But Beast Master and Warlock get unlimited summons!

Go go poison spider!

I always overuse summons in games.. If the fight is too hard I just make more friends. Overwhelm with numbers. .. of course if you use the tweak anthology mod in BG to uncap the summons limit some of the enemies can spam summons as well which makes some fights super crazy.

I like summoning if I've built a summoner (duh!), but I think I'd prefer my animal companion to be a feature rather than a spell-summoned creature. I imagine the spell approach is useful from an implementation viewpoint, but I would like my pig to be curled up by the fire next to my dwarf when we camp. Purely a fluff thing, though, so it doesn't break the game for me having to summon him.

Wait, how does the Warlock get summons? Just pact of the chain familiar, or something more?

I mean if you multiplayer 4 rangers, can have 4 players and 4 pets.

Beastmaster spider has made me enjoy playing Ranger the most, something I would never usually do for a DnD type game.

Unlimited find familiar, no clue what its called.

I love the spider...I'm also slightly creeped out by it, but he's a cool companion.

How? I used find familiar on Wyll and it greys out once used until combat is over. Does it let you recast it even though it is greyed out? I must admit, I never tried to.

At level 2 or 3 you get a permanent recastable version.

Wait you said 'until combat is over'.

That is the permanent summon.

The summon even appears in camp for warlocks. Haven't checked rangers but it must be the same, no?

You can pick a ranger with the beast tamer feature to have a familiar and the beastmaster subclass to have an companion and when you level up you can use the "summon animal" spell to conjure more animals and finally multiclass to cleric so you can summon undead animal corpses to do your bidding and finally became the crazy lady of the cats.