not given's page

I have not been a fan of Prestige classes in general, but Loremaster really fits the concept for the wizard I am creating for a new campaign. He is a conjuration specialist (evocation and enchantment as opposition schools). It looks to me that if I take 10 levels in wizard and then 10 levels in Loremaster, I lose nothing but one “free” wizard feat ( if I take the Loremaster secret ability that gives on free feat). Hit dice, saves, BAB are all the same, plus I get slightly better skill points for the Loremaster levels. And spells per day matches the wizard progression.

The only thing I see that might possibly be a loss would be the final part of Summoner’s Charm “At 20th level, you can change the duration of all summon monster spells to permanent. You can have no more than one summon monster spell made permanent in this way at one time. If you designate another summon monster spell as permanent, the previous spell immediately ends.” The part about 20th level is unclear: does that mean 20 full levels as wizard, or just attaining 20th level in any way (like 10 wizard/10 Loremaster)?

Thanks!
BB

We almost had a total party wipe last night and i am trying to figure out where we, the players, goofed.

Background: 5 players, only one has played 3.x.pathfidner before, the other 4 of us are from more cinematic style games (no maps, very freeform fights), most of us really enjoy RP more than combat, but we acknowledge combat is necessary to advance the plots (and the characters).

The five characters are all level 1, with a 20 point buy, and 90 gold for starting equipment. There is a human paladin, an elf fighter, a gnome sorceress, a halfling cleric and a gnome bard.

The GM is running us through a Piazo campaign, i think is is Kingmaker, and we were on our second gamin session. The first section, we had saved an outpost from some bandits and dealt with a small group of kobolds in the wilderness.

This time, we were on the trail of the bandit camp. We got there and they had EIGHT bandits, all with (we later found out) longbows with a +2 STR mod. We tried to take out the first lookout (he was in a tree) but that alerted the camp and they all came after us. We tried using the spells we had. the fighters meleed, we did everything we could think of - but the elf fighter went down twice (cleric got him back up both times, but that took all his spells), and then this chick dual wielding hand axes ambushes us and almost takes down both the fighter and the paladin. By this point, five bandits were down, one had fled and we had the axe crazy chick and two bandits left. The elf and paladin took out one of the bandits, then the axe chick and started to flee (our first experience with the withdrawal maneuver - that was a shock to us, we didn't know that was possible), and the other bandit fled at that point as well. We were out of spells, the elf was down (for the third time) and the paladin and bard were wounded. If they NPCs had not fled, the party would have wiped.

I work with the elf fighter's player (he's the only one with 3.x prior experience) and we were trying to figure out at lunch today what we did wrong, how we could have possibly, at first level, handled this scenario better - and we were drawing blanks.

Any advice would be much appreciated, but please, no spoilers for the campaign plot.