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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iceifur" data-source="post: 3673093" data-attributes="member: 18077">Due to the excellent suggestions, I added the Forceful Summons (Cha bonus to summons' durations) ability at 1st level. Charisma was chosen due to the fact that your Intelligence determines the highest level summoner spell you can cast, and will therefore always be at least a 19 (unless you don't want to be able to cast 9th-level spells). Plus, it's yet another reason not to dump Charisma. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />In addition, I added an optional rules section for Subtype Specialist Summoners, the idea being that a single subtype of summons is boosted while its opposite is penalized. It's worth noting that even if your effective caster level is somehow reduced to 0, due to the aforementioned Forceful Summons ability, the summon spell will last for at least 1 round.The list of subtypes could be larger, and could include creature types as well; however, the problem lies in balancing it so that a choice does not completely outweigh its opposite."Animals" and "Outsiders," for example, seems like a fine pairing at first glance, but it has some issues. Choosing "Animals" pumps up your SNA spells (already a spell level behind -- a sub-par choice) while simultaneously dumping on your SM spells (your most powerful option -- another sub-par choice). Choosing "Outsiders" makes your strongest suite of summoning spells even better and your weaker spells (due to the spell level lag) slightly weaker (pretty much a no-brainer). If you make it so the summoner gains access to the SNA spells at the same rate as SM spells (I-IX at 1st-9th rather than I-VIII at 2nd-9th), you're basically yoinking something that's pretty much exclusive to the Druid (and, to a lesser extent, the Ranger), causing further unneeded wonkiness.Choosing "Elementals," another decent option at the first pass through, doesn't actually have any effect at all until later into the class and spell progression, and will therefore unbalance almost anything it's paired with.Finally, most of the other creature types and subtypes are barely represented, if at all, in the summoning spells, making balancing the pairings difficult if not impossible. Of course, I subscribe to the "sub-par or over-powered options aren't really options at all" design mentality.</blockquote>

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