mal2

The 2000 gp listed at level 6 isn't a total for their entire career up to that point. It's the amount of treasure they are suggesting be handed out to the whole party between the time the party turns level 6 and the time they turn level 7.

That said, it's not at all far off from the amount that 4 brand new characters would get from table 10-10 Character Wealth if they were all being created at that level.

In my opinion, if the party as a whole is below that number, you should really be planning to hand out some extra rewards to try to catch them up. If they're between that number and double or so, you're probably fine. If they're more than, I don't know, like 5x that number, I would slow down on the loot for a while.

I think there are two tables of interest to get a feel for things. We have the Treasure by Level section, and the Treasure for New Characters section.

Looking at the Treasure by Level chart, we see that while the characters were level 5, they should have gotten about 1320 gp worth of treasure for the whole group. The suggested spread for that is a couple of level 5 items, a couple of level 6 items, a handful of consumables ranging from 4th to 6th level, plus about 320 gold. Over the course of an entire career running from 1st level to just turning 6th level, the party probably should have gotten about 3175 gp worth of stuff, split amongst the entire group. Some of the consumables probably should have been used over the course of those levels, and some magic items may well have been sold, so they should probably have a bit less than that left. Again, that's for the entire party. It sounds like your PCs have about 4000 gp worth of stuff split between 4 characters. That's a bit more than the chart calls for.

If we look at the Treasure for New Characters charts, we see that a brand new 6th level character would get either a handful of items ranging from 2nd to 5th level plus some gold, or else a lump sum of 450 gp. It's normal that characters that were played through the lower levels end up with more stuff than a character who just goes shopping at level six. The characters who played through those levels may well have some less-than-optimal items, just because they found them along the way, plus they get some advantages just from having been in play longer.

All of that says that your PCs sound like they're a little more wealthy than the guidelines, but not by a ton. If you wanted to, it would be fine to back off on the loot a bit over the course of level 6. On the other hand, I think you're basically pretty close. If you're comfortable with the power level of their gear, just keep on with what you've been doing and don't worry about it.

I think the designers were worried about summoning becoming too good as the pool of available creatures expanded with every bestiary published. I feel like that was a real issue in 1st edition. Unfortunately, I think they went too far in trying to avoid that problem. I wish they had gone the same route as the various combat form spells and just provided a couple of base templates for summons, with easily applied modifiers as the spells were heightened. It would take some variety away, but it would hopefully allow summons to be a little more useful than "I'm here to absorb a single hit at -10 MAP, then die."

I don't want summons to be too good in combat -- they shouldn't take the spotlight from martial characters, or pet-based classes, after all. At the moment, though, I feel like they're tuned too far in the other direction.

I usually start with a broad mechanical concept — melee, ranged, healer, or the like. Often that bit is discussed with other players to see what they’re thinking. I don’t want to end up with everyone trying to fit in the same niche on accident.

Then I refine the idea by thinking about flavor. Sometimes I’ll find a picture at this stage, then try to build a character around that. Otherwise, I’ll try to come up with an interesting backstory or bit of the world that we haven’t explored before and build around that.

I don't think it's a big deal to allow both the summoner and the eidolon to be healed by Treat Wounds in an hour. Assuming someone is planning on pursuing Medicine Skill Feats, Continual Recovery comes online quite quickly and eliminates all of the Treat Wounds cooldowns anyway.

Centaurs may not have reach, if they're classed as Large (Long) instead of Large (Tall). There's a chart in the Size, Space and Reach rules that lays out the difference. The Centaur in the Bestiary works that way. The Minotaur ought to get 10 feet of base reach with melee weapons, though.

Also, larger weapons don't inherently use larger damage dice in second edition. A Tiny greatsword does 1d12 damage, the same as a Huge greatsword. It's possible that Large creatures will get a permanent Clumsy 1 in exchange for a flat +2 damage the same way that Enlarge does, though. That's how they worked the feat-based size increase for Lizardmen. It's also possible they'll just get racial +2 Strength and -2 Dexterity or something instead.

I've been using Foundry for our face to face games. One of the players logs in and casts their screen up onto a TV (which has a Chromecast plugged in). That person typically just moves the tokens for anyone who isn't using a laptop. When we're doing exploration, they just pile all the tokens into one space, so they can be moved as a group. Everyone does their character sheets on Pathbuilder, and the import to Foundry works fine most of the time. I don't care if people roll their own dice or do it through Foundry, either way works fine.

We don't tend to sit around the kitchen table anymore, so this is still less awkward than trying to get everyone to come look at a battle map on their turn when combat is going on. Setting up the tokens and maps ahead of time is much faster than hunting for miniatures and drawing maps on a wet erase battle mat, too.

I don't think you'd need to Squeeze through either 5-foot hallways or normal sized doors. In theory that's reserved for spaces that just barely fit your shoulders (trained) or just barely fit your head (master).

I'd think both of those would just be difficult terrain. The doorway might be greater difficult terrain, especially if it's particularly narrow or something. Squeezing is pretty debilitating, since it's 10 rounds (one minute) per 5 or 10 feet of movement.