When do summoned creatures act?

[Festivus]

Does anyone have any guidance as far as when a summoned creature gets to act? It states "on your turn", but that seems a bit vague. For example, last night a drow priestess had cast deeper darkness, but the wizard on his turn, first dispelled the darkness, and then had the lion attack. The prior round he had the lion attack first, and then his wizards actions. Can you flip flop those all you want? Could the wizard cast a spell, then have the lion act, and then move?

That doesn't seem right to me for some reason, but I was probably wrong with my ruling last night and wanted to check in here. Last night I said that he had to have the lion act before the darkness was dispelled... of course all his attacks succeeded.

 

[Rackhir]

Does anyone have any guidance as far as when a summoned creature gets to act? It states "on your turn", but that seems a bit vague. For example, last night a drow priestess had cast deeper darkness, but the wizard on his turn, first dispelled the darkness, and then had the lion attack. The prior round he had the lion attack first, and then his wizards actions. Can you flip flop those all you want? Could the wizard cast a spell, then have the lion act, and then move?

That doesn't seem right to me for some reason, but I was probably wrong with my ruling last night and wanted to check in here. Last night I said that he had to have the lion act before the darkness was dispelled... of course all his attacks succeeded.

No, they should have been able to do things as he wanted. If you were being a hard case about it you might have forced them to drop a point in the initiative order for each time, they switched off like that, but even that should be unnecessary IMHO. Since all you are really doing is shuffling the order of action a couple of seconds or fractions of a second. Since you aren't talking even as much of a shift in initiative as a delay to act before or after another player on a different initiative.

That said, he would probably need the ability to talk to the summons to be able to order it like this. Though most summoned creatures (especially the fiendish or celestial, since the template gives an int of at least 3) should understand common. But you might want to require the character to take the "native" language of the creature, if they want to be able to give it complex orders.

Summoning is hardly over powering as is, so I don't really think it's necessary to beat up the player with all sorts of iron clad restrictions on the exact order stuff happens.

 

[Infiniti2000]

In order to tactically plan actions like that, you need to be able to efficiently communicate. If the wizard could order the celestial lion (e.g.), then no problem. "Wait until I cast a spell before attacking" is a free action that you can take outside your turn, so such communication should be relatively easy.

If the summoned monster cannot be communicated with easily, however, such as a druid without speak with animals and a summoned rhino, then no. You can't just switch the ordering. In those cases, the summoned monster acts first (sans initiative changing actions).

 

[Festivus]

Ok, that was my thought post game as well (that I was perhaps unfair with it). It didn't change the outcome this session anyhow. I suspect it's those damn computer games (TOEE) that force your summon to act before you that plopped into my head. Of course the lion could have delayed... duh. It's games past 10pm where my brain shuts down that I run into these sorts of problems.

Thanks for the advice.