Tsidkenu wrote:Crimson, you can have a water elemental as a cohort as soon as you have Summon Creature VI or higher & Thaumaturge level 5. You can view instructions on how to do this
here (Customising Summoned Creatures; click the spoiler!). Note: you don't need to be a thaumaturge to customise all your Summon VI, VII, VIII and IX spells to always create a water elemental. Have fun!
The Thaumaturge PrC was setup so that a Thaum could have, at the same time: 1 Summons and 1 Bound/Alley Planar.
At the moment, Planar Alley spell no longer gives the option for Elementals. Planar Cohart, the 5th Level feat, states any creature called through a Planar Calling, Biding or Summoning spell will serve the caster permanently (until Rest).
However, this DOES NOT apply to Call Elemental spell, nor the Gate Spell.
So at the moment, even thought the Character Details option as described in the link above still shows you can setup the Level 6 Spell of Planar Alley to always call an Elemental, if you do this, the spell WILL NOT summon anything, just cast and...nothing.
You have to reset the spell from the Level in the Character Details, in order to get the manually choose option.
It would seem that a decision was made that Planar Allay / Binding is to call only from the Outer Planes, while Summoning spells call to the Inner Planes?
If you want to fall down the rabbit hole, I suggest
reading this.
I would also suggest that Planar Alley / Binding get back the Elementals. Please.