Abraxas said:
The difference is in all those other cases free will is involved. In the case of summoned creatures, there is no free will. They are, effectively, capable automatons and nothing more. The spell summons a creature that does nothing but follow your directions to the best of its ability, or lacking any directions, attack your nearest enemy. Thats how everyone I have ever gamed with has dealt with them, and it works perfectly fine within the rules.
It's easy to see how one can arrive at that conclusion. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that
Summon Monster is a simple Conjuration (Summoning), not a Enchantment (Compulsion). I guess both interpretations can be argued from the rules out of the core books. So your concept works for your game, and mine...well, I DM in the Iron Kingdoms anyway, and the summoning rules are pretty different there.
@KarinsDad
I'd be very oblieged if you'd stop shouting your interpretation of the rules into my ears. I'm not deaf (blind). You keep insisting that a creature that has been reduced to -10 HP is not dead, but, according to the game we are playing, it is. Just as dead as the henchman that was reduced to -10. Or any other creature. Being at -10 HP is defined as being dead in D&D.
And just because the body is reformed 24 hours later doesn't make it less dead.
And what has this "they are slaves" got to do with anything else? First off, it is an interpretation as much as the automatons abraxas called them. I could argument for them having free will just as well, and just from the same rules. Second, even if they were "just slaves", killing them out of convenience is still an evil act, according to the D&D alignment rules. Third, even if they were just "slaves", that doesn't mean they can't be allies to you in a fight. Fourth, what they think and what not is absolutely not described. What is described in the spell is that you get a [insert creature], that it instantly attacks your enemies or follows your directions, if you can communicate with it. Fifth, what constitutes "common knowledge" in any given fantasy setting about the magic used and the effects thereof is handled with the appropriate skills, like
Spellcraft, Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (Planes), at least if you don't simply want to handwave that away. Which you can, in your own campaign.
About that hairsplitting between opponents and enemies...that's simply a course in circular logic? Most of the examples you quoted last time simply described situations during which a character was in the process of attacking somebody (thus becoming his enemy automatically), or describing under which circumstances a character cannot AoO an opponent (meaning that opponent already qualified as enemy, otherwise the AoO couldn't have been provoked but not followed up on in the first place). The one thing that might have an opponent who is not necessarily your enemy is the coup-de-grace, when your ally tries to keep you from CdG-ing a fallen foe..and even that is debateable. So where's your point? The rule as written makes perfect sense. If you intend to handle it differently, that's okay, too..it's the base of the whole AoO vs. ally discussion in the first place. We're just arguing outside of D&D RAW.
An lastly...your "proof" is simply your own interpretation of information not given in the descriptions of the summoning spell and magic, and of your perceptions of what an enemy constitutes. You say it yourself...you can AoO whomever you please, according to the rules, as long as they provoke an AoO...which they only do if they are
enemies, according to the rules. A simple summoned creature running past you is, by your own quote, not an enemy. So they don't provoke an AoO.
And please...no shouting anymore, yes?
