Effigy Mage?

[Saint of Kord]

So a player in my group wants to play a puppet master in the vein of Naruto from 1st level. I'm always willing to completely rewrite fluff, but this would take some crunchy changes that I'm afraid could be unbalancing.

I'm thinking of using the skeletal companion alternate Necromancer class feature from UA, only replacing the skeleton with a warforged with no INT.

Also, I would allow the player to use Summon Monster spells to conjure construct versions of anything on the list. The construct immunities being what they are, I would balance this by saying that puppet masters are invariably under the tutelage of a master or academy (from whose stock of puppets you'd be summoning) that allows you to rent their puppets for a fee, say 10gpXthe HD of the creature summoned, doubled if you allow the summon to be destroyed.

I don't really have time to playtest any of this so I'm asking you guys. Any glaring game balance issues? Any better ideas?

[Gavinfoxx]

...Why not play a Shaper?

[Daftendirekt]

...Why not play a Shaper?

Good point there, refluffing astral construct as a naruto-style puppet takes little effort, and it's already a construct. If they don't want to play a psion, maybe just work up an arcane version of Summon Astral Construct and let him play his wiz/sorc.

[Thurbane]

Maybe obvious, but Effigy Master PrC from CAr?

[Yuki Akuma]

...Conjure Ice Beast already makes construct versions of things from the Summon Monster list.

It's a Cleric and Druid spell, though, but you can easily house rule that.

It's balanced by the fact that they lose almost all of their special abilities due to the Ice Beast template.