| VedounMar |
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I have never, ever seen any of those classes manage to cast spells and fight in the same round, with the possible exception of Quicken Spell which is prohibitively expensive.
Use your head.
You've never seen a Wizard or Cleric use a summons, then cast? A Druid use an Animal Companion and cast? Did they cast a Summon Monster and then sit back and watch. Do Druids in your game bring popcorn to watch their companions kill stuff? How about an Evangelical Cleric with the Animal Domain? Which at later levels can buff, cast and have the animal charge in the same round...
That is not to say you shouldn't ban it. It is a complicated class, and keeping things simple is a decent enough motivation. . . Whole game systems have been built and enjoyed with that very thought.
As for the power level of the summoner. . . It has some decent power no doubt. When I was comparing it to my Evangelical Cleric mentioned earlier (doing all those tiresome dps calcs) I found the Summoner and Friend made a good showing. . . but didn't quite match it. Likewise when comparing the Summoner with a DPS fighter build. . . There are some threads dedicated to DPS builds, by all means compare for yourself.
In spellcasting the Summoner serves a few basic roles.. . that of the Summoner (obviously), and the Strategist( and a bit of the Booster). Why does that bear mentioning? The OP mentioned dominate monster. . . which is a good example of the Ivory Tower nature of this class. You can choose Dominate, but with the -3 DC, the need for decent con to survive early battles (Summoner=Glass Cannon), and the class's dependence on the conjuration school make Dominate a poor choice. Mass Charm Monster will be a far better choice, as your very hit/miss DCs will still affect Someone. This encapsulates most of the summoner in a nutshell. On first glance abilities look awesome, but when taken in context become much less so.
Powerful certainly. . . but if its level of power is ban worthy than there are at least a dozen other things in the game that would have to be banned alongside it. Typically if I'm going to ban something it would be for complication reasons for new players, not to discourage them from seeking powerful characters in a high fantasy game built for making powerful characters. . .
Vedoun