Summoner (variant of the Cleric)

[hammymchamham]

Ok, so I am trying to come up with a balanced variant of the Cleric class for a character idea I have. Basically I’m trying to develop someone who is really good at summoning. Looking through Defenders of the Faith I saw the Summoning P.D. and realized a Cleric may be the way to go for the Contemplative PrC. But I wanted to play around with the Cleric class to fit the summoning type, so these were some ideas I had:

Summoner (variant of Cleric)
Hit die: d8
Class Skills: same as cleric, plus Knowledge(The Planes)
Armor and Weapon Profiencies: All simple weapons, one Martial weapon. Light armor and shields.
Spells: Same as a cleric
Domains: Summoning Domain (from Defenders of the faith) and one other domain
BAB: Same as cleric
Saves: Same as cleric
SPD: Same as cleric
Spontaneous Casting: A Summoner may drop a prepared spell and replace it with a Summon Monster spell of the appropriate level. For example, a cleric has the 1st level spell Shield of Faith prepared and the 3rd level spell Bestow Curse. The cleric can drop Bestow Curse to cast Summon Monster III or Shield of Faith to cast Summon Monster I.
A Summoner can not drop a prepared domain spell for spontaneous casting.
Chaotic, Evil, Good, and Lawful spells: Same as cleric
Turn Outsiders and Elementals: A Summoner has the supernatural ability to rebuke or command Outsiders and Elementals. This ability only works on beings with the Outsider subtype (but not Native Outsiders) and Elementals. Summoners are unable to rebuke or turn undead.
Extra Turning: Same as cleric


Comments, thoughts? Feedback would be appreciated

 

[Chun-tzu]

Very interesting. Dropping the medium and heavy armor and allowing one martial weapon seems reasonably balanced.

With regards to the domains, maybe the Summoning prestige domain should be available and even required for all Summoners (so they would get Summoning and one other domain).

Since being able to communicate with outsiders would be so essential to this type of character, I'd want to add more language-capability to this guy. You could add Speak Languages to their skill list, or maybe have them gain outsider/elemental languages at first level and every other.

 

[Bean 2.0]

what's SPD

the rest is interesting I think I'm going to try this

 

[Bean 2.0]

clerics already have special access to infernal, abbysal, and celestial but this guy probably needs infernal,aquan,terran, and auran as well

 

[hammymchamham]

what's SPD

the rest is interesting I think I'm going to try this

Spells Per Day. Just uses the same progression (and spell list) as Clerics, and I just realized I put Spells: Same as cleric. Thats what I get for doing the end, then the begining, the the middle

Good idea about the languages, I'll throw that in

 

[Bean 2.0]

I like Chun-tzu's Idea make one of their domains the summoning domain

 

[Jeph]

Good ideas! However, I think they should be able to turn Elementals, too. And, instead of Domains, you might want to just grant +1 Summon spell of each level that they can cast, and Augment Summoning as a bonus feat at 1st level. In exchange for the effective loss of 1 domain, you might want to give an Improved Summon ability, at 2nd level and every 4 levels thereafter:

Improved Summon: At 2nd level, the Summoner gains +1 effective caster level for the purposes of all Conjuration (Summoning) spells. This bonus improves by +1 at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th levels.

 

[hammymchamham]

Thats for the idea about elemantals. Throwing that in. The reasons I didn't want to give them the Summoning P.D. at 1st level is because its a Prestiage Domain, and should take something to get. But I guess since others have mentioned getting it, I'm going to change around how domains work. As I was writing him the first time, I kinda felt iffy about the domains, just didn't seem right, so they'll get Summon domain plus one other.

Also, what about getting Augment Summoning at 2nd level, since it has a PreReq of Caster Level 2+ ?