Summoner

Summoners are a clandestine, loose coalition of arcane practitioners who focus entirely on the art of summoning. From lesser spirits to greater gods, summoners have discovered that nearly any entity will come (often willingly) to your aid if you know the shape of their true name. Summoners journey under a well-deserved paranoia, seeking to collect these true names and perhaps piece back together something they broke so very long ago: the monstrous world itself.

Keepers of True Names

Summoners, in a sense, are librarians and historians of the ancient eternities. It would be impossible to obtain a god’s true name without also learning extensively about that god, and so by accident of that fact, summoners tend to possess the most knowledge of the monstrous world out of any other.

The act of seeking a true name is often a laborious series of quests, yet summoners find the payoff worth pursuing and engage in this kind of seeking almost continuously. Once found, the summoner jots down the keys for utterance of a true name in their occult lexica, and begin the hunt for the next name.

Once one knows a true name of a god or spirit, one gains immense power over it. Summoners, specifically, leverage these names in order to perform summoning magic: the art of speaking words so profound that new gods spring into existence near the summoner, ready to undertake their whim.

Worldbreakers

Although powerful and knowledgable, the summoners of Oshanal must hide themselves or else risk their lives. Once, long ago, a great summoner — possibly the greatest — attempted to call forth a true god and instead caused the conjunction of all realms, and broke eternity open, exposing the cosmos to horrible elder things from between eternities. People still, understandably, loathe the art of summoning and do not suffer initiates gladly. Quite the contrary: in most parts of the world, summoners are shunned. In some, they are simply hunted down and slain.

Loathsome Practitioners

Despite the stigma on their head, summoner orders proliferate. Instead of openly studying as they once did, though, summoners instead acknowledge their loathed status and form smaller, informal cells of study with one another. These cells are loosely connected, but persist across the entirety of the monstrous world. In these occult societies, summoners hold clandestine meetings where they exchange any updates to their lexica or discoveries of metaphysic taxonomy. Typically members of an occult society commit complimentary true names to the memories of their initiates, and only collect their full known lexica in official volumes, precious items jealously guarded over.

One day, the time will come where summoners are again recognized as worthy peers to the other magical arts, or at least this is something summoners tend to believe. It is in the service of this dream that they persist in their work even in the face of a world that fears and hates them. One day, they will restore peace and prosperity to the twilight world, healing eternity itself: or else they will ruin it trying.

Creating a Summoner

When creating a summoner, consider how you first discovered the presence of true names, and what that originating moment meant to you. Were you secretly brought into an occult society that traded in true names like currency? Did you find out about the power of true names on your own, or through independent research? Were you an accidental inheritor, changed suddenly and without warning by the seemingly incomprehensible language spoken by a shackled summoner, destined for execution?

Quick Build

You can make a magus quickly by following these suggestions. First, put your highest ability score in Intelligence, followed by Charisma or Constitution. Second, choose the occult initiate background.

Multiclassing Notes

If your group uses the optional rule on multi classing in the Player’s Handbook, here’s what you need to know if you choose summoner as one of your classes.

• Ability Score Minimum: As a multi class character, you must have at least an Intelligence score of 13 to take a level in this class, or to take a level of another class if you are already a summoner.
• Proficiencies Gained: If summoner isn’t your initial class, here are the proficiencies you gain when you take your first level as a magus: light armor, dagger, quarterstaff, and an artisan’s tools of your choice.

Class Features

As a summoner, you gain the following class features.

Hit Points

• Hit Dice: 1d6 per summoner level
• Hit Points at 1st Level: 6 + your Constitution modifier
• Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d6 (or 4) + your Constitution modifier per summoner level after 1st

Proficiencies

• Armor: None
• Weapons: Daggers, darts, slings, quarterstaffs, light crossbows
• Tools: None
• Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom
• Skills: Choose two from Arcana, History, Insight, Investigation, Medicine, and Religion

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

• (a) a quarterstaff or (b) a dagger
• (a) a scholar’s pack or (b) an explorer’s pack
• Three distinct lexica of true names

Summoning Magic

You are a collector of true names, both sacred and profane. Recording these names in your lexica, you document a series of potential pacts and summonings for a large variety of lesser and greater gods and spirits. See the end of the class description for a list of summonable spirits.

Lexica

At 1st level, you have some varied lexica containing four lesser true names of your choice. Your lexica is a repository of these true names. Summoners tend to split their lexica up and track them in parts: this behavior is an effective cipher against intrusion and can also help a summoner avoid being totally robbed of their true names. Often this paranoia pays off.

Summoning Spirits and Gods

The summoner table shows you how many summoned spirits you may have at one time. To summon a spirit, you must have at least one available summon slot. Spirits are living spells: they can move, and they have their own actions. A summoned spirit will do what you wish it to do without protesting, even if obeying you would kill it.

Summoned spirits have 1 hit point, an AC equal to yours, and merely vanish when they take damage: waiting for you to summon them again. You may summon a spirit anywhere in within a 30ft range of yourself, and you may direct it to move anywhere you like. Your summoned spirit acts immediately after you do.

In order to summon a spirit, you must spend time after each long rest committing their true name to memory. You may memorize up to your proficiency bonus in spirits each day.

Summoning a spirit is a standard action, and you may dismiss a spirit at any time as a free action.

The strength of your summoned spirit is fixed. It grows as you advance in summoner levels. Each summoned spirit has 3 levels of strength, each level defining its own special features for the spirit. You summon spirits at 1st level when you get this feature. You begin summoning level 2 spirits at 5th level, and level 3 spirits at 13th level.

Summoning Ability

Intelligence is your key ability for your summoner features, since the art of summoning is a purely mental discipline. You use your intelligence whenever a feature refers to your summoning ability. In addition, you use your Intelligence modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a summoned spirit’s magic you use and when having your summoned spirits make attacks.

• Summoning save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier.
• Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier.

Finding and Learning True Names

Each time you gain a summoner level, you can add one new summoned spirit to your lexica for free. On your adventures, you might find other names that you can add to your lexica.

Your Lexica

The names which you add to your lexica as you gain levels reflect the questing for hidden truth you conduct on your own, as well as any significant breakthroughs you may have about the taxonomy and etymology of the ancient spirit lineages. You might find other true names during your adventures; you could discover one enshrined in a decrepit ruin, or you could have true names taught to you by colleagues and peers.

Whenever you obtain a new true name, you may add it to your lexica. Copying the name into your lexica involves reproducing the cosmic shape of the true name in graphs and charts. You must practice speaking the name until you understand the nuance of its intonation and the particular truth it conveys.

Each time you transcribe a spirit’s true name, the process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp. The cost represents scratch work you’ve gone through as you attempt to perfectly refine the cosmic graph and model it in a way that you can easily recollect and comprehend later. Once you’ve spent this time and money, you can memorize the true name just like your others.

You may make copies of your own lexica and other summoners’ — for example, if you want to make sure that your discovered true names survive you should you meet an untimely end, you may make backup copies of different parts of your lexica. This works exactly like transcribing true names to your lexica to begin with, except it’s quicker: to make such a copy, it only costs 10 gp per spirit transcribed.

If you lose one of your lexica, but have at least one remaining, then you may recover the lost lexica with the same procedure outlined for copying backup lexica. If you lose all of your lexica, you may create a new lexica with the true names that you’ve committed to memory. It is extremely common for summoners to abandon lexica or to hide them away somewhere, and many summoners have a cache of materials they keep ready in case they need to make more copies with no warning.

What is the lexica?

Your lexica is a collection of true names, but it is not necessarily a physical book (though it often is). Some lexica are songs on scrolls, others are ancient murals or etchings in the stone walls of labyrinths. The easiest lexica to carry with you tend to be leather volumes, song books, scroll collections, and things of that nature.

Occult Society

When you reach 2nd level, you choose an occult society, which determines the lexica of true names you learn to invoke. These occult societies are detailed at the end of the class description. Your choice grants you features at 2nd level, and again 6th, 10th, and 14th level.

Realm Affinity

When you reach 3rd level, you grow familiar with the summoning of spirits from a particular radiant realm. Pick one of the radiant realms: arcadian, astral, primordial, stygian, or sylvan. You may summon a spirit from that realm as a bonus action.

Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Using the optional feats rule, you can forgo taking this feature to take a feat of your choice instead.

Master Summoner

Beginning at 9th level, you may summon two spirits at once and command each of them.

Potent Invocations

Once you reach 13th level, your summoned spirits grow much more durable. Each of your summoned spirits now has a number of hit points equal to half of yours, rounded down.

Grandmaster Summoner

Beginning at 18th level, you may summon three spirits at once and command each of them.

Permanence

At 20th level, you may give yourself a true name, making it much more difficult for you to die. If you should ever perish, anyone who knows your true name may invoke it to cast the true resurrection spell on you. You return with no adornings, having only the true names you had committed to memory when you died.