About the stairs, yeah that's just how the stairs eventing works. Nothing I Can really do about that. I thought the bug with dig/escape ropes were that you could use them with Aya and other followers (which was intentional), so when I update for E16 I'll have to double check that it's working as intended. And finally, didn't know about the surf thing. I'll see what I can do to fix that.
If you don't talk to the npc that disables followers before changing back to regular reborn, the game will crash upon launch. (It won't damage your save or anything though)
Ahh, my bad there. That'll be fixed with a simple scripting edit once E16 comes.