Re: session re****t

Chances are suprisingly good that Mary K. Kuhner was not wearing pants 
when he or she said:
 
> My first _City of the Spider Queen_ game was almost completely
determined
> by the mis-leveling of one of the angels (planetar? solar? I forget)
which
> allows the PCs to summon it with a modestly powerful spell, even though
> it's much more powerful than that.  (A 16th level cleric is CR16.  I
don't
> know how something with the full spellcasting of a 16th level cleric,
> plus a whole bunch more special powers, could be CR15.  I guess some of
> the AD&D game designers think of clerical casting as useless, but that
> has not been my experience.)

This was a pretty common complaint, and not just in the context of City 
of the Spider Queen. I think they toned down the Planar Ally spells 
quite a bit in 3.5, just FYI.

There is also extensive errata to Polymorph available somewhere on 
WotC's Web site, though I haven't examined it closely enough to know 
whether it would address your issues with it.

(BTW, they dropped the "A" in "D&D" when 3E came out, since there is no 
longer a basic version for it to be an advanced counterpart *of*...)