Augment Summoning

[wraithstrike]

The summoner's SLA's are affected by Augment Summoning even though SLA's are not spells. Is this an exception to a normal rule, or can spell enhancing feats feats affect SLA's as long as they they don't use up higher level spell slots like metamagic feats do?
As an extension to this question could I use Spell Focus(XXX) to increase the DC of an SLA that emulated a particular spell?

[kyrt-ryder]

As far as I know/can remember, the spell focus feats applied to SLA's in 3.5, though I can't remember where I got the ruling from. (Slight chance it was a houserule/ mistaken attempt at RAW, but back then I followed the RAW pretty religiously, so odds are good I'm right on this.)

[Bwang]

In 3.5, there were 3rd party feats that duplicated Metamagics, including AS. A friend just plain house ruled that they were the same thing. Easier than my creating duplicate feats, but be warned that there is no integral 'level penalty', so a high level cost (like Empowered) is not carried over. He eventually balanced it with reducing DCs, costing extra uses or delaying how often a SLA could be used.

[james maissen]

wraithstrike wrote:

The summoner's SLA's are affected by Augment Summoning even though SLA's are not spells. Is this an exception to a normal rule, or can spell enhancing feats feats affect SLA's as long as they they don't use up higher level spell slots like metamagic feats do?

As an extension to this question could I use Spell Focus(XXX) to increase the DC of an SLA that emulated a particular spell?

I believe that the folks at Paizo are saying that these feats apply to SLAs in general. I'm not saying that I agree with this but that seems to be their ruling on it.

I understand the confusion however as the summoner class has so many special rules and exceptions that one wonders what normal rules apply to it and it makes sense to assume that this is yet another rules exception for them.

You can't apply metamagic feats to SLA, but there are other feats for that (empower SLA, quicken SLA, etc). Eschew materials doesn't matter as SLAs don't have VSM components.

-James