Well, I had some of the same issues, cropping up around the time of assault on Celwynvian.
One suggestion I have, is take into account that these abilities are usable once per day. I simply had some of my drow enter combat with PCs without the levitate ability available. I believe I also added levels to drow minions later in the adventure.
Also, as a general rule, PF PCs I found to be about 1 CR higher party than usual.
Name: Tirala
Race: Female Elf
Class: Cleric 10 (3.P Beta)
Adventure: Endless Night
Location: House Azrinae
Catalyst: Forcing entry into a great drow house.
Spoiler:
The PCs had spent some time gathering information within the city of Zirnakaynin, while staying at the Deurgar inn. Eventually they decided that the best course of action was to poke around house Azrinae. There was no response at the gates of the drow house, so the PCs scaled the walls. Within the courtyard was simply a large sphere of darkness. They set out across the yard, but were ambushed by Chwidenchas (spider leg horrors), burrowing beneath them. The PC cleric was having a rough time of things, nearly being eaten alive. She fled, running towards the outer wall that she had earlier scaled with the help of a knotted rope. After feebly scratching at the wall and realizing she hadn't the skill or strength to scale it herself, she took off in a panic in the other direction. She unfortunately ended her movement directly above the horror that had been burrowing after her, and suffered the full fury of its attacks in the following moments.
The party muscles were busy dealing with three other Chwidenchas, but the wizard managed to pluck her from the jaws of death with a timely dimension door. At this point, a demon-possessed dagger that the wizard carried attempted to force its will upon him, demanding he slay the goodly cleric. He shrugged off the suggestion and the cleric was revived.
Moments later, the PCs provoked the attention of the creature of darkness, a horrific vasuthant. The party monk narrowly survived the creatures casual attention, and as he was in need of assistance, the cleric moved forward, brandishing her Calistrian holy symbol, and prepared to channel energy. At this point, the vasuthant reached out and touched her, subjecting her to a temporal stasis spell.
The party narrowly escaped without her, leaving the curious sight of a female drow holding a symbol of Calistria within the courtyard of house Azrinae.
From a player perspective:
More varied play - At very low levels characters are not much different from each other mechanically.
More epic opponents - I prefer fighting an adult dragon as opposed to a juvenile dragon. I find it more exciting to be facing a high level lich than say a CR 8 giant.
From a DM perspective:
More interesting - once I hit high levels, I go from being able to mathematically determine how exactly the combat will play out to tossing extreme challenges at the PCs and assuming they will think of some way to overcome that I have not.
I prefer to start around level 10 because that gives some time for the group to work out how various spells/abilities will be interpreted around the table, and how the characters will synergize with each other as the game progresses. I find that jumping into a game at level 16+ can be very jarring. Starting low (10th), allows you to get the core mechanics/tactics of the PCs flowing smoothly so that battles resolve quickly. In contrast, a one-shot game at lvl 18 would be quite clunky.
The main reasons I gave the cut-off at 18 are epic ruleset and campaign world. I'm not particularly thrilled or familiar with the epic rules, and I would need to use them quite extensively to provide proper challenge and background NPCs in a lvl 20 campaign. The other aspect is that it can be challenging to come up with a suitably epic story for a party above level 18th. I don't really enjoy the prospect of fighting deities (seems silly), and you practically have to go to a planar setting at some point. For example, Dragonlance as a setting does not really support lvl 19 PCs particularly well. Of course this latter point is why I want paizo to write me an adventure!
One other note, I feel that the capstone abilities are very poorly balanced in PFRPG, and will throw the party dynamic out of whack at lvl 20 and onwards.
3) What's your favorite adventure, and what level was it for? Why is it your favorite adventure?
I DM'd City of the Spider Queen (10-18), great combats and general feel for the most part. The anti-teleport effects of the underdark are useful to high level play. However, my final combats at level 18 were not the most satisfactory, though I feel now that I have a little more experience DMing I could provide an excellent experience.
(4) There really is a city bureacracy capable of posting guards, even though it lacks House status. Presumably it's a kind of headless hydra, with low-level power and authority but totally at the whim of the Council of Widows.
I went with this option, based off of the drow entry in "Into the Darklands." There is a "Fighting Society" which takes care of the martial training in drow society. Afterwards, the nobles and the noble's guardsmen go back to their houses, while a large number of common drow act as soldiers, handling things of common interest, such as guarding the city perimeter and dealing with invasions from their many external enemies.
Specific interests are still watched over by particular houses (eg: guarding the elf-gates, expedition to Celwynvian), and in the case of dire need, all forces available are summoned to war.
I would say that the weakness you pointed out in the military command would still exist in this structure. The combined forces of the common drow are not more powerful than the combined forces of the great houses, and in a serious fight a supreme leader would have to be chosen for them to mesh together successfully. I believe this is described in the section on Ileccinoc.
I've played in a variety of games featuring both predominately good parties and evil parties of various flavors. I see that the common viewpoint is that less mature roleplayers and gamers have troubles making an evil party work well. In my experience the opposite has been true. I find that myself and others are much more inclined to be jerks when playing a paladin type character concept, and alignment has been a bigger stumbling block in good campaigns.
I think a key point is simply that when you sit down at the table, you are there to facilitate the game you are playing in. In my games there is generally an understanding OOC that PC's will not only not kill each other, but act in a cooperative manner, also splitting treasure fairly. It is up to the player to make this work if they are playing an antisocial character of any alignment.
That being said, I have played in an evil game where PCs were always at each others throats, only being held in check by fear, sleeping in their own alarm spells, not distributing healing freely etc. It was an amazingly fun game, though it did fall apart (15 sessions later), and I don't look down upon anyone going for that sort of experience.
Summary: in my experience, evil runs more smoothly than good, with less chance of player conflict, so for the time being I'm sticking with evil.
Been having a blast playing in maptools and skype, 3 players, with the following 5 PC's, Beta ruleset.
* Thavian Ornelos - LE Human Illusionist, son of Korvosa Acadamae headmaster. Currently seeking meteor magic for his own uses. Self proclaimed party leader.
* Travok Tulipprancer - NE Human Fighter, socially hopeless, with a disturbingly childlike approach to adventuring.
* Timandlon Prodigalarious - CN Elven Rogue, previously with the Crying Leaf elves, now following the more aggressive road of the PC's.
* Braak Bonecrusher - LE Half-orc Monk, worked his way from cleaning dung in Zincher's arena to bashing in drow wizard skulls.
* Talindra Namilil - CN Elven Cleric of Calistria, tight-lipped fugitive from Kyonin justice.
Only one PC death so far, Depora's poison leaving a PC vulnerable to a dretch coup-de-gras. We've just finished up Armageddon Echo - thanks paizo for putting out these adventure paths. :)
Limited wish is able to provide a one time -7 on a saving throw.
Scroll of Limited wish 3,775 gp
May also be worth looking into anything that can cause reroll's: unluck spell (spell compendium?), PF cleric domain abilities
Enervation as you said is a very effective method aswell. Dimensional anchor or feeblemind may be a good idea if the creature is likely to attempt escape after being level drained.
