I have a few questions about the campaign. We are all new to the game (including GM) and never played D&D or Pathfinder before, so I'm afraid something is not going quite right.
The party consists of half-orc Ranger (pure shooter, dumped Int, so no skills), Cleric dwarf (aims for Loremaster, so a lot of Knowledge) and Hunter gnome with dinosaur friend (some Knowledge too + battle skills like Ride).
I'm afraid we are losing on something. Our party has only 3 people, so we are lacking Skill Monkey and Face. We fail a lot of checks frequently (sometimes even Knowledge ones). For example GM already told us, that he tries to eliminate Mechanic checks, as the party doesn't have skill points in it. The number of skills, that are not covered, makes me think that we will completely miss some parts of adventure, because of being totally unqualified.
Is the start of Rise of the Runelords supposed to be that low on gold? At the start of our level 3 (right after the fight in the glassworks) we had only about 200g per character (average wealth for this level is 3000g, as I understand). We proceeded into the catacombs and the flying-invisible bastard almost massacred us. At the end we grappled and pinned her, but bypassing DR 5 and fast healing took so long that she managed to escape a few times. At the end it seemed to me that we won only because the GM let us. Smart control of the monsters during that 5-hour fight would definitely have led to a TPK.
Finally, our dwarf got kissed by a vargouille, so now it might be the end for him.
The GM says, that he follows the book strictly, but it seems to me, that he has some problems with the CR rules and "reward for scene" rule. Also, in his words, "your dinosaur is so strong, that you are basically a party of 4".
Am I being paranoid, and the campaign is running normally?