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Balkoth, I would say invisibility breaks at the time that you have to roll for the attack/maneuver/spell resistance or they have to roll a saving throw.

Well damn, then you would lose Hardy, as it should be considered an Extraordinary Ability. Same with Stability and Stonecunning.

Sah, Wild Shape (Su): At 4th level, a druid gains the ability to turn herself into any small or Medium animal and back again once per day.

This particular case says you become an animal, not that it is a polymorph effect wherein you gain traits as that animal. Unless the polymorph spell descriptor of the Beast Shape/Elemental Shape/Plant Shape spells it calls out as it "acting like" overrides the RAW reading of that initial sentence of wild shape.

Lady-J wrote:

3/day fireball, 5/day shield and maybe 3/day acid arrow

Cloak of the Hedge Wizard has a 1/day shield (and some other spells) - 2500 gp

Force bracers let you create a shield 10/day but does act like a real shield and takes proficiency etc.
6900 gp

There is no item that has shield 5/day - you could ask your GM to allow you to make one - using the above items as guidelines - I'd say you have a valid case that such an item should be priced between 2k and 6k gold.

Ring of Force Shield might be better in this case. What it doesn't spell out in the description is that the bonus applies to incorporeal and touch attacks, just like the Shield spell. But it's only +2, though it appears as though it might be an untyped bonus to AC, different sources show different wordings which obfuscate what it's really meant to be. I haven't checked the official errata/faq to be sure, but I would assume that it's really a Shield bonus.

1. I would say, normally no. As the GM I would rule that if the character has Combat Reflexes or Uncanny Dodge, then they can be considered flanking, but only if they are considered to be threatening with a melee weapon out or feat/ability that allows them to be considered threatening through other means.

Flat-Footed: A character who has not yet acted during a combat is flat-footed, unable to react normally to the situation. A flat-footed character loses his Dexterity bonus to AC and Combat Maneuver Defense (CMD) (if any) and cannot make attacks of opportunity, unless he has the Combat Reflexes feat or Uncanny Dodge class ability. Characters with Uncanny Dodge retain their Dexterity bonus to their AC and can make attacks of opportunity before they have acted in the first round of combat.

Flanking: Only a creature or character that threatens the defender can help an attacker get a flanking bonus.

2. You don't suddenly lose your racial abilities/qualities/trainings on account of "no longer being a fill-in-the-blank." Otherwise, you would lose basically everything you got at character creation upon wild shaping or using any other transmutation effect which changes types/subtypes, including your racial ability modifiers, regardless of race. Because pretty much every single entry says "race gains ability" or "race has quality." The only exceptions being the things which are specifically pointed out in the wild shape class ability, i.e. "lose the ability to speak or cast spells without necessary feats." You would not, however, be a valid target for spells/effects which target humanoids as you are currently an animal while in wild shape.

4. For Ray Shield, the shield would take that damage instead of you, though I would rule that you would take the splash damage, as it only implies that it takes the direct damage. For the Greater version, I would say that you and your shield would still take splash damage. For Missile Shield, the alchemist bomb feature spells out that the alchemist 'infuses them with magical reserves' ultimately making the bombs' damage a spell effect. Same applies for Deflect Arrows or any other feat/ability that excepts spell effects from their abilities to block/absorb/deflect damage/attacks.

5. So long as the character(s) have a way of seeing/detecting and threatening the invisible creature(s), then it would be possible to flank them. Otherwise, they can't really threaten what they can't see and can't anticipate which direction the invisible creature(s) will go. The +2 per character, I think, would still apply, but only if they can also see, or otherwise detect, the invisible creature(s).

6. If it is normal invisibility, it takes a direct attack to break invisibility, not just anything that an enemy would consider an attack. Essentially, if you have to roll an attack roll, bypass spell resistance, or they have to roll a saving throw because of an ability/spell directly affecting them which causes damage, drain, or a status condition, whether it specifically targets them or includes them in the area, it is an attack that breaks invisibility. There are possible exceptions. Things which do not count as an attack is remotely triggering traps, summoning creatures and directing them to attack, opening portcullises to allow attack animals to attack their foes, or cutting a rope bridge while enemies are still on it.

7. Per RAW, you and your allies would still be prone, as it does not call it out as a "gives allies a free move action with base movement equivalent to the amount you provide to them" or anything along those lines, it simply says that you "move them" a specific amount of distance away from where they were, being no less than 5 feet, and "with you." As for moving willing creatures with you, I would say the intent was to "reposition" them closer to you or move them with you in the same direction, not as a tactical repositioning.

Time Hop (Su): As a move action, you can teleport up to 10 feet per oracle level that you possess per day. This teleportation must be used in 5-foot increments. This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity. You must have line of sight to your destination to use this ability. You can bring other willing creatures with you, but you must expend an equal amount of distance for each creature brought.

Late response, but better than never.
The closest I've run across so far is Necromantic Affinity from the Inner Sea World Guide.

I have more than just that one perspective, which was very short-lived.

Much earlier in my gaming experience, I was part of a different gaming group than I am in now. We went through RA up to 11th level with eight players back in 3.5. Over the course of that time, we had a total of seven character deaths and no TPKs, had more than a few close calls. One of those deaths was my second character, to the Spectre when we were at 7th level. That character was a Ranger in life...and a Paladin in death. There was some DM fiat involved for being able to keep my original alignment since the Spectre which spawned my character was destroyed before I raised. The ECL of a Spectre for 3.5 is 7. So the only things I had to change were Constitution dropped out (was the same mod as Charisma, so didn't even have to change Con related stuff), my wolf familiar and gear were distributed to the rest of the party, class abilities switched out for Spectre abilities. I still had Snaggletooth following me around (yes, we figured out what that one gem was and how to open it, and I was the one who opened it before that encounter). And ended up with a Spectre Spawn due to my lack of familiarity with creatures and their types...which completely changed the dynamics of several of the combats, both for having two Spectres in the party and for my roleplaying out his reluctance to use his Spectre abilities in combat.
That was, hands-down, the most memorable character I've played.

Either treat its Con score as 10 for all intents and purposes[...]

That seems the most reasonable of the options.

Probably Magical Beast.

It would make a really weird Magical Beast...I'm still leaning toward it's creature type being the same as your own...though another alternative I saw in another thread after posting this is that it could be an Outsider (subtype) or something else based on flavour of "what" is possessing it.

Yes, it would gain the Grab ability.

That's what I was leaning toward.

Another question posed would be if the detached hand still benefits from the Possessed Hand feat, since the feat predicates that you are the one that needs to be attacking with the hand in order to gain the bonuses.

That is a good question that I had not thought of...and have not seen an answer to. If I were the DM, I would rule that it does get it, since you wouldn't be able to get something that it doesn't get itself.

On a side note, a mauler hand would boast a 22 strength score at level 3. Amusing.

Yeah, I saw that familiar archetype and am using that with the character I'm working on.

I've got a few questions about Hand's Detachment that I haven't been able to find an answer to. The first is summed up as "What's its Constitution Score?", the second is "What is its creature type?", and the last is "Does it retain the Grab ability?"

Background information for all:

Additional background info for first:

First question long form: Seeing as how a Crawling Hand is normally undead, it has no Constitution score because that is an undead specific trait (also applies to Constructs, but the feat doesn't say that it becomes a Construct). Since it is no longer undead, does it gain a Constitution score? If so, what does that become? Since you're losing the undead type, it would no longer be able to utilise undead traits, such as using Charisma mod to determine all the things Constitution scores are used for.

I know that the general rule is that if a trait/ability/feat calls out that you get x, y, and z but doesn't say anything about q, you don't get q. But this seems like an exception to that. This specifically says that it is not undead, which is why it even lacks a Constitution score to begin with, and is silent on the matter of the Constitution score.

Additional background info for second and last:

Second question long form: The feat only says that it isn't undead, but doesn't say that it becomes anything else. Its creature type would become your own, since it's your own hand, right? Or would it become a Magical Beast according to the usual Familiar rule, even though it was never an animal to begin with?

Last question long form: Seeing as how the feat calls out Mark Quarry as something it doesn't gain, but doesn't call out Grab as either gained or not gained...do you gain it as part of the Crawling Hand stats? It doesn't fall into the normal "retains" rule for a familiar. Yeah, x, y, and z mentioned, no q mentioned, means no q...but still want to know for certain.

I really want to make terrible hand related puns while grappling a person with just my hand and being able to attack them as myself or vice-versa with the Fighter Eldritch Guardian / Mutation Warrior archetypes combination that I saw elsewhere in the forums. And I can see how these issues might end up being relevant for multiple reasons.

Rappan Athuk has a running "Dead Characters" thing somewhere, since it is famous for TPKs and near-TPKs. I attempted to start an RA campaign with my gaming group, but it turned into a one shot. There were only three characters, they did 20 point buy, and they built their characters with the other characters in mind to avoid doubling up abilities/skills.

The first random encounter going from town to RA nearly TPKd them. Mind you, knowing that there were only three characters rather than the four for an experienced group and six for an inexperienced group, I scaled back the encounter size (only 70% as many), dropped HP (80%), to Hit (80%), Damage output (70%), and Defenses (80%)...and fudged a few rolls down. And that was from a prequel module for the areas surrounding RA that isn't included with the normal dungeon crawler.

If your party is larger or more optimised/experienced, you could probably get away with it without making too much in the way of alterations. Though you'll want to give them ways to exit and re-enter if it's going to be a "peppering" and, like Quentin said, scale back loot drop since there's a lot of loot. Much of it ends up being worthless to the party pretty quickly and just becomes more of a burden or 'leave it where it lies' thing due to carrying capacity limitations and not being able to use it.