Weird! The party I just ascended with was 2 Lizzie Fighters and 4 Bishops. The Bishops were missing 1 sixth level spell each. Only used Mind Stab and Holy Water as spell picks before sixth level spells. They ascended at level 25. I just wanted to say that even though you do not need the sixth and seventh level spells to win the game, they were very nice to have. I found myself using Earthquake, Mind Flay, Tsunami, Banish, Blizzard, Boiling Blood, Might to Magic, Dehydrate, and Psionic Blast most often (and of course Soul Shield/Elemental Shield). Most battles were only 1-3 rounds.

25th level with 6 guys?? Spend lots of time leveling up?

No, it was my first time completely through the game, and I wanted to explore everywhere. The Fighters were actually level 28 I believe. I did all the quests, all the retros, did some exploring on A/P early (level 13/14).

2 bishops in a 6 member party is definately overkill. I created a party with
1-samerai,2-bishops,1-valcarie,1-gadgeteer, and a ranger. Am currently at level 14-15 training the bishops in parellel. The game's to easy. I have all three artifacts, and even with the level 20 monsters in the mountain wilderness the battles aren't taking very long. I thought having only one slice and dicer in the front would make the game more challenging but i thought wrong.