Nefarious Nine Export

I'm thinking of retiring Ba Chim, or putting him on ice and rolling up someone else. (I know, ironic, since he's just been back one day with the group!) On the one hand, he's a plankowner of the NN, I love playing him, and he's probably my favorite D&D character that I've played. But I'm worried that he's a) a liability in exploration and dungeon situations, and b) not matching with the rest of the group in terms of goals and policies.  I don't want to be the guy who's holding up the rest of the group and making things less fun because of their special snowflake, or a liability in gameplay.

Dungeon Tactics So after two delves into the Brothel Below, it seems like we can't really get into exploring, because of the strength of the opposition. So what can we do to try and change the equation? One option, as discussed last night, is to try and get some levels and equipment under our belts and try again. That's certainly an option, but I want to try and theorize about what we can do to improve our chances without the grind. * Spell selection. I wound up taking magic missiles rather than sleep because I thought the cyclopes would be out of sleep's hitting area. I realized that they're around 4+1 HD, which is the "single target" range of sleep. Being able to one-shot a cyclops is still a pretty good use (especially as compared to my current d6+1 damage on a mm).  * Polearms, shields, and ranged weapons. If we wound up putting together a polearm hedge - the first two ranks armed with halberds, or something - we might be able to get more attacks in on i