How does fearful empowerment work on summon monster?

Question

The dread witch prestige class offers the ability fearful empowerment:

Fearful Empowerment (Su): Starting at 3rd level, once per day you can add the fear descriptor to any spell you cast that has some sort of visual manifestation. For example, you could apply it to a fireball, to a summon monster spell, or to any visual illusion, but not to charm person, since that spell does not directly create any visual effect. Creatures targeted by a spell modified by fearful empowerment must make a Will save (DC equal to 10 + your class level + your Cha modifier) or become shaken for 1d4 rounds; this is in addition to any other effects the spell might have. Your save DC bonuses from master of terror apply to this spell.

^{(Heroes of Horror, pg. 98-99)}

Explicitly noted here is that fearful empowerment works with a summon monster spell, but then the effect of fearful empowerment is to attempt to render shaken anyone “targeted by a spell modified by fearful empowerment.”

Summon monster doesn’t target any creatures; it summons a monster. How does a fearfully-empowered summon monster work? Is everyone attacked by the creature, or otherwise targeted by its abilities, subject to the effect? Or is it merely that being in the presence of such a summoning that’s frightful—and if so, how close must one be? Do you have to be able to see it?

I suspect the strict RAW answer here is simply “you can cast a fearfully-empowered summon monster spell, since summon monster is explicitly a legal subject of the fearful empowerment ability, but since summon monster never targets anyone, no one is actually subject to the fearful empowerment effect and you just wasted your daily usage of the ability.” That being the case, does anyone have any experience running a dread witch actually using a fearfully-empowered summon monster to some actual effect? What are the pros and cons of running things that way—is that how you would still run things? Is there a solid best practice to follow here? Or is “just pick something else” really the best answer here?

Answer 1

There are two important points in this ability description:

you can add the fear descriptor to any spell you cast that has some sort of visual manifestation

Creatures targeted by a spell modified by fearful empowerment must make a Will save (DC equal to 10 + your class level + your Cha modifier) or become shaken for 1d4 rounds

These two items are not related. Unfortunately, as written, at best a fearfully-empowered summon monster would have no effect. At worst, the summoned creature itself would actually be shaken since it is technically the target of the summon monster spell.

It is probably fair to say that the intent of the ability was to make shaken any creature who was affected by a visual spell's effect as long as it was an active effect (e.g. monster attacks, fireball damages as opposed to illusory wall just being a giant passive wall of fear), but it is not worded as such. Ultimately, this ability is one that allows you to apply it to spells that will receive no benefit from it. Buyer beware.

However, there may be some beneficial interaction with other feats and abilities that may require the fear descriptor, so that could be useful for getting a fear descriptor on a spell that otherwise would never have it. I do not have any examples offhand of such a situation.