Master Summoner - take 2

[yennico]

I don't know if Yennico will be looking at this, but I wanted to make a comment about the Spell Enhanced Summoning ability.

I read this post.

With the release of Heroes of Battle, this ability does not seem to strong now.

I do not own the Heroes of Battle book, so I can post my answer based on the information you posted.

The War Weaver class is a 5 level PRC that gives the caster the ability to cast spells on multiple comrades (up to 1 per Intelligence/Charisma bonus + himself). At 5th level, the range for these spells are increased one step (touch to short, short to medium, medium to long).

Thus, a War Weaver could cast Blur (or Displacement, or Mage Armor, or Invisibility, etc.) on himself and 4 other people within short range (if it is normally a touch spell) at 5th level.

This is a really nice abilty, but IMHO this combined ability is not balanced.
It sounds like a mass buff spell version for the spell slot price of a normal buff spell.
One displacement spell for the entire party.... IMC No way.
I assume the War weaver has full spell casting pogression so each of the displacment spells is difficult to dispel.

To make that prestige class even stronger, a War Weaver can cast spells ahead of time into the "tapestry" that connects the members and release any spells stored with a single move action So, a 5th level War Weaver could release 5 spells to augment his comrades as a move action, then cast cast Fireball to soften the targets up.

From the information you posted I will not allow the war weaver prc IMC.

So, allowing a single spell to augment summoned creatures doesn't even begin to appear to be broken compared to the War Weaver that is now in an official WOTC product.

Yes it is an official WotC product, but WotC also released not balanced or broken prcs (e.g. the 3.0 Incantatrix).

I'm sure others will say "Well, a support character can get away with more becuase they are helping improve their comrades." While I don't necessarily disagree, the War Weaver already gets a lot more than what I am proposing for this class.

It is true that the War weaver gets more than your prc.

Here my opinion on this topic:
Each campaign has a different level of power. The level of power is determined by the GM.
If the GM allows the war weaver prc, and a player plays a war weaver your prc can get spell enhanced summonning ability (I´m not thinking about a war weaver/master summoner prc )
If the GM disallows the war weaver prc because of the level of power of this prc your prc can not get the spell enhanced summoning ability.

IMHO it depends on your GM if your master summoner gets the spell enhanced summoning ability.
IMC your master summoner prc will not get the spell enhanced summoning ability.

 

[farscapesg1]

Thanks for replying Yennico.

I agree completely that the class powers are very dependent on what the DM feels comfortable allowing.

For the campaign I am currently playing in, the DM has already allowed the class. With a little bit of tweaking, he even granted it full casting progression. To get this, he split up the Spell Enhanced Summoning and the Greater Augmentation abilities to occur over time.

Spell Enhanced Summoning ability is first attained at 5th level, but only works on 1 creature per 3 class levels (1 at 5th, 2 at 6th, 3 at 9th). At 10th level it can affect all the creatures summoned.

Greater Augmentation is first gained at 6th level and grants a +1 HD bonus to creatures, increasing to +2 HD at 8th level.

The only reason that I brought up the War Weaver is because I still want to make it as balanced as possible. However, when balancing PRCs it is my opinion that you have to look at all PRCs produced in published materials by WOTC. Sure there are some that are broken, but there are some that are horribly undesirable also.

I guess what I am saying is that I would like to balance the class out to the point that it could be somewhere compatible with anything that WOTC would publish.

Oh, and I have already thought about the combination of my class with the War Weaver. We will see if the campaign makes it that far