I've got a lot of fun memories playing summoners in a variety of games, the bg and iwd series being up there. What I'd love to see is actually a bit like the system used in the naruto anime (haha don't judge me, been watching it with my little bro in law) where each summoner had to form a "contract" or relationship with the summon type (like naruto with his toads). Implement it via a skill/talent/background that the wizard picks on creation, either with some pre-generated story/background or the ability to write your own to RP the character well. This way you couldn't have a necromancer focused summoner suddenly pulling out an army of orcs when fighting a cleric, for instance. That'd help with balance, as the summoner might be stronger in situation a, but totally suck in situation b. Then summoning could be implemented as a special ability, not a spell, with various strengths (ie lots of weak, a couple of medium or one strong) but it comes at the cost of some memorized spells due to the energy and focus required to summon whatever it is. I wouldn't put a time limit on it, but rather have them hang around until the end of the battle they've been summoned in. This system could work well because you can still summon some powerful summons, feel totally ripped, but it'd also introduce some specific weaknesses with summons so you couldn't just use them for every battle; you'd need to keep the party tank etc around. obviously it needs some padding out, but what do you all think?
