Summoner Advice

[Nagog]

Howdy folks!

I'm currently working on making a Summoner class for my friends and I to use, but I'm struggling to find what CR of creature I can draw from for the starting Summoned Creature stats.

For reference, I'm making them half casters with their own spell list full of buffing and support spells, as the main focus of the class will be their summoned creature.
That said, until level 2 they will only have light armor and simple weapons to protect their d8 hit die form, until they pick up spells and a subclass at level 2, so whatever it is, it needs to be both powerful enough that later upgrades can build upon it without it quickly scaling out, but also not too powerful that level 1 it's broken.

Some references:
Find Steed (acquired at level 5 by paladins) mostly summons CR 1/2
Conjure Animals (Gained by Druids at level 5) can summon up to a CR 2 creature
Find Familiar (gained by Wizards at level 1) mostly summons CR 0 creatures
Pact of the Chain upgrades a familiar to a CR 1
Beast Master Rangers gain a Beast companion at level 3 that's about 1/4 and gains abilities from there
Keep in mind these references are for classes that also have other abilities to lean on beyond their summoned creature, so the summoner's will need to be a tad bit beefier than these at level 1.

[Tvtyrant]

Balancing summoners is rough in 5E. A potent summoner is like a Sorcadin that can fight and cast at the same time, so either the summon has to be bad at fighting or the summoner has to not be able to cast spells while the summon is out.

An easy patch is the summoner can't cast while their critter is out. Then the Summoner is basically a fighter between the summon and the caster, and a utility caster of sorts outside of it. If you got that way the appropriate scale to compare to is Moon Wildshape, which is decent but not amazing in combat (perfect because the summoner is going to also be in combat.)

So on that note; CR 1 until level 5, CR 2 levels 6-8, CR 3 levels 9-11, CR 4 until 14, 5 until 17, CR 6 after that.

[BerzerkerUnit]

You might look at the Eberron Battlesmith Artificer for a baseline. It’s meeting all your defined criteria.

Also, the mechanics are a bit tough to wedge into. If you want a strong pet then the summoner’s action needs to be spent directing the pet.

Here’s a link to my own attempt so you can have a look at how I tried to deal with those issues.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...Zuxsw_yIPrf6L_

[Grod_The_Giant]

When I was designing my Summoner (published in my Guide to Greatness), I worked backwards from the encounter difficulty rules. Those are calculated by converted each character into an exp budget and adding them up. So if your summon is going to carry most of the weight-- which was the case for my class, and seems like it will be for yours as well-- it should contribute around one character's worth to an encounter. So for each level, I looked at the exp budgets for a single character of that level, then translated that back into challenge ratings, giving me something like this:

Character Level	Easy XP Budget	Easy Summon CR	Medium XP Budget	Medium Summon CR
1st	25	1/8	50	1/4
2nd	50	1/4	100	1/2
3rd	75		150
4th	125	1/2	250	1
5th	250	1	500
6th	300		600
7th	350		750	3
8th	450	2	900
9th	550		1,100	4
10th	600		1,200
11th	800	3	1,600
12th	1,000		2,000	5
13th	1,100	4	2,200
14th	1,250		2,500	6
15th	1,400		2,800
16th	1,600		3,200	7
17th	2,000	5	3,900	8
18th	2,100		4,200
19th	2,400		4,900
20th	2,800		5,700	9

I decided that an Easy encounter was fair, since the summon is getting its combat abilities enhanced by the summoner in one way or another. From there I just smoothed out the progression.

[Nagog]

Balancing summoners is rough in 5E. A potent summoner is like a Sorcadin that can fight and cast at the same time, so either the summon has to be bad at fighting or the summoner has to not be able to cast spells while the summon is out.

An easy patch is the summoner can't cast while their critter is out. Then the Summoner is basically a fighter between the summon and the caster, and a utility caster of sorts outside of it. If you got that way the appropriate scale to compare to is Moon Wildshape, which is decent but not amazing in combat (perfect because the summoner is going to also be in combat.)

What I've got so far is giving the Summoner light armor, simple weapons, and a d8 hit dice (same baseline as a Warlock) and half caster spell progression with a custom spell list that 99% buff/debuff spells. They're also Int based, so dipping into Hexblade or Ranger won't make them OP early game.

You might look at the Eberron Battlesmith Artificer for a baseline. It’s meeting all your defined criteria.

Also, the mechanics are a bit tough to wedge into. If you want a strong pet then the summoner’s action needs to be spent directing the pet.

Here’s a link to my own attempt so you can have a look at how I tried to deal with those issues.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...Zuxsw_yIPrf6L_

That's what I ended up using as a baseline, with a few adjustments to overall HP and a few other details borrowed from how a Beast Master's companion scales (mostly the hp gaining a hit die every level rather than only varying by about 10-20 over the entire level spectrum).



I've also added in some Mutations (akin to the Pathfinder Summoner's trait of the same name) that grants the Summoned Creature abilities often found in 5e's creatures, like Flyby, Pack Tactics, Multiattack, Innate Spellcasting, etc. Do ya'll have any suggestions of other monster abilities that could work for a Summoned Creature?

[BerzerkerUnit]

I had a bunch for an aberration maker Artificer.

Here’s a link. The Plasmic Infusions Feature has a bunch of stuff like adding size or what have you.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ep2...w?usp=drivesdk