is doing, he may kill the miscreant right then and there! This does have the downside that his minions would get flanked very easily.

1) your not attacking/tripping your ally with the intent to kill.

2) you did not summon the play specifically for the purpose of being attacked.

Please note, your trip is not giving you a Cleave option, and your not tripping your friend just to get the CLeave (it is a good example of dealing with confused or charmed friends, though. )

As for the BBEG using the tactic, bravo. Good DMing, that's one heck of a bad guy. Would I allow a Cleave though...probably not.