Hey Folks,
Many of you will have seen that the Summoner v0.6 has gone up (attached as PDF). With it fleshing things out, it's time to vote on the next subclass for it. I'll give a brief summary of the options below. You can vote for all the options you want, but 0.7 will probably add only one of them:
Keeper. The missing 'standard' subclass of Summoner that builds more on its core summoning mechanics than twists it like the existing subclasses. It falls between Binder's single powerful summon and Swarm's horde, of managing a small team of minions, juggling their movement and action. Focus on moving its minions and teamwork between them and keeping them effectively deployed. This also folds in the previous idea of 'Necromancer' since, a Necromancer under this model is a Keeper that selects the Undead plane of study (as a subclass tied to a single plane doesn't make sense).
Dreamer. A summoner that dreams up their conjured entities in their dreams, pulling these dream creatures into reality. This results in more customization and mixing and matching between planes, since it the summons aren't 'real' creatures from those planes, but semi-illusionary dream plane versions of them.
Caller. This one focuses on casting higher levels spells and special effects through their Summons, which often don't last as long as they exhaust their magical power. At higher levels, it can call more powerful but temporary summons to act once before fading away. This is one functions somewhat more like a caster compared to other Summoners. This has also been called Conduit/Channeler in previous polls/discussions.
Rider. This is a 'martial' Summoner, that focuses more on making their own attacks supported by their Summon, rather than supporting the summons or focusing on a special type of Summoner. They can still act like a Summoner using the basic features, but are more like a martial. The difference between them in a Converger is that the use their summons more as mounts and assists than merge with them completely. You will not get flying mounts at low levels though, so don't expect them.