Turns out reading through a whole complex class can make you miss some things.
The Summoner, Draw Steel's first class beyond the core rules (though it and the Beast Heart were originally meant to be in the core, but some system design had to happen before they could be complete) is built around summoning minions. Lots and lots of minions.
Well, lots.
At level 1, you'll have access to four kinds of minions. Each subclass/Circle/portfolio gives you an option of three signature minions and three 3-Essence minions, and you get to choose two of each (meaning you're really choosing which minion you don't want to take in each list.)
Later on, you'll pick one type of 5-Essence minion, one type of 7-Essence Minion, and then you'll get your subclass' Champion, which is essentially your 9-Essence minion (but these break a lot of rules so we don't really need to consider them here).
You can control up to 8 minions at a time (not counting the Champion. Again, we'll set them aside for now). It's up to you whether these minions are in the same squad or not, BUT: only minions of the same name can be in the same squad.
You can only have two squads, and thus you can only have two kinds of minions out at once.
Thus, in practice, you're likely to have one squad for your signature minions and one squad for your "heroic" minions. If you want to have two squads with heroic minions, you won't be able to get your free summoned signature minions at the start of your turns (though there's an optional rule to just immediately sacrifice the squad-less signature minions to reduce ability costs).
The real upshot, though, is that you'll only have two kinds of minions out on the field at once, which should make things far more manageable.
So, another way to think about it is this:
As a Summoner, you've got two battle pets that can each be in multiple places at once. The number of places you can put them is dependent on how much Stamina they have. If you want a third pet out, you need to get rid of one of those two (either by letting them naturally get killed off by foes or by sacrificing them).
You have a cap on how many minions you can have out there on the field, 8, but if you're ok with them all being of the same kind (one "pet" with many locations) you can have them all in one big squad.
If each squad is a pet, then it makes sense that you can only command your pet to do one specific maneuver or main action on a turn.
Now, the following idea works great for minions that only have free strikes and no rolled abilities (which I think is the majority of them,) but this "pet" will do the same amount of damage with its attacks - it's just a question of whether you spread them out to multiple foes or if you concentrate them on one.
As an example: I'm controlling a squad of 4 Skeletons (Skeleton Squad! It sounds like a 1970s TV show). Each of these guys do just 1 point of damage with their free strikes. Let's say I have two Ogres I'm fighting. If I have my Skeletons attack on their turn, then I can do 4 damage to one ogre, 3 to one and 1 to the second, or 2 to each.
Now, like the Director's minions, if I target a foe with a Signature Ability, such as the Flow of Magma's Molten Strike, I make a Power Roll just once. A single target can only take the power roll's damage once, while any further minions attacking that target just add their Free Strike damage.
For example: I'm fighting three War Dogs and I've gotten 4 Flows of Magma onto the field. The Flow of Magma has a signature ability that does 4, 6, or 8 damage (as well as other effects). It also does 4 damage on a Free Strike.
The most efficient way for them to use this is to attack each War Dog separately (though they do have to get within range to do so, as this is a melee option, while free strikes can be either melee or ranged). I have more elementals than targets, so if I have Flow 1 attack War Dog A, Flow 2 attack War Dog B, and Flow 3 attack War Dog C, Flow 4 is going to, at best, need to tag-team attack one of the aforementioned ones. We'll say A.
That means that while B and C are taking 4, 6, or 8 damage from this attack, A will now be taking 8, 10, or 12 from the attack, because Flow 4 can only add its free strike damage onto Flow 1's attack.
However, if I have another squad acting separately, a different minion with an ability (say, a Quiet of Snow) could make a Power Roll against War Dog A because this is a different squad. Squads act separately, so your Quiet Squad's effects and damage would all already take into account the state of things after your Flow Squad had done its business.
This manner of contribution also applies to Maneuvers that involve a power roll. If you want to, say, knockback a target, you don't roll, but instead get a result equal to 8 plus the minions' characteristic, plus the number of squad members within distance of the maneuver. So, you might need a certain number minions to get the result of the maneuver that you're looking for.
Note that when you get your Champion at level 8, this doesn't count against your Minion or Squad maximum, breaking the rules in several ways.
Depending on your Formation choices, you might have access to more minions, but you only have two squads, and thus only ever have two types of minions on the field. (Two multi-bodied "pets.")
To be sure, even if they truly were single pets, commanding two as well as running your hero would be a challenge, and I think moving the minions is going to be probably take a lot of time regardless.
But I hope that these insights might make the class a little less overwhelming (it certainly helped me to think it out this way).
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