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I realised that I have made some major mistakes in my previous game, so I have decided to start a new party. I'm not sure whether I want to continue to HOF or not, but I sure do want a strong, well-balanced party. Here is my idea, tell me if it's good and how I can make it better.

I've tried to pick only races with spell resistance, as I think it's a great ability to have! Also, I love arcane magic users and they're usually the backbone of my party.

Deep gnome monk: as they naturally have +4AC and +2wis, it seemed like a good idea to have one as a decoy/tank.

Drow (female) fighter 4/cleric X: main tank. the fighter levels are there for the BAB increase and the feats...

Drow (male) rogue 2/3 (not sure!)/ wiz X: rogue lvls for the skill points and armour proficiency. Will use light armour with appropriate feats to avoid spell failure. Can unlock chests and disarm traps.

Wild elf Monk 3/sorcerer: monk levels to increase speed and give wis bonus to AC


I still have two character slots free. I'm not sure about those. I will need a 'face' character to do the talking (the monk/sorcerer has good charisma, but abysmal int, so she can't spare enough skill points for diplo and bluff!).

I was also wondering which would be best, a monk 3/cleric X female drow character (won't use armour but doesn't need to and has great speed) or a barb 3/cleric X female drow?

So, what do you think?

If you are planning to cheat via installing XP mods or abuse the game mechanics via level squatting which allows you to reach level 30 even in chapter2 your party is fine.

But when playing the regular way you'll only reach an average party level of just below 17 at the end of the game and most of the time your party level will be far lower.

You'll have a very hard time with this party.

Essential for keeping the game easy are a cleric and an arcane caster, your party is missing both.
You'll get important spells like "animate dead", "raise dead", "stoneskin" and "mass haste" far too late in the game, you'll just have learned to cast "heal" when you are supposed to cast "mass heal", ..., nearly all spells also have level-dependent effects which will be low at low caster levels.

So the best additions to your 4 characters would be a shield dwarf cleric and a human transmuter/diviner or sorcerer.

About your character ideas:

1) standard tank with great AC
2) works very well as tank, but is no proper cleric
3) perfect back-up caster, I'd consider taking a specialist wizard. The level 1 "mage armor" spell is better than the light armor you'll find. Taking only one rogue level at the start is enough to take you through the game, but you can take more for roleplaying reasons if this is only your backup caster.
4) wisdom is useless for sorcerers and mages, the monk levels will cripple your casting power a lot. Many add 1-2 paladin levels to their sorc because of the enormous charisma bonus to saving throws and other paladin bonusses, but I don't think it's worth the slowdown.
5) A pure cleric will be superior both to the monk3/cleric and barbarian3/cleric who aren't much different from the fighter4/cleric.

I'll add my $0.02.

1) Fine. One of my favourites.
2) If doing a normal game and not doing HoF, lose the 3 extra fighter levels - take one for the martial weapons feats and create the character with 18 Str and high Con. As kmonster pointed out, drow are slow to develop as casters, so consider a non-ECL race.
3) Fine. A decent backup.
4) I don't like this idea because the classes conflict both in character role (e.g. sorc is a spellbomber, monk is a tank or speedy attacker of casters and archers) and stat distribution. Better to have a pure human sorceror.

For characters 5 & 6, I'd add another caster (wizard, cleric, or druid, by preference) for sure at #5. If you like magic, add another caster at #6, if not, add another tank or a scout/archer type. If you made #6 a ranger/rogue, you could drop the rogue levels on #3 and make it a better caster.

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1) Standard, just a decoy and therefore not one of my favourites, I would cancel this one, If you follow my advice with 2) and 3), you won't need this one anyway!

2) I like the idea of a melee heavy back-up cleric and therefore I would definetly add a 2 monk levels 3 rogue (evasion is just to good)

3) same as 2), 15-17L for a cleric and 20L for a wiz are just enough for a back-up great caster! I would add more melee capability!

4) No monk - 2 PAL levels and aasimar or drow! as main arcane caster

5) cleric25 - (PAL2) - monk3 (drow female) as main arcane caster (drow female)

6) you need a speaker and some party-support: bard9-11/druid21-19! (human)

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