Can Wizards Summon Fiends?

[Aunders]

So I've got a player who is rebuilding his old wizard from 1e into 2e and he's having difficulty figuring out how to summon devils as that was his bread and butter in 1e. I see the Summon Fiend spell in 2e is for Divine casters but is there any way you can get a Wizard to have that spell or access to the ability to summon evil-aligned outsiders?

[Xenocrat]

Only with the Planar Binding ritual in the CRB.

[KrispyXIV]

Currently, this available as noted by Xenocrat only via Rituals.

If it is your game and your player, however, its worth noting that things are tightly balanced enough that you're not going to break anything by letting your player have Summon Fiend as a non-divine caster.

[manbearscientist]

Separating summon spells has little to do with balance and more to do with differentiating the spell lists. And even that is probably fine to homebrew around. If it is 'too strong' to give access for free it can always be at the cost of a feat (see: Divine Access for Oracle).

[cavernshark]

Aunders wrote:

So I've got a player who is rebuilding his old wizard from 1e into 2e and he's having difficulty figuring out how to summon devils as that was his bread and butter in 1e. I see the Summon Fiend spell in 2e is for Divine casters but is there any way you can get a Wizard to have that spell or access to the ability to summon evil-aligned outsiders?

You can probably only work this out with some amount of multi-classing right now or changing the concept a bit to pick a different class. Devils, Angels, etc are all now divine in nature and each of the spell lists gets 1-2 types of things it focuses on summoning.

If your player wants the prepared casting style of a wizard, the witch class with the Fervor patron would have access to Divine spells. There's also some decent summon support for that build since the Witches hex could be used on the summon. Cackle is also a unique power which would potentially let the player summon two things at once at the same time and there's a level 4 feat that would let the player swap prepared spells out for summon spells.

Similarly, if the player wants an arcane list, a sorcerer with Crossblooded Evolution (level 8 feat) could pick up a single spell off of the divine list and grab the summon. It could be made into a signature spell which would let the player cast across the whole level. The arcane bloodlines also have the Arcane Evolution feat at 4, which would give the player a spell book.

[Orithilaen]

By RAW, you can do it by multiclassing into a divine caster. (I was going to say you can do it by taking Magaambyan Attendant/Halcyon Speaker, but I think that won't actually work because of alignment incompatibility.)

But probably the better solution is to homebrew a class feat. Or an archetype that lets you take feats to get all the summon spells. It's not game-breaking; alongside the fact that summons are no longer a clearly optimal choice, the division of the summon spells into creature categories means that you can't just pick which one on the fly. As others have said above, it has more to do with giving each spell list a distinctive identity, and there are already lots of ways to pick up a few off-list spells.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Aunders wrote:

So I've got a player who is rebuilding his old wizard from 1e into 2e and he's having difficulty figuring out how to summon devils as that was his bread and butter in 1e. I see the Summon Fiend spell in 2e is for Divine casters but is there any way you can get a Wizard to have that spell or access to the ability to summon evil-aligned outsiders?

Other than dedication into a Divine spellcasting class, or utilizing a ritual, no.

It makes sense from a worldbuilding standpoint, since you use Religion checks to identify outsiders from the Abyss or from the Heavens, which is strictly Divine territory. In short, Arcane spellcasters aren't going to be extremely knowledgable about those types of outsiders in Golarion. (Of course, they can take the Unified Theory skill feat when they are Legendary Arcana, which would prove otherwise, but until then it's not going to be likely.)

Is there a major problem to make spellcasters like Wizards able to summon fiends? Not really. Summons in this game are pretty weaksauce, so unless you're summoning creatures with special abilities that are crucial in a fight, it's not particularly powerful to do so. Even with feats and abilities that improve their effects. But do know that encroaching on spell lists like this should likewise means Clerics can summon Golems, Giants, Entities, etc., for balance reasons.

[Timeshadow]

Honestly if I were GMing this player I'd just let him learn an arcane version of the spell as one of his lvl up frebees at the cost of banning from using a same lvl type summon EG lose access to Summon dragon to gain access to summon fiend. It allows the player his flavor without imbalance. Both are 5th lvl summons

[Kulgore]

Wizards get summon dragon, which IMO is significantly better than summon fiend. If he wanted to give up dragon summoning in favour of fiend summoning I'd be fine with it.

[Kulgore]

Or, if he wants it 100% RAW legal, while maintaining 90% of his wizard flavour:

Make him an arcane sorcerer. Take the crossblooded feat to add summon fiend to his spell list and then make it his signature spell.

And take the arcane evaluation feat so he can still do that whole wizard "I learn exotic spells and add them to my spell book. And I study my spell book every morning to determine which spell I'm going to be casting today." thing.