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He wants to summon terrible creatures to do his bidding? Diabolist PrC if alignment is not an issue, there is a diabolist guide out there who goes into excruciating details about planar bidding. Wizard would be suggested only because of a quicker qualification for the prestige class.
The "safest" way, again if alignment is not an issue, play a cleric and use planar ally, as your evil deity will send you the approriate evil outsiders to help you with your task.
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Depends on what kind of creatures he wants, how long he wants to wait to do it and whether or not he wants those creatures to be perminent. If he just wants to summon things to fight for him on a temporary basis/per-fight and dosen't care about assembeling an army of perminent/semi-perminent minions, then the best class, bar none, will be a summoner with the master summoner archtype. A master summoner is, without a doupt, the BEST class for specializing in the use of the summon monster line of spells. He can literally crap out a small army in a single encounter, and has the fastest/best summoning mechanic in the game. However, when it comes to planar-binding and the like, the master summoner sadly falls short. So if your player is more into binding fiends then summoning temporary monsters with summon monster spells, I would not recommend this route.
If your friend is specifically looking to play with planar binding, and do it well, I'd highly suggest that he/she look into the Diabolist Prestige class. The best entries to it are likely wizard(with the acadame graduate feat for standard action summons) or arcanist, but sorcerer is doable if he wants more then 14 cha. The Diabolist Prestige class is a wonderful PrC for planar-binding, giving the caster who takes it a substantial boost to the charisma checks they need to make to force devils into their service, as well as giving summoning-based feats like the ever nessicary augment summoning as free bonus feats and some other cool, themeatic abilities(such as making blast spells deal hellfire damage)...Oh, and the Diabolist also gets an imp companion that works almost like a druid's animal companion as appose to an improved fammiliar(and you can still take improved fammiliar and thus get an imp for each shoulder!)...which actually turns out to be VERY strong.
So, if going more for planar binding then summon monster...bar none, the Diabolist prestige class is THE way to go. If you want to know more about the class, and how it works, there is a very good optimization guide for it right here on these forums. I don't have the link ATM, but I can dredge it up for you if you like...
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heh most of the good features of the malconvoker have been turned into feats in pathfinder like fiendish legion is basically superior summoning feat...like usual, there are guides out there about summoning and planar binding, just read them.
Best base class for summoning? Guess if you want everything...Occultist (Arcanist archetype) , you get planar ally (all versions) + the ability to use summon monsters spells as a standard action lasting 1 minute per level instead 1 round/level.
Just use the summoner feats out there.
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Hmm...If they don't like the diabolist, they may like the darkfire adept better. It's another summoning-focused PrC that has some powerful abilites but gets overlooked because it loses three caster levels. Unlike the diabolist it does get a ton of abilites that directly enhance summoning, but at a significant cost as mentioned. If you want to see it, it can be found here..
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/c-d/darkfire-a dept
As for base classes, Sorcerer won't be doing much monster summoning -until- it gets planar binding and friends, so if he wants to focus exculsively on planar binding and forgoe the use of summon monster entirely sorcerer is good for the raw charisma. However, since he's interested in malconvoker, I take it he does, in fact, want to make use of summon monster as well as planar binding, in which case sorcerer is the WORST possible entry of the three main arcane casters. Wizard and Arcanist, for a summon monster-user, are both are good, with Arcanist being better if he goes with the -occultist- archtype. I don't know, however, if the occultist archtype summon monster ability scales with character level or arcanist class level. If it scales with character level then, without a doupt, arcanist with the occultist arctype will be THE best option, bar none....standard action summoning with no hoops is just that good. If the occultist summon monster scales with arcanist level rather then overall character level, then I'd actually advice wizard over occultist arcanist if he plans on taking any kind of prestige class. If no prestige class then occultist arcanist is the best choice no matter which way the summon monster power works...