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So I'm playing an aasimar spiritualist with the anger phantom in a game of Hell's Vengeance. The DM is (I think) fairly tough, while the group's relatively optimisation-light, usually more roleplay focused but at least building characters who function (though a couple of us in the group with a bit more experience usually give advice for builds). So as long as it doesn't incapacitate a character we usually go for the thematic choice.

My current build is an archon-aasimar spiritualist 6 / ranger 1 (1 level dip for better proficiencies and favoured enemy (human) for thematic reasons). I do decent damage when my phantom is out, but since it's a semi-intrigue campaign I often have to keep the evil rage monster inside my head to avoid notice.

Due to character deaths, I've gone from being in melee alongside a barbarian to being the party's primary melee for the last couple of levels. (hopefully this will ease up as another character death is giving us some sort of melee martial, and we currently have a sniper rogue and a bones oracle).

I seem to struggle a lot with hitting the enemies. Part of this may just be that I have pretty bad luck, but I was hoping I could get some outside opinions on my build, see if there's something obvious I'm missing.

I know my initiative is weak, and AC needs some work. Current plan is to continue advancing spiritualist from here. Pick up haste, fly and mage armor at SP7 and greater magic fang at SP8, swapping out magic fang for shield and SP8.

Any recommendations beyond that?

So I've been running the campaign for a couple of years now, and one thing that has repeatedly caused a problem for me is that the villains in this campaign are quite mysterious about their large-scale goals. While I understand that part of the campaign is the process of figuring this out, it does mean that the party still doesn't have a real concept of what's at stake.

I've tried to address this through dropping hints at a larger-scale intent, including a correspondence between Lucrecia and Mokmurian that did mention 'gathering our forces' (as well as a few other campaign-specific adjustments I'd made). Most of the players seem to be content with the understanding that someone's been calling the shots with all this murder, and as of last session they've just found the note about the raid on Sandpoint. They seem to be mostly okay with the flow of information.

However, one player is planning to retire his character (he's playing a pacifistic druid, and all the deliberately going places to kill innocent creatures like ogres who lived here first doesn't sit well with the character). He wants to bring in a new character, but due to the fact that there hasn't been a lot of clear information revealed about Mokmurian or his goals at this point he can't find a strong character motive for joining the party, or caring much about any of what's going on. The opinion from this player seems to be that the villains so far appear to have been mostly of the mustache-twirling variety.

Have any of you had similar troubles with this AP, reluctant heroes not feeling like they had a reason to get involved? And how at this point could I help with that? My idea of a solution at this point is having Svevenka contact the players after Myriana is put to rest (one of the players had a familial tie to Myriana so I think I can sell it) and tell them about how Mokmurian travelled to Xin Shalast and returned, and that the city's been unusually active since.