The Emerald Spires Questions

[LegitName]

Okay, here's the scoop: My friends and I are doing the Emerald Spires superdungeon. We are working our way through the Splinter Den right now. The boy who was originally GM was found to hold too much creative liberty for our liking. His older brother is taking over GM for him.

Our party consists of: A monk. A ranger (This player left a few days ago. I will be playing as him now). An alchemist (The brother's character - either the ex-GM takes him over (unlikely), he gets reincarnated as a ninja through divine intervention, or the kid playing the monk gets him as well). And me, a Paladin (Originally played by the new GM before I learned about Pathfinder). We are level 3 right now.

So, here are our plans:

The monk. Undecided. We want tips on how to make him fun.

The ranger. Arcane Archer For The Win!

The alchemist. Depends on how we do the transition. (If we keep him, I think he should stay pure alchemist - what about you guys?)

The paladin. I'm gonna aim for a Holy Vindicator. I posted a rules question about whether I have to take a level in Cleric or the Paladin's Channel Positive Energy Counts.

So, to sum things up: What do we do with a level 3 monk? Should we keep our alchemist? And do I really want celestial scars?

[Serisan]

I've run the entire Emerald Spire. My initial thoughts:

Monk: What is the monk doing exactly? If it's melee beat-em-up, I'd recommend either going Unchained Monk (if the GM is ok with retraining) or looking at some relevant archetypes.

Alchemist: Alch is very good. I would strongly recommend keeping the alch rather than changing to ninja. There is nothing that the rest of the party gains by changing to a ninja. As long as you have Infusion, you can do literally anything with the alch and it contributes more than the ninja would.

Holy Vindicator: Your paladin channel counts just fine. I don't know that it's necessarily beneficial in the composition you have, though. I think continuing straight paladin is probably stronger. HV is good if you're going to focus on AC with a shield, but paladin is the weak way to go into that build. Paladin can progress just as well without prestiging and you save yourself all the prerequisites.

[LegitName]

Ok: Get the monk an archetype, tell the new player he cannot play a ninja (This will be hard - we might loose him.), and stay 100% paladin.

[BadBird]

If someone really wants to play a Ninja, they'd be best-off with some advice on how to beef-up the Ninja's combat abilities and survival. You can cross Weapon Master Fighter and Ninja into a strength-based 'Shadow-Warrior' type character that has lots of Ninja flavor, but can stand up to danger like a heavily armored katana-master. Or if they insist on a more 'classic' Ninja, at least you could suggest Swashbuckler/Ninja for solid combat with high dexterity and light armor. Ninja is just plain better-off with a little multiclassing to make all that sneaky pyjama-fighting a little stronger.

[Serisan]

It's also important to note that you can have a ninja in flavor without being the ninja class. If you made the alchemist into a vivisectionist, for example, you'd still have sneak attack but you could focus on poisons and alchemical items that help with subtlety - smoke bombs and the like. A swashbuckler or unchained rogue could equally handle these duties, with unchained rogue handling the ninja better than the ninja alt class does.

You can theme without adhering to the class labels, after all.