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Hey guys, I had a quick question about incorporeal creatures. There are going to be some in an upcoming session in my campaign, but the rules threw me for a loop on the first few read-throughs.

"An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it takes only half damage from a corporeal source (except for channel energy). Although it is not a magical attack, holy water can affect incorporeal undead. Corporeal spells and effects that do not cause damage only have a 50% chance of affecting an incorporeal creature. Force spells and effects, such as from a magic missile, affect an incorporeal creature normally."

I want to make sure I have this right. If a barbarian is wielding a +1 greataxe and swings on the ghost, he deals half damage; if the archer in the back with a mundane bow tries to shoot it he does nothing; but if the priest in the back slaps the ghost across the face with channeled energy (or with a Ghost Touch mace) he deals full damage.

Additionally, the wizard standing next to the archer trying to cast "Bestow Curse" or some other nonsense on the ghost only has a 50% chance of having it work. But if they had a friendly ghost on their side, it could use whatever it had, from a random pointy stick to a delayed-blast fireball, without any problems on the enemy incorporeal?

Also, if the incorporeal enemies wanted to set up an ambush, could they hide inside the walls? Or is the theory behind incorporeal enemies that they're less the traditional "you cant hit me im an ethereal spoopy ghost" and more "my physical makeup is similar to mist or smoke", in which case could they just sorta shimmy up next to a wall and wait?

And last but not least, the incorporeal creature can affect all four of them normally without a problem (or even the friendly ghost if he gets mad at the traitor)? The creature in question is a shadow, and I only ask because I was thinking about switching it up and using a Wolf shadow instead of a normal shadow and one of its abilities states it has to turn corporeal to use its bite/trip.

So I recently (and by recently I mean in January) began DMing for a group of friends by running the Shackled City AP. I know it's an old one, but it was the AP that got me into this crazy world so I wanted to share it with others.

Anyway, before starting out I asked everyone for their character concepts and laid out some house rules.
-Everyone gets weapon finesse and qualifies as having it for later feats.
-3.5 feats are allowed.
-Players could choose between 3.5 and PF versions of classes, and so long as they could show me the page where they were getting it from, the PFSRD would be allowed as well.

What wound up happening was a human bloodrager, a human magus (he started out as a homebrew because I didn't know any better but he's since retrained his levels), a witch who's hiding her true race for reasons, and a drow bard.

So far it's going good and everyone's having fun, but about halfway through I had to make a change that I'm still to this day not sitting well with. I made it so all characters, both players and monsters, get full HD for HP. I had to do this because the party barbarian was literally 2-shotting bosses because he took Power Attack from 3.5 and then took Furious Focus. And then the party bard frontloaded all his buffs into him so his to-hit was through the roof. Making matters worse is the fact that the witch says "Misfortune" to all of the enemies (I know there's not much you can do about that one, but when the bloodrager says "hit me in 2 rounds or you dead" with that debuff, it gets hard to give the players a challenge).

I've brought the issue up with him before, but he is very...adamant. He's the type of guy who is still salty that Barbarians can only rage a certain number of rounds per day, and both he and the party know that he's the largest (and right now the ONLY) damage dealer in the party. So when I suggest he only be allowed to take the PF power attack or furious focus doesn't work with 3.5 power attack, he has at least 15 arguments on why damage is his only power and he should be allowed to keep it. Most of these arguments revolve around "Mages get HOW much damage? Yeah, that's what I thought." Plus, I made a change to Deadly Aim (I think that's what it was called? The ranged version of Power Attack) where if the player wanted to they could treat it as 3.5 power attack too (take a penalty up to your BAB for damage bonuses), because the guy playing Magus/Homebrew was going for ranged combat at the time and felt like he did no damage.

Additionally, at the start he expressed interest in the "Frenzied Berserker" prestige class, which I thought was a cool looking class and we both agreed it could use a little help in the "please don't TPK" department. So I said I'd let him not worry about it and that's his plan for the moment.

I feel like I've screwed up in multiple places here. Any help resolving these issues would be appreciated, as the bloodrager is a close personal friend and it's very hard for me to tell him "No you cant have all of the damage" when his immediate counter-argument is "Spells do what again?"

My goal here is for everyone at the table to have fun (even if as a DM I don't, as long as the players are happy and get through the story I'm happy). And for a while, it was fine and everyone WAS having fun. But with the party advancing into higher levels (they just hit 6 and are gearing up for the Demonskar Ball), the Bard is leaving and a new player just came in (playing an unchained rogue), and with the Magus trying (and failing) to be relevant in combat, I feel like the bloodrager is starting to step on some toes.